'Fahrenheit 451,' Brother, Where Art Thou the Black Women?

Fahrenheit 451 poster.

Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 is an outstanding piece of dystopian literature. It made perfect sense to create a new film adaptation of a story entailing a post apocalyptic world without books, without knowledge turning pages grants us. With Michael B. Jordan tapped as lead and serving executive producer duties, why not be excited about HBO's reenactment?

Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) and Guy Montag (Michael B. Jordan) burning all books.

Ramin Bahrani's film shows a quite compelling opening sequence that is heated and alluring all at once. Heartbreaking imagery of beloved books and art devoured by smoldering flames. Classics like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and works by Vermeer, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Horace Pippin, James Van Der Zee, and Gordon Parks are consumed by melodious fire. Archival photos including The Kissing Sailor are also torched alive. Poetry, fiction, theory, and everything in between translated in various languages across the globe are destroyed, seemingly lost forever.

Left behind, however, is a hardened yet vulnerable world surviving on inaccurate information, without art and music, nearly 7,000 languages lost, doomed for collapse.

Secretly seduced, Montag pockets a slim copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Notes From the Underground."

The firemen break into houses, damage property, and humiliate the guilty via surveillance that can be seen outside on skyscrapers, all over the web. Captain Beatty and Guy Montag lead their team, burning up computers and books, determined to stop anyone from uploading thousands of existing material onto the Internet. They're a rough, aggressive bunch, often celebrating victories over these intelligent renegades, believing that burning books are necessary, saving people from sin and depravity.

Beatty and Montag have a close bond, an almost familial allegiance. Montag is Beatty's righthand man, someone he can count on most, and a topnotch replacement for his upcoming retirement.  Both men, though, are hiding secrets from one another and from Yuxie, their in house Suri. She is in charge of securing the home, offering a vocal companionship, and instructing them to take their eyedrop cocktails.Unlike Beatty who instructs, "Yuxie, go dark" and places a lampshade over Yuxie's sleek head, Montag only tells her, "go dark," believing that he has complete privacy.

Guy (Michael B. Jordan) finds himself beguiled by dimly lit stacks of paperbacks and hardcovers. If you're a library/bookstore enthusiast, the smell of books, the sight of books is a tantalizing seduction, albeit innocent, but worthwhile and pleasant. Fahrenheit 451 definitely captured that lure.

Just like Black Panther's Erik Killmonger, Montag has strong patriarchal ties, his memories flooded with father and son interactions. It is beautiful, an expression of tenderness and compassion, thoughtfully expressing a father's love, a black father's love that is present and undeniable. Without exchanging words, the father and the son look upon one another in a genuinely endearing affection. However, the black mother's absence isn't explained. Had she fallen for books? Was she a betrayer to the regime? Or had she died in childbirth due to the lack of knowledge doctors likely held? Although it starts to become obvious that Montag's thoughts are rigged, there is no indication as to what has happened to his mother. Montag's desire for a father figure makes his relationship with Beatty appear a desperate clinch, a reach that ultimately starts to unravel once Montag's views on burning books changes.

Enter Clarisse McClellan, a woman who helps those eels (the rebel organization) in need and moonlights for the fire department, granting them information to keep them off her revolutionary trail. Montag is intrigued by her, sneaking visits to her room in the slums, which also showcases a great class difference between the two. Clarisse's knowledge, however, puts her in a whole other league from Montag. He no longer feels driven by duty, but by destiny. Soon, they're reading Dostoyevsky together- she reading with purpose, he struggling with reading flow as though illiterate. After witnessing a woman sacrifice herself along her vast book collection ala Joan of Arc fashion, Montag begins to understand the draw of the written word.

Guy (Michael B. Jordan) and Clarisse (Sofia Boutella) have a bland, short lived romance.

Of Jordan, fresh off one of Marvel Universe's most successful hero origin films where blackness held vital key, is it not too much to ask that the same logic be shown in a small HBO picture such as Fahrenheit 451? This is a man set on producing films with the inclusive rider clause. Yet, however, this film doesn't include black women in a way that is valid and celebratory. Sure, Khandi Alexander shows up one hour and nine minutes in, calling herself Toni Morrison, a fierce leader among a gang of folks ushering the rebel change. Now Jordan knows black women are his hugest fans, his biggest support group. The love is definitely not returned here. Once Toni Morrison arrives, the main points have been made, the shift has already been set in stone, and the film is only an hour and forty minutes.

"The most disrespected woman in America is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is black women."- Malcolm X

Yes, books, art, and music have to survive. They're absolutely needed. Humanity would be in a sunken place without people's individual opinions, convictions, passions, and talents. Most importantly, black women are imperative.  And a world without them, is a world without strength, dignity, and backbone.