Great Analysis. I enjoyed this movie though the scene at the bar of the racist police officer being held accountable rang false and seemed very Hollywoodish IMO. The burning cross at then end with the scenes from the Charlottesville Riots at the end rang much more true to me.
I think the ordering of those two scenes is intentional. The Hollywood ending we desire contrasted with something much closer to reality. But I like that we can imagine better endings for ourselves in movies - part of why i did not care for the ending of Queen and Slim oof
So glad you brought up gone with the wind. God, the only book I could never finish. I had to read it for my class on literature in the american south in college (to be fair to my professor he made us read it to have a conversation about how the white ruling class of the south rewrites history but boy howdy let me tell you it was awkward enough for me to be sitting as the only american in that class it was one of my early moments questining the anthropolgiical sort of view of other cultures in academia and how that is tied to colonialism and whiteness) Blackkkllansman has been on my 'need to watch lisst' for a while, after this video I really need to check it out today.
Thanks for watching!! That college experience sounds like a head trip 🥴. Princesss Weekes has an excellent video on Gone With the Wind with a lot more focus on the book that you’ll probably appreciate
Your videos are so incredible!!!!! I absolutely love the topics you choose. I appreciate that your boondocks videos blew up but your whole videography needs to blow up too! That first video about the Southern Beasts *destroyed* me in the best way. Love you perspective and i hope you keep creating ❤️❤️
Phenomenal video, I've seen at least one of your videos before and this got my subscription. Your descriptions of the role that emotion plays in fueling myth compared to history and memory was beautiful and insightful. If you have time, I really want to recommend the book "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" by Viet Thanh Gnuyen. It's descriptions of the ethics of representation and industries of memory blew me away, and I think american mythology has a lot it needs to crticialy reflect on. Thanks for making great content.
i really appreciate your channel for existing bc i dont see many Black video essayists on youtube dissecting and analyzing Black media that’s cinema, books, or animation
God, I'm so grateful to have found this channel and can't wait to see what else you decide to dive into! I'm curious if you've seen Tangerine and if that would be something you'd consider breaking down in the future? Either way I'm in love with the channel so far and whatever you come up with next will be great I'm sure!
Was gonna go to bed but instead ended up watching a video essay on the boondocks, a show I haven't seen since I was a kid. Now it's 3am and I'm going to watch every other video on this channel. Hope it blows up soon
This video essay was amazing, the film does such an amazing job of deconstructing media that holds up and romanticizes white supremacy. Your video gave so much context to the points Spike Lee was making.
I’m sure plenty of people said this already but I love how you keep bringing back the sound bites from previous points like your making a sandwich until all the pieces are in place. It seemed like it was easier to follow along with the boondocks video tho
There was also one more important thing about Woodrow wilson and the movie Birth of a Nation. That was the first movie ever shown in the White House. For those who don't know, Woodrow Wilson is a insane trip. President Wilson was know as the professor president because he was a HISTORY professor. So when he said " that was how it was" in response to Birth of a Nation, it's take as expert opinion. Like someone quoting a doctor because they are an expert in the field. Makes sense why the majority of the country thought the resurgence of the KKK was an okay thing to let happen. Also the real twist is that he was the leader of the progressives. Back then it was perfectly okay to be blatantly racist. So progressive racist might seem hard to put together. But that's how you separate, but equal ideal that didn't really end up equal in the long run. They feel that everyone has a right to education but don't want the races to mix and be separate..... progressive racist. Or everyone should have a right to a house, but in seperated communities (leading to redlining), you get the point. That was also when Democrats where closer to modern day Republicans when it comes to how they think about race and other societal things. On how much government influnce and how to handle finance both parties are still similar today. It was around this time that Democrat ideals started to change to it more modern ideals through the decades. But that's my little insight on Woodrow Wilason personal in my top 5 presidents i don't like, you get a bit why now.
Fantastic video. This isn't a criticism, (and you kind of acknowledged it with your thoughts on Reconstruction) but when you say the South lost the war, did they really though? Like I don't mean the Confederacy, but the South. Like at face value they "lost" the Civil War, but they won with the Compromise of 1877, and then everything they fought to preserve lived on in the form of debt peonage, prison labor, Jim Crow segregation, the KKK, sundown towns, etc. Like how can we say the South really lost, when you look at the lynchings, the pro-confederate films, and that there are Americans everywhere today who still buy the propaganda that slavery wasn't that bad? I really think it may be necessary to stop just flat out saying that the South lost, when history shows otherwise. And if we do say they lost, then it should always be they "lost" y'know? I've seen the Confederate flag waved many times too, and I'm in Washington state. That flag didn't just stay in the south, this is nationwide. If the biggest appeal of waving the flag today is to be a rebel, then acknowledging the way the South won in the end would take away that meaning real quick. Confederate fanboys have a fetish for being the "rebel" but you can't win and be a rebel. Also I love you labeling the Culture War as the Cold Civil War. That's perfect.
Spike Lee is a director I ought to look more into. I know some of his movies like the old boy remake are total garbage, but I've heard really good things about this one from every reviewer who mentioned it.
@@goldfro Good to know. My only real knowledge of him is from YourMovieSuck's review of Old Boy, and he did mention some of those ones as good examples of Spike's directing
Gotta write two papers this week and my idea is to anyalyze it through genre theory and talk about how it’s an anti war movie and the other is through Marxist theory. If you have any ideas it would be nice to hear from you so I can bounce off of those? If not great essay
The only good alt history about the confederacy is by Harry Turtledove. The Southern Victory series goes all out in how confederate America and Nazi Germany were barely different and goes deep into how devastating a Union-Confederate cold war would be. It's also interesting in how it shows that black people definitely would never submit to eternal slavery
Yeah I’ve been using Adobe for a looong time now. I really only recently got over my anxiety about after effects and just dove into creating comps for some freelance work and am still kinda developing/exploring my style in all those tools with this video essay channel
Hard to believe that “birth of a nation” is what first made people take film seriously as a format…and that it normalized feature-length films… It was 1915…you’d think they could’ve just made a WW1 movie
America wasn’t in the war yet, so such things wouldn’t have been in the mind of the American people. Besides, the whole war was just getting it started.
