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`` Medicine For Melancholy `` By Barry Jenkins Essay

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“Medicine for Melancholy”, a film by Barry Jenkins, uses the story of a young African-American couple learning about each other to explore how Jenkins himself feels about San Francisco’s reputation for beauty and inclusion. The film starts with the main characters, Micah and Joanne, waking up the morning after a drunken one-night stand and realizing that they do not know much about each other. Micah manages to beguile a reluctant Joanne into spending the day together in San Francisco. Jenkins uses picturesque and diverse communities as backdrops for the couple to celebrate the superficial beauty and inclusiveness of San Francisco. As Micah and Joanne learn more about each other, they discover that they have different perspectives about the same city. Micah defines himself and his experiences in the city based on being African-American, and, although Joanne is conscious of her race, she does not view race as what defines her or her place in San Francisco. At first the Jenkins focuses on Micah’s perspective, highlighting his passion for proselytizing about how black people are struggling to find their identity in the city. With help from Joanne’s more centrist views and Jenkins’ artful cinematography, the film shifts focus away from Micah’s race-centric perspective of inclusion to reveal that San Francisco, the city of otherness, is actually forcing lower income people of all races to leave by redevelopment making housing unaffordable. Through the depiction of a young

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