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Tuesday, January 24, 1989/University Daily Kansan
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Steve Traynor/KANSAf
Hanging around
Mary Ingram, 11, left, and Autumn McDaniel, 11, both of Lawrence, use their free time to play on the goal posts at the Lawrence High School practice field.
Movie gets subtle reaction
bv Laurie Whitten
Kansan staff writer
There have been no visible signs of controversy in Lawrence about the movie "Mississippi Burning," a part fact, part fiction portrayal of racism in the South during the civil rights movement.
There have been no signs or editorials. No picketing on Jayhawk Boulevard. Not even a peaceful protest in front of the theater as hapening "The Last Temptation of Christ" was shown in November in Lawrence.
Like the racial tension that has been a part of U.S. history, the controversy lies buried beneath the surface.
Nationalide, reaction to the movie has been subdued, characterized by newspaper editorsials, magazine articles and talk show appearances by the movie's actors, and not by riots and protests.
Alicia Cardona, Wichita senior, said she refused to see the movie because it retells one of the greatest black struggles for freedom from a
The $15 million drama, directed by Alan Parker and starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, centers on the 1964 FBI search for three murdered civil rights workers — two whites and one black — who disappeared in the heart of Ku Klux Klan-infested Neshoba County, Miss.
"I don't want to patronize this movie because it takes a crucial part of our history and tells it from the point of view of two white FBI agents," Cardona said. "That's like slipping in the face."
white perspective.
She said she didn't have any friends who were interested in seeing the movie.
"Not only is it an unfair portrayal, it would be very painful to watch," she said.
Sam Adams, professor of journalism, said the movie proved that Hollywood still was racist. He said that no story from the South had been told from the blacks' point of view, even that of Martin Luther King Jr.
Adams' strongest criticism is that the movie makes heroes of the characters portrayed by Hackman and Dafoe. The only salvation for blacks in the South at that time was the Supreme Court, not the FBI, he said.
"The movie ignores the fact that Southern blacks viewed the FBI as the enemy," Adams said. ("Former FBI director J. Edgar) Hoover didn't like blacks, so there were no black FBI members, only informers.
"You couldn't tell who was FBI and who was Klan, so there was a desire to keep your mouth shut."
Adams said that the movie's often horrifying images of fire and violence were accurate. In one scene, a young black is quizzed in a luncheonette by an FBI agent; that night he is tortured by the Klan.
Another scene shows a black church being burned to the ground and a young worshipper been kicked in the face.
Raised in Waycross, Ga., Adams said he had seen buildings being burned and people getting kicked by whites for no apparent reason.
“It’s more what I’ve seen than what I’ve suffered. I’ve been personally lucky because I’m alive,” he said.
Steve Lencioni, Deerfield, Ill., junior, said he and his friends rated the movie as "excellent" but never "very good." He has been told from a white perspective
"We left the theater thinking, 'Wow, what a powerful film,' "'Lencioni said.
"I think the movie serves a purpose, and that is to show what really happened 25 years ago. Whites may remember things like separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, but they don't want to think about."
Dave Bobanam, Lawrence senior, said he thought the movie would force U.S. citizens to remember the cruelties of racism in the 1960s and alert them to the problems of racism today.
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