Friday, March 4, 2011

Now Playing: Amiri Baraka's 'Dutchman'



from Shadow and Act:

Made in 1966, Dutchman is the filmed version of Amiri Baraka’s controversial one-act stage play. It won the Obie Award for best off-Broadway play, thrusting Baraka into the limelight. It stars Al Freeman Jr. & Shirley Knight.

The story, for those unfamiliar, goes… A sinister, neurotic, lascivious white girl, Lula, lures to his doom, a good-looking young black man, Clay – a stranger she picks up in the subway. She mocks him for wearing the clothes, and employing the voice and manners of what she deems the conventional white intellectual. The man, who, at first, sees no reason to resist the girl’s advances, perceives too late that he is being used by her. He then drops his so-called “white” disguise, and launches into a counterattack, against the girl, and at whites in general, leading to its haunting, shocking conclusion.

*hat-tip to Kalamu ya Salaam

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