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diversions:
video picks
Video Picks deals
with racism
Racism and discrimination
have been continuing issues over the course of time. The Constitution
states that all men are created equal, yet slavery was not abolished
until the 1800s.
San Francisco hotels
used to hang signs on their front doors that read "No
Filipinos Allowed." Drinking fountains and restrooms
were once designated "blacks only" and "whites
only." Racism and discrimination loom in this week's
Video Picks.
Film director,
Edward Zwick recaptured not only the Civil War, but also a
specific landmark event that paved the way for people of color
in his 1989 movie "Glory."
Black men, still
under the control of slavery, wanted to show America they
could fight compassionately alongside white men. Unfortunately,
slavery was the key blockade in allowing the future soldiers
easy passage into the war.
The Massachusetts
54th Volunteer Regiment, the first army regiment of black
soldiers commissioned during the Civil War, was soon gathered
and a leader was needed.
Although reluctant,
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) took the job
and ended up leading his troops into battle, giving up his
life and proving that black men could indeed fight honorably
alongside white men.
Trip (Denzel Washington)
is a wily, loudmouthed slave who enters the regiment wanting
to show America that he is a human being. Picking fights,
not only with his white superior officers, Trip also agitates
his black peers so he could train them into not taking "No"
for an answer. Fighting in the war is Trip's race towards
his freedom.
Morgan Freeman
plays John Rawlins, a former gravedigger and later the first
black officer in an American Army. He is the mediator between
minorities and superiors.
The second film
breaks all laws and "discriminating" restraints
concerning the Video Picks column. Being a column based on
'80s and pre-'80s films, the pick is of the '90s.
Screenwriter Gary
Ross gives a metaphoric adaptation of racism in the 1998 film
"Pleasantville."
The story begins
in color, establishing the characters of David Wagner, played
by Toby Maguire ("Wonder Boys"), and his sister
Jennifer, played by Reese Witherspoon ("Cruel Intentions").
The siblings are
total opposites. David is a typical geek and Jennifer is the
popular, high school dream girl. David fights for a simple
lifestyle and Jennifer gives into a materialistic world.
Don Knotts plays
a television repairman who turns the entire story around.
He transports the bickering siblings into their television
into "Pleasantville," a '50s-type sitcom setting
where life is simple, sexless and in black and white.
Pleasantville is
entirely a black and white world. The people, the cars and
the buildings are all black and white, except for David and
Jennifer, who are in color.
The movie, consisting
of an all white cast, is an extended metaphor for the struggle
that people of color went through during that time, and still
do today. Although white Americans, because David and Jennifer
are in color, they are the minority.
The movie continues
through riots and warfare against the outcasts until the people
of Pleasantville slowly starts gaining color, eventually turning
into in all colored town. The transforming to color metaphorically
shows society's acceptance of diversity.
Racism may not
be as apparent as it was decades and centuries ago, but it
still exists, whether we accept it or not. "Glory"
and "Pleasantville" depict this issue in two contrasting
time periods.
Derrick Engoy
is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.
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