Blog 8. Fruitvale Station. Due by 11PM tonight.

I think this film contrasts starkly to Do the Right Thing. This film portrays a much more modern form of racism: it is not as obvious and can even be labeled an accident.

—Jordyn

The moment that stayed with me the most was the scene following Grant getting shot. After the train leaves, Officer Caruso walks over to his fellow officer and exclaims, “What the fuck happened?”. Then he gets doing on his knees, grabs Grants hand, and tells him, “Keep your eyes open”. He also looks frightened, ashamed, and regretful when Grant repeatedly says, “I have a daughter”. This fascinates me because when I first saw officer Caruso I thought he was just a mean racist cop. However his subsequent reaction makes me think otherwise. He is in fact more complicated than one might think. 

—Philip 

I kept asking myself why I was more upset with the victims for not complying than I was with the officers for lacking decency. After hearing this type of story so many times I've started to view police officers (in these situations) as robots executing commands. I’ve seen it and told myself “just comply, just comply, just comply” so many times that I get upset when other don’t, but of course they don’t. They’re people in stressful situations and they’re not dealing with robots, they’re dealing with people too. It made me aware to how much I’ve changed my perception of the “boys in blue,” and just how many times I’ve seen innocent people killed in unnavigable situations.

—Jordan

The president laid the groundwork for understanding a crucial aspect of the reaction to the [Trayvon Martin] verdict. He was asking sympathetic and curious listeners to consider that the outcry is not about one race’s oppression of another. It’s about the system of demoralization and dehumanization that sometimes keeps black people from seeming human even to themselves: epidemiology and statistics and diagnoses, the pathologization of black existence. The statistics make blacks look sick and hopeless, weak and unlovable. I’ve seen black women clutch their purses, too.

But attitudes in politics change all the time. Coogler’s debut is like the debuts of John Singleton, Matty Rich, and Allen and Albert Hughes: It’s about the hassles of modern black male life in America. His debut is notable not for its anger or nihilism but for its calm. Coogler could have included the protests and riots that happened in the days after Oscar Grant’s death and weeks before Obama’s inauguration. He could have gone into the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the officer who killed Grant. But he captures the altered tenor of depictions of black life in popular culture: Jay Z is a sports agent, the Roots are Jimmy Fallon’s house band, Chris Rock is playing a droopy dad in an Adam Sandler movie.

In its way, Fruitvale Station speaks to that yawning discrepancy. What feels slight, shaggy, and ordinary about it is also rather remarkable. To present Grant this way — as a son who loves his mother, as a father who loves his daughter, as the sort of person who comforts a dying dog and pleads with a shop owner to permit a pregnant woman to use his restroom — is to remove the stigma. He’s a lower-middle-class kid who got mixed up with crime. But most of the narrative belongs to a charming, charismatic, devoted young man, someone striving to better himself. It’s not only that this Grant is a person. It’s that, to a fault, he’s made to be more than black male pathology.
     
It sounds corny. But urgency supersedes that corniness. Oscar Grant is what’s missing from movies about young black men. The movie strives to restore to Grant the individuality that the symbolism of tragedy took away. Coogler’s portrait affixes a human face on ones that hoodies willfully obscure. The film arrives in the moment after the predicted rage turned out to be something a lot stranger and more profound than flashes of fury. No one threw a trash can through a window, as Lee’s character notoriously does in his movie. Sal’s Pizzeria didn’t burn to the ground. Instead of acting up and acting out after the Zimmerman verdict, people began to turn inward, to wring their hands and search their souls. No one knows yet how to break new ground, not even the president. However, there’s a sense that the angry, old solutions will no longer cut it. We might be out of cheeks to turn, but we’re also out of trash cans.
—Wesley Morris

What made me want to tell this story? It started with the incident, and being right there in the Bay Area when it happened. Being the same age as Oscar. Oscar was born in 1986. And I couldn’t help seeing myself right there. Seeing that situation. Seeing his friends—they look like my friends. We wear the same clothes, the same complexion. So in seeing that I thought, what if that was me? And that is where the idea initially came from. Being so hurt and being so angry, and so frustrated, and confused about what happened. The same feeling everybody had when they were out protesting and rioting. And people on the other side on the Internet. And seeing the trial, I feel like it kind of got muddled over that Oscar is a human being. He became this saint or this idol that people held up. He became a rallying cry and a symbol for whatever kind of impressions you wanted to make him a symbol for. And the other side has demonized him. He’s a criminal. He’s a thug. He got what he deserved. Personally, he’s not either one of those things. I feel like what was getting glossed over was the fact that this 22-year-old guy didn’t make it home to the people that he mattered to most. And for unnecessary reasons—his life was cut short unnecessarily. And so many young black men’s lives get cut short unnecessarily. [They’re not seen as] human beings by people who don’t know them or are on the other side of [this particular] conflict who don’t seem to care.

—Ryan Coogler

OSCAR. How long yall been married? PETE. Eight years.

Oscar nods at this. Pete looks at Oscar's hand for a ring, doesn't see one.
PETE. You thinking about it?

Oscar nods.

PETER.  What's stopping you?

OSCAR. Money.

PETER. Shitty reason. When we got married, we had nothing. Lived in the back of her parents' house for the first two years.

OSCAR. For real?

PETER. Shit you not ma. I wasn't working at all and she's a teacher, which might as well be the same thing as far as money goes.

OSCAR. How'd you get the ring?

Peter looks around for a beat.

PETER. I stole it.

Oscar looks at him like he is crazy.

PETER. Yeah man, I told you, I had nothing. I used to be good with credit cards if you know what I mean. I wouldn't go that route of I were you man.

OSCAR. Yeah, I'm straight off that.

PETER. Yeah. I ended up getting locked up for a bit. My wife had to sell the ring to bail me out. Got my business going about a year after I got out, and I got her the one she wears now.

OSCAR. What do you do?

PETER. I owe a web design company. We do a lot of business with companies in the valley. 

Peter pulls out his wallet and Oscar hands Oscar a card. Oscar looks at it.

OSCAR. Peter? (beat) Oscar.

They shake hands.

1. This is one of the few relatively lengthy scenes between Oscar and a white person in the film (earlier, of course, was his interaction with Katie at the Farmer Joe's where he used to work, where he helps her out with her fish fry—and maybe hits on her just a little). Oscar and Peter have a genuine conversation, the way strangers can, about marriage and commitment. It's a nice exchange between the men—and it is slightly, but significantly—at least I think, different in the film. Look at the clip and look at the screenplay above. First: why this scene in the film—to what effect? Second: to you, what's the significance of the difference between the screenplay and the filmed version?

2. This is hard, I know, but it's quick. This is where Officer Ingram shoots Oscar.

In Coogler's screenplay, it reads this way:

INGRAM. ROLL OVER! ON YOUR STOMACH!!

OSCAR. Fuck, I can't move!

Caruso stands up, pushing off Oscar's head with his hands. Ingram flips [Oscar] off of Carlos' legs and onto his stomach. Oscar squirms again, while Caruso grabs his hand trying to put it behind his back. Caruso puts his knee back down on Oscar, driving down hard at the base of his head, pressing Oscar's face against the ground. 

OSCAR. AGHHH, AGHHH!

INGRAM. Fuck. I can't get his hands! Back up.

Caruso lifts up off of Oscar. Ingram stands a but, keeping one knee in Oscar's back, reaches on the right side of his belt and pulls a black gun from the holster. He stands up and aims it at Oscar's back. BLAM!!

[...]

[Oscar's friend] Cato is frozen by shock. Caruso takes a step back, and looks at Ingram with confusion.

The way Coogler films this, from a distance, it all happens quickly and in the middle of chaos. Still: look at the minute plus clip. Why did this happen? And does any part of what Jordyn, Philip, and/or Jordan say at the top of the page apply to why you saw this happen?

3. Finally, something from Thrower's class playbook.  I would like you to acknowledge one of your classmates for something they did this semester or year that you appreciated or learned from or enjoyed or helped make the class better.  Something you would feel comfortable acknowledging and thanking a classmate for.

And that's it everyone. Thank you all for the time, effort, thought, and feeling you put into this blog this year.  Reading them was always a highlight of my day and/or night. Really.

Blog 7. Fruitvale Station. Due Sunday by 10 PM.

SOPHINA. What are you going to do?
OSCAR. I don't know. Something legal.  Gonna see if my sister can hire me again while I look.  Maybe if I can just not fuck up for 30 days...Oprah said that's all it takes to form a habit, right?
(Look at this clip)
 
Fruitvale Station. (2013)
Director and Writer: Ryan Coogler
Cinematography: Rachel Morrison
Editing: Claudia Castello, Michael P. Shawver
Music: Ludwpg Goransson

Oscar Grant III: Michael B. Jordan
Sophina Mesa: Melonie Diaz
Wanda Johnson: Octavia Spencer
Tatiana Grant: Ariana Neal
Officer Caruso: Kevin Durand
Officer Ingram: Chad Michael Murray
(for the rest of the cast, look here)

Budget: $900,000
Box Office: $17.4 million

An early publicity poster when the film was simply titled "Fruitvale."

Isaac and I were talking this morning about how watching a movie with others is different than watching a movie by yourself.  When I watched this by myself I was, of course, impressed and moved. But sitting on my couch with my phone next to me, answering texts, dulled the effect of this film. Today in class, in the dark with you in 6th period, I felt devastated by this film. I knew what was going to happen, of course; I managed to put it out of my head until Oscar picks Tatiana up at the pre-school and races her to the car when Sophina—perhaps finally trusting Oscar completely after he reveals he dumped the weed and didn't make the drug deal—waits.  Here is the scene.  This may be the most joyous moment in the film.  It's followed by more joyous moments: Wanda's birthday, the party on the train to SF for the fireworks, Oscar persuading the store owner to let the women into his shop to use the bathroom.  The decency, kindness, and respect shown by everyone to each other in this 15 minute stretch of the film may be the high point of the semester in this respect, with echoes of what we didn't see in Do The Right Thing, though Spike filmed it and a number of you wrote about it: Mookie, Vito, and Mister Senor Love Daddy communing in the radio station over a great chicken parmesan sandwich.  But, as in DTRT—a film that seems so much to have influenced then 27-year old Ryan Coogler (watching Oscar, Sophina, and Tatiana spooning in their bed reminded me of Mookie, Tina, and Hector in bed at the end of DTRT)—the happiness cannot last.  There is no Atticus Finch to try to make us believe that there are plenty of good people out there (though there are, in everything we've studied this semester); there's no Mookie and Sal to finally see each other eye-to-eye over the rubble of a building; there is no Paul and Grant shaking hands and offering to help each other. There's just a mother and a daughter and a father never coming home.

(On a slightly more upbeat note: the year after his film opened, Coogler managed to contact Spike and suggested a cold reading of Do The Right Thing the day after Thanksgiving "in the wake of [Eric] Garner’s death as a way to[...] 'put an end to human-rights violations being committed by public servants, men and women being paid by tax dollars.'” Spike agreed. Michael B. Jordan read Mookie; Melonie Diaz (Sophina) read Tina. Here's the story.)

Here are three questions I want you to address.  There will be one more blog after this, and you will be done with the blog—and perhaps all blogs—forever.  Unless you're in my class next year.

1. What is your reaction to the film?

2. What scene or moment or image stayed with you?  And why?

3. As I said in class today—and I will say tomorrow for 5th period—I debated showing this film up until a half-hour before class. I knew when I decided to do this class, that this would really be the culminating piece for this semester; everything we've read and watched since February points toward this. But I've been wondering: is this too much?  Is this simply a reiteration of what we've been discussing since Do The Right Thing? Does this add something different to our study? Does this help us understand the questions of racism and violence that have been really at the core of these works this semester?  I think it does, hard as it is to watch. So could you address a couple of the questions I've just posed?

4. Finally: after writing your responses, would you please read this essay on the film by Wesley Morris. It's perceptive, challenging, and extremely well written. I'll try to bring this up in our discussion of the film. 

As Jordan said this morning on his way to his first period class: "Every day is race day." Indeed.  Write 250-300 words.

Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler

Director of Photography Rachel Morrison and Ryan Coogler

Melonie Diaz, Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler, producer Forrest Whitaker