Amiri Baraka
Watch Now – Amiri Baraka’s “Dutchman” (Black Man’s Neuroses)
Made in 1966, Dutchman is the filmed version of Amiri Baraka’s controversial one-act stage play. It won the Obie Award for best off-Broadway play, thrusting Baraka into the limelight. It stars Al Freeman Jr. & Shirley Knight.
The story, for those unfamiliar, goes… A sinister, neurotic, lascivious white girl, Lula, lures to his doom, a good-looking young black man, Clay – a stranger she picks up in the subway. She mocks him for wearing the clothes, and employing the voice and manners of what she deems the conventional white intellectual. The man, who, at first, sees no reason to resist the girl’s advances, perceives too late that he is being used by her. He then drops his so-called “white” disguise, and launches into a counterattack, against the girl, and at whites in general, leading to its haunting, shocking conclusion.
Dutchman initially played to primarily white audiences, until Baraka moved it to a Harlem theater that he founded, in order to reach, and to educate his intended black audience. It was the last play produced by Baraka under his birth name, LeRoi Jones. At the time, Jones/Baraka was in the process of divorcing his white Jewish wife and embracing Black Nationalism.
It certainly shows
And now… Dutchman (It’s about an hour long; if you’re not at all familiar with the play that the film is based on, I encourage you to watch it all the way to its end to fully appreciate the work):
