Jan Chats with Joyce Miller Bean About ‘Beloved’
(First Posted in 2003)
Joyce: BELOVED is her magnum opus about the residue of slavery. Remember, it’s not set in slave times. It’s set after the Civil War, in the Reconstruction Era, & there is an awful lot of residue that still eddies & flows into the lives of African-Americans today that I think she was focusing on in this novel. This is my view point. I have not heard Toni Morrison say this. But I think she was trying to capture all the cacophony, the horrible residue. You know, when you hear a huge alarm, the echoing hurts your ears for many minutes afterwards. Jan: Joyce: But when I finally saw it, I was amazed by its beauty. I’m not a filmmaker so I do not know the technical details, but as a layperson, the cinematography was just exquisite. The changing of the seasons — I was very moved by that. And I loved the theme music; music plays such an integral part in every film. The soundtrack, it’s just hauntingly beautiful. So that surprised me. I was expecting the film to be dark & heavy, “rain cloudy dark.” But there’s this abundance of sexuality that always permeates, over-permeates films about African-Americans. The stereotype used to be that you couldn’t trust black men because they were all sexual predators, & black women, we’re just all loose. That’s nonsense! It’s a stereotype, but I see it in so many films made by black filmmakers. The character Paul Dee (portrayed by Danny Glover), well, in both the novel & in the film, Sethe (portrayed by Oprah Winfrey) hasn’t seen him in 18 years, but he comes to her house, & they hop into bed. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with sexuality. I’m not trying to pretend that we (meaning all human beings including African-Americans) aren’t sexual beings. But come on, there’s a lot more to it than the film allows. That depressed me. It began with that. Then there’s the whole idea of the family’s utter poverty. Sethe worked very hard but her house was a mess. It was clean, but it was falling down! Now here’s a paragraph from an article about Black Women during Reconstruction by African-American writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper:
First of all, everyone Harper describes in her book was married. I’m offended by this fact in BELOVED. Why didn’t the characters (Sethe & Paul Dee) marry? It wasn’t “slavery times” anymore. They had obviously struck up a relationship. The idea that African-Americans don’t marry, that we have this base animalistic nature, that we just “couple,” that disturbs me. I would argue that a writer of Toni Morrison’s caliber could have taken another path, & not fallen prey to the same things I see all the time in the cinema. You see the African-American experience, & in my opinion, we’re either portrayed as victims or as fools. But most of us fall somewhere in the middle. No wonder the average White person in this country doesn’t think that there’s any such thing. Members of my family have been attending college & getting degrees since the 1870s. That stuns people because they think we’re aberrations. We’re not. We owned businesses & we owned farms. We were married couples, parents, grandparents… There was warmth & love. Powerful novels could be written about that experience, but you don’t see many… That kind of warmth & married love, that’s almost alien to filmmakers. Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: But there are other battles. There was an article in a major Chicago newspaper about four months ago. One religious group (I will not state the particular denomination), they’ve started a program to encourage African-Americans to marry because we supposedly marry at such low rates. That’s nonsense! I’m livid! My parents were happily married for 50 years. I got married. Most people I know got married. But the image we have from the movies is that African-Americans are either victims (portrayed in many of the films about slavery) or we’re buffoons. I’m tired of slavery being the only serious reflection on our lives. |
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Ralph Ellison wrote INVISIBLE MAN decades ago, but most African-Americans are still invisible in films. If BELOVED had been one of a kind, Jan, then I would say: Bravo! It was very well-acted, beautiful cinematography, music, but, in the end, once again: victimization & constant sexuality… Jan: Joyce: |
Joyce Miller Bean |
Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: But since you mentioned the Academy Awards, last year people didn’t suddenly open their eyes & recognize what filmgoers have known for a long time — that certainly Denzel Washington is a very gifted actor & I believe Halle Berry is a very fine actress too. It was political. There was pressure. But look at those film roles! MONSTER’S BALL? What is Leticia but a glorified prostitute? Her husband is on “Death Row.” Hello? Isn’t anybody a happily married person or even just a balanced soul?!? Denzel’s character in TRAINING DAY was a crooked cop. Jan: Joyce: Now this hits the nail on the head for me. I’m not saying that REMEMBER THE TITANS was “great filmmaking,” but it was a fine film, an enjoyable film. Did you ever see CAR WASH? CAR WASH is set in Los Angeles around 1978, with a variety of realistic multi-ethnic folks – African-Americans, Whites, Native Americans, Hispanics. And it’s just a typical day at a car wash, but it’s real. When I watch CAR WASH (& I must have watched it a thousand times), the Black characters in that film speak to me. Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: Jan: Joyce: FILMS FOR TWO® ADDENDUM Joyce Miller Bean is a member of the English Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences @ De Paul University in Chicago. A specialist in American Literature, Joyce formerly taught at St. Xavier University & Lexington College here in Chicago. She is also a free-lance writer as well as a professional storyteller who has appeared at the Art Institute of Chicago & Chicago Public Library. Joyce is the proud mother of two college students, son Kyle, (a graphic design major) & daughter Lauren, (who is a Cultural Religious Studies major with a minor in Anthropology). In addition to the films discussed above, other films about the African-American experience on Joyce’s “WISH LIST” include: Bio-Pics about the lives of great African-American movers-&-shakers such as Labor Leader A. Phillip Randolph, Dancer/Anthropologist Katherine Dunham, & Justice Advocate Ida B. Wells. A historical film about the literati of the Harlem Renaissance which would include such cultural luminaries as Poet Langston Hughes & Novelist/Folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. © Jan Lisa Huttner (2/9/2003) – Special for Films for Two. Reposted with permission. Jan & Joyce at DePaul. |