>interested in learning the thoughts of anyone on the list as to why this
>event attracted such an antagonistic -- and opportunistic, I suppose --
>response from civil rights organizations when, if memory serves, Roots
>and The Color Purple received all but universal -- if undeserved --
>approbation.  I have some thoughts of my own but I would be interested in
 ...
>Ken Yellis
 
Perhaps your answer lies in David Harvey's posting itself:
 
>Poster:       Dave Harvey <[log in to unmask]>
 ...
>just the right note. I was personally struck by the normality of the
>occasion. The sense that this monsterous practice of chattel slavery was
>just another piece of commerce. This reminded me of those powerful scene
 
It is one thing to show evils of any sort as part of an overall whole, a
fiction, a drama, even one based on reality, where moreover you KNOW that
the evildoers are going to be punished or defeated or somehow get at least
some of what they deserve -- because that is how fictions tend to work.
The dramas you refer to have morals: the whole balances out at the end,
somehow, even if not perfectly.
 
It is QUITE another to have evil shown as part of business as usual.  To
the buyers and sellers -- and, indeed, to the victims -- what happens is
NORMAL.  The victims remain victims, the sellers get their profit, the
buyers get their slaves, and tomorrow will be as today.  Ho hum.
 
One can hold one's emotions in check to some extent if you know that, at
the end of the piece, the villains will be down (or at least worse off),
the victims up (or at least better off), and the final credits will roll.
It's a great deal harder if there ARE no final credits.  These victims will
not eventually triumph, these villains will not suffer for their deeds.
The reenactment reflected reality, not fiction; it was not a morality play.
 
And to be shown evil as a part and reflection of normality ... that is very
hard to bear, indeed.
 
Mario Rups (who spent four years in Williamsburg in the never-never days
     when it represented the eighteenth century, not as it was, but as it
     should have been -- and is favourably impressed by the changes implied
     by the reenactment)
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