Comments on Bright Lights After Dark: Speaking of Critic Soul Windows.... Whither MANDIN...

This from the man who wrote Beyond the Valley of t...

2009-08-13T00:10:53.463-07:00

This from the man who wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, an atrocious film I myself felt soiled by. I couldn't think of pre-op trannies without horror for weeks afterward.

You should read what Roger Ebert had to say about ...

2009-08-12T23:03:31.556-07:00

You should read what Roger Ebert had to say about the film in his 1975 review

I quite agree with C.Jerry Kutner. Really great as...

2009-05-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

I quite agree with C.Jerry Kutner. Really great as Robin Wood's piece on "Mandingo" is, the late Andrew Britton's earlier, much longer one, is yet better, no doubt one of the best critical texts ever written. Since "Mandingo" certainly deserves such (and a couple of other) great criticism, it can only be a proof of criticism's futility against prejudice that Fleischer's film remains, more than 30 years after, almost unknown and sadly underappreciated, if not maligned or dismissed.
Miguel Marías

The best essay on MANDINGO, as even Robin Wood ack...

2009-05-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

The best essay on MANDINGO, as even Robin Wood acknowledges, is Andrew Britton's, which can be found in the anthology, BRITTON ON FILM.

It's long, and might be among the best pieces of film criticism ever written.

Yeah, I dont know, I haven't seen SALO. I'm much t...

2009-05-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I dont know, I haven't seen SALO. I'm much too sensitive. I'm STILL a little traumatized by MANDINGO and now it's several days later.

BUT in this case it's a good trauma as I feel like I truly "get" the whole warping dehumanizing mess, and how the descendants of both sides are still way fucked up by it.

Neat. This movie is so notorious I've only needed ...

2009-05-10T16:00:00.000-07:00

Neat. This movie is so notorious I've only needed a good reason to finally break down and see it, and you've given it to me. When I was a teen a friend and I found the book on his parent's shelves and spent a funny juvenile half hour or so giggling over a hilariously overwrought sado masochistic whipping. The way you describe it reminds me of Styron's notorious The Confessions of Nat Turner, which blacks began by liking and then turned against with full fury. It also features this sexualizing of slavery and power positioning, and turns the whole institution into a macabre gothic, with something in it to offend just about every pc person: justified rape and murder, angry killer blacks, and one of the most disgusting and grotesque homophobic portraits I've come across in a main stream writer's work. The problem with this book was that it made slavery seem so weird and upside down when, as Toni Morrison pointed out recently, up until the nineteenth century it was the norm of human experience. Compare it, for instance, to Huck Finn's outlook and you see the difference. I hope this won't be the case with Mandingo (though a deeper part of me wants it to be an extravagant work of seventies camp overindulgence), because if it is...I will GO OFF! Seriously, though, I'm gonna try to cram that thing in in the next couple weeks. But you know, from your description it sounds less A Clockwork Orange and more Passolini's Salo. God, I hope it's not like that thing...