Race is everywhere here.
The human race. The black race. The race around the track.
Of course the race around the track is different. You are either the first one around it or you’re not. The fact that you are black or brown or red or yellow or white doesn’t change the fact that you either get there first or you don’t.
Unless of course we go back to a time when being black excluded you from any number of sports. Then take all of that over to Nazi Germany and the 1936 Olympics.
It all adds up to Jesse Owens.
Jesse: In those ten seconds, there’s no black or white, only fast or slow.
Of course some white folks will always be comfortable with a narrative in which the triumphant sports figure or the entertainer is black. As long as it more or less ends there. If they can’t be racist regarding some aspects of human interactions they will always find a way to be racist regarding the parts that count the most. At least to them.
And then there is always that fork in the road. Go in one direction and the priority is personal, go in the other direction and the priority is political. And there are always any number of folks lining up from both sides to tug you in the right direction.
Also, the part where Jesse Owens the man fits into mankind coming to grips with how folks react to other folks who are not the same color as them. Something that we seem to be visiting all over again with the new American president. How far back will he turn the clock? Is it or is it not for nothing these days that Trump is being portrayed as a racist? Even a fascist. But does anyone actually believe he can set the clock back 80 years?
The bottom line is that a film of this sort is going to be critiqued on where it draws the line between the man and the moment, the man and the movement; between race over there and race over here; between the individual snapshot and the big picture.
So, is it more or less “revisionist”?
IMDb
[b]Snyder buys Owens new shoes from shoemaker Adi Dassler, who would later found Adidas.
Jesse Owens was born James Cleveland Owens. The name Jesse comes from his first two initials.
His achievement of setting three world records and tying another in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been called “the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport”.
In the movie, Jesse Owens and Luz Long talk during the competition and Long even helps Owens for his qualifying long jump. According to an interview given by Owens to historian Tom Ecker (“Olympic Facts and Fables”) in 1965, this is a myth: Owens and Long never talked during the Olympics. Apparently, this legend was previously created by Owens himself to make Long’s son feel better after his father’s death. However it is true they became friends at the end of the Olympics and kept contact afterwards, until Long’s death in 1943 in Sicily. Owens still expressed his great respect for Long even after that date.
The German zeppelin flying over the Olympiastadion during the beginning of the games is the LZ 129 Hindenburg. One year later, it exploded while docking at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, killing 36 people.[/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(2016_film
trailer: youtu.be/E31LnSw47xo
RACE [2016]
Directed by Stephen Hopkins
White athlete: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…Now what you boys think you’re doing.
Jesse: Just using the showers.
White athlete: Not until we’re through your’re not. You niggers can wait your turn.
White athlete: Yeah, can you believe they let these jiggoboos share a locker room with us.
You know that it’s going to start there.
[b]Larry: Charlie Riley says you can run. Says you’re a natural, best he’s ever seen.
Jesse: Well, I guess.
Larry: Me, personally, I don’t trust naturals 'cause they think they don’t have to work. I will say you can run. And boy, can you jump. What I want to know is - can you win?
…
Larry [to Jesse who has been looking down the whole time]: You know, your mama might have taught you how to dress right, but she sure as hell didn’t teach you anything about manners. You should look a man in the eye when he is speaking to you.
[Jesse looks up]
Larry: Can you work?
Jesse: I was picking a 100 pounds of cotton a day at six years old. You ever pick cotton? The way it cuts you when you pick it off the boll? Yes, sir, I can work.
…
Larry: I was watching you out there today and I’ll tell you this. Your start’s no good, your rhythm’s off and your posture’s lousy. But we can fix all that, that’s easy. But if you want to win it takes more than a pair of legs.
[he taps Jesse on the head]
Larry: You win up here. And that’s the part I don’t know about you yet. I don’t know if you got that.
…
Jesse: I ran the 100 yards last year in Chicago in 9.4. I mean, it’s the same as Wykoff. It’s a world record.
Larry: Records don’t mean shit! You know what matters? Medals. Some kid out of nowhere, snatch your record from you like that. But a gold medal? That’s yours…for life.
…
Larry: You wanna win a gold medal?
Jesse: Well, sure.
Larry: You wanna do it in Berlin?
Jesse: I heard they don’t care much for colored folk over there.
Larry: Well, they don’t care for 'em much here in Columbus either. Is that going to be a problem?
Jesse: No, sir. I just came here to run.
…
Lynn [looking over at Jesse]: Another one? The joke on the board is that they’re thinking of renaming us the “Model-T State”. Any color you want, so long as it’s black.
Larry: Yeah, well if you and Coach Schimdt let them play football, they wouldn’t all choose track and field, huh?
…
Lynn [after Jesse runs in practice]: I don’t know why you look so impressed. That was a second slower than Wykoff’s record.
Larry: Fred Wykoff runs 100 yards in 9.4. Kid just ran a 100 meters.
[Lynn looks at him puzzled]
Larry: Lynn, you do know that meters are longer than yards, yeah?
…
Jesse [who has just broken a record while practicing]: Is there a problem?
Larry [staring at his stopwatch in disbelief]: No, no problem!
Jesse: Want me to do it again?
Larry: Yeah, that’d be great.
…
Avery: What’s this I’m hearing about a boycott?
Jeremiah: Nothing has been decided yet but we are hearing some pretty ugly reports out of Germany.
AAU official: It is not the purpose of the AAU or the AOC or the IOC to tell Germans how to govern their affairs.
Jeremiah: So you think we should just sit back and take their word that they afre going to play fair.
AAU official: I’m saying that politics has no place in sport.
…
Jeremiah: There is a lot of hateful literature coming out of there. And it is not only against the Jews. Now they are saying they don’t want Negros to compete.
Avery: Krauts got kicked in the balls twenty years ago, and they’re still catching their brearth. They need these games. Show they’re back on their feet. Why would they risk us pulling out?
…
Jeremiah: How can you trust the word of a Nazi?
Avery: I’ve never met a Nazi? Have you? Come to think of it, when is the last time you played 18 holes with a Jew…or a Negro?
…
Jesse [after he missed a practice]: Look, Coach, I need that job pumping gas. I got a lot of people counting on me back home.
Larry: I guess I misunderstood. I got the impression when you stood in my office and you looked me in the eye, that YOU MADE ME A GODDAMN COMMITTMENT!!
Jesse: Look, I know I ain’t as fast as I can be, but you need to figure out a way to feed and put clothes on my baby girl. Or else fit your practices in around me. 'Cause I’m all out of options.
Larry: Hey, why didn’t you tell me you had a daughter?
Jesse: 'Cause you never asked.[/b]
Coach gets him a better job. It pays 60 dollars a month to do nothing.
Avery [in Germany]: Look, I’m not here to tell you how to run your country. I walk in a man’s house, I’m not going to piss on his rug. But I don’t expect him to feed me manure and call it foie gras. You want to use these games to sell your nasty little ideas to the world, and I’m hear to tell you that no one is going to stand for it. You’ve got to clean up your act.
Leni [the interpreter for Josef Goebbels]: Would you like me to translate or interpret?
She interprets.
Avery [looking straight at Goebbels]: I want your word that you will not exclude Jews or Negroes from the games. As long as they are Americans, we’ll bring Martians if we want to.
More interpretation. Then Leni “interprets” what Goebbels says back to Avery.
[b]Larry: You also shattered the Ohio State record for the most points in a single year, so congrats.
Jesse: Really? Which cracker did I take that from?
Larry [pointing to himself]: This cracker.
…
Larry [to Jesse regarding Quincella]: The choices your making right now won’t even feel like choices until it is too late.
…
Jeramiah [to Avery]: 58 to 56. Congratulations.
…
Emma: Jesse, this is Representative Davis of the Ohio State legislature. He’s here on behalf of the NAACP.
Jesse: The what?
Davis: The National Association for the Adancement of Colored People.
…
Davis: The Olympic trials are coming up soon…No doubt you hope to qualify and take part?
Jesse: Well, yeah. I mean, yes, sir.
Davis: Even under the Hitler regime? On behalf of the NAACP and the Negro community across America, I hope you don’t go.
Ruth: But this is the Olympic Games. I mean, Jesse’s been training for this his whole life.
Davis: Look, Jesse. You’re the best. You have a chance to strike a powerful blow. I know that it must sound hypocritical for any American to talk about racial bigotry in other countries but that is the reason we must not go to these games. We’ve got a chance here to show our solidarity with the oppressed people of Germany. It’s all part of the same great hatred. We can make those in power aware of their moral obligation to fight against the wrongs that we Negros suffer right here at home.
Henry [Jesse’s father]: Do you think it will make a damn bit of difference? He stays, they ain’t gonna notice. He goes, he can come back with a drawer full of medals, and they will hate him even worse than they did before.
[he turns to his son]
Henry: J.C. You do what you want, you hear me. It ain’t gonna make no difference no how.
…
Jesse: Do you run, Mr. Davis.
Davis: No, not competitively.
Jesse: Figures. Cause you know out there on that track you’re free of all this. The moment that gun goes off can’t nothing stop you. Nothing matters, not color, not money, not even hate. There ain’t no black and white, there’s only fast and slow. For those ten seconds you are completely free. Now here you come and tell me I can’t do it, that I’m letting down my race if I go. What’s that suppose to do for me?
…
Larry [after Jesse announces he is not going]: You get a chance to be a part of history and you’re gonna walk away from it?
Jesse: I’ve got people looking at me for an example.
Larry: What do you mean, people? What people? Black people? I don’t give a shit about any of that!
Jesse: Yeah, well you’re white, Larry! You don’t have to!!
…
Eulace: I read the papers. All those people yelling and screaming at you. It can really get in the way of a man’s concentration, but all that means is there’s a lot of people counting on you.
Jesse: To do what?
Eulace: To get on over there and stick it up Hitler’s ass! Courtesy of Eulace Peacock.
…
Jesse: I’m gonna be there all by myself. The whole world watching. What if I lose…if I lose, it’ll mean those Nazis are right.
Ruth: Quit thinking so much Jesse, it’s not what you’re good at. You was put here to run.
…
Avery [to Goebbels]: You let the chancellor know he congratulates all of the gold medalists or none of them.
[Goebbels looks over to Furstner]
Goebbels [indicating Jesse]: Do you really think he’d allow himself to be photographed shaking hands with that?
…
Leni [to Avery acting as translator]: He says you have a business arrangement.
Avery: That was business! That has nothing to do with this.
Leni [translating not interpreting]: How would it look for for American Olympic Association to have collaborated with us before these games.[/b]
Avery sells out the Jews…
[b]Marty: Oh come on, you know what this is all about? We’re the only Jews.
Cromwell: This has nothing to do with the Jewish question.
…
Track coach: We want to field our strongest runners. And that’s gonna be Ralph and Jesse.
Avery: That’s perfect.
Jesse: No, look, Coach. You gotta run Sam and Marty. I mean, I can’t speak for Ralph, but you gotta give them a shot. I’ve never even ran the relay. I don’t even think I know how to pass a baton…Ralph you do what you want but I ain’t running. Not unless Sam and Marty say it’s alright.
…
Marty: If you lose it’s for nothing. Understand? Sam asnd me would’ve been shafted for nothing. All the world will see is another Nazi waving another medal.
Jesse: What are you trying to say?
Sam: He means don’t lose.
…
Title card: Following his defiance of the Nazi ideal, Carl “Luz” Long was enlisted in the German army and sent to the front lines. He and Jesse remained friends until Long was killed in action during the invasion of Sicily.
…
Doorman: I’m sorry sir but your friends will have to use the servants entrance.
Larry [stunned, pointing to Jesse]: Are you kidding me? You know who this is?
Doorman: Yes, sir.
Larry: I mean, they are holding the dinner for him!
Doorman: Yes, sir. I’m sorry, Mr. Owens, sir, but those are the rules.
…
Title card: The White House never publicaly acknowledged Jesse Owens, or his success in the 1936 Olympics.[/b]