about Haley's honesty (or lack thereof) when writing Roots.
Posted on 02/12/2016 8:47:12 AM PST by rktman
Roots remake? What the heck was wrong with the original one?
I cant believe these people are THIS disrespectful to an iconic production to sully it be “rebooting” the thing with all of that garbage.
Well then again, I can totally believe it.
Because Hollywood is incapable of coming up with new material.
Me, neither. In the end his descendants end up owning land in Tennessee and doing pretty good for themselves. He ended up retired from the Navy and a rich author. If “that old African” hadn’t been captured and sold into slavery Alex would still be running from lions.
Who have they cast to play Ben Affleck’s great-great grandfather?
Hopefully they show other Africans capturing them before selling them to the white slavers rather than just butchering them as they would have before.
If captured prisoners of tribal conflicts hadn't had value, they would have just been slaughtered.
Cash or dinner?
My ancestors were pathetic slaves.
On a good day, you could trade six of us to the Mongols for a three-legged cat with one ear and half a tail.
I wish they would remake Weekend At Bernies II.
The first one too for that matter.
Obama will love it and start Reparations Immediately.
“From the looks of the trailer, it will only inflame the black community.........and bring more racism, hatred and division....... Not a tool for healing old wounds.......but one for opening new ones...........”
Healing wounds was not the intent of the original, it was more to generate white guilt which it did quite well. This one will be aimed at intensifying black hatred of whites. The trailer looks to have a more militant tone.
LOL, that deserves a rim-shot!
Oh good grief, judging by the trailer, it ought to get the black hatred towards whites stirred up with the BLM crowd. Roots, what a joke, especially when almost 80% don’t even make an attempt to create an intact family. The only thing Roots did was set off some kind of competition for the most bizarre and outlandish baby names imaginable.
Mr. Haley died many years ago.
He's "Kunta Kanye" in the remake.
Will they update the story and show who captured then sold the people to everyone in the world who wanted slaves?
You know the africans who raided other villages.
If they do this they might also want to correct who actually wrote much of what Alex Haley took credit for.
Will they? Nah....
From Wikipedia:
Courlander wrote seven novels, his most famous being The African, published in 1967. The novel was the story of a slave's capture in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, and his struggle to retain his native culture in a hostile new world. In 1978, Courlander filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had copied 81 passages from his novel.[3] Courlander's pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement lawsuit claimed: "Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without The African.... Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character."[4]
In his Expert Witness Report submitted to federal court, Professor of English Michael Wood of Columbia University stated: "The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive. ... Roots... plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified, but always it seems, to be consulted. ... Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot. Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave's thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else's novel."[5]
After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots."[6]
During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period."[7]
During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed The African with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had given his own personal copy of The African to Haley, events that took place a good number of years prior to the publication of Roots.[8]
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