Oh Jesse. The "Grey's Anatomy" star just got himself into a SITUATION situation. He's getting tons of backlash over his taste in memes to promote his new Emmett Till movie. But is Black Twitter misinterpreting what he meant? Deets inside....
Jesse Williams is about a quarter of a f*** up from being cancelled for good, let Black Twitter tell it.
The actor is set to make his directorial debut in an upcoming movie focused on the aftermath of Emmett Till's murder.
Deadline just revealed the news this afternoon, but Jesse may have already ruined it. The trade publication reports:
Jesse Williams, one of the stars of ABC’s long-running series, Grey’s Anatomy, is marking his feature directorial debut with Till, a film centered around Mamie Mobley Till, the mother of Emmett Louis Till, a Black teen who was lynched after being accused flirting with a white woman in the Jim Crow-era South.
The film, which is being produced by Whoopi Goldberg, is based on a screenplay by Michael Reilly and civil rights filmmaker Keith A. Beauchamp.
The film is based on Beauchamp’s 2005 documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which led the United States Department of Justice to reopen the Till case in 2004.
.....
Till is about Mamie Mobley Till’s journey for justice following the brutal murder of her fourteen-year-old son in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in 1955.
Just as the news dropped, Jesse tweeted a now-deleted series of memes that included historical pics of a visibly distraught Mamie Till standing over her son's casket. Jesse slapped the words from Nike's newest Colin Kaepernick campaign - focusing on sacrifice - on the pics as well.
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Anything seen as commercializing death never goes over well, especially not when a black woman's pain is being used. So Twitter read the actor the riot act, saying Mamie didn't "sacrifice" her son, her son was ripped from her life by racist whites:
So Jesse Williams divorces a black woman and loses his good sense it seems...what is this?! Emmett Till wasn't a sacrifice he was murdered by white supremacy.
(Also too many people liked this bullshit) pic.twitter.com/i5ZlBRnuWh
— The Harlem Shimmy (@Say_Yes_2theJes) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams turned pictures of Emmett Till’s mom into a Nike meme...to promote the movie he’s directing.
I can’t lie this makes me question how he’s going to do with the movie pic.twitter.com/eDD38e9KZW
— DrmCatchr (@JaleelSpeaQs) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams just made Emmett Till into a Nike meme. Bruh.....
— I tweet (@c__suave) September 24, 2018
a nike meme of emmett till's mother to promote a movie????? i hate jesse williams. wow.
— I'M MALCOLM X. (@itssnaz_) September 24, 2018
"I stand with Jesse Williams" pic.twitter.com/K0El4NQZwT
— jujoffer (@jujoffer) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams or his team didn’t think an Nike inspired meme with Emmett Till’s mom crying near her son’s casket was offensive?
Then had a nerve to say “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” as if she sacrificed her son. #TillTheMovie@iJesseWilliams
— Jerome Trammel (@MrJeromeTrammel) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams tweet on reducing Emmett Till to a Nike ad Highlights a larger problem in Hollywood/corporate. Racism is a business now, they're cashing in on this.
Movies, TV shirts, Commercials, Ads you name it.
They produce torture porn to reach them pockets not solutions.— Nikki (@DeansPie) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams is the primary example of someone who should've just sat there and ate his food.
— gabrielle noel (@gabalexa) September 24, 2018
Nike is capitalizing off of rebellion in the face of black pain, not simply the pain itself.
Jesse Williams making a meme of a crying black mother over a casket is NOT the same as Nike promoting a LIVING black man for trying to prevent those images.
— Ty’Challa $ign (@fandole44) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams was promoting his new movie about Emmett Till with a series of real photos from the lives of his family after the tragedy with the Nike branding from their new campaign. Like... what? pic.twitter.com/FXbirFxHDS
— Chachie (@ChachieMusic) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams directing more trauma porn and using a Nike ad meme to promote it is the most Jesse Williams thing I can think of.
— - (@pseudonova) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams could've created an actual movie poster for #TILLtheMovie but nope. He had to be that one guy: "hey, everybody is doing it. I wanna do it too." A statue could've been made or an actual respectable poster or ANYTHING ELSE but THIS? Come on now.... pic.twitter.com/rq1xDwvOtN
— Aallyhia Cruz (@BigtimeAallyhia) September 24, 2018
Deadline recalls:
Emmett Till’s murder was seen as the impetus for the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement. At the time of his funeral, Mamie famously insisted on an open casket ceremony, exposing her son’s mutilated body and bringing attention not only to racially charged violence but also to the odious and barbaric practice of lynching.
The two white men who kidnapped and murdered Emmett were acquitted by an all-white jury. The men later confessed to the murder in an interview published in Look magazine, but due to the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the men were protected from a retrial.
Carolyn Bryant-Donham, the woman at the center of Emmett’s case, decades later admitted to fabricating her testimony regarding her interaction with Emmett.
While the memes are a WHOLE mess, especially without properly conveyed context, we wonder if Jesse was speaking of Mamie Till's handling of her son's death as the sacrifice, as opposed to her son's death itself.
Mamie Till made one of the boldest, most selfless decisions after her son was beaten and killed at the hands of racist white men who believed a racist white woman's tale that Emmett did the "unconscionable act" of flirting with her. While much of America in the 50's was busy trying to convince the rest of America that we, as a country, had turned a corner in Civil Rights and racism was a thing of the past (sound familiar?), Mamie Till wanted to make sure EVERYONE knew that racism was alive and well.
She decided to hold an open casket, public funeral where media and the public were welcomed to view the evilness that resulted in her son's life being taken. It is one of the biggest turning points in the Civil Rights era. Mrs. Till sacrificed her peace, personal comfort and personal grieving to showcase the injustice in her son's death.
A few others seem to agree, even though we still believe Jesse didn't convey his message properly:
My guess is Jesse Williams was trying to articulate the sacrifices Mamie Till made to get justice for her son and to combat poverty as an activist she would later become. The movie is about the aftermath so that’s the only rationalization I could see.
— Dave Mensah (@davemenz) September 24, 2018
I think I sort of understand what Jesse Williams meant with the Nike memes.
Emmett Till was murdered but it wasn't until his mother sacrificed her privacy for an open casket funeral that his death got global attention. So in a sense, she sacrificed something for her beliefs.
— An Artist Named Grayne (@graynetimi) September 24, 2018
1. Yes, the Jesse Williams pictures were in poor taste.
2. Clearly not intentionally. That should matter.
3. Some of y’all don’t know enough about the story to be so outspoken. Group anger is such a trend.
— Uncle Trav (@ImMrCochran) September 24, 2018
Jesse Williams said in a press release earlier:
“I’m honored to be directing the story of Mamie & Emmett: a tale of revolutionary defiance in the face of tremendous personal and public devastation. An exploration of power and pulling back the curtain on cultural violence; of boyhood and maternity challenging America’s reflex to hide from itself; underdogs refusing to pretend that terror is freedom.”
Production starts Summer 2019 with the support of the Till family. We hope Jesse gets his director act together by then and thinks through messaging much more thoroughly.
Photo: Getty
