Jungle Fever

I've reviewed "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" before, and even wondered about a remake:

This movie was made at a time when the ideal (at least in the moviemakers' mind) was a mixed-race couple who loved each other as people, not as racial types (content of character, not color of skin). Looking beyond race to the people within, determinedly, and stubbornly getting beyond whatever opposition there may be from outside. As Sidney Poitier says to his father, "You think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man."  [Now, it seems, you're supposed to think of yourself as a colored man -- or, rather, a person of color -- rather than as a man.]

I wonder what it would be like made today. Perhaps they would get married as a statement -- what many people seem to think (and are pleased) that I'm making. You can't fall for someone, it is thought by many today, without making your choice of person based largely on their skin color (but you gotta be the right assortment of two people, or your skin color choice will be racist -- don't go for asians if you're not one). And rather than being called down for getting above his station, the black guy would be called down for letting down his race, for betraying it by giving into whitey (well, maybe only if it's written by Boondocks -- unless that's an opinion held by more people than just a cartoon, as much of what I've read leads me to think is true). Being colorblind would not be the ideal...

I'm glad the movie was made then and not now.

And now there's a remake; a comedy, though, so it didn't work out the same way as my predictions for a didactic/ social commentary remake.  And the NYT has a short review:

The latest "Guess Who" is about a white man in love with a black woman, and that's a comfortable old archetype from days when slave owners inflicted themselves on slave women.

Right.  I see.  White guy with black girl, longing for slavery and domination.  Kristof doesn't say it directly, but it goes the other way too: white girl with black guy, it's jungle fever.  Interesting that he holds up Othello as the goal -- or, if not the ultimate goal, at least something to which level Hollywood has yet to come -- considering the thirty-odd film versions of Othello there are, including a trendy Julia Stiles one (who was also in another jungle-fever movie, save the last dance) and a Kenneth Branagh-Laurence Fishburne one.  (And considering Othello's supposed to be vaguely Arabic -- Moorish, coastal north African -- not black.)

Eh, but I haven't got time to write about this.  Suffice it to say: Kristof's silly, I'm tired of hearing things like this, and he's really not doing much towards his expressed goal of lots of colorblind relationships by saying a white guy with a black girl is like a master-slave relationship.

UPDATE: NRO's talking about this too, mentioning Star Trek and with a slightly different idea of complaints about white-woman-black-man relationships.

Comments

[R. Alex]

What's bizarre to me is how he can point out how atrociously bad things were in North Carolina in 1958 to prove that things haven't gotten better cause Danzel hasn't kissed Reese yet. I think there's a point to be made at what he's getting at (Hollywood is skittish about interracial relationships unless it's about making a statement), but seriously undermines his point with the tired old "things haven't really changed (except for that whole blacks not having to fear for their life for kissing a white girl thing).