2000 Suicides

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2005)

I ask you to watch "Birth of a Nation," folks. By many measures it is the most successful movie of all time, seen by the greatest percentage of the population. Bigger, yes than "Star Wars" or "Gone With the Wind."
If you don't know it, it is reprehensibly racist. We can see this today, but essentially no one did when it was new. Now I ask you, what will our grandchildren consider racist that we blindly accept today?
My guess is stories like this.
Jackson plays a well meaning man, with the affect of nobility you find in intense, well- meaning, stupid people have. Sure, he talks about "getting ahead" and the value of an education. But when the movie needs tension and movement, the thing revolves around the ordinary sports movie core: determination leads to winning.
Two things will seem offensive in the future. The first is obvious: black boys as incapable of even thinking, only playing and having to be forced into "studying" by the reward of just being on the court in a place of honor. It is new generation racism. Obvious, and we won't have to wait for my grandchildren for that one to be reviled.
But the other. The other is that apart from race that sports has something to do with the life of the mind. That discipline and focus and determination, even sacrifice in the one gives you "life lessons" that apply in the other. This will take longer because each movie that uses it encourages you to not think, and not thinking means you don't think about the thing that just instructed you to not think.
And it will take some time because sports is theater (and little less) and these kinds of movies are theater and they will support each other against our better interests.
The curious things about movies. Genres adapt to survive. We've already abandoned the simple version of this genre. This is a slight modification.
Stay away from this; it is harmful, in addition to being a clichéd hack of the formula. Your grandkids will think you are stupid.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.