The movie I chose to review on is entitled ‘The Hate U Give’. I chose this movie because for me, it portrays discrimination towards black people being Starr, her family, Ofrah and her childhood crush Khalil Harris. The title or headline I chose for this movie is the acronym ‘Thug Life’ because that is what is mainly portrayed in the movie.
Basically, this movie is based through a lifetime event of Starr Carter, a sixteen-year-old who witnessed two tragic deaths and couldn’t let go without making justice. Furthermore, the plot starts where she accompanied her friend Kenya, who she shares a half-brother with. She accompanies her to a spring break party where she met her childhood crush and the one who gave her the first kiss, Khalil Harris. While having interacted for a couple of minutes, a shooting happened and they had to leave the party in order to arrive home safe. Khalil decides to take Starr so he makes sure she arrives home safe. While on their way they continue talking and he decides to stop to talk to her much better and to look into her eyes. During the stop they start reminiscing about their childhood memories and the games they used to play such as Harry Potter with Natasha, Starr’s best friend. While Khalil drives, he explains rapper Tupac Shakur’s idea that ‘Thug Life’ stands for ‘The Hate U Give Little Infants F—- Everybody’. Since that moment Starr tends to believe in that powerful acronym. After that, they head home and at that instant a police car stops them and asks Khalil to lower his music volume but he refuses. For such a refusal, the police officer, One-Fifteen requests for Khalil driver’s license and asks him to get out of the car. Khalil hands him the license and gets out of the car while the officer heads to his police car Khalil decides to get his hair brush to comb his hair then there was a sudden shot. One-Fifteen shot Khalil thinking that instead of grabbing the hair brush he grabbed a gun. He did this because to the whites the color of a Dark skin is always a threat to them. The officer hurriedly gets back and handcuffs Starr and asks where the gun is, but Starr stays speechless and just continues to sob, then One-Fifteen realizes that it was just a hair brush and realizes what he had done. Starr asked him to help Khalil and call an ambulance but the officer just stood there without knowing what to do. Moreover, this is the second incident Starr witnessed and she wants to make justice for Khalil since she couldn’t help Natasha who also got killed. The main characters in ‘The Hate U Give’ are Starr, her dad (Mr. Maverick Carter) Khalil, Ofrah, who is Starr’s lawyer and wants Starr to protest and King Lord. She knew that they will be rebuilt, and she vows to continue fighting for justice for Khalil and all the black people that were killed at the hands of the white police.
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A theme I found in this movie is ‘One's complexion should not matter; justice should be done for all’. I think that this is a powerful theme because the police officers do not question Starr about what led to Khalil’s death, they just question his past. Why should his past matter? Who was the one to get killed? Not the officer for sure. They don’t want her to make justice for him only because of their skin color.
Another theme found is identity and blackness because Starr has two identities since she was born and raised in Garden Heights and studied there but eventually moved to Williamson Prep. Identity can also be viewed in the way in which her dad and her uncle both had a different meaning on blackness. For her dad being black was an honor and a symbol of greatness and for her uncle it was different because he has to assimilate the white culture since he works for the police.
I think that this movie in relation to discrimination is that black people voices were never heard and they were treated unfair because the police didn’t want them to make justice as portrayed in the scene where the police gave them three seconds to move off the road when they, the blacks along with Ofrah and Starr, were protesting for Khalil’s death. I think discrimination was shown from the very beginning of the movie whereby Starr’s dad told her how she should react when a police officer stops her. The blacks couldn’t be free, their voices didn’t matter to any authority and if a black men died, his death would be left like that. But in ‘The Hate U Give’ Starr wouldn’t keep seeing that happen because the blacks have equal rights and the color of your skin should never matter. I think that in ‘The Hate U Give’, one realistically gets the tension and discrimination of the law enforcement with the black community. She has to show up to a school where students protest against Khalil’s murder just to skip a math class or a biology test. A race related was also shown in the issue when Starr discussed police protocols with her uncle. Tearfully, she asked him how the world could possibly defend a police officer, who kills a young black man in cold blood. She tried to turn the scenario towards him. He admitted that he would warn first if the young man was a white. For me this stands out as discrimination towards black people and it is the saddest part. It is not just broad society keeping us down but our guilt of it.
‘The Hate U Give’ examines the way society uses stereotypes of black people to justify violence and racism against them. These stereotypes protect white communities, such as the students at Starr’s school, Williamson Prep, from reflecting upon systemic racism, which perpetuates discrimination. We see this prejudice most clearly in how One-Fifteen defends his murder of Khalil by saying he that felt threatened, he felt threatened by “the color of Khalil’s skin”.
In the end Starr accepts that Khalil's story had an unhappy ending, but feels hope that the black community will continue to fight for justice. She makes a promise in memory of Khalil that she will never forget him, will never give up, and will never be silent. I identified de facto segregation in the scene whereby Starr’s parents move her over from Garden Heights School to Williamson Prep because they don’t want her to cause trouble or worse ending up pregnant.
In conclusion this movie, ‘The Hate U Give’ is predominantly connected to prejudice and discrimination because of being dark skinned and justice wasn’t done. This movie was based on a 16-year-old Starr, who witnessed two deaths, her best friend’s and her crush’s death. Starr decides to protest for her crush’s death because a white police officer, One-Fifteen, murdered him without any right and he did his best to wash out his hands. Justice was all what Starr wanted and with the help of Ofrah, her lawyer she managed to go on TV and protest for it but it was nothing easy because the police asked them to move out the streets.
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