Wednesday, December 29, 2004
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
"Call me Mr. Tibbs."
A fine reminder of why sometimes, to deliberately misquote Quentin Compson, "I hate the South!", the film offers a portrait of professional and personal courage in the face of racism and the culture of racism. Still, though, the South may have gone a long way to face down its peculiar problem, somewhat like how industrial progress may have done its part to free the region of the drudgery of the ubiquitous job of plucking cotton bulbs all day. (The connection may be a merely personal one, in the dread I face at both the racism and the cotton-picking.)
"There's white time [in jail] and there's colored time, and colored time's the worst kind."
That didn't demonstrate itself in this film, but rather the specter of hoodlums assaulting Tibbs, a town assuming a standard of justice which held that a black man deserves to be shot for an act of selfdefense, a speech comparing the black race to the epiphectus variety of orchid in its constant needs, and more, as depictions of racism.
Anyway, I'm rambling. I think I may have wanted to simply make the comment that, with respect to the relative importance of statism and racism, the two must not be ranked. Instead, we ought to recognise that the first may come in many cultural shades, and it it is the culture that gives it its real power beyond the brute force from which its seed grows.
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"Call me Mr. Tibbs."
A fine reminder of why sometimes, to deliberately misquote Quentin Compson, "I hate the South!", the film offers a portrait of professional and personal courage in the face of racism and the culture of racism. Still, though, the South may have gone a long way to face down its peculiar problem, somewhat like how industrial progress may have done its part to free the region of the drudgery of the ubiquitous job of plucking cotton bulbs all day. (The connection may be a merely personal one, in the dread I face at both the racism and the cotton-picking.)
"There's white time [in jail] and there's colored time, and colored time's the worst kind."
That didn't demonstrate itself in this film, but rather the specter of hoodlums assaulting Tibbs, a town assuming a standard of justice which held that a black man deserves to be shot for an act of selfdefense, a speech comparing the black race to the epiphectus variety of orchid in its constant needs, and more, as depictions of racism.
Anyway, I'm rambling. I think I may have wanted to simply make the comment that, with respect to the relative importance of statism and racism, the two must not be ranked. Instead, we ought to recognise that the first may come in many cultural shades, and it it is the culture that gives it its real power beyond the brute force from which its seed grows.
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