A perspective on this question comes from Anna Deavere Smith’s film Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. Smith explores different dynamics of the tragic and well-known historical event, the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Los Angeles riots instigated when an African American named Rodney King was beaten by four police officers, who were later acquitted for the beating. The occurrence of the incident was inconspicuously video-taped and released to the Los Angeles community, which led to individuals becoming outraged and starting a demonstration. As a result of the major outbreak of violence, there were several casualties, injured individuals, and a great deal of property damage, which resulted to be one of the most devastating domestic disruptions in United …show more content…
By completing her production, Smith’s work consisted of a series of monologues from interviews of residents that were conducted in the aftermath of the disturbance. Throughout the film, she reenacted witnesses’ experiences, outlooks, and concerns about the sudden nerve racking riots by as well as changing her physical and speech presentation to have a similar correlation. and their reflection on their personal experience of being surrounded in the midlife crisis atmosphere. Smith strived to maintain capturing an extensive range of perspectives of the following situation by interviewing several individuals from various ethnicities, financial backgrounds to different occupations. The composed piece is combined with historical research to provide a significant examination of the underlying cause of the devastating riot. The play, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, provides assistance to illuminate speculations and emotions of numerous diverse viewpoints behind the horrendous racial tensions, the perceived police brutality, and the absence of leadership, which is desperately needed for …show more content…
Anwar Congo, one of the chief leaders, and his associates are known to be gangsters who sold cinema tickets in the black market who were later promoted to be recognized as death squad leaders. Participants of the death squad are considered to be an essential part of the Indonesian parliamentary. In this particular film, Anwar and his collogues agree to reveal their personal experiences of the genocide to the filmmakers. The filmmakers took advantage of the opportunity of exposing the depraved acts and challenge Anwar and his partners to assemble the reenactment scenes of their perception on their experiences of the massacre modified into their desired Hollywood-style film containing a combination of genres of gangster like and musical film. During the process of filming, a few of Anwar’s partners begin to realize and reevaluate their wrongful actions, and others were apprehensive about their public image and subsequential consequences. The filmmaking process turned from an exhilarating and anticipated piece into a drastic and emotional progress for Anwar. Gradually, he becomes less conceited and feels significantly remorseful once he confronts his reenacted dreadful actions. After the completion of the film, Anwar’s conscious becomes a threat to him and
In May of 1992, performer and dramatist Anna Deavere Smith was appointed to compose a one-lady execution piece about the encounters, sentiments, and pressures that added to and were exacerbated by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. For her work, Smith met more than 200 inhabitants of Los Angeles amid the season of the uproar. Her script comprises totally of the genuine expressions of individuals from the Los Angeles group as they ponder their encounters encompassing the Los Angeles riots. As Smith depicted in the prologue to her play, Twilight, which she later distributed as a book, "I am first searching for the humanness inside the issues, or the crises." She strived to keep up a wide assortment of points of view, talking individuals from all kinds of different backgrounds:
The language in Fires in the Mirror, by Anna Deveare Smith, is a microcosm for the way in which language creates reality in every community.
...ed no matter what. Anderson discusses the code of the streets and how this set of rules and norms dictates how people behave in South Las Angeles and gives rise to organized gang violence. Gang violence is a complex issue with many causes consisting of; lack of jobs, dysfunctional schools, and a biased judicial system, these things have shaped and molded the social structure of this South Central society into something dark and perverse, it has given rise to violence and death, and inconvenient truth of the matter is it’s our societies fault.
The beating of Rodney King from the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991 and the Los Angeles riots resulting from the verdict of the police officers on April 29 through May 5, 1992 are events that will never be forgotten. They both evolve around one incident, but there are two sides of ethical deviance: the LAPD and the citizens involved in the L.A. riots. The incident on March 3, 1991 is an event, which the public across the nation has never witnessed. If it weren’t for the random videotaping of the beating that night, society would never know what truly happened to Rodney King. What was even more disturbing is the mentality the LAPD displayed to the public and the details of how this mentality of policing led up to this particular incident. This type of ethical deviance is something the public has not seen since the civil rights era. Little did Chief Gates, the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the LAPD know what the consequences of their actions would lead to. Moving forward in time to the verdict of those police officers being acquitted of the charges, the public sentiment spiraled into an outrage. The disbelief and shock of the citizens of Los Angeles sparked a mammoth rioting that lasted for six days. The riots led to 53 deaths and the destruction of many building. This is a true but disturbing story uncovering the ethical deviance from the LAPD and the L.A. riots. The two perspectives are from the Rodney King incident are the LAPD and the L.A. riots.
There are many ideas, experiences, values and beliefs in the play Blackrock by Nick Enright. The play is based on a true story and is set in late November to early January in an Industrial city and its beachside suburb of Blackrock. It is about a girl called Tracy aged 15 who was raped and murdered at a teenage party and the effects of it on the locals and community. Three main ideas explored in the play that challenged and confirmed my own beliefs include “Disrespect toward women”, “Victim blaming” and “Double standards”.
This incident would have produced nothing more than another report for resisting arrest had a bystander, George Holliday, not videotaped the altercation. Holliday then released the footage to the media. LAPD Officers Lawrence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Brisino were indicted and charged with assaulting King. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered a change of venue to suburban Simi Valley, which is a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. All officers were subsequently acquitted by a jury comprised of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Asian, and the African American community responded in a manner far worse than the Watts Riots of 1965. ?While the King beating was tragic, it was just the trigger that released the rage of a community in economic strife and a police department in serious dec...
The Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
In the early 1990’s in Los Angeles, California, police brutally was considered a norm in African Americans neighborhoods. News coverage ignores the facts of how African ...
Spike Lee is brand name when it comes to the film industry. When you try to ask any group of people their opinion about this man, you will probably receive numerous positive responses from the film community as well as the African American community. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) is a film that illustrates how racial conflict can become a reality while showing the repercussions that come with racial segregation. Spike Lee uses a number of tools to write and produce the film in order to ensure the message reaches his intended audience in the best way possible. The use of location, soundtrack, and dialogue is abundant in this film. Therefore, this film analysis paper is for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). It is a film in which racial segregation ignites riots in a neighborhood dominated by the black population. The heightened scene of this film analysis is where Spike Lee throws a trash can and it is from this that hell breaks loose and riots begin.
On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used.
While the L.A. riots were far larger, and the effects are still being felt, I still feel that the Watts riots had more of an impact. I had known about the riots previously, as I had been interested and looked into it on my own, but I had not looked into the economic at the time. Seeing that there were not any real economic effects from the riot, and in-fact some things may have gotten even worse, changes how I think of riots reported on in the media. Although there has been little in empirical studies done on the impact of the Watts riots, which is odd due to their importance in recent American history, especially now, it is clear that the riots started a trend of misguided racial tension that continues to this day, one that has prolonged the suffering and disenfranchisement of Blacks in the United States. While I do not believe another riot is the answer, researching this riot has shown me that while the riots can be considered important, the reality is that their effects on society are quite minimal, and only the political discussion of the riots is what has lasted to today. The failure of any real reform since then of the treatment of Blacks in general, let alone in the criminal justice world, shows to me a real lack of justice in the United
Millions of people all over the US were watching TV on a Sunday night when the television program was interrupted by African Americans being beat by clubs and tear gas being thrown. Six hundred people were attacked by police and state troopers and they were dressed in riot uniforms. ABC was showing a movie and then it was stopped and showed African Americans being hurt. Most people have never heard of Selma, Alabama but after March 7 no one would forget. ("National park service")
Martin Luther King Jr. states “the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that 's pretty important also." In this quote, Dr. Kings is referring to how biases the legal system is in the United State. His hope that one day the justice system will treat all man equal and race wouldn’t be a factor. However, African American and Hispanic are still being suppressed by the justice system. Police officers are still discriminating against minority and getting away with it. One can argued, that police are to be blamed for what is transpiring nowadays in our society. Furthermore, most of the riots emerged after an officer killed an individual and gets acquitted.
The director Antoine Fuqua vision for this film was to bring that intense love-hate relationship onto the big screen and showcase it for the world to see. To ensure a convincing film setting, Fuqua shot on location in some of the most hardcore neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Fuqua also wanted to show the daily struggles of officers tasked to work in the rougher neighborhoods of cities and how easy it can be to get caught up in a street life filled with killers and drug dealers. Overall the film displayed the city of Los Angeles in a different perspective. One which m...
“We fight each other for territory; we kill each other over race, pride, and respect. We fight for what is ours. They think they’re winning by jumping me now, but soon they’re all going down, war has been declared.” Abuse, Pain, Violence, Racism and Hate fill the streets of Long Beach, California. Asians, Blacks, Whites and Hispanics filled Wilson High School; these students from different ethnic backgrounds faced gang problems from day to night. This movie contains five messages: people shouldn’t be judgmental because being open-minded allows people to know others, having compassion for a person can help people change their views in life, being a racist can only create hate, having the power of the human will/goodness to benefit humanity will cause a person to succeed at any cost and becoming educated helps bring out the intelligence of people.