A couple of black gentlemen have a contest to see who can finish a slice of watermelon first. There’s obviously no subtext or anything here. Well, no, seriously, we all know what’s up here. And it doesn’t help that the director is literally named White. This film kind of surprised me because it made me realize that these films haven’t really had any particularly racist elements to this point. I mean, yes, there was that “Chinese Laundry” sketch, but I maintain that there were no elements that indicated why it was titled that, so it doesn’t exactly count. But here we are in 1896 and it appears that racist caricatures have arrived. Oh, good. 0 stars.
tl;dr – racist stereotypes finally show up in these Edison shorts and they don’t improve things. 0 stars.