For weeks now, we’ve been hearing criticisms of the new Darren Aronofsky film Noah from folks who claim the movie isn’t Biblical enough for their liking. Today, tho, I came up on a blog post by Reverend Wil Gafney, Ph.D. who saw the movie on opening night last night and realized very quickly that there are no Black characters AT ALL in the entire film. Not that that this is a good thing but even in horror films there are Black characters who are features and oftentimes killed off early on in the story … but Noah is essentially an origin story that tells the tale of the only surviving human beings to exist after all life on Earth was destroyed by a flood (which Aronofsky‘s film maintains was caused by environmental means and not necessarily the hand of God, which is where the original controversy stems but that’s a discussion for another time) and, as such, should at least give some representation to people of color in the world. That there are no Black people at all in the world featured in Noah, Rev. Gafney maintains, suggests that Black people simply do not exist.
I pay attention to the peopling of the world in the vision filmmakers. I want to know if there are people like me in their worlds, people of African descent, people of color. In Darren Aronofsky’s vision of Noah and his world I do not exist. People like me do not exist. Black, brown and beige people do not exist even though the story is the story of the destruction and re-peopling of the whole Earth. Noah and his family and all of his ancestors and even all the lost, dying, drowning people are white people. Adam and Eve glow with the light of innocence in their white skins. Ham, the ancestor of African peoples – at least according to the biblical text –has white skin and as a little boy, dark blue eyes. And that matters to me as a biblical scholar and seminary professor and, as a person of African descent whose ancestors were enslaved in the Americas, whose enslavement was justified in part on readings of the Scriptures that emerge from ancient Israel because these texts are also my scriptures. As an origin story, the story of Noah and his sons and their descendants purports to tell the story of human diversity, many peoples of differing ethnicities descended from a single family, a common ancestor. There is an evolutionary equivalent. However on this planet, the first humans were African, all others derivative. Without other genetic material, the offspring of black and brown people can be lighter than their parents, but it doesn’t work the other way around … My black, woman’s body is a human body but it is not represented in Darren Aronofsky’s movie. No one in the whole wide world that he has created is black like me.
You can read the full text of Rev. Gafney‘s blogpost HERE. Most of Gafney‘s piece talks about the religious aspects (or lack thereof) of the film but I was most taken by the fact that there are no Black characters at all in the movie. Like, how does this even happen? I have yet to see Noah (I still plan to) but I’m really surprised by the complete lack of diversity. The film manages to attempt representation of all of the animals on Earth but not one single person of color is featured at all? For me, the lack of diversity seems the most troubling thing about the movie, forget the religious stuff. Have any of you seen Noah yet? What is your take on all of this?
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