Wild Wild West

http://movies.aol.com/movie/wild-wild-west/6300/synopsis

“Wild Wild West”, a movie that is supposed to take place a few years after the civil war ended, taking place from Louisiana to Washington. Jim West a black secret service member teams up with Gordon, also a secret service member at the orders of the President to find the person behind the kidnapping of many of America’s top scientists. The two operatives end up finding out that the kidnapper is Loveless an ex supporter for the South during the civil war and is back to exact his revenge on the country and divide it back to Britain, Mexico and other countries with some area for himself. The fact that the South had to sign a surrender in order to ensure that they would not be killed after many of their battles were lost. Many of the southerners shown that were from the South were still very racist and thought of blacks as second class citizens and tools. At a party blacks were not supposed to be inside since it was a meeting for friends of the South, which were supporters of the Confederacy. The plan to claim America and divide it heads in the desert as the President is christening a railway that will combine the North and South. As foreign dignitaries sit and watch the President is ordered to sign a treaty that gives up the United States to Loveless, he is rescued by his agents and Loveless is defeated. This story relates to Hoard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”. In chapter 2 Zinn discusses the history of the United States and how slavery was started in America. The fact that slavery became illegal after the civil war made many Southerners angry and disgruntled and gave rise to many rebellions. Though there were no large scale efforts such as in this movie after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, there were many minor attempts, most of which were never even put into action. The racism after the civil war was not ended even though the civil war was won by the North, slavery was still a big part of most peoples lives and as in the movie blacks were still treated wrongly and talked down to. Lynching was a common practice back than and an attempted hanging takes places during the movie, just because a black man touched a white woman breasts. The rules back then were very different depending on your race and a crime that a white would get fined for could get a black lynched. This movie is a good example of the different treatment blacks received just because of the color of their skin. This movie was not supposed to be about race and slavery but it had a lot of ideas and beliefs that would subconsciously show through. There were some innuendoes implied in the movie but not enough time was taken on them to make it a racy film. At first glance the movie is pretty impartial, a white and black agent working together with no real degradation towards the black man that was race related.