Stepping Razor Red X Essay

Cinematic Interpretation of "Stepping Razor Red X": the Peter Tosh Story

Films are designed for numerous purposes, some entertain, frighten, enlighten, educate, inspire, and most make us think about the world we live in. This paper will be focused on the cinematic interpretation of the film "Stepping Razor Red X", the Peter Tosh Story. The makers of a film from the writer, director, cinematographer and the art director, design, and conceptualize what they want the viewer to see.

Movie makers have agendas. They get their ideas across by using cinematic techniques and styles which make us view a certain subject in the light that they put it in. I will discuss the differing techniques used by the makers of "Stepping Razor" and describe

In a filmic irony the director shows us footage from a Saturday Night Live appearance where Tosh performed with Mick Jagger. It could be said from the way that Jagger was strutting and chiming in on Tosh’s microphone that he was hogging the spotlight from Tosh. It did not appear that Tosh minded, at least not on camera.

Peter Tosh: Rude Boy

Tosh became known as the ‘Stepping Razor’ while in the group the Wailers. His presence and musical intonations were angry and incited revolution, thus he was given this name. It is made known from the footage of Jamaica and Tosh’s own statements in Audio #5 that he came from a poor family. To come from nothing and get something is a repeated theme, he talks about this in Audio #9. Having no black role models in power to serve him as guides the viewer can assert that, his, was a struggle to power and fame.

The image of the rude boy is cultural stereotype of Jamaica. The rude boy connotes violence and war tactics to fight oppression and poverty. Barrow and Dalton define the term Rude boy as, "a young ghetto criminal or hooligan, as immortalized in the mid-late 1960’s by among others, the Wailers" (Barrow &