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Context of Mississippi Burning

Arguably the most important aspect of a film is a viewer’s reaction to it. Films in general are produced for the purpose of generating revenue and a film’s reception by the audience at large is key to this. Viewers hear about films through word of mouth, film previews, and reviews and base their opinion’s on the movie through the information they attain.

Film reviews are widely split on the movie Mississippi Burning. The action is championed by some and condemned by others. Jim Emerson contends that "...Mississippi Burning sets out not so much to conquer the Klan as to mount a merciless attack on the viewer’s autonomic nervous system." The action is over dramatized and was widely criticized as being far too brutal. Most everyone seems to agree that the film effectively arouses deep emotions and hatred for the antagonists, but the debate comes over the necessity of the brutal images and their overpowering of deeper ethical issues. The abuse of blacks is shown but we see no suffering that the blacks had to endure on a day-to-day basis. The director, Alan Parker, chose to focus on bringing out audience emotion, rather than realistically showing how the abuse affected the blacks.

The historical inaccuracies were a problem for most people astute enough to spot them. The manipulation of history was rampant throughout the film. The climax of the movie where the FBI uses terror tactics against the Klan was entirely fabricated by the director. This is unfortunate for the average viewer who is uninformed on the history of the civil rights movement and the murder of the three activists. Some may sit through the film and come out believing that a great deal of the actions that transpired in the film were realistic. This is sad.

Another conflict came over the role blacks played in the film. Blacks were cast as primarily victims, in need of help from white FBI agents. This is ironic basically because J Edgar Hoover was strongly opposed to the civil rights movement, as were many FBI agents. Cutthroat Klan tactics were used in the film by FBI agents against the Klan itself; they fought fire with fire. This is certainly not an uplifting message. Rita Kempley of the Washington Post stated that "Anderson is a tainted hero who breaks the law to enforce it..." The southerners were equally portrayed as racist, ignorant rednecks swapping genes among their families.

These oversimplifications of the roles of blacks and whites lead for a very un-intellectual movie. These roles are so black and white (pun intended) that it leaves for uninteresting overall character development. This leaves the viewer no job of thinking for his or herself and comes to a point where the viewer becomes conditioned to expect brutality whenever a black person comes into a shot.

Overall, the movie was seen as enjoyable to watch, however only at a base level. Once historical innacuracies were brought to light, the actions of the FBI were analyzed, and the casting of the roles of the blacks and southerners were understood, the movie lost a great deal of its appeal. We feel that it is unfortunate that directors feel they need to bastardize history in order to sell tickets to their film.

Plot Summary

Mississippi Burning takes place in the mid 60’s in the heart of the civil right movement. The film begins with three civil rights activists (two white and one black) traveling at night down a backcountry road. They encounter a car that contains members of the Ku Klux Klan. The car follows them and forces them off the road. The members then kill the activists without a provocation on the part of the activists. FBI agents are then put on the case and travel down to the small town in Mississippi. The two agents have different personalities and ideas of how to solve the case. The lead agent, Willem Dafoe, takes control of the case and calls for more manpower to work on the case despite Gene Hackman’s advice.

This fuels a rivalry between the small town people and the Bureau and strengthens the rivalry between the black community. Members of the KKK and community set fire to the houses and churches of the black people of the town and use physical violence to scare them into not talking to the FBI agents. The extra men brought in (Navy reserve officers) dredge and endlessly search the swamp until the abandoned car of the activists is recovered. The search is continued for the three missing bodies of the young men. While questioning the members of the Klan, the families are also interviewed. While one of the family interviews is taking place, Gene Hackman meets and develops feelings for one of the Klan member’s wives.

 

Throughout the movie Gene continues to visit the woman (Frances McDormand) and they grow closer. As the rivalry grows to an uncontrollable frenzy of destruction, Willem Defoe’s character is forced to use the tactics of Gene Hackman and recruit a small group of Hackman’s friends to bully the truth out of the KKK members.

A friend of Hackman’s (A black man) helps scare the kidnapped mayor of the town into revealing the names of the men involved in the murders. The agents use bully tactics to scare the truth out of one of the Klan members. The film ends with snapshots of the guilty members with their sentences beneath them. All but one man is sent to prison.

 

Critique

In 1988 the film Mississippi Burning drew a much criticism due to the racial and violent content of the film. Critics took sides and either praised or condemned the film. Roger Ebert called it "the best American movie of the year" and stated that it is one of the only movies he has ever seen that shows the real passions of race relations in America, the topic generally being a taboo. But other critics were not so pleased with the film. Pauline Keal of The New Yorker stated that "Parker used the civil rights movement to make a Charles Bronson movie, and, from his blithe public statements, he seems unaware that this could be thought morally repugnant.... The [movie's] manipulation got to me, all right, but the only emotion I felt was hatred for the movie." Clearly the film was a bold statement in 1988.

Our group felt that all actors gave a very memorable performance. Frances McDormand’s character deals with the issues’ of racial conflict as well domestic abuse. The film did make as shocking an impact on our group as it would have if we had viewed it in 1988. The content and issues still disturbed us and made an impact and insight into American racism.

Fact vs. Fiction

The film Mississippi Burning was based on true events that occurred during 1964. It is so far from what happened it is almost like saying a film with World War II as a setting is based on true events because there actually was a war.

The story begins with a car of three civil rights workers in Mississippi heading down to encourage blacks to vote. We see them pulled over by a law enforcement official then shot. This is far from what really happened. The group had originally decided to travel only in the daytime and to make check in calls with the office back home. If the group did not call in to the office would know something was wrong. The group was arrested and held on nothing during the day and released as soon as it got dark. They were then taken by Klan members and the black member of the group was beat to death and the other two were shot on the dam they were buried in.

The station wagon was found in a swamp in the film, but in the facts, it was burned then dumped in the swamp. Agent ward then calls for a search of the swamp for the bodies. Two inaccuracies occur in the film. Ward asks for a hundred men to be sent down, but J. Edgar Hoover did not give him near the amount of men portrayed in the film. Hoover felt that much of the civil rights movement was sponsored by communists and there for did not deserve much manpower. Second, during the search, seven other bodies of blacks that had been killed by Klan members were found in the swamp and river. None of this was discussed in the film.

Parker is accused of showing strong conflict between Hackman and DaFoe, and allowing them to used unorthodox non-standard FBI tactics to scare the information out of the killers. When in fact the murders were finally convicted by information from a bribe of one of the members. It was suggested by several critics that if Parker wanted to make a movie about civil rights in the south during the 60s, that he should have made up a story and used the civil rights as the setting instead of twisting facts to make a film of a true story more thrilling.

Most of the film is also exaggerated by Parker’s techniques. He wants the viewer to hate the Klan and pity the blacks. But what he ends up doing (partly through casting and script) is making the blacks seem like helpless animals that are in the film as sacrificial lambs, and the Klan members as devilish villains that even the most upstanding of all citizens would like to kill if they had the chance. No where in the film are the blacks portrayed as ones that helped in the civil rights struggle.

Finally, many of the scenes had an added Hollywood flair that adds to the movie but takes away from the facts of the real story. One instance of the dramatization is when a house is bombed by the Klan, everything explodes including a fence and mailbox. It is visually entertaining but does not portray actual events.

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Discussion Questions

  1. What film approach is used for the movie?
  2. Do you believe that this film would have been written if not only 2 of the dead activists were white, but also if the heroes hadn’t been white?
  3. Do you believe that the characterization or sound effects play a bigger role in the them of the movie?
  4. Why do you think Parker took a fictional approach in making this film instead of directly basing it off of the true case? Do you feel that a lot of the truth was lost, or that it just made the story more interesting?

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