Ava DuVernay on ‘Selma’ Criticism: ‘I Wasn’t Interested in Making a White Savior Movie’

By Jamilah King Jan 06, 2015

Ava DuVernay’s latest film "Selma" has earned plenty of praise for its portrayal of a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, but it’s also earned its share of criticism. That criticism has mostly centered on the film’s depiction of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who former cabinet member Joseph A. Califano, Jr. wrote in the Washington Post was falsely protrayed in the film "as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself."

In fact, Selma was LBJ’s idea," Califano, Jr. continued. "He considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, [and] he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted.

DuVernay responded to the criticism this week in an interview with Rolling Stone:

Every filmmaker imbues a movie with their own point of view. The script was the LBJ/King thing, but originally, it was much more slanted to Johnson. I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie; I was interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma. You have to bring in some context for what it was like to live in the racial terrorism that was going on in the deep south at that time. The four little girls have to be there, and then you have to bring in the women. So I started adding women.

This is a dramatization of the events. But what’s important for me as a student of this time in history is to not deify what the president did. Johnson has been hailed as a hero of that time, and he was, but we’re talking about a reluctant hero. He was cajoled and pushed, he was protective of a legacy — he was not doing things out of the goodness of his heart. Does it make it any worse or any better? I don’t think so. History is history and he did do it eventually. But there was some process to it that was important to show.

Read more at Rolling Stone.