Roots – The Next Generations (Mini-Series/1978 – 9/DVD-Video)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: C     Episodes: B

 

 

The TV Mini-Series was still very new when the first stretch of David L. Wolper’s production of Alex Haley’s Roots set new ratings records and gave everyone the impression the Mini-Series was both here to stay and would help network TV always offer quality television.  The 1980s proved that very wrong, but the original series became a classic and ABC reteamed with Wolper and company to deliver a sequel series.  The resulting Roots – The Next Generations (1978 – 1979) was as good, about as big a hit and even had more money invested in it.

 

On the strong side, the exhaustive cast is impressive all the way to Marlon Brando’s bold role as a White Supremist and a who’s who of amazing actors well-cast (like its predecessor), it picks up after the Emancipation Proclamation kicks in and the situation stays ugly with the rise of the KKK.  It concludes with James Earl Jones unforgettable as Alex Haley himself, discovers the truth and finds closure in mapping out his family tree.  That was a hot thing in the 1970s and still remains of interest to many.

 

So how did such a landmark series become sort of lost and forgotten besides the effect of the Neo-conservative movement of the 1980s?  For one thing, the switch from literary studies to cultural studies actually trashed this work in academia by those on the extreme left rewriting history for sinister reasons.  Also, many African Americans became sick and tired of Hollywood producing only serious dramas involving slavery, which with the likes of Beulah Land turning into the anti-Roots where slavery was made out to be “not that bad” and a strange Right Wing Christian myth that slavery was just a temporary challenge by “God” to get to the path of The Second Coming.

 

Sick as that all sounds, it all is part of a larger attempt to negate anything important Roots had to say, as the film is seen as a Christian Left parable by some and then there arte those (in and out of the African America community) who find it oversimplifying history and that its movement towards freedom and liberation is still to friendly to an establishment holding institutionalized racism in sinister new ways.  They say the 1980s proved that the episodes and book were a distraction for a neo-racist movement.

 

At the least, this is to say the story arc is naïve and though well-meaning, not realistic, though less of a soap opera than you might remember or think.  However, that is an oversimplification and the recent success of the Tyler Perry films shows what the arc has to say is far from dated and more relevant than ever.  Another implied point in the arc is that the freedom meant unity for all of those who knew better, speaking to a new America being possible.  Again, the 1980s (temporarily?) killed that, but the rating success had to do with more of the goodwill of most viewers than anything else.  Of course, there were those across the nation, especially in the South who tuned in for sadistic reasons to watch African Americans suffer, proved by the 1980s itself.

 

However, with a shift in the country upon us again, Roots suddenly becomes a wise time capsule (naïve as it can sometimes be) showing us that the direction many would like to now go had already been reached before the rollback movement that has the country in the trouble it finds itself in.  With Hip Hop in decline but still a major force, maybe that culture also ought to address this text as it has Blaxploitation and other aspects of African American successes that reached the forefront of the mainstream culture.  This set makes that all the easier.

 

The 1.33 x 1 image is soft and looks like it is from an old analog master, lacking detail and depth, as well as displaying color range limits.  This is confirmed by the compressed and sometimes warped Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, which makes enjoying this difficult throughout.  The combination is dated and Warner needs to go back and redo this for HD.  The only extra is a behind the scenes documentary, but you would think this would have more extras to offer.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo