As far as the Academy attempting to be liberal in their decision making and attempting to keep a balance when it comes to visionaries of color and gender, we’ll never know if this particular statement holds any weight and so, we should just be happy and relieved that it is. I’ve watched all of the award shows for quite a few years, and hearing that barriers are just being broken at this point in time when it comes to women, different nationalities and creeds, or African American artists winning statues is just a really nauseating thought.
This should not be the way, and we should be more advanced when it comes to equality in art. But, if there are changes being made, and it feels like voters and the industry are working on being more accepting and having a deeper knowledge that good artistry does not just come from white skin or the male gender, then I feel that we’re on the right track, even if there’s a long road ahead to get where the film and television industry needs to go in terms of representation.
The last factor, is the idea that some fans and audience members feel that horror or darker toned productions should not have a social commentary. The fact of the matter is, countless films in the genre have had a message and were extremely influenced by the times they were conceived. This goes all the way to masterful work of Mary Shelley, to the late George Romero’s Night of The Living Dead, all the way to the present. Even films that are considered slasher fare like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were inspired by what the late Tobe Hooper witnessed on television during coverage of The Vietnam War.
Let’s talk about the commentary inside Get Out, too, and I can tell you how it affected me as I’ve now viewed it over ten times. As a white person watching this film, it really opened my eyes to many ideas and how certain individuals treat race. Even if someone’s not attempting to be a racist, there’s a blatant way to make African Americans feel uncomfortable or verbally slighted, even when they’re being kind. I’ve always considered myself to be an extremely woke individual, and without a desire for a pat on the back, I accept everyone, if they’re not hurting anyone and are good people. But watching this film, I’m most definitely guilty of this myself.
When I was very young, my best friend was black, and his family always had me over their home. They were extremely well off because his parents worked hard, and I was most definitely the kid on the other side of the tracks in comparison. But, I do recall, with loving intent, calling them The Huxtables from The Cosby Show or The Banks family of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I remember my friend would chuckle or smile, but if I could only go back to really break into his mind, to witness his true reaction behind the grin he probably shot at me to make me feel at ease.
There were other times as well as I grew older, changing the pitch of my tone of voice, or using slang in certain situations to fit in, feel as if I was surviving in certain situations. My life has changed drastically, but I had quite a few moments where I was in some extremely dangerous or what some would call seedy places. These are are all things that I learned through the years through culture and television. It was the only time as a white child or young adult that I saw a black family who were prospering financially, or that on the streets you had to be street. Everything that I was, as I am sure it has been for many, has been influenced by the small or big screen.
Then I went back to a time when I was going on eighteen and I was kicked out of my home. I moved from the suburbs to the city, and I slept on benches and outside of bus stations. That was until I took a chance and faced my addiction issues that I had at the time head on and attended a daily Narcotics Anonymous meeting and met a woman who really heard me when no one else was. She was in fact a black woman, she lived in a small apartment with her son and young daughter, and invited me to come live with them.
Her son Jason and I shared a room, and when his mother was at work, we’d spent a ton of time together and he became my brother. When we would spend time with other teenagers in the area of Southwest Philadelphia, they had a nickname for Jason and I, the Money Train Brothers. If you don’t recall or have never seen it, Money Train was a film starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, and in this action comedy they were also brothers.
Harrelson’s character was a white kid basically found in the gutter of life as a child and taken in by Snipes’s family in a foster situation. The sentiment was always kind, Jason and I having a bond where we would protect and look out for each other, but looking back on it, I was basically being called garbage. I was the screw up, the white brother with all of the issues and problems, and Jason was Snipes and had his head together, which he did, and later left to attend the Spartan School of Aeronautics, where I went on to continue to mess up every intention of being a better person with goals. As I looked back on these encounters, I realized that it’s not just white people who have the ability to say things they feel are kind that can be taken as offensive, it can come out of the mouth of anyone, no matter what color they are.