Madam CJ Walker's great granddaughter throws Netflix series UNDER the salon chair

[BigMoneyGrip]

She didn’t receive the bag

 

[get these nets]

I think the Harriet and Madam Walker projects were granted a sort of immunity to criticism by Black writers,academics,journalists. . I got the impression the success of these projects was believed to open up doors for future projects about African American women, directed by AA women.......and the pass was granted.

Anybody who disagrees, I want you to watch this 2 minute clip. Anthony Anderson & Marlon Wayans speak briefly about attending Howard when In Living Colour was on the air.

 

[get these nets]

This is kind of a moot point imo. The same people would have watched the film if it didn’t have all the colorism and lesbianism in it. I’ll give you the haddish casting as expanding the audience, but outside of that I don’t think adding in those elements garnered any more of an audience. If I knew they butchered her legacy BEFORE seeing the film, I would never have watched it. I think more than anything they alienated audience members. Hollywood changes things around for entertainment purposes in many historical films, but this story stood well on its own without the fluff.

.

How could a point about tailoring the script/ altering casting decisions to expand the audience be moot in an era where social media plays such a big role in promoting content?

This wasn't a traditional miniseries aired across a number of nights, but I imagine that ins./twitter and forum discussions about the soap opera elements in the opening episodes encouraged people to watch it who otherwise wouldn't have thought about watching it.

The author of the piece in OP implies that this might have been the motive for the script and directing, the producers not thinking that the story was interesting enough by itself to draw a large audience.

 

[Jblaze204]

Many creative decisions, Asher explained to Deggans, were devised “to help the story resonate and feel contemporary to today’s audience.”

This was a mistake imo, Madam Walker's accession into a business woman against a racist power structure (America) provided plenty of conflict and drama and didn't need all the extra stuff (colorism, LGBT daughter).

She didn’t receive the bag

If you're referring to the great grandaughter, this ain't it. In the article she spoke about how the main writer didn't keep her in the loop on purpose. The great grandaughter remains quiet as to not derail the project that had black people attached.

I know when it comes to film/shows we like to run with the "white suits" are responsible with the way black people are depicted but in this case this project had black people - black woman specifically, and this was turned into something else...

 

[invalid]

I still haven't watched the series but I'm glad @Get These Nets posted this because I was having a hard time reconciling the criticism being levied at the series on the one hand but that A'lelia signed off on the project on the other. So I'm glad that she was able to expound on why she just went with the flow.

I think that was a bad decision on her part though. I personally could not have my name associated with a project in which I didn't agree. Don't understand how people could just give their blessings on projects that have a certain magnitude without having seen the project in it's entirety or having gotten familiar with every detail. Because if things go sour, you're left with having to expend time and energy doing damage control, as A'lelia is doing now or in other situations like Ja Rule and the Fyre Festival debacle. I guess A'lelia posses that old noblesse oblige trait that many of our old leaders had, that she had to take one for the team or for the grander scheme (black women and black production), but in the end, all that was left was "Madame Walker deserved better than this." I couldn't have done that.

I don't understand the justifications that liberties need to be taken on projects like this to "expand the audience". Period pieces, when they stay true to their core audience, can be a huge success. We can look to the popularity of series like Downton Abbey or The Crown for examples like this. But when you're trying to make a period piece, and at the same time, also appeal to a demographic that stans someone like Tiffany Haddish, it's bound to be a disaster. Everything is not for everyone, or in this case, every black millennial/generation z viewer.

I want to say something but before I do, I want to preface by saying that when you are doing largely biographical pieces, I don't think you should take the type of liberties with a person's personal life in that it would deviate from their presented persona. I think that when depicting a person, liberties should always operate within the facts.

The facts that we know about A'lelia Walker was that she had two boyfriend's at the same time and that she went on to marry. Those are the facts that are presented to us.

But when I heard about the LGBT angle being taken with respect to her, it did not surprise me at all. From pictures that I've seen and from some details that I know of her, I've speculated on whether A'lelia was a closet lesbian myself. In her adult years, she presents very "masculine" in photos and I've heard accounts that some of her Harlem parties were very "open" and "wild". A'lelia was close friends with all of Harlem's literati and creatives, many of whom were LGBTQ, and that her parties reflected that demographic and that it was a space for them to be "themselves". So you can imagine the types of things that may have went on.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that a black woman at the beginning of the 20th centuty, who is at the top of a society that is highly regulated by codes of respectability, propriety, and decorum, to have entertained the type of people that she did, and to allow unmitigated certain liberal activities under her watch, I find it hard to believe that she wasn't slant herself. There is no doubt in my mind that A'lelia was on the spectrum.

But, the producers should not have went down that road and just stuck with the known facts, if at most alluded to it in a very discrete way (because of the circumstantial evidence).

Other than that, I don't think it's right to recolor historical figures lives in a way that deviates from the facts of their personas.

 

[get these nets]

From 5/15/20

25 minute interview

 

[invalid]

From 5/15/20

25 minute interview

Interesting.

This Nicole Asher seems like she is a trip.

A comparison of Annie Malone & CJ walker

I also wonder why she didn't mention the mis-characterization of Alelia Walker (my guess is it wasn't too far off the mark)?

.............................

And wow at her mentioning Stanley Nelson and Jill Nelson. Stanley, she mentioned before, being the descendant of the Attorney Freeman Briley (FB) Ransom, but his name wasn't immediately recognizable to me.

Jill Nelson I recognized immediately. She's up there with being one of my favorite black critics and writers. Actually, she's a great writer. I did not know her and Stanley were siblings. Which makes sense. Her brother is a MacArthur genius. He was the one that created that Boss Documentary that you've posted on here before.

And their mother's name is A'lelia as well.

Jill is a very colorful character. I met her at the Harlem Book Festival some years ago (same festival I met A'lelia B.)

Her family has been on Martha's Vineyard since the beginning of the 20th century. She wrote a really beautiful book about black life on the island and how it wasn't about snobbery like LOG made it out to be.

Speaking of...

Jill Nelson wrote the most scathing (and entertaining) critique of LOG's OKOP that I had ever read.

It's clear that A'lelia and Jill Nelson are pretty close.

A'lelia on OKOP -

Spoiler

'Very silly'

Bundles, a retired network news executive, is the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, the former laundrywoman whose hair care products made her the richest woman, black or white, of the early 20th century.

Walker and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, were featured heavily in the first book.

But Bundles, who wrote "On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker," says that in a parallel to some blacks today who have recently become rich, Walker was shunned by some wealthy blacks who saw her as nothing more than a washwoman.

"Who is Lawrence Otis Graham to make these delineations? Who made him the arbiter?" Bundles asked. "There are a lot of really wealthy black people who aren't going around saying they hope to get in this book. None of them care. It is very silly."

Jill Nelson on OKOP-

Spoiler

---THE BLACK ELITE -- WHATEVER THAT IS.-
BY JILL NELSON

The nation might be slouching toward the millennium, but it was the best I could do to slouch into the Harvard Club. I was invited to a fete for "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class," a new book by attorney and writer Lawrence Otis Graham. It was hard not to suspect that as much as the evening was about the book, it was even more another instance of modern-day communal branding, in which instead of Massa burning his mark upon our flesh, we put it on our backs. Or the covers of our books. Declare ourselves important and in doing so, as they say in Narcotics Anonymous, "compare ourselves out." Make sure everyone knows we're not them, they're not our kind of people, whoever they are. It was the upscale, bourgeois, literate equivalent of what Tommy Hilfiger garb is to the working class.

I kept my head down going in, hoping not to be recognized by any of my radical cronies. (In the interests of full disclosure, several family members and I are mentioned in "Our Kind of People," although none of them ever met Graham. I am pissed that I'm identified twice as "former Washington Post reporter," a job I quit in 1990, but it's apparently my only accomplishment that matters to Graham's kind of people.) I was ambivalent about both the event and the book. I grew up in a family in which class bonding was frowned upon, in an era of -- so we thought -- class-busting social transformation. Yet here I was, 30 years after, attending a party to celebrate the black elite. Me, I just wanted to know who they are. Or who the writer thinks they are. Or, at my most cynical, what the hell type of black folks identify themselves as "the black elite."

Inside, I'm sucked into a large, wood-paneled room reeking, perhaps of old money, but definitely of fried foods. Waiters whip by offering snifters of cognac (the event was underwritten by Hennessy cognac -- no low-class purveyors of malt liquor "40s" here) and martini glasses of Brandy Alexanders -- made, of course, with Hennessy. On the way to the corner bar to get a Diet Coke, I manage to decline the crab balls, cold canapés, cheese, crackers and fruit. My near downfall, being from a people in which the three characteristics of our favorite foods are greasy, salty and fried, is a platter of what I suspect are miniature egg rolls nestled around a bowl of that thick, orangish dipping stuff. "Egg rolls?" I eagerly ask the waiter, fingers poised over the platter. "No. Spring rolls," he corrects. I snatch my fingers back, appetite gone but wiser. They sure as hell looked like egg rolls to me, but when you're noshing with the elite, they're spring.

Sipping my soda, I introduce myself to the man on my left, a rather intriguing cross between Yaphet Kotto and Truman Capote, wearing thick black-framed glasses with bright blue lenses. "What brought you here?" I ask cheerily, hoping for a discourse on our kind of people. "Someone told me I should be here, but I'm on my way to the Maya Angelou presentation at the Waldorf," he says in a voice somewhere between a yawn and a drawl, looking over my shoulder. I wonder if always being on your way to someplace more important than where you are is a hallmark of the elite, but attempts at further conversation are both boring and futile. The mofo -- er, I mean, cad -- won't even make eye contact. I move on when it occurs to me to slap him upside his bald head, seize his lapels and scream, "I may not be your type of people, but I am somebody!"

Luckily, I meet Audrey Thorne, member of the greater New York chapter of the Links, a black women's organization profiled in the book. Sharp as a mortal can get in a black suit, ropy rhinestone necklace -- could anything that thick be diamonds? -- matching earrings and a crown of silver hair, Ms. Thorne is not on her way someplace else. She's exactly where she's at. "I think the book is wonderful because it has so much history, it's enlightened me to so many things I didn't know about. Race, slavery, it's enlightening to me." She's friendly and looks me in the eye so happily I don't have the heart to ask how it comes to pass that a woman in her 70s needs to be enlightened about race or slavery. "We're talking about one of those children who is clearly the essence of good things happening to a human being," chimes in a woman sharing her table, but before I can ask her exactly what those good things are, I see an opening in the circle around the author and take it.

Lawrence Otis Graham is slight, impeccably dressed, his sharp nose the product of plastic surgery. He greets me effusively, professes to be a fan and we bond briefly, not around class, but the rigors of book tours. I feel the crowd moving toward the right, luckily not in the direction of either Clarence Thomas or better munchies at the Waldorf, but the auditorium, where Graham and three panelists -- Dr. Marcella Maxwell, former chair of the NYC Commission on Human Rights and on the Status of Women and Links member; Dr. R. Chester Redhead, dentist, professor and longtime member of the Boule; and Anne Griffith, an attorney at Battle Fowler LLP -- will participate in what Hennessy bills as a "fireside chat" about the black upper class, moderated by Fox 5 anchorwoman Carol Jenkins.

On the way, I run into a writer whose father was an extremely successful jurist. "I have heard no buzz, but based upon history, I don't want my picture taken," she confides. As we snicker, I try to figure out how I can get the film from the photographer who snapped me at the door. "I'm here because I'm interested. Whatever these people are supposed to be, they should be people like my family. People who went to Vail, other places, and belonged to clubs, but there was an awareness of who we are and how we got where we are. Not just people trying to be like white folks." Before I can comment that many white folks don't want to be like white folks, I realize the auditorium's filling up rapidly in an elite version of bum-rushing the door. It's imperative I grab one of the rapidly vanishing seats. I may not know much, but I do know that no kind of people want to be left standing.

Terrie Williams, founder of the PR firm who arranged the event, welcomes us, graciously dedicates the evening to former N.Y. Amsterdam News gossip columnist Cathy Connor, and in listing the many places Connor covered commits the faux pas "our kind of people" -- or aspirants -- would never make: She says "Oaks Bluff" rather than "Oak Bluffs." Half the 200 people crammed into the room holler in unison, "Oak!" "I don't hang out there," shrugs a nonplused Williams, moving right along.

With the exception of Graham, who seems to revel in a celebration of class that is essentially the Negro equivalent of the worst of Caucasian snobbery -- focused on skin color, hair texture, profession and membership in social clubs -- the panelists exhibit varying degrees of discomfort at essentially being asked to break out their crème de la black crop credentials before a group of people composed of the successful, the curious, the indifferent, the hostile, the wannabes and, that staple of New York events, the moochers. Wisely, Maxwell and Redhead focus on the importance of education for upward mobility, skirting the festering issues of exclusion based on color, hair texture, club membership and pedigree, whatever that means. Still, it's hard not to squirm when Redhead tells a story about not wanting to take his dad, a working-class immigrant who supported him in becoming a doctor, to the famous Harlem bar the Red Rooster because "You split verbs and dangle modifiers." When his father asked his son why when he wanted to borrow money the way he talked didn't bother him, Redhead replied, "Because I'd rather say 'I is rich' than 'I am poor.'"

Anne Griffith, at 28 the youngest member of the panel, was also the most uncomfortable. "This book has given me a chance to examine where I've come from, what my values are and where I'd like to go," Griffith says, carefully choosing her words. "And to contemplate how I feel about various titles and images."

It would have been fascinating to discuss the ways in which over the last two decades Americans of all colors define, label and separate ourselves into tribes based on varying notions of class. Having lost faith in the possibility of equality, inclusion and social transformation by any means other than the almighty dollar, we rush to buy ourselves out of a bad situation. Still, leave it to Graham to bring it on down, if not to that dark-skinned, big-lipped, low-class, not-invited-to-join-Jack-and-Jill home, to its most superficial. Color, hair, cotillions and debutante balls are what he wants to talk about, the parameters of his own insular experience of the black elite, devoid of any connection to a larger world. "We were fighting over who's going to commandeer the yacht while black people were getting their butts kicked and Martin Luther King was getting shot," Graham shamelessly announces, as if indifference to King's assassination was proof of pedigree as opposed to an embarrassingly disingenuous admission of ignorance. Ditto his joyful comment, "Isn't it wonderful that we too as black people have dynasties? It's not just the Roosevelts and the Kennedys!" Am I the only one struck by the pathos, irony and inaccuracy of this statement, or simply the only audience member sucking her teeth?

And even if it's a good line when he says, "Until I was 12 years old I thought that when white people went to Martha's Vineyard, they were just passing through," in the end it's just another sign of how smug and self-referential Graham's world and book is. He posits himself and his how-much-money-does-your-Daddy-make, what-clubs-do-you-belong-to, are-you-lighter-than-a-brown-paper-bag worldview at the center and then defines everyone and everything else according to this marginal and misguided perspective.

Then it's time for audience Q&A. Or, more appropriately with black people, T&A -- testimony and attitude. Even though Graham cheerily embraces and celebrates his snobbery, apparently the panel has pricked a collective nerve, as several women rise to testify to the harmful effects of their exclusion -- based upon skin color, geography or economics -- from Graham's light-skinned, apolitical, ahistorical elite. Thank goodness for J. Bruce Llewellyn, president and CEO of Coca-Cola of Pennsylvania, who cuts through the morass of exclusivity with a voice of realism and sanity. "The reason we were in Oak Bluffs or Sag Harbor is because the white community would not let us buy property anywhere else. I'm happy about the fact that we do have these things, but education is the only way out of this mess. The other thing is, you can straighten your hair, you can be light or dark, but when white people see you, you're still black."

But it's Ed Lover, morning DJ on the popular radio station Hot 97, who evokes applause and cheers when he stands, clad in sweats and nylon parka and snarls, "It's sad and disgusting that black people would shut other people out because they're darker than a brown paper bag. If I had to be part of the black upper class and shut my people out, I'd rather be a thug for life!" Although the truth is that the notion that successful black folks' choices are either white-faced minstrelsy or designer thug-dom points out how far we haven't come and the need for serious discussion. Not here, not now.

Moderator Jenkins wraps up the session before the verbal fisticuffs move to another level, attendants open oak doors and we swarm back to the reception area to scarf assorted late-night fats and, of course, more cognac. The buzz in the room is confused and unrequited, as if an important topic had been broached, clumsily handled, then retracted. My best friend L.E. is ready to split, her simple mission unaccomplished. The daughter of professionals with a home on the Vineyard who belong to the right clubs, her issue ain't color, class or cotillions. "There aren't any good-looking single men here, of any color, with money or without it," she declares, yanking on her coat. "I'm going home."

Jill Nelson is the author of "Volunteer Slavery" and "Straight, No Chaser." Her last piece for Salon was a profile of Richard Pryor.

SALON | Feb. 4, 1999

 

[invalid]

Anybody who disagrees, I want you to watch this 2 minute clip. Anthony Anderson & Marlon Wayans speak briefly about attending Howard when In Living Colour was on the air.

Are you referring to the support the show received or the criticism from Marlon's professors?

 

[invalid]

Hmm...

She probably wasn't a lesbian.

In the show, A'Lelia is in a relationship with a woman named Esther, which causes tension between her and her mother. However, her granddaughter and biographer, A'Lelia Bundles, attests that Esther is a fictional character. "What is portrayed in the series is certainly not something that really happened. And it certainly wasn't a source of conflict with the mother," Bundles tells OprahMag.com.

WIKIPEDIA
Self Made is definitive about A'Lelia's sexual orientation, but the truth about her dating history is hazier—simply due to a lack of documentation. While writing A'Lelia's biography, Bundles is struggling with that very void.

"I don't have any letters. I don't have any documentation. I don't have anything that can tell me definitively. So I'm trying to work with what I know with circumstantial evidence," Bundles says.

Still, Bundles has found evidence that A'Lelia dated a woman after her third marriage. "Her last relationship after the failed third marriage may have been with a woman. A person who was a longtime friend of hers," Bundles says.

However, we do know this about A'Lelia: She was an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. "She had many friends who were queer. She was comfortable, they were very comfortable in her home," Bundles says.

The True Story of "Self Made's" A'Lelia Walker

This is conflicting.

A'lelia herself admits that her grandmother was in a relationship with another woman.

And what was the rationale for Esther, another fictional character, as A’Lelia Walker’s lover? As a plot twist, it showed conflict between mother and daughter. But the real-life drama involved A’Lelia’s two boyfriends: Dr. Wiley Wilson, whom Walker distrusted, and Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, whom she adored.

The rationale was probably that A'lelia went through three men and had no biological children during a time when contraception was probably not widely available, surrounded herself around Harlem's famous LGBT personalities, and was in a relationship with a women.

If it walks like a duck.

 

[invalid]

Now that I think about it..

I thought I heard there was alot of contention between Annie Malone and Walker and Booker T. and Walker.

Gonna go look into this.

You sign off on the project but say the film writers took liberties, but then you're contradicting yourself on some things you claim they took liberties.

Something don't smell right.

I have a hunch that all her powerful friends thought the show was garbage and now she has to save face by throwing the writers/producers under the bus but may have initially really liked the story especially it's appeal to a younger audience.

Something about A'lelia's hairstyle has been throwing me off.

It's too young and a trendy for a woman of her position.

 

[get these nets]

@boy

The entertainment industry is extremely difficult to navigate, even for a person with her education and background in media. I gave her a pass, and felt that she was just trying to set the record straight.
In light of some of the conflicting messages you've pointed out, I'm going to reassess my views on Ms. Bundles and the series.

(the forum auto save function for drafts of posts let me down, again. I had parts of longer replies saved, or so I thought)

 

[get these nets]

Interesting.

This Nicole Asher seems like she is a trip.

Asher and the director are either hacks or they don't have confidence in their storytelling abilities. The elephants in the room are Scandal and How I Got Away with Murder, though............not the reality shows that were mentioned. I don't watch either show, but because of their success, it's difficult to avoid reading about them in entertainment platforms. Those shows being ratings successes and featuring high powered Black women in soap opera scenarios is what put the battery in the back of Asher and company to turn Madam Walker into (the late)Diahann Carroll in Dynasty.

"Oh, I get it, you're Biggie she's Alexis and and he's Puffy Madam Walker is Dominique".

I grew up with sisters who watched their stories. These reality shows and Scandal etc are all channeling soap operas that Black women grew up watching. The crossover success of these shows revealed an audience willing and eager to view Black characters in these scenarios.


That the MCJW story was about real people, with living descendants meant nothing to Asher and company. They just saw a potential hit miniseries to put on their resumes.

I cringed when I saw the heavy handed simplistic way the villain was written. I'm like really? The light skinned woman is wearing Pink? Could they be any more obvious? I expected them to have her skee-weeing at some point.
heheehehehehe

Asher and company are hacks.

THOUGH, I do think that their concerns about expanding the audience for the series was based on reality. They just went about it the wrong way. If anybody reading this can think of the last projects similar to this one, covering Civil War to WW2 era ,I'd be interested to know how they were received supported by Black audiences.
That audience exists but it's difficult to identify and promote to them in 2020. I will share my personal experiences with a recent film in my next post.

I also wonder why she didn't mention the mis-characterization of Alelia Walker (my guess is it wasn't too far off the mark)?

.............................

And wow at her mentioning Stanley Nelson and Jill Nelson. Stanley, she mentioned before, being the descendant of the Attorney Freeman Briley (FB) Ransom, but his name wasn't immediately recognizable to me.

Jill Nelson I recognized immediately. She's up there with being one of my favorite black critics and writers. Actually, she's a great writer. I did not know her and Stanley were siblings. Which makes sense. Her brother is a MacArthur genius. He was the one that created that Boss Documentary that you've posted on here before.

Shortly after the debut of the series, Ms Bundles responded to the critics by posting a link to the original documentary about Madam Walker. It was Stanley Nelson's first media project, if I'm not mistaken.(and it shows). He's one of the top filmmakers in the world now.
Stanley and Jill are talented and accomplished people, raised, nurtured, and encouraged to excel.

And their mother's name is A'lelia as well.

Jill is a very colorful character. I met her at the Harlem Book Festival some years ago (same festival I met A'lelia B.)

Her family has been on Martha's Vineyard since the beginning of the 20th century. She wrote a really beautiful book about black life on the island and how it wasn't about snobbery like LOG made it out to be.

Speaking of...

Jill Nelson wrote the most scathing (and entertaining) critique of LOG's OKOP that I had ever read.

It's clear that A'lelia and Jill Nelson are pretty close.

A'lelia on OKOP -
Jill Nelson on OKOP-

DAMN !!! I'm reading it and cringing/ducking like when I watch boxing knockout compilation.


She figuratively put him in a guillotine, as she should have. The same way that the hacks on the Madam Walker series reduced a full and interesting life to soap opera elements for ratings/views , he reduced the history of a segment of a community to soap opera elements to sell books.

The danger of what he did is that, because this was a group mainly unknown to most people......his book will form the first impression of them to outsiders. First and permanent impression....."confirming" that they are like that.

Because he lived an isolated/sequestered life, he didn't care. Other members of that community who live,socialize, and interact with other Black people were right to be offended.

 

[get these nets]

THOUGH, I do think that their concerns about expanding the audience for the series was based on reality. They just went about it the wrong way. If anybody reading this can think of the last projects similar to this one, covering Civil War to WW2 era ,I'd be interested to know how they were received supported by Black audiences.
That audience exists but it's difficult to identify and promote to them in 2020. I will share my personal experiences with a recent film in my next post.

.

@boy @tater
The film I'm referring to was about a distinctly African American music genre, one of the central figures in its history/formation , and was executive produced by the musician the public most closely associates with the music.

Spoiler

When I saw it, the theater was mostly filled with white people. I tried to find forums to discuss it, and there mostly non Black spaces. I remember that I was in a music related thread here that sank to "y'all copy everything from us" level. So, thinking that people were serious ............I thought for certain that the chest beating set had supported this biopic film about this important figure in their cultural history.
And of course, they did no such thing.

It was a weird film, and difficult to follow....so I wasn't surprised that it didn't pick up a lot of buzz after opening week. But because of the importance of Jazz in American culture, I was genuinely surprised that more Black people didn't see this film.

 

[invalid]

Link to view archived video (have to register)

Artistic License and the Challenges of History Based Drama - Crowdcast

 

[invalid]

The film I'm referring to was about a distinctly African American music genre, one of the central figures in its history/formation , and was executive produced by the musician the public most closely associates with the music.

Spoiler

undefined

Sorry, when I get tagged in a post, I only receive a notification that I was tagged 50% of the time. Must be a glych. I'm always surprised when I go back to threads and see I was tagged in something but didn't get the notification.

I hadn't even heard of this project with Marsalis.

When I saw it, the theater was mostly filled with white people. I tried to find forums to discuss it, and there mostly non Black spaces. I remember that I was in a music related here that sank to "y'all copy everything from us" level. So, thinking that people were serious ............I thought for certain that the chest beating set had supported this biopic film about this important figure in their cultural history.
And of course, they did no such thing.

This is the thing. There are enough period and historical dramas out there that have been incredibly successful to know that there is an audience for it. The reality is the support is going to come from an overwhelming white majority who have an appreciation of historicity and authentic storytelling without the need for serious embellishment.

The truth of the matter is that it's a cultural thing. We're a colorful people, we love flash, drama, and exaggeration. We live our lives with "extra-seasoning" and want that reflected in our entertainment. So I get it.

However, there are black people that share in the appreciation of historicity and every much enjoy historical productions that are true to it's authenticity.

You appeal to them and you appeal to their white counterparts. Because overseasoned meat is less edible than underseasoned meat.

The reality is that today, a black historical retelling like this is going to only appeal to black history Lovers, black academians, black feminist, black LGBT(taking account the LGBT angle), and black literarians. The black hip hop generation will largely be non-plussed without the extras.