Peanutbutter and The End Of Slavery

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 1998)

In Holland we used to have a commercial for peanut butter. A little boy was shown riding his bicycle against the wind and, while taking a break, eating a sandwich with peanut butter. Here comes this man driving by, telling him to keep up the good nourishment so that one day he will grow up strong enough to win the Tour de France. Punchline of the commercial: 'Twenty years later Joop Zoetemelk won the Tour de France' plus the brand name and logo of the peanut butter company.
After watching Amistad I had the same feeling that something wasn't right. That the filmmakers were suggesting a link between two separate moments in history that wasn't there. After all: the Amistad-incident took place well over twenty years before the Civil War started. This means that virtually everyone we see in the film will have died before the first rifleshot in the War that ended slavery in North-America was even fired. Suggesting a direct causality between the two events seems ridiculous.