Race, Gender, and American Film

One of the best examples of someone playing as a white savior in a film is Louanne Johnson in the film Dangerous Minds. Louanne begins her job teaching a pilot program at a school where she is teaching mostly students of color who are underprivileged and not performing well. Since Louanne knows they are smart children she tries to save them from themselves and acts as if she knows exactly what they are going through. In the film Get Out you can see how Rose and her family have been working as white saviors just in a dark and twisted way. They took this literal and tried to relieve Chris of his color.

The films Get Out and The Help both relate to each other because they are based on race. Most importantly, both films show examples of white people acting as white saviors. Get Out shows Rose’s family trying to fix black men such as Chris. Rose, Dean, Missy, and Jeremy all act as if they are trying to save Chris and make him into a better person so he won’t have black skin. In The Help, Skeeter, the author of the book, shares stories in an effort to give them a platform but also for her own benefit. Since Skeeter just graduated college and is trying to begin her career she is looking for any story to tell that would bring her attention. She also acts as though she is helping them and giving them the publicity they need in order to get the momentum going.

The film Get Out is a thriller based on a love story of an interracial couple. A black man, Chris, and a white woman, Rose, fall in love and decide to go on a getaway with Rose’s parents, Dean and Missy, and her brother, Jeremy, so Chris can get to know her family and vice versa. Missy then pressures him into hypnotherapy to end his addiction to smoking. Multiple things about the family start to become suspicious especially when he found out that Rose had lied about him being her first black boyfriend when he found pictures of two of her exes. The family then doesn’t let him leave and Missy used the trigger word to knock him out. He comes to realize that the family has been taking the brains of black men and putting them into other bodies. He then kills her family after attacking them back and leaves Rose to bleed out in the middle of the road. This film relates to our class Race, Gender, and American Film because Rose and her family judge black men by their skin and kill them because they are uncomfortable with the fact that they are black. This is a twisted movie that really makes you realize the crazy thoughts that people could have.

The Maid Narratives is a novel about the real experiences of black maids. The authors Sudduth, Jackson, and Wormer all used true stories and events to inform readers about women’s suffrage. They also told stories about affairs, how they were treated, and the lack of empathy the families showed these women. These white families did not treat them as humans and were more like robots. The stories told in this book align well with stories shared in the film The Help. It’s heart-wrenching to see, hear, and read about the experiences of these women.

These films although filmed from very different perspectives were based on the same thing. They were both about the fight for the lives of black and other people of color. The Help was based in the 1960s when the fight for Civil Rights was occurring. The interviews of these women who worked for white families were contributing to helping these stories be shared while advocating for change at the same time. Gook was in the perspective of an Asian American experience during the Los Angeles riots. Years later, both of these movies are still fighting for the same thing, equality. These movies do show two different extremes of how people protest, one being rioting and the other being writing/expressing.

This film is a story of a southern white woman, Skeeter, in the 1960s. Skeeter is an aspiring writer who is interviewing black women on their experiences being housekeepers for white families. The more interviews Skeeter conducted, the deeper she got into creating a whole community of strong women that wanted to share their stories with others. Aibileen and Minny were the main contributors to the stories and they are the ones who got the momentum going. This relates to our class Race, Gender, and American Film because you can recognize immediately the blatant racism and bigotry the women endure.

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter Movement became very active with protests and riots because of the killing of George Floyd. The riots in the film Gook reminded me of what I would see on the news every day. Fortunately, my town was not affected by the riots because we participated in peaceful protests instead of rioting. Other cities were completely destroyed such as Minneapolis and New York. The scene of the shoe store on fire gave me flashbacks to this photo.

These films both tell a story of a young person with a broken childhood that gets the short end of the stick. In Moonlight, Chiron grew up with an abusive and drug-addicted mother. He dealt with her changes in behavior and constant bashing. In Gook, Kamilla lost her mother at a young age. This led her to spend her time with her brother who was very much involved in the riots so he did not care for her much. Kamilla was on her own most of the time until meeting Eli and Daniel. In Gook, Chiron was also excluded from everyone else because he was gay, which is when he met the local drug dealer that took him under his wing. Both Kamilla and Chiron were being raised and felt protected by people that weren’t their family because their real families were far too broken to fix.

This film took place during the Los Angeles riots and gives us the perspective of the Asian-American experience during that time. Eli and Daniel own a struggling shoe store that was passed down by their father. The riots cause them to go through many financial struggles but also experience racism from Hispanics and African Americans in the neighborhood. They meet a young black girl, Kamilla, on the first day of the riots and develop a connection with her. This leads to Daniel being jumped by Kamilla’s brother. Daniel’s hopes to become a recording artist are slowly being crushed by the society around him and obstacles that are constantly being thrown at him. He is being held back the most by the shoe store, which takes up most of his time without returning much profit. After Kamilla accidentally shoots herself trying to stop the fighting between her brother, Eli, and Daniel, Eli burns the shoe store down because the pain the store carried with it was too much to endure. This film relates to our class Race, Gender, and American Film because the fighting is based on race. Kamilla’s brother does not agree with her associating herself with Eli and Daniel especially during the time of the riots. This also relates to our class because the time period takes place during the riots which influences the motives behind most of the characters. 

While watching Moonlight, I could not help but think about Lil Nas X. He is also a black gay man. Ever since Lil Nas X has come out publicly there has been a shift in change/ acceptance in the black community for gay men. I could only imagine what having a role model like Lil Nas X would have done for Chiron and how it may have influenced his social life. Chiron had a hard time coming to terms with himself and struggled to allow everyone to see who he truly was. Lil Nas X had the same experience, which most members of the LGBTQ+ community do. He struggled to come out especially because he was already in the spotlight for being an artist so this would put in in a very vulnerable position. He decided to own who he was, just how Chiron was able to do at the end.

Moonlight and The Breakfast club relate because of the age group. In The Breakfast Club, there are multiple cliques that are present in the high school. In Moonlight, you can see a sense of subliminal cliques because there are athletes, the bullies, and then individuals like Chiron who are on their own. He becomes friends with Kevin and in the end, he betrays him in order to fit in with the crowd of bullies. These films both show how it is easy for teenagers to be influenced by peer pressure to do things they do not want to do because they want to fit in to the popular crowd.

This has been one of the most intriguing and emotional films we have watched in this class. Moonlight is a story of a young man, Chiron, in three different time periods of his life. The first time period was when he was a child, the second being when he was a teenager, and the third being when he was an adult. This movie gave a perspective of a black gay man living in a society where the odds were against him. He was living in poverty with a mother who struggled with addiction. His role model/ father figure was the local drug dealer who looked after him and taught him many life lessons. This film put Chiron through heartbreaking experiences, from betrayal from his best friend, bullying, abuse from his mother, and struggling with coming to terms with his own sexuality. This relates to our class Race, Gender, and Film because it shows the pressure that was put on Chiron because he is gay and still is trying to fit into what he thinks his role in society should be.

The Breakfast Club reminds me a lot of a movie series I grew up watching, High School Musical. High School Musical has characters from all different cliques joined together where they are all able to bond over music and the drama department. Although they did not all talk because of all the differences they so clearly had they were able to find that at the end of the day they all had a lot in common. This triggered the beginning of a lot of their journeys into music because they were able to bond. Much like how everyone in The Breakfast Club was able to bond during detention to then realize they aren’t that different after all. They didn;t stick to the “status quo”.

The Breakfast Club and Namesake are similar because both films show people from different walks of life joining together and finding love although they clearly have many different qualities. In Namesake Nikhil and Maxine fall in love in spite of being from different cultural backgrounds. In The Breakfast Club, two couples come out of the group that had detention which are Andrew and Allison and Claire and Bender. Both of these couples came from different cliques that never associated before this day, but after being stuck together in a room, and with a little bit of forced conversations they realized that they like each other after all regardless of their clique.

The film The Breakfast Club is targeted towards teenagers/ high schools students to show the everyday high school culture that they will experience. Teens are also able to learn that despite them fitting in to a certain clique at school there is a chance they could meet cool people that they have never associated with before. In The Breakfast Club a group of five students that have ever held a conversation before have detention together. They are all completely different with interests that do not align. After being locked in a room for extremely long with each other they are able to discover that people they have been completely avoiding in school this whole time are actually pretty cool after all. They learned that maybe they do not always have to stick to their normal. This relates to our class Race, Gender and American Film because you are able to recognize the culture of an American High School and how their cliques are defining for the teens in high school.

Namesake reminded me a lot of Imitation of life when Nikhil told his father he wanted to change his last name so it looks more appealing on a resume. In Imitation of Life Sarah Jane who is both black and white tries her best to hide her identity. She tells everyone that she is white so that she is not treated any differently. She did this as an act of survival just as Nikhil wants to do to ensure that he is respected professionally when applying to find a job. It is interesting to see these recurring themes prevail throughout different times in history. Although Sarah Jane and Nikhil Ganguli’s circumstances were very different they still were the same in seeking approval when being different (racially) from the people they are surrounded by.

The similarity between Mi Familia and Namesake rely solely on the fact that both families stem from immigrant parents trying to provide their children with a better life. Mi Familia is more of the story of the hardships their family faced while in America from hispanic descent. Namesake portrays a story of a child of immigrants starting to forget his culture and wanting to leave it behind in order to make it successfully in America. In both films the parents take their ideas of family very seriously and all their children are expected to succeed in America after all their parents have given up for them to be in this position.