Marxist Criticism in the Dutchman

The film the Dutchman was inspired by a play of the same name that opened in New York City in March of 1964 at the height of the civil rights movement. The play was made into a film in 1967, starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. At that time, this film was very controversial and shocking to its audience. This film, as in the play, begins in a subway station. The subway represents the solace of the underground and the depth of evil.

During the first scene, the male character, an African American, Clay, is a passenger on the subway and the female character, a white woman, Lula, is standing outside the train on the platform. This film is filled with symbolism, beginning with this scene. The window symbolizes the separation between black and white Americans at the time. Once on the train, Lula states, 'I even got into this train, going some other way than mine, searching you out”. Her temptress role begins.

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As Lula begins talking to Clay, she continues to eat an apple. This apple is symbolic of Adam and Eve. Characterizing Lula as Eve and her manipulative power and Clay, by his name alone, Adam, as Adam was made of the dust of the earth or clay. They are alone in this scene, as was Adam and Eve. Along with a religious analogy of good vs evil, there is also a scene where Clay calls Lula Snow White.

Ironic, since Snow White is the one tricked into eating a poisoned apple, but Clay doesn’t realize he is Snow White in this situation.

As the movie progresses Lula continues to try to seduce and also demean Clay based on preconceived notions of a black man. This talk begins to unleash anger deep within Clay and he lashes out in anger but stops himself from killing her as the other riders do nothing. This is when Lula steals Clay's life by stabbing him and demanding the rest of the riders to throw him off of the train at the next station. Soon the narrative begins again with Lula and another young black man that enters the train. This film was very reminiscent of the play in both plot and theme. Both the film and play were played out in the same time of close to 70 minutes. In Marxist criticism about this film, he states, 'inferior class (Subordinate class: Don’t own and control the means of production) were the only two classes who engaged in hostile interaction to achieve class consciousness.' He believed, 'that all past history is a struggle between hostile and competing economic classes in the state of change and Baraka presents this challenge in his film masterpiece Dutchman which is a real show of internal social racial, ideological challenges that the reader of this text can feel in the modern American society