If you have not heard about or yet watched Small Axe, director Steve McQueen's five-part mini-series of films, I can recommend part one. (I suppose I should go and watch the second part right now while that big football game is on.) I was a bit confused, based on what I had read — I thought it was five short films within a feature length, but I had it backwards.
The stories all take place in London's West Indian community at various times between the 1960s and 1980s. The first one, Mangrove, was excellent, and told a story I knew nothing about: police repression and unprovoked violence toward Black immigrants (and native British people), leading to a march and more violence, leading to arrests and a trial. The Mangrove Nine are real people.
One specific thing I learned from the film is that the Black Panthers were active in Britain, or at least London.
Another thing I learned about from Mangrove, though it was only an aside, was Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, which he gave in 1968. It's referred to in the movie only briefly (I think it was in some graffiti, maybe in one line of dialog at the beginning).
Reading about that speech — which excused white Britons for being racist and said all the immigrants should go away because change was causing all the problems — is like reading about our present moment. It made Powell more popular and escalated the rightward movement of the Conservative Party.
Which I imagine is part of why McQueen wanted to include those references and tell this story now.
He is not wrong.
___
The name Small Axe comes from a Bob Marley lyric:
So if you are the big tree
We are the small axe
Ready to cut you down (well sharp)
To cut you down
No comments:
Post a Comment