The Huffington Post published an article in 2015, titled,
"No, White People Will Never Understand the Black Experience."
The writer reasons that a white person,
no matter how blind to color,
can only understand so much of something they cannot viscerally experience.
To her though, white people must still educate themselves
on schematic racism to help actively fight
against something they cannot truly understand.
In the movie, "Menace II Society,"
the Hughes brothers are on this exact mission:
educating white people.
In this video, I want to teach how movies teach prejudice
using various engaging cinematic techniques.
"Menace II Society" attempts to do what the Huffington Post says is impossible.
The movie tries to give an outsider a window into what it is like to grow up in a poor black neighborhood.
And in doing so, they teach outsider to emphasize with people in that situation.
The movie accomplishes this from the start in the first two moments:
the rioting scene
and the convenience store robbery
The rioting scene purposefully gives a distorted perspective of poor black people.
From the opening shot, the camera looks at the carnage of the Watts Riots safely from a helicopter,
like someone would see live news footage on T.V.
The camera is physically above the violence and looking down on the people rioting.
Once we get to ride footage on the ground,
the filming is from the perspective of the rioting police.
Never the black people.
While the white news commentator in the background puts obvious emphasis on the cops instead of the rioters.
Even the pixelation effect makes all the black people look the same,
removing their face from the story.
This allows the viewer to easily generalize them as a group.
Not as individuals.
The Hughes brothers are cleverly capturing the black experience in a stereotypical way,
and in a way that many white people experience black communities:
from a distance and mostly with stereotypes.
They further reinforce white stereotypes of black people by showing the main characters later robbing a convenience store,
another stereotypical black behavior.
They established this white bias so they can spend the rest of the movie deconstructing it.
After the riot footage, we go from a white commentator to a black narrator.
And we no longer see the black people from a distance.
We enter their homes and live within their personal stories.
Caine: "That was the first time I had ever seen my father killing a guy,
but it wasn't the last.
I got used to it though."
To compliment this intimacy,
the violence in this film becomes much grittier than the far, removed violence we normally see in news footage from a helicopter.
The cinematography becomes clearer, colorful and up-close.
This change was done intentionally by the Hughes brothers to show that violence is not like what we see in T.V.
By first using various techniques establishing the black community as faceless, violent rioters,
the rapid cinematic change of the black community into up-close, relatable and vulnerable characters,
deconstructs the racial stereotypes.
Start with the poor, black population as an outsider sees them.
Then bring the outsider in
and challenge their initial perspective with a personal story of loss and excessive violence.
Capture the racism and then deconstruct it.
Getting white people on the inside of poor black neighborhoods is a great strategy to helping them understand the cycle of poverty.
Actually, films have used bias cinematic techniques to highlight sexism as well as racism.
This is done more subtly, but just as powerfully in "The Silence of the Lambs."
The main character arc in the movie is Clarice Starling overcoming the mental trauma of her childhood,
but there's also the backdrop of her struggling to distinguish herself in an almost all-male profession.
Men sexualize Clarice throughout the whole movie.
Whether it's subtly checking her out or outright asking her on a date.
We see her isolation most powerfully in subjective point-of-view shots throughout the movie.
Where we see through the eyes of Clarice, all the towering male figures looking down on her.
These cinematic choices put us in the perspective of the victim.
Even the final scene has a man staring her down with her unable to see him,
echoing the men in her career, always watching her and looking down on her.
The underlying idea is that even subjective experiences like growing up in a poor, black neighborhood,
or being a woman in a male-dominated profession,
will always be impossible to experience as an outsider.
But directors use subjective filmmaking techniques to try to recreate it
and sometimes they do a pretty good job.
Of course, they don't always get it right.
It seems that, historically, mainstream American cinema has had trouble capturing authentic aspects of the Asian experience.
Up until very recently,
Asian characters were almost always either the "sensei" who teaches using his Americanized Eastern wisdom,
or a racist punchline.
Maybe the most important idea to grasp in these discussions of creating film bias is that they extend outside of fictional story-telling.
In a famous example,
how is it possible that the police officers who physically assaulted Rodney King were acquitted?
There are many ways to approach this question
and the racial and political reasons for their acquittal are undeniable
but another reason is necessary to understanding that trial.
And it's how the lawyers defending the Los Angeles Police Department distorted the video footage of the beatings to suit their story.
The lawyers white-washed the footage
for their own narrative.
This is a perfect example of racially-biased filmmaking used for evil.
The lawyers created a narrative that white people are used to experiencing
and this deceit tries to justify the obviously unjust beating of Rodney King.
Using biased filmmaking to create a distorted narrative is still happening by the way.
If you ever want to test this, see how two different media outlets film the same event.
If your network supports Betty DeVos, her Senate hearing uses films like this.
If not it's filmed like this.
The Huffington Post article may be right.
White people can never truly understand the black experience,
and this also applies to men who never truly understand what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominant field,
but the closest we can get may be from a close reading of commentary on the black experience
like in "Menace II Society,"
or by the perspectives and camera choices like in "Silence of the Lambs."
Each movie uses the power of cinematography to show experiences outside of our own race or gender,
and that's the beauty of movies.
We get sucked into lives and experiences that we could never possibly experience ourselves,
and some directors use that ability to teach us something about the world around us.
When these choices are used for good, we learn about the human experience.
But when they're used for bad,
they cloud the truth and present the world in a narrow-minded and dangerous way.
So keep a look out.
Thanks for watching.