Issue Date: June 29, 2008
"Mandingo," the 1975 film released on DVD
A leading civil rights attorney reconsiders a film about plantation life.
The Plot: A crusty plantation owner (James Mason) and his son (Perry King) train a new slave, Mede (Ken Norton), to be a fighter in this 1975 film. When the son's bride (Susan George) forces Mede to become her lover and gets pregnant, things go from bad to worse.
Our Insider: Washington, D.C., lawyer Alexander J. Pires Jr. made history in 1999 when he won a billion-dollar-plus settlement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture over discrimination against black farmers. Pires also is active in the reparations movement.
OVERVIEW "Mandingo seems like a combination of two films -- a campy cult movie and a serious drama. It's painful to watch at times, not just because the acting is often so poor, but because so much of the way slavery is depicted is true."
HARSH REALITIES "Most of us don't know slaves weren't allowed to marry or be educated, families were split up and children were taken from their parents -- all shown realistically here. It became impossible for a black man to have a sense of himself because he was treated like an animal. Indeed, one scene shows a gentleman coming to buy slaves and looking in their mouths like he's examining a horse."
WATCH THE SON "Perry King is the key to the movie. Just when you think he might do the right thing, he fails -- with his father, his wife, his lover, the fighter. His character shows the future of slavery and how the new generation won't be any better than the previous one."
RACIAL LINES "The 'house blacks' run around saying 'Yesum, Massuh,' and their lives are so humiliating. The farmhands watch their families being torn apart and are shackled before they're sold. Mede, the West African fighter, is the closest thing to a person with any pride because he knows how to hurt others. The irony is, of course, that in order to survive, he has to fight and kill another black man."
MASON'S AUTHORITY "Mason was a great British actor. He often played a very self-contained, authoritative figure. His role is to remind us about the rules of slavery. He relays about 20 messages: the need to treat blacks as subhuman; blacks don't feel pain the way whites do and must be punished more harshly; slavery came directly from God; and so on."
ABOVE ALL "Mandingo" is a dark, difficult film. By the time you get to the end of it, you're pretty bummed out. But it's an important piece. I don't think it's as laughable as people remember from when it was released 30 years ago."
-- Jeffrey Ressner
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