Amistad, a film about an 1839 revolt aboard a slave ship and the U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted from it, had a strong box office opening, indicating that racial matters lure moviegoers to theaters. The answer is a qualified yes. If past films are any indication, The Boxer and Kundun don't stand a chance. And despite Brad Pitt's presence, Seven Years in Tibet flopped. There's nothing like a great movie to make an issue a grabber, though.
Excellent movies have superb stories and compelling characters.
And it inevitably helps when a masterful director such as Steven Spielberg decides to tackle a topic. Still, there is a pecking order of concerns, with race foremost among Americans, according to pop culture mavens. ''In the United States, if you talk about class, you're also talking about race,'' said Richard Slotkin, professor of American studies and film at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. ''If you talk about the fragmentation of society, you're talking about race. That's one of the things that you've got to be talking about. So even the conflict in Northern Ireland, he said, has resonances of race. Kuwahara, who's based at Northern Kentucky University, said people can get interested in Tibet's subjugation by the Red Chinese or human rights, but it's almost as if they're dilettantes dabbling in a distant disturbance.