“Africa has had far too many dictators like that,” my wife remarked as we walked out of the theater.
James McAvoy also did a fine job as Nicholas Garrigan, Amin’s personal physician and “closest advisor”. In the film, Amin turned to Garrigan for advice on dealings with his ministers, his family and with the media.
Ultimately, Ugandans relied on him to tell the story of the despot’s attrocities. A Ugandan doctor tells Garrigan in the movie, “They’ll believe you. You’re a white man.”
And that line reveals the truth, doesn’t it? The character of Garrigan is fictional, created for the book by Giles Foden and adapted for the movie. Was the white man added to the story to make it more “believable”, or is he there to make an African tale more “marketable” to a white audience?
4 comments:
Nadir: I share your disdain for putting white characters into black stories, either as invented charactors, or as overemphasized
The worst example must be: "Amastad! The story of an African slave rebellion, starring.... Mathew McConnehey! And Anthony Hopkins!" Then, all the honkies speak english and all the Africans speak African. Why not have the Africans speak English, and the honkies speak gibberish, to replicate for the audience the perspective of the slaves?
"Glory" was almost as bad, taking this landmark victory of blacks and telling it from the honkey perspective. Why not tell this from the perspective of one of the black characters? Perhaps from the son of Fred Douglas, who served in that company?
"Scarface" and "Carlito's Way" somewhat did this in that they used a white actor (Al Pacino in each case) to portray the lead non-white hispanic charactor.
Two films, I reckon, got it right: "Rosewood" and "Hotel Rwanda". The success of Hotel should have proven that white audiences don't need a focus on white characters in order to embrace a black story.
On a positive note: last night a news report included a study by a black UCLA law prof who concluded that "only 8% of all written script parts in Hollywood specify black characters." Though the study's author and the reporter presented this as a negative stat, considering that black's comprise 12% of the US population, 8% represents 67% of full equity. Still an "F", but a high "F", and surely better than 10 and 20 years ago, no? A survey of nominated and winning best actors/actresses and supporting actors/actresses in the past ten years leads to figures well above 12%.
Also: "Godfather" sort of did this also, inventing an Irish character as the adopted brother; I believe even the novel had done this, and for the same reason.
"Two films, I reckon, got it right: "Rosewood" and "Hotel Rwanda". The success of Hotel should have proven that white audiences don't need a focus on white characters in order to embrace a black story."
Jon Voight in Rosewood and Nick Nolte in Hotel Rwanda would probably qualify as the "white savior" role in each of those movies, though neither was the sole savior.
"Though the study's author and the reporter presented this as a negative stat, considering that black's comprise 12% of the US population, 8% represents 67% of full equity. Still an "F", but a high "F", and surely better than 10 and 20 years ago, no?"
Things are getting better as this year's Oscar nominations will attest. But there is still a long way to go...
Nadir: Yes, a long way to go. I think that the stats I provided are about right; a high F, much better than 20 years ago, but still an F.
Yes, Rosewood and Hotel did have a "good honkey", but those characters weren't even secondary characters but rather tertiary. Also for certain the Hotel honkey was a real character who really did play a role central to the story. I am not certain if the real Rosewood story had a "good white guy"; if it did, that character would probably have been as important to the story as he would have been to the black folks in deadly crisis.
I sense you share my passion for some totally all-black stories that omit any crackers. But for some of the stories that you and I want on screen, white folks will have to make some crucial appearances. For example, Nat Turner's story would need not only the crackers that he fought, but his pre-revolt interactions with honkies were very important as I understand his story.
If we got the three Alexander Dumas' on the screen, even one for each of three films, they lived their lives nearly exclusively with honkies.... but of course they were their own saviors (and the saviors of honkies).
T'saount L'Ovouture (spelling!) could have just a few honkies, but they at least need to be there to get killed! He also had some crucial lieutenants who were honkies, of course, including a few who served in the first black govt.
Even in Glory, they could have had the same honkey characters, but just told the story from the black chars view, and instead of the honkeys saving the negroes, the negroes could have been saving themselves, and the Union cause of "free soil, free men."
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