Well, this is one for the history books: President Obama will introduce a 50th-anniversary broadcast of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on USA Network this Saturday.
Yep — in spite of the teabaggers, the birthers, and all the other skeptics of this Administration (and count us among those skeptics occasionally), there's no getting around the fact that when the first African-American President pays tribute to a great American book and film like "Mockingbird," it's pretty special. Heck, even Harper Lee broke her Salinger-like silence to say she was pleased.
There are "Mockingbird"-related items, of course, that we cats feel we must quibble with. For example, we have this nagging feeling that the film's story is supposed to take place in 1932, even though Miss Lee avers in the book that "Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself" — and FDR didn't say that until his Inaugural Address in 1933. But what bothers us most is: If it's so hot in Maycomb, why does Atticus wear that damn sweater all the time?
Not to mention the fact that Robert Duvall, who plays Boo Radley, is a Republican. And that as usual, Hollywood in "Mockingbird" is portraying not black American life, but whites' reactions to black American life — which we suppose can get pretty tiring and eye-rolling for people of color. Sorry, guys.
Still and all, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, it seems clear that justice for black people in this country is even now, just as in "Mockingbird," an ideal rather than a reality. If either the Martin event or the classic Lee novel and Stanley Kramer film help to educate people on this issue, then we cats say, hooray.
As Miss Lee wrote, you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. If George Zimmerman had stood in Trayvon Martin's shoes even for a moment that night in Sanford, Florida, things would be different today.
We cats neither PURR nor HISS, but sit looking out the window, thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment