Melena Ryzik, in the NYTimes, “‘Roots,’ Remade for a New Era”:
ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA. — Cannons boomed, shaking the leaves off 50-foot trees. “Ready, I need fire on that hill!” an urgent voice yelled. Weapons were reloaded. Exhausted infantrymen — black, white, young, old — were splayed around a muddy pit. “Watch your muzzles, gentlemen,” their leader called. “Don’t blow your friend’s face off!”
In a wooded grove in this town near Baton Rouge, La., a television crew was meticulously recreating the brutal Civil War battle of Fort Pillow, for a remake of “Roots,” the seminal mini-series about slavery. The carnage in the fight was significant: After Union soldiers surrendered, the Confederates disproportionately took white soldiers hostage as prisoners of war and slaughtered hundreds of black soldiers, sending survivors into the slave trade. This massacre was not in the original “Roots,” broadcast in 1977, which is exactly why the producers of the new one chose to include it.
It is one of many unexpected historical details put onscreen in “Roots,” which will air over four nights starting on Memorial Day. It will be simulcast on the History, Lifetime and A&E channels, with a sprawling cast that includes Laurence Fishburne; Forest Whitaker; Anika Noni Rose; Anna Paquin; the rapper T.I.; and the English newcomer Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte, the central character. The revival aims to deliver a visceral punch of the past to a younger demographic, consumed anew by questions of race, inequality and heritage. With a crew of contemporary influencers — Will Packer (“Straight Outta Compton”) is a producer; Questlove oversaw the music — the hope is to recontextualize “Roots” for the Black Lives Matter era, a solemn and exacting feat.
“I’d be lying if I said I had zero trepidation and nervousness,” said LeVar Burton, who began his career, indelibly, as the slave Kunta Kinte, and who serves as a producer on the modern version. “But I do believe that we have a lot to contribute to the very important conversation of race in America, and how it continues to hold us back as a society.”…
From NYMag‘s culture blog:
… Vulture sat down with producers Mark Wolper — whose father, David L. Wolper, produced the original Roots — and Packer (Straight Outta Compton), and cast members Kirby, Regé-Jean Page (who plays Kunta Kinte’s son, Chicken George), and Erica Tazel (Chicken George’s wife Matilda), to discuss the urgency of revisiting this story…
The reboot comes in a year with a number of other notable projects about slavery, including Underground on WGN, and Fox Searchlight’s forthcoming Oscar contender, The Birth of a Nation. How is your retelling of Roots distinct among these narratives? And why tell this particular story again now?…
Mark Wolper: I wasn’t sure there was any right time to reboot a project that was so monumental for the TV business and for its social ramifications, not to mention a project that my own father had produced. It was a triple whammy in that respect for me. People had been saying for years, “Let’s do Roots again. Can we do Roots again?” And my answer was always, “No.” But it was when I sat my 16-year-old son down to watch it and he said, “I understand why Roots is so important, but it’s kind of like your music — it doesn’t speak to me” that realized I had to overcome my fears. There is an entire generation of young people that needs to hear and see this story. The problems we have with race in America right now are enormous, but we can’t fix the future or understand the present unless we understand where we all came from…
Regé-Jean Page: Contrary to what many people think, our history did not start with slavery. So this project for me is very much about about filling in a history that has been mistold, or in some cases, even erased. It’s about upgrading a lot of misinformation that we’ve been told for generations. And that’s a task that doesn’t ever really end…
Tragically related, also in the NYTimes, “‘A Million Questions’ From Descendants of Slaves Sold to Aid Georgetown”, and Carl Zimmer’s “Tales of African-American History Found in DNA”:
The history of African-Americans has been shaped in part by two great journeys. The first brought hundreds of thousands of Africans to the southern United States as slaves. The second, the Great Migration, began around 1910 and sent six million African-Americans from the South to New York, Chicago and other cities across the country.
In a study published on Friday, a team of geneticists sought evidence for this history in the DNA of living African-Americans. The findings, published in PLOS Genetics, provide a map of African-American genetic diversity, shedding light on both their history and their health…
RaflW
Wow, I had no idea this was in the works. I will be curious to watch it, I was 12 when the original miniseries ran. I remember watching it with my family, and parts of it were tough for a kid to see. But the narrative arc is pretty murky in my memory now.
Schlemazel Khan
I’m undecided on watching the updated version, I hope it can change hearts as much as the original but the times seem so different.
The genetics thing fascinates me. It is revealing that rape was much more prevalent than even decent people imagined let alone the slave-apologist Southrons. It often comes up on Lewis Gates show “Finding Your Roots” and often he can identify who the white father was. It is also interesting how genetics disrupts our self image, I remember Wanda Sykes being sort of upset to find out her ancestry came from a black man and a white woman who had married at a time that was a dangerous thing to do.
Patricia Kayden
The new Roots series sounds interesting although I tend to shy away from movies about slavery. Looking forward to The Free State of Jones movie though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EMkxEKKSQI
WaterGirl
@RaflW: All I can remember about the original Roots was watching the slave being whipped. I couldn’t deal with it.
benw
I’m legitimately stoked for this: happy that my kids will watch it. Kendrick’s King Kunta.
Shell
Still can’t believe they’ve never made a major movie about Harriet Tubman.
gene108
I do not remember the Ft. Pillow massacre being I Haley’s book, but it is the sort of thing that should not be forgotten.
RaflW
@WaterGirl: That was the first image that came to mind today thinking back on the orig. series.
RaflW
@Schlemazel Khan: Just re-watching the slave auction scene from Roots, and the auctioneer describes the first woman as “a fine black pearl” and “she’s young, she’s supple, she’s strong.”
As a kid I wouldn’t have noticed, but it strikes me now as if she is being sold intentionally for rape, as well as for hard labor.
Schlemazel Khan
I read the book then saw the mini-series and it has been a long time so I don’t remember what all was in each but I don’t recall anything about Ft. Pillow, a crime that deserves its own movie. I do remember the conversions at work and in general. The show had a serious impact on a lot of white people who had never considered slavery or the aftermath. I felt like it was a high point in race relations from which both sides have retreated in recent years. It would be nice to think it might work that magic of drawing us together again but in the era of Drumpf I am skeptical.
The book also got me to read Malcolm X’s book and that was an eye opener as my knowledge of him was heavily filtered through the media representation.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Shell:
Depends on what you consider “major.” A Woman Called Moses (1978) with Cicely Tyson was a network TV movie when that was a big deal and guaranteed a large audience. But, yes, a TV movie.
Schlemazel Khan
@RaflW:
And to imagine that the buy thought of her as an animal no different from a horse or a goat. They used the Bible to justify slavery yet skipped the part that dictated punishment for a man that had sex with an animal. Using the Bible to support what you want while ignoring the parts prohibiting something else you want to do – a story as old as time. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Aimai
@Schlemazel Khan: ah…please . It is disgusting to compare the rape of enslaved people go bestiality and your point about the bible is simply incorrect. The southern slave owners used biblical slavery of humans as their ostensible model. Rhetoric aside they did not regard their slaves ss the equivalent of animals. The treatment of slaves was inhumane, repulsive, violent, immoral and also capitalist but that stil doesnt make your remark about bestiality ok.
Schlemazel Khan
@Aimai:
Maybe I am misunderstood. I have read several books about slavery and the civil war and equating Africans to animals was fairly common among the slave apologists. What I was pointing out was that if they believe that then they were admitting they had sex with animals. Of course it was ignorant and ugly but it exposes the thinking of slave apologists. I in no way endorse that thinking and brought it up to highlight both the hypocrisy and the evil of the people involved in the trade.
Many of the wills from the time listed slaves in the section with livestock. Discussion – in print – of the proper method of beating slaves used beating mules and horses as examples. I am not going to ignore that because it is ugly I am going to point it out so that Southrons and other current day slavery apologists have to wear it as a badge of shame.
WereBear
Roots had a profound effect on my generation, and I will be glad to see it reworked for a new one.
The book is not a completely true story as sold, having scenes from a previously published novel by a different author thrown in where the historical record is lacking.
But it does not matter in the big picture. Like having the Fort Pillow massacre put into the new one, it has achieved mythic status and what it depicts did happen, even if it wasn’t the original author’s actual family story.
These are stories which must be told.
WereBear
Speaking of ancestry, I am now a Great-Aunt!
I hope to be a great Great-Aunt!
Patricia Kayden
@Schlemazel Khan: I believe you are correct. Enslaved people were no better than livestock or property in the eyes of their owners. Hence escaped slaves had to be returned and chic be brutalized and killed at whim.
p.a.
Hope they include Northern complicity in slavery; tobacco, triangle and slave trade, king cotton and northern mills, as well as the North’s abandonement of the freedmen and freeborn blacks to Jim Crow. Ref: C Vann Woodward. These were not and are not just sectional issues.
Also too, Woodrow Wilson was scum.
Patricia Kayden
@WereBear: Congrats. Wonderful milestone.
Shell
@WereBear: Congratulations! I became one twice over myself this year.
WereBear
Yes, and totally not covered in my history classes.
D58826
@RaflW:
Exactly. for the buyer and his male relatives a two-fer
Aimai
There is so much more scholarship on AA lives and histories and on what ta nehisi coates calls the 400 year war gor freedom it only makes sense to do Roots again. We know more, in greater detail, about everything from the first settlements to the great migration. Tv writing, directing, and acting is also better, and different. Standards are higher. Writers can expect a more educated, more minority, more engaged and critical audience.
Aimai
@Schlemazel Khan: i get it. But ease stop doing it. You atent going to persuade or shame anyone into changing their mind if they are still pro slavery. And it is simply disgusting to use the comparison between women and animals, and to use the fact of rape opportunistically in an argument. Its distasteful, disrespectful, and self indulgent. Again, no modern white supremacist or lost causer will be affected in the slightest–but there is collateral damage or backsplash for both women and AA readers in handling their pain so glibly.**
**aldo you very much misunderstand the cultural context within which rape and degrading and violent treatment took place. In an authoritarian culture anything and everything the master does is legitimate because he does it. There are no rules that exist outside of authoritarian whim. That is precisely why the authoritarian version of the slaver’s god is never held avcountable for massacres, violence, capricious cruelty. There are no real independent moral codes existing in sn authoritarian society. Where there appear to be–law or scripture–these turn out to be only interpreted or dnforced by the authority in wuestion. Older white msles. Property owners. Your opinions about what constiutes an argument are irrelevant. You wouldnt have standing to offer an interpretation or they would dismiss your anslysis ss flawed.
rikyrah
I was a skeptic about a remake of Roots. One of my favorite bloggers -Awesomely Luvvie -has done a review, and convinced me. I put it on the DVR.
rikyrah
I can, without equivocation, recommend Underground on the WGN network. The 10 episode season was absolutely brilliant. It faced every possible evil of the system of slavery. It was unflinching, and every episode will disturb your soul. I think that it should be used as a teaching tool in schools to show THE TRUTH about American slavery. It will be out on DVD in June.
WaterGirl
@RSP: I don’t agree with some of Aimai’s position on this, but the spelling thing? That seems kind of petty – it’s pretty obvious that she is on some sort of mobile device.
Uncle Cosmo
@Aimai: Could you please do something about the typos in your posts? I ask only because they are very prevalent in all your posts & make those posts difficult to decipher.
Most of them seem to be caused by missing a key or typing a key next to the one you want. I conjecture that whatever device you are posting from has a tiny (most likely touchscreen) keyboard & you’re about as fumble-fingered as I am.
I would ask you to be a bit more careful as you type. Or to spend a couple of minutes reviewing & editing what you typed before you post it. (We can wait.) But it does not seem very courteous to your audience here to force them to do the editing for you.
Aimai
@Uncle Cosmo: i am out of the country. Typing on my phone. I cant edit and i can not easily see the full text. I dont think that typos are evidence of discourtesy. If you have a problem with my posts just skip them.
Schlemazel Khan
@Aimai:
Sorry but as part of several ACW discussion and research groups I have had to put up with too many people who are only happy to tell me that owners loved their slaves like their children and the slaves appreciated what the master did for them and how the whole affair is misunderstood and misrepresented. It becomes important to show them in their own words and deeds what the reality was and there is no way to do that without using the words they themselves used.
Emerald
@Shell: They did. Back in the seventies starring Cicely Tyson. Pretty good too!
Emerald
@rikyrah: Thanks! Found it on Amazon. Will watch.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel Khan:
IIRC, what Sykes was upset about was that she put the pieces together even as Gates was talking and realized that he was about to tell her that her free black ancestors had themselves owned slaves, because everyone in early colonial times owned at least one or two as house servants. And she was right.
We’re living in kind of a golden age for genealogy right now, especially for African-Americans. So many slave records have been digitized and put online now that it’s relatively easy to trace your ancestors from the comfort of your home computer rather than having to go down to an archive and search a microfilm or microfiche.
bemused senior
I urge anyone living near or traveling to New Orleans to make time to visit the Whitney Plantation. It is a restored plantation showing the life of the slaves who lived and died there. Very powerful experience.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@rikyrah: I can’t wait to see Underground. We ditched cable a ways back so I haven’t been able to see it but I’ve heard it is everything one would hope for in a series on that subject. Also, can’t wait to see the Nat Turner movie. I mean, just the trailer alone…
No One You Know
@Schlemazel Khan: John Quincy Adams, in his post-presidency career as a legislator, started a riot in the House when he made this exact point ~1837. The southern legislators and northern sympathizers were so furious when he introduced a petition from slaves asking for emancipation from their “benevolent, happy condition” (as it was described) that speaker of the house James Polk was almost in the position of publicly censoring the former president.
No One You Know
ETA: the petitioners were free mulatto women that he described as “ladies”–which a furious legislator described as “women, not ladies, and not of good reputation.” Adams wondered if that meant they were whores.
No, just that they were mixed blood.
Adams remarked he had often seen a resemblance to the White fathers of such women, and if it was a disgrace to the chamber if any of those fathers were present.
No One You Know
@Aimai: I believe Uncle meant kindly of you.
Not evidence of discourtesy, perhaps, but badly edited comments do suggest evidence that the comments aren’t thoughtful, and not reviewed before posting.
I always have to review what I put out to others to see. Sometimes I miss typos myself. It’s never because I’m in another country (I type just as well, or badly, anywhere).
I do want to show not just respect for others, but for my own thoughts.
It’s not possible to “just skip” in a column; the eye catches on them anyway. It’s how scanning works.
Saying, “Just ignore them” not only isn’t an physical option; it says you yourself don’t actually want to be read thoughtfully. How could such a remark work in a column people use to talk among themselves?
I’ve corrected over seventeen errors in the course of writing just this post, because I cared for it, and for you. I may not have caught them all, but I thought it worth the effort.
Regards,
Susan
No One You Know
@Schlemazel Khan: On reading this thread just now, I had to go look up the cause of the “gag order” on motions to discuss petitions regarding slavery. The Right to Petition, to be heard in the petitioners’s (plural possessive) own words, is part of the group of free speech rights.
The white slaveowners could not speak for people they didn’t represent, and the dispute over “who speaks” and the moral authority of those claims, resulted in the House temporarily abridging free speech in the House itself.
Which lead, inevitably, to a dispute about whether states could abrogate federal law,of postmasters could refuse to deliver abolitionist pamphlets…
…and, in our day, whether pharmacists can refuse to dispense birth control, or a state employee can refuse to issue marriage certificates.
Nothing is new under the sun!