Hip-hop

There is this moment in Black Snake Moan where the character Reverend R.L. (played by the solid actor John Cothran) asks Lazarus (played by Samuel L. Jackson) the question that has been the figurative “elephant in the room” in this movie: “Why is there a half-naked white woman chained up in your house?” He should have been asking the question to the director Craig Brewer (director of Hustle & Flow.) Both films invest themselves with similar characters that would people a William Faulkner novel or a Flannery O’Connor short story: the characters are offbeat, Southern and the atmosphere is lurid flirting with old-style South. However the difference between a Brewer versus a Faulkner and an O’Connor, is that Faulkner and O’Connor may have used quirky devices to hook readers in, but they also respected and understood the depths and the humanity in most of their characters.