Movie review: Rabbit-Proof Fence -- and commentary on racial fear
The 1930s, the time of Hitler's rise, was a time when racial fears were common."Rabbit-Proof Fence" is an amazing true story. Follows the 1,500-mile trek of 3 little girls who escape on foot, without food or water, from an abusive orphanage. It's set in the 1930s in Australia, where England ruled back then. Astonishingly, the girls succeed not only in evading for months the urgent and persistent efforts of their captors to find them and bring them back but also in surviving this horrendously tough crossing of the desert to find their homes again. They showed pictures of old women who were actually two of these girls.
Here's another astonishing part. The English government was very upset that white English workers who'd gone to jobs in Australia were intermarrying with Aboriginal people. It decided that it must remedy this situation at all costs. It decided to set up a magistrate as sole judge and jury to locate half-caste children, steal them from their families, and put them in controlled settings where they would teach them "how to be white." The idea was that they would teach them to follow white culture and then to marry white men (they all seemed to be girls in the movie) and thus breed the "blackness" out of them after a couple of generations.
This pure racial purging occurred years before Hitler rose to power and began his reign of horror to create the perfect Aryan (white) race. Wonder if he got some ideas from the English? But as my daughter said when I told her about it, I guess because they weren't killing the children, it didn't seem so bad to the world. The Aboriginal people refer to the children of that time as The Stolen Generation.
Almost as amazing--I was in luck because my DVD player is screwy and I can't control what it does very well--I accidentally found myself first watching the documentary section of the DVD, "following the making of Rabbit-Proof Fence." The director made a film of how he went among the Australian people to find the right three girls to play these difficult roles. He couldn't find them in the big cities and had to go out into the regions where the Aboriginal people still live. A grueling process of finding the girls with the right qualities, the courage to undertake the touch job, and the stamina to see it through. Imagine--finding a 7-year-old to play a part like this. If you see this movie, do not fail to watch the documentary. In fact, I recommend watching it first. It made the whole movie seem even more poignant and intense.
And it would be nice to think our world is finished with racial discrimination and hatred and murders, but since we all know that's not yet the case, let us hope we will still be alive when the end is in sight.
Labels: movie reviews, Rabbit-Proof Fence, race discrimination, racial fear
3 Comments:
The "lost generation," however ill-advised, was in no way comparable to Hitler's racial purging. Aborigines were not rounded up into death camps. When mixed-race children were born, it was assumed that, of the two races in their background, they would be better off if they were raised in white society. (As opposed to the United States, where even one-eighth black heritage meant you were black, and therefore segregated away from whites.) Whether or not raising them in white culture was in fact better depended of course on what the situation was like where the child was being raised. There were some wonderful orphanages, and some really horrific situations for children in traditional settings, especially for girls, who were betrothed as infants to tribal elders.
I find that movies have a tendency to make things both excessively dramatic and overly simplistic, as true complexity is tough to fit into a two-hour film. This is an extremely complex situation, with divergent opinions among both whites and Aboriginals (I've met Aboriginals who were raised in white society and were grateful, as it gave them more opportunities in life, even though some of them went back and learned some of the tribal culture as adults). Also, it was largely born out of misguided paternalism, rather than hatred.
This is a perfect example of why it is never a good idea to form an opinion about anything based on a single movie.
Thanks for the balance, Cynthia. Forcibly reprogramming people is undoubtedly not comparable to killing them. And you're certainly right about movies often taking a one-sided view. And then right after we got your comment, I'd been reading a book that detailed the forced internments going on in the US during the 30s of Japanese, Germans, and even Italians (though it claimed the Italians were less heavily supervised/guarded). Misguidedness has created a lot of misery through the generations, but it's certainly not the same as murder.
And I decided to moderate my title and opening line thanks to your balancing comment. Thanks, Cynthia!
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