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Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
My Interview with with Mark Harris, director of "Black & Privileged"
Posted by:
Barrickman
()
Date: May 19, 2020 10:38PM
Full Report with Comments Portal open below: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/11/harr-a11.html
The film examines in part how an affluent African-American community is turned upside down by the arrival in its midst of several low-income blacks. In other words, Harris’s work, as we wrote, deals with “a nearly taboo subject in America—wealth and class divisions, including…within the African-American population.” Black & Privileged is significant for this reason. At the same time, the review was critical of certain aspects of the film, including its failure to fully follow through on that important theme.
* * * * *
Nick Barrickman: I appreciate you granting us this interview. I wanted to know if you would give us a little background about yourself, your personal history and your work in film.
Mark Harris: Sure. First of all, thank you for reviewing the film, it was an honor to see it on your website.
Black & Privileged
I was born and raised in Englewood, Illinois [a Chicago neighborhood and the setting for Black & Privileged]. I now live in Hyde Park. I started making movies in 2005, with a film titled Black Coffee. I did another film called My First Love, as well as a film titled Stock Option on MTV. I’m doing a lot of work with Netflix and Amazon Prime right now.
NB: In my opinion, Black & Privileged raises a very important issue—the issue of social inequality. To be honest, this issue hasn’t been well-addressed at all in recent art, let alone in popular film, and even less so in respect to how it appears within the African-American community. Could you speak a little about how you view this issue and how it influenced your film?
MH: Sure, the way I see it is, in society, the average person who hasn’t been born and raised in a black community usually isn’t willing to walk through one at night. Why? They’re afraid of violence and so on. In most communities, the question of violence is connected to economic issues; the lack of jobs, but also, the lack of wealth and the ability to invest and create jobs for others.
NB: There’s a scene early in Black & Privileged with Dawnisha Halfkenny, in which she hears that new residents from a nearby housing tenement are being sent to live in Englewood. At first, she acts very “progressive” and is supportive of it all. She quotes W.E.B. DuBois and says how they must lend these poor people a helping hand. Then, almost overnight, when she sees the new residents out in the community, drinking malt liquor, with their “bad manners” and all, she gets hysterical and calls the police on them.
NB: Another way to say this is that while the residents’ skin color may have changed, the class status they inherited has, ironically, led them to adopt similar discriminatory views seen during the Jim Crow era.
MH: Yes.
Incidentally, I also wanted to address your criticism about the movie’s editing.
The production is purposefully rough in places. I wanted the movie to reflect the chaotic and contradictory parts of society. At the end of the movie, there’s a particular scene in which a little girl is looking up at the adult characters. I wanted to show the audience the world from the little girl’s perspective, which is disjointed. We have a lot of contradictions; between old and young; rich and poor; black and white; in politics; in religion. I wanted these shots to reflect these conflicts within the black community.
NB: Fair enough. I would like to ask a more critical question. As our review suggests, your film seems to “back off” from following through on the theme of social inequality and pursues something completely different in the second half of the movie which, in my opinion, is far less interesting. Would you agree the movie pivots away from this issue, and if so, why?
MH: I think your criticism is valid, but here is the reason why—if you follow the narrative, the film is set into three chapters. The Eldon character gives an outline of each. In my film, the three assassins who appear in the plot are actually meant to represent an idea, not actual people. That idea is “America.” If you note, each assassin wears a specific color: red, white or blue.
The assassins are killing off the female characters. Malcolm X referred to the black woman as the most unprotected person in America. As the plot unfolds, the citizens of Englewood regroup and kill off these ideas.
NB: What about America is embodied in these ideas?
MH: The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the residue of the Civil Rights movement. Symbols of history.
NB: You seem to be placing Jim Crow segregation in the same category as the Civil Rights movement. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say the Civil Rights movement was out to vanquish Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery?
MH: Many people look back to the Civil Rights movement period as this great thing. But within it, you had these major figures—Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr.—who were assassinated.
NB: It seems to me you’re mixing too many things together in one pot. On the one hand, you have the period of Reconstruction, which followed the American Civil War to end slavery. During this time there was an effort to genuinely integrate blacks into American society. But then you’re also conflating this with the period of Jim Crow, which was against integration. Finally, the Civil Rights movement was striving for genuine equality and to do away with Jim Crow and the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
Attachments:
The film examines in part how an affluent African-American community is turned upside down by the arrival in its midst of several low-income blacks. In other words, Harris’s work, as we wrote, deals with “a nearly taboo subject in America—wealth and class divisions, including…within the African-American population.” Black & Privileged is significant for this reason. At the same time, the review was critical of certain aspects of the film, including its failure to fully follow through on that important theme.
* * * * *
Nick Barrickman: I appreciate you granting us this interview. I wanted to know if you would give us a little background about yourself, your personal history and your work in film.
Mark Harris: Sure. First of all, thank you for reviewing the film, it was an honor to see it on your website.
Black & Privileged
I was born and raised in Englewood, Illinois [a Chicago neighborhood and the setting for Black & Privileged]. I now live in Hyde Park. I started making movies in 2005, with a film titled Black Coffee. I did another film called My First Love, as well as a film titled Stock Option on MTV. I’m doing a lot of work with Netflix and Amazon Prime right now.
NB: In my opinion, Black & Privileged raises a very important issue—the issue of social inequality. To be honest, this issue hasn’t been well-addressed at all in recent art, let alone in popular film, and even less so in respect to how it appears within the African-American community. Could you speak a little about how you view this issue and how it influenced your film?
MH: Sure, the way I see it is, in society, the average person who hasn’t been born and raised in a black community usually isn’t willing to walk through one at night. Why? They’re afraid of violence and so on. In most communities, the question of violence is connected to economic issues; the lack of jobs, but also, the lack of wealth and the ability to invest and create jobs for others.
NB: There’s a scene early in Black & Privileged with Dawnisha Halfkenny, in which she hears that new residents from a nearby housing tenement are being sent to live in Englewood. At first, she acts very “progressive” and is supportive of it all. She quotes W.E.B. DuBois and says how they must lend these poor people a helping hand. Then, almost overnight, when she sees the new residents out in the community, drinking malt liquor, with their “bad manners” and all, she gets hysterical and calls the police on them.
NB: Another way to say this is that while the residents’ skin color may have changed, the class status they inherited has, ironically, led them to adopt similar discriminatory views seen during the Jim Crow era.
MH: Yes.
Incidentally, I also wanted to address your criticism about the movie’s editing.
The production is purposefully rough in places. I wanted the movie to reflect the chaotic and contradictory parts of society. At the end of the movie, there’s a particular scene in which a little girl is looking up at the adult characters. I wanted to show the audience the world from the little girl’s perspective, which is disjointed. We have a lot of contradictions; between old and young; rich and poor; black and white; in politics; in religion. I wanted these shots to reflect these conflicts within the black community.
NB: Fair enough. I would like to ask a more critical question. As our review suggests, your film seems to “back off” from following through on the theme of social inequality and pursues something completely different in the second half of the movie which, in my opinion, is far less interesting. Would you agree the movie pivots away from this issue, and if so, why?
MH: I think your criticism is valid, but here is the reason why—if you follow the narrative, the film is set into three chapters. The Eldon character gives an outline of each. In my film, the three assassins who appear in the plot are actually meant to represent an idea, not actual people. That idea is “America.” If you note, each assassin wears a specific color: red, white or blue.
The assassins are killing off the female characters. Malcolm X referred to the black woman as the most unprotected person in America. As the plot unfolds, the citizens of Englewood regroup and kill off these ideas.
NB: What about America is embodied in these ideas?
MH: The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the residue of the Civil Rights movement. Symbols of history.
NB: You seem to be placing Jim Crow segregation in the same category as the Civil Rights movement. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say the Civil Rights movement was out to vanquish Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery?
MH: Many people look back to the Civil Rights movement period as this great thing. But within it, you had these major figures—Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr.—who were assassinated.
NB: It seems to me you’re mixing too many things together in one pot. On the one hand, you have the period of Reconstruction, which followed the American Civil War to end slavery. During this time there was an effort to genuinely integrate blacks into American society. But then you’re also conflating this with the period of Jim Crow, which was against integration. Finally, the Civil Rights movement was striving for genuine equality and to do away with Jim Crow and the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
Attachments:
Re: My Interview with with Mark Harris, director of "Black & Privileged"
Posted by:
Isn’t it illegal
()
Date: May 20, 2020 07:07AM
Isn’t it illegal for primates to wear clothes?