Race in the Movie City of God

1525 Words4 Pages

Race has always been a large part of cinema. The way movie directors and producers make other races out to be in movies like City of God, can be disturbing. Though the movie depicts the truth about some parts of the world, the way it portrays black youth as savages who kill and do drugs couldn’t be farther from the truth. Just because something like this goes on in one part of the world does not mean that all black youth are like this. The movie City of God, showed the incredible world of gang youth in the undeveloped area of Rio de Janeiro, where gangs ruled the streets and young children were initiated into murder before they were teenagers. The urbanization of the third world is creating sub-cultures that are filed with chaos and run by crime, most of which is the result of drugs and other illegal activities. In his article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley, 1). Though the Civil Rights movement was able to get equal rights for blacks, it could not stop the brutality that still plagued them. The urban setting is so overcrowded that the people are living on top of each other. Throughout the film there are shots of the city, the... ... middle of paper ... ...t and gunfire. In conclusion, after view this film, it is clear that one can see how black youth are being viewed as killers and savages. This is not true. There have been many admirable scholars and scientists who come from the African American culture. This movie, though it depicts what goes on in South America, takes the violence committed by black youth too far. One cannot view a film and take it that this is what a race is like. The filmmakers depicted black youth in a harsher light. Works Cited City of God. Dir. Fernando Meirelles Perf. Alexandre Rodrigues, Matheus Nachtergaele 2002. O2 Films. Film Conley, D. Race the Power of an Illusion, 2003, Interview with Dalton Conley, Class Readings 2014 Kennedy, R. Viewpoint: The Goal of Affirmative Action Should Not Be ‘Diversity’ but Righting Wrongs. Time. 2013 Class Notes 2014

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