So I read the small blurb in The Crisis magazine the other day that “Eyes On The Prize” will return to Public Tee Vee this fall. I was elated, until I read the (original?) Boston Globe story.

Excerpted out of order from Catherine Foster’s May 26, 2006 Globe account:

The clearance rights for the astounding amount of material, which had originally been negotiated to be used for varying periods of time by Blackside, gradually expired.

It took four or five years to raise $915,000 for research, rights clearance, and post-production costs, said Sandra Forman, Blackside attorney and director of the “Eyes on the Prize” Renewal Project.

So Blackside had indeed raised the $900,000 or so ( the total cost of any five Diddy parties, right?) for broadcast rights, but not the rights to allow the series to be sold again on DVD.

*SIGH*

Oh, yeah, and I gotta point out that:

The first six hours took 10 years to fund and produce.

I have the greatest respect for our ancestor Henry Hampton and the fact that he used up half his life to create Black documentaries and get them on American screens. It must be said, however, that “Eyes On The Prize” is a racially, politically and ideologically conservative, PBS- and Ford Foundation-approved version of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. I’ve always seen it as akin to a documentary series on the Jewish Holocaust that was partially produced and (under)written by a modern-day unified German government. “Eyes I,” from 1987, shows a part of the Black Freedom Movement as something called the Civil Rights Movement—a time, according to “Eyes,” in which small groups of whites and Blacks lovingly came together to nonviolently expand American democracy.

However, its national airing—particularly “Eyes II”‘s 1990 debut, showing the Black Panther Party and Attica to a generation (read: me :)) who had never seen anything like that level of resistance—was one of the biggest mistakes this system ever made. Back then. When many of us we were wearing African medallions and trying to read books on our history and culture. When Mandela released himself from a South African prison. When Spike Lee was still angry and BET still had its first newscast and its first version of “Teen Summit,” and when those shows were followed in subsequent years by SEVERAL talk programs/newsmagazines (“For Black Men Only,” “Screen Scene,” “Conservations with Ed Gordon,” “The Color Of Money”) . I’m just sayin’. 🙂

The tragedy of “Eyes” is that Black resistance against a system of oppression is somehow never seen. But I guess we can’t expect foundations created from the spoils of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy to actually pay to show that to our lil’ chillins, can we? Those innocent tykes might actually start to ask some questions about their society………. 🙂 Or even worse, ask questions about what WE have done, or not done, to further this Movement.

Time to get out the DVD recorders before the screen blacks out again.