January 2nd, 2014
In (yet another) piece about white privilege, someone at Salon writes:
We ended 2013, the 150thanniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation — a year in which one of the most popular movies, “12 Years a Slave,” chronicled the horrors of slavery in Louisiana . . .
I have no doubt that 12 Years a Slave was the most popular movie of the year (decade?) at the offices of Salon.
Out in the wider world? Here’s the 2013 box office list, which is a pretty objective measure of a movie’s popularity. 12 Years a Slave clocks in at . . .
#75
Let’s play a little game where I name a movie from 2013 and you tell me if it was less popular than 12 Years a Slave. And I promise right off the bat that this won’t be one of those trick quizes where there are no right answers:
* 42–Which was also about race in America!
* The Smurfs 2–I’ll cheat on this and just tell you: it made twice as much money as 12 Years.
* Jurassic Park 3D–This was just a 3D-ified re-lease of a 20-year-old movie.
* A Haunted House–Also a movie about race in America. Kind of. (It’s a Wayans Bros. joint.)
Okay, I lied. All of those movies made more money than 12 Years a Slave. But don’t worry, it was way, waaayyy more popular than Kick Ass 2.
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Prediction: It’s still going to get the Oscar for Best Director. Why? Because “it’s long past time” for a black director to win it. So say the zeitgeist tea leaves out here. It’s been at least a year since they could all stand and cheer themselves hoarse with cries of, “We’re making history.” But when the director wants to do his next film, and it’s not, per se, about the “African-American experience,” he’ll wonder why Brett Ratner gets it instead. He’ll end up doing the Larry Doby story.
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I think Salon’s error there is merely saying “popular” when they meant “critically acclaimed,” which I guess doesn’t take anything away from your point that the folks at Salon think that elitist opinion is the same thing as “popular”
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[…] at least, the film is not being seen by many. While someone at Salon thought the movie was “one of the most popular” of last year, that was not true. It was actually ranked 75th. As Jonathan Last pointed out, […]
Galley Friend J.E. January 11, 2014 at 12:54 pm
I rest my case: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lee-daniels-talks-direct-richard-669815