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<krug@wisc.edu> I think the concern is less with the obvious liberties any narrative (non-documentary) film must take, at least from my perspective. To me, the issue is the continual, immutable theme of all of these films (Amistad, Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond, Amazing Grace, etc.): that Black people are indebted to whites for liberty, rationality, civilization, etc. It is 2007, and we have seen post after post come across this listserve relating to the 200th anniversary of the British 'abolition' of their traffic in African people. I don't think that I am the only person on this list who is cynical enough to think that the story isn't quite so 'amazing' or 'graceful,' since Eric Williams had something to say about that 60 years ago. Film, of course, reflects the values of the society within which it is produced, and the U.S. is hardly a society in which Black self-determination is a majority value. But I don't think that a critique of the underlying political narrative of such films, such as Carina Ray's and Karin Klieman's, can be so easily dismissed. Jessica A. Krug Graduate Student Department of History University of Wisconsin-Madison krug@wisc.edu
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