On realism,
allegory, and hot Southern summers.
I’ve written
many times before in this space about the difficult
but vital question of how we might better remember our darkest
national histories, a list that without question features prominently histories
of race and slavery, lynching
and segregration, and their attendant horrors. The issue isn’t simply that
we don’t remember those histories, although certainly that’s the case when compared
to more widely shared historical topics such as the Revolutionary and Civil
Wars (which, while not without their darknesses, are far easier to fit into
progressive national narratives). It’s also that when we have produced cultural
texts that engage with those dark histories, we have far too often done so
through stereotypes
and myths, through a-historical
misrepresentations of the past, or through triumphal
narratives of overcoming obstacles that allow us to pat ourselves on the
back rather than really examine the histories on their own terms.
Those aren’t the
only options, however, and I would argue that two films set in the dog days of
Southern summer offer two very distinct but perhaps complementary means through
which to engage more honestly with some of our darkest histories. Norman Jewison’s
In the Heat of the Night
(1967) is a gritty, realistic crime drama, one in which Philadelphia
detective Virgil Tibbs (played
famously by Sidney Poitier), passing through the small town of Sparta, Mississippi,
finds himself working closely with the town’s racist police chief (Rod Steiger)
to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman. Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan
(2006) is an over-the-top melodrama, one in which a troubled, drug addicted,
and nymphomaniac young woman (Christina Ricci) is discovered by a religious but
bitter former blues musician (Samuel L. Jackson) who
decides to keep her chained up in his house until he can cure her of her various
addictions. Despite their significant differences in style and tone, the two
films share not only this emphasis on a forced and uncomfortable relationship
between black and white characters, but also prominent imagery of heat to
highlight their tensions: from Heat’s
titular reference to Black Snake Moan’s
tagline, “Everything is hotter down South.”
It’d be easy,
and not at all inaccurate, to focus any analysis of this pairing on the differences
between the two films. Those differences likewise link the films to two
distinct, longstanding artistic genres: Black
Snake Moan fits nicely into the tradition known as the
Southern gothic, a genre that uses extreme imagery and tones to capture
allegorically the region’s worst and best sides; while In the Heat of the Night uses the realistic plotting, characterization,
and attention to detail of detective
fiction and the police
procedural to explore its social and cultural setting and world. Yet I
would argue that to engage with the South’s (and America’s) darkest histories
requires a combination of these two modes: a detective’s ability and willingness
to investigate the past and unearth the truth, no matter how unattractive it
might be; and in so doing, a sensibility attuned to the Gothic extremes that
have, quite simply, characterized histories like lynching far more often and
thoroughly than we’d care to admit. As such, a dog day double billing of these
two films might just be the ticket to a fuller understanding of the sultry
South, and all of us.
Last dog days
film tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Summertime movies you’d highlight?
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