Analysis of The Film The Hurricane The movie that was analyzed was "The Hurricane" starring Denzel Washington. The movie was based on a true story, which was about a boxer who was wrongfully accused for murders he did not commit. Rubin Carter had been a victim of racial prejudice since the age of 11. From that time on he had been haunted by the racial prejudice that would take most of his natural life away from him. At the age of fifty he ended up going to the Supreme courts to get his trial heard and at this time he was set free. This is a short summary leaving a lot to be unsaid, but I believe the portrayal will tell most of the story in itself. In the beginning of the movie one can tell that the less developed, or "slums", was where Rubin Carter was forced to grow up. This is an example of minority group status and stratification. This society was one where African Americans did not have access to wealth, power, prestige, or income. With this type of environment forces these African Americans to be more prone to violence and criminal acts. So as a kid Rubin was involved with a crime where an older white male came up to him and his friends down by the local river. This male was trying to molest one of the little boys, so Rubin threw a bottle at him and they ran. The man caught up to them and got a hold of Rubin and threatened to throw him over the edge of a cliff, so Rubin at age 11 pulled a knife and stabbed him in the arm to get away. The police caught him and since the older man was a public figure, Rubin Carter was sentenced to a juvenile detention center until the age of thirteen. This was the first time that we seen the racial prejudice from the head police chief towards Carter. The next principle t... ... middle of paper ... ...at the prejudice cops seen white people do the same thing that the blacks were doing they would make up excuses for why it was all right for them to do it. This is what is called the ultimate attribution error. The portrayal of the principles of ethnic relations was considered to be accurate for that time of the 1960's. Economic inequality was not something that was unusual for the African American culture. They were concentrated in the slums and ghettos were opportunity was not something they had a lot of. The other principles like discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes like that portrayed in this movie was much like the real life that African Americans had to live in, and even still do just not as extreme as in the 60' and in years before. So as disturbing as it maybe this video did a good job at portraying the principles analyzed in this time frame.
The case of Rubin (Hurricane) Carter has been a heated issue for the last 34 years. In the last year a new movie, The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington has once again brought this case to the foreground of discussion. The question argued has been is Rubin Carter innocent or guilty of the murders he allegedly committed on June 17, 1966 in the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. The proof is undeniable that Carter is innocent. He had an unfair trial where the police played a negative part, the prosecution suppressed information, and the court also worked against Carter.
“Their struggle has been a struggle that every black person went through, one that grew from the seeds of slavery and took hold in a post-civil war America, when blacks gained their freedom (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012).” It was interesting to learn from the movie that “reconstruction is a defining moment in African-American history in which blacks gained political rights in the south. With these rights, whites saw the blacks gain social equality. Fearing what they saw, whites brought a quick end to reconstruction. (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012)." It would be interesting to interview people from the past to ask them why they think it 's okay to treat African Americans like that. It made me wonder what white people were thinking in the past. It brought tears to my eyes to learn that blacks quickly lost their new found freedom and lynching
This film brings a better understanding to people about police brutality towards the Black community in America. A lot of people try to ignore it or say that African-Americans are using the “race card.” However, that is not true, and it is a serious matter that still goes on in our society now. It is the sad truth that more African-Americans are fearful of police officers, instead of feeling safe and
The inner city can be a good thing or a bad thing, for African Americans it is often a bad thing as they get caught up in gangs thinking that this is the only way they will have family. This is true in some aspects, because depending on the family, children can be abandoned due to drugs or be subject to violence. In the movie, one of the children, who lives around the pizzeria, is a little girl is abused at home. This often happens in broken homes, like the ones depicted by Spike Lee. In other cases children come from good homes. For example, if one comes from a prominent African American family, they know that everyone takes care of everyone, they work together to take care of each other. In the film, there are several older black men that act like grandfathers to the people on the block. This is reminiscent in of one of the class readings, Family M...
Racism was the biggest issue of the 1960’s and in Jackson, Mississippi it was a time of mistreatment and neglect for African-Americans, to a point where they did not get the say they deserved. The wealthier section Jackson, which was made up of all whites, had the female African-American be their maids which, they referred to as the “help”. The “help” were supposed to do everything from changing the children’s diapers to making dinner for the family every night. At the end of the day, they had to also take a bus ride to their homes on the opposite side of town and take care of their own families. The white people in town expected to wake up, have
With this movie set in the 1962 the majority of white people still looked down on blacks and thought t...
I am well aware of the oppression that has faced many people of color in our society. I did learn a great deal about how our government is to blame for the racial segregation in our society. America has a history of placing laws and policies on non-whites, thus making it extremely hard for them to live a well-balanced life. I thought it was interesting that immigrants were far more likely to work in mining and industrial jobs than whites. I feel as though this a trend that continues today in America, thus it is evident that we still exclude certain ethnic groups in our society. Although I did not have any biases going into this documentary, I learned a lot about how our government has been the main contributor to white privilege in our
...Their dialogues included nothing very intellectually stimulating, which would suggest a lack of intelligence. By portraying the characters as such, the film was able to represent the judgmental racial stereotypes commonly associated with African Americans.
Many of the readings we had this semester has given me a better outlook on the society I know today. Mainly, the most obvious characteristics of people, race. Race: The power of an Illusion, allowed me to understand the construction of a complex distinction of people. These distinctions and classifications created a divide in humanity, and re-enforced a system that not only favored the white race, but embedded a virus of hatred for colored people to succumb for future generations. The man made term and meaning of race is a important tool that the white elite used to oppress non-whites. It 's in this film, which provides us with there ridiculous claims of black bodies inferiority and theorized inevitability of extinction. False scientific theories
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
Silver Rights is a true story from the front lines of the civil rights struggle--the story of the Carter family of Sunflower County, Mississippi. African-American sharecroppers and the parents of seven children, Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter accepted their school district's 1965 "Freedom of Choice" offer and enrolled their seven school-age children in the formerly all-white schools of Drew, Mississippi. The Carter family was the only family brave enough to send their seven children to be the first children to ever desegregate the previously all white schools. Through the Carter children and their experiences we learn that it is important to stand up for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone, because you never know what kind of difference you could be making in the world.
The problem of racial discrimination has been portrayed in many films in the last 15 years. However, The Hurricane does a masterful job at addressing this issue, and will leave audience members clenching their fists in anger at the injustice that happened to a man named Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The movie demonstrates the racial inequity that can be found in our judicial system through the impressive acting by Denzel Washington and the direction of Norman Jewison. The Hurricane makes you wonder who else has been wrongfully accused in the past 30 years.
The Conflict Perspective, in itself, focuses on the ruling class and the ruled class. In the perspective, the ruling class defines what is deviant based on how it helps them. In this case, the ruling class would be defined as upper-class and white. The ruled class would be defined as lower-class and black. This is illustrated through the emphasis placed on the impact of the differences between the woman who was raped and the young men who were accused of raping her. The woman who was raped was a white and wealthy business woman who worked as an investment banker on Wall Street. The young men who raped her were lower class, black, and from Harlem. Due to these extreme differences, there was immense media attention. The media was often one sided and viewed the young men as criminals and animals in order to make them social pariahs. The media and upper-class wanted to make an example of them to reinforce the laws and separate the two groups even further. Also, the court system had the woman give a testimony despite the fact that she could not remember anything that happened that night. The documentary stated that her testimony was simply used to “pack an emotional punch,” and make the young men look even more inhuman. Finally, when the men were exonerated, the media barely covered it. The news was no longer about showing the lower-class where they belonged. Anything
The depictions in this movie showed only a small fraction of troubles African Americans had to deal with during the time of segregation. According to the dates in this movie, the Brown vs. Board case had already been decided on by the Supreme Court, which was supposed to put an end to racial injustice. However, even the Justices in the Supreme Court knew that the idea of true equality for colored people would not be graciously accepted by society. Even if you were a white American and you disagreed with the conditions blacks had to suffer through in those times, it was dangerous to speak out against the internal and external pain that was being ...
In “Gang Leader for a Day”, racism is used to understand and comprehend the everyday basis in which the people of the Robert Taylor community lived. Sudhir’s exposure into the black community began when he was first introduced the the old black men that would spend their days in the park in which he would run. One of the men, who was often referred to as Old Time, believed that no matter what happened whites and blacks could never coexist peacefully. In more ways than one, biological determinism had a major role in the impact of racism. Many of the whites believed that it simply was in the nature of a black to affiliate in crime and unmoral behaviors. This created a social construction of blacks in which till this day continues to have a hold on many African American everyday lives, from complex areas such as the workplace to simple social situations such as social stereotypes. These social constructions set by society towards the blacks within this community, had taken a considerable impact on the fate of the Robert Taylor homes. When the Robert Taylor homes had first been built, they were constructed on the hope of mixing the black and white community. Chicago politicians allegedly viewed this as a stepping stone for the blacks towards racial equality. Many black activists were infuriated by the idea that the homes had been placed in the center of a predominately ghetto