Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Movie

I think I was scanning some sort of list on imdb of "the most effed up movies ever!" or some shit and came across a title I was NOT familiar with, shocking me to my core, as I thought I was aware of most controversial gross-out fests, even if I had no desire to see it (like those gross pseudo-snuff Guina Pig movies from Japan). The title was "Goodbye Uncle Tom" and I found out it was an Italian fake mondo documentary about the slave trade in America and that it was totally hardcore and showed the TRUE horrors of slavery.

My interest piqued, I did a search on youtube. First I found a trailer that made it look like a trashy exploitation movie (which it essentially is), including this funny part where they had this boob montage and they showed various slaves boobs for like 10 seconds. Then I found a hilarious clip of a Southern dinner party, with various people talking to the camera about slavery (remember it is a fake documentary, with the two filmmakers magically flying into the old south on a helicopter). This one guy's like "I believe in freedom, but I don't believe in equality!" and this other guy with this goofy voice (everyone is hilariously dubbed over, just like all Italian movies) is like "God is white!" and there's this ridiculous fan thing that looks like a giant block of wood swinging back and forth over the table, blocking everyone's faces every few seconds, accompanied by loud "whoooooosh" noises everytime it passes. Then this treat of a scene turned brilliant when one of the women at the table says something along the lines of:

"I am not a southerner and have only stayed here a short time. You see, my name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. And God has told me to write...a story...a BOOK. I think I shall call it...."Uncle Tom's Cabin". And it is my great hope that it shall enlighten and ease our souls."

I had thought characterizations of famous historical figures, who blantantly state their importance in the most unrealistic manner, were only found in crappy social studies videos, but I was mistaken. So based on that one scene, I assumed that the movie was probably really hilarious and there would be constant appearances from famous civil war figures, and the movie would have some self-importance and self-riteous additude, even though its just a shitty exploitation movie.

Well I was right about the last part, but it was sadly not very funny. More just really irritating and a chore to sit through. I had originally planned to watch it with Adrienne, Anna, and Jordan last weekend, because we all agreed the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was great, but Adrienne fell asleep, Anna was on the phone, and Jordan and I watched 20 minutes of it, only to find out the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was like the first scene in the movie followed by a lot of graphic and weird shit on this slave boat, including a guy getting a cork shoved up his butt to stop diarreah. So Jordan was totally grossed and creeped out and we shut it off and I JUST got around to watching the whole thing today.

Anyway, it's 2 hours long and highly tedious and boring, and really fucking awful. The documentary thing is kind of cool for like 15 minutes, and then that gets old, and the content gets old after like 10 minutes. Basically it boils down to: blacks were treated badly by whites. Then because it has no insight or any fresh ideas on the slavery times of America, the movie throws in multiple rape scenes and tons of violent abuse to show how awful the times were. I think everyone agrees that is the worst part of American history, and people should be aware of its horrors, but this film has NOTHING to say about it apart from it's not right. I was sick of watching it after 40 minutes, and I somehow managed to get through the whole thing.

I'll go ahead and say this movie is kind of offensive, not just because it may be the most unintellectual, tired, and emotionally dry look at slavery I've ever seen, but because, for a movie that apparently is so appalled by the actions of white people during that time and how we're the real monsters, the black characters (if you can even call them that) are a bunch of blank faced or screaming bafoons who are given no dialogue or personality. The only black characters that talk in that movie are two "mammy" fat maid characters with a lot of sass and a 13 year old slave prostitute who convinces one of the filmmakers to have sex with her (which he does, making for an awkward part where the camera fucks her, which also brings up another point that I shall asterik and you can find it at the bottom *). There are also a lot of innapropiate gags throughout the movie that basically portray slaves as dumbasses. For instance, a woman is putting cherries on a cake, and a little boy is grabbing and eating the cherries she puts down, and she goes "I un just keep on puttin' on these here cherries, and they never seem to fill up the cake. It's the darndest thing!" Nice positive view of these people guys. I'm not saying they should all be portrayed as intelligent, scholarly people, because many were uneducated, but at least have populate your film with good people to make them sympathetic instead of making them all as dumb as possible.

It's very evident these guys are racist. They made the movie because their previous feature was labeled racist, and they wanted to show people they weren't. But seriously, these guys are idiots. It's a movie that apparently is disgusted by the white ideology of thinking of black people as stupid animals, so they make a movie that portrays all black people as....stupid animals. Their approach to the subject matter just does my head in.

The most ridiculous part of the whole fucking mess of a movie is the last 15 minutes, where it suddenly cuts to modern day America (though it looks like none of the movie was shot in America) where a black preacher reads the diary of Nat Turner, which recounts a slave revolt, and then the preacher imagines klling a bunch of annoying white people in the same manner as in the book. This includes axing a bunch of people to death and bludgoning a fake baby against a wall. I REALLY don't know how to take this part. It's the final nail on this movies coffin, closing off all good intentions these assholes may have sort of had. So the modern day black person is still an animal who secretly wants to kill all white people, who are also portrayed really goofily and stuck-up. I just don't get what it's trying to say AT ALL. The very end is the preacher popping a white kids ball and the last shot is a freeze on his angry face. Like, is it condoning race riots and violence? Or is it meant to show us white folks made black people this way? Both are offensive for obvious reasons.

Ugh, this is one of the worst pieces of shit I've seen in a long time. I saw a comment on imdb about how they should show this in high school. Yeah buddy! Let's show students a braindead exploitation flick with an annoying fake art brand on it full of graphic rape and gratuitous child nudity (I think these guys are also into children; take the long scene of young boys being covered in gold and silver paint and the camera focusing on their penises and it feels a lot like child porn).

Harriet Beecher Stowe, how I wish the movie had been solely of you.

*It seems obvious through the whole movie that it's a psedo-documentary, with everything being recorded by cameras the people can see, but then when it gets to the guy fucking girl slave thing, suddenly the movie is just through his eyes. So does that mean the whole movie is just through the filmmakers eyes? Do they have the magic ability to zoom in with their eyes and glide across landscapes? Ugh, it confuses me.