Some thoughts on Wednesday night's TCM National Film Registry lineup

So I watched the first half-hour of TCM's Wednesday night lineup, having no desire to watch My Fair Lady at 8:30 PM. For some reason I thought it was going to be Ben Mankiewicz sitting down with the Librarian of Congress, but it was actually Leonard Maltin.

Anyhow, the night started off with a very brief movie from 1898, Something Good -- Negro Kiss. The title describes what the movie is about, although it's apparently a takeoff on an earlier Edison kissing short. In this one, the two black people are rather more passionate, and both look like they're really enjoying themselves. Each time they stop to come up for air, the guy looks at the camera looking like he's hamming it up shamelessly. But, since this is in some ways designed as a parody, that fits in and actually makes the short more charming. I would have thought the Library of Congress would have put it up on Youtube by now, since it should be in the public domain, but it isn't. It does appear to be on Vimeo; it looks like they allow embedding too:



The second short was Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People, a 1984 short that was followed by a brief interview with the director, Ayoka Chenzira. It's about the difficulties black women have had throughout the years with their hair and the fact that in a world where white people are in a significant majority, black people's hair types aren't going to be considered the standard of beauty. Now I'm white, and a man, and I keep my hair short in the way that a Steve McQueen did in his 1960s movies, basically just long enough that I could part it if I so desired, and I don't spend much time on fancy hair care. So I felt able to watch this one with a sense of detachment. (Chenzira said in the interview that she chose animation because she thought that would make the topic -- apparently a touchy one among black women -- less threatening.) Let's just say that after watching it, I'm glad that I keep my hair short (to be honest, if it grows out too long, it starts curling up, which would be a deal-breaker) and don't have to deal with any of the stuff women of any race do to try to achieve "beautiful" hair. Some of the things described sound like they'd be rather uncomfortable. All in all, an interesting short I would never have seen any other way.