Alexandre Dumas - Black Frenchman

Rasta Livewire is picking news feed that French film makers and their financiers are attempting to credit the so-called white tribes as being the author of that nation’s greatest great novels such as, The Three Musketeers and The Count Of Monte Christo.

These works were well known to have been written by a black man, Alexandre Dumas, son of Haitian born General, Thomas Dumas. He is known as one of the fathers of modern French literature and modern French language.

Although France has produced many great writers, none has been as widely read as Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been translated into almost a hundred languages, and have inspired more than 200 motion pictures.

Eventhough very successful in French higher society, Alexandre Dumas (and his father General Thomas Dumas) suffered immensely on the account of his race and the racism of the average so-called white Europeans.

In 1843 he wrote a short novel, Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. All his life he referred to himself as anegro.

He famously remarked to a so-called white man who insulted him about his mixed-race background with the following words: “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

Although his books were revered by his contemporaries, he was often mocked for his colour. “In caricatures or in sketches he was always presented with big lips, with Afro hair, as a sort of monster.”

Even at death, he was not honoured by the society which he did so much to enlighten and promote. He was buried in his home town rather than in the national mausoleum where luminaries less than him had been buried. And while his book was widely read and celebrated, his remains was not accorded the respect dued to it.

All that changed that on 30 November 2002, when under the orders of the French President, Jacques Chirac, Alexandre Dumas’ body was exhumed, and in a televised ceremony with new coffin all draped in national colours; was transported in a solemn procession to the Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where French luminaries are interred.

President Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed in the treatment of the remaining physical legacy of Alexandre Dumas; but also emphasized that such a wrong had now been righted, with Alexandre Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.

Why would France now seek to re-dramatize the life of Alexandre Dumas as a so-called white man?

Below is the one of the several reports on the issue floating on the web:

Dumas film with white actor Depardieu sparks race row

By Emma Jane Kirby

BBC News, Paris

French actor Gerard Depardieu (file image)

Gerard Depardieu’s natural skin tone was not dark enough

A film about 19th Century French author Alexandre Dumas has sparked a row after a white actor was chosen to portray the novelist, who was of African origin.

The celebrated but fair-skinned screen star, Gerard Depardieu, had to darken his skin and wear curly wig to play the part in L’Autre Dumas.

Critics argue the French movie industry has deliberately undermined the 19th Century novelist’s ethnicity.

They say a mixed race actor should have been chosen to play the national hero.

…..The film’s directors insist they simply chose an actor who could match Dumas’s vibrancy.