What Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” Gets Wrong

The danger of telling "a single story"

Movie review

WHAT AVA DUVERNAY’S ORIGIN GETS WRONG

The danger of telling “a single story”

Nandini Patwardhan

How do you turn a non-fiction “big idea” book into a hero’s journey, i.e., a film with a sympathetic protagonist, a narrative arc, and a triumphant ending? Director Ava DuVernay has managed to accomplish this feat in Origin, a film based, if only partially, on Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents.

DuVernay bypassed much of the data and anecdotes that comprise the book and instead centered author Isabel Wilkerson’s personal life and her research journey. We see Wilkerson first come up with and then gradually solidify her thesis that “caste is the underlying skeleton and race merely the skin” of American inequality.

Skeptics and True Believers

I published three deeply researched and highly critical reviews of Caste between 2021 and 2023, two of them here in JFBT and one on my own Medium account. As a person of Indian origin who has lived in the US for four decades, I relied on my lived experience in both countries. As a (retired) data analyst with degrees in Math and Statistics, I examined and critiqued the data cited in the book and, where warranted, located additional data (ignored in the book) to show where it went wrong. Other critical assessments of the book (by commentators who all happen to be African American) include a review by Charisse Burden-Stelly (Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University), a long-form social media post by Saida Grundy (Assistant Professor of Sociology, African-American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, Boston University), and an appearance on The Jacobin Show by Touré Reed (Professor of History, Illinois State University) and Adolph Reed, Jr. (Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania).

I decided to see Origin because I was curious to find out how a non-fiction book could be made into a dramatic story. I also wanted to understand Wilkerson’s research and writing process.

There were about a hundred people in the audience for the matinee show. An impressive turnout. About 60% of the viewers were black and the rest were white, predominantly older women. These audience members were an engaged bunch. There were approving guffaws at some mildly funny lines, such as when a Dalit student asks Wilkerson during her visit to India, “Do you know Ebony magazine?” There were chuckles when Wilkerson, endeavoring to show how the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany fits her thesis, is told by her cousin Marion, “Leave Jewish folks alone. They don’t need you. Write about us.” There were tears as the movie reached its final scenes, and applause when the closing credits started rolling.

Origin relies on three narrative arcs: the deaths of Wilkerson’s mother, husband, and cousin; the somewhat choppy process of coming up with a universal explanation of oppression; and a series of reenactments of historical incidents, such as eighteenth-century ships bound for America crammed with slaves in chains and World War II-era scenes from Germany and the American South.

The only reenactment that is set in contemporary America is the Trayvon Martin case.

Trayvon Martin

In one of the opening scenes, Wilkerson’s literary agent pleads with her to quickly produce a book about the murder of Trayvon Martin. She repeatedly turns him down because she has to spend all her time caring for her aging mother. She eventually gives in and the audience gets to listen with her to the chilling 911 call and its end with a single resounding gunshot. This was undoubtedly a tragic death that should never have happened.

However, as Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discussed in 2019 and again in 2022, there is quite a bit more to the story. At the very least, there are legitimate questions about the narrative that Trayvon lost his life solely because of Neighborhood Watch coordinator George Zimmerman’s racism. Both the FBI and Eric Holder’s DOJ, for example, terminated their investigations of the incident after finding no evidence of civil rights violations or a hate crime. Unfortunately, neither Wilkerson in her book nor DuVernay in her screenplay considered these issues, even though information that troubles the standard narrative was easily available when the book and the screenplay were in development.

This raises the question: Just how widespread are incidents such as the Trayvon Martin killing in America today? I analyzed some indicators in detail in Part 2 of my review of Caste in this journal, “What the Data Show about Police Killings of Black Men.” I found that such incidents, at least those involving killings by police, are very rare and that Wilkerson’s book “contributes to a highly skewed but dominant narrative about the prevalence of racism in contemporary American society.”

As for the film, I could not help noting that even though it depicts a significant amount of tragedy in Wilkerson’s life, it does not depict even a shadow of racial prejudice against her. If anything, she commands adulation wherever she goes. Also, while her friends and relatives have stories of past brushes with racism, all are shown to be leading stable, secure, middle-class, well-integrated lives.

Thus, a case could be made that despite past white-supremacist terror, prejudice, and hate, the last seven decades have brought forth a more equal and, dare I say, a much more fair and just present. Excluding any mention of this progress is, in my view, a flaw of the book as well as the movie.

Jew-hate in Germany

Origin’s reenactments set in Germany depict an ill-fated romance between Irma Eckler, a Jew, and August Landmesser, a Nazi, as well as book burnings and Nazis looking to learn from America’s racial policies. These scenes of past evil are balanced by scenes showing the many successful initiatives by postwar German society to commemorate Jewish victims and implement other forms of reconciliation. In contrast, the film shows Wilkerson criticizing contemporary American society in discussions with her German hosts and allowing for none of the progress that has taken place, even as her German hosts are unequivocally positive about the progress made by their country.

Yes, some Confederate monuments still exist here and there in the South, just as Germany still has some neo-Nazis who celebrate the Reich. But that is far from the whole or even a significant part of reality in either country. For Wilkerson and DuVernay to present American reality as unchanged since before the 1960s feels wrong and unfair to Americans, including naturalized ones like me, who have done and are doing “the work.”

Caste in India

It is significant that the only scenes of present-day oppression in Origin take place in India.

A prime example is a statue of the Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar which, we are told, must be enclosed in a cage in order to protect it from anti-Dalit vandals. Viewers are not told however that this is far from a widespread need. A Google search reveals that statues of Dr. Ambedkar are caged in just two of India’s three dozen states. Clearly, this is not quite as widespread a practice as the movie leads audiences to believe. Further, in several cases, it is the state government that constructs the iron grills that surround the statues and it also appoints and pays for round-the-clock security to protect the statues. So, hatred of Dalits in India is neither omnipresent nor state-sanctioned.

Indeed, the state of Andhra Pradesh unveiled a 206-foot-tall statue of Dr. Ambedkar in January of this very year. The state spent Rs. 404 crore (approximately $5MM), which is far from chump change. Also, Dr. Ambedkar is honored by people of all castes and classes for much more than being a leader of the Dalit community. His contribution to the nation is unparalleled, as he was a principal contributor to the Indian constitution.

Unfortunately, audiences are kept in the dark about these nuances and led to believe that India is an aggressively and unrepentingly anti-Dalit country.   

The only other instance of present-day mistreatment of Dalits in India is the scene involving what is called “manual scavenging,” that is, the removal of human excrement and cleaning of drains and sewers by hand. Needless to say, this is a cruel and inhuman custom that harkens back to medieval times and can be found in a variety of very poor countries. The fact that this practice exists in modern India is an indication of how far the country still has to go in terms of both modernity and prosperity.

To what extent does the caste association of this “profession” make the indefensibly horrible situation meaningfully worse? In other words, would manual scavenging be somehow less odious if non-Dalit people were also employed in those jobs? I leave the answer to each reader’s judgment.

India is called a subcontinent for a reason. It is home to enormous diversity in religion, language, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic class. It is also a place where multiple centuries co-exist in the same physical space. For example, as recently as 2010, almost 25% of India’s population did not have access to electricity. In 1994, this number was just under 50%. Lack of electricity means access denied to all the trappings of modern life, including, in particular, exposure to progressive thought, ideas, and aspirations. Is it any surprise that there are parts of India where people still live, or have lived until very recently, in medieval-level ignorance, superstition, illiteracy, and poverty? (The good news is that this is changing dramatically and as of 2021, over 99% of India’s over 1.4 billion population has access to electricity.)

Being a low-income country comes with many other disadvantages and indignities, and in the case of India, public cleanliness is one of them. Even so, India launched its Clean India Mission, or Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, a countrywide campaign to directly tackle all the problems associated with manual scavenging and the general dearth of hygiene facilities. Even Bollywood joined the effort by producing the film Toilet: A Love Story. The commercial film was a huge success at the box office, which means that it likely reached many of the very people who struggle with lack of access to hygiene facilities.

In writing the above, it is not at all my intention to minimize the horrors of manual scavenging and the disproportionate burden borne by the Dalit community. My point is only that Origin draws a very one-sided and superficial portrait in its few scenes of oppression that take place in the modern era.

Additionally, in willfully ignoring the reality of India regarding prosperity, both Wilkerson and DuVernay are guilty of punching down.

The danger of a single story

Wilkerson was correct in her hunch that a single explanation, “racism,” was inadequate to account for the complex, entrenched, and fraught issue of “racial oppression” in the US. If she had been courageous and objective, she would not have substituted for the simplistic explanation of “race” the simplistic explanation of “caste,” particularly given that caste is built on highly disparate foundation stones. 

The three societies that she studied, the US, Germany, and India, are vastly different in terms of the time periods studied, their histories and socio-economic status, and the majority/minority status of the historically oppressed groups within them.

First, while Jews and blacks were/are numerical minorities in their respective societies, the Dalits and other low castes comprise almost two-thirds of the population of India. Second, unlike blacks in the US and Dalits in India, Jews in Germany were not a powerless class.

Third, India is the most populous country in the world and is the poorest of the three countries Wilkerson and Origin considered. This combination of circumstances means that in India there is stifling competition for resources (education and career opportunities as well as clean water, air, space) and this brings out the basest human instincts for self-preservation, including exploitation/oppression of anyone deemed powerless and vulnerable. This is not to excuse exploitation, but merely to understand human nature and how it is shaped by circumstances. In short, we cannot de-link casteism (to the extent that it exists today) from the overall scarcity of resources and opportunities that plagues India.  

Finally, and most importantly, the differences in time periods are an enormous factor. The Indian caste system evolved centuries ago, at a time when fear of contagion (think COVID fears and lockdowns on an exponential scale) was real and immediate in a tropical (hot and humid) climate. This was a time when there was no knowledge of bacteria and viruses, let alone vaccines and antibiotics. The only way people knew to avoid diseases was to practice extreme social distancing from people who handled animal and human waste. This gave rise to untouchability and the other pillars of caste, as noted by Wilkerson, such as endogamy and stratification of work roles.

India has been independent for about 75 years. It is about the same age as the US was at the time of the Civil War. It takes generational time for countries to come into their own and take charge of their own destinies. Let us not forget that a century passed between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, a period when Jim Crow laws and legal segregation were in effect.

To have gone from 50% to 100% electricity access for a population of hundreds of millions in a span of 30 years is a Herculean feat. From this and other similar initiatives (Clean Health Initiative, countrywide cell phone coverage, digital banking, free girls’ education, and massive highway and other infrastructure construction projects) will emerge a more enlightened India.

Unfortunately, Wilkerson and DuVernay are so obsessed with their need to find a single overarching explanation to account for their own jaundiced assessment of the US that they willfully ignore all of these factors and fixate on “caste” as the only, all-pervasive, and unrelieved explanation of evil.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brilliantly articulated the danger of adhering to “a single story” in her 2009 TED talk. She warned that when we are exposed to only a single story about another person or society, we get only a superficial and flawed understanding. It is like when blind men touch isolated parts of an elephant and draw conclusions from that about the form of the whole animal.

Wilkerson and DuVernay have told a single story about both the US and India in a way that they did not do for Germany. They have touched only parts of these two elephants, blind to the fact that they have not comprehended the animals’ forms in their entirety.

As I think back to the many audience members who were reduced to tears at the end of Origin, the danger of a single story becomes apparent. The people who pay the price (and not just in dollars) for this flawed single story are African-American readers and viewers who may internalize narratives that are cynically designed by the likes of Wilkerson and DuVernay to deliver a punch, regardless of the fact that the punch does not reflect all of reality. White Americans of sincere goodwill also pay a price in the form of extreme guilt and shame for sins that their ancestors may or may not have committed (but which they personally certainly did not), and for so-called privileges that they did not steal from anybody. In short, all readers and viewers who choose to engage with such content become willing victims by taking on the emotional labor of having to repeatedly process emotional trauma that has a very thin connection, if any, to the present day. This may ultimately be detrimental to the readers' and viewers' own well-being and may rob them of optimism and a sense of agency.

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Nandini Patwardhan is originally from India but has now lived in the US for four decades and currently resides in Oakland, California. She is a retired software engineer and a passionate nonfiction writer, whose work was awarded the San Francisco Press Club Award in 2020 and 2021. Her 2020 biography of Anandi Joshee (1865–1887), titled Radical Spirits: India's First Woman Doctor and Her American Champions, won the Benjamin Franklin Award in Biography. She has published with Journal of Free Black Thought here and here (a two-part review of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste), here (“A Marshall Plan for Black Lives”), here (“An Indian Thanksgiving”), and here (“On Affirmative Action”). Follow her on Twitter and Medium and visit her website.