Library Video of the Week, February 20, 2012.

Intruder in the Dust, staring Juano Hernandez, Claude Jarmin, Jr.  and David Brian. Directed by Clarence Brown. 1949. Library Call Number: PN1995.9.N4I67 2011.

       From the IMDB database:  “Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence. “

          Nominated for two Golden Globes, a Writer’s Guild Award and and winning a UN award, the film, based on a William Faulkner novel, is a hidden masterpiece. Both noirish and progressive for its time, Intruder in the Dust provides an interesting look at white attitudes toward equal rights in the early post-war era.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, February 13, 2012.

Juice! by Ishmael Reed. Library Call Number: PS3568.E365J85 2011.

Reed has written a biting, satiric look at what passes for race relations in the American “post-racial” society.  O.J. Simpson’s trial in 1994 acts as a catalyst to the story here of five aging friends, all in a different art, all worried about the numerous illnesses and injuries of aging, watching America progress through the 90’s into the 21^st century.  Told through the eyes of African-American Paul Blessings, a diabetic television cartoonist for an alternative station, “Juice!” is an obsessive account of Simpson’s trial, the rise of the corporation and the burial of culture.  Blessings, who pens a cartoon called Attitude the Badger, says, “Jonathan Kraal, who had taken over this…network kept me on.  He wanted his station to appeal to high school teachers, dot commers and MBAs.  I have nothing in common with these people.” 

          Dalkey Archive says, “Juice! serves as a comi-tragedy, chronicling the increased anxieties of ‘post-race’ America.”

Library Video of the Week, May 2, 2011.

The Blind Side, starring Quentin Aaron, Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw and Kathy Bates. Directed by John Lee Hancock. 2009. Library Call Number: PN1995.9.S67 B55 2010.
          Tip-toeing through what could be saccharine/maudlin territory, and managing to mostly avoid it, The Blind Side is based on the true story of Michael Oher, an abandoned, shy and gentle teen-aged boy who is literally plucked off the streets by the Touhys, a white Republican, Evangelical family, and taken in to their Nashville home. Mother Leigh Anne Touhy takes an interest in the teen and begins to nurture him, helping him in school and on the football field—he’s never before touched a football. Oher, in turn, blossoms, becomes an All-American left guard, wins a scholarship to the University of Mississippi and eventually becomes a professional football player.
          Wesley Morris, film critic for the Boston Globe, points out an interesting sub-text in this film: though it’s actually Michael Oher’s story, it’s told primarily from the point of view of Leigh Anne Touhy. This makes it, he says, a more comfortable, Hollywood view of race in America, where no one wonders why the city schools seem all black and the private schools except for their athletes, are primarily white. Still, this is a smart film, worth watching; the main characters are pitch perfect and Bullock won an Oscar for her role.