Checked out the new film The Hate U Give. This is a film about race and the police, based on a YA book that I did not read but probably should.
The Hate U Give is about a black teenage girl who lives in the hood and goes to school in a predominantly white private school. In so doing, she has to constantly code switch between her home life and her school life, where she can never be “too black” even when her white friends act like they are. She’s a little mixed up as she no longer belongs in either of her worlds… basically she hasn’t found her voice as she constantly has to tamp it down at school while also not really fitting in with friends at a house party on the weekend.
At one such party, an old school friend-who-is-a-boy gives her a lift home. They talk about how they had been friends as kids… they talk about Tupac and they talk about Harry Potter. Then a cop pulls them over. The girl was given The Talk… what to do as a black person when you get pulled over. The boy… he’s more belligerent… indignant… they didn’t do anything wrong, he protests. The boy thinks its funny to reach into his car for his comb… when he gets shot and killed.
The rest of the film is about how the girl has to deal with the aftermath. Her black community wants justice and she has to decide if she should testify, knowing in part that the boy was a drug runner for a gang who doesn’t want her talking. She also doesn’t want her friends at the white school to know since she fears she’ll just become a ghetto charity case. She doesn’t want to be on social media, getting that abuse either. But she wants to speak up for her friend who may not have been perfect, but wasn’t doing anything wrong that night either.
One thing I didn’t like about the film was the presence of a drunk kingpin who doesn’t want her to talk. This felt a little too Hollywood for the movie. I’m not sure how common it is in such shootings and protests that part of the black community doesn’t want a witness to talk. This feels a little much for dramatic effect but, possibly, its there to add more nuance to the story. I’m not really sure.
But regardless of that, the movie has plenty of nuance otherwise and has direct, blunt-force rage at its core. It’s angry. It looks for answers and delivers no pat, easy ones. It’s a fresh-faced, honest, bold look at a problem that I think the film presents as more nuanced than the characters see it. I’m not sure it was meant to be that way which could be a small flaw in an otherwise pretty darn good movie.
Score: 89