La Haine, “It’s about a society on its way down, and as it falls it keeps telling itself, so far so good… so far so good… so far so good… it’s not how you fall that matters. It’s how you land.” Beneath the façade of juvenile banter and rowdy misadventures endured by the film’s three main characters, La Haine tells a much deeper story on the complexities of living in the Parisian slums of the 1990’s. The final line of the film above succinctly explains its true message of the numerous ongoing failings of society that occurred before La Haine’s production, during its creation, and long after its release. This is what makes La Haine’s examination of the French political state so fascinating. While it only details a day in the life of three broke …show more content…
Each of the three men, Hubert, a black man who has his gym burned down in a police riot, Vinz, an anguished and brutish Jewish immigrant, and Said, an Islamic immigrant caught in a crossroads of joining in Vinz’s angers and standing with Hubert’s rationality, band together to survive the situation that they are forced to inhabit. Unable to escape the societal pressures of the Banlieues, the three men take to calling the police “pigs,” and in their eyes, there is little reason not to. At first, it seems that the tension of between the inhabitants of the slums and the police is the result of stereotypes that each of the groups hold for one another. It is only after an innocent Said and Hubert are arrested and humiliated by racist cops that the film takes a clear stance on the policing methods displayed in Paris’s suburbs. The film quickly establishes that it is not so much an anti-police film however as it shows a third cop looking on in disgust as the two young men are beaten. With this slight reversal, it becomes evident that La Haine isn’t so much being overtly anti-police as it is accurately describing the conduct of police at the …show more content…
In fact, as tensions continue to rise in the Middle East, they have been further exacerbated. In just the past few years, France has been struck by numerous radical terrorist attacks from the Charlie Hebdo attack, to the Nice Bastille Day attacks, to the infamous Paris bombings that took place a year ago. While tensions have remained high since the 1970s when immigrants first came under scrutiny by the French upper classes, never before has such global attention been paid to France’s immigration and religious toleration policies. What is even more concerning is that the perpetrators of some of these attacks grew up in the banlieues of Paris. As La Haine predicted, since the institutional problems facing the French government continue to be ignored, the fall will be that much more
The French occupation is a confrontation between exported modernity and an old regime: the French revolutionaries and their dominance over the Ottoman social order that is markedly different in contrast; and, al-Jabarti reports on how it transfers cross-culturally. Levels of contestation, open and/or secretive acceptances give way to losses and gains driven by high emotion – even for this writer. He “describes very carefully every step in the negotiation of the organization of society, from administration to inheritance, from property to charity or from justice to deliberation.”
Both Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995) and Meirelles’ City of God (2003), utilise distinctive techniques in order to present ideas of power, poverty and conflict, as well as to reflect their urban environments in a particular way. Both directors present conflict between the poor and the powerful through a range of powerful micro and macro techniques to create films which expose the problems related to urban areas, and the context that each was set in, which contributes to getting the messages of their films across and thus has a greater impact on the audience.
As almost anyone with the slightest knowledge of European history can tell you, the French and the British do not like each other. Some French and British people still hate each other today for issues that occurred 100 of years ago. So on top of the conflict that is already present between France and Great Britain there is a new one in the pursuit of gaining more land and power for one’s cou...
Meursault is a young man living in Algiers. He receives a report of his mother Madame Meursault's funeral. He attends his mothers funeral, but he does not show any outward signs of appropriate grief. He returns to his home and immediately begins an affair with Marie Cardona, a former co-worker. After the weekend ends, he concludes that his mother's death has changed nothing. The banal rhythm of a Sunday afternoon remains exactly the same as it was before. He strikes up an acquaintance with Raymond Sintes, a local gigolo and pimp. Meursault unintentionally becomes involved in a dispute between Raymond and Raymond's mistress and her brother, the Arab. The dispute ends with Meursault's murder of the Arab. Meursault, who narrates The Stranger, does not offer an explanation for the murder. It is by all appearances completely without motivation. Nevertheless, society demands a rational explanation.
The word La Haine translates as Hate. The story revolves around three young men, North African, a black guy and an eastern European Jew who are against the society which has marginalized them. In this movie the concept of suburbs is portrayed for the very first time in
The French people were quick to blame the government for all the misfortune they possess, yet ignored the potential evil or crisis the social body was heading towards within themselves. Because of the rapid sequence of horrific events in the beginning of the French revolution, it prevented the subversive principles to be spread passes the frontiers of France, and the wars of conquest which succeeded them gave to the public mind a direction little favorable to revolutionary principles (2). French men have disgraced the religion by ‘attacking with a steady and systematic animosity, and all it is there that the weapon of ridicule has been used with the most ease and success (2). Metternich was not in support of the French
Pierre performs whiteness in several different ways. First thing that is noticeable is the way Pierre talks. He has this accent that he adapted to separate himself from other african americans. At one point in the movie his father even calls him out on his ridiculous accent and how he needs to stop. Another thing Pierre changed about himself was his name. Pierre Delacroix is the name he had it change to for sound like he has less of a “black” background. His original name, Perrless Dothan, did not fit the “white image” he was trying to pass off. Pierre also furthers his image of a white man by dressing and acting as if he his white. He tries his hardest to pretend like he has no “black” in him, at the beginning of the movie at least.
The Declaration declares that all French citizens must be guaranteed their natural born rights of “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” In the Declaration, it disputes that there is a need for law that protects the citizens of Fra...
In the satires of Juvenal, it seems all matters of life are susceptible to his anger and bitter sense of humor, and food is not an exception. Even the Roman cena is full of social and political commentary from the way a dinner invitation is sent, to how the tables and couches are arranged in a cubiculum, and what elements create the perfect meal that solidifies the social hierarchy of the host. Through examining the carnal language and the meanings behind the descriptions of the various delicacies and scraps that are highlighted in his satires, this paper sets out to analyze how Juvenal uses the language and theme of food and its use in creating dominance and power in Satires five and eleven.
Far from rationalizing terrorism, the aim of this paper is to analyze the fear of the terrorist rather than the society’s fear of the terrorist. Medias portray terrorist as an angry irrational heartless individual that just betrays Islam to create death around him. However, his anger hides something deeper such as fear. Films such as Pour L’amour de Dieu (2006), Hadewijch (2009) or Voyage sans retour (2013) represent a new type of narratives about how French Muslims negotiate their identity. The corpus explores a more diverse range of ways of ‘being Muslim’ in contemporary France, giving more noticeable expression to Islam as collective, communal belief and practice, for example showing scenes of group prayers, but also showing how the Muslim
Anomie was coined by the sociologist Emile Durkheim during his book titled Suicide in 1897. He described anomie as a condition in which society provides little moral guidance and when there is a lack of the usual social or ethical standards in a group within a society. This fits perfectly into the movie because there is very much a lack of social and ethical control. The only thing that keeps any kind of control over the society is the Timekeepers. The Timekeepers’ job is to keep a watch over the society and keep as much crime like killing for time or stealing time out of the society. They are supposed to keep the society running smoothly and efficiently but because of the exploitation and extreme poverty that the bourgeoisie has caused, it leaves the lower class that live in the ghetto with no other options left. Also, because of the people of New Greenwich and their extreme power over everybody else, they go more times than not unscathed and unnoticed when they do something against the law. This creates a bureaucracy within their society. A bureaucracy is a governmental system in which the decisions are made by those that hold the most power instead of an individual elected by the people. The Timekeepers in this society are controlled by those in power like Philippe Weis, the wealthy man from New Greenwich that controls most of the money or time in the society, and other powerful individuals of New Greenwich. This also
...d in all its gritty, depressing, and violent truths. While being born in the upper middle class, Hugo manages to shows the plight of the poor in a realistic and touching way that connects with the people of the time on more than superficial level. While it initially received mixed reviews, Les Miserables was a global success and is remembered for it profundity and insight into the lives of people living under the July Monarchy. The novel’s standing a political and social commentary allow readers for years to come to sympathize with the people and inspires change for those still living in conditions such as these. Each adaptation made brings a unique twist to the story and rekindles interest in the outstanding literary work. Considered by many to be one of the greatest stories ever written, Les Miserables allows us an exclusive look into 19th century French culture.
Social injustice had always been an uncorrected shortcoming for France from the early 19th century to the present. While the social injustice that appeared in the form of French religious persecution was much more visible during the early 19th century than in the reasonably tolerant 21st century, as seen in the contrasting cases of the Anti-Sacrilege Act in 1825 and the About-Picard Law in 2001, social injustice was a ubiquitous presence in many religious institutions of France. In a different degree of paramountcy, the social injustice manifested in the style of French political inequalities remains to be a perennial prejudice against the “forgotten man”, one clear-cut case being the anti-Semitic and espionage controversy of the Dreyfus Affair in the modern 20th century. In the same way, the social injustice seen in the economic discrimination in France was so prominent that literary works such as Les Miserables by eminent novelist Victor Hugo and its more modern philosophical counterpart, La Misère Du Monde by prominent French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu continually emphasized on the French economic inequalities between the inferior social classes and bourgeois-esque citizens. While religious persecution in France was more visible in the 1800s than that of recent times, the social injustice seen in the case of political inequalities and economic discriminations remained more or less the same throughout the 19th and 21st centuries.
The film’s portrayal of government insensitivity to the plight of the slum dwellers and the telling of the story from the point of view of the characters shows that the youth who become criminals, such as the Tender Trio and the Runts are victims of circumstances. These kids were not born criminals or social deviants, but are, right from birth, exposed to a social environment that nurtures them into criminals. They are born into a world were survival requires one to engage in crime, a decadent society in which hardcore criminals like the Tender Trio are idols. The film, therefore, views the social problems associated with urban slums from the victims’ point of view by trying to show why they act and behave the way they do. It is not an attempt to excuse or justify their crimes, but an objective depiction of the interacting factors that make young boys like Li 'l Zé and the Runts to be transformed from innocent children to gun-toting robbers and drug sellers. They are victims of government negligence of the slum’s poor, exemplified by an urban planning policy that limits resource allocation to poor neighborhoods. The ending scene drives this point home powerfully when the Runts ask each other if anyone of them can write so they can make the hit list. Without education, how does the government expect such youths to earn a living, and how much can they be justifiably blamed for turning out the way they did? In the City of God, crime is the beast. If you run away, it will catch up with you, if you stay, it will eat
The story of the poor Frenchman, Claude Gueux, written by Victor Hugo, tells the life altering decisions that this man was forced to make. From the beginning to the end, it follows him as his criminal acts thicken and become more volatile. This however is not the story of a common criminal in modern day America; this tale tells of a man in the time of the French depression and had no option other than resorting to a life of crime. It dictates what happens when society plays too much of a part in a persons' life. Some of the time this is good, but all too often it is disastrous and leads to the demise of a person.