I didn't expect to be able to write a review this year.
This kind of thing is really weird.
You can get furious in Italy because the supermarket cashier’s indifferent attitude, then go back to the hotel and say "I think black people look so dirty"; you can yell "u can't call me nigger" at the white people ", and said "plz open up your eyes" to Asians. This kind of thing is really weird, as it reflects all the weaknesses of people: conformity, stubbornness, harshness, blindness-the most important thing is selfishness. You never know what pain is until you are.
This is everything I know about racial discrimination, but it's much more than that. This is probably the reason why I wrote this review. It is not only the film itself. It gave me an opportunity to think and made me want to record my current thoughts, but because I must not be able to tell everything about it, I can only try Write down everything I know about it, for us to live in such an era: an era in which everything has not yet improved, an era in which the estrangement from the world will be deeper.
The American film industry has never lacked works that reflect racial discrimination, such as "American X-Files", "Frutwell Station", "Green Book", "Hidden Characters" and "Crash"... You can even play in "Escape from Death". In horror films such as "We", we see the political demands of black people. These works do reflect the past and current situation of black Americans, but none of them can be as profound as "Do What We Should". Racial issues are complex, but they almost all attribute it to binary opposition: innocent blacks, ignorant whites, miserable society, and violent police, as if this were all the tragedy that occurred.
Similarly, for this movie, you can certainly tell the story like this: A fire broke out in a pizzeria in Brooklyn one night in 1989. It all started when the Italian boss smashed a black guy. The black guy and his companions just want this shop, which is mainly profitable by the black community, to hang a few black photos on the celebrity wall in the shop. After the owner’s family clashed with the group of blacks, the police rushed to the pizza restaurant. They accidentally killed the black man with the radio while controlling the situation and left quickly. After the police left, angry black residents attacked the pizza. In the shop, another group of police officers who controlled the situation rushed to the shop and used high-pressure water guns to suppress it.
Another classic racism news, if there is no detailed description of Spike Lee. Regarding the unemployment and chaos in this neighborhood, about how much the boss likes his customers, about why the shop that was closed that day was opened, about the root cause of these people’s request for photos of black people, or about employment Policy, when it comes to history and culture, when it comes to community characteristics...this is everything. I certainly do not deny everything about the binary opposition story. After all, movies are not sociological essays. I will be angry, crying, and empathizing with the plots of these movies. They are indeed an important part of the affirmative movement, but in retrospect, In terms of depth, "Do What It Should Be" is obviously worthy of all praise. It is more like a reflection and admonition, and it is still applicable today as we are about to enter the 2020s.
It seems to me that the political demands of black people today seem to have become a business, fast-food along with all cultural products. Movies, music, social networks, your output does not even need to be of high quality, as long as you cater to it, you can get attention and praise. Everything about black culture is like the postcards of black spiritual leaders stuttering on the street in the movie, Malcom X, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan...you can hear them almost in the works of all black musicians today Names, I’m not saying that they are not worthy of respect, but to this day they are more like simple symbols. You don’t need to really understand their greatness, you only need to know that today’s big entertainment guys who write words with these names are Is the "new black leader". I think of Beyonce’s The gift with Africa as the background. The Black Panther movie is with Africa as the background. Yes, they are all black. They are creating black art works with black culture as a source of inspiration. However, in the roots, these generations What did the African Americans later have to do with Africa? Didn't the people who created them and those who followed them grew up in American pop culture? Could it be that they were influenced by the native African music when they were growing up? Of course, it is not bad to emphasize recognition of such an identity. No matter what the purpose is, it is a kind of inheritance after a few hands, but such emphasis also brings some problems.
I always feel that today's cultural creation seems to have entered a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding of standing still and emphasizing their identity. These black artists seem to have to speak for their own race, which has become their natural responsibility in cultural production. This reality is very ambiguous. On the one hand, you must speak up for your own race, and on the other hand, your audience is all people. The natural opposition of rejection and confrontation but coexistence becomes a natural dilemma. I think of Kendrick Lamar’s tour in the previous year. He invited a fan to sing on stage. There are many n-words in the song. The fans are white. I didn’t pay attention to the original words. Lamar pinched the wheat urgently, reminding the fans before taking control of the scene. This incident makes me feel very typical. It seems to be a microcosm of the present day. The appeal is raised, the public recognizes it, and everyone is at peace. But at the same time, this kind of peace is fragile and superficial. On the one hand, there is an invisible and insurmountable line separating us-just like no one said that we would discriminate against Uyghurs, but you only need to go to Xinjiang to see that there are checkpoints everywhere, these non-Han faces are waiting to pass. Obviously, it’s much longer, as if it’s natural. You can drink and eat meat with them, have a picnic under the tree, or take their waiting time for granted-the same is true for Lamar, you can Love our rap to the extent of memorizing every word, but be careful not to say the n-word that is in almost every word.
In this world, the ambiguous estrangement between different races is so natural, and the symbiosis and fragile balance of various ethnic groups are also so natural. Understanding is originally a difficult thing, so you will hate people you don’t know at all, and you will feel uneasy because they belong to another culture and another skin color, and this uneasiness is so easy to be exploited. It can be used to gain your attention to earn your traffic, or it can be used as violence, just like in this movie, everything that is happy and hopeful will be so easily broken with a radio.
I think of the other side. The racial issue may sound like a matter of different skin colors, but it is actually a matter of two cultures, so I think we and them can also be attributed to the kind of culture described in the movie, the culture of estrangement, the fragile red line, and the occurrence of violence. Chinese people really often have "misunderstandings of the same face", and the difference between us and them is so big as if they are really two races, political culture, language habits, lifestyle, development history... I remember the first in elementary school When I visited Hong Kong this time, I had never seen vending machines, wireless mice, and left-hand lanes. Everything was so fresh and friendly. When I traveled again in February this year, the objectionable slogans appeared on the roadside, and I encountered it twice. The patient clerk, those things happened later. At first, when my friends and I were discussing it, they only regarded it as a general political phenomenon under a democratic system. But today, is it different from everything described in this movie? Of course I know that there are many good people in this world, and what I accept in a different culture is mostly kind, but as I said, it is ambiguous. When the right demands deviate from the wrong track, the only ones who control violence in chaos will always be It would be a rascal. Just as I also disdain those people who are full of abuse and ridicule on this shore, because I believe that these arrogant and unwilling to understand others will become the object of insults today just like on the other side.
I hate all barriers, unfairness and violence, although sometimes I am one of them, even though I know that all this will not get better in our lifetime, and even because of him, we will be more and more misunderstood (because we Naturally derailed from world public opinion), so on the night of December 4, 2019, I tried to write down all my thoughts about this in my mind.
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