Roots

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Has anyone else been watching the History Channel remake?  It's been mind-blowingly good so far considering what it had to live up to and that...well...it is airing on the History Channel.  I'd argue it is significantly better than the original mini-series (and certainly more historically accurate).

[angus]

I've watched the first three episodes.  They have been interesting so far.  Of course I like the original better, but that's a matter of opinion.  I first watched it as a lad of 10, with my parents, and I think it might have been my first exposure to the knowledge of the brutality of slavery in British North America.  Years later, it aired again and I watched it with interest.  I am glad there was a new series because it reminds us of our nation's history.  In some sense, the new episodes do follow the descriptions of the characters in the book a little better than the old episodes, and depict their circumstances more or less as described in the book.  It has been a very long time since I read Roots but after watching the first couple of installments of the new series I looked up some things and I would agree that it doesn't change as many names.  There's a fourth episode on tonight and I'll try to watch if my schedule permits.

Historical accuracy?  Alex Haley is an admitted plagiarist and wrote a long tale based on little more than oral tradition.  It is not clear to me how we might be able to determine how historically accurate either of them are.  Certainly it is a gripping tale, and the book is worth a read, but it was a stretch to market it as anything other than historical fiction, like a James Michener novel.  To quote Henry Louis Gates, "Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship."

One thing is for sure:  the commercials are too frequent and too long.  It's like watching a Super Bowl, except that the Super Bowl at least has reasonably amusing commercials.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I've watched the first three episodes.  They have been interesting so far.  Of course I like the original better, but that's a matter of opinion.  I first watched it as a lad of 10, with my parents, and I think it might have been my first exposure to the knowledge of the brutality of slavery in British North America.  Years later, it aired again and I watched it with interest.  I am glad there was a new series because it reminds us of our nation's history.  In some sense, the new episodes do follow the descriptions of the characters in the book a little better than the old episodes, and depict their circumstances more or less as described in the book.  It has been a very long time since I read Roots but after watching the first couple of installments of the new series I looked up some things and I would agree that it doesn't change as many names.  There's a fourth episode on tonight and I'll try to watch if my schedule permits.

Historical accuracy?  Alex Haley is an admitted plagiarist and wrote a long tale based on little more than oral tradition.  It is not clear to me how we might be able to determine how historically accurate either of them are.  Certainly it is a gripping tale, and the book is worth a read, but it was a stretch to market it as anything other than historical fiction, like a James Michener novel.  To quote Henry Louis Gates, "Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship."

One thing is for sure:  the commercials are too frequent and too long.  It's like watching a Super Bowl, except that the Super Bowl at least has reasonably amusing commercials.

I meant more accurate in the sense that it is less sanitized for white audiences than the original mini-series.

[angus]

I think what you're observing owes itself to the fact that television is simply more intrinsically violent than it was in 1977.  Actually, I sensed even more intrusion of modern sensibilities, rather than greater accuracy, in the new episodes than in the old ones.  

I did like the dueling scene.  I can't remember whether he original series featured a duel, but the duel in the new series is unlike anything I'd ever seen.  Usually in movies a duel involves two men who stand back-to-back, and on a signal each takes 50 paces, then turns around and fires on the other.  Immediately, one or both men fall down dead.  This one looked more realistic.  Maybe they just did it differently in the South than in the West, but it started with a card draw, not unlike the coin flip in the modern-day Super Bowl contests.  Then it became immediately clear that one duelist was so nervous that he couldn't even take aim.  Eventually, they both get off two shots, one of which totally disfigures the other one's face and the other one probably lost much of the ability of his right hand.  Also, neither one is killed, and it just ends with one yielding to the other.  Gritty and realistic, much more so that the duels we usually see in movies.  (Also, the guys who played Tom Lea and his bastard son Chicken George performed superbly.  I don't think I've ever seen either of those actors in anything else).

I was also struck by the differences in perceptions of gender now compared to 40 years ago.  Alex Haley was apparently not particularly interested in developing any of the female characters very much, and I think it would nr especially obvious if you read the book for the first time now, with modern sensibilities.  You could call his writing sexist, if you want to be extreme, but really he was just a product of his times.  The producers of the current series certainly took liberties in developing the female characters.  I thought it added value.  Clever female slaves probably often had to figure out how to save the hides of their men, on the fly, on a regular basis, and it was fascinating to see potential re-enactments of those instances of salvation.  Belle, Kizzy, Matilda, and even Mrs. Wallace were developed much more fully than in the original.  

I suppose I will always prefer the original.  I suppose I'd feel that way about Star Trek if I were a decade older than I am.  As it is, I prefer the Next Generation.

Still, I agree that it's a good watch.  I'm looking forward to the fourth installment.  By the way, if you miss it at 9pm you can watch a second airing starting at 11:05.

[angus]

Just finished it.  Last night I watched the first hour or so then got too tired to pay attention so I finished watching it on line today.

I think I have to disagree that the first was somehow more sanitized.  It's not the word I'd use anyway.  I agree that the narrative was tweaked for the audience of the times, just as the modern one was tweaked for this audience.  One was prepared for a 1977 audience and one for a 2016 audience.  Neither seems particularly historically accurate.  For example, in the third episode of the new series I noted at least three instances in which expressions were used which would not come into the lexicon for at least another fifty years.  Just to be sure, I checked the etymologies on such scholarly, edited websites as mirriam-webster.com.  But they're the sort of references 21st-century audiences expect to hear, so the directors allow it, just like in 1977 they thought that they'd lose white audiences if they stuck to just mandinka warriors for too long, which is why Ed Asner (aka "Lou Grant") shows up as an English ship captain a mere eight minutes into the film.  The historical inaccuracies do not take away from the drama, however, any more than the fact that Alex Haley made most of the story up.  It's a good story.

I will grant that the production values in the modern version are better.  Lighting, sets, engineering are all more sophisticated now, as is our generations desensitization to graphic violence which allows for more gritty action.  That does not automatically mean a better depiction.  There are plenty of films from the 1930s and 40s that are excellent and that I've watched many times over, despite the fact that women and men are never shown in bed together and the grainy, tinted, 35-millimeter film is spotted and flawed.

Too damned many commercials, though.  Even on the on-line version you have to sit through about two and one-half minutes of advertisements for every ten minutes of drama.

Kinda like the way a 60-minute SuperBowl lasts about four hours, right?