Critics can’t critique them… | Baradwaj Rangan
Reminded me of this piece BR wrote for Firstpost:
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/and-breathe-normally-reviews-reveal-the-interesting-ways-in-which-black-and-white-critics-write-5483691.html
This, for instance, is what the very white (and very wise) Jonathan Rosenbaum had to say about 12 Years a Slave: “[an> arthouse exploitation gift to masochistic guilty liberals hungry for history lessons, some of whom consider any treatment of American slavery by a black filmmaker to be an unprecedented event, thus overlooking Charles Burnett’s far superior [1996 TV movie] Nightjohn.”
This is a brave, brave stance to take on a much-lauded movie about an Important Subject™ – especially in today’s hysterical climate, where the Social Media PC Police scream themselves hoarse over every real or imagined infraction. Pauline Kael had it far easier. Of Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985), based on Alice Walker’s novel, she noted that “it seems to be going on in a faraway, magical kingdom, in a field of pink flowers from the florists who supplied the daffodils tor David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago.” This may not seem as controversial a stance as Rosenbaum’s on 12 Years a Slave, which was a black film by a black filmmaker. (Spielberg is easier to criticise.) But then, Kael wasn’t a fan of Walker’s book either. She smirked, “The novel is about the bonding of the generous, artistically gifted, understanding black women (no matter how worn down they are, they never speak a harsh word to a child)…” Oh what fun it would have been to have Kael in the Twitter era.
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