Season 6: Episode 312 - AMERICA GOES DARK: Beloved (T. Morrison) (1998)

Book:  Beloved

            By Toni Morrison

 

Film: Beloved (1998)

 

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is inspired by an event that actually happened: Margaret Garner, an enslaved person in Kentucky, who escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856. She was subject to capture in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; when U.S. marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, she was attempting to kill her children, and had already killed her two-year-old daughter, to spare them from being returned to slavery.  Morrison had come across an account of Garner titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article published in the American Baptist, and reproduced in The Black Book, a miscellaneous compilation of black history and culture that Morrison edited in 1974.

 

Beloved is a 1998 American psychological horror drama film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Thandiwe Newton. Based on Toni Morrison's 1987 novel of the same name, the plot centers on a former slave after the American Civil War, her haunting by a poltergeist, and the visitation of her reincarnated daughter.  Despite being a box office bomb Beloved received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design for Colleen Atwood, the film received mostly positive reviews, and both Danny Glover and Kimberly Elise received praise for their performances.

 

Opening Credits; Introduction (2.30); Background History (21.42); Plot Synopsis (23.37); Book Thoughts(28.10); Let's Rate (56.09); Introducing a Film (58.22); Film Trailer (59.35); Lights, Camera, Action (1:01.35); How Many Stars (1:57.01); End Credits (2:01.20); Closing Credits (2:02.35)

 

Opening Credits– Epidemic Sound – copyright 2021. All rights reserved

 

Closing Credits:  Something In My House by Dead or Alive.  Taken from the album Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know.  Copyright 1986.  Epic Records.

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Original Music copyrighted 2020 Dan Hughes Music and the Literary License Podcast. 

 

All rights reserved.  Used With Kind Permission.

 

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