Chagrin et la Pitié [Sorrow and the Pity] (1969)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://fouducinema.com/)

Inevitably, this film is too long to support its content, but it does exert a morbid fascination. It asks: “What did you do in the Occupation, Daddy?” a question that re-lives the sorrow and the pity of that occupation.

People consider more what they have to lose than to gain, which is why so few joined the Maquis while so many claimed to be members. The greatest pleasure in this film is watching a bunch of aging Frenchmen animatedly reminisce about their days in the Resistance. Essentially a band of misfits who would likely never have come together for any other reason, they found war to be their route to selfhood. War clearly brings out the best in people as well as the worst.

The guilt and shame of postwar France comes from the widespread political collaboration, with the Germans, of Vichy: Essentially rendering themselves a pro-German Axis power. The endemic anti-Semitism of French culture led French police to help the Nazis find Jews and become vigorously complicit in the Holocaust. French laws were even more racist than German ones as genetic murder is an effective means of eliminating the economic and political competition.

As it can be difficult to separate a German from a Nazi, it can be hard to distinguish a patriot from a collaborator. It is all too easy to condemn collaborators, from the outside, but this is morally-complex territory. The fact that France was the only country involved in the Second World War occupied by Nazi Germany to agree an armistice - rather than simply surrender - damns the whole country as collaborationist. Of all the occupied lands, the French were the most conscientious rounders-up of jews for transportation to the gas chambers; leading one to the conclusion that France is as endemically anti-semitic as Germany. This is as good an example as any of the recurrent bouts of European phenotypism that regularly comes to the surface.

The political defeat of France in 1940 was inevitable but the military failure was not since France possessed a more powerful military than Nazi Germany. The Germans exploited this by partitioning France and thus dividing it against itself.

The lack of moral complexity of this documentary is evinced in contemporary issues such as the ethical difficulty of being White in a country unhealthily obsessed with skin pigmentation. Or a Westerner in a world apparently running out of the resources Westerners are squandering.

The ultimate moral issue is food since without it one cannot be a moral entity - the dead are amoral, after all. If the Third World starves, the First will not take the food from its children's mouths to feed it. If a qualified Black is not hired because he is black, the less qualified White then employed would not renounce his post if he learned of this.

Collaboration is more complex than this film admits since the movie never draws any useful parallels with other areas of collaborationist thought and activity.

The occupation of ones homeland is a classic example of discovering what people are really like. They are usually very willing to exploit the unethical advantages of collaboration to obtain financial advantages. A give-me-your-watch-and-I’ll-tell-you-the-time point made more simply and more profoundly in a thriller like Inside Man. The narrow moral focus here is as unethical as the collaboration being condemned.

Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Black Jacobins (1938)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	Book

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

A fantastic and superbly-written book about the only successful slave revolt in history that shows just what Blacks can do given the right circumstances and leadership.

This book that gets right to the heart of why Whites approved of African slavery for 500 years. Without the guilt and shame of a typical White historian this is an eidetic view of the challenges posed by White supremacy - then and now; exposing the real reasons for the abolition of racial slavery: Free trade is more profitable than mercantilism since one can then sell to the highest bidder and not just ones own government. As well as the fact the British government’s jealousy of the French making more money than they at the traffic in human misery that the possession of India meant the British need no longer indulge in.

Humanitarianism is absent from this account since a humanitarian country would obviously never have become involved in racial slavery in the first place. The book then comes to the obvious conclusion that White history books simply lie about the ethical role of Whites in the emancipation of African slaves.

What makes this book so readable is the precision with which the writer effectively skewers White politics as quintessentially White supremacist with humor, wit and irony.

The mixture of fear and envy Whites have for the exotic is stressed here through their repeated claim that anything foreign is inferior while being embraced to fund the English (17th century) and French (18th century) revolutions. A supreme irony of history is that both these bids for freedom and statements of the inalienable rights of Man were made possible by a bourgeoisie made rich from African slavery. The moral contradictions of White culture today stem from such institutions as the writer here makes many links between the past and the present.

That the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery itself never simultaneously abolished the various European empires and the White racism that drove them on is a telling legacy that remains with us to this very day.

Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Autobiography of Malcolm X (1968)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	Book

(http://www.amazon.co.uk)

Purposeful Life

Way above-average story of redemption leading to a strong sense of personal identity and purpose.

This one serves as a valuable source of a role-model in the form of Malcolm X’s life as he salvaged and reconstructed it from the predations of White, Christian culture and proved that it could be done. As inspirational, in its way, as any honest account of the life of Muhammad Ali. They both realized that without self-identification, there can be no self-determination.

The most obvious fact of the book of greatest interest to Blacks, is that bit represents the most politically-ontogenetic experience for Blacks in a White supremacist culture as they try to forge a cultural identity for themselves in the face of mass hostility from those who themselves lack a clear sense of ethic identity.

Growing up in a White culture that demands Blacks was Malcolm X’s quintessential problem as a maturing and sensitive man and was the cause of his many political mistakes during his life - especially the veering from one political extreme to the other. Still, moderation is only for people who choose not to grow up since the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. A moderate knows only about moderation, not about other political positions, so he really knows very little at all.

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Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Blacksnake [Slaves] (1973)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://go.sky.com/)

From Russ Meyer’s period of making more serious films in a more serious way in widescreen (eg, Seven Minutes); before returning to make humorous films about serious subjects.

The black slave-trade theme is well handled and the melodramatic performing style successfully brings out the racist emotions of the White characters and the righteous anger of the Blacks.

Anushka HEMPEL makes a surprisingly-sexy racist.

Copyright © 2013 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Dear Black South Africa! (2012)

(Image: http://www.news24.com/)

Enough Hypocrisy!

Bizarre, self-contradictory rant that talks about an ideal world rather than the real one.

Being tired of making White South Africans feel at home means that one has accepted responsibility for this - else why would one be tired? This is the same kind of Black hypocrisy this author accuses Whites of.

Whites have never put their South African‑ness before their whiteness unless Blacks have ever been required to forget all about Apartheid. And, as they say, he who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.

Claiming Whites share no intimate connection with Europe is nonsense. If true, Whites would have changed to suit the situation in South Africa and not aped European ways - especially by creating Apartheid. The intimate connection they feel is, essentially, homesickness: Their tacit realization that they are not at home in Africa and never will be. (Isn't Africa the White Man's Graveyard, after all?)

Clearly, there is stigma attached to being White in South Africa (remember Apartheid?). Whites are not trusted by Blacks because Whites have shown a historical predilection for White supremacy in all of the 52 White-dominated countries in the world – no exceptions Not only this, but the shame and guilt Whites feels exacerbates the racism they frequently express; making them inherently untrustworthy, not as individuals, but as a culture. This is why so many Whites have left South Africa: Their paranoiac fear of Black revenge for what Whites have done in the past, in the full moral knowledge that it was, and is, wrong. Yet Blacks in the United States never went on the feared vendetta after the emancipation of the Slaves – such fears were merely expressions of what Whites would have done if the situation had been reversed; ie, White Projection & Displacement of their own immorality onto others.

No-one has an unqualified right to practice their culture if it is at the expense of another. Only Whites believe this nonsense. A Black who believes it would welcome the return of Apartheid, if Whites decided it was their right to have it back.

In truth, everyone bears responsibility for the behavior of those who claim to belong to their culture, when all the members of that culture receive a benefit from that behavior. To claim otherwise is to engage in moral evasion. All Whites bear responsibility for White supremacy because they all benefit from it – not just the White supremacists. All Blacks bear responsibility for Black supremacy (if it exists) because they can all benefit from it. Each group must explain what it is doing to root out any cultural defects, since no culture is perfect. That is not happening in this article nor in the country.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.