I found this 1964 film on an odd cable channel, it's not out on DVD. Black Like Me is a film version of a book which documents the true story of John Howard Griffin, a white journalist who changed his skin color and lived in the segregated south as a black man. When I first saw the description I was reminded of the Eddie Murphy skit from SNL when he dressed as a white man and wandered around. This was nothing like that.
Griffen took large doses of a drug and sat under a sun lamp to change his skin color. He has various encounters with both whites and blacks which I won't detail. He struggles getting rides, finding places to stay, eat or even go to the bathroom. He keeps applying for clerk jobs but is always turned down. He's chased a few times.
There are two things that struck me about this. First was just how often he's asked about interracial sex. One white man who gave him a ride says he's never hired a black woman unless he slept with her. It came up often and it struck me even more out of place as I think of other black and white movies from 1964, you just didn't hear of this. The second his how much of an affect it had on Griffen. In just a few weeks he became very irritable, depressed, angry and to some extent violent.
Griffen had a remarkable life. He was a decorated soldier from WWII and was blind for a decade due to injuries from the war. He says in the beginning of the film, when you're blind you can't tell if someone is black or white. After this experience he became a well-known advocate for civil rights.
The movie is a product of its times. There are some heavy handed montages with loud slow drum beats in the background. Some of the edits are rough too, at one point you hear the piano music before he starts playing. Still the story itself is powerful enough it covers everything else over. If it's on cable, catch it.
No comments:
Post a Comment