Storm Over ‘Hurricane’ Undermines Black Culture

If you wish to keep a people oppressed, you take away their cosmology.

The trumped up controversy surrounding Denzel Washington’s latest movie, “The Hurricane,” by a few self-serving lawyers and East Coast journalists (“A Reporter Responds to ‘Hurricane’ Fight,” by Selwyn Raab, Feb. 28) is nothing less than a picayune sniping at African American emancipation and development.

Black Americans need their cultural heroes and mythic struggles as much as every other people--perhaps more. Whereas white Americans have benefited from 200 years of their own manufactured folklore and fabled country folk, black Americans were deprived of theirs the moment they were abducted from foreign shores. For the same span of 200 years, the black American has been force-fed the white man’s heroes, religions, superstitions and cultural icons.

Now for the first time they are politically and culturally powerful enough to begin choosing, creating and “lionizing” their own. From Martin Luther King to Tupac Shakur, from Malcolm X to Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the black struggle is not just for liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but equal justice for all.

But what is even more shameful is the appalling silence from the Hollywood creative community. Have we become so self-absorbed that we cannot see the plight of “The Hurricane’s” creators as a reductionist broad swipe against the entire creative process? Where is the outrage from the Writers Guild and other artists’ unions when the self-serving diatribes of a few malcontents sabotage a film’s entire box office run and Academy Award consideration?

Does the creative community really want the New York Times defining, dictating and determining what is poetic license? Have we become so blunt a society that even our art forms must now bear warning labels for the critically impaired?

MARTIN CHASE WALKER

Los Angeles

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In his Feb. 28 Counterpunch (“The Academy Voters Can’t Deal With Reality of ‘Three Kings’ ”), Saul Halpert states: “Tell me it wasn’t political when, in choosing Oscar nominees, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences imposed a total blackout on ‘Three Kings.’ ”

Mr. Halpert, it was not political. In my more than 30 years as a voting member of the motion picture academy, I have never heard of any coordinated effort to “blackout” a film.

To impute an extremely diverse cross-section of American citizenry (academy members) with a political motive is very naive. We are a film-judging audience with numerous differences of opinion in many areas. The only thing we all have in common is the job of voting for the Oscar nominations.

I sympathize with your position with regard to the Iraqi militants. I agree that our untimely pullout was a grave error. This does not change the fact that “Three Kings,” as a movie, just doesn’t make the grade. It is noisy and violent and quite erratic. In terms of great filmmaking (which is what the academy votes on), frankly, it’s just not up there. That is why it was not selected as a nominee.

DAVID SAXON

Sherman Oaks

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Regarding the Counterpunch by Burt Prelutsky (“You’ve Just Gotta Go See . . . ,” Feb. 21), let me answer his question.

I own Preston Sturges’ 1941 classic, “Sullivan’s Travels,” and I have seen Woody Allen’s 1977 best picture winner, “Annie Hall.” That said, I would rather watch Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” than the aforementioned double-bill any time.

I guess this proves Prelutsky’s point that there is no way to predict how other people will respond to a film. My question to Prelutsky, then, is: If your point was that you wish people would refrain from recommending films to you, then why don’t you practice what you preach?

SHENANDOAH LYND

Rancho Santa Margarita