Personally, I find this movie to be really interesting so far. Even though there have already been some historical inaccuracies, I find it to be more compelling than the documentary we recently watched. One of my favorite parts of the movie so far has been when the news channel were interviewing people by the swamp when the FBI agents were searching for the bodies and all the responses the crew received because they truly encompassed what people believed during and before the civil rights movement. One man said that he believed the three boys were dead because they were "looking for trouble." The man thought the boys deserved to be killed, and not searched for or found, because they were looking for trouble by fighting for equality. One woman thought that the disappearance was staged to gain publicity for the movement and that the three men were really alive in New York, celebrating. Also, a second woman straight out denied that they would find the boys because nothing would happen like that in their Mississippi town and that the agents should just go home. These three responses really enforced the idea that no one was going to help the search because they truly didn't care about the missing boys. All the adults believed they deserved to be killed for trying to fight for equality, especially in their Mississippi town that would never change their beliefs. This part of the movie really showed what people believed and thought about blacks and white activists during the civil rights movement. I also found it interesting though that the movie did not show the agents finding other bodies in the swamp, which did happen. In class we talked about how some historical events had to be altered to gain the public's interest, but I feel a scene where more bodies were found would have been beneficial to the movie. It is extremely interesting and tragic to realize how many events occurred to other people that happened to the three boys who went missing. Hopefully, they add this scene or talk about finding the other bodies in the future.
As I was watching the first part of Mississippi Burning, two things really struck me. The first one was the fear that the whites placed in the black community. Back in the 1960s, there were still many violent crimes that were perpetrated against blacks, and there were still many hate groups, most notably the KKK, that succeeded in keeping blacks oppressed through fear. I thought that this was most evident in the diner scene when Agent Ward attempts to talk to a black person about the case. It can be clearly seen that he is terrified to say anything, obviously because he is afraid of retaliation by the KKK, which does end up happening. The other thing that struck me was how complicit the authorities in the south were to the violent crime. If the police and leaders of the town were not in the KKK, they still likely turned a blind eye to Klan activities. In this particular film, the police in the town participated in the crime, and actively tried to undermine the FBI’s attempts to solve the crime. Despite several inaccuracies in the movie, I think that it is so far a good film and a good general depiction of the sorry state of civil rights in the South in the 1960s.
The movie to me is shocking not only at the level of racism but the way the FBI handled the investigation. If this is the way the FBI handled the investigation while in the south they had the wrong tactic. By going in with little tact, they immediately turned the town against the cause. I also am flabbergasted at the ignorance people had in the south. The fact that they truly believed that African-Americans lower class and that anyone who supported them was less then them, was ridiculous. I couldn’t believe that people were raised in such a culture that they believed that African- Americans were happy in the conditions that they were in. I also have started to wonder how much of the movie is accurate. Are the actions of the FBI agents in real life true to the movie? I am worried that the drama in the movie causes the view to distort his or her on the event.
Mississippi Burning is an intense movie that definitely holds your interest. Although it’s based on historical events, it is not as dry as a documentary. Because the historical events have been dramatized through Hollywood in this movie, it is especially captivating. I was disappointed after reading the articles about how the director took too many liberties in creating the movie, because I think that the events are dramatic and captivating enough without the extra additions. It’s heartbreaking to watch the movie and think that stuff like that really happened, which is easy to talk about, but different if you actually see it. I hope that the African American characters in this movie will be shown in the rest of it as courageous and strong because through what we learned in class, the African Americans were the force behind the civil rights movement. I think that so far, even though the movie has been criticized, the movie has done the historical events justice. From what we have read and talked about in class, the movie really captures the essence of that time period. I am excited to see the rest!
Of all the things I took away from that movie, it is the way that the children were treated. The black child in the church, bent in prayer, was struck by the Klansman. You would think that a groups that is sworn to protect "good Protestant values" would spare a young boy in prayer. Hatred can not be justified with morality the way the Klan tried to. Not only that, but the way that the children of Klansmen were integrated into the Klan society and into racism was shocking. A young child in Klan robes or spiting on protesting African Americans is a sad thing, and it is sad to think that hatred could be instilled in something as innocent as a child. Moreover, this was not that long ago. Those children would be adults today. They could very easily be sheriffs, or mayors, or anything else really. Today, there is still a Klan, and that is scary. The fact that today Klansmen are inducting their children into the Klan is scarier.
So far this movie has been fairly interesting to me. I think one of the reactions I've had so far has been the realism with which the director is able to portray the film. Having learned all about the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle black Americans faced in society in the 1950s and forward, I find that I am much more aware of the brutality of the situation because of the film. Like some of my classmates said, the film holds so many details that are so close to real life, it's hard to tell the difference and that is the driving force for me. When scenes of people burning churches, beating black citizens or refusing to help the FBI are shown, I am struck by the realness of it all that I would not have gotten from reading about it in a textbook. With the documentary we watched in class, we learn facts about the Freedom Summer and the struggles of registering black voters. But with the film, Mississippi Burning, characters that we grow attached to are suddenly hurt or insulted and it feels much more real. I can actually visualize the struggle these men and women had to go up against while being in the deep South, trying to register voters. It is a whole new level of understanding the Civil Rights Movement and the core of white supremacy and the South's hatred of black citizens.
So far I have really enjoyed this movie. One of the things I am most curious about is how the feel of the town (the mood/tone set) in the movie may be different than the feel of the town in reality during the period. For example, in the opening scene where the FBI agents got out of their car, there were old men giving them nasty looks across the parking lot for no reason. Was this what the town was actually like, or was it more of a technique to get the audience to feel a certain way? I also think that the movie has done a good job emphasizing the KKK's presence in the South. In the movie, there are many scenes shown with the KKK inflicting harm on black people, and it helps to try and replicate the unsafe atmosphere for the blacks in the movie that there was during the time. Also , although we have only seen a brief glance at his character, I loved the representation of the KKK leader, Clayton. The way he described his reasoning for racism against all types except whites was an insightful glimpse into how racist members of society could have justified their beliefs almost politically. I am curious as well about the role of the deputy's wife and what she will play--because she has already let important information slip to one of the agents, and also seems to be accepted by and accept black people throughout the movie.
I've definitely enjoyed the first part of the movie. I think it does a good job of invoking different kinds of emotions in its audience. For example, something that really stuck with me was the multiple KKK attacks on individual blacks and the church-goers. It seems insane that things like that were common, especially since the movie really didn't embellish anything in this area. Another thing I found powerful was when many reporters began asking a businessman why he didn't like different groups of people and he basically replied by saying Mississippi wanted to protect American customs and democracy, and that these people threatened those ideals. A problem I have with the movie, though is its inconsistency. It has both factual details and fictional enhancements, which can portray a misconstrued idea of the event. I feel like there wasn't much of a need to fictionalize any part of the movie. I understand making the sequence of events into a movie instead of a documentary, but I don't think what happened needed to be dramatized. I feel like it would have had a more powerful effect on the public if the director could have said this is literally what happened instead of oh we made some stuff up.
I found it interesting that the movie portrayed the racial discrimination right from the first scene through the separate water fountains for the whites and the colored people. I think that the difference between a documentary and a movie is that documentaries deliver facts and movies catch attention of the audience by building up tension (mainly to attract more people and make money). And “Mississippi Burning” certainly succeeded in “hooking” the audience through the depiction of the actual murder of the three civil rights’ workers. Although, there were some inaccuracies in the movie, I thought that the main purpose of the movie is to get people interested in the incident that happened in Mississippi in 1964, to make people care about and be aware of racial discrimination in the US. Moreover, the film portrayed the attitude of people towards the black community by segregation and even biased decisions of the policemen against the blacks. It was horrifying to see how the KKK used violence against blacks for no particular reason, just because he talked to a white male, and it was also scary that they burned all the churches so that the blacks couldn’t physically vote, even though they had the right to do so. Therefore, in my opinion, watching the movie was a better way of delivering the message than watching the documentary, as the dramatic and graphic scenes helped me understand the amount of hatred towards blacks at the time and the suffering the blacks had to go through. The movie stimulates people’s emotions, which is one of the most effective ways of spreading the information and creating awareness.
I think that this movie does a good job of keeping the viewer engaged. I was shocked to see the level of KKK violence portrayed in the movie so far, as I am sure most of the class was as well. However violent it may be, however, I think that it is an important part of Southern culture during the time of the Civil Rights movement that needed to be explicitly portrayed in Mississippi Burning. Two things about the portrayal of the KKK in this movie were shocking to me: the scene where the Klan members attack the church-goers and one lingering member beats the little boy for seemingly no other reason, besides that he is black. Also, it was eye-opening for me to realize just how involved the sheriff and the local law enforcers in the south were with the Klan. For example, two law enforcers are seen releasing a black man, after what we assume has been a questioning. Not thirty seconds after the man leaves the sheriff's office members of the KKK chase after him and force him into a car, where they take him and beat him severely. I knew that law enforcement in the south was involved in the Ku Klux Klan, but what I didn't realize until seeing this movie is that sheriffs and deputies would actually plan KKK attacks and stage them, using their "cover" to aid the Klan's efforts. I thought that this was one of the things the director did a really good job of making the audience realize, and it was very effective in adding to the overall cause of the two FBI agents.
Mississippi Burning has captured my attention so far. The movie does an amazing job portraying the racial discrimination that pervaded the South throughout the Civil Rights Movement. The racial tension between African-Americans and Whites is exemplified in the scene where Agent Ward sits down in the colored section and tries to talk to the teen African boy. All the white folk sitting in the café stop talking and watch Agent Ward. Despite refusing to tell him anything, the African boy is taken and beaten by the KKK later that day. The most disturbing thing is that the sheriffs are aligned with the KKK and called Cheney the N word. People from the North are not exposed to such blatant racism, and I think that is why the movie is so shocking. I was appalled when the KKK man kicked the black boy straight in the face and continued to kick him and then run away. The whole scene of white KKK men ambushing the African-Americans after Church shows the ruthlessness of southerners at that time. Southern hate is exemplified with the short interviews of white southern male and females talking to the newscaster about the FBI’s involvement in Mississippi to find the three Civil Right workers. The movie was great at showing how profound racism was in the South, but fails to show how that relates to the broader context of things. So far, there has not been any mention of the previous protests and marches during the Civil Rights Movement. The movie seems to isolate the kidnapping as a singular incident and has not explained its effect on the outside world yet. It also puts too much emphasis on the FBI and their role in the case, while it should have focused on the individual African-Americans who brought issues to the forefront.
I have never seen the brutality of the KKK i a movie before. It is safe to say that one of the main objectives of Mississippi Burning is to implant the violence of the KKK into the viewers mind, causing a reality check of sorts. One particular scene that stood out to me was when the African Americans were congregating in their church. All that they were trying to do was have a peaceful meeting and sing songs in order to express their feelings. However, members of the KKK were sitting outside the church waiting to ambush the crowd when they came out of the church after the service. Many of the church members were beaten. Just as the beatings were winding down, a small child was kicked and whacked with a club by a klan member. The fact that someone would do this to a small child just because of the color of their skin made me cringe. However, it also made me think about how far our country has come since that dark period in our history. Today, someone would never get away with a crime like that. Mississippi Burning allowed me to see accurate images of what happened during the civil rights era and the brutality that the African American race needed to overcome as a whole.
So far this movie has been very interesting to me. Even though at some points the historical parts are inaccurate it does a very good job of keeping the audience interested. It takes historical events that usually are seen in a documentary that tends to be very boring and it portrays it in a way that does come off interesting and makes me watch to continue watching. I think the opening scene starts off the movie well. It puts the idea across that the African- Americans lost alot. The whites discriminated the african americans to a point that is gross and we see this in the movie. At one point in the movie we see the KKK physically abuse a black boy. The boy had done nothing wrong and in no way deserved the harsh treatment of the KKK. While I watched the movie its hard to come to grips with the fact that things like this really did happen. Not only did things like this occur, but it was nothing out of the ordinary when it did happen. Another part that I seemed to remember most vividly was when the KKK attacked a group of African Americans after they had attended church. Before the KKK had arrived the movie showed the hope the black members had. All they wanted was for peace. Then, when they leave the church they receive the complete opposite of peace. Seeing that young children were also being hurt was painful to watch. From what I have seen so far it is crazy to think that it actually happened, but I am interested to continue watching.
Wrote my post and forgot to put it on the actual blog...
Mississippi Burning, like most movies, has its pros and cons. There were certain aspects of the atmosphere and the event that the film portrayed well, one particular one being the whites' very obvious hatred for the black community. One scene in particular that stood out to me was when Anderson was telling Ward about how his father killed the black farmer's mule. His exact words to Anderson were, "If you ain't better than a nigger, then who you better than?" Literally, he blatantly states that having black skin is the worst possible fate for someone to have. Worse than being an animal, worse than being a criminal, worse than any type of person at all. If you were black, you had nothing worth living for, because you were the worst possible thing. That was the mentality back then for many white people in Mississippi, and I thought that the movie did an excellent job of recreating that. However, the one thing that the movie did not do was really show how active the black community was in demanding their freedom. Out of all the violence from the white people directed towards the blacks, the one time we hear anything from them about wanting equality is in the informal church congregation. There, people calmly gathered in the ruins of a burned church while a small child read about how one day they would reach equality and how things would get better. In reality, black people in Mississippi were incredibly active in the summer of 1964. There were more marches and more stands for equality, and they were much more zealous, though not violent. The movie portrayed the movement for equality as almost entirely passive, which was not the case.
I find Mississippi Burning a fascinating movie. Although it is an embellished Hollywood movie, I think it shows a lot of truth in the brutality and struggles that African-Americans had to go through in the South. One of the first things that really shocked me was when the sheriff called the disappearance of the civil rights workers a publicity stunt by Martin Luther King Jr. It was difficult to understand that some people could think this way when three people had possibly been murdered. One embellished scene that I found to be too much like a Hollywood movie was when the police were about to pull over the civil rights workers. The filmmakers made it more like a police chase than a cop just pulling them over. Another scene that was sad but true was in the salon when the women said that the FBI wouldn't be there if the white kids weren't missing. It's awful to think that now, but at the time, many African-American people had gone missing or been murdered before without the FBI coming to investigate every one. The reason for the FBI going to Mississippi was triggered by the news of the white men on the media.
Personally, I find this movie to be really interesting so far. Even though there have already been some historical inaccuracies, I find it to be more compelling than the documentary we recently watched. One of my favorite parts of the movie so far has been when the news channel were interviewing people by the swamp when the FBI agents were searching for the bodies and all the responses the crew received because they truly encompassed what people believed during and before the civil rights movement. One man said that he believed the three boys were dead because they were "looking for trouble." The man thought the boys deserved to be killed, and not searched for or found, because they were looking for trouble by fighting for equality. One woman thought that the disappearance was staged to gain publicity for the movement and that the three men were really alive in New York, celebrating. Also, a second woman straight out denied that they would find the boys because nothing would happen like that in their Mississippi town and that the agents should just go home. These three responses really enforced the idea that no one was going to help the search because they truly didn't care about the missing boys. All the adults believed they deserved to be killed for trying to fight for equality, especially in their Mississippi town that would never change their beliefs. This part of the movie really showed what people believed and thought about blacks and white activists during the civil rights movement.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting though that the movie did not show the agents finding other bodies in the swamp, which did happen. In class we talked about how some historical events had to be altered to gain the public's interest, but I feel a scene where more bodies were found would have been beneficial to the movie. It is extremely interesting and tragic to realize how many events occurred to other people that happened to the three boys who went missing. Hopefully, they add this scene or talk about finding the other bodies in the future.
As I was watching the first part of Mississippi Burning, two things really struck me. The first one was the fear that the whites placed in the black community. Back in the 1960s, there were still many violent crimes that were perpetrated against blacks, and there were still many hate groups, most notably the KKK, that succeeded in keeping blacks oppressed through fear. I thought that this was most evident in the diner scene when Agent Ward attempts to talk to a black person about the case. It can be clearly seen that he is terrified to say anything, obviously because he is afraid of retaliation by the KKK, which does end up happening. The other thing that struck me was how complicit the authorities in the south were to the violent crime. If the police and leaders of the town were not in the KKK, they still likely turned a blind eye to Klan activities. In this particular film, the police in the town participated in the crime, and actively tried to undermine the FBI’s attempts to solve the crime. Despite several inaccuracies in the movie, I think that it is so far a good film and a good general depiction of the sorry state of civil rights in the South in the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteThe movie to me is shocking not only at the level of racism but the way the FBI handled the investigation. If this is the way the FBI handled the investigation while in the south they had the wrong tactic. By going in with little tact, they immediately turned the town against the cause. I also am flabbergasted at the ignorance people had in the south. The fact that they truly believed that African-Americans lower class and that anyone who supported them was less then them, was ridiculous. I couldn’t believe that people were raised in such a culture that they believed that African- Americans were happy in the conditions that they were in. I also have started to wonder how much of the movie is accurate. Are the actions of the FBI agents in real life true to the movie? I am worried that the drama in the movie causes the view to distort his or her on the event.
ReplyDeleteMississippi Burning is an intense movie that definitely holds your interest. Although it’s based on historical events, it is not as dry as a documentary. Because the historical events have been dramatized through Hollywood in this movie, it is especially captivating. I was disappointed after reading the articles about how the director took too many liberties in creating the movie, because I think that the events are dramatic and captivating enough without the extra additions. It’s heartbreaking to watch the movie and think that stuff like that really happened, which is easy to talk about, but different if you actually see it. I hope that the African American characters in this movie will be shown in the rest of it as courageous and strong because through what we learned in class, the African Americans were the force behind the civil rights movement. I think that so far, even though the movie has been criticized, the movie has done the historical events justice. From what we have read and talked about in class, the movie really captures the essence of that time period. I am excited to see the rest!
ReplyDeleteOf all the things I took away from that movie, it is the way that the children were treated. The black child in the church, bent in prayer, was struck by the Klansman. You would think that a groups that is sworn to protect "good Protestant values" would spare a young boy in prayer. Hatred can not be justified with morality the way the Klan tried to. Not only that, but the way that the children of Klansmen were integrated into the Klan society and into racism was shocking. A young child in Klan robes or spiting on protesting African Americans is a sad thing, and it is sad to think that hatred could be instilled in something as innocent as a child. Moreover, this was not that long ago. Those children would be adults today. They could very easily be sheriffs, or mayors, or
ReplyDeleteanything else really. Today, there is still a Klan, and that is scary. The fact that today Klansmen are inducting their children into the Klan is scarier.
So far this movie has been fairly interesting to me. I think one of the reactions I've had so far has been the realism with which the director is able to portray the film. Having learned all about the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle black Americans faced in society in the 1950s and forward, I find that I am much more aware of the brutality of the situation because of the film. Like some of my classmates said, the film holds so many details that are so close to real life, it's hard to tell the difference and that is the driving force for me. When scenes of people burning churches, beating black citizens or refusing to help the FBI are shown, I am struck by the realness of it all that I would not have gotten from reading about it in a textbook. With the documentary we watched in class, we learn facts about the Freedom Summer and the struggles of registering black voters. But with the film, Mississippi Burning, characters that we grow attached to are suddenly hurt or insulted and it feels much more real. I can actually visualize the struggle these men and women had to go up against while being in the deep South, trying to register voters. It is a whole new level of understanding the Civil Rights Movement and the core of white supremacy and the South's hatred of black citizens.
ReplyDeleteSo far I have really enjoyed this movie. One of the things I am most curious about is how the feel of the town (the mood/tone set) in the movie may be different than the feel of the town in reality during the period. For example, in the opening scene where the FBI agents got out of their car, there were old men giving them nasty looks across the parking lot for no reason. Was this what the town was actually like, or was it more of a technique to get the audience to feel a certain way?
ReplyDeleteI also think that the movie has done a good job emphasizing the KKK's presence in the South. In the movie, there are many scenes shown with the KKK inflicting harm on black people, and it helps to try and replicate the unsafe atmosphere for the blacks in the movie that there was during the time.
Also , although we have only seen a brief glance at his character, I loved the representation of the KKK leader, Clayton. The way he described his reasoning for racism against all types except whites was an insightful glimpse into how racist members of society could have justified their beliefs almost politically. I am curious as well about the role of the deputy's wife and what she will play--because she has already let important information slip to one of the agents, and also seems to be accepted by and accept black people throughout the movie.
I've definitely enjoyed the first part of the movie. I think it does a good job of invoking different kinds of emotions in its audience. For example, something that really stuck with me was the multiple KKK attacks on individual blacks and the church-goers. It seems insane that things like that were common, especially since the movie really didn't embellish anything in this area. Another thing I found powerful was when many reporters began asking a businessman why he didn't like different groups of people and he basically replied by saying Mississippi wanted to protect American customs and democracy, and that these people threatened those ideals.
ReplyDeleteA problem I have with the movie, though is its inconsistency. It has both factual details and fictional enhancements, which can portray a misconstrued idea of the event. I feel like there wasn't much of a need to fictionalize any part of the movie. I understand making the sequence of events into a movie instead of a documentary, but I don't think what happened needed to be dramatized. I feel like it would have had a more powerful effect on the public if the director could have said this is literally what happened instead of oh we made some stuff up.
I found it interesting that the movie portrayed the racial discrimination right from the first scene through the separate water fountains for the whites and the colored people. I think that the difference between a documentary and a movie is that documentaries deliver facts and movies catch attention of the audience by building up tension (mainly to attract more people and make money). And “Mississippi Burning” certainly succeeded in “hooking” the audience through the depiction of the actual murder of the three civil rights’ workers. Although, there were some inaccuracies in the movie, I thought that the main purpose of the movie is to get people interested in the incident that happened in Mississippi in 1964, to make people care about and be aware of racial discrimination in the US. Moreover, the film portrayed the attitude of people towards the black community by segregation and even biased decisions of the policemen against the blacks. It was horrifying to see how the KKK used violence against blacks for no particular reason, just because he talked to a white male, and it was also scary that they burned all the churches so that the blacks couldn’t physically vote, even though they had the right to do so. Therefore, in my opinion, watching the movie was a better way of delivering the message than watching the documentary, as the dramatic and graphic scenes helped me understand the amount of hatred towards blacks at the time and the suffering the blacks had to go through. The movie stimulates people’s emotions, which is one of the most effective ways of spreading the information and creating awareness.
ReplyDeleteI think that this movie does a good job of keeping the viewer engaged. I was shocked to see the level of KKK violence portrayed in the movie so far, as I am sure most of the class was as well. However violent it may be, however, I think that it is an important part of Southern culture during the time of the Civil Rights movement that needed to be explicitly portrayed in Mississippi Burning. Two things about the portrayal of the KKK in this movie were shocking to me: the scene where the Klan members attack the church-goers and one lingering member beats the little boy for seemingly no other reason, besides that he is black. Also, it was eye-opening for me to realize just how involved the sheriff and the local law enforcers in the south were with the Klan. For example, two law enforcers are seen releasing a black man, after what we assume has been a questioning. Not thirty seconds after the man leaves the sheriff's office members of the KKK chase after him and force him into a car, where they take him and beat him severely. I knew that law enforcement in the south was involved in the Ku Klux Klan, but what I didn't realize until seeing this movie is that sheriffs and deputies would actually plan KKK attacks and stage them, using their "cover" to aid the Klan's efforts. I thought that this was one of the things the director did a really good job of making the audience realize, and it was very effective in adding to the overall cause of the two FBI agents.
ReplyDeleteMississippi Burning has captured my attention so far. The movie does an amazing job portraying the racial discrimination that pervaded the South throughout the Civil Rights Movement. The racial tension between African-Americans and Whites is exemplified in the scene where Agent Ward sits down in the colored section and tries to talk to the teen African boy. All the white folk sitting in the café stop talking and watch Agent Ward. Despite refusing to tell him anything, the African boy is taken and beaten by the KKK later that day. The most disturbing thing is that the sheriffs are aligned with the KKK and called Cheney the N word. People from the North are not exposed to such blatant racism, and I think that is why the movie is so shocking. I was appalled when the KKK man kicked the black boy straight in the face and continued to kick him and then run away. The whole scene of white KKK men ambushing the African-Americans after Church shows the ruthlessness of southerners at that time. Southern hate is exemplified with the short interviews of white southern male and females talking to the newscaster about the FBI’s involvement in Mississippi to find the three Civil Right workers. The movie was great at showing how profound racism was in the South, but fails to show how that relates to the broader context of things. So far, there has not been any mention of the previous protests and marches during the Civil Rights Movement. The movie seems to isolate the kidnapping as a singular incident and has not explained its effect on the outside world yet. It also puts too much emphasis on the FBI and their role in the case, while it should have focused on the individual African-Americans who brought issues to the forefront.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen the brutality of the KKK i a movie before. It is safe to say that one of the main objectives of Mississippi Burning is to implant the violence of the KKK into the viewers mind, causing a reality check of sorts. One particular scene that stood out to me was when the African Americans were congregating in their church. All that they were trying to do was have a peaceful meeting and sing songs in order to express their feelings. However, members of the KKK were sitting outside the church waiting to ambush the crowd when they came out of the church after the service. Many of the church members were beaten. Just as the beatings were winding down, a small child was kicked and whacked with a club by a klan member. The fact that someone would do this to a small child just because of the color of their skin made me cringe. However, it also made me think about how far our country has come since that dark period in our history. Today, someone would never get away with a crime like that. Mississippi Burning allowed me to see accurate images of what happened during the civil rights era and the brutality that the African American race needed to overcome as a whole.
ReplyDeleteSo far this movie has been very interesting to me. Even though at some points the historical parts are inaccurate it does a very good job of keeping the audience interested. It takes historical events that usually are seen in a documentary that tends to be very boring and it portrays it in a way that does come off interesting and makes me watch to continue watching. I think the opening scene starts off the movie well. It puts the idea across that the African- Americans lost alot. The whites discriminated the african americans to a point that is gross and we see this in the movie. At one point in the movie we see the KKK physically abuse a black boy. The boy had done nothing wrong and in no way deserved the harsh treatment of the KKK. While I watched the movie its hard to come to grips with the fact that things like this really did happen. Not only did things like this occur, but it was nothing out of the ordinary when it did happen. Another part that I seemed to remember most vividly was when the KKK attacked a group of African Americans after they had attended church. Before the KKK had arrived the movie showed the hope the black members had. All they wanted was for peace. Then, when they leave the church they receive the complete opposite of peace. Seeing that young children were also being hurt was painful to watch. From what I have seen so far it is crazy to think that it actually happened, but I am interested to continue watching.
ReplyDeleteWrote my post and forgot to put it on the actual blog...
ReplyDeleteMississippi Burning, like most movies, has its pros and cons. There were certain aspects of the atmosphere and the event that the film portrayed well, one particular one being the whites' very obvious hatred for the black community. One scene in particular that stood out to me was when Anderson was telling Ward about how his father killed the black farmer's mule. His exact words to Anderson were, "If you ain't better than a nigger, then who you better than?" Literally, he blatantly states that having black skin is the worst possible fate for someone to have. Worse than being an animal, worse than being a criminal, worse than any type of person at all. If you were black, you had nothing worth living for, because you were the worst possible thing. That was the mentality back then for many white people in Mississippi, and I thought that the movie did an excellent job of recreating that. However, the one thing that the movie did not do was really show how active the black community was in demanding their freedom. Out of all the violence from the white people directed towards the blacks, the one time we hear anything from them about wanting equality is in the informal church congregation. There, people calmly gathered in the ruins of a burned church while a small child read about how one day they would reach equality and how things would get better. In reality, black people in Mississippi were incredibly active in the summer of 1964. There were more marches and more stands for equality, and they were much more zealous, though not violent. The movie portrayed the movement for equality as almost entirely passive, which was not the case.
I find Mississippi Burning a fascinating movie. Although it is an embellished Hollywood movie, I think it shows a lot of truth in the brutality and struggles that African-Americans had to go through in the South. One of the first things that really shocked me was when the sheriff called the disappearance of the civil rights workers a publicity stunt by Martin Luther King Jr. It was difficult to understand that some people could think this way when three people had possibly been murdered. One embellished scene that I found to be too much like a Hollywood movie was when the police were about to pull over the civil rights workers. The filmmakers made it more like a police chase than a cop just pulling them over. Another scene that was sad but true was in the salon when the women said that the FBI wouldn't be there if the white kids weren't missing. It's awful to think that now, but at the time, many African-American people had gone missing or been murdered before without the FBI coming to investigate every one. The reason for the FBI going to Mississippi was triggered by the news of the white men on the media.
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