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Gloria Dulan-Wilson Blog/ ECLECTICALLY BLACK NEWS
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5.03.2016

The Ersatz Remake of ROOTS - Say it isn't so!!!

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:




  • Interesting isn't it how bad news travels fast under the guise of good news. 

  • While checking out my Facebook page, I received a post from my brother/friend Durval Arantes in Brazil in reference to the upcoming "remake"of ROOTS - the Alex Haley classic that was released by David Wolper and Warner Brothers in the 70's.  I had been talking about how hideous it was, but didn't have a clip - but now, thanks to Durval, I do.

  • Several of us who attended the National Action Network 25th Anniversary Convention in April, saw the preview of the 1st episode (of a 4-part production) and were completely horrified. In fact, Activist/Radio Personality, Donald Brown spoke with Rev. Sharpton, who had not had an opportunity to preview the show, about it  and how misleading and heinous it was. This is by way of a warning to you to not co-sign this show.  I am not going to tell you to no watch it - that's a form of reverse PR which usually has the opposite affect.  I'm just going to tell you to do your homework - check out Alex Haley, get the book or get the original version and watch it so you can have something to compare this with.

  • Generally speaking, whenever anyone in hollywood sets out to do a remake of an original, it turns out to be a poor imitation and some times a down right abomination of the original - I would say, judging from what we've already witnessed - this would be in that category.

  • Below is my response to Durval Arantes, which is posted on his Facebook Timeline.  I'm sharing it with you.  If you have children,  please make sure that they know enough about their history that they don't thnk that most of the captured Black people who were stolen from Africa were done at the hands of their own brothers; or that Africans had guns given to them by whites.  While there were some Blacks involved -the overwhelming majority of slave monsters were white!!







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    Durval Arantes
    May 1 at 6:04pm
    Coming up next (in 2016): Alex Huxleys "Roots"



    Roots: The Journey Begins with a Name | Premieres Memorial Day 2016 | History
    Check out this trailer for HISTORY's…
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    Davi Ulysses
    Davi Ulysses The woman of the Dreams of Africa and it generation we black nation
    Like · Reply · 11 hrs
    Gloria Dulan-Wilson
    Gloria Dulan-Wilson  
    Hi: Durval:

     Please, don't endorse this movie until you hear the real issue - we previewed the first episode at the National Action Network in April - they have taken Alex Haley's original and distorted it - the very beginning shows nothing but Africans enslaving other Africans - Africans with guns - when we all know that whites never gave Africans guns because they were afraid of what they would do!!

    There are distortions of Haley's original writings - they've up ticked the violence to such an extent that it's beyond belief - and eliminated key phrases from the orIginal script. Will Packer is one of the producers - to entice more Blacks to watch. I love his work in "Ride Along," and other productions - and I know his heart is in the right place; but this is doing us a dis-service as Blacks under the guise of being more "accurate."

    This is supposed to be a more "authenticated" better researched version; as if Haley, who wrote about his family had not already done so. The kicker is that they are showing it during Memorial day week end as a prelude to Juneteenth - the authenticity of Haley is being impugned - and because most folks of this generation have probably not read his book - let alone seen the original series - they wouldn't know the difference, and will be swayed by the sensationalism as well as the fact that credible actors like Laurence Fishburne are involved.

    Rather than make something relevant to the future of BLACK PEOPLE - like a movie on REPARATIONS, BLACK LIBERATION, BLACK SELF EDUCATION,  or illuminate the impact of other heroes on our lives such as THE LIFE OF CARTER G. WOODSON, or FREDRICK DOUGLASS, or MARCUS GARVEY, they choose to tamper with an original document. It would have been better had they written their own story as opposed to trying to alter Alex Haley's. If they didn't like his version, that would have been the more honest equitable thing to do -- but that's the problem with HOLLYWEIRD - and that's what A&E and the HIS-STORY channels are - under the guise of documentation, they are creating an abominable remake of a story that was complete in its original form.

    The NAN audience left that preview very upset. We are not cosigning this production - it was supposed to be a "work in progress."   Well they need to rethink the distortion of Alex Haley's work - and the dis-service they are doing to the Black youth - and other people of African heritage - many of whom will be seeing this version without ever having seen the original - which was graphic enough.

    There was a key phrase that Haley had in his original story that was dropped from the "remake" - when Kunta Kinte was warned to watch out for white hunters - he had never seen whites before. His friend said it would be easy to detect them: "THEY SMELL LIKE WET CHICKEN!!" That one phrase got a laugh and was repeated in every commentary and conversation about the original  - all of our peers went around quoting that for day - interestingly enough, it has been dropped from the remake.

    There are some character rewrites that are likewise disturbing - especially that of Fiddler (portrayed by the great Forrest Whittaker).  This is the reason why we as Black people must maintain control over our  own stories and the stories of our heroes;  and that includes who produces them, who performs them, and rewrites them - the distortion of this piece that Alex Haley spent his lifetime putting together through diligent research is now being desecrated - and we''re all going to watch it on TV and think it's his original.  But this is the GMO version - genocidally modified obfuscation.

    It's more than time that we begin focusing on our future and what's owed us. We already know how we got here - even if we don't know all the names, dates, times and places - we know that we are owed a heavy price - our focus should be on REPARATIONS. 

     Now, of course, if this movie somehow fine tunes the debate, and makes them so ashamed of what they've done that we are immediately compensated fully for what our Ancestors suffered, and from which we continue to suffer - then I stand to be corrected.  In that case, in the words of Emily Latella (from Saturday Night Live) NEVER MIND!  We saw the first episode of a 4-day series - (hmmmm wonder if they are planning to make this an ongoing serial like the OJ Simpson Trial?) It was extremely graphic and misleading - at this juncture we are assuming that the remaining three will be no less misleading.

    But if it gets us into an ongoing diatribe of focusing on how  unfair things are -and they are; how racist they are - and they are;  and how victimized we are - and we are;  without viable solutions to these problems - then we'll have wasted more time concentrating on that than moving our agenda along to autonomy, empowerment and compensation.

    Actually, the money wasted on the ersatz remake of the movie could have been used to fund a top of the line school in Philadelphia - which has one of the poorest school systems in the US; paid for an endowment for one of the many HBCUs that need help. 

    The saying, "just because we can, doesn't mean we should," should have been the first consideration when they began to undertake the project of remaking Alex Haley's masterpiece.  Somehow people never learn that you can't improve perfection.  What they should have done was made their own "Roots Revisited" movie - and not tampered with Haley's.  SMH

    Stay Blessed & ECLECTICALLY BLACK - Gloria
    Like · Reply · 19 mins


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    Posted by Gloria Dulan-Wilson at 4:29:00 AM
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    Labels: Alex Haley, Brazil, David Wolper, Duval Arantes, FaceBook, Kunta Kinte, REPARATIONS NOW, ROOTS, Will Packer

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