Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. 40 Acres and a Mule

There’s quite a hubbub in the movie biz these days about a little missive Spike Lee wrote to the Hollywood Reporter on the Monday after The Patriot’s opening weekend. In it, Spike accuses the filmmakers of “whitewashing history” and of ignoring the fact that “America was built upon the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African People.”

It’s exactly the kind of thing that, under normal circumstances, might send the Pen off at warp speed. But again, wanting to be fair, The Pen waited until he had actually seen the movie before electing to respond.

Well, I saw it and, to be honest, it would have been a lot easier to respond angrily to Mr. Lee if I thought the movie was actually any good or, more importantly, if I thought Spike didn’t have a pretty solid point.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of fence-walking going on in this movie, which speaks to a tremendous fear on the part of the filmmakers about the dangers of creating a hero with all the faults of white men of the period, and an awful lot of “real” history is sacrificed in order to produce a squeaky-clean, rah-rah hero for us to get behind on a summer evening.

Let’s take Spike’s main argument, that it was very convenient, from a movie business perspective, for the filmmakers to make their hero a non-slave holder. In the movie, the only African-Americans we see on hero Benjamin Martin’s plantation are “workers” who get paid to work the land. I see Spike’s point here. I mean come one, if you’re going to put African-Americans in the movie, don’t sidestep the issue of whether or not they would have been free men. I would rather Roland Emmerich had elected to just not address the subject at all, since that’s not what the movie was about.

But to go so far as to have, in the film, a specific bit of dialogue that serves no purpose beyond reassuring us that Mel Gibson’s character did not own slaves, seemed like a chicken-shit move to me if there ever was one. All we see in this film are “happy Negroes.” Lots and lots of them. Seemingly thrilled with their lives, owners of their own land, with happy, intact families, there is not an abused slave among them. So, in support of Spike’s point here, to the makers of The Patriot, The Pen says go for it, or don’t, but please don’t treat me like a child who has no idea about the realities of life for the average African-American during the Revolutionary period.

Contrary to my hopes, things only got worse for this movie after Robert Rodat, the screenwriter, weighed in on Wednesday with his response. Rodat points out that, “Benjamin Martin is a backcountry South Carolina farmer. Many of those farmers, unlike the Southern coastal area plantation owners, did not hold slaves.”

Come one Robert, that’s extremely misleading, and it’s not what’s going on in this film. First of all, backcountry farmers didn’t own slaves because they couldn’t afford to. There was no backcountry South Carolina gentleman’s agreement that the practice of owning slaves was wrong, which is what your cagey response implies. Let’s be honest. This is South Carolina we’re talking about. First to secede from the Union. Home of Fort Sumter. This was not a bastion of abolitionist sentiment. To imply, as you do, that because most of the residents of the South Carolina colony were not slaveholders, that it means they were also against slavery, is misleading at best, morally reprehensible at worst.

And by the way Robert, Benjamin Martin is no “backcountry farmer,” either. This dude has an enormous, well-furnished plantation home, six children, huge tracts of land, and enough stature within the community to stand and speak out during a meeting of the South Carolina Continental Congressional delegation. This is exactly the kind of guy who did own slaves in 1776, and if you’re going to go to the trouble to point out that he does not own them, well then you’ve got to come up with a better reason than, “well, there were landowners in South Carolina who didn’t have slaves and uh… he was one of ‘em.” Maybe so, but what kinds of people did not own slaves? Certainly not Benjamin Martin types. And what kinds of reasons did they have for not doing so? Most likely they were economic reasons, not moral ones.

The Pen thinks that if you were going to include African-American characters in this story, then you had a responsibility not to shrink from the truth about who they would have been and what station in life they might have occupied in Revolutionary War-era South Carolina. That, I would hope, is Spike’s point.

Unfortunately, I’m worried that it’s not. We all know Spike’s opinions on race in this country, and I think I’m being charitable when I call them unusual. So I feel compelled to point out a few things to Mr. Lee, just to be on the safe side.

First of all, Slavery was a terrible thing about Revolutionary America, but it was not the only thing. The Pen believes that it is possible to tell an inspiring story of the American Revolution without getting all moony about Slavery, and I’ll tell you why.

Rodat points out, correctly, that some of the founding fathers were not slaveholders, out of principle. In particular, my history lessons taught me that there was a discussion about the abolition of slavery at the time of the Declaration of Independence, but that the subject was dropped because the northern colonies knew they would need the southern colonies (and their unregulated militias) to keep the British Army occupied until George Washington could get his army’s act together. The issue was dropped because, ultimately, it became clear that pushing the southerners on the slavery issue would only divide what needed to be a united front against the British.

So in a way, a deal was made with the devil so that the bigger battle over the slave issue could be fought at a later date, when the forces of freedom were stronger and more prepared.

Second, I know it took eighty years to do it, and I’m really sorry about that, but it is a fact that in 1861, thousands of white Americans started marching into bayonets and withering gunfire for the sole purpose of reuniting a great nation under the principles of liberty for all, and especially in an effort to sound the death-knell for the horrible and violent history of slavery in America. And for the next hundred and fifty years or so, many white Americans have continued to put themselves in harms way, alongside their African-American brothers and sisters, to fight the continuing scourge of racism in this nation. When are we going to start getting a little credit for that?

Because the fact is that, while it did take an embarrassingly long time, whites and blacks together have forged the greatest, and most free nation on the planet. One that served, and continues to serve, as an example of how free men and women should be treated the world over. That’s a pretty amazing legacy that we are all a part of. And it’s a legacy that started with men like Benjamin Martin, even with all their faults.