![]() ![]() On June 24th, the long Civil War era will return to the big screen with “Free State of Jones,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mahershala Ali, Keri Russell, and Brendan Gleeson. This spring, PBS’s “Mercy Street” conveyed life and death, work and love in an Alexandria, Virginia hotel-turned-Union-hospital (check out reviews on Muster by Elizabeth Motich!). In “The Hateful Eight” (2015), Tarantino toyed with the racial, legal, and political legacies of the war in 1870s Wyoming before abandoning nuance and complexity to bathe audiences in a sea of blood and bile. ![]() This year, the jagged edges of the war again took center stage. ![]() Tarantino implies what McQueen makes explicit and what a former slave articulated in Ken Burns’ “Civil War:” For the slave, it is all night–all night forever.” Jamie Foxx as the title character in “Django Unchained” (2012). Tarantino may give us a world where the slaveholders receive their just deserts and Django (Jamie Foxx) and his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) ride away free, but their triumphant departure takes place in actual darkness. Solomon’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) rescue is hopeful yet hollow since audiences know that Patsy (Lupita Nyong’o) will continue to suffer under slaveholder Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). Director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s autobiographical account of his kidnapping into slavery “12 Years a Slave” won wide acclaim with critics (3 Oscars) and audiences alike. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” (2012) illustrated the violence on which slaveholders relied to support their cultural, social, and economic system. Recent films also have captured the violence of slavery. Their lenses are otherwise focused on struggles far from the front lines. Both “Cold Mountain” and “Lincoln” open with battle scenes to remind us of the context and consequences of their stories. “Lincoln” (2012) charted the political landscape the president and Republicans navigated during debate on the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Inman (Jude Law) formed unlikely alliances to stay alive. Ruby Thewes (Renée Zellweger) and Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) battled nature and the predations of Confederate Home Guards to survive, while Confederate deserter W.P. “Cold Mountain” (2004) opened with the 1864 Battle of the Crater but focused on the Confederate home front. The BBC’s “Copper” (2012-2013) took viewers to 1864 New York City rife with ethnic and racial conflict, thick with Confederate sympathizers, and led by honest cops and capricious pols. Hollywood’s eagerness to portray the ragged edges of the era beyond the battlefields has cast women, deserters, slaves, veterans, and guerillas into leading roles. This year, with movies like “Free State of Jones” and “Birth of a Nation,” filmmakers continue to explore the struggles beyond the battlefield but still central to the war. Forum: The Future of Civil War Era StudiesĪs scholarship on the Civil War era expands, Hollywood, too, has cast a wider gaze at the conflict and its roots.Reconstruction in Public History and Memory at the Sesquicentennial: A Roundtable Discussion.Maintaining a Radical Vision of African Americans in the Age of Freedom.In a Class by Itself: Slavery and the Emergence of Capitalist Social Relations during Reconstruction.Birthright Citizenship and Reconstruction’s Unfinished Revolution.The Civil War and State-Building: A Reconsideration.Forum: The Future of Reconstruction Studies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |