what about mammy?cause i think mammy -- mammy complicates our notion of these stereotypes a little bit, right? how does she complicate our notion of the stereotyping of african-americans here? >> she stayed forever. >> okay. so she is incredibly loyal, she's always there, right? you'd never know that emancipation happened, right? there's no sense of that. and, you know, even big sam comes back, right, pork sticks around, prissy is still there. they're still around but mammy is a constant presence, right? how else does mammy complicate our notion? >> mammy cares for her a lot. in the beginning -- [ inaudible ]. mammy was like, no, no, you have to eat. she cared for her so much and in reality they probably wouldn't have cared. >> all right. >> i think the respect that scarlet gave back to her because like scarlet would listen to her and value her input instead of being like whatever and ignoring her. >> mammy occupies a major role because she is listened to. she is seen as in some ways as a positive infl

and mammy and rhe tt?nitial -- is to say no. >> right. >> she did take into account mammy's account. she doesn't always listen. she's kind of nasty to her. but scarlet is kind of nasty to everyone. is it because she's black? >> that's egalitarian. >> at the very least it's reciprocal. >> you get closer to that ideal from the southern white perspective of how the relationships work, right? >> you don't always listen to your mom and she had an i'm looking out for your best interest, and said to me the almost equal relationship is almost correct whether it's a good one. it makes me question the hollywood academy, but i think it's almost equal because she can get away with so much more than anyone else personified. >> yeah? >> i think the scene where scarlet is putting on the party to go to 12 oaks and mammy is like, you can't wear that until 4:00. mammy is pulling the dress down and scarlet is pulling it back up. she is saying you have these rules and you have to follow these. scarlet is not -- they're strugg

because everybody was doing mammy. i was doing the other jolson.a different jolson. ♪ when you were sweet when you were sweet 16 ♪ it was a beautiful jolson. but they didn't know that. they wanted mammy. so three prizes. majorette wins. she dropped that thing three times. the fat guy, he came in second with the buttens flying all over. the little black kid, he did all right. he got third. three prizes. i got nothing. but i was determined. and so i kept -- finally, i went to the borscht belt and to the resorts in the mountains and i learned my craft. i was a busboy and i was a waiter and i was all kinds of things. finally, somebody got sick. i was a utility actor and i took over. unfortunately, the part -- he was a district attorney. he was about 70 years old. so they put a wig on me. they put a beard on me. they put lines, you know, to make me old. i'm supposed to say, there, there, harry, have a glass of water and tell me in your own words exactly what happened that night. okay, i can do that. but i got to do it a little older. not so fast. right.

a reason why he is the he is, reason why a person like miss hamer is -- people perceive her as the mammy they had who was also kind of catchy with the word "freedom" and that is a dynamic leader of her people. >> i have a view of that. at the heart of that in a political sense, is the question of citizenship. who gets to be fall citizen, and the way the country has been set up, from the very beginning, is to keep the full rights of citizenship away -- from whole groups of people. women didn't get the right to vote until the 20th century. black people, didn't get the right to vote until -- guaranteed until 1965. struggling with that question around illegals now? the united states? there are laws related to sexual preference and gender. this whole question of who gets -- well, let me put it this way. full citizenship, we, the people, fight those who have the power in this country, and they have used throughout the history of the country various mechanisms to deny this, you know. if you look at black history, which was the history i obviously know the best, terror, poll tax, literacy tests

hattie mcdaniel who won her oscar for her role as mammy couldn't attend the film's georgia premiere. why not? segregation laws prevented her from being there. in fact part of the movie popularity came from a racist or racialized desire for a time when race relations were supposedly simpler. that was a time that never existed except perhaps in the minds of southern white elites. but that doesn't minimize the appeal and not just to whites in the south in the 1930s. the movie never addresses the real problems of slavery or racial reconstruction. it doesn't because because it is a movie that wholly takes on the perspective of the elite southern whites who lost their world and remembered it more fondly than it actually was. the movie is an homage to the perspective of the confederate apologists. a view of the south that never existed. honestly, if it wasn't so popular it wouldn't be a problem. it would occasionally run on turner movie classics or amc or so late at night that it was early on in the morning and we could just leave it as a relic of its time. but that's not the case. as long