What did you learn from The Devil Finds Work? What surprised you the most?
Everyone reacts to a film from their own point of view and from their individual experiences. The power of the cinema is to evoke emotional responses. I appreciated how James Baldwin shared his love, disappointments, anger and contradictory feelings about the movies he reviewed in this essay. I learned how valuable it is to be open to perspectives other than my own.
I think what surprised me the most was Baldwin’s assertion that White’s primary feeling about Black people is fear (which I knew before) and that the primary feeling of Blacks toward White people was rage which I never really thought about before, but makes total sense.
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I really enjoyed reading Baldwin’s viewpoint on many films I’ve watched. The one thing that really struck me was on page 5 when he started talking about - Billy (Orella) Miller - a young white school teacher. Baldwin was between the ages of 10 and 11. She took him to movies and plays and gave him books to read. They talked about books and the world. I wondered what did she see in Baldwin that inspired her to mentor him. We would have missed out on a great writer had she not.
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I recently watched In the Heat of the Night (a week ago) and I resonated with much of Baldwin’s comments, and it made me remember having seen a talk with a woman who wrote a book about when the first slaves came to America in 1630 and she talked about having no hope that Blacks would ever achieve equality. I didn’t see negativity like that coming from Baldwin, but on the other hand he lived in Paris for nine years to be free from the racism in America. I felt pretty naive reading his book but then I didn’t really experience a black person until I was in college and the man I met wasn’t born in America, he was born in Africa. I think I learned a lot of things about myself, how little I know about a lot of things, from reading Baldwin’s book, and also the filters that have altered the reality that I experience.
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I was also struck by Baldwin’s relationship with Billy Miller. How did this relationship actually come about? Why did his mother not think that was unusual? Did she not care that another adult- and a white person - was taking her son out to movies?? That could not happen in today’s world. And I would have liked her prespective- why did she choose Baldwin? How did that actually work when they bought tickets?? I never had a non relatiive adult take me anywhere as a child? I was curious about that from the beginning.
I thought Baldwin’s relationship with Bill Miller was interesting and surprising. Baldwin noted that she was “treated like a nigger, especially by the cops,…” and then later on noted she stood up to the cops when Bill took him to a picnic where he was to get ice cream (p. 22). Bill sounded like a very remarkable woman, with her values firmly in place to treat all people equally. That was a difficult thing for a man to do, never mind a woman.
As with so much of what Baldwin writes, I am constantly amazed at my own blind spots. He points out so many assumptions in so many films that demonstrate white supremacist thinking that would not have occurred to me had he not pointed them out. It’s embarrassing to see how, despite my best efforts, I am still locked into white ways of thinking. Of course, it’s blatant in Birth of a Nation, but to see the racism that permeates films such as West Side Story and The Defiant Ones is a far more subtle exercise and requires the guidance of an intellect like Baldwin’s.
Not to copy the sentiments of the others on this thread, but I must echo my surprise about the relationship that Baldwin had with Bill Miller. I’m glad that it was such a positive relationship, but it must have been difficult, at times, with the culture during that time period. I was also surprised by the general thoughts that discussing the movies caused him to have. The memories that the various films evoked in him made me envious; I wish I remembered my own childhood so vividly!
Your point about blind spots, assumptions and issues pointed out by Baldwin is well framed. I lost count of how often I found myself thinking “I hadn’t considered that.” I’m going to pass on watching “Birth of a Nation” after reading responses about the extreme racism but will rewatch “West Side Story” with a more critical eye to see how I missed so much in that movie.
It is fascinating to ponder how “of their times” many of these films were. I remember In the Heat of the Night and To Kill A Mockingbird, for instance, as films considered bold and foward-looking (to white people, anyway), yet both are now cringe-worthy
I went back and looked up the movie summary of “In the Heat of the Night” after reading your post because I was curious whether today’s summary mentioned the racism in the movie. Besides mentioning the racism, the summary also mentioned the taunts, attacks and off-color remarks that Poitier’s character was subjected to. That made me wonder how Poitier managed to deal with the dialogue attacking his character and whether he ever felt that some of his co-stars meant the words from the script on a personal level.
I thought that i knew a lot, or understood a lot about , the tension that race creates. between black and white. I realized that I’m still ,earning and have. lot more to learn.
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I was also surprised to learn of Bill. The most surprising aspect to me is that she introduced him to “sophisticated” movies and books when he was so young. He must have been quite impressive even then.