Lights! Camera! Racism!
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Many Chinese people love classical European literature. From the blood soaked warrior epic from ancient Greece the Iliad, to the pulse racing romantic novels of Jane Austen. The new French biopic "The Other Dumas" about the world famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas, whose most famous work is the "Three Musketeers" is likely to be of interest to many Chinese lovers of European literature. What will be of equal interest is that this film has caused a bitter racial controversy. In the film Dumas is white. In reality Dumas was black. Black intellectuals and cultural critics, especially in France, are very angry. To put it mildly.
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| Alfred Oshin |
At this point you're probably wondering why the outcry is limited to the Black intelligentsia? Why would this film want to change his color? How could any film be taken seriously with such an obvious mistake? Let me solve this racial mystery for you.
Shakespeare said the world is a stage and we are all actors in it, for black people in European history the part they play is as slaves and savages. The parts black people have in European history are considered so unimportant, so insignificant that many well-educated Westerners of any color cannot name a black European of historical note. Despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary.
Septimius Severus was a Roman emperor, Alessandro de Medici ruled Renaissance Florence and Abram Gannibal held the position of governor in one of the territories in the Czarist Russian Empire. These people were from different times and cultures. The one thing they had in common was that they were black.
Europe has a racist education system which promotes, both implicitly and explicitly white superiority, and with only a few universities which teach black European history it is no wonder why only the black intelligentsia are outraged by the French film about Alexandre Dumas. Simply put most Europeans don't know of the existence of black people in European history.
The European educational system is not just content with removing black people from its distant past. The same is done with relatively recent history. Europeans of all colors are mostly unaware that Black Europeans suffered with other white racial minorities in Hitler's concentration camps. Contrast this with China, it would be impossible to find a Chinese person who does not know of the brutality the Japanese inflicted upon the people of Nanjing and the wider civilian population in the 1930's. Europeans are also unaware that Black soldiers bravely fought in World War I & II and were decisive element in its victory. In Europe each country has an annual commemoration of civilians who suffered and the veterans who fought in these wars. There is a collective European wide silence about black people in those troubled times.
The reason why European culture removes black people from its history is to make white Europeans feel they are true Europeans. This racist view of the color of a true European is promoted nationally and internationally. What better form of media than the movies to deliver an international message.
So if you go and see "The Other Dumas" just remember the real Dumas was a black man.
Alfred Oshin is an English lecturer by profession from London, Britain. He has a BA in Ancient History from Kings College London.
