{"id":48326,"date":"2016-07-19T19:44:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T19:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48326"},"modified":"2016-07-19T19:44:43","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T19:44:43","slug":"crucifying-the-white-savior-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48326","title":{"rendered":"Crucifying the White Savior (Film)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crucifying the White Savior (Film)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Shadow and Act<\/a>
\n2016-06-29<\/p>\n

Andre Seewood<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

We no longer have to forgive them, for they know exactly what they are doing.<\/p>\n

The new film by Gary Ross<\/a>, \u201cThe Free State of Jones<\/a>\u201d is uncontestably a White savior film<\/a>. Laid bare, \u201cThe Free State of Jones\u201d is a simplistically constructed tale of a Confederate army<\/a> deserter who eventually lives in a polygamous relationship with a Black former slave named Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw<\/a>) with whom he has a mixed race child and his White wife and their White child. The film\u2019s story is a heroification of the 1862 true story of Newton Knight<\/a> a real Confederate deserter from Jones County, Mississippi<\/a>, who ironically didn\u2019t actually \u201csave\u201d anyone, but instead merely prolonged the inevitable suffering of those Blacks and his mixed race progeny who were trapped within the White supremacist power structure of the United States of America.<\/p>\n

The film builds its White savior character not in the broad conflicts between Confederate and Union soldiers, Free Black men and the KKK<\/a>, but in small scenes of selfless heroism and demonstrative yet intimate \u201cWhite-man- taking-charge- and-directing- the-actions- of-others\u201d scenes that accumulate over the course of the two-and- a-half- hour film until there is no doubt about who is saving whom in a battle and who desperately needed to be protected from whom in a White supremacist society. Yet \u201cThe Free State of Jones\u201d is an oddly racially segregated film that separates its Black token characters from its White fully developed characters, even as they fight (presumably) together to protect their illegal territory. There are certain battle and robbery scenes where no Black token is shown and others where Black tokens fight next to each other but are segregated from their fellow White fighters, revealing that Knight\u2019s Free State was conditional at best. Moreover, the film never manages to convince the skeptical spectator that Knight\u2019s higher ideals of freedom, autonomy, and \u201cEvery man is a man\u201d equality were not simply rooted in his adulterous lust for a Black woman\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

However, if we take off the metaphorical rose colored glasses that director Gary Ross has placed in front of the camera, it is not too difficult to see that Newton Knight was merely a Confederate deserter who wanted to have his cake and eat it too- a Black mistress and a White wife \u2013 and through the benefit of his White privilege, he was allowed to do so with peculiar impunity until the end of his days…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crucifying the White Savior (Film) Shadow and Act 2016-06-29 Andre Seewood We no longer have to forgive them, for they know exactly what they are doing. The new film by Gary Ross, \u201cThe Free State of Jones\u201d is uncontestably a White savior film. Laid bare, \u201cThe Free State of Jones\u201d is a simplistically constructed tale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,1459,6940,20],"tags":[24518,5505,15676,18372,1457,1456,11481],"class_list":["post-48326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-andre-seewood","tag-gary-ross","tag-gugu-mbatha-raw","tag-matthew-mcconaughey","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-shadow-and-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48328,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48326\/revisions\/48328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}