{"id":13515,"date":"2017-02-27T09:30:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T17:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13515"},"modified":"2017-02-28T12:41:18","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T20:41:18","slug":"i-am-not-your-negro-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/02\/27\/i-am-not-your-negro-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Not Your Negro<\/em> more than the sum of its parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Am Not Your Negro
\n<\/em>4\/5<\/p>\n

I Am Not Your Negro <\/em>(2017), centered around narration by Samuel L. Jackson from James Baldwin\u2019s unfinished manuscript Remember This House<\/em>, is a powerful piece of filmmaking\u2014it’s a documentary with more nuance than most, especially docs that attempt to tackle the same difficult subject matter: race, class, and human rights.<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting film as it’s sort of a biopic\u2014we are seeing three great civil rights leaders (Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers) through the eyes of a single person (Baldwin), rather than through the lens of fact\u2014and it’s sort of a documentary, as director Raoul Peck supplements Baldwin\u2019s writing with documentary-style still photographs, news clips, talk-show segments, and newspaper clippings.<\/p>\n

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I Am Not Your Negro<\/em> is more than your average documentary (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This approach works, for the most part, primarily because Baldwin\u2019s writing (and Jackson\u2019s narration) is so strong. It’s refreshing to see the oft-told stories of the three civil rights leaders and not feel as though it’s a history lesson. I Am Not Your Negro<\/em> doesn\u2019t dwell on dates or names, and through Baldwin\u2019s pen is much more concerned with the broader themes of, among others, (mis)understanding, (lack of) education, humankind, and what it is to be human.<\/p>\n

Baldwin (a prominent character on screen as well as off, Peck having assembled a host of the writer\u2019s talk-show appearances in the movie) is captivating to watch, and like the three subjects of Remember This House<\/em>, he’s a born speaker; to see him disassemble the pish-posh-why-always-focus-on-race viewpoint of fellow talk-show guests is nothing short of inspiring.<\/p>\n

Peck also draws parallels between the 1960s and today\u2019s pertinently turbulent sociopolitical reality by relating Baldwin\u2019s words to the frequent shootings and police brutalities that now seem so common. And it\u2019s this stance\u2014relating Baldwin\u2019s writing to today, a time when people seem just as lost as they did 50-odd years ago\u2014that makes I Am Not Your Negro<\/em> more powerful than an ordinary biopic or documentary would be, and makes it clear that it has more to say than merely reporting on the lives of men. I Am Not Your Negro<\/em> distinguishes itself from the feel-goodery cheese of exceedingly ordinary biopic Hidden Figures<\/em> (2017) by making it clear that the modern day is not the time for back-patting, it is the time for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Am Not Your Negro 4\/5 I Am Not Your Negro (2017), centered around narration by Samuel L. Jackson from James Baldwin\u2019s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, is a powerful piece of filmmaking\u2014it’s a documentary with more nuance than most, especially docs that attempt to tackle the same difficult subject matter: race, class, and human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13517,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13515\/revisions\/13517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}