OF "RED TAILS" AND RACISM...ENOUGH ALREADY!

I just finished watching Red Tails on HBO. It was a film I intended to see when it hit the theaters MLK weekend 2012, but I didn’t get a chance to. Before recording my thoughts on the movie, I decided to check the internet to see what other people said. What I found downright depressed me. Of the several sites I visited, the one that I found most disturbing was...

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/why-did-red-tails-fail-to-soar-at-the-box-office

The author of this blog made several good, albeit angrily worded observations of the film. I agree, for example, that the acting was not exactly Oscar-caliber. I also think that Red Tails should not have been billed as an obligatory “must-see” for African-American film-goers. The author is also correct in asserting that the film would have benefitted greatly from an A-list cast that might have included Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock…perhaps even Morgan Freeman. But the author’s claim that “the film sucks…big time” is, in my estimation, far too harsh. I also don’t believe that the dialogue was “laughable”. I think the author of the previously mentioned blog missed the point of the film…which I will come back to in a moment.

But first I would like to address what irritated me the most…the comments people left at the end of the blog. While many of them were appropriate and spoke to the author’s review of the film, many more were despicable. Why does a review about an African-American centric film or the film itself have to generate comments that include phrases like… “black people look for white people to torture” and “you’re a racist hypocrite”? Why do commentators feel the need to throw in words like “honky”, “darkies”, repeatedly use the “N-word”, and reference the KKK? One commentator even went so far as to call the people in the theater with him “loud, arrogant, putrid-smelling ghetto types and their wailing, crying little obnoxious welfare babies”. How in any way does this kind of language further the discourse about race relations or even permit us to accurately review a film? The following statement left by a commentator best sums up my thoughts on this subject… “Wow – Just read these comments. I am from South Africa… AND I THOUGHT WE HAVE RACE ISSUES. Don’t kill each other people.”   

Now, back to the film itself. If I recall correctly, George Lucas, the Executive Producer, stated on several occasions that he wanted Red Tails to be a family-friendly adventure film that featured a primarily African-American cast. The filmmakers did not set out to make Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan, both heavy, gritty movies. Red Tails was intended to be the kind of movie that teachers could show in school and parents could watch with children. It’s a standard adventure with a fairly predictable plot, some campy dialogue and sympathetic characters. It was meant to entertain and raise curiosity. So many people today think that a film has to teach them something that they were too lazy to read in a book. Why can’t a movie simply entertain and encourage intellectually curious viewers to learn more about the subject on their own?

I, for one, lament the fact that people expect their entertainers to be their educators. If you want to learn the true history of the Tuskegee Airmen, buy a book. There are plenty of them available on the subject. If you want to be entertained by an uplifting adventure film, watch Red Tails.

And PLEASE keep the racial insults and death threats for the filmmakers to yourself!