I first encountered the chiefly American epithet ‘Uncle Tom’ many years before I picked up the novel from which it was derived, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). I was watching a documentary about boxing and I believe Muhammad Ali and his entourage directed the insult at Joe Frazier. To accuse a black man of selling out his fellow blacks by pandering to a white man had to be close to the ultimate slight, I thought, given the historical context of slavery and racism in America. So I was curious to learn its literary origins.
When I finished Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I was embarrassed for everyone.
Far from depicting Uncle Tom as selling out his fellow slaves, author Harriet Beecher Stowe paints him as a Christ-like figure, a man who sacrifices himself so that others like him might be spared pain and indignity. But her literary allusions were apparently lost on enough readers that the ‘Uncle Tom’ epithet spread and has now become part of America’s informal lexicon.
Such misunderstanding are, unfortunately, inevitable if a book aims to be something more than the next brain-dead James Patterson page turner. Nor are they solely the province of the unread and unlearned. Many years ago, I got into a slightly beer-addled debate about the violence in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. My opponent – a former colleague and friend who was and is the most erudite and well-read person I have ever met – insisted that the scene where a rat is, er, introduced to a female character went too far.
I maintained – and still do – that in the context of that novel, it was impossible to go too far, because that was the point Ellis was trying to make. Corporate America had become so absorbed with greed and selfishness that the worst psychopath imaginable could walk among its denizens unnoticed. But my friend, who can drop literary quotes like one of Stephen King’s less believable characters, refused to accept my argument.
Extreme violence seems to blind book and movie critics to anything more subtle going on. The venerable David Stratton savaged the Australian film Romper Stomper (1992) for glorifying violence towards Asians. He was apparently oblivious to the filmmaker’s ultimate message: the skinheads’ racist aggression leads to their own destruction.
Or take the idolisation of Tony Montana from Scarface (1983) by certain groups in society, which is as misguided as the use of the term ‘Uncle Tom’. Much like Hando from Romper Stomper, Montana is corrupted by the violence and excess that are symptomatic of his ‘success’, and it brings about his demise. But this theme has been lost on generations of wannabe gangsters, who are apparently callow enough to see the climax of Scarface as something romantic.
Now I’m certainly not without sin, I should add. I’m the guy who, when he first watched M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, missed the subtext altogether. While discussing it with a mate later on, I declared it a creepy alien invasion movie ruined by a stupid ending. I can still remember the dismayed look on his face as I dismissed his claims to the contrary; in truth I scarcely listened to what he had to say, because I had watched countless alien invasion movies and considered myself an expert.
Then, about six months later, I watched Signs again – and this time I joined the dots. The aliens, much like the violence in American Psycho, were peripheral; a means to a thematic end. When I told my friend about my epiphany, he was elated – the way a maths tutor must be elated when a slightly dim student finally understands an algebraic concept.
The common denominator in each of the cases mentioned above seems to be a closed mind. If we approach films and literature that aspire to something more than entertainment with anything less than an open mind, we are usually left looking foolish. If there’s a surer sign that art is important to the mental health of humanity, I don’t know what it could be.