New Nat Turner movie WOWS Sundance

History has treated his cause well but it's relied on his oppressors to tell who he was.

Notice how those that want to view Turner as a heroic freedom fighter refer to his victims and their race in general as "oppressors".

As if that some how explains or justifies his murders.
 
Look at where he purportedly talked about their blood lust.
Do you mean "our thirst for blood"? I don't see that it's enough to negate all the straightforward information about his childhood and youth, the visions, revelations and such. The problem is that with a dictated manuscript in the style of the day, one can't interpret every word as if it came just as Turner spoke it. I'm more interested in the events described than the exact words used, and even filtered through Gray, Turner never hints that the things he experienced were any less than perfectly real and that his cause was any less than divinely driven.
 
"thirst for blood" was afairly common 19th century metaphor denoting cruelty/savagry or a desire for vengeance.
 
Notice how those that want to view Turner as a heroic freedom fighter refer to his victims and their race in general as "oppressors".

As if that some how explains or justifies his murders.

I don't know that anyone who finds an alcoholic lawyer and known gambler who has lost all his family estate and
This is a classic example of "if you can'directly discredit the evidence, discredit the person presenting it".

A staple defense attorney tactic.

Why would slave owners want to hear that some slaves justified violence against slave owners via religious beliefs?

One of the main pillars of slave owners defense of slavery was that they were giving them religious instruction and "christianizing the heathen. It would hardly be comforting to be shown were those efforts could potentially lead.

There is no "evidence," just one degenerate lawyer's fictionalized version of what he says was a slave's statement. According to a historian, Fabricant, who examined the case, the justices involved took statements from Nat Turner and it's nowhere documented that Turner acknowledged Gray's "Confession" or that it was read in court.

Much has been made of the fact that, according to the fiction written down by Thomas Gray, accepted in whole and simply repeated by a raft of later historians, the slave who led a rebellion was schizophrenic, delusional, a religious fanatic. I believe that an author, Fabricant, who looked carefully at the case noted that masters in Virginia feared that there were plans of an uprising in North Carolina. Gray reassured them that there was none, this was the work of one religious fanatic, delusional slave. For people who had to deal everyday with numerous enslaved people around them, that must have been reassuring.

I've not said that Turner was a heroic figure or justified in the killings. But I don't find that portraying him as delusional or psychotic makes sense if it's just based on one degenerate lawyer's writings for self-publication.
 
Notice how those that want to view Turner as a heroic freedom fighter refer to his victims and their race in general as "oppressors".

As if that some how explains or justifies his murders.

Oh, I didn't know Turner was the slave owner and the white people were the slaves.
 
Do you mean "our thirst for blood"? I don't see that it's enough to negate all the straightforward information about his childhood and youth, the visions, revelations and such. The problem is that with a dictated manuscript in the style of the day, one can't interpret every word as if it came just as Turner spoke it. I'm more interested in the events described than the exact words used, and even filtered through Gray, Turner never hints that the things he experienced were any less than perfectly real and that his cause was any less than divinely driven.

It's not something a person would say about themself. It is, however, exactly the way the slave power would describe a monster they're creating for public consumption.
 
"thirst for blood" was afairly common 19th century metaphor denoting cruelty/savagry or a desire for vengeance.

It's not something a person would say about themself. It's something they would say about others.
 
Notice how those that want to view Turner as a heroic freedom fighter refer to his victims and their race in general as "oppressors".

As if that some how explains or justifies his murders.

I fully agree with you, Nate, and anyone else that states that answering a wrong with a wrong does not justify the killings.

I think what ties me up on the discussion of Nat Turner is that there is never any sense of the tragedy of what led to the uprising in the first place. It (uprising) is usually depicted as a madman who goes on an unprovoked rampage, wild eyed with delusions. <insert Manson at this point> Rather, I envision someone who yes, probably was pushed over the edge by all that his people have suffered, the trauma, the brutality, the total destruction of one's self. In evaluating that the uprising did not make sense (in that it could not possibly succeed) or that the fact that innocents were killed does not automatically lend validation of Gray's account or lessen the tragedy on both sides.
 
I fully agree with you, Nate, and anyone else that states that answering a wrong with a wrong does not justify the killings.

I think what ties me up on the discussion of Nat Turner is that there is never any sense of the tragedy of what led to the uprising in the first place. It (uprising) is usually depicted as a madman who goes on an unprovoked rampage, wild eyed with delusions. <insert Manson at this point> Rather, I envision someone who yes, probably was pushed over the edge by all that his people have suffered, the trauma, the brutality, the total destruction of one's self. In evaluating that the uprising did not make sense (in that it could not possibly succeed) or that the fact that innocents were killed does not automatically lend validation of Gray's account or lessen the tragedy on both sides.
And sometimes, even those oppressed, simply snaps and is charismatic enough to get others to foolishly follow them to their deaths.
 
People,

It's a movie!

Remember all the comments that came out before the movie Lincoln was even shown?

How about we all save our comments and jabs until we actually see the durn thing?

Just an idea.

Sincerely,
Unionblue
 
I've not said that Turner was a heroic figure or justified in the killings. But I don't find that portraying him as delusional or psychotic makes sense if it's just based on one degenerate lawyer's writings for self-publication.
Pretty much where I am on all of this. I am interested in the movie for the story it will tell. It is likely to be as fictional as the "Confession."
 
I fully agree with you, Nate, and anyone else that states that answering a wrong with a wrong does not justify the killings.

I think what ties me up on the discussion of Nat Turner is that there is never any sense of the tragedy of what led to the uprising in the first place.

I agree with that, but it doesn't seem to fit with the following:

It (uprising) is usually depicted as a madman who goes on an unprovoked rampage, wild eyed with delusions. <insert Manson at this point> Rather, I envision someone who yes, probably was pushed over the edge by all that his people have suffered, the trauma, the brutality, the total destruction of one's self. In evaluating that the uprising did not make sense (in that it could not possibly succeed) or that the fact that innocents were killed does not automatically lend validation of Gray's account or lessen the tragedy on both sides.
Without Gray's account, to me Turner can only be envisioned as a madman, in the colloquial cartoon sense, who goes on an unprovoked rampage because slavery somehow drove him crazy, although millions of others bore it without going on murder sprees.

Gray's account makes Turner a real but flawed human. To state it explicitly, I'm not using mental illness as a way to insult him, but rather to help understand him; not to justify or condemn the murders, but to put the murders in the context that he saw them.

I've mentioned this before, but I grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic father, although his delusions were based around the cold war era, government spying on him, rather than religion. My father never turned violent except to make life hell with unpredictable yelling and crazy rants, and he was not charismatic--others seemed to see him as creepy and strange rather than being attracted to him. But I can see the way he viewed things in the way Gray wrote about Turner. Real humans struggle with mental illness. Cartoon characters just go crazy and go on random killing sprees.

If the movie rejects Gray, I don't know what one would base Turner's personality on. Just make up whatever one wanted, I guess. That's sad, if we have contemporary insight into Turner, and it's rejected.
Is there alternative accounts of Turner, besides Thomas Grey's?

I was hoping someone would answer, but as far as I know, Gray is all we've got, as far as anything that talks about his earlier life and personality.

.
 
Is there alternative accounts of Turner, besides Thomas Grey's?

When you look at the different accounts, they seem to all be based on a reading of Thomas Gray's tale. They make all kinds of interpretation of what Turner thought, who he was, why he was so religious, on and on.

But the only source seems to be Thomas Gray's account.
 
Back
Top