Selma: Hollywood vs. Reality
ANGLO AMERICA, 16 Feb 2015
Daniel Horgan – TRANSCEND Media Service
Selma. An intriguing 2015 film about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his push to secure voting rights for African Americans who had been disenfranchised by a post-slavery, Jim Crow segregated society. Powerful. Yes! Moving. Yes! Convincing. Yes! Truthful. Not entirely.
As Selma Wikipedia reads about the film:
“In 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepts his Nobel Peace Prize. Four African-American girls are shown walking in a church when an explosion kills them. In Selma, Alabama, Annie Lee Cooper attempts to register to vote but is prevented from doing so by the white registrar. Dr. King meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson and asks for federal legislation to allow black citizens to register to vote unencumbered. Johnson says he has more important projects.”
An obvious observation of the above is that King and Johnson were presented in Selma as adversaries or something very close. At the very least Johnson is presented as a politician who asks King “to wait for voting rights” as Johnson’s War on Poverty Legislation will help the black community nationwide. Both men are fiery and determined; Johnson more gruff than King, in this scene. Hollywood also more gruff and determined, to lie, to its movie going American public. Why? It is a bit puzzling.
Joseph Anthony Califano Jr. (born May 15, 1931) is one of two living former Secretaries of Health, Education and Welfare. He has been Adjunct Professor of Public Health (Health Policy and Management) at Columbia University Medical School (Department of Psychiatry) and School of Public Health and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the founder and former chairman of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
He served under Lyndon Johnson as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. He recently appeared on the Charlie Rose Show and talked about many facets of Lyndon Johnson, including the shrewd politician he was. He discussed his new book, The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years. He also testified as a witness to the dishonesty of the movie Selma in regards to the actions of President Johnson as well as interactions Lyndon Johnson had with Dr. King.
Califano said the following about the historic meeting depicted in Selma between Dr. King and LBJ:
Lyndon Johnson always called MLK ‘Doctor,’ implying respect. More specifically he said there were three items of importance in that historic meeting depicted in Selma. First, Lyndon Johnson informed Dr. King that he wished to appoint the country’s first African American Cabinet Member. Second, he said that Housing and Health Care legislation in his related War on Poverty Legislation would help millions of African American citizens, if he could have it his way. Third, and most importantly, he agreed with King that we needed Voting Rights for African American citizens. King pointed out that the Deep South did not vote for Johnson and millions of African Americans were off voting rolls. Further, LBJ discussed with King a strategy. It was to find in the Deep South the hardest place he could to launch such a campaign. According to Califano, LBJ stressed to do it, stay, and up the pressure until all Americans couldn’t forget where King was working. King agreed. The place he chose was Selma. They were allies in the fight against racial oppression, not adversaries.
In addition Califano states that this conversation had been recorded and is on public record. It can be listened to if any citizen chooses to access the LBJ files at the Library of Congress. Califano goes on to give his opinion about the discrepancies between reality and the Hollywood version. While the mass media touched on the fact that this could be considered a discredit to LBJ, Califano says that it was not as much a discredit to President Johnson and his legacy as it was to Martin Luther King’s. He rightly states that King was a powerful person, and an adept politician in his own right, and that he commanded the respect of the president and many others. Califano feels that Selma somehow discredits King portraying otherwise.
No one can deny the fact that Selma is a powerful and moving film. No one can deny that the actors are tremendous in their roles to portray such a moving and important account on Martin Luther King and voting rights for African American citizens. It is odd though that the writers, producers, and/or director chose to make King and LBJ adversaries when it was not the case.
Something deeper to think about would be who is to blame. Is it Hollywood or the movie going public? After all, Hollywood does package films into what they think the public want. Right or wrong, this is true. It’s worth questioning ourselves and the media, its normal way of doing things.
Do we need a fight or a conflict at every stage of our entertainment? Maybe. Look no further than the news cycle and you’ll find that this is true. Bad news and conflicts presented in the vast majority of our local, national, and international news stories. Ask someone, even journalists, if they know about the principles of “Peace Journalism”, as promoted on TRANSCEND, and few will have a vague idea of what concretely this entails. (https://www.transcend.org/tms/about-peace-journalism/)
Look at the constant news cycle of our domestic affairs and current issues as portrayed regarding places like Ferguson. More conflict. Ferguson’s police chief said that the constant need for the media to have information 24 hours a day made it more difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. Are we to discredit his statement altogether, as the media have done, simply because there may have been and likely was an injustice done under his watch?
Think bigger. Look at our foreign policy. Conflict and failed wars in many parts of the globe, with Iraq or Libya being perhaps a most poignant example. Entire swaths of two continents further destabilized. Conflict pervades many levels of our society, especially regarding the media and entertainment industries. Good vs. Bad. Simple. Just the way people want it, or need it? Or is it just easier to sell?
As Johan Galtung has taught: There exists in every society many issues and trends that can be part of one society’s “deep culture”. Culture is what we are taught, what we learn, and what we practice. Deep Culture represents these same things but they are more deeply embedded in our national conscience and subconscious. Are violence and conflict so much a part of American culture and deep culture that we yearn for it? Even between two great and well respected American Civil Rights Leaders when it didn’t exist? One would hope not, but to these questions, there are no simple answers. After all we have to be looking for something to find it. This includes the lack of conflict. This includes peace.
Selma: Two dreams can change the world. Look for peace, and we might find it.
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Daniel Horgan is an occasional contributor to TRANSCEND Media Service. He is a former student of Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fisher at the European Center for Peace Studies in Austria.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 16 Feb 2015.
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