Set It Off (1996) is an action packed, star studded film focusing on the lives of four African American female friends in a tough inner city environment who are willing to go to any length, including bank robbery, to escape the limitations and struggles of their gender, race, and socioeconomic status. According to director Gary Gray, the film is “not so much about robbing banks as choices young sisters make when their backs are against the wall” (Gregory 1996, 56). While the film has similar urban youth struggles found in many of the other “ghettocentric” films of the 1990s, Set It Off distinguishes itself in the genre due to presenting a largely unique all star cast of “blacktresses” and also for portraying themes concentrated on the plight …show more content…
However, in contrast to the other exclusively male dominated and themed films also released in the decade, when Set It Off was coauthored by Kate Lanier and Takashi Bufford in the early 1990s, it was intentionally grounded in close observation of the harsh realities faced by four female friends living in Los Angeles, California. In an opening scene, Frankie is fired for having a personal connection to a man who robs the bank where she is a bank teller even though she clearly has no involvement in the robbery. Stoney’s younger brother is later that evening wrongfully gunned down by police at his own high school graduation ceremony when he is mistakenly identified as being the same neighborhood friend who had earlier robbed Frankie’s bank. Because she is a single mother earning low wages and has no means to pay for childcare, T.T.’s young son is taken away by child protective services when the child is injured at her janitorial job as soon as desperation forces her to bring him to work with her. Each of these closely chronological events, most notably T.T.’s necessity to obtain money for legal fees in order to regain custody of her son, lead the foursome to form a pact to rob banks together. Cleo is the only friend who appears to have no clear aspiration to leave their urban lifestyle.
With grades where an A is never found and an IQ comparable to a goldfish, you can guess that Donovan Curtis is far from a genius. But you don’t have to be brilliant to be the hero of the story. In the novel Ungifted by Gordon Korman, several themes are presented. One theme could be there is always a way to solve a problem. Another important theme might be it’s better to work together. Additionally, a theme to consider is friends and family will always be by your side. In Ungifted, the main character Donovan Curtis is a rebel who always finds himself in trouble. When he ends up breaking the school’s statue of Atlas, all he wants is to avoid getting in trouble. But, the superintendent Dr. Schultz is hunting down Donovan to make sure that he’ll
The cinematic film Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, presents a scenario in which African Americans are targeted by white people mainly for their physical advantages. The plot follows Chris Washington, a professional African American photographer who goes away for the weekend to visit his white girlfriend’s family. Chris’ best friend, Rod Williams, is a TSA agent who is concerned about Chris going to a white family’s estate. Throughout the movie, Chris discusses to Rod the strange events that occur in the Armitage house. Get out displays how two people use their intelligence and ability to identify social cues to escape from an arduous situation.
This movie Directed by Paul Haggis who also directed Academy Award Winning "Million Dollar Baby" and had also won an Academy Award for this movie as well puts a twisted story in this film. This movie is trying to symbolize what goes on in the world today in regards to racism and stereotypes. He tries to make a point on how societies view themselves and others in the world based on there ethnicities. This movie intertwines several different people's lives, all different races, with different types of beliefs. Such ethnicities include Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Middle Eastern. This movie includes conflicts on both sides of the picture from cops and criminals as well
The movie's success depends on using dated stereotypes: "angry black woman," "thuggish black man," and "innocent" white women. White men,
As I sat in class to watch Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing", I noticed that a 20 year old film could convey such overwhelmingly real, modern social viewpoints. Many of the themes portrayed in "Do the Right Thing" which pave the way to the inescapable disarray of the movie that are issues which we confront today. Bedford–Stuyvesant or better known as Bed-Stuy, this Brooklyn neighborhood has gradually been the objective of gentrification since the mid 90s. Hip hop fans realize that Bed-Stuy is home to some of the most illustrious and well known artists like Jay Z, Notorious B.I.G., Mos Def, Lil' Kim, actor-comedian Tracy Morgan, thus some more.
“If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen...” (pg. 54). Throughout the course of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, we familiarize ourselves with the exceptional hardships that Ishmael has experienced as a child soldier, in Sierra Leone, and what actions he takes to overcome them. Despite the fact that Ishmael has been through these devastating hardships and that he became the fear that he himself feared, Ishmael is able to instill hope and keep the reader going through the themes of powerful memories, nature and redemption. He does this through the use of powerful memories that contrast the fear and danger of the war with the remembrance of the beauty of life. Furthermore, nature leaves the reader striving
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.”
Ungifted by Gordon Korman was a very interesting and an amusing book. This book was very entertaining for me because Donovan was on the edge of his life everyday because of the trouble he caused, and also because this book has a viewpoint of most of the characters in the book, which gave the book more depth and understanding. I was very curious about what is going to happen next and when I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Donovan Curtis is the main character of this book, and I think he is a good character because he keeps on trying hard, and he greatly cares about other people and things. For example, at the school dance party, Chloe was getting bullied and Donovan protected her and he got Chloe out of trouble. I can relate to Donovan because when he moved to the Academy, he first didn’t understand any of the things the
I chose to write about the 2017 psychological thriller Get Out, which was written and directed by famous comedian Jordan Peele. Get Out is about an interracial couple Chris and Rose who are taking a weekend trip to meet Rose’s parents who are unaware that Chris is African American. Chris at first takes Rose’s parents, Missy and Dean’s, overwhelming appreciation for black culture and overly accommodating behavior as being nervous in regards to their daughter’s interracial relationship. However, as the plot unfolds a more sinister
RACISM AS A CAUSE FOR CRIME AND VIOLENCE: CINEMATIC ANALYSIS OF “BOYZ N’ THE HOOD”
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
unflinching look at the complexities of racial tolerance in contemporary America. Diving headlong into the diverse melting pot of post-9/11 Los Angeles, this compelling urban drama tracks the volatile intersections of a multi-ethnic cast of characters' struggles to overcome their fears as they careen in and out of one another's lives. In the gray area between black and white, victim and aggressor, there are no easy answers. Funny, powerful, and always unpredictable, "Crash" boldly reminds us of the importance of tolerance as it ventures beyond color lines and uncovers the truth of our shared humanity (plot synopsis from film's official site).
Jordan Peels’s Get Out (2017) is entertaining through its chilling aspects; however, it also focuses on an extremely important issue in today’s society. Peele uses the combination of sound and graphics to portray the ongoing issue of racism. In this film, a black man by the name of Chris (played by Daniel Kaluuya) is going to meet his Caucasian girlfriend of 4 months- Rose’s (Allison Williams) parents. Chris is very paranoid that his skin color may be a problem with Rose’s folks, but she assures him that her parents are loving of everyone no matter their skin tone. When Chris arrives to Rose’s parent’s upscale property, he is a little uneasy. The housekeeper and groundskeeper are African American and they have a very strange persona, which increases his discomfort. Through tone and dialogue, Get Out expresses how the factor of racism has continually added to the aspect of racial paranoia.
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
balanced, realistic depictions of blacks in America The film is about a Chicago family who