The Academy Award-winning film Zero Dark Thirty premiered a mere 19 months after Osama Bin Laden was assassinated by Seal Team 6 in Pakistan. The film depicts the night Bin Laden’s compound was stormed and American forces killed the founder of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Forty five years and nine months following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, TN., there has never been a biopic about the celebrated Atlantan’s life.
In the past several years, the King family has denied both Dreamworks and Warner Bros. the rights to all of the civil rights leader’s speeches (without which, a truly encompassing biopic would be impossible). Screenplays backed by celebrated directors Paul Greengrass and Oliver Stone have been trashed, both for the same reason. Both works, of course, characterize King as the bold, influential civil rights leader he was; but also include scenes depicting King’s alleged extramarital affairs. “I’m told the estate & the ‘respectable’ black community that guard King’s reputation won’t approve it.” Stone said, “They suffocate the man & the truth.”
The King family is guilty of an ethical crime that threatens to keep our view of King (and any other human we encounter in life, history or literature), woefully incomplete. By completely denying certain aspects of someone’s life, whether they be moral or immoral, to satisfy our own agenda, we set a standard of perfection that cannot be met. This belief that all people are either “good or bad” and all actions are either “right or wrong” is referred to as moral absolutism.
A chief tenant of moral absolutism is the acceptance of a simple truth, based on higher moral values. It is a school of thought that denies any factors or stories extending beyond the final “guilty or innocent” verdict we apply to people’s legacies. In order to retain our virtually predetermined view of a person, absolutists choose to ignore specific aspects of character that contradict what we want to see.
The King family seems to believe that if we were to delve into the less family-friendly aspects of King’s character, he would cease to be the champion of civil rights that he was and is. Though King’s extramarital affairs may not be the man’s most shining accomplishment, I believe King would have greatly appreciated a full, honest screenplay. As a devout follower of Mahatma Ghandi, I think King would have agreed with the words of Ghandi’s acquaintance and contemporary, guru Sri Aurobindo:
“Truth is an infinitely complex reality and he has the best chance of arriving nearest to it who most recognizes but is not daunted by its infinite complexity. We must look at the whole thought-tangle, fact, emotion, idea, truth beyond idea, conclusion, contradiction, modification, ideal, practice, possibility, impossibility.”
By denying or overly emphasizing the darker sides of anyone, we are denying ourselves the full truth, which is a truly damaging form of censorship.
