Posted on 01/19/2015 6:58:09 AM PST by SkyPilot
I WENT Friday morning to see Selma and found myself watching it in a theater full of black teenagers.
Thanks to donations, D.C. public school kids got free tickets to the first Hollywood movie about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday weekend an effort that was duplicated for students around the country.
The kids did plenty of talking and texting, and plenty of fighting over whether there was too much talking and texting. Slowly but surely, though, the crowd was drawn in by the Scheherazade skills of the Selma director, Ava DuVernay.
The horrific scene of the four schoolgirls killed in the white supremacist bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church stunned the audience. One young man next to me unleashed a string of expletives and admitted that he was scared. When civil rights leaders are clubbed, whipped and trampled by white lawmen as feral white onlookers cheer, the youngsters seemed aghast.
In a delicately wrought scene in which Coretta Scott King calls out her husband about his infidelities, some of the teenage girls reacted with a chorus of oooohs.
DuVernay sets the tone for her portrayal of Lyndon Johnson as patronizing and skittish on civil rights in the first scene between the president and Dr. King. L.B.J. stands above a seated M.L.K., pats him on the shoulder, and tells him this voting thing is just going to have to wait while he works on the eradication of poverty.
Many of the teenagers by me bristled at the power dynamic between the men. It was clear that a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.s role in civil rights through DuVernays lens.
And thats a shame. I loved the movie and find the Oscar snub of its dazzling actors repugnant.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Maureen Dowd doesn’t like how “Selma” portrayed LBJ????? That must mean that she’s a RACIST!!!!!!!!!
Thank you. She always touches my heart.
Scheherazade is the name of a Persian story teller queen in the old tales of 1000 and one nights. Dowd’s use of the term here is inspired and valid. Scheherazade wove magical stories that kept here tyrant king enraptured and her alive for years.
If Sniper Chris Kyle was black, would they still complain about Selma not winning anything? If Sniper is the big money maker, the public has decided that it was a great picture. There have been many great pictures in the past that never won an Oscar, so what? I guess they have to hype this one so people will take notice. As far as Selma, I saw it on the TV news when it occurred. Maybe the Hollywood MPA can come up with a special Oscar for it, in the category of best Propaganda movie, so it can receive the gold Joesph Goebbels Award?
Heh, heh, that song was titled “Welfare Cadilac” & the misspelling was intentional. Came out during the anti-hippie protests by hardhat workers in NYC, as I recall.
LBJ’s `Great Society’ seriously messed this country up, from the late Sixties through the Sucky Seventies. Ronald Reagan saved us in the nick of time, IMO.
Thanks for sharing the pic, but that’s not CZJ
The liberals don’t want it to be known that Eugene “Bull” Conner who famously turned attack dogs and fire hoses on blacks to keep them from voting was a DEMOCRAT!
When, uh, I was bothering to look at the eyes.
Thanks all!
When ordinary white people walking down the street are clubbed, whipped and trampled by black thugs as feral black onlookers cheer, the youngsters don't seem to mind.
“Scheherazade skills of the Selma director, Ava DuVernay. “
What the heck does that mean?
And the media wonders why white people stay away, not wanting to sit in the same theater with "bristled" black teens angry with whites in general.
And put in so much debt it will take a hundred years to get rid of it.
It is a freakin’ movie. Not a documentary.
Mama's in the whorehouse.
Daddy's in the jail.
Sister's on the corner
shouting "P***y for sale!"
The illegitimacy rate is the telling statistic.
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