Movies involving Racism
 

When "Crash (2004)" came out it was a film I was very interested in a seeing and it is a film that I have watched many times since I first saw it.

One thing however that I have heard from a lot of people including film critics is "we get it, we get racism is bad, we don't need it shoved in our faces" & I here the same things about the film "American History X" but thing is I think this is wildly over looking the idea of the films to begin with. The thing about the two films is no-one gets off lightly, it is not a case of "white power is good, black people are bad", everyone is given the same treatment and exposed one way or another.

I personally think that this is something that is important to make and write stories of. We as a society have come a long way but there are still ways to go and for this reason I did not come to the same conclusions as the critics.

But what do you think?

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

Legitimate topic but the first post makes me not want to talk about it. I don't think I understand your premise. Why did you choose those movies and which critics are you talking about?

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

You know, the critics.

I like a story about discrimination if it's done well. I don't need to see a sentimental preach for the thousandth time.

My favorite film that tackles the subject of racism DIRECTLY probably is:

Do the Right Thing (1989)

http://cinemafanatic.files.wordpress...ight_thing.jpg

An energetic, agressive and insightful piece of film that makes its point by observing a hot summer day in a multicultural neighborhood and letting the audience question all the portrayed events. It's also impeccably directed.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

Of course films like these are needed...

I get the attitude of "we don't need reminding every 5 minutes"... but without films like these, I think I said in another thread a few days ago... movies would be simply just sunshine and rainbows all the time.


I did a review of American History X last year, might have been the year before... and I said it was one of the most important films of the past 30 years...


It's like films about rape, domestic violence or even paedophilia... for instance Prisoners... though Prisoners was very subtle in its involvement of actual child abuse.

Movies like these are not just thought provoking, or for want of a better word "entertaining", they're also part of a world of taboos that should be explored, even exposed...

What I am talking about is films that involved racism that people see as pandering to racism and shoving it down your throats for one reason or another. I choose these films because these are the films I hear it from people most often and I would invite people to add other films that do the same.

As for Critics the ones I can think off mostly are "Movies you should See" but I also see it on "Rotten Tomatoes" and "IMDb" quite often.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

Of course films about racism should be made. It's still a very relevant topic. However, Crash in particular was so heavy handed in its approach to the topic that it turned many viewers off and failed to effectively get its point across as a result.

Ah, these "critics." More like people who criticize the movie rather than people who are film critics and write about the movie.

So would you say these people are less qualified to talk of them? The reason I ask is so far you have not contributed to the question except your dislike for critics.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

I think what bluedeed means is people who watch films and then bitch, rather than actually constructively criticize them.

I understand what you mean and I do agree with you but do you think that with this sort of subject matter there needs to be a level of this?

I understand that but this is not a film to entirely talk about hatred for critics but also the films and the original topic as to about films.

Of heavy handedness? No.

Certainly it shouldn't be sugar coated, but people don't like to be preached to and the message is communicated more effectively when preaching is avoided.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

What bluedeed means is that when people use the collective "critics," it usually has nothing to do with actual criticism and more to do with internet and newspaper reviewers whose maximum qualifications are typically a degree in journalism and an interest in film. When people use the collective "critics," it's usually in distaste for this body and a gross misrepresentation of actual film criticism as an institution, which needs the support of the people to stay alive and isn't being given any favors when people reject "critics" because they disagree with Richard Roeper or "The Nostalgia Critic." So, what is a critic? David Bordwell has the answer.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

Interesting movies about racism:

1 - District 9 (best movie about racism I ever watched)
2 - The Help (sort of good, not really comparable to the one above it though)

No, it's not. District 9 deals with the same subject in a much more gentle and mature manner.

I found District 9 to not only be heavy-handed in its approach, but also plain racist.

Really? Plain racist? A film that tells a true story is heavy handed and plain racist? District 9 was a wonderful inclusion into this discussion and I applaud Guaporense for including it.

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

From Adam Nayman, writer for Reverse Shot:
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 might have gone down as the fanboy film of the year if not for James Cameron raising the bar in the ain’t-it-cool? sweepstakes with that other radicalization sci-fi narrative. That I’ve chosen to single out District 9 for scorn should not be taken as an endorsement of Avatar, which has correctly been taken to task (at least in some quarters) for its lazy Iraq allegory and condescending racial politics. But if Avatar’s equations (trees = good; 99.9% of humans = bad) are stupid, District 9’s coded evocation of apartheid—with nine-foot-tall insectoids standing in for South African blacks—is downright offensive. Blomkamp, whose much-YouTubed Landfall trilogy—a series of shorts set in Halo’s video-game universe—impressed enough people (including Peter Jackson) to land him a feature filmmaking deal, may have been born in South Africa, but his understanding of the country’s post-Soweto history seems facile at best. For starters, are we really supposed to believe that anything—even the arrival of an alien mothership in the skies over Johannesburg—could constitute a clean slate for the country’s whites and blacks? (You’d need a World Cup rugby game for that, eh, Clint?) Even if we buy this conceit (derived from The Outer Limits’ episode “The Architects of Fear”), Blomkamp’s usage of brutal, menacing Nigerian gang bangers as secondary villains—gun-runners who antagonize both the country’s “Prawn” population and bumbling Afrikaner pencil pusher turned alien mutant Wikus van der Mewe (Sharto Copley)—suggests he’s not above the propagation of stereotypes. And it would be easier to take Wikus’s symbolically loaded transformation into the Other (which begins when he’s accidentally sprayed by some bug fluid during a ghetto raid) seriously if it wasn’t ultimately a pretense for his being able to operate the aliens’ biochemical weaponry—a development that allows District 9 to abandon its thin veneer of social commentary (and erratically deployed faux-documentary textures) to become the live-action Halo shoot-em-up its creator wanted to make all along. —AN

Re: Movies involving Racism
 

Really ? I thought District 9 was a parody of racism