The Good Lord Bird begs the question: "Can a white person ever usefully tell a slave story?

The New York Times

Carvell Wallace, who visited the set of the Showtime series, recalled Ethan Hawke telling him at the TV press tour in January he wanted to "get it right." "How, precisely, one 'gets it right' when it comes to the intersection of slavery and Hollywood is at this point unclear," says Wallace. "Last year’s Harriet, meant to lend movie magic to one of America’s most truly heroic figures, Harriet Tubman, landed with a thud. So far, this year’s Antebellum — which trades on the considerable power of Janelle Monáe to tell a horror tale that both is and isn’t about slavery — seems to have underwhelmed audiences. The problem isn’t just that the films aren’t particularly well made; most movies aren’t. It has more to do, I suspect, with the offensiveness inherent in subjecting the still-living trauma of America’s racism to the unavoidably flattening and glossifying effect of Hollywood. The challenge faced by Hawke and company is that for white men to prominently place their names on a tale of slavery on Showtime in 2020 is a far sight riskier than for (Good Lord Bird author James) McBride, a Black man, to have spun his yarn in a novel in 2013. It is a daunting proposition, and one that makes me wonder: Can a white person ever usefully tell a slave story — or, more specific, can they tell a story that is useful to the descendants of the enslaved, rather than to their own egos or cinematic fantasies?" ALSO: The Good Lord Bird is a timely reminder that Americans aren’t usually fans of progress.