My AAS Major Jiminy Cricket (Roots, 2016)

Hi, my name is Micah Ariel Watson. I am an African-American Studies major and a Film minor and I cannot watch movies about slavery. Welcome to honesty hour. 

Twelve Years A Slave—haven’t seen it. 

Django Unchained—watched a bunch of making of documentaries about it but…haven’t seen it. 

Amistad—nope. 

Now, I have seen Sankofa and that was pretty good. But it was for a class assignment, so I don’t really think it counts. 

And don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m trying to forget or erase the past—I did choose to study it, after all. It’s that I am just simply not good with graphic violence. When I see someone get shot or punched—or whipped—I cringe. Well actually, I more than cringe. It’s like I can feel the strike through my entire body, then it lingers and makes its way up to my brain, and then I feel the blow again in my heart. There’s probably a scientific word for that. 

So, naturally, when I heard about the remake of Roots, I watched the commercials in awe and interest, but really had no intentions of ever watching it. My professor, Kevin Everson, mentioned how he caught glimpses of the picture being shot. I thought that was pretty cool and considered checking it out….naahhh, that was never going to happen. Then, I re-watched CNN’s The Seventies episode where they talked about the impact of the original Roots on modern television. The weeklong miniseries was revolutionary. No one had told the story of slavery through the eyes of Africans in this way before. It also featured popular television dad’s, Cicely Tyson, OJ Simpson, and LaVar Burton, who I was first introduced to through Reading Rainbow—go figure. Side note: I highly recommend the CNN docu-series The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties (and pretty much any other CNN doc). Bomb. Then there's hearing about the impact of Alex Hayley's book in a lot of my classes. So after finding all of these great reasons to watch Roots…I still wasn’t gonna watch it. Sorry. 

But here I am, writing this while watching the second episode. Micah, how on earth did you get here? Read on. 

The boys in my house are both out of town. So tonight, it’s just my mom, my sister, and me. GIRLS’ NIGHT! And what do you do on girls’ night? Do your nails, eat popcorn, watch chick flicks! Wrong. Not with my family.  I had every intention of coming home and watching white boys throw a pigskin around with Friday Night Lights reruns (I love this show with every fiber of my being). But no, my sister who writes spoken word about the struggle and spent her entire 7th grade summer binging on SVU and my mom who finds art in prison documentaries were like “let’s watch Roots!” They were talking about it like it was The Notebook, for heaven sakes. I was going to let them do their thing while I enjoyed my Memorial Day leftovers. But my little AAS-major-Jiminy-cricket, told me to stay and watch it. So we went to the DVR list, pressed play, and began watching Roots. 

It was hard.

But the first episode was also so beautiful that I got through it (flinching every 2.4 seconds). The History Channel gave us a stunning and intriguing view of what life was like in Juffure, Kunta Kinte’s homeland. I was most fascinated by the process of making a young man into a Mandingo Warrior. One of the most enlightening aspects of my studies has been learning about the advanced African civilizations. Before Hillman, there was Timbuktu. Many communities were close knit, well structured, and powerful. Let me say it one more time for the people in the back: Black people never needed Europeans. And that makes the reality of slavery that much more painful. 

Roots takes us from Juffure to Annapolis, Maryland, to the Atlantic graveyard, to the Waller Farm in Virginia (a sarcastic “wahoowa” to all of you Hoos). It goes without saying that all of the actors gave gorgeous and compelling performances. In the first episode, we’ve already seen Derek Luke and Forrest Whitaker. Malachi Kirby, the actor who plays Kunta Kinte, is continuously taking my breath away. 

I like the way that English is used in this piece. When both the free and enslaved Africans are speaking to one and other, they use English. But when they are speaking to white people, there is a language barrier. Later, we see Kunta go through the process of learning English. The conventional use of English is well articulated and easily understood. 

It was well shot, the costumes were fantastic, and the music added a noticeable layer of depth that I really appreciated. Congratulations, Micah! You got through all two hours and thirteen minutes of the episode, you are now free to fangirl over Tim Riggins.

Then I saw the preview for the second episode and Emayatzy Corinealdi’s face flashed across the screen and I said to myself “well, maybe a few more minutes.” I recognized Corinealdi from Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere, a simple and brilliant film about a woman struggling with love while her husband served his prison sentence. She was fantastic as Belle. An actor I love can convince me to watch pretty much anything. So here I am, flinching every time she tends to Kunta Kinte’s stub of a foot (I basically just passed out while writing that). Her and Kunta’s love is beautiful. In case y’all weren’t sure if I was going to jump the broom when I get married, there should be no doubt. 

This reimagined Roots pulls at every single one of my heartstrings. Not just because it is well-done. But because it’s real. These are my people. So, in some ways, I’m grateful for this cringe instinct, because it reminds me of who I am, where I come from, and why it’s so important to keep fighting. My flinching can’t even compare to what people like Kunta Kinte and his family went through, just to get me here. Call it cliché, but I am currently ALL in my feelings, so it is what it is. I think I’m gonna keep watching. Anika Noni Rose is coming, I have no choice. 

Hi, my name is Micah Ariel Watson. I am an African-American Studies major and a Film minor…and I am in the process of watching a miniseries about slavery. Progress. 

And after this, I may just be able to watch an upcoming movie that my hairstylist Willie was telling me about, Free State. We’ll see.