White Man's Burden
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DVD details
Actor: Harry Belafonte, John Travolta, Kelly Lynch, Margaret Avery, Tom BowerBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-05-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Hbo Home Video
DVD Reviews of White Man's Burden
DVD Review: Great concept, so-so delivery
Summary: 3 Stars
Speaking as a white person, I was quite taken by many aspects of "White Man's Burden", a film about an alternate, contemporary America (as far as 1995 is concerned) where White and Black people have switched roles in society.
I do not think the director was trying to make this film to "show Whites how it feels" nor to "show Blacks their own faults". I think he was simply making this film to say, "What would it look like?"
With that question asked, it is clear that the director put much more thought into the background, themes, and imagery, rather than the actual plot. I have to admit, as a white person I was quite struck to see the typical background roles of peaceful joggers, drivers (in nice cars), and wealthy suburbanites filled by Blacks rather than the usual Whites. It was the first time where I actually asked myself how it made Black people feel, usually seeing White people in those roles.
The boy who plays John Travolta's son cannot find anyone who looks like him on TV (unless they are being reported as a suspect in a crime, or fill the roles on sit-coms as lazy wise-crackers). When the boy wants a toy for his birthday, he chooses the more expensive black action figure, rather than the white one (a reference to the real-life doll test in which black children wanted the white doll, and felt the black doll was ugly and "bad"), which speaks to racial self-esteem.
Another reversal of roles is found in the inner city, which in this movie, is inhabited by whites, some who exhibit the stereotypes of "white trash" or white leather-and-chain-clad punks. It's crime-ridden, many are homeless, and a lot of them either have low self-esteem and they feel very angry about the way they feel they are treated by the black aristocracy. The black police assume guilt and even mistake Travolta's character for a similar looking white suspect, and beat him severely for it. At a charity event fashion show, young little white kids are paraded in front of a crowd of wealthy blacks, as they are thanked for their charity to "inner city communities". That part of the movie definitely struck a cord in me, as it seemed almost degrading to have to receive charity like that, knowing that there were white folks who couldn't take care of those kids, and then parade them around like, "look at these poor children".
As far as the plot, acting, and characters go, well, eek. Harry Belafonte definitely was not the charismatic guy I knew in every day public life. Throughout the whole film, he seemed to almost have a smile on his face, even as John Travolta was car-jacking and kidnapping him. His line delivery has no emotion. John Travolta was basically doing Black Face, just without any black make up. Travolta plays an angry, violent man in this film (once he gets fired and things go bad for him), reinforcing stereotypes about black men. Perhaps, the director was trying to show what being in the underclass does to you, but that is definitely something that could make this film controversial (if it ever did get popular enough). I found it quite unrealistic that Belafonte, in this movie, being a racist, all of a sudden develops some compassion for white people when he is kidnapped by Travolta, offering his family money at the end of the movie. A bit of a leap there for the director.
All in all, I think this film can actually do some good for talking about race and race relations in America.
Description of White Man's Burden
From the producer of "Pulp Fiction" --set in a time where color roles have been reversed, John Travolta is Louis Pinnock--a poor man struggling to keep his wife and children fed and clothed. But when he loses his job, Pinnock snaps and decides to fight back the only way he knows how.The premise is interesting, but the execution fails to live up to any of its potential. White Man's Burden imagines an America where black people are the ruling class and whites are underprivileged minorities. John Travolta stars as a factory worker who is fired after making a delivery to the house of the factory owner (Harry Belafonte) and accidentally peeping the man's naked wife through a window. Now jobless and unable to support his family, his wife (Kelly Lynch) leaves him. In desperation he kidnaps Belafonte. The best part of the film is seeing African American actors filling the smaller, background roles that usually go to white actors (such as police officers and wealthy suburbanites), but the movie fails in its poorly thought-out ideas. Transposing the characters' skin color out of the thinly veiled metaphor, John Travolta's portrayal of the poor black man as violent and uneducated (but family oriented), combined with Belafonte's rich white man as just and compassionate (and also family oriented), borders on being truly offensive. The fact that it's helmed by an Asian American director, Desmond Nakano, only makes you wonder why Asian Americans are conspicuously absent (as are Hispanics) and where the heck they would fit into this world, anyway. --Andy Spletzer
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