| While in West Germany, the President of the United States and Speaker of the House are killed when the parliament building suffers a collapse; the vice-president, elderly and in ill health while recovering from a stroke, declines his constitutional obligation to sit in the Oval Office. Immediately, the order of succession falls to the Senate President pro tempore Douglas Dilman, a politically moderate senator and African-American who suddenly finds himself President of the United States. Sworn in, a stunned Dilman arrives at the White House to assume the office—and from this day until the next presidential election, the nation’s new Chief Executive is challenged to hone his political skills until later when he has to decide if he will seek the nomination of his party to run for the office.
"THE MAN" (1972) starring James Earl Jones as Douglas Dilman with a screenplay by Rod Serling is largely based upon the 1964 (768-page) novel by Irving Wallace. The film (this is 36 years ago) is rated G. It’s actually a C...a pretty shaky C...but it's a C. “If it were a better movie, it would be offensive,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review, a critique describing how the film failed to present any real-world ideas about Washington politics, race relations and international diplomacy. Instead, Serling’s screenplay is abundant with intrigue and plot twists—transcending the vivid impression of that made-for pedigree commonly fixed upon movies made for television back in the day. Cutting then reworking Wallace’s narrative, Serling by his effort safely tailored an Eisenhower-era suit to fit the current fashion of that post-1960s "revolutionary" period following the clash between the Black Panthers and FBI in December 1969 and the May 1970 shootings at Kent State University a few years prior to the film’s world premiered.
Instead, Serling’s screenplay is abundant with intrigue and plot twists—the film transcending that vivid impression of its made-for-television pedigree fixed firmly upon any 90-minute dramatic program produced by ABC-TV for broadcast over the airwaves back in the day. Cutting then reworking Wallace’s narrative, Serling by his effort safely but clumsily tailored an Eisenhower-era suit to fit the current fashion of that post-1960's revolutionary period, following the real-world clash between the Black Panthers and FBI in December 1969 and the May 1970 shootings at Kent State University prior to the film’s 1972 world premiered.
Although the movie is triumphantly short, the story is stodgy with plot and silly with dialogue. The only hope is James Earl Jones as the first black U.S. president, an otherwise brilliant actor who commands the screen without chewing the scenery; however here he's too subdued in the role with minimal impact on the audience. But the real surprise is the film’s torpid handling of the obvious racial issue, where Serling’s tepid script appears uncharacteristically sophomoric in failing to account for many social ills, portrayed with the most unlikely reserve.
During his lifetime Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was America's revered author/playwright/scenarist, creator of The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-64) whose supernatural parables explored humanity's pride and prejudices, always Aesopian and often horrific, far and away from the dramatic convention that commonly marked the 1950's and 60's. He criticized loyalty oaths, the Vietnam War and social inequity by skillfully weaving pivotal social themes that could be quite blunt, as in an episode of Twilight Zone: "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" wherein America’s historic racism carried by deep hatred cause a dark cloud to form in the South before eventually spreading elsewhere. Serling, profoundly affected by the 1955 murder of Emmett Louis Till in Money, Mississippi, moralizes with a reliable streak of misanthropy that nearly always imbues his work.
Having written a number of screenplays with a political focus, including "Seven Days in May" (1964) about an attempted military coup against the President of the United States and "Planet of the Apes" (1968) a nightmare meditation on life oppressed by terror, oddly Serling adaptated "The Man" ignoring the most obvious facts about American life during the most turbulent decade of the 20th Century. Here, the opportunity to transform Irving Wallace's literary conceit into a framework for the emotional reality and psychological brutality of bigotry, moved along with great effort by the forces of evil, results in a political confection of sophomoric fancy.
So trivial it seems worhty of little regard, how could such a movie as this be of any temporal importance? Because the film doesn't appears nearly as insufficient, given the rowdiness of presidential politics over the racial visibility of Sen. Barack Obam, the Democratic presidential candidate. And considering the threat of New World terrorism and Vice President Dick Cheney's history of heart disease, those improbable coincidences that fueld the narrative for "The Man"—turning a black U.S. senator into the first African-American to occupy the Oval Office—doesn't seem nearly so implausibe today.
James Earl Jones, a generation later, would appear as the director of the CIA in "The Hunt for Red October" based on the Tom Clancy novel. Of course, every motion picture at its best merely reflects (maybe suggests) reality, so no one should take an African-American as CIA director all that seriously, to say nothing of President of the United States…at least until now.
Where art imitates life, its interpretation over time grows exponentially into something remarkably oracular. "Bulworth" (1998) is a veteran U.S. Senator losing his bid for re-election. His tactic then becomes one of commenting about corporations controlling the American political system, and depicting Democrats and Republicans as being one in the same. In the end, Bulworth unexpectedly accepts a run for the presidency just before he is assassinated. The final scene is a homeless man talking to the camera saying, "Bulworth, you got to be a spirit. You can't be no ghost."
Conversely, whenever life imitates art, avoiding commentary is always nearly impossible. “Oliver Stone's unusual and inescapably interesting“W.” feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years,” wrote Todd McCarthy in his Vairety.com review. “For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, "W." is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.”
"W." began as the work product of Director Oliver Stone and his co-screenwriter, Stanley Weiser. After reading seventeen books as part of their research for the script and working on the project for a year, admittedly, they had to speculate about some of the dialogue. "I want a fair, true portrait of the man,” Stone said. “How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?”
“Can you imagine if some conservative director made a movie about Barack Obama?” a reader retorted in talking back to Variety.com about McCarthy’s review of the film. “Think there would be some outrage about it? Do you think ANYONE on the left would think it would be fair and balance especially if it was rushed to be released just a few weeks before the election?”
The real question is how do you to fairly deal with a seated president depicted in a movie, who happens to be white and for nearly eight years failed to deliver on bold promises, in contrast to dealing with a presidential candidate in real life who happens to be black aspiring to the office with his own set of bold promises?
 Campbell Brown before the election had said that race was an unavoidable issue challenging the American electorate in facing both an historic and cultural sea change. Reporting for CNN.com she commented: “Look everybody, we all know we are in uncharted territory here.” The reporter had cautioned, “Never before has there been an African-American presidential nominee,” she opined. “So without question, race is going to be a part of the conversation. Race-baiting doesn't have to be and yet it is happening in this campaign."
Steve Schifferes reporting for BBC News online wrote that historian Simon Schama believes Barack Obama’s emergence as a presidential candidate represents far-reaching political rehabilitation of the American psyche, expressed in a new series for BBC Television, offering Obama as a stalwart challenger who can lay aside all prior notions of race and politics for an ever-changing America.
He said in part: "... this represents an historic shift in America’s self-perception." The distinguished historian, as reported by Schifferes, argues convincingly on his TV program The American Future that “It would have been inconceivable in the 1960s for white Americans in the midst of a major economic collapse” to have turned to a black man for leadership out of the crisis. The new attitude toward race is the result of a generational shift, Schama summarized, “which began with the civil rights movement, and has now affected not only the ‘baby boomer generation’ born in the l950s but their children as well.
Dumeetha Luthra, also with BBC News, reported from Uniontown, Pennsylvania that race is the big question mark hanging over this election year.
"I'm not voting for Obama, he's black," the reporter quoted a resident named Charles, a registered Democrat. "If it wasn't for Obama I would vote Democrat. Blacks just cause trouble, that's the taste I've got in my mouth."
By now It's more than obvious that the 2008 presidential election will be a de facto litmus test on racism in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's and Sen. Douglas Dilman's ascent to the presidency in "The Man".
America, the bedrock of world democracy, has been historically mired in racism, fixated on ethnicity, religious affiliation and the color of a person's skin for well over three hundred years.
In short, the method of a democratic election in the U.S. at the highest level has hardly done credit to the process. Inherently, those who opposed a black man as Chief Executive of the government must find justification for their attitude so those more fair-minded might overlook, disregard or forgive the most egregious behavior to forbid an African-American to occupy that formidable seat of power, if it's someone too “foreign” or not like “us”—whatever it takes to deny him entry into the White House where the chair behind the desk rolls on titanium casters, and where the highest office in the land happens to be the most powerful in the world. 
Unlike the fictional Sen. Douglas Dilman, the process of advancing along that upward slope to the presidency is no accident for Senator Barack Obama. And what those opposed to his presidency might do, well, that'll be no accident either.
By Frederick Louis Richardson
October 12, 2008
Copyright © 2008 DreaMerchant ®
All Rights Reserved
|
