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Best Picture

Monday, February 25, 2019 4:59 PM

The truth that a “Green Book” and facsimiles figuratively and physically are consulted by Black Americans currently is a sad reality. On the movie-portrayed eras depicted in Green Book and BlacKkKlansman, African Americans have been aroused to making comparison. 1Author Jan Miles suggests that Green Book is a white-washing (my words) of racism into an evil of the past – thus a lie and disservice to racial equality. Only a willfully racist or blind by choice white person would be inclined to conclude racism in America is dead. Miles articulated comparison of the disparate story-line themes of these two movies is an understandable but cumbersome bad fit. Green Book is essentially a story of the evolving friendship of two men over a period of time against the backdrop of racism. A powerful depiction of discovery through circumstance. BlacKkKlansman is a true life story of white racism confronted and beaten back via opportunity presenting itself. Nothing in either movie messages the "mission-accomplished” end of racism to any sane person. In-plain-sight racism and hate mongering fills our societal interactions, politics, and news. The two movies similarly involve race, racism, and learned prejudice. Within that context, they have similar overtones, yet their undertones of the human condition are decidedly different. Jumbling the two stories together as aspectual singularities – one telling it right, the other telling it wrong – is fundamentally inaccurate.

Which story is qualitatively better, more realistic, more authentically rendered is ground for comparing and concluding the stories' merit. And yes, visceral power to engage one personally is a determinant criterion. Was the Academy’s selection of Green Book over BlacKkKlansman as best picture founded in some unconscious bias to relieve white America’s moral indebtedness for past and present racism? One can speculate on all sorts of possibilities, if inclined. But both movies were worthy. Jan Miles argument "that In a based-on-a-true-story 'Green Book' world, cops no longer harass black motorists and dyed-in-the-wool racists acquiesce, with an insouciant shrug, to the changing of the times," is a non sequitur that is puzzling to me. With all that’s going on in plain sight, how could anyone think racism is dead and buried?

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1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/23/racism-isnt-dead-black-americans-still-need-green-book/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6653f1107421

— Carl