Comic Con BET Animation Panel: Bid 'Em In
BET will begin playing animation shorts throughout their normal programming. The Shorts will range from 6 second parodies like a 6 second tribute to Notorious BIG to a very controversial short called Bid 'Em In by Neal Sopata. The crudely drawn, naive style animation dealt with slavery and the auction block in particular. When the short was previewed, I was stunned. As a woman of color I was offended and uneasy by the animation. I didn't know how to react, but the applause from the crowd blew me away. The short displayed the ugliness and demeaning nature of slavery and the objectification of women. It presented a view into the slave auction, but ended abruptly with no conclusion.
Directly following the panel, I discussed the short with other panel attendees. We questioned BET's motive to display such a riveting short, on such a touchy subject. The issue that stuck out the most to us is the way the slave woman was objectified, much like the women in the music videos today. I thought this was an interesting choice for BET to make as an initial short, considering the content and depiction of the Video Girls in the rap videos. It spurred an intellectual conversation discussing the influence slavery still has in society, along with how this short will be received by America who will be watching this in the comfort of their home. Will it be well received? Will it spur the youth to question the effect slavery still has on society? Will it remind people of the injustice and objectification that took place during the formation of America?
I don't have the answers to those questions, but those questions lead me to research the man behind the animation, Oscar Brown, Jr. The animation short was created by Neal Sopata in 2003 and was widely acclaimed in film festivals. The sing song nature of the animation was a song done by Brown, born in 1926, titled "Slave Sale Song." Brown was a very outspoken Jazz musician with social consciousness on his agenda. He used a spoken word, griot style to remind people of the truths that are often buried in the history books. His in your face presentation of social issues attacked the notions of racism and raised a lot of controversy including his song, "Forty Acres and a Mule", demanding reparations.
Below is a short excerpt from the "Slave Sale Song" and a short clip.
Bid `em in, get `em inThat sun is hot and plenty bright
Let's get down to business and get home tonight
Bid `em in
Auctionin' slaves is a real high art
Bring that young gal, Roy, she's good for a start
Bid `em in, get `em in
Now here's a real good buy, only about 15
Her great-grandmammy was a Dahomey queen
Just look at her face, she sure ain't homely
Like Sheeba in the bible she's black but comely
Bid `em in
Gonna start her at three, can I hear three
Step up gents, take a good look-see
`Cause I know you'll like her once you've seen her
She's young and ripe, make a durn good breeder
2 Comments:
I liked it. It showed a reality... the particular issues facing African-American women and mothers under slavery, not the cruelty of slavery per say but the barbarous nature of the 'slaver'/slave master... it showed the devilish behavior of the so-called white man. We can invision the ways that fear of insurrection drove white slave owners to restrict the movement, education, and judicial rights of the enslaved, while also encouraging slaves to adopt a version of Christianity that promoted docile obedience.
" Known to God only is the amount of human agony and suffering which sends its cry from these slave-prisons, unheard or unheeded by man, up to His ear; mothers weeping for their children -- breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts... At these auction-stands, bones, muscles, sinews, blood and nerves, of human beings, are sold with as much indifference as a farmer in the north sells a horse or sheep. William Wells Brown, The American Slave-Trade, The Liberty Bell (1848)
I could make a complex argument about how white slave owners enacted their psychological investments in the slave system, and their notion of themselves as beneficent paternalists, through the public transactions of slave sales and purchases, while slaves themselves maneuvered as best they could within the extremely constricted circumstances of a marketplace in which they were the commodity, but the fact is that policy of entrenched racism has emanated from all branches of the United States government, from the days of the auction block and the recent United States walk out of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa. The United States government has relentlessly held on to its white supremacist ideology.
One of the things that the slave-master purposefully did was rob us of the knowledge of self, so that it would be next to impossible for us to truly love ourselves.
"No, no! They were not all bad, I dare say, but slavery hardens white people's hearts towards the blacks; and many of them were not slow to make their remarks upon us aloud, without regard to our grief - though their light words fell like cayenne on the fresh wounds of our hearts. Oh those white people have small hearts who can only feel for themselves." - Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave (1831)
The White man deprived us of our mothers. If we knew our mothers, we would speak our mothers’ tongue, but we do not know one word of our mothers’ tongue because the slave-masters killed our mothers. Many Muslims were brought into slavery; the children were separated from their parents and reared to be slaves. Fathers would pray in the original language of Arabic, but when one of the children would speak in the mother tongue, the slave-master would kill that child.
We grew up in America without the knowledge of ourselves, with the slave-master breaking the Black man because he did not want any Black woman to honor, cherish, respect Black males. He wanted the Black woman for himself so that he could, as Jill Scott said, dirty the water. The White man wanted to poison the stream that brings life to the nation. There is no hope for us if our women are destroyed. Women are the water of life of the nation. If the water is corrupted and poisoned, and women bring forth the children that are the future of the nation, then the children are corrupted even at birth.
The White man reared us to fear him and not God. Since the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, he wanted to stand in God’s place so that we would fear him, that we would not disobey him, so he could then make a n----r. God does not make n-----s; the White man makes n-----s. If that is what you want to be, then you will remain as you are. That is why the word “n----r” is objectionable because it is the product of our slave-masters. He made us studs that went into Black women to produce children that we did not support. And unfortunately, that is our lifestyle today. We make babies, but we do not support them. Our women are hurting in great pain because we are not the men that we should be.
"So absolutely were the slaves in the power of their masters that they were pledged, leased, exchanged, taken for debt or gambled off at the gambling table; and men women, and children were sold by auction at the public auction block - husbands and wives separated, never to meet again, and little children torn from their parents' loving arms, and sold into slavery, and into the hands of strangers from distant parts." - Thomas Johnson, Twenty-Eight Years a Slave (1909)
Step down off the slave auction block and do something for self, instead of disgracing and embarrassing the rest of us with your perpetual begging from white people. . . - Shahrazad Ali
By Andre S. Belcher-El (Husaam Udeen Waliyullah)
National Black United Front (NBUF)
While my initial thoughts about "Bid 'Em In" echoed your sentiments Tatiana, I decided to go a little more deeply and ask myself what exactly was it about the piece that made me feel uneasy.
The presentation is based on history, a very ugly part of our history, but it is fact nonetheless. I question whether my uneasiness is directed at the message of the piece itself, or the messenger.
Whether intentional or not, BET, historically, has endorsed the exploitation of black women through a number of music videos and programs targeted at base sensibilities. While the network's intentions may be honorable in trying to counteract some of its more titillating programming with something a little more educational like "Bid 'Em In," I'm concerned that the audience that has existed on a steady diet of rap videos (and the representation of women in them) will not receive the message of "Bid 'Em In" from a historical and educational perspective, but rather internalize the subject matter as yet another example of the objectification of black women.
"Bid 'Em In" is an abrupt about face for BET in terms of subject matter. Who knows, this could mark the dawn of a new beginning. Let's hope that BET will continue to bring more programming to the table to help offset the negative images for which, unfortunately, the network has become associated with.
Suzanne
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