ACROSS THE POND

Black Cowboys and Rastas

Netflix Western ‘The Harder They Fall’ honors Rasta version of Redwood

The Netflix blockbuster, The Harder They Fall, had me squealing! That’s because it hit me different than most people watching it. It spoke to my Black Power self, my Black feminist self, my lover of global Black music self but also my Pan African- and Rasta- minded self.

The film paid homage to the legacy of Black cowboys and was written, directed, and scored by Jeymes Samuel. He is a Black British singer and songwriter, producer, and filmmaker who I presume is also Rasta-minded.

This is because in the film's musical subtext he pays homage to the first Diasporic Black people to repatriate themselves successfully and independently to Africa.

While the film is a fictional story of an outlaw committed to getting revenge on the man who killed his parents, the characters they played were not. It features a bevy of African American stars including Regina King, Jonathan Majors, LeKeith Stanfield and Black British stars like Idris Elba and Delroy Lindo (who is also American). This casting, plus the writing, offers a more accurate rendition of the classic old western.