Moments of Permanence - Post a comment

About

Post a comment

shivers	May. 28th, 2009 @ 09:01 pm

Somehow, between watchings (ETA: of Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe)... I always forget how deeply, profoundly gay for each other Idgie and Ruth are.

... and that it's also a story about race in the Bad Old South.

I wonder how it feels, as an actor, to put on a Klan hood...

Also, seriously, the actor who played Big George... how the hell did he even get through this scene?

The one where the Klan descend on the Cafe, with Frank Bennett, and there are shots fired at the windows, and, as Idgie put it: "They've got Big George."

Outside, there are flaming torches, and men in Klan robes. Grady, who's been playing poker with Idgie, follows as she runs out.

They're whipping Big George, and Grady - established earlier, mind you, as a racist himself, who allegedly does some marching in Klan robes himself - tells them he's the law, and they better clear out. Grady's a cultural racist.

... although he did just gaybait the sheriff and the entire state of Georgia.
I just... I can't imagine what it must be like for an actor like Stan Shaw to do that kind of scene, something so ugly and brutal, knowing that it's something that happened. The other actors, too - there's some viciously ugly stuff in this film, and yeah, it's being presented as "this is what it was, and it was and is hideous..."

But even if it's being shown as a horror, he's still sitting there while someone throws him a line like: "Just remember, we hang lyin' niggers in Georgia just as fast as they do in Alabama."

To which George says: "Yes sir. I remember." All quiet and hurting, and he's a brilliant actor for that alone, because that scene causes me to fill with a burning rage and I'm just watching it - not for the first time, and I'm not descended from people who lived through this.

*breathes*

The thing is, I love this movie, and I think it's one of its strengths that it doesn't gloss this stuff, but... it also hurts. And if it hurts me, I wonder how much scenes like that hurt people who have ties to the people and the area.

Current Music: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe