Textual Analysis: The Skin Movie

Coming to this point at the semester, discovering that it is almost over makes one re-think and have a glance on everything that has been done in the course. As a result of this, it becomes very obvious that everything is connected to each other in a way or another. Every text book, short story, or even a movie that we went through during the course has something in common and the same main goal which is answering the big question regarding the human quest and what does it mean to be human. Despite the feeling regarding some texts that it might be boring, there was always an interesting something in every single text we had. For me, the literature section was the most interesting part I have faced in this course. I always found them very realistic

The “Skin” movie is a biographical movie written by Helen Crawley, Jessi Keyt, and Helena Kriel and directed by Anthony Fabion. This movie has been released in 2008 in United Kingdom and in 2009 in the US. The movie is based on true story that tells about a black girl with white parents due to genetic case that upon which she had to go through many obstacles in her country. They are a white Afrikaners family having the black ancestry that presents in their daughter Sandra’s genes. They moved from their country to the Switzerland, and consequently she was rejected by the entire surrounding environment as she is apparently black living in white community. Due to the strict racism, she had difficulties in all her stages of life starting from entering the school passing by the community’s eye towards her till work and marriage. Although her parents was struggling to prove that she is white because of her parents are deniably white, she could not be treated as white at all. Because of Sandra’s feeling of being rejected, she started to get attracted to black people feeling that they are her actual community; however, that caused the wrath

Sandra started to fall in love with a black market gardener called Petrus, and the struggle with her father began from here. As she is officially white on papers; it is a crime getting married to a black person. The father started to chase Petrus asking him to leave his daughter although she gets pregnant. After much suffering with the father, Sandra left home. The father then prevented her to call or meet her parents what so ever. On the other hand, “My Son the Fanatic” is a short story written by Hanif Kureishi tells about also a Pakistani family who moved from their country to live in England, and by time, Ali, the hero of the story started to be more religious which also causes his father’s anger because of his wired behavior from his father’s view point. From here, one can obviously see the same aspect of the “Skin” and “My Son the Fanatic” which is the Father-son relationship. In the movie, the father-daughter relationship was not good although he had fought for her to prove her classification. However, when she gets into the adolescents stage and started to like a black guy, he forced her to marry someone else and when she escaped from him, he becomes her enemy