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SELMA is a timely and riveting film that has received near universal acclaim for its dramatic treatment of the Civil Rights Movement, one of the most significant social movements in U.S. history. SELMA is not a biography about Martin Luther King Jr., though it places him at the center of a drama about a moment in history that it links to the black civil rights struggle of today. SELMA concerns actual events and integrates historical personalities, applying a feminist perspective and employing critical methods of embodiment, discursiveness, and strategic anachronism.
01 Introduction: SELMA--a historical Drama for Our Current Times
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A film's opening sequence is particularly important because it usually signals what the audience should expect of the rest of the work. Watch SELMA's opening sequence, considering the uncommon omission of opening credits. How does SELMA depict MLK in this opening sequence?
02 Question: Without Opening Credits, an Opening Sequence Humanizes
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An opening credits sequence would have reminded audiences that they are about to watch a film about significant historical events, disconnecting SELMA's events from the current and ongoing struggle for civil rights. The opening sequence further underscores SELMA's interest in depicting King's doubt about accepting the renowned Nobel Peace Prize as an individual, as we as his family and work life ambition, thereby humanizing him and setting the stage for learning about the contributions of others to the Civil Rights Movement.
03 Answer: Without Opening Credits, an Opening Sequence Humanizes
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In this exchange, depicting two of the most influential Americans of the 20th century are two British actors. Two other influential American persons portrayed in this film are also performed by British actors. Who are the four personalities and who portrays them? Why would such casting have raised eyebrows, especially in the case of the African American characters?
04 Question: Controversy over Nationality
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David Oyelowo Plays Dr. King and Tom Wilkinson plays Lyndon B. Johnson, as depicted in this sequence. Additionally, Carmen Ejogo plays Coretta Scott King and Tim Roth plays George Wallace. In casting to play the Kings, it could be argued that African American actors, given comparatively few roles that promise to advance their careers, deserved priority consideration. Oyelowo has stated that casting for Selma did not pursue actors for their being British, but also added that British actors promised minimal "baggage."
05 Answer: Controversy over Nationality
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Examine the writing that appears on the screen in a moment. What is curious about the method of communicating the information as written?
06 Question: SELMA'S Telegram Stamp
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The telegram that prints onto the screen is one of many that communicate information efficiently, continually reminding the audience of the FBI's surveillance of leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. They also replace typical date and location stamps to alert the audience that they are not watching a biography. The FBI telegram stamps also underscore that historical events do not occur in isolation. Events are a result of actions over time, influenced by shifting conditions, including relating discourse. Thus, SELMA is a discursive film.
07 Answer: SELMA'S Telegram Stamp
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Who are these two individuals and what is their significance in the film and to the Civil Rights Movement?
08 Question: Nash and Bevel
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Diane Nash was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, including of the Nashville sit-ins while a student in Fisk University. (She appears in the SIT-IN documentary.) James Bevel also participated in the Nashville sit-ins while a student in the American Baptist Theological Seminary. Nash and Bevel went on to cofound the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced "snik") and would marry.
09 Answer: Nash and Bevel
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In which film have you recently heard of students influenced by Martin Luther King's methods in leading a non-violent movement demanding greater civil rights? What's the significance for SELMA?
10 Question: Students and the Civil Rights Movement
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In SIT-IN, the narrator discusses how Fisk University students who demonstrated in sit-ins were influenced by Gandhi’s teachings on non-violence, as practiced by Martin Luther King. The Nashville sit-ins took place in 1960. By 1965, year of SELMA's events, the SNCC had grown into one of the most powerful in the Movement, one that had led the voter registration struggle in the South for three years before the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.
11 Answer: Students and Civil Rights
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Consider the discussion in this scene between the two SNCC members and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) about the two groups' work relating to black voter registration in Selma. What does this exchange say about the interaction between civil rights groups? What does King's interjection say about his activist method?
12 Question: Divergent Methods, Identical Goals
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The exchange between members of the two groups indicates tensions and disagreements, to assert that effecting social change is fraught and messy, rather than smooth and harmonious. King's mantra of method--"Negotiate, Demonstrate, Resist"--testifies to the fluidity and opportunism of his kind of activism. King's method instrumentalized "drama;" it was not passive at all.
13 Answer: Strategizing to Protest
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How does the following scene exemplify embodied cinema? How does it point to the present?
14 Question: Embodied Cinema
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Much of what film characters experience is typically expressed in language--the script. Far less common is presenting the human body as the site of personal experience. This scene depicts the toll the civil rights struggle took on activists' bodies--the body as the site of resistance. The scene's composition and movement resemble images captured of stand-offs between police officers and demonstrators of the Black Lives Matter movement, in our day.
15 Answer: Embodied Cinema
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What is the film trying to say in the following exchange?
16 Question: Coretta King's Role, Clip 1
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SELMA is not only asserting that Coretta Scott King contributed to the Movement, but that she is in a long tradition of African Americans who have resisted by surviving and helping their families survive, which in itself entailed struggle against oppression that crystalized in the Civil Rights Movement.
17 Answer: Coretta King's Role, Clip 1
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Consider the discussion in this scene relating to black voter registration then listen to King's first line from the sequence that the film cuts to following. What is Director Ava DuVernay emphasizing about the Civil Rights Movement with this juxtaposition?
18 Question: Strategizing to Protest
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DuVernay is emphasizing that decisions made as part of the Movement were not ordained, but were deliberately strategized, in ways that involved discussion, disagreement and prioritization. Further, cutting from the strategizing sequence to Dr. King's informing President Johnson about the planned march demonstrates that non-violence was not passive or cowardly, but courageously calibrated to achieve maximum legal effect.
19 Answer: Strategizing to Protest
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Consider the following raw exchange between Martin and Coretta King. How does it challenge the conventions of "great man" biographies? (Far fewer biographic films have been made about "great women.") How does it consider resistance politics from a feminist viewpoint?
20 Question: Coretta King's Role, Clip 2
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SELMA positions the "great man" within a scene typical to family melodrama, to assert that even the most influential personalities are fallible human beings. SELMA also positions Ms. King in the dominant position in confronting Dr. King about his infidelities. Ms. King, and SELMA in turn, intimates that, since she and her children are suffering, her willingness to maintain the marriage is partly in recognition of her responsibility to the Movement. The scene asserts the feminist position that the personal is political.
21 Answer: Coretta King's Role, Clip 2
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The song "Glory," so different in tone from what had preceded it, concludes SELMA. How does it enact the artistic tradition of an anachronism strategically?
22 Question: A Strategic Anachronism
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An anachronism is a temporal inconsistency in the content of a work, whereby an element of the artistic work does not suit the period of time into which it is situated. Considering that the song "Glory" includes a rap (by Common), a musical form not yet invented in SELMA's story's period, the song jars the audience into recognizing that the Civil Rights Movement continues to this day.
23 Answer: A Strategic Anachronism
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"Glory" by Common and John Legend is a rousing and timely song that has won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. The song's lyrics reference the struggle of African Americans, while pointing to the Black Lives Matter movement. Listen carefully to the following segment so as to discuss the meaning of the phrases "Hands to the heavens, no man, no weapon," "Every day men and women become legends," "Justice for all just ain't specific enough," That's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up," and "Now we right the wrongs in history."
24 Question: "Glory" and the Movement
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"Hands to the heavens, no man, no weapon," alludes to prayer, but also the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, where protests relating followed in 2014, entailing "hands up don't shoot" as a Black Lives Matter slogan. "Every day men and women become legends" could also be read as "Everyday men and women." "Justice for all just ain't specific enough" alludes to the attempted erasure within "AllLivesMatter" and to how "liberty and justice for all" in the pledge of allegiance does not seem to apply to all Americans. "We right the wrongs in history" has an interesting double meaning about "writing" historical stories.
25 Answer: "Glory" and the Movement