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Trailer – Disgrace (More On The Frailty Of White Women, And The Savagery Of African Men)
Disgrace is Steve Jacobs’s feature adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee’s best-selling, award-winning 1999 novel of the same name. The story goes… driven to resign after an affair with a student, a white Cape Town college professor, David Lurie (played by John Malkovich) seeks refuge with his only daughter, Lucy, on her lonely homestead in the hinterlands. Their casual walk with her dogs one day turns into a nightmare: three black men who ask to use the phone attack them instead, raping her and setting him on fire, before stealing his car. Despite the violent occurrence, Lucy decides to stay at her farm – land she owns and shares with a black farmer, Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney who played Lumumba in Raoul Peck’s biopic) – and not to report the sexual assault, which infuriates her father.
The trauma-laden story had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and opens in the United States on September 18. The reviews I’ve read thus far have been strong; however, I’ll pass on this one, for some very obvious reasons, which I’m sure you can guess. Along with the savage portrayals of black Africans in this summer’s sleeper hit, District 9, also set in South Africa by the way, what’s the overall message being delivered here? Here’s its trailer:
5 comments to Trailer – Disgrace (More On The Frailty Of White Women, And The Savagery Of African Men) |
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however, I’ll pass on this one, for some very obvious reasons, which I’m sure you can guess.
Interesting philosophical question. I happen to believe that cinema should present the truth of the world unflinchingly. Violent crime is one of the defining social realities of South Africa in this decade.
Black-on-white crime in particular is driving an exodus of white South Africans that’s reconfiguring the population. (An Afrikaner I met in Johannesburg in 2000 recently became a citizen of New Zealand.)
Do you believe that white victimization of blacks under apartheid is a legitimate subject of film storytelling… but black victimization of whites is not?
I’m definitely all for truth in story-telling, and black victimization of whites in South Africa is a legitimate subject. But I’m affected by the cumulative effect of the often one-dimensional, pejorative portrayals of blacks all over Africa, in cinema, especially in films with stories that are told by non-blacks, usually intended for non-black audiences in North America and Europe.
So, there’s this immediate negative reaction when I read about films like this. If we had more robust, varied stories about blacks in Africa, I think there’d be less resistance.
I recognize that I’m lumping all of Africa together, and certainly the filmmakers of this specific film, set in South Africa, have a story that we could maybe say speaks more to their experience than the other; and thus, this is a legitimate story to tell.
However, I can’t help but be turned off by what feels like a dominance of similar kinds of stories (in which blacks in Africa are either “savage-like” or “deserving of pity”), almost always told by whites, about blacks in Africa. Those are the films that tend to travel. Those made by blacks telling of their experiences, often don’t have the same kind of reach, and thus, effect on world the way the former does.
You know… Despite strides being taken in some realms (e.g. majority black rule Soth Africa and America electing its first half African president) it seems to me that the film world is firmly on course to keep the stereotypical images of black men alive in people’s minds.
I’m a Malkovich fan, but this probably won’t be on my must-see list, either.
I hear you, Tambay.
I suppose I’m just willing to give any serious-minded film, with apparent literary and cinematic value, the benefit of the doubt.
I saw this last night.
All I can say is it a very pre April 1994 view of South Africa. I don’t know the book but the subtext of the film seemed to me to be give a Black African his freedom all they’ll do is shaft a White man out of his job and rape and kill our women. That if you want a multi-racial Africa you should put up with this situation.
Oh, if your a Malkovich fan do steer clear. As his accent goes from everywhere from Illinois via Scotland back to New York and never quite makes South Africa.