Letters to the Editor
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I'm glad this movie was made
A few years ago, I saw a photo of Daniel Pearl, his hands chained before him, looking at the viewer. I think it was in Rolling Stone, shortly after his death. There was something in his eyes that really moved me - perhaps it was a lack of fear or hate - it was a look of defiance. Daniel Pearl went into the maw of the beast with a desire to understand it, because his own perspective and beliefs in our common humanity was so different from that of murderous fundamentalists.
Marianne Pearl, in her own words, reflects the same belief, the same strength in the face of fear, that we should all aspire to. It is that strength that enables moral choices when the world around is chaotic, seductive, and frightening.
I can't wait to see how this essence was captured in film. I don't expect a blockbuster, but I do expect a movie that will show a more complex, yet honest portrayal of what it means to be a moral, ethical, and courageous human being in the world we live in.
Shame on those of you who cannot see past the color of the actress. Can you truly not see past the color of someone's skin to the point beneath?
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Anonymous: How hard it is to understand Jolie was miscasted??
Your piling on facts about Brad Pitt's role in the film only confirms my premise that she was selected because of her celebrity not becuase she was the best option for this role..
This is nothing to get angry about or attack my colour becuase the film is a average piece of work certainly nothing to write home about.. in fact this story is not novel many journalists have lost thier lives and thier wives stories have never been told or shoped around as a movie of course it helps if your a bunch of white superstar celebrities and one of the dead is jewish and the adveraries are muslims..
Here on this soil(usa) media types have lost lives while covering our 2 domestic holocausts and thier tales never were told or some have even ye to be discovered..
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unmooring
Hey anonymous:
Unmooring (also unmoored, unmoors): To release from or as if from moorings.
Moorings: elements providing stability or security.
It's called a dictionary.
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why pearl?
How many lives have been destroyed by this war?
Why is Pearl's death any more important than all the others?
Why should we believe the details of this story any more than the death of Paul Tillman or the heroism of Jessica Lynch?
The news media has been just as complicit and deceitful as the administration, the intelligence agencies or the tail that wags the dog.
Pearl may have been a fine and decent man, it doesn't matter. He chose to go there and he chose a profession that made him an obvious target. If he wasn't a part of an intellignece operation then he was clearly suicidal. Chutzpah, arrogance and hubris seem a lot more common in "news professionals" than suicidal behaviors.
I didn't believe the media lies before the war and I am not about ready to start believing the lies they tell now to make themselves look like heroes.
If Pearl was actively opposed to the war then he would be a hero.
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Not about "blackness"?
First off, to the Anonymous of your "editor's choice" letter-- if you're a person who is black, or "of color", everything is about "blackness". . .it's an intrinsic aspect of your identity, that has everything to do with your life experiences.
The point to me is less that Marianne Pearl is black-- the United States is the only place that lets the archaic "one drop rule" stand, but that Jolie & Pitt bill themselves as humanitarians seeking to foster understanding and colorblind social equity. If that is so, it should be important to the mother and father of "colored" children that they help shape the opportunity for actors and actresses of color to work in an industry that has a decided anti-"colored" bent.
That, and, I'm firmly in the Huey Freeman camp-- in the opening episode of "The Boondocks" he is asked why he hasn't seen The Passion of the Christ. "Two words," he replies. "White Jesus."
I'm not interested in paying money to see a white actress put on brown contact lenses and skin paint, when as the partner of the producer of the film she could have helped to hire someone equally talented, with natural melanin, brown eyes and kinky hair to do so just as easily.
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Quiet the thrasher
This thrasher is a horribly offensive human being, with a "culturo-centric" worldview. Injecting one's own particular schemas of race on this topic reeks of ill-suited, polemical intentions.
On my part, frankly, I always thought Pearl was 100% franco-syrian jew until I became better informed. But Thrasher's assertion that she is a 'colour' woman hangs on North American one-drop standards, that are not quite entirely global by any means.
Racism, intentional or otherwise, in Hollywood casting is a worthy topic in its own right, but as I noted, heckling here just irks and stinks of polemics. There are thousands of roles in Hollywood in which a black man or woman could be injected without the story meriting much if any adjustment.
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The race thing is an awful lot like navel gazing
Thrasher: get over it. No, really.
rupert_c: I know what you mean, but I also love this quote from Primo Levi: "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."
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Thrasher
Tell me Thrasher...
Who should have played Marianne Pearl. Give me a list of actresses that would satisfy your racial requirements. She can't be African-American, of course. That would be just as inaccurate as her being a white American. So who. And she has to be able to open a movie. And have the ability to act.
As for Year of Sitting Bull, are you sure the person was 100% White american. Plenty of white americans have "native" blood in them somewhere. I'm "African-American" and I have native blood 4 generations back. Can I play an Indian?
I grew up around a fair amount of American Indians, and there were a few who looked "white." What's better, them playing American Indian or an Asian who looks more an American Indian? My nephew is a blaxican (hehe, I crack myself up.) and he looks Middle Eastern. It's the nose, surprisingly enough...somehow the stereotypically flat african version merged with Aztec warrior nose and...whatever, who cares. But he could be a Pakistani.
But I suppose you're either colored or not colored. It's okay if you cast Denzel as Mao tse Tsung. At least they're both colored (i love saying colored.)