This film's raison d'etre is to display the denigration of Black people for entertainment. That's it, so stop making excuses.
The first 100 minutes or so are just an endless series of scenes where Blacks are humiliated. During many sequences it becomes impossible to think of the cast as anything other than people being manipulated by the filmmakers into degrading themselves.
The stunning aspect is that while an effort is made to expose the slave trade participants as beastly and ignorant through their actions there is no effort made at all to refute their stance or present any Black characters in a positive way. They are either savages, meek, accomplices or given no voice at all.
During much of it the incredibly insulting things the slave trade participants say about Blacks isn't even challenged. Now that could be taken as a style of 'indictment with their own words' but the filmmakers present it all in a way that visually seems to support what is said. Basically they cut from a white character saying Blacks are savages and then they show a scene of Blacks acting like savages!
Change a few lines of dialog and this grotesquerie would be perfect fodder for White supremacists. Even the last few minutes where a speechless Black guy in "modern" America reads from The Confessions of Nat Turner perpetuates negative violent/sexual stereotypes.
There is however one great scene... a gaggle of white wives discussing the reasons given to them by their husbands explaining why the female slaves keep having babies with paler skin or blond hair.
If you're a fan of exploitation of the truly lowest order this thing is a treasure trove, I would actually recommend it based on that criteria, it's genuinely outrageous, inept and shameless. Just don't fool yourself regarding what it's really doing or rationalize it.
The first 100 minutes or so are just an endless series of scenes where Blacks are humiliated. During many sequences it becomes impossible to think of the cast as anything other than people being manipulated by the filmmakers into degrading themselves.
The stunning aspect is that while an effort is made to expose the slave trade participants as beastly and ignorant through their actions there is no effort made at all to refute their stance or present any Black characters in a positive way. They are either savages, meek, accomplices or given no voice at all.
During much of it the incredibly insulting things the slave trade participants say about Blacks isn't even challenged. Now that could be taken as a style of 'indictment with their own words' but the filmmakers present it all in a way that visually seems to support what is said. Basically they cut from a white character saying Blacks are savages and then they show a scene of Blacks acting like savages!
Change a few lines of dialog and this grotesquerie would be perfect fodder for White supremacists. Even the last few minutes where a speechless Black guy in "modern" America reads from The Confessions of Nat Turner perpetuates negative violent/sexual stereotypes.
There is however one great scene... a gaggle of white wives discussing the reasons given to them by their husbands explaining why the female slaves keep having babies with paler skin or blond hair.
If you're a fan of exploitation of the truly lowest order this thing is a treasure trove, I would actually recommend it based on that criteria, it's genuinely outrageous, inept and shameless. Just don't fool yourself regarding what it's really doing or rationalize it.