While I usually focus on politics here, I like to broaden the scope when I can to keep things interesting. Movies are something that I love and have spent some time and effort studying, and the fun thing about the internet is that we all get to blather on about things we really don't have a right to take a position on. So I will do that here by talking about Maureen Dowd's article, Not Just A Movie, which critiques President Johnson's role in the Civil Rights movement as depicted in the recent film, Selma. I haven't seen Selma yet, and truthfully I'm glad that reviews have been so strong for the film because I worried that it was going to be an overwrought, slightly cheesy experience based on the trailers I had seen. But enough about my expectations, let's get to the heart of Ms. Dowd's article.
She opens by describing a fairly noble effort to get kids in to the theater to see Selma over the MLK holiday weekend. Free tickets to D.C. public school students sounds like a great idea, and the experience had the intended effect. Part of learning history is appreciating it, not just understanding a linear series of events. Selma brings to life a church bombing that killed four young girls as well as the violence surrounding the Selma march itself in ways that reading about it never could. Those four girls never intended to be martyrs, but they died so that so that the current state of racial equality, for better or worse, could exist. Their deaths have changed the lives of many of those students sharing a theater with Maureen Dowd when she went to see Selma.
President Johnson also changed the lives of those students as well, and Ms. Dowd believes LBJ got the short shrift with his depiction in Selma. She writes:
DuVernay sets the tone for her portrayal of Lyndon Johnson as patronizing and skittish on civil rights in the first scene between the president and Dr. King. L.B.J. stands above a seated M.L.K., pats him on the shoulder, and tells him “this voting thing is just going to have to wait” while he works on “the eradication of poverty.”
I don't think it's a secret that LBJ admitted the timing wasn't right to get the Civil Rights Act pushed through congress before Selma. Granted, most view the LBJ-MLK relationship as one of mutual respect and friendliness. As this CBS News article states, the two men knew they shared a common goal and needed each other to accomplish that goal, even if they needed the public perception to indicate otherwise.
But how do you shorthand that kind of relationship into a two hour film and still leave time for the rest of what the film wants to cover? You could make it more obvious that these two prominent figures had a cordial relationship, I guess, but I feel like the film makers are in a no-win situation here as long as they choose to follow Dr. King instead of LBJ given the timeframe the film covers (three months in 1965).
Maybe Selma could have borrowed more from what LBJ actually said to Dr. King at one point:
"If you could find the worst condition that you run into, and get it on the radio and get it on television, get it every place you can. Pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but follow, drive a tractor, he'll say "well that's not right. That's not fair."
Maybe Selma does lean on that quote more than I realize, but all the critiques I've read about the film don't seem to indicate that. Maybe the screenwriter, Paul Webb, feels the scenes as filmed capture the essence of LBJ's quote. But maybe Ms. Dowd mostly wants to see LBJ depicted the way he should be depicted in her mind's eye?
Dr. Gary May, a history professor at the University of Delaware, wrote an interesting article for The Daily Beast. In that article, Dr. May describes the LBJ-MLK relationship in the following way:
President Lyndon Johnson, played by Tom Wilkinson, knew the contents of King’s FBI file and feared that a close relationship with the preacher would tarnish his presidency. (JFK felt the same way.) He preferred working with older members of the civil rights community, those he could control, and he often treated King with contempt. While sympathetic to King’s demand for a voting rights bill, Johnson refused to be pushed, waiting for the right political moment to send the bill to Congress. DuVernay’s treatment of LBJ is too harsh. (People near me in the theater hissed at him.) She fails to appreciate the congressional and constitutional obstacles Johnson had to overcome to win passage of the bill.
Not as cordial as the CBS article above, maybe highlighting the more public face of their relationship, or maybe highlighting the fact that there are certain realities to getting something so monumental accomplished. Dr. May describes LBJ's depiction as "too harsh," not necessarily "inaccurate," but goes on to cite the real shortcomings of Selma... the lack of attention paid to the people who came out to march with Dr. King that day. The smaller, lesser known stories that helped make the Selma march the success and tragedy that it was.
The Daily Beast article also described an earlier attempt by director Lee Daniels (of The Butler fame) to get Selma off the ground that would have basically reversed the MLK-LBJ prominence in the movie. Daniels wanted to make Selma LBJ's story, which seems like an overcorrection in the other direction.
I think it's fair to conclude that Selma doesn't nail every fact with complete accuracy, something director Ava DuVernay doesn't feel required to do with her film. Ms. Dowd writes the following:
“This is art; this is a movie; this is a film,” DuVernay said. “I’m not a historian. I’m not a documentarian.”
The “Hey, it’s just a movie” excuse doesn’t wash. Filmmakers love to talk about their artistic license to distort the truth, even as they bank on the authenticity of their films to boost them at awards season.
Here's where the film part kicks in. You can't single Selma out with this critique because there are inaccuracies in every historical film every made. I don't feel these films bank on their authenticity to boost them at awards season, I feel that they bank on the power these moments in history bring to the screenwriting formula. Since films are a business, their goal is to make a profit at the end of the day. So people collaborating on a film try to find a story they can be passionate about while believing tickets can be sold. Sometimes that gives you Transformers 4, other times it gives you films covering important moments from history. But make no mistake, regardless of the subject, there are rules of a sort when it comes to making films.
Take the LBJ-MLK scene in Selma as described in Ms. Dowd's article. There's a couple of things this scene has to accomplish. First is that it needs to be as economical as possible, that's just a fact of movie-making life. Films intended for a widespread audience don't often take the time they should to explore nuance. Second is that the scene needs conflict, which means that maybe the cordial reality presented in the CBS News article linked above wouldn't work. Finally, it needs to move the story forward. Making LBJ out to be more of an obstacle that he was in reality could provide the inciting incident, if you will, that drives the film's plot forward in a comfortably formulaic fashion. That's it... that's all any scene in any film needs to do and while I feel that a historical film should stick as close as it can to the truth while accomplishing those goals, there's no obligation to do so.
Does this lead to people having skewed understandings of historical event? No doubt, but that's the great thing about these student in D.C. going to see Selma for free. They aren't watching Selma in a vacuum, they get to go to school and hopefully use Selma as a starting point for a great discussion that opens their eyes to this powerful chapter in U.S. history that continues to change the lives of minorities today. Another way to look at movies like Selma... imagine this film never gets made. This part of history never has a well-made, easily digestible film covering these events to pique the curiosity of a generation that finds itself further removed from the months covered in Selma. There is no starting point to generate a nationwide discussion about the minutiae of the film while admitting that as a whole it's a powerful accomplishment. Sure, there's a burden on us as viewers to make sure we get a fuller understanding than what the film offers, and maybe that's a burden we often fail to bear as media consumers. But I feel it might be better to fail that burden and allow historical films to exist, warts and all, than to not have these films get made in the first place due to an obligation to 100% accuracy
The thing is, at the end of the day, this isn't the first time a historical film with possible Oscars in its future has failed the accuracy test. I don't remember Ms. Dowd speaking up before about past films that distort history to fit into the structure and business of a film. A lot of people feel they know more about World War 2 after seeing Saving Private RyanDiscussing the historical shortcomings of a film adds to the societal context of said film. It's why these films get made on some level, so on that level, it should be okay for historical films to take some license for storytelling's sake. Calling Selma out in particular feels disingenuous on some level since it hardly stands out as the exception.
