"Cautious culture"

"I'm exploring something that has nothing to do with race or gender. I'm the crazy girl on the end of that chain. I'm the one who felt I was losing control of my mind and my body because I was not tethered to anyone. And I needed to be snapped back. I needed my father, who died at 49 of a heart attack, to tell me, "It's gonna be OK, and you're not alone. Everybody goes crazy at certain times in their life. You're entitled to some happiness, you're entitled to some unconditional love. And it will never stop. You will constantly be getting punched in the gut, being exploited, being judged."

So I think it's foolish to immediately jump to sexism because of the imagery. But I will give them this: I'm asking for it. I guess I could have chosen some other way to do it. But, look, you can't do a movie about the blues and not explore biblical imagery and Southern iconography. And it is an obvious flip to see that black man with a white woman on the end of a chain, walking with her in his beautiful bean field, with her in those white cotton panties and a crop top with a Confederate flag and an American flag on it. I can't believe people are thinking this is, like, a documentary -- that this goes on in the South every day.

It doesn't, but "Tobacco Road" doesn't happen every day in the South, either. "Baby Doll," the Elia Kazan movie, doesn't happen every day either. But we give those movies a pass. We're in a very cautious culture, and to some extent I think that means we've created a bigger divide."

Black Snake Moan's director Craig Brewer.