The Grassy Green Mile

1999’s The Green Mile opens with one of the greatest sites of mass Black terror in America: The white vigilante mob. Then, the ritual class pandering: Poor people are criminal, rich people are spoiled, and everyone else is, by virtue(s), normal. Yet, normal in The Green Mile is anything but apparent.

In the film, the Black man has a mysterious power to heal, which most critiques have insufficiently contrasted against the state’s miraculous power to destroy. Life or death quandaries continually emerge to push the plot forward. Given that the miraculous Black man ultimately colludes in his own death, which is therefore suicide, the critique here seems to be about the green pathway. It’s as if the filmmakers demonstrate that by choosing the normal, grassy green path, we are collectively committing ourselves to the awesome power of destruction, even when faced with evidence of our ability to heal (the world). In Christian fundamentalist terms this might be called Devil worship.

The race/class war in the film- the institutionalized monopoly the state exercised over Black and poor people’s lives- is contested on The Green Mile. As a society we would even deny ourselves the right to heal ourselves rather than stray from this path of destruction.

“Let’s look alive,” Tom Hanks’ character says, rounding up his death troupers for the arrival of John Coffey, the Magic Negro. This dialogue betrays the superficial nature with which life is normally respected; they may only “look,” or pretend to be alive- like the characters in 1999’s American Beauty, destroying themselves from the inside out by their own white privilege. The huge n*gger marches in shackled and chained and soon after the Native American is put to death. “Big ass dead man walking,” the sissy character, Percy, repeats almost predicating his own fate; he continually chooses death and is even portrayed as having a sadistic pleasure in pain. 

Choosing death over life circumvented through S&M is both the super and sub-narrative of the The Green Mile.  It provides a direct critique, for example, of the indulgency of the modern consumerist world wallowing in its own pleasure while taking sadistic pleasure in the pain of others, which we see are only verifying that we individually ‘merit’ our own place in society through subconsciously evoking images that almost literally trace our past. That’s also the modern day judgment of the Holy Roman Empire- Goddamned Rome! Percy’s S&M tendency materializes as a normal consequence of being (treated like) a sissy.

Though a career arbiter of death, Hanks’ character showed that he was unable to deal with his own illness, suffering and loss, a prelude to how he would face his own death dilemmas later in the film. Hanks’ character’s only proposed resolution to Coffey’s life or death situation was to face death as a nigger-lover by releasing Coffey to run free in the Apartheid/Jim and Jane Crow South during the Great Depression. 

True to form, Coffey’s character is a classic Magic Negro, willing to set aside all his own woes to solve that of the main, inevitably white main character. It’s the classic starring role versus supporting actor scenario. This same scenario often gets played out in real life where the power equation fits the same, such as that one really smart Black kid in class who has all the answers, yet expresses no real desires or distinctiveness of their own, despite the obvious power to climb in the face of white supremacy. 

Coffey-the-Magic-Negro provided the necessary moral authority to move on by, for example, reviving the mouse the sissy slaughtered, and boosting Hanks’ sex life. The Magic Negro unlocks everyone’s fates.

When I get to heaven, gon’ scream-n-shout!/Be nobody there to put me out

Consider Negro Spirituals as the strongest, indigenous cultural references that would have informed contemplations of life and death of a southern Black character like Coffey. Admittedly culturally intricate and nuanced, Soon ah will be done wit’ da troubles o’ dis worl’ is not a death wish. Goin’ home to live wit’ God is not some damn permission slip absconding white guilt of this torrid past. Hence, Hanks asking Coffey if he should execute or release him is the product of pure S&M fantasy and masturbation, not a power shift. This life or death dilemma also sealed Hanks’ character’s fate.

Rather than viewing life as a gift, the characters see life as punishment, as Hanks’ character’s didactic, irreconcilable relationship with inevitable loss reveals in the penultimate scene. This is not a cry to be maimed, harmed and abused- the perverse S&M assumption that a man as powerful as Coffey would plea for pain (justifying and normalizing abuse). Imagine Mahalia shouting:  

Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, then why not every man/He delivered Daniel from de lion’s den/Jonah from de belly of de whale/An’ de Hebrew chillun from de fiery furnace/An’ why not every man

Negro Spirituals consistently emphasize overcoming, i.e. choosing life over death, which is established by the beat and forceful melisma. As my granny reiterates: “Do you know a lot of dem old songs, Negros just made ‘em up, in the cotton fields, pickin’ cotton. They call ‘em Negro Spirituals.” Oh Mary don’t you weep, she hummed, now smiling more, swinging her head and shoulders from side to side. “It had beat to it…and white folks used to come to our church just to hear ‘em sang.” 

The lyrics and beat are in constant dialogue, with what might sound like counterpoints or competition. Instead of a separate but equal harmony and melody, the beat simply presses everything forward with such a force that resolves the apparent musical discord or ‘dilemma’. 

In western music this conflict is resolved through didactic communication: the conductor acts as the orchestra’s overseer. Yet, here one can imagine a wedding in Bamako, with a set of drummers, and both invités as well as passers-by jumping in and out of the circle, dancing, challenging each other and the drummers to push the beat to the full extent of human capacity. Certainly, neither the dancers nor the drummers doing Senegal’s Manjanee- the fastest dance in Africa- could slap their palms against the drums, or stomp their feet against the dusty earth any quicker. Everyone leaves exhausted and full. This is a pattern in Black culture found throughout the Diaspora. Elsewhere it’s ‘tragicomic’ according to Cornel West, or just plain Blues.

Indeed, the polyrhythmic beat resolves conflict through dialogue between these beats, in Mahalia’s case a stomping piano and a strong belting register. Miles did this with his quintet; James Brown did it with Maceo, Fred, Jimmy and the rest. More recently, consider LL Cool J and Cut Creator. The swing of the beat provides the earnest, incontestable resolution: Choose life.

Image via Wikipedia