The 1967 Detroit Riot was a horror show – go here to read the Wiki on what happened. The slaughter of black lives went on for five days, and within those five days, there were many stories to be told by any enterprising filmmaker. Director Kathryn Bigelow chose to fictionalize the real story of the Algiers Motel – you can read the Wiki for “the Algiers Motel incident” here. The “incident” left three young black teenagers dead, and two white females and seven black men traumatized, beaten and humiliated at the hands of Detroit police officers, Michigan State Police and National Guardsmen. Bigelow used the real story and switched around some names and circumstances and made the film Detroit.

Detroit’s reviews are all over the place – some critics are calling it a masterpiece and some are saying it’s a “misfire.” The film looks very difficult to watch for many reasons, and I imagine there will be thinkpieces written about how a white female director “handles” race and violence within the movie. But here’s an interesting take from Ira Madison III at the Daily Beast: he says that Bigelow made the choice to erase black women from the story. Madison maintains that if Bigelow merely told the story of what went down at the Algiers (fictionalized as it is), there would be no cause to call out the erasure of black women. But Bigelow follows the story to the trials of the white policemen, and that’s the problem:

One of the most horrifyingly abundant images in America is the face of a black mother grieving for her slain child. Gwen Carr, Sybrina Fulton, and Lezley McSpadden (mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown respectively) were among the many “Mothers of the Movement” who endorsed Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention last year. When black boys and men are killed, it is often their mothers who take up the cause of justice when the legal system fails them. It’s an unsung tradition that includes brave women like Rebecca Pollard, the mother of Aubrey Pollard, one of three young black men murdered at the Algiers Motel during the 1967 Detroit riot.

It is Rebecca’s stunned face that was pictured in the Chicago Tribune on June 11, 1969, seen leaving the courtroom after an all-white jury found Detroit police officer Ronald August innocent in the murder of her son. Rebecca’s face is why it’s so egregious that there are no black women in the trailer for Detroit. Social media was quick to call out the seeming erasure of black women from the story of the 1967 riot—an understandable charge given that the film’s title is a misnomer, as it has little to do with the city of Detroit itself and the entire scope of the riot.

…Unfortunately, the lights don’t come up once the Algiers victims escape their Sartre-esque trap. Boal’s script continues on to the aftermath of the riot and the trials of officers Ronald August, Robert Paille, and David Senak. It’s here that the claims of erasing black women from the narrative hold weight. Detroit breaks tradition with most of Bigelow’s oeuvre as she attempts to use her film to bring some modicum of justice to Carl Cooper, Fred Temple, and Aubrey Pollard, who never received it from that all-white jury in 1969.

In one fleeting moment after the officers are acquitted, a black woman insists to reporters that if white men were found in the hotel with black women, no one would have died. It’s a statement that sadly rings true, but in the context of Detroit, laying this piece of dialogue at the end of the film instead of dissecting it exposes the weaknesses in Bigelow’s and Boal’s approach. To truly condemn these officers and achieve justice for the grieving families—as well as a ravaged city that still has not fully recovered—you must include the stories of the black women who sustain the movement; who grieved for their sons so profoundly that they held mock trials in their churches (one of which saw Rosa Parks famously act as a juror) to prepare them for the verdict and educate the community on what happened that night. Detroit is a triumph when Bigelow documents a single night of horrors, but when she has to conjure up the souls of the men and women who awoke the next morning, the spirits of Detroit are silent.

[From The Daily Beast]

I think Madison makes a valid point – Bigelow wanted to make a film about the Algiers Motel murders and there weren’t any black women involved, so that part of it is fine. But then Bigelow continues the story to the trials of the police officers and that’s when the film could have used the mothers of the murdered teenagers to ground the story of what happens next. Ira Madison is also the same writer who half-way defended Sofia Coppola for “staying in her lane” with The Beguiled, by the way. He’s not excoriating Bigelow for erasing black women, he’s saying that the argument is valid and should be addressed.

Photos courtesy of WENN, IMDB.