Alan Parker’s film Mississippi Burning (1988) is a film about hate. It offers viewers an endless spectacle of hatred and violence with only the illusion of nuance. Parker’s images of racist violence provoke and shock the viewer, soliciting feelings of guilt and rage. The historical context of the narrative is really only circumstantial within this visual economy of prejudice in brutal action.
Recently I just happened to watch Mississippi Burning right after seeing Norman Jewison’s In The Heat Of The Night (1967) again. I have seen both films a handful of times each without ever considering them within the context of juxtaposition. In terms of technique the formal radicalism of Jewison’s film mirrors and compliments the political radicalism of the narrative. Zoom lenses, soft focus, and lens flare pepper In The Heat Of The Night, imbuing the picture with the realist posturing of the burgeoning New Hollywood. Radicalism, formally or politically, are noticeably absent from Mississippi Burning which moves within the aesthetic traditions of Stanley Kramer and Alan J. Pakula. It’s humorous to me that these differing techniques should reflect the presidencies of when each of these films was made; Johnson versus Reagan.
The success or failure of these two films is hardly tied to their stylistic ambitions. Surely what matters the most is how these films articulate systemic racism in America. If one considers the Warren Oates character Sam Wood from In The Heat Of The Night he is both despicable in his prejudice but charming in his sincerity and oafishness. Ultimately Wood redeems himself when he sides with Mr. Tibbs (the great Sidney Poitier) and casts off the more aggressive aspects of his racism. Wood, like the Rod Steiger character, is allowed to be human first and racist second. Jewsion clearly intends to demonstrate that the reason why hatred, prejudice and violence go unchecked so often in our world is because the perpetrators of these heinous acts, no matter how small, are so much like the good people we all know. It is this ambiguity that fosters racist traditions and teachings.
In Mississippi Burning Frances McDormand delivers a monologue to Gene Hackman’s G-Man to this effect but Parker never really demonstrates this concept in action. The racist sheriff’s department in Mississippi Burning are never human. They exist only as “bad guys”; one note personalities with the moral sophistication of the villain in a Tom Mix western. In a way this defangs the evil at work in Parker’s narrative. Racism just feels so far removed from the viewer’s reality when it’s treated this way.
In editing In The Heat Of The Night Hal Ashby puts in the film a number of visual cues that signify how commonplace and institutionalized racism is in America. There’s one scene in particular where Poitier walks up to a large Southern Gothic style mansion and passes a lawn jockey. Even when characters aren’t spitting their racism venom at Poitier’s Mr. Tibbs he still has to contend with a constant barrage of degradation.
This clever little device of Ashby’s has no place in Mississippi Burning where Black Americans are depicted almost exclusively as hopelessly helpless victims. A complex Black protagonist such as Mr. Tibbs cannot exist in Parker’s film specifically because his film addresses only those viewers with white guilt.
