User Reviews

Obviously, the gag in this film is lost on modern audiences. The obsessive and frustrating washing of the black boy is supposed to imply that no matter how hard she washes him, he is still black. People (white men) in 1896 thought this was hilarious.

As much as I would like to believe this kind of blatant ugly behavior was isolated, it wasn't. Racism is still prevalent today, but far less so than at the dawn of the 20th century. This film is an embarrassing reflection of its time.

Contrary to what a previous post claimed, you aren't racist just because you recognized the original intent of the film.

I think it is important to know about this film, but it is not important to see it.

The plot outline for 'A Hard Wash', already posted on IMDb, is written in the racist language of 1896 but is otherwise accurate. A 'colored woman' washes a 'pickaninny'. You want more detail? Right, then. A young black woman baths a small black boy (her own son, I assume) in a wash basin on a kitchen table. At first, he is standing up with his back to the camera so we see his naked bum. His mother soaps him all over. She soaps a huge quantity of lather into his hair, creating a pyramid of suds on top of his head. She squeezes the bath sponge over his head, soaking him thoroughly. By now, the boy has turned slightly so that he's in profile and we see the water dripping across his genitals. If anybody needs to know, he's not circumcised.

I get the distinct impression that 'A Hard Wash' was meant to be funny in 1896, and - by the standards of that era - this movie probably *was* funny, at least for white audiences. There seems to be an implication here that black children (or black people in general) are just naturally less clean than their white counterparts, and so the act of bathing a black child is some sort of exercise in futility. Very funny, I don't think. This movie is listed as a 'comedy', but the only emotion it aroused in me was disgust.

I'm normally very generous in rating films made before 1910: even if they lack entertainment value, they still possess historic significance. But, really: there's nothing going on in 'A Hard Wash' that needs to be preserved for posterity. Do we need to know what naked children looked like in 1896? No, we don't, and the racist aspects of this movie make it even more extraneous. I'll rate 'A Hard Wash' absolutely zero points.

Having seen this film a long time ago, it wouldn't surprise me if it became the target of so-called "political correctness" in the present climate of New Labour Hypocrisy. Sure enough, the previous entry here has attracted a comment from one of this appalling brigade of interfering nonentities who haven't the intelligence to understand that any film, especially the early ones like this, is a reflection of its own time and culture. Who exactly is this "politically correct" judge who can sit there and state that a film of a black woman washing her little boy is racist and is therefore disgusting? What these stupid, ignorant hypocrites never realise is that THEY are the real racists. It is because of their narrow-mindedness that some people are led to believe there is something odd about a black kid being washed, whereas white kids naturally wash seven times a day. Anyone with a bit of common sense can see that this film is a bit of fun. A kid has been playing and has got dirty, so his mum washes him: doesn't matter if the people concerned are white, black, brown, yellow, red or Martian. Unless of course you are one of the righteous few who thinks Blair and his ridiculous wife should be canonised.

It is true that there is nothing ostensiby racist about this film or The Morning Bath, the Edison film made in imitation of it. The problem is that is an example of a stereotype that one encounters over and over again in representations of African American women or, for at matter, African or Indian women, bathing babies.

As indicated in other reviews, there is an implied racist joke in the whole idea of "a hard wash", of an infant that is hard to wash not merely because it is dirty but because of the colour of the skin. There is also a voyeuristic note in the way the audience is being asked - here quite explicitly in the catalogue description - to find the scene comical and laugh at (rather than with) the people represented.

Evidently, rather later when it became common to make films of white middle class babies being bathed (see my review of Baby's Toilet 1906), the content of the film and the regard on the scene were both very different. Here the bathing might also be very thorough but this time because it included powdering and weighing and all the things associated with best modern practice. Now, instead of being invited to giggle at the mother and baby, the audience is being invited to admire and emulate.