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Found a Harriet bootleg y’all. Watching it now
They’re already laying it on thick with the spellbound masterbae thirsty for Harriet. Why did they add this element?
This honestly feels very hammy and like a CW or Lifetime movie. Very broad musical cues and very tropey. It really doesn’t make slavery look that bad except for restriction of movement.
The movie is mildly entertaining in a middlebrow blockbuster kind of way. It feels like a 90s highly fictionalized biopic like Mel Gibson’s The Patriot. It doesn’t feel like a “serious” biopic at all.
It isn’t boring but it’s very shallow. There’s no real depth to anything. No background to any characters, no childhood, no larger context. It just starts right before she escapes and hits the ground running and is trope filled. L
The people who hate this movie without seeing it for the reason that they hate trauma porn (not my objection to the movie) might actually not mind this movie. Very little mistreatment. Plus far 30ins In there have been two good white ppl in succession who help her escape
They not only don’t show that, they show no violence or mistreatment onscreen at all so far and no backstory. She has visions but they don’t explain violence slaveowner did to cause them https://twitter.com/mindbendermind/status/1190490595468496896?s=21
Cynthia Erivo’s acting is very flat. Her emotional range is low so far, her affect is very flat
She later gives a verbal explanation of how she got the head injury but the bootleg audio quality makes it hard for me to hear what she said.
Cynthia Erivo isn’t bad she’s just very unremarkable and flat. I don’t know if this is meant to be contrasted with the second half of the movie where she will presumably gain confidence and comes out of her shell given this is very formulaic heroes journey stuff so far.
If this was totally fictional and not intended to be a butchered biopic of an icon, it would be a pleasant enough TV movie so far. Like a CW or Lifetime show meets Underground the series. It doesn’t feel like a real theatrical movie though, it feels very TV
I wish I could give a more entertaining live tweet but this movie is just so average. Not good enough to rave about but not bad enough so far to really shrewd as a good hate watch. It’s just a kinda watchable TV movie
They finally mentioned Bigger Long. He’s an infamous slave catcher 
As opposed to black slaves who were forced to help slave patrols, Bigger Long is a free agent free black who is known as the best slave catcher there is, better than the white slave patrols. He’s who they go to when they need slave catching expert lmaooo.
OH MAN BIGGER LONG IS HERE. I can’t believe how much worse this movie has gotten with his arrival. He seriously showed up and all the white southerners are deferring to him as the best slave catching expert. And he’s like a mix between a rapper and Uncle Ruckus
So catch this y’all. Bigger Long shows up with all this swagger and stands in front of all the slave catchers and is basically treated like an expert they must defer to. He demands the largest share of the bounty and the other white people to split rest among themselves...
...and when the head slaveowner, the CW looking masterbae, asks him why he needs that much money for, he grins and says so he can buy all the white whores he can from now till whenever. He says this in front of a bunch of white slaveowners and overseers and they don’t kill him
They all grab their guns and there’s a tense moment but Bigger Long just bursts out audaciously laughing at his own “fucking all the white whores I can” line + the white men stay their hand, presumably because he’s such a slave catching expert they can’t kill him for impertinence
Fucking white whores is literally Bigger Long’s motivation for being the world’s greatest slave catcher in Harriet! it’s like all the worst Black men tropes. It’s like Boondocks characters Catcher Freeman and Uncle Ruckus were combined lol
it’s like all the worst Black men tropes. It’s like Boondocks characters Catcher Freeman and Uncle Ruckus were combined lol
Bigger Long just talks like a rapper. He just told another black guy “You fucked up, nigga” in a modern cadence
This is the Bigger Long intro scene. It’s hard to hear probably but he this is the part where he demands 2/3 of the bounty and says the other whites must split the rest and when they ask why he needs so much he says “to fuck white whores”
This is where Bigger Long says “you fucked up, nigga”
So I am really confused as to why all the blue checks in this thread I quoted kept gaslighting anyone who disliked the idea of this movie that they had to see it for themselves and they were wrong. So far it’s worse than why we thought! https://twitter.com/rickyrawls/status/1190467522954514432?s=21
It’s like how all the blue checks kept telling Black people Slave Play wasn’t so bad and kept telling everyone they had to see it to judge, then when I saw it it was exactly what everyone complained it was before seeing it but worse. These people will say anything!
There are so many good white people in this movie. The good white people actually outnumber the bad ones. Lots of abolitionists but only one bad family and that family is never seen doing much bad except slapping two slaves.
Ugh. The only real violence has happened and it was a black man stomping out and punching a black woman to death. The one who was in it for the white whores. He didn’t even shoot her.
The CW underwear model looking masterbae tracking Harriet has just caught sight of Harriet after thinking she was dead for a year and he looks at her like a star crossed lover from afar (to be fair the romantic interest is not reciprocated but he’s clearly smitten)
There are very few scenes of slavery and slaveowners and plenty of scenes of freedom and northern abolitionists. It asks nothing of white people as far as interrogating themselves but gives them plenty of good white people to identity with, unlike Birth of a Nation
It’s true. Erivo has like two expressions, scared and stressed out. I have no idea where all these critical raves about her performance came from https://twitter.com/mroyer3/status/1190512010624028673?s=21
Oh wow so this high yellow Black lady is supposed to be an escaped slave hiding the others in the back. She’s not only passing as white but as a man, her master, and she fools this slave patrol the man even calls her “sir”
the man even calls her “sir”
So a bunch of the Blavity Buzzfeed Blacks defending this film claimed the white slaveowner didn’t save her and that was a lie. But here’s the scene!
This academic not only defended the movie she straight up lied to someone about this scene from the previous tweet for some reason. These people are weirdly loyal to each other to the point of outright lying and gaslighting other black people
It’s over now and the first half was just passably mediocre BET or Lifetime movie but the second half turned into a howler! So bad! I don’t get why these blue checks kept gaslighting ppl who were going by the reviews and acting like they needed to see it.
The reviews of anything REALLY downplayed how terrible this shit was!! Why would they encourage ppl to see it? Did they think they’d agree with them after seeing it or were they just hoping to trick them into inflating the opening weekend box office?
So I think what Bigger Long says here when asked what he needs $200 slave catching bounty for, he says “enough white whores to last me til Atlanta” but I’m not sure
Oh one last thing about Harriet...she has her owner dead to rights and instead of shooting him she takes the high road and delivers a lecture full of civil rights platitudes and presentism and predicts the Civil War (explicitly says your ppl will be part of a “lost cause”)
So she throws down her guns, espouses respectability and civil rights talk, basically a type of negro forgiveness scene, predicts the civil war and declares she will do her killing on the battlefield (where she will have the permission of the white people to do it)...
So she shows some negro forgiveness and lets her master off with a stern lecture and implies that the right way for her to take up arms against white people even oppressive slavers is in service of and with permission from other White people (the Union in the Civil War)
Then it jumps forward to Harriet leading a Union regimen against the Confederacy at the Battle at Combahee and now she is finally shooting at white people with intent to kill, because now she’s doing so within the rules and the system, as part of the white military
Just going to end this by saying check out our podcast Champagne Sharks anywhere you listen to podcasts, and subscribe to it, and we’re going to be discussing it soon. Also subscribe to the twitter @ChampagneSharks
There is more fuckery but I’m going to save that for the eventual podcast episode. When we do it I’ll add the link to it to this thread
