Reception and Controversy
The film was widely criticised for blackface. When the film was released, some protests took place within the black community because Howell is in blackface make up throughout most of it. In 2008, New York Press's contrarian critic Armond White would cite the movie as predicting the rise of Barack Obama, who entered the real-life Harvard Law School in 1988, and White declared that Soul Man was "easily the best movie ever set at Harvard."
Read more about this topic: Soul Man (film)
Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or controversy:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)