Misplaced criticism? Some thoughts on 'Selma'

Now that I've seen "Selma," I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the controversy swirling around its depiction of President Lyndon Johnson as a stubborn adversary to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rather than his ally. Every year during awards season, a new film based upon historical events is subjected to the now-familiar scrutiny of being picked apart for accuracy. That these criticisms always occur during Oscar campaigning certainly feels like calculated attempts to discredit the merits of these films, though in fairness, they are rarely released outside of the narrow window of the holiday season, when "serious" films are paraded before award voters.

David Oyelowo. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

Many recent films have fallen under the scrutiny of fact checking, including our last two Best Picture winners, “Argo” and “12 Years a Slave.” And as a journalist, I am certainly a big fan of fact checking. But these are movies we are talking about, and as such, I believe that much of this current controversy surrounding “Selma” is misplaced energy that is taking us further away from a few key ideas that get lost every time these debates take place. So for those of you who are interested in reading my two cents on the issue, I’ve attempted here to focus my thoughts on three things that I believe get lost in the fray whenever we debate the historical accuracy of a film. 

1. Films are art.

As someone who has studied film as an academic pursuit for 25 years or so, I have a question I ask myself whenever I walk out of a theater, and that is: How well does the film accomplish what it seems to be attempting to accomplish? In my effort to talk about a movie, much less “rank” it by using some journalistic system of stars or letters, I find this to me the most fair way to assess it. Through the process of watching movies, I attempt to discern what I think the film’s creators were trying to accomplish, and I try to measure its success by that standard. It’s not a perfect system in that I often won’t know what a director was setting out to achieve. But it’s a far better system, I think, than measuring a comedy – for example – by the number of times I laughed. And it also prevents me from having to compare, say, "Some Like It Hot" to "Schindler's List," cinematic apples and oranges.

People seem to be forgetting that film is art. It’s not journalism. It’s not academic. And therefore, like a symphony or a painting or poem, its purest aim is to connect to something in our collective humanity. Art, when done well, informs our intellect. When the source that art draws upon is history, art attempts to enlighten those moments. But the primary aim of art is to visit us on emotional level. All art contains truth where the human experience is concerned, whether or not it's "based on a true story."

In the pursuit of emotional resonance, "Selma" is wildly successful. As Dr. King, actor David Oyelowo elicits the kind of visceral response that reading "Letter From Birmingham Jail" might not from those who can't transcend the limitations of the written word, however powerful. The film's director, Ava DuVernay, successfully recreates the intensity of the moments depicted in the film more frequently than she misfires. Watching “Selma” will cause you to gasp and cry, shut your eyes and shake your head, be filled with both hope and defeat – sometimes simultaneously. Does “Selma” accomplish what it sets out to accomplish? I think for the most part, the answer to that is “yes,” based largely on my next point.

2. Films have a point of view.

There are two different kinds of art: those created by a singular voice and vision, and those requiring a community of collaborators, though even with the latter, someone has to be in charge, which is why theatrical works like plays, films and movies have directors. The director is charged with the artistic vision and enlists a team with a shared belief in that vision to help him or her bring it to bear. But whether alone or as a part of a team, fiction or nonfiction, film, as with any other kind of art, is told from a point of view.

This includes films labeled as documentary or nonfiction. Even if “Selma” had been assembled from real footage and narrated by James Earl Jones, the assembly of that footage, the writing of that narration, and the choices over what to include and what not to include would pass through the gate keeping of the director and his or her vision for what story is trying to be told.

I am particularly amazed, time and again, by those who gnash their teeth over filmed versions of books. The author of a book is an artist, and the director of a film is a different artist. Unless the sole aim of the film director is to accurately recreate the book in moving images (which, I suppose, could be the case, though I’m not sure what would be in it for the filmmaker), how much does the film director truly owe the creator of the source material?

March on Selma. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

As for “Selma,” we have a film directed by, largely produced by, and largely starring African-American artists. The film, not surprisingly, reflects a particular point of view. I am not thrown to see aspects of this version of the story of the fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 differ from the way I’ve read about it and learned it in the past. And like it or not, I know exactly why. I have never been taught history by an African-American teacher, and most of the accounts I’ve read in textbooks were curated and edited by white editors at white scholastic publishing houses, who have to tell the version of history that is most palatable to financially profit from the sales of their textbooks. I have never met a person who marched in Selma or Washington, who sat defiantly at a diner counter or the front of a bus. Ms. DuVernay has met such people, so I can gladly defer to her recreation of their accounts for a few hours. I have neither the right nor the reason to believe that she, as this film's director, is doing any of them an injustice through her telling of these events. The film's point of view is clear, and I knew what it was walking into it just as clearly as I'd understand what I'd be getting if the director was Spike Lee or Quentin Tarantino.

Multiple sources are quoting DuVernay as having said at a recent event: “This is what I see, this is what we see…and that should be valid.” She also said that “everyone sees history through their own lens,” which is something I agree with. And I would go on to argue that good teachers in this world fight not to teach kids a particular version of history, but to assist kids in developing “their own lens.” And that leads to my third and final point.

3. Films are being misused.

As the recent terrorist attack on the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo reminds us, we live in a world where people judge the commentary without taking the time to study what the commentary is commenting on. Young people in particular get their news straight from “The Daily Show”and its companions. They understand what is being made fun of but, with less frequency, why.

If this laziness in global citizenship is evident anywhere else, it’s certainly visible where movies are concerned, and that has been the case for years. Letting someone post the bullet points of a Supreme Court ruling on social media is far less work than reading the ruling ourselves, and rarely arrives without having passed through the filter of the poster’s interpretation of the ruling. Those who won’t take time to listen to our president speak feel adequately informed by the clips rebroadcast hours later on the nightly news. And, perhaps worst of all, films stand as satisfactory historical documents for far too many of us.

Schools use movies in history classes, and with good reason. They certainly enliven what can be a dry academic experience for any student not inherently intrigued by the past. But there is danger in allowing any film – and yes, I’m including documentary films here – in being the document of an historical event. So, for example, the problem is not that African-American leaders in New York City are working with Paramount Pictures to offer free screenings of “Selma” to junior high students. The problem would be if “Selma” became the sole statement on the events depicted in the film. How could any film be so accurate that we could show it to our children and simply say: “And that’s the way it was?”

When I watched “Selma,” I was a bit taken aback to see a President Johnson who was far more adversarial to the cause than I had once believed him to be, but my appreciation of the film was not diminished. Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to assume that this man was torn between his personal convictions and his political mandates? And before you vilify DuVernay, it’s worth taking a step back to notice that she does depict a president interested in the cause of civil rights – just one who disagrees about which steps should be taken and in which order to accomplish the goals that, on many levels, Johnson shared with King.  The film depicts the accurate end results but causes us to question the road leading up to them. I have no problem with that because I'm not relying on this movie or any one source as my sole provider of truth. I simply finished the film remembering the struggle anew, not taking for granted - at least in these moments - the sacrifices made by many to get our nation to where it is today.

I remember an uproar after walking out of Disney’s 1995 feature “Pocahontas” regarding the romanticizing of the girl’s relationship with Captain John Smith, when in reality she was known to have been much younger and was allegedly raped by Smith. It was right around that time that I started to come into a clearer understanding that while film has the power to illuminate aspects of our historical past, it is not a medium created without artistic diversions. You can call those diversions irresponsible and argue that filmmakers have a duty to get their facts straight exactly because so many of us will assume that directors have pursued their due diligence to the source material. But I think the problem is more our fault than theirs. That pursuit of the facts is incumbent on us. The filmmakers are creating art from their own personal perspectives. We’re the ones treating art as fact or complaining when it doesn’t rise to that standard. It seems to me that when we replace our historical documents, eye witnesses and carefully researched texts with movies, we're getting the history we deserve.

We need movies like “Selma” to keep the emotions of moments in our collective history alive for younger generations. And indeed, those in support of Dr. King’s mission are not going to gain any major enlightenment from the film or be so challenged by it as to question what they once believed. By and large, “Selma” is an experience in catharsis with the intellectual sidecar of a warning: are we really there yet? The film does exactly what you think it will do and largely covers exactly what you expect it to cover. I doubt many mature viewers will learn too much that they didn't already know, which in no way diminishes the power of reliving it though our viewing of the film.

Director Ava DuVernay. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

This returns us to the purpose of the art, and I think for Ava DuVernay, the purpose of her art was to remind us: of a struggle, of a feeling, and of a promise so shakily fulfilled in our country that in the closing credits’ song, “Glory,” John Legend and Common drop in references to Ferguson, Missouri without having to work hard to connect those dots.

Let us not forget that films are art; they are entertainment. I personally happen to have a greater appreciation for art that makes me think, moves me and challenges me. Others prefer that their art takes them away from their problems instead of amplifying or exploring them. But when a movie is "based on a true story," we can't forget the definition of the word "based." We are misusing films, repurposing materials that support our understanding of history as the history itself.

In his discussion on this controversy, film critic Brad Brevet, on his site Rope of Silicon, sums up my own feelings about this whole issue probably better than I managed to over the course of this long posting,when he wrote:  “The fact of the matter is, this is a movie called ‘Selma,’ not ‘LBJ,’ and if people are interested in the whole truth of history there are plenty of ways to find it. Movies evoke feelings and anyone who goes to them searching for the whole truth (even documentaries and perhaps especially documentaries) are looking in the wrong place.”