Ava DuVernay's "When They See Us" is a Masterclass in How to Depict Racists On Screen.

Historically, racism as a subject matter in film and Television has been handled poorly, mostly because racism in our country has been handled so poorly. I think most films on the subject are rote, basic, overly simplistic in their discourse, and in their perspective regarding the large scale implications, and harm, the practice does to a nation and a people as well as to the individual. This is largely because they disconnect the personal from the systemic. What Ava has done so well in her latest addition to Netflix is create a deeply moving, engaging narrative string theory that connects the personal directly to the systemic in a way that doesn't devolve either. By doing so she avoids the caricaturization of racism and its proponents common in film and television of this nature made by other creators (mostly white folk). These efforts by other directors like the Farrelly brother's “The Green Book” whittle down the insidiousness of white supremacy to the work of a couple or a few choice villains rather than a collective effort by a vast spectrum of personalities with varying motivations. This reduction so popular in history books films or series written, helmed and created by white folk commits two sins: it A. allows the actual full breadth and harm of white supremacy to crawl under the legs of these manufactured cartoons and out the back door, and B. Creates poor boring characters ( I SWEAR I BARELY even recall Sam Rockwell’s character in “Three Billboards” for this exact reason, he’s a very well drawn character…for a cartoon). The effect? It creates no call to action, and saves white people from embarrassment and accountability. In a cartoon if a boulder falls on said villain Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner is safe until the next time his death is plotted by Wile E, who has no rhyme no reason to his desire for harm other than the simplified explanation that it is simply in his nature to be so. we gain nothing from this other than the entertainment. In a fashion this has been the way our very real pain, trauma, harm, and hurt has been historically portrayed on screen by whites. A garish cartoon where we watch oppression play out in a variety of schemes by one perpetrator, who is eventually quelled, until the next episode, purely for our entertainment. …

What really stood out to me upon doing or taking an inventory of what moved me so much about the story being told in “When They See Us” was not only Ava's execution in showing micro and macro cause and effect in systemic oppression, but her understanding of these functions and expressions as more than just racism as a motivation in and of itself. It is a body to head one two punch that knocks the audience off its feet and into recovery mode well after the credits run. The character that best embodies just how well and deeply Ava understands these processes and the people in them is Linda Fairstein. Now in order to properly frame what Ava is doing, and how much better it's done, both from a filmmaking and philosophical standpoint I feel I have to show someone who doesn't do it well..the aforementioned Sam Rockwell characterJason Dixon in Martin Mcdonagh's “The Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri".

Now On Digital: http://bit.ly/ThreeBillboardsDigitial Now On Blu-ray & DVD: http://bit.ly/Get3Billboards THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comedic drama from Academy Award® winner Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES).

I think it's important to note the difference in the introductions of each of these characters and how they align to show the differences in approach. Rockwell's character in the three billboards is alone when we first meet him and his racism is made evident from the very beginning. Two things are being established here 1 he is alone in his racism, which in turn reinforces the childish, (But safe for white people) idea that racism is an individual problem. 2. That this is the beginning of his arc because it is where he starts, so that we are being set up for him to either grow or get his, the former rather insidious because it not only seeks to have us empathize or rather understand his motivations, but to identify with them. Not only that, but from the very beginning the light in which his racism is shown is not taken tonally serious at all. It is again an example of racism played for laughs that completely ignores the widespread ramifications of this mans cruelty, it's not funny. I'm not one of those that thinks that you can't make fun of, or have a laugh at the expense of racist or racism (sometimes its all you can do) but I think that that line is very fine and that the jokes have to come as offerings of levity from a stance that makes clear its depravity systemically as well as interpersonally. For a better example of this kind of line being drawn one can look to the 1999 film “Life” starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence....

Clip from "Life" starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence

The scene from Life is clearly from the perspective of those offended, this is in essence what they see. Throughout the movie it makes clear not only the harm to these two men, but black men all over (Interestingly enough both Life and When they see us are about a cruel and injust system that railroads black bodies into dehumanizing life in prison) and the result is a movie that both makes us laugh and cry at the injustice we have endured and prevailed over in our long suffering here on this most desperate island of eternal hope and damnation. Meanwhile back over at the three billboards, when black people are there, and in the vicinity of Rockwell’s or anyone else’s racism the scene is seen from the perspective of the offender, and is drawn to connect us with his point of view. The presence of its black citizens are barely made known, much less any examination of what the effects of a clearly racist police force has had on it's denizen’s. In concert with the centralization of the arc of its very racist cop, it serves the doubly troublesome effect of humanizing (not necessarily harmful in and of itself ) its racist character, and dehumanizing his victims.

Its really hard to find a scene in “The Three Billboards of Ebbing Missouri” that reckons with race in a meaningful way, because its pretty hard to find black people in it from whose point of view we can see it.

Having seen what a bad introduction to a character looks like, what a poorly emphasized arc to a bad character looks like, and subsequently what a poor political stance on a character looks like, we can now see what it looks like when it's done right in Ava's “When They See Us”. The introduction to Linda Fairstein for starters, whom bares a light but superficial resemblance to Rockwell’s Jason Dixon, yet, as vile as Fairstein is, her racism is not cartoonish nor two dimensional. It does not function on auto pilot, or unilaterally without consultation with her ambitions and her sense of justice which acts as a front man for her gross prejudices.

Ava and co writers go beyond platitudes, to create a character whose evil is propelled by layered and multi-dimensional motivations and objectives. It is made implicitly clear if not at time explicitly that in her own mind she is merely seeking justice, and yes maybe she is ambitious an what is wrong with that?” is something she may ask herself when she feels morally compromised. The answer is of course racism . The strength of this depiction lies in the the abilities of Felicity Huffman, and in the storytelling that allows for the cohabitation of her motivations, objectives, and desires along with racism without absolution. Objective, and the selective being seen, being made visible. The first of these objectives is made clear when she finds she body, and subsequently when she doubles down after finding out the timeline doesn't match. As our into is being made this is a woman on the trail of justice, for the bodily, and psychological harm done to another woman. The other quality turned vice (ambition) is in previewed in a scene that declares her rivalry as a prosecutor with another woman. What can be easily implied from that scene alone are the stakes, for her career, what this win means for her outside the context of her prejudice and hate. The racism does not spring from these it meets with them, takes them out to dinner, connects with and then deploys them. When compared to Three Billboard’s Dixon, her arc is inverted. We see at the beginning that she has some semblance remaining humanity, but unlike Dixon the arc does not go upward to then redeem her, and politely sermonize its audience. As the series moves along her humanity is devolving, and the facade of decency crumbling. Fairstein, unlike Dixon is also not alone. She has dozens of people working in concert with her to put these children away. Soldiers in a war on black people and children, and the generational effect of this war is evident in characters like Bobby McCray played with crushing vulnerability by Michael K Williams in a gut wrenching scene between father and son.

Uploaded by SCENE Tv SERIES on 2019-05-31.

The complexity of the tangled web woven by racism trickles right down in the portrayal of even minor characters. Each and every character’s mistake is not simply in service to a plot, and if there is a plot the plot is racism. When they See Us has the facts of the case and yet it still doesn’t move its characters along like chess pieces towards a inevitable destination. Ava as a storyteller gives us the feeling they’re walking there all on their own. The antagonist in her story are not alone, they are legion. They do not simply act and behave as racist because the script tells them to, they have undergirding motives, which makes the racism all that much more real, thicker, heavier in a way that sticks to your bones. When District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer continues along with these convictions there is tension, there is anxiety, and subsequently choice. The purpose of showing Lederer’s tension about the decision in a lesser directors hands would’ve been either to exonerate her or to convict her in the minds of the audience. It is neither here in Ava hands, it is part of the moral complexity of the roles of Individual inaction, self delusion, ambition, and ultimately choice in a racist system. Thusly the overall point being made here is racism as something that eats away at humanity, and individually at our humanity, so that it cannot be eradicated simply by wagging a finger at the Fairstein’s of the world. Ava makes the most reasoned of arguments for either systemic reform or abolishment of the entire enterprise of prison and policing, not by presenting just the facts in a male oriented fashion , but by emotional straight talk that indicts the idea any of it involves reason or logic at all. Almost every decision both the pure and the corrupt , can be broken down to the emotional, and the personal, and thus acts as the driver for systemic. I just don’t think there are many folk behind the camera who could do with this what Ava did, and the ones who have are black (McQueen 12 years a Slave”, Rees “Mudbound”) so let’s take that in for a moment… and please by all means possible watch “When they see us”. It informs us , educates us, indicts others, holds us accountable, exhausts, and hurts us in its narrative integrity, and power.. all the ways in which racism should.