Top 10 Opportunities for Social Criticism at the Movies
“Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned. … Movies not only provide a narrative for specific discourses of race, sex, and class, they provide a shared experience, a common starting point from which diverse audiences can dialogue about these charged issues.”
– bell hooks, Reel to Real
In the spirit of badass cultural critic bell hooks, I offer 10 questions about 2005 movies aimed at provoking some good, fun, charged dialogue among the diverse groups you might be hanging out with this holiday season.
1. How is Crash like D.A.R.E.? (Hint: You know how D.A.R.E. looks like bullshit alarmism if you’re aware that pot doesn’t instantaneously destroy lives? Well, what does Crash look like if you know racism functions insidiously and systematically, not just as an endless string of overt slur-filled encounters between individuals?)
2. Is Broken Flowers Jim Jarmusch’s counter-narrative to the xenophobic, gender-stereotyping Lost in Translation?
3. Anyone can make it if they know how to shake it? Mad Hot Ballroom is charming and all (I even cried), but isn’t it, finally, all about assimilation and movin’ on up?
4. You haven’t seen Private? What? It didn’t play where you live? I wonder why.
5. Is it possible to make a movie about war that can’t be viewed as pro-war porn? (Via Lawrence Weschler’s “Valkyries Over Iraq”)
6. What do you make of that last scene in A History of Violence: Is Cronenberg suggesting that a history of deviance lurks beneath every happy-family veneer or just romanticizing the safe, warm, middle-American nuclear family?
7. How have critics managed to totally avoid talking about race in reviewing the remake of King Kong? (Thanks to Sonali Kolhatkar of KPFK-FM’s Uprising for provoking this question.)
8. In what sense(s) can a straight-ahead narrative about same-sex love be considered groundbreaking? (And can I be the only one who just feels like shit the morning after being reminded – amid pretty scenery — for 130+ minutes that transgression of gender/relationship norms has often resulted in death and/or alcoholism and/or loneliness and/or poverty?)
9. You don’t even need to buy a ticket for this one: Spend some time trying to unpack the race/gender/class stuff in these movie posters.
10. And regarding Syriana: Just ask anything. Get that conversation started.
–Jessica Hoffmann, People Section Editor (Who Loves — and Loves to Critique — the Movies)
December 17th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Two comments about the Top Ten:
1. I’ve used Crash to start a discussion about race in my ACS class here at BGSU. It’s interesting how the film engages students, normally reticent to broach the subject, to openly discuss difference. So I would caution dismissing the film out of hand, as your comment seems to accomplish. This is not to say that Crash isn’t extremely problematic, it is. The film manages to wrap the audience in a safe cocoon of racial stereotypes; from redneck trigger happy cops, to the Arabic trigger happy madman, to young black male trigger happy carjackers, to bitchy pampered but miserable white wives with nothing to do other than diss their stereotypical Mexican maids.
What is most disturbing about Crash is that after indicting every race as racist, it then lets each off the hook. Matt Dillion’s racism is explained away by his care taking of a sick father and an incredibly brave rescue of the woman he sexually assaulted during a bogus traffic stop. And who can forget Saundra Bullock’s “Gone with the Wind” moment with her housekeeper (Mammy, you’re my only friend)? There are many other similar moments leading up to the admittedly touching last scene in which Ludacris frees the Asian slaves. So there is ample pedagogical opportunity in Crash, just look beneath the surface.
So I would disagree that Crash is merely an interwoven bunch of overt slur filled encounters. The film is actually much worse than that. The institutional and systematic racism is there. After all, isn’t Crash just a cop film in which white males (Tony Danza, Brendan Frazier) get to strut their power? It doesn’t get more insidious or systematic than that.
As for King Kong, the film announces Peter Jackson as one of the most dangerously racist film directors in motion picture history. After nine plus hours of terrifyingly black and mud colored “others” in the Rings Trilogy, Jackson, who has admitted that the 1933 original was the reason he wanted to be a filmmaker, has wrapped racism in a Christmas bow and delivered it to a grateful world tired of the schlock of war and terror films presented by Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Ridley “I’m on retainer with the Pentagon” Scott. King Kong is Titanic racism redux. No one want sto talk about it because today’s critic only deals with what is seen on the screen.
The film gives critics a chance to ignore race because it isn’t overtly present in the remake. That is if you don’t count the dancing “native” jungle bunnies and King Kong himself, who represents, well, you know what he represents.
Don’t all brothers just go “ape” when you let them sniff a pretty blonde?
Rob Prince
robero@bgsu.edu
December 17th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Rob,
Your thoughtful response is exactly the kind of dialogue I’d hoped to provoke with this list, so I don’t want to leave it unanswered.
I do agree that Crash is extremely useful as a starting point for conversations about race (and filmmaking, and storytelling in general — the differences between characters and caricatures, etc.) among diverse audiences — students and otherwise. I hope my comment (which was self-consciously somewhat flip, top-10-list-style…) doesn’t serve to dismiss it but rather to engage and provoke precisely these kinds of discussions.
So, many thanks to you for jumping in,
–jh
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:53 pm
what about Paradise Now?
it may be the best answer in popular media that begins to explore the why, how, when and more of those who consider their bodies the only weapons that they have. for those who wonder ‘why do they hate us?’ this is a great exploration of what goes on in the mind of a young man who feels helpless in the face of state-sponsored brutality.
December 30th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
we black kitchen table blogger grad school critics HAVE been talking about race and/in King Kong, some of us don’t have the privilege of ignoring the continuous production of racist cultural images.