MovieChat Forums > When Worlds Collide (1951) Discussion > Great Big Deal for Black People

Great Big Deal for Black People

posted 14 years ago by Arlon10
10 replies | jump to latest

I read the "No Black People at the Camp" discussion so far and I have a contribution so unique I decided to start another discussion.

Before my ideas, yours though ...

I think you kids did a good job of defending the movie. Perhaps there was racism in the South, but it wasn't Hollywood's fault, or movies, or television.
And someone pointed out that the Secretary General of th U.N. was perhaps non-white, but you should also have noted that was 10 years before the real U.N. had a non-white Secretary General.

Something you missed, and because I am so old I can help you with it, is another difference between then and now. Back then science wasn't God. You don't understand how many people back then, white or black, really wouldn't give plug nickel to ride on some stupid space ship. Very few people would believe they had a better chance on it. So where's the hubris? The hubris is that you think black people would miss you. That is laughable!

Okay, so they landed on the new planet and the air was breathable for two minutes. Did you not hear them fret and fray about how unlikely that would be? So after three minutes they choke on the bad air and nobody from the fifties misses being on the ship at all, white or black, but the movie is over before then. That's not the racist problem you've been trying to make it.

[–] vincebruno11 13 years ago

i think the movie had an all white cast because Hollywood was afraid of offending the segregationist south (in 1951). Black people weren't even allowed to sit with whites in the theater, they are going to depict them in the same rocket ship?

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[–] Arlon10 13 years ago

Although I don't believe Hollywood in the 50s would blatantly offend the South. I don't believe they would so consciously bow to them either. You can see a change in movies, if not Hollywood, from D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" in 1915 to the 1962 "To Kill a Mockingbird." That's quite a difference.
But no, the 50s Hollywood was not excluding blacks from the ships to appease the South, I don't believe.
What actually was the problem I attempt to describe in my review of the movie 2012 (released in 2009), which compares that movie with When Worlds Collide.
The review http://www.thetownvoice.net/religion/e12.htm

[–] hockeyhrs 9 years ago

You're making this more complicated than it needs to be:

http://image.slidesharecdn.com/2013beyaseminarglobalhealthplacematters-130318142052-phpapp01/95/2013-beya-seminar-global-health-place-matters-8-638.jpg?cb=1365762307

It wasn't economically worth going after that 10% black segment of the 1950 population when there was a risk of offending ___% (of the 90% white 1950 population) that was 'uncomfortable' with colored people . . . or at least uncomfortable with integration.

[–] joshdestardi 9 years ago

Fantastic explanation.

Thanks

Not very original, but 'We accept the love we think we deserve.' Brilliant.

[–] G_Runciter 8 years ago

you are very incoherent

[–] Gary O. (1009) 8 years ago

I'm not certain what it is that you are trying to convey here.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Me neither.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 4 years ago

The movie was a product of its time. Non White Americans were purposely shrouded from public view and the idea of America being a melting pot was not in vogue. Even the portrayal of Whites we ridiculously overcompensating, but this isn't just apparent in this movie. Old Hollywood Westerns are probably the biggest LIE in terms of portraying the Old West in terms of the people involved with developing the land. Even by today's standards Hollywood still makes westerns thru the eyes of White men, usually reconstituted Confederate soldier veterans looking to restart their lives when in fact it was a hodgepodge of White, Asian, Black, Hispanic, and recent White European immigrants. "Hell on Wheels" did a decent job portraying the grittiness of the railroad projects through newly conquered great plains and they didn't try to portray native Americans with the tiresome noble savage trope and in fact showed the open disregard for their culture in favor of westernization.

[–] liscarkat (18367) 4 years ago

Wow, that movie sounds entertaining. Sorry, but I'll stick with John Ford.

[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

I heard John Ford was a racist white supremacist who wanted the South to win the Civil War.