So Hard to Watch

I went to see the movie "Detroit" this week.  It was horrific.  Not because it wasn't well made.  It was.  Not because it wasn't well cast.  It was.  Not because it was brought to life by a white director.  A problem, but one I could overlook.  No, the issue was the pain it evoked.  The torment and physical agony of seeing black folks tortured and killed simply for being black, was too much to bear.  Seeing the cops who did it get off, was soul-crushing.  Knowing this happened 40 years ago and knowing that it is still happening today, is horrifying.  Heartbreaking.

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

‘Detroit’ and the question of cultural gatekeeping
By Ann Hornaday

 The groan, when it came, was swift, the pain behind it palpable. At a curators’ roundtable at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia last weekend, the subject was gatekeeping. Who decides what stories get told? Who decides who gets to tell them? When it comes to stories rooted in the African diaspora — the focus of BlackStar, now in its sixth year — how have moving images in mainstream culture contributed to external bias and internalized self-loathing? Why is a particular story that transpired during the 1967 riots being called “Detroit,” as if one specific, if admittedly monstrous, episode can fairly represent the far more complex events during which it took place?

It was at this question, posed by scholar and curator Dessane Cassell, that the collective groan went up in the packed conference room at the Institute of Contemporary Art. “Detroit,” in which director Kathryn Bigelow dramatizes the murder of three black teenagers at the hands of white policemen during the titular city’s 1967 uprising, has been hailed by many critics (including this one) for plunging viewers into an event that crystallizes white supremacy and impunity at their most pathological. But for many others — including those among the filmmakers, programmers and viewers who attended BlackStar — “Detroit” presents yet another dispiriting example of a white filmmaker undertaking self-examination and catharsis using the spectacle of anguish, suffering and desecration of the black body.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/detroit-and-the-question-of-cultural-gatekeeping/2017/08/10/0bdff1a2-7dce-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.11590ba19b41&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1