The Black Panthers Vanguard of the Revolution Review
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The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
We are republishing this piece on the homepage in allegiance with a critical American motility that upholds Blackness voices. For a growing resources list with information on where you lot tin can donate, connect with activists, learn more about the protests, and find anti-racism reading, click hither. #BlackLivesMatter.
"The Blackness Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" opens with an erstwhile "Soul Train" clip of musical legends, The Chi-Lites. "For God'due south sake," the group sings, "why dontcha requite more power to the people?" The Afro-clad quartet deliver their message of protestation with a funky groove, a technique director Stanley Nelson adopts for this documentary. A river of protestation soul music runs through the film, underscoring the visuals and influencing the smart editing choices past Aljernon Tunsil. He and Nelson traverse a structured arc every bit if designing great drama, presenting a slew of talking heads, picture show clips and rarely seen photographs. The film avoids hagiography, and in doing so, brings out the undeniable humanity of its subjects.
PBS strikes again with some other fine documentary about the Black Ability motion. "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" would make a fine double feature with 2012's "The Black Power Mixtape." That moving picture stunned me, leaving my mind racing with thoughts and ideas. In my RogerEbert.com review, I wrote that "Mixtape" took me "back to the days when I came to a mature understanding of the implications of being Blackness, male, and broke." The same tin exist said for Nelson'southward documentary, merely "Vanguard" besides added an unnerving sense of déjà vu. "If you live long plenty," an elder one time told me, "life starts to feel similar a merry-get-round." Viewers will exist struck by how eerily familiar and electric current the tactics depicted in this film are. In the grand scheme of oppression, fifty years is apparently long enough for history to repeat itself.
"Vanguard" reminded me that every generation has its media-fueled boogeyman, and it'southward usually a brown one. The American majority of my parents' generation was scared out of its wits by the Black Panther Party, an Oakland-based group fighting for the civil rights of African-Americans. Founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panthers had a multi-signal programme and a savvy command of the fine fine art of media manipulation. They presented a tough, military-manner image that ran counter to the suits and Sunday-all-time attire of protest marches and sit down-ins. They published a newspaper, like the Nation of Islam did, that detailed events and delivered news to the Black community. They provided a breakfast program for poor kids. And they used the 2d Amendment to great effect by blatantly carrying loaded guns in a state that had an open bear police force. Whenever confronted well-nigh this by the law, Newton would recite the California Penal Code that fabricated his weapon legal.
Throughout the film, Nelson turns to members of the Black Panther Political party to set up the scene and tell their story. He begins in 1966, where the tensions between law and the community In Oakland, California were at the highest levels in America. William Calhoun tells us that "there was absolutely no difference betwixt the way the police treated us in Mississippi as they did in California." Equally a result, the Black Panther Party started out every bit a self-defense force organization, interim as a watchdog for police brutality. As Newton and others explicate their methods to prevent undue violence during arrests, Nelson alternates betwixt their words and those of Ray Gaul, an Oakland police officer describing the same methods. "Information technology was pretty intimidating," Gaul says.
Far more intimidating was the 24-hour interval-to-day being of Blacks throughout the U.S. "Being Black in America meant that yous didn't walk down the street with the same sense of safety, and the same sense of privilege, as a White person," says Jamal Joseph, some other Panther interviewed here. This lack of safe and bureau did non go abroad when the Panthers came on the scene. Instead, their show of ability was seen as an enormous threat to the American way of life, a threat that caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover. The former head of the F.B.I. became even more than fearful one time the Panthers acquired charismaticcharacters like Eldridge Cleaver and Fred Hampton, both of whom could work a crowd too as Malcolm X and Dr. Rex.
Hoover is as large a grapheme in this tale as Newton, Seale, Cleaver and Hampton. Nelson zeroes in on Hoover'south memos and his language, drawing a parallel between the Blackness Panther Party and Blackness Lives Matter with no actress effort. The similarities are striking. Hoover'due south FBI was going after a group whose origins were in protesting against police brutality. He called the Panthers a racist terrorist group that wanted to destroy America, and a sure faction of the media promoted this bulletin past playing up a manufactured scariness factor. The Panthers interrupted a press briefing held by Governor Ronald Reagan, proving they can as well play the media game to become politicians to heed. Hampton was illegally gunned downwardly by the cops, leading to a successful civil lawsuit confronting the Chicago constabulary section.
And in memos, Hoover was constantly fearful of a "Blackness messiah" who volition bend the ear of not-Blacks and turn them toward the Black crusade. That final one took me past surprise, just there's a sly, subversive reason Nelson puts information technology out there. Remember the GOP'southward favorite term for Obama during the 2008 ballot wheel? It was "the Messiah."
Though it masterfully highlights the similarities between the "radical" organizations of yesteryear and today, "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" makes an even better cautionary tale for today's movement. After all, these institutions are run by people who are subject to the all-time and worst of human emotions, people who aren't always right in their controlling. This film shows how the Blackness Panther Political party fractured between its two leaders Newton and Cleaver, and is unflinching in depicting what went incorrect and how the FBI exploited it using informants and counterintelligence. "We thought the FBI wanted to kill us," says Kathleen Cleaver. "I don't retrieve we understood how insidious their plan really was." The dissentious elements of human nature turned out to be J. Edgar Hoover's biggest ally. Subsequently a certain point, he just sat back and allow the dissention he planted play out on its own.
The film too comments on whether the Panthers were victims of the prototype they projected and their underestimation of how powerful their enemies eventually were. "The great strength of the Black Panther Party was its ideals and youthful vigor and enthusiasm," Calhoun tells usa. "The keen weakness of the Black Panther Party was its ethics and youthful vigor and enthusiasm. That can be dangerous, especially against the United states of america government."
In dissimilarity to the song of protest and forwards motility that opens his film, Nelson closes with Gil Scott-Heron's mournful "Winter in America." Against the hopelessness and exhaustion of that archetype soul song, each of the moving-picture show's talking heads recite from the Blackness Panther Party Platform and Plan. None of the platform demands are outrageous nor unusual. All of them remain as relevant, necessary and timely as this documentary. "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" deserves to exist seen, studied and discussed.
Odie Henderson
Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here.
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The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)
113 minutes
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