Review of Free State of Jones (2016) by Ad P — 27 Jun 2016

I read the book "The Free State of Jones" and saw the movie. Both are excellent. Some reviewers can't seen to understand that real life is complicated, the Civil War and racial relations included. The "Free State of Jones" shows some of the reality of Southern dissent and interracial cooperation. It devastates the myth of "The Lost Cause." I've also noticed that some reviewers subscribe to the fashionable nonsense that any sexual relations between a white man and a slave woman was by definition "rape" because slave women enjoyed no legal protection from assault. Remember that many slave women were mated or bred to black male slaves against their will. Carrying the "rape" redefinition to its logical conclusion, ANY sex a slave woman had was "rape." Some reviewers are also whining that the hero, Newt Knight, was presented as a "white savior" and that only blacks should be presented as antebellum and Civil War heroes. Well, grow up! There were many white heroes in the struggle against the Confederacy and the Jim Crow tyranny that replaced it after Reconstruction. Anyone who denies this wants to promote a lie.

Oh, "The Free State of Jones" had several great action scenes that kept me on the edge of my seat.

What irony that this fine film may be done in, not by reactionary neo-Confederates or white supremacists, but by ignorant liberals chasing a fashionable fantasy that every story set in the slave era must be "Django" or "Nat Turner.".