An unfortunate turning point in my life

My mother took me to see this when I was 13 and still very much into Disney movies. I loved the 1967 animated version of this (and still do), so I was determined to catch this live-action adaptation in a theater. But had I known what I was in for, I think I would have skipped it.

I could point out that the plot of this version deviated a great deal from the animated feature. I could mention that the animals in the movie were ferocious and frightened me. I could complain about the ending being an anticlimactic letdown. But I might have been able to forgive all that if the movie had not forcefully exposed me to something I'd never encountered before, at least not on so visceral a level: anti-white racism.

Up to this point I had been well aware that racial oppression had long existed, but I had never let it disturb me too much, and in fact my sympathies were almost always on the side of nonwhites. I also knew on at least an academic level that in THE JUNGLE BOOK Mowgli is an Indian, but I had never given it much thought and I didn't really care anyway. But this movie MADE me care, because it made clear to me, for the first time in my life, how profoundly people of European descent were held in contempt - even, in many cases, by their own kind - in late-twentieth-century America.

This edition of THE JUNGLE BOOK was only the first of many, many, MANY movies I'd find myself viewing - sometimes willingly and sometimes not - that purported to express the perspective of "people of color" (a phrase I've always found absurd, since there are no colorless people) but seemed equally determined to annoy, bait, humiliate, and even psychologically torture members of the white race.

It seems that whenever Hollywood makes a "black" film, or a "Latino" film, or a "Native American" film or so forth, if "white" characters show up on the screen - and, statistically speaking, they almost always do - then I can be pretty sure that, as a person of non-Hispanic European descent, that I will see one of only three basic reflections of myself staring back at me. It's either the racist bully, who will inevitably take a well-deserved beating from a person of color no matter how tough and athletic he is; the shallow liberal, totally egotistical, who helps the minority characters only out of a combination of condescension and self-satisfaction; or the smiling, sheltered idiot, happy-go-lucky, completely insensitive to the sufferings of others and desperately in need of someone to get it through his or her thick head what a horrible place the world really is. These characterizations thoroughly bore me, they're no fun, I find them demeaning, and (since I've watched a LOT of movies) they have caused me a growing amount of psychological anguish over the years.

This 1994 adaptation of THE JUNGLE BOOK is, I think, precisely where a part of my innocence was lost and a seed of bitterness toward nonwhite people started to grow within me. I entered the theater full of happiness and excitement; I exited it muttering irritably to my mother about "propaganda against the white man." My mother told me I was overreacting, but there's a part of me that still thinks otherwise. I ended up having to overcome a lot of anger and prejudice over the course of my adolescence and young adulthood borne of my years of having to navigate the kind of mass culture that would produce a motion picture like the one I'm discussing right now.

With these and other, similar cultural cues that young people are trained to pick up from popular entertainment nowadays, is it any wonder that I and many others like me have become extremely reluctant to watch any "race" film, for fear that one or more - or all - of the above stereotypes will rear their heads? For that matter, is it any wonder so many of us are tempted to wax sarcastic - or even violently fulminate - about the Civil Rights Movement, or affirmative action, or "political correctness," or whatever?

Some people might tell me to shut up about this, declaring that, as a person descended from natives of Europe, I am the heir to several centuries of uncontested global dominance, social complacency, and ego-stroking - and that, if anything, I could stand to develop a little humility. Well, I'm sorry: I was not around for all those wonderful, bygone centuries, so they didn't benefit me personally; and as for humility, I feel that by now I've endured more than enough, both in sociopolitical matters and in life generally. Others might scoff at this entire essay, reminding me that "It's only a movie. Lighten up!" Okay. But, as I explained before, I spent so much time as a young person consuming movies and television that, in a sense, they became a sort of representation of the real world for me; when I see something happening on a video screen, I tend to interpret it very seriously.

In case anyone is wondering, I am not a white supremacist or white separatist. I am not a grouchy hick longing for the "good ol' days." In fact, I'm not even a political conservative. I'm just a very intelligent and perceptive person who would like to see a lot more nuance in all fictional characterizations and an increase in the tendency to see all people as individuals whose flaws and triumphs are attributable to those individuals alone.