2 Comments

1. peggy:

   The sound on my computer is not working, so I could watch the visuals. The girls are all so beautiful – are they questioning their looks, or something else?

   Also, I think the black doll white doll experiment/test was a set-up. The children were doing what they believed they were expected to do. They were confused, and one, I believe, was quietly angry.

   Was the interviewer black or white?

   And the dolls were only dolls, not real babies. A doll is a plaything, a fantasy object. A baby is a person, who responds to your touch.

   Would anyone do a Sophie’s Choice thing on these children, and ask them which child may live, and which must die?

   It is said that black women had to nurse their white mistress’s babies, while leaving their own babies to cry, and maybe to die. Has that memory been passed on to these children somehow?

   These are just questions. My computer is mute.

   STAN: The dolls are a reproduction of an experiment that was done in preparation for the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. The Board of Education. The interviewer and film maker are the same — a 17-year-old African American woman. Find the sound somewhere. It’s an amazing short film by any measure.

   29 January 2007, 8:52 pm

2. howard:

   Peggy, My sound works and you are exactly right about what these young women are talking about — though I think they all have quite a bit of consciousness. The doll experiment was, according to the narration, a conscious attempt to see the difference between now and 1954.

   In terms of the Sophie’s choice thing, the second segment with the small children is to ask them who the “nice” doll is and who the “bad” doll is and why. The little girl at the end who pushes the black doll toward the camera is asked to “give me the doll that looks like you” — after she has just explained that the black doll is the “bad” one — because it is black.

   This video has really been making the rounds in circles I am familiar with and is causing people who ordinarily wouldn’t think about these things to discuss them.

   I found it really powerful. The children break your heart.

   30 January 2007, 12:16 pm

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