Did Shared Histories of Oppression Of Black People And Jewish People Translate into Solidarity in Hollywood Movies ? Russian films made in the dark ages feature enough Indigenous folks in Heroic, Saviour of USSR, truly Cool roles but Hollywood and our assumed natural allies ? - Mostly Slavery Ass Punk Movies. 4Q?

 

Venomous, anti-Black, anti-African, really deeply seated, authentic hatred for Black people or people of color or Indigenous people doesn’t seem to be predominant in Russian historical movies, unlike Western European and American movies, especially Hollywood movies, where one would have thought—if we are to go by the mixture, the admixture in Hollywood, with so many Jewish people or people of Jewish ancestry in Hollywood who, according to them, have gone through the Holocaust and anti-racism—that Hollywood would be a dreamland for accuracy and for Black representation to be sustained. 

But viewing documents and evidence where there is honesty suggests that this is not the case.

When you look at especially most World War II films, they seem to totally exclude Black people. It’s worse: the further back you go, the worse the exclusion is, especially in the black-and-white films. You rarely see Black people represented properly.

Whilst when you go into the so-called commie, Ruski, Russian films of such eras, you find a lot of Mongolians depicted, a lot of Asiatic-looking people, which to me… there’s so much. 

Although one might say Ukraine or Ukrainians were just as racist to Black people as the Ku Klux Klan during the outbreak of the initial Russian invasion—well, 

my argument with that is, number one, without being rude, they’re a bit backwards. They’re not as exposed to the global platform as most Western Europeans, so that’s no comparison, really.

And their sentiments seem to be closer to the West. You know, you have the Azimov Battalion and whatever, which would never, ever exist in Russia. 

And their wanting to ally themselves with NATO and the EU says a lot—that probably during the Soviet era, they weren’t the best Soviets or the best communists.

If we think of communist education, which seems to nullify or deflate any racist sentiments—I mean, we see a lot of Russians, a lot of Eastern Europeans, helping South Africa in the ’60s or ’50s—but in retrospect, one might say maybe they were Russian in geographical landmark origin and not necessarily the entirety of Eastern Europe. 

Because I do find, personally, that a lot of Eastern Europeans are, for the best of them, to be polite, a little bit—not even a little bit—a lot out of date with Black people. I’m talking about professional life and personal life, the questions they’ve asked me in my life, and I’ve been like, “Whoa! Thank God the Berlin Wall came down.” And that’s it as well.

You know, you might be a good pianist, a good concert dancer, and a good ballet dancer, but no, you don’t know the difference between Nigerians and Jamaicans.

So, going back to the point, I think overall Russian hegemony, or the Russian film industry, or whatever, is not as deeply, deeply, deeply racist as Hollywood is. 

Yes, we have a few movies nowadays that glamorise Black people, and even those are by Black directors who have to go through hell to depict movies that are not really slavery-centred. That’s another thing: most films from Hollywood about Black people are about some struggle, some slavery, some—you know what I mean? 

That’s interesting. Odabo in Yoruba means my humble handsome self is GTFOH till the next blog article, thanks