Thread by @DrSepinwall

My verdict on #ChevalierMovie. It is a good film to think about Black Europe and the erasure of memory. It is a not a great film about 18th C. France, slavery or the Revolution.

You should see it anyway & tell your students about it. 1/

Keep in mind first that it is VERY hard for a Black filmmaker to get greenlit for this kind of film from a Hollywood studio like Searchlight. & the last thing I want to do as a white scholar of Black French & Haitian history on film is to torpedo a film by a Black director 2/

AND let's keep in mind that films about history from white directors have errors *all the time*. Yet those directors get greenlit over & over again. A Black director whose film is funded & not seen does not get many second chances.

Let's be real about that. 3/

So having said that, the way the film collapses the late 18th C. into just 1789 is kind of silly. It places things he did in the 1760, 1770s & 1780s in 1789 - & in ways that made me laugh. Everyone wanted to kill the queen & proclaim the rights of man b4 the Rev. started, k? 4/

And he was invited to England to go to a gathering with Rousseau, Paine and Equiano? We know Rousseau died in 1778, folks?

So this is not a film to send students to to learn about the Fr. Rev....

Also I think the film underplays discrimination against Black ppl in France. 4/

We get some "only in France could you..." lines without any acknowledgment of the "police des noirs" & that there wasn't just bans on marriage or garden-variety discrimination, but more severe policing.

HOWEVER, that is not why you should see this film. 5/

We have plenty of films on the Fr. Rev. you can see for that reason.

This film is trying to RECOVER forgotten history - & the way that the Chevalier de Saint Georges's ILLUSTRIOUS career was SUPPRESSED by Nappy Bon (that's Napoleon Bonaparte to you) after 1802.

And so it's 6/

...doing the same thing that Bridgerton tried to do in s1, in restoring Black people and their history to Europe, even as that history has been whitewashed, to suggest that Black people came to the metropole only in the 20th C. 7/

So again, this is an important film in the canon of films about Black Europe and memory. The director should be supported & the topic should be supported. Scholars like me can critique particular parts of the film & teach our students to. BUT holding Black directors to 8/

a different standard than white directors (who play fast and loose with historical fact & dates all the time) is not something that interests me in the least. So let's get more films like this MADE... & increase public conversations about this suppressed history. Meanwhile 9/

.@Histor_Ian the main reason I went tonight & didn't wait for it to come on streaming was if you're doing an event at UCI! And I'm super excited for it. There's a lot to break down in the film while also highlighting it for students. So if you go ahead: I'm in! 10/

Finally, movie theaters suck. AMC seems to have good air filtering & hopefully I'll be ok.

But even though there were only 10 people in the theater & the next person was 10 feet away - she hacked for a good portion of the film. Lady, if you're coughing, why are you out? But 11/

this is life in 2023 - & that's why I stay home to stream.

Anyway, I'm delighted I got to SUPPORT the film by buying a ticket in the theater. It is hardly perfect but the topic is worthy & we need to talk more about these suppressed stories in Black European history! Fin/

Oh - & maybe the most fun part of the film is that Philippe d'Orléans was Chevalier de Saint-Georges's patron - and so we get a young 🍐👑🇫🇷 in the film. He didn't look like a pear when he was young😆😆. (but you're not seeing this film for Fr Rev stuff anyway, right?)

Also, again - see this film before it gets pulled from theaters. It's opening week. Show #ChevalierMovie some love & tell Hollywood we want more films on Black history that are not stereotypical plantation films!

Again, if you're not a Fr. Rev historian or someone who knows all the nuances of how Black people were treated in 18th C 🇫🇷, anachronisms are not going to bug you. The film is well-acted, well-paced, & Kelvin Harrison Jr. is having a ton of fun disrupting white supremacy! 😆🎻🎶