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In his 1988 film Mississippi Burning, Director Alan Parker sets out to corner the audience into an awareness of the segregation and bigotry in Americas south during the 1960 s. Ironically he attempts to achieve this by using cinematic methods that fall in line with exactly what his films central message is attacking; the ugly stereotyping of race and class. While the films message is as important in todays society, where segregation of race and class still occurs, the use of blatant misrepresentations to develop, or rather manipulate, the emotions of the audience is distasteful not to mention arrogantly hypocritical. Parkers film roughly portrays the events surrounding the investigation into the 1964 disappearance of three young civil rights workers (two white, one black) in the Deep South; a time and place representing one of the ugliest periods in Americas history. But contrary to what you may believe, the film manages to depict Mississippi in the 1960 s more unattractively than history itself suggests. Through its use of oversimplified, stereotypical representations of race and class, Mississippi Burning creates a dim image in the viewers mind; one that is ultimately more evident than the message the film was intended to expose.
These representations so simple that according to the film only the southern hicks were racist, only the southern blacks were victims, only one class, the northern F. B. I agents, namely agents Ward (William Dafoe) and Anderson (Gene Hackman), could save them and they could only save them by using violence. As is the case with many films that serve the purpose of entertaining audiences, Mississippi Burning develops an easy to understand and even easier to hate villain. From the films outset the audience is left vulnerable to the manipulated representation of the white Mississippians violent tendencies. Audiences are regularly presented with the image of lower-class, inbred and uneducated hicks from the south with an undying intolerance toward outsiders.
Alan Parker fails to realise that his films depiction of southern characters is no less racist than how they are portrayed to be, not to mention how clichd their portrayal is. What the film fails to suggest other than through a single character, Mrs. Pell (Frances McDormand), the wife of a Klan leader (Brad Dourif), is that while many Mississippians were full of hate and intolerance to outsiders, not all, and maybe not even the majority, were brainless, ignorant Klan people. If by twenty minutes into viewing the film the audience wasnt already loathing the white southerners and urging on the oppressed African-Americans, surely they had missed something because in the black southerners the film had already developed its all important innocent race, the victim that movie goers could sympathize with. If any class or race was meant to have justice done by them in this film it would have been the simple, church going southern blacks who, according to the film, were the only innocent race in southern America. However, the film does no justice, in fact more of an injustice, by simply presenting them as the helpless and vulnerable victims of white oppression, the victim that needed saving for the film to be well received by audiences.
Furthermore, the film fails to make any suggestion that the southern black Americans could be as racist, hate filled and violent as the white. Alan Parker positions the viewers to feel sympathy and compassion for the blacks by representing history as a good guy-bad guy action film in which, ironically, the heroes, the good guys so to speak, were of the same race as the victims oppressors. The educated Hover boys from the north arrive in Mississippi to solve the crime and save the day. According to the films portrayal of the 1964 occurrences, they are the vigilantes who had all the answers and the authority to decide that they could be violent to stop violence. Representing the regular cinematic occurrence of the good cop-bad cop scenario, the two major characters, Ward a young, by the book federal agent, and Anderson, the older, rougher former sheriff who does his job his own way, are thrown at the audience as characters to relate to. The F.
B. I represented what audiences had been set up to want. They would feel sympathy for the blacks so the audience would feel sympathy for the blacks, just as when they wanted to catch the villains, audiences wanted villains caught. By presenting it in this manner, Alan Parker simply managed to make violence acceptable in his film, urging viewers to support the downfall of the southern whites in a spectacle of good over evil; a demonstration of cinematic stereotypes, hypocritical clich's and impressive historical misinterpretations, defeating the purpose of any thought-provoking messages intended. If it wasnt bad enough for a film to be based on such a terrible chapter of American history and be so glorified, the failure of Alan Parker to be original in his presentation of the film, but rather go down the same road as so many films before and since, was a disappointment. The film was not at all original yet managed to stray far from the true story it was based.
Rather than the story of the three missing boys, the film ended up being a self inflicting, hypocritical piece of cinematic distortion that targeted, and ultimately exploited its audience to feel one way or another for the oversimplified races and classes that were represented. While it may have been the original intentions of the film makers, Mississippi Burning wasnt a film that created awareness about racism and discrimination, rather it turned into a story of good vs. evil; the biggest evil being the film itself and the only good being its end.
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Research essay sample on Race And Class Southern Blacks
