a blues exorcism

The white girl chained to a radiator wasn't what fueled my skepticism of Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan. Afterall, I'd sat through Boxing Helena, which was some real sick and twisted misogynistic shit ... but I digress. I was initially skeptical of Black Snake because of Brewer's debut film Hustle and Flow, which admittedly I didn't see. I just couldn't find any compelling reasons to sympathize with a pimp nor could I buy Terrence Howard as a rapper. Call me crazy.

I also wondered why Brewer was so fascinated with black culture: first hip hop, then the blues. Was he trying to do something provocative with race or was he -- like Eminem -- using the most bankable commodity (blackness) to his advantage?

After reading salon.com's interview with Brewer, I sensed that something other than fetishism and misogyny might be motivating Brewer to create racially and sexually provocative films set in his homestate of Tennessee. I'm also a student of the blues and know full well how it can complicate and entangle spirituality, magic, and sex.

Brewer obviously is aware of the intricacies of blues music and blues mythology as well as Black Snake lays to bear a full out blues exorcism of painful demons: of sexual trauma, of lost love. The film is not without its problems, but the on-screen chemistry between Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson is not one of them. Not sexual chemistry, but a kinship induced by shared pain. The film delves uncomfortably into the reluctant intimacies that sometimes develop between blacks and whites in a racist and segregated south. But that's one of the things that makes it interesting. No doubt Brewer was well aware of the controversy that would arise when he decided to feature a black man chaining a white woman to a radiator. That image alone holds an entire history of sexualized racism and violence. But I applaud Brewer for treading into such scary territory. Black Snake is not a flawless film to be sure, but it is visually interesting (especially the scene in the juke joint when Sam Jackson performs) and the plotline is complex. And though I hate to admit it, Justin Timberlake ain't half bad either.