Production Stills

Here are a few of my favorite production stills from 'Finding Genesis'. Click them to enlarge the photo.

  

See My Film at the Des Moines Art Festival [June 24th-26th]

Hey everybody, come see my film 'Waiting for Eternity' at the Des Moines Art Festival. I don't know when my film will be shown exactly, but I will hopefully find out soon. I can tell you that the art festival is between June 24th and the 26th in downtown Des Moines. My film will be part of the Interrobang Film Festival. Here is a promotional video that they asked me to share:

'Finding Genesis' Poster

Here is the first poster to promote 'Finding Genesis' which we will finish shooting Monday, May 9th. It is scheduled for release this summer!

The American Racial Hierarchy in Contemporary Cinema

First year critical theory class, please give me a break!

            'The Blind Side' is a 2009 film written and directed by John Lee Hancock that was nominated for an Academy Award for being an inspirational movie following the true story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) and his adopted family. Michael Oher is now an NFL football player with the Baltimore Ravens, but at the age of seventeen he was barely educated and lived, homeless, in the Memphis ghettos. Given the circumstances he is born to and the fact that he is African American, Michael Oher would be considered a hopeless youth with no contributable niche to society whatsoever. That is until on one November night when the Tuohy family by some fortune encounters Michael on the rainy street with no place to sleep; Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) offers Michael their sofa for the night. The Touhy's are a typical white, upper class, Christian family and huge fans of football. Michael slowly becomes a member of the Touhy family. They feed him, clothe him, give him his own bedroom and eventually adopt him. Most importantly, they care enough about his well-being to help improve his grades and get him on the school's football team. There he finds his niche, and by graduation, just about every College University wants to give him a scholarship to play for their school. Leigh Anne is there every step of the way to couch him and give Michael everything he needs. Thanks to the Touhy's, Michael Oher is saved from poverty to become a wealthy and successful member of a white family.

            Michael Oher's story is touching and miraculous, and the movie is meant to demonstrate the beauty and what can be overcome with racial harmony. However, after giving the premise of 'The Blind Side' some exploratory thought, there is something deeply troubling about this film. Troubling, because it is not a story about a young black boy who overcomes poverty, but rather about a white family who intervenes and becomes a black boy's only means of escape from poverty. 'The Blind Side' relies heavily on race/class stereotypes, even given that it is based on a true story, so the question remains: Why is this the feel-good story that we take pleasure in being told? This trend of narrative where the white man becomes the black man's only hope for escape from their "inferior culture" is reflected frequently in modern cinema. Notable examples include 'Freedom Writers' (Richard LaGravenese, 2007) and 'The Soloist' (Joe Wright, 2009). Since the filming of Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird' (Robert Mulligan, 1962), it has been a popular notion, and cultural trend, that white culture can redeem itself for over 200 years of slavery and the ongoing racism in America by displaying the hero in the cinematic apparatus as being selfless and moral by saving the African Americans from themselves.

            In her essay, 'Feeling in the Dark: Empathy, Whiteness, and Miscege-nation in Monster's Ball', Aimee Carrillo Rowe analysis the film 'Monster's Ball' (Marc Forster, 2001) similarly. 'Monster's Ball' has been celebrated for becoming the benchmark of racial tolerance in cinema. In this film, Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton), a discontented racist, has by midway through the film given up on life until encountering Leticia (Halle Barry), a black woman living in poverty. After a love affair with Leticia ensues, Hank learns the error of his ways and undergoes change. When Leticia is evicted from her house, Hank offers that she move in with him and buys her a car and gas station. In other words, as Rowe argues, Hank seeks redemption for having been a racist through miscegeny and by saving Leticia from poverty. The racist, white supremacist is treated as being a victim himself of a discriminatory trait over which he has no control. However, despite his wrongs, the white man is still treated as being racially superior because by rescuing the subordinate African American from poverty, he is both showing that he is superior and proving that he is worthy of that superiority. "The nation as an imagined community governed by particular ideologies, practices, and legislative norms, provides the condition of possibility through which rights and wrongs are rendered intelligible," (Rowe, 124) so given that the power over whether racial discrimination is right or wrong lies with the nation controlled by the white man, he redeems himself as being a self proclaimed, justified superior capable of balancing past failings. The African American subculture has no say over the effect of the reparation and is continually treated as being inferior, and a nuisance.

            This American racial hierarchy is similar to the theory of Orientalism. C. Edward Said describes the history of Orientalism as beginning when Europeans first came across eastern cultures, the orient. These eastern cultures were considerably less developed relative to the Europeans, so they were considered uncivilized. This attitude has carried on to today when eastern cultures are often viewed as exotic. Arabs, for example, are considered an uncivilized culture and their religion, Islam, is violent and wrong. Cinema has played a key role in shaping Orientalism. Shohat and Stam theorize on how Imperial Imaginary, the illusion of a racial hierarchy, in films has naturalized western European countries as being dominant over the east. Films like ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ (Spielberg 1984) follow the western European hero who arrives in an eastern country where the uncivilized natives need the help of the white hero. Take this concept and apply it to African American culture. Everything about their culture in America is considered wrong, such as the status of where they live, how they talk, dress, and walk—all characterized as uncivilized. They are the Other, and therefore substandard or in need of change.

            The Imperial Imaginary is evident in 'The Blind Side' even though the film is meant to show racial harmony. The Touhys are meant to represent the perfect family; white, very Christian, very conservative, athletically involved, and wealthy. Even the atheist, democrat tutor they hire is made to be apologetic for her beliefs and submissive to the Touhys' implied dominance. Being the superior, the Touhys might subconsciously feel obligated to earn their status and do so by using Michael Oher as an object of redemption. In one scene, Leah Anne Touhy is confronted by her clan of rich, white girl friends who fear that Michael might take advantage of Leah Anne's daughter. Leah Anne is disgusted that they would even suggest that because it is an extremely racist and prejudice thing to say. This scene almost counteracts the idea that this film misrepresents African American culture, until later in the film when Michael runs away and returns to the ghetto. There, his friends, who are stereotypical black hoodlums, ask Michael whether or not he "tapped that", i.e. raped Leah Anne's daughter. This scene is by far the most morally repugnant in the entire film because it implies that black men do in fact rape white girls, unless they have been rescued from African American culture by a white family.

            This kind of attitude is not only present in films, but alternate modes of media as well—including video games. Paul Barrett discusses critical race theory applied to the video game, 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' (Rockstar Games 2008) in his thesis 'White Thumbs, Black Bodies: Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Fantasies in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'. One aspect that Barrett mentions is how the urban area in which the main character, CJ, lives offers no explanation for why the conditions are so terrible, why CJ's friends are unemployed and parentless,  and why one cannot walk down the street without being shot—which naturalizes these conditions as typical for African American lifestyle and without any alternative. "By disconnecting the poverty that San Andreas claims to represent from any historical context, the game, by default, reinforces the neoliberal line of an absolutely isolated sense of agency," (Barrett 101). This is exactly what movies like 'The Blind Side' are doing. The condition of the ghetto where Michael was raised is made to be the norm of African American culture. It is represented as a dangerous place full of bad black people, but the perfect white family who knows no wrongs can save the black children from this subsidiary culture. The entire premise of 'The Blind Side' is to make a white person feel obligated to save African American children because the white person seeks redemption for how African Americans are treated.

            Towards the end of 'The Blind Side', Leah Anne Touhy lists a number of young African American men along with a montage of news clippings of their ultimate demise. She says that each of these boys had something to offer the world, but they couldn't because they were killed, usually murdered by another black boy. What is she really saying? This is a call to action claiming that because these African Americans were not saved by a white person like herself, they were inevitably killed by their own culture. These racial binaries should not be acceptable in modern cinema because they only fuel the idea of a racial hierarchy. To change the power relations which produce discrimination between races, narratives like that of 'The Blind Side', whether true or fictional, should not be show cinematically. African Americans are not objects of redemption, they are human beings and their culture is just as valid as that of any other race.

Work Cited:

1. Barrett, Paul. "White Thumbs, Black Bodies: Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Fantasies in           Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural   Studies, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. (pg. 95–119).

2. Carrillo Rowe, Aimee. "Feeling in the Dark: Empathy, Whiteness, and Miscege-nation in           Monster's Ball," Hypatia vol. 22. Aimee Carrillo Rowe, 2007. (pg. 122-142).

3. Said, C. Edward. Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition, New York: Vintage Books of Random House, 2003. [Original: 1978]. (pg. 1-26).

4. Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. "The Imperial Imaginary." Unthinking Eurocentrism:      Multiculturalism and the Media. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. (pg. 100-136)

Audio-Visuals:

1. The Blind Side. Dir. John Lee Hancock. Perf. Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron. Warner       Bros. 2009.

2. Freedom Writers. Dir. Richard LaGravenese. Perf. Hilary Swank and Patrick Dempsey.            Paramount Pictures. 2007.

3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Rockstar Games. 2008.

4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Harrison Ford and Kate Capshaw. Paramount Pictures. 1984.

5. To Kill A Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Perf. Gregory Peck and Mary Badham.   Universal International Pictures. 1962.

6. Monster's Ball. Dir. Marc Forster. Perf. Billy Bob Thornton and Halley Berry. Lee Daniels        Entertainment. 2001.

7. The Soloist. Dir. Joe Wright. Jamie Foxx and Robert Downing Jr. Dreamworks. 2009.