Selma
“Selma (2014”
Text By: Basil Swartzfager
Original Publication Date: January 26th, 2015
I appreciate that Selma at least makes an effort to use its story as an analogy to contemporary events, even if they aren't exactly the contemporary events I would prefer. In the wake of one of the lowest voter turnouts in U.S. history, the story of hundreds of people who are willing to be beaten -- possibly to death -- for their right to participate in civil government struck a chord with me. I voted this year, but it was the first time since 2008 that I had done so. I have abused this privilege that comes to me so easily. And, in certain moments, Selma succeeded in making me feel bad about my apathy.
But it didn't push far enough. The film ends, as one expects, with the triumph of the black people of the titular Alabama town. But it does nothing to foreshadow the extreme apathy and jaded nihilism people feel now about the government's abilities to look after their best interests. That didn't come about from nothing. The 1970s were a brutal time of disenchantment, especially for black communities who felt the swell of pride and success that Selma replicates only to see all the promises for restitution and equality disappear. Well-meaning white liberals turned their attention to other matters, abandoning the movement before it came close to finishing, and thus became little more than empty smiling faces. This voter apathy is not borne of laziness, but a historical disenchantment based in fact. I wish Selma had done more to address this.
What it does do, though, is draw parallels to current attempts by right-wing parties to reenact awful voter registration penalties, to make it as difficult as possible for people of color, and people living in poverty, to exercise their right to vote. As a call to action, I appreciate some of whatSelma attempts. The movie should have come out in October, when it might have mattered more. Like many tales of the South in the 1960s, its picture is fully delineated between two obvious sides. White people who care a lot, and white people who are super racist. Only LBJ is demonstrated to be both, and is the film's most obviously complicated character. Everyone else is a sneering villain or a noble white helper who exists to die, comforting white audiences that maybe if they had been alive back then they would have done the same thing.
Selma needs to be angrier. It needs to paint us, a primarily white audience, with our true colors. We are complacent. We aren't doing nearly enough to help people in need. Even if contemporary Republicans are transparently willing to make themselves look as awful as George Wallace looks in this film, we need to be reminded that we are much closer to being George Wallace than we are to being those people so moved by what they saw on television that they packed their bags and risked being murdered by bigots to help strangers they had never met. This movie needs people who care enough to say they don't like what they see, but don't care enough to do anything. At the start of the film, LBJ fits that bill. But he's also a president. It's hard for an audience to look at a figure like that and say, "Damn, that's me." But it is us. And Selma's greatest failing is letting us off the hook for that.
-Basil Swartzfager, 2015
