How Do Neil Blomkamp ' District 9 And Clint Eastwood 's Invictus Use Language And Stylistic Features?

Movies and entertainment outlets speak volumes about the current state of a nation’s culture. Cinematic creations in the United States allow small voices to be heard and controversial issues to be addressed. However, a repetitive and monumental issue continues to be addressed, yet continues to persist in our 21st century culture, racial inequalities. Since the inception of the United States, black men and women alike have been disenfranchised at the hands of the “white man” in America. Instead of continuing the conversation today, the issue is continually silenced referencing the successes and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. Nonetheless, an unfortunate reality looms upon this great land; racially based systems and structures continue to exist in 2015 the in United States. This paper synthesizes three films focused on racial inequalities in different time periods. Separate but Equal (1991), Selma (2015), and Crash (2005) illustrate how influential the Civil War amendments are, while serving as an uncanny reminder of how the racial prejudices during the 20th century continue to exist in our great nation today. Needless to say our nation has made great strides, but still has a long way to go.

The concept art imitates life is crucial to film directors who express their views on political and social issues in film. In regard to film studies, race is a topic rare in many films. Like America, many films simply refuse to address this topic for various reasons. However, more recently, Jordan Peele’s 2017 box office hit Get Out explicates contemporary race relations in America. In the form of an unconventional comedy horror, Get Out is intricate in its depiction of white liberal attitudes towards African Americans. In short, Get Out suggests a form of covert racism existing in a post- Jim Crow era. Similarly, Eduardo Bonilla- Silva’s book Racism Without Racists acknowledges the contemporary system of racism or “new racism,” a system

Thesis Statement: Apartheid may have been a horrible era in South African history, but only so because the whites were forced to take action against the outrageous and threatening deeds of the blacks in order to sustain their power.

P.K. had to deal with being a victim of racism as well. He knew how it felt to be treated like he was worthless from when he was at boarding school and the Afrikaans blamed him for how the English military treated them. The swastika was shown on the main tormentor’s arm as a symbol of the wickedness and power of the apartheid. The Afrikaans in this movie were portrayed as the primary promoters or racism and segregation.

These stereotypes depicted “drug dealers, prostitutes, single mothers, and complacent drag queens” (Harris, 51). In the 1980s, African American filmmakers began to make a name for themselves. These films are “social commentaries, indictments of racism and depictions of ‘everyday’ American lives” (Harris, 51). Compared to the traditional representations of blacks and blackness, New Black cinema takes on this cultural intervention and the recoding of blackness. Harris describes this as “revising the visual codes surrounding black skin on the screen and in the public

While the 1970’s and 80’s marked a decline in movies featuring black actors and a lack of black directors, the mid 1980’s through the 1990’s invited a new generation of filmmakers and rappers, engaging with the “New Jack” image, transforming the Ghettos of yesteryears into the hood of today. A major director that emerged during this time was Spike Lee. According to Paula Massood’s book titled, Black City Cinema, African American Urban Experiences in Film, “…Lee not only transformed African American city spaces and black filmmaking practices, he also changed American filmmaking as a whole.” Lee is perhaps one of the most influential film makers of the time, likely of all time. He thrusted black Brooklyn into light, shifting away from the popularity of Harlem. By putting complex characters into an urban space that is not only defined by poverty, drugs, and crime, it suggests the community is more than the black city it once was, it is instead a complex cityscape. Despite them being addressed to an African American audience, Lee’s film attract a mixed audience. Spike lee’s Do the Right Thing painted a different image of the African American community, “The construction of the African American city as community differs from more mainstream examples of the represents black city spaces from the rime period, such as Colors…, which presented its African American and Mexican American communities through the eyes of white LAPD officers.”

Using the language of the moving image, which includes cinematography, editing, sound, music and mise-en-scene, this essay will investigate the ideology of Racism in film. OxfordDictionaries.com describes racism as “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” When we, the audience think of racism in film, we traditionally think of movies for adults and often overlook the sinister aspect of racism in children’s films. I have chosen to contrast a recent R-rated film with a G-rated Disney movie from the 1990s. Disney films, even up until the 1990s have persistently reinforced the image of blacks or latino and asian races as being below whites. The

The drama-comedy film Mississippi Masala (1991) directed by Mira Nair explores an interracial love story between Meena, an Indian woman, and Demetrius, an African-American, portrayed by Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington, respectively. This is one of those movies that I had high hopes for and anticipated that by the end I would feel so empowered and moved that it would be impossible to not constantly hype up the motion picture to friends and strangers. To my relief, those expectations were met. I truly and deeply was so encapsulated and emotionally committed to this feature because it was massively progressive and transcended the norm of the time by depicting with such grace and tact, the power dynamics, racial hierarchy, colorism, and social contexts between the two racial groups in Uganda and the American south.

The use of various camera techniques such as canted frames, low-angled, high-angled and close up shots, as well as camera distance, enhances the struggle between the characters. The use of such techniques not only allows the audience to get an extensive insight into the many different characters, but also helps us understand the relationships between them and how all of these factors contribute to the overarching theme of racism in the film. The use of these camera rapid movements

This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: color saturation (or black and white), sound, setting, type of camera angles used; repetition of visual motifs (Metz, 1985). The two films explored were made in the 1960s. Neither film is American, yet both reveal influences and reflections on American cinema and American power; the Western film, adherence or detracting from Hollywood Classical cinema tropes, i.e. close-ups, shot-reverse-shot, POV, depth of field (Bazin, 1985: 128-9). The two films are Kurasawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), from Japan and Italy, respectively. How are they different; how similar? Why do they use the same plot,

[1] Before I start this essay, I feel the need to remind the reader that I find slavery in all its forms to be an oppressive and terrible institution, and I firmly believe that for centuries (including this one) bigotry is one of the most terrible stains on our civilization. The views I intend to express in the following essay are in no way meant to condone the practices of slavery or racism; they are meant only to evaluate and interpret the construction of slavery in film.

Cry, The Beloved Country is the first movie about racial relations in South Africa I personally have seen which trusts the viewer’s intelligence enough not to set up one or more characters as a straw man to represent everything evil about apartheid. Technically, the time period of the movie predates the formal institutionalization of apartheid, but I still think the point’s valid. Based on Alan Paton’s 1946 novel, this film gives us a loving but painful look at a society headed toward increasing division and violence. James Earl Jones and Richard Harris give great performances as fathers who are tested by the unhappy fates of their respective sons. When these two have their first major scene together, we can’t help but feel compassion over the emotion involved. And later, when they eye each other while taking refuge from a storm in a leaky church, they become an picture for two different and wary tribes sharing a common home. The meat of Cry, the Beloved Country concerns how events in the wake of the shooting transform the lives of Stephen Kumalo and James Jarvis. Each is forced to abandon their

In conclusion, A Time to Kill has many examples of how conflict between characters reveals society's dominant racist attitudes. These attitudes are presented to be negative throughout the film by representation of social groups, characterisation of Jake Brigance and the perspective from Carl Hailey. Together these conventions allow the viewer to understand the character Carl Hailey, and see how the film presents the dominant racist attitudes

District 9 (Peter Jackson, 2009), a science fiction film produced by Peter Jackson, is a rare gem unlike the many sci-fi movies which have been released in our time. The story is established via a mix of standard third person camera and documentary footage and takes place in the present - a twist from your regular science fiction film which normally takes place in the future. The film, about a colony of alien refugees forced by humans to live in a South African slum, is an example of social satire by presenting a critique of the injustice with which we treat those who are different from us. The metaphors of science fiction are being used to portray the nature of racism; with the way that racist ideology and discourse deals with those different

In America, racism as well as race relations are generally extremely sensitive subjects that are often brushed underneath the rug. Earlier this year, Jordan Peele’s Get Out graced the big screen, and left audiences with a great deal to digest. Peele’s first cinematic debut touched on the delicate topics of racism and the continuous devaluing of African American culture by “liberal” Caucasians in American suburbs. In this essay, one will explore the ways in which works written by modern political thinkers such as Nietzsche and Marx effortlessly add perspective through various theories on the difficulties brought to light in the motion picture, Get Out.