I have been looking forward to seeing the film, Selma. Now I’m not so sure. Apparently the writer and producer played loose with history.
At least that is what Joseph A. Califano, Jr. said in a Washington Post article. He was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s top assistant for domestic affairs from 1965 to 1969. The film apparently does not present Johnson in a positive light re the Selma march and civil rights, much to Califano’s dismay.
“Contrary to the portrait painted by ‘Selma,'” he writes, “Johnson and [Martin Luther] King were partners in this effort. Johnson was enthusiastic about voting rights, and the president urged King to find a place like Selma and lead a major demonstration.”
Others in the Johnson administration have made similar criticisms of the film, but critics of these critics insist they are off base either because they don’t understand film making or they are racists.
Jamelle Bouie of Slate magazine represents the first point of view. “…the entire line of criticism is misplaced,” he says. “Selma isn’t a documentary or even a dramatized history. It is a film based on historical accounts, and like all films of its genre, it has a loose relationship to actual history… it’s better to look at deviations from established history or known facts as creative choices—license in pursuit of art.”
But if you do understand the genre the film represents and still believe it was wrong to portray Johnson as it does, then you are a racist. That’s according to Jim Naureckas’s “In These Times” article.
“Johnson is the character most clearly intended for white audience members to identify with.” Naurecka writes; “no doubt like many of them, he starts out admiring King but not really understanding him, and over the course of the film he comes to realize on an emotional level why King says he cannot wait for political justice. In other words, he’s a white man who has something to learn from a black man. Fifty years after the events portrayed in Selma, that’s still evidently something some people don’t want to see.”
Hmm. So the best advocates for the film can say to people who are bothered by the inaccurate portrayal of President Johnson is, “You either don’t understand film making or you’re a racist.”
That is, I suggest, an example of liberalism run amuck, not to mention it is both condescending and offensive. But that’s the tone of the several articles I have read, so much so that the film’s advocates are the ones who have almost convinced me not to go see it.
It comes down to intention. Apparently had the film portrayed President Johnson in an historically correct light, it would not have diminished the drama of the film, focused attention on Johnson, or taken anything away from its portrayal of Dr. King.
So why was it done? That is a question only the writer and director can answer, and thus far what little the director has said answers nothing.
Whatever they may eventually say, though, I am of the view that when movies focus on historical figures, especially those of recent times, they do not have to be documentaries to be careful to present the personal character of real people and their role in historic events with utmost care and accuracy.
It is one thing not to tell everything about a historical moment. It is something else to tell things that are not true. It would seem on that score, Selma is guilty as charged.
That’s because whatever its defenders say, they can never undo the fact that history matters.
And yet…I still may go see it, in the hope that the disappointment I feel now will not be confirmed, but overshadowed by the power of the film itself and the history it does get right.
linnposts.com 