Mandingo

From blackwiki
Revision as of 06:39, 15 March 2021 by Al (talk | contribs) (→‎References)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Mandingo-movie-poster.jpg

Mandingo is a 1975 American historical drama film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, and boxer-turned-actor Ken Norton. The film was released by Paramount Pictures.[1]

Based on the 1957 novel Mandingo by Kyle Onstott. The book is set in the 1830s in the antebellum South primarily around Falconhurst, a fictional plantation in Alabama owned by the planter Warren Maxwell. The narrative centers on Maxwell, his son Hammond, and the Mandingo slave Ganymede, or Mede. Mandingo is a tale of cruelty toward the black people of that time and place, detailing the overwhelmingly dehumanizing behavior meted out to the slaves, as well as vicious fights, poisoning, and violent death. [2]

The Novel

Mandingo was first published in 1957 in hardcover. It was 659 pages long and sold around 2.7 million copies. Subsequent paperback editions whittled the novel down to 423 pages. The novel sold a total of 5 million copies in the United States.

Mandingo is the only novel of the Falconhurst series that Onstott wrote, but he edited the next three novels in the series. All of the sequels were penned by either Lance Horner or Henry Whittington (Ashley Carter).[2]

Mandingo.png

The Movie

The movie is set in the Deep South of the United States prior to the American Civil War. Falconhurst is a run-down plantation owned by widower Warren Maxwell and largely run by his son, Hammond. Hammond and his cousin, Charles, visit a plantation where both men are given black women out of hospitality.

Warren Maxwell pressures him to marry, so Hammond chooses his cousin, Blanche, who is desperate to get out of her house to escape her brother Charles. It is implied that Charles raped her when she was 13. After their wedding night, Hammond is sure that she is not a virgin—a claim Blanche denies. On their way back from their honeymoon, Hammond returns to the plantation where Ellen is kept and purchases her as his sex slave. Eventually, he comes to genuinely care for her.

Meanwhile, Hammond purchases a Mandingo slave named Ganymede. Nicknamed "Mede", the slave works for Hammond as a prize-fighter. He's forced to soak in a large cauldron of very hot salt water to ostensibly toughen his skin. Hammond also breeds Mede with female slaves on his plantation. Hammond makes a great deal of money betting on Mede's fights.

Critical Reactions

Roger Ebert despised the film, calling it "racist trash", and gave it a "zero star" rating. Richard Schickel of Time magazine found the film boring and cliché-ridden.[1]

In the 21st century, the film has been recognised for the heavy use of racist stereotypes, that were created during the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and were used to help commodify black people and justify slavery.[3] The film has also been the subject of racial analysis.[4] Film critic Roger Ebert called it "racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon".[5]

Mandingo Stereotype

The Mandingo is a stereotype of a sexually-voracious black man with a huge penis, invented by white slave owners to promote the notion that blacks were not civilizable but "animalistic" by nature. They asserted, for example, that in "Negroes all the passions, emotions, and ambitions, are almost wholly subservient to the sexual instinct" and "this construction of the oversexed black male parlayed perfectly into notions of black bestiality and primitivism."[6]

The term mandingo is of 20th century origin.[7]

External Link

Watch Mandingo trailer at Youtube

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Mandingo Film. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Mandingo Novel. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  3. Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans. National Museum of African American History and Culture. 31 October 2018. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  4. Jack, Bryan M., 1969. Southern history on screen : race and rights, 1976–2016. Lexington. ISBN 978-0-8131-7646-8.
  5. Ebert, Roger. Mandingo movie review & film summary (1975) | Roger Ebert. RogerEbert.com. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  6. Stereotypes of African Americans. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  7. Van Deburg, William L. (1984). Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-299-09630-4.