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Birth of a Nation Underperforms

October 13, 2016 | celebrity | Lex Jurgen | 0 Comments

In the final weeks of the Presidential campaign, Trump attacks have drowned out every other politically correct obligatory outrage. Including how Nate Parker’s groundbreaking Birth of a Nation film suffered pretty mediocre to poor box office results in its opening week because America is racist.

Birth of a Nation is the mostly unknown actor’s first major film venture, and tells the tale of the 19th century Nat Turner slave rebellion at a time when Hollywood self-flagellators were desperate for another black experience sword to fall on. Twelve Years a Slave and Selma were in the rear view mirror and Spike Lee and Will Smith were refusing to attend the Oscars they weren’t invited to. Birth of a Nation received standing ovations at Sundance. Fox Searchlight set a record buy with $17.5 million for the distribution rights. I’ve never seen it. No idea if it’s any good. I suppose that wasn’t really the point.

Somewhere between that big early year hype and the release of the film this past weekend, the brother of a woman that accused Nate Parker and friends of raping her at Penn State years earlier reminded everybody of the sexual assault charges. Parker was acquitted, though the alleged victim did later kill herself, rendering the incident hindsight blurry. The black chick on the view who’s not Whoopi Goldberg and who even The View producers call the black chick not Whoopi Goldberg since it saves time remembering names, smelled a conspiracy on the Nate Parker rape allegation stories gaining traction in the press. Why now just when his movie was coming out? She answered her own question but didn’t seem to care. Nate Parker rape stories seemed less exciting when nobody knew who the hell Nate Parker was. Why are five thousand people in Hollywood currently digging through Apprentice outtakes when a few months ago that number was zero?

Racism doesn’t explain why people don’t go to see historical dramas. Or even why white people don’t want to see black-experience historical dramas. In the Heart of the Sea tanked hard last Christmas and that had a fat budget, Thor, and a giant cunning whale. We’ve seen the black slave movie before. Birth of a Nation might be really good, but movie box office is driven by younger people with shitty commercial taste. They want superheroes. Luke Cage who happens to be black not by chance scored the fifth highest rating of a Netflix original launch ever this past week. Straight out of Compton tallied $160 million in domestic box office. It’s the same story as Birth of a Nation but with guns and Suge Knight and hot topless bitches. The new Star Wars featured an unknown chick and a black dude as the lead heroes. It made something close to the GDP of Slovakia.

Check the mirror before whining and make sure you’re good looking. Otherwise nobody cares.

Tags: birth of a nation nate parker




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