Ethics Review: Till (2022)
Welcome to the Ethics Review.
The focus is on the cultural messages sent by the movie or show, not the overall quality.
Till (2022)
Till is a succinctly apt title for a movie that honors both Emmett and his mother Mamie. The extremely violent, hate-fueled, racist murder of 14-year old Emmett Till takes place in an early scene, and although he remains a rich presence, the main focus is on Mamie.
There is no downside to Till. In contrast, when I reviewed Marshall, eponymous with Thurgood Marshall, there was a serious flaw: not only the inclusion, but the cinematic pedestaling of a rape myth: that women who don’t scream aren’t really raped.
https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2021/10/ethical-review-sketches-of-five-netflix.html
The importance of challenging this myth came up recently in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit against Donald Trump. When cross-examined, Carroll said, “I'm telling you he raped me, whether I screamed or not.”
Till includes no oppressive stereotypes, not that I saw. It furthermore empowers both Black women and men, with sensitive supporting roles for the males who help Mamie face the trauma of losing her son. Many characters, male and female, bolster Mamie, while facing their own insecurities and wounds. Due to astute script-writing, these self-confrontations implicitly examine how White dominance coerces the human soul.
Despite the revelatory and validating voices around her, Mamie leads the way . In fact, her poignant and challenging remarks are often the reason people dare to face their own demons and end up supporting her. Unprompted, Mamie makes the excruciating choice to display her son’s body in an open casket, putting his hideous wounds on display for the public. Justice is her brave goal, justice that takes on a vicious, gaslighting White Southern establishment, and the inveterate institution of racism itself.
As befits a tribute to a crucial historical event, the acting is superb. Danielle Deadwyler, who plays Mamie, absorbed me with her grief, her anger, her resolve, and every other nuance of emotion and passion one might expect from a mother whose son is murdered in vast hate, and who finds herself thrust into the national spotlight.
If the acting had been bad, it would've been, in my mind, an ethical failure, a kind of mockery, though unintentional. But real care was taken to make this movie worthy of its topic.
The disfigurement and death of Emmett exemplifies the presence of a great evil in our society: a virulent racism that slouches onward still, far after the Civil War to end slavery. This racism festered in segregated 1955, when the movie is set, and still does to this day.
And yet Till also shines a light of hope on our
future as a nation. If Mamie can do what
she did, and if we Americans can welcome into our hearts and minds a movie about
her and Emmett, a movie this evocative, this compelling, this ethically
beautiful, maybe we can overcome someday. I will dare to say it: some progress, but not nearly enough, not near the mountaintop yet, has been made.
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