Why so Anti-White and Anti-Male?
-
noahdb — 18 years ago(October 25, 2007 12:06 PM)
I'm always confused why so many people struggle to grasp polemic art. John Singleton is not presenting "Higher Learning" as a piece of "truth." He's simply advancing a particular, subjective point of view in order to advance a greater theme.
It's much like kabuki theater where heavy makeup, outrageous clothing and heavily-stylized dance movements are done to illustrate a particular point or story line. Everything is highly dramatized and over-the-top in order to keep the audience entertained and to present a theme.
Anyone over the age of about eleven shouldn't have to be told this, but:- All white guys from Idaho are not skinheads;
- Women don't immediately become lesbians after one bad sexual experience;
- Frat boys, despite their many flaws, are capable of drinking beer without raping women;
- Black men are capable of interacting with people of another race without thinking that the other person is a racist;
- College professors often hold office hours without smoking a pipe or wearing a coat with padded elbows;
And on..and onand on.
Singleton is presenting each character as a completely exaggerated character as a shortcut. He doesn't have ten hours to flesh out each character's backstory with motivations and personal histories. The MINUTE you hear Malik calling his professor an Uncle Tom or calling out Michael Rappaport or complaining about institutional racism (even if it's not there), you KNOW who that character is. The minute you see Rappaport's character fail to summon the courage to confront his racist ideology or to at least speak his mind, you KNOW who he is. And the minute you see Buffy and Jennifer Connely staring into one another's eyes, you know who they are and what they're thinking.
Singleton is taking necessary shortcuts in order to advance a larger theme. He's not saying, "This is who white people are and this is who black people are." He's taking something that's often extremely subtle and unspoken and putting arrows and highlighters and closed-captioning and bullet points and asterisks by it so we can talk about it.
It's actually much larger than racism. It's an inability for people to deal with those are unlike themselves. College is the place where (typically) kids come together and are forced to confront people who have different religious beliefs, come from different backgrounds, countries of birth, income levels, varying intelligence levels and often have radically different ideas. While that aspect of college life scares the HELL out of a lot of people, it's a life lesson that a lot of people need to come to grips with. It's part of growing up and dealing with a world that's often hostile to your own needs.
You can scream about how unfair it is that someone gets into college because of their race or their athletic abilities. How will that help you, however, when you apply for a job and have to to compete with people that have an inside advantage (for any number of reasons)?
You can scream about how unfair it is that someone holds up a sign that basically suggests men should be castrated. Yeah, and there are a lot of people in the world who are openly hostile to your very existence. How are you going to deal with them?
Is "Higher Learning" realistic? Not really. No movie is. Are the themes relevant? Absolutely. How you react to the larger theme is up to you.
-
vfrance-1 — 18 years ago(October 29, 2007 03:39 AM)
If you're wondering why people fail to grasp these concepts, there is a clue to be found in the post you responded towhy even bother with someone who says dumb beep things like college in general is "anti-white and anti-male." I hate to be so cynical, but this person probably didn't even observe this himself (how could he, it's bullsh*t), but rather read it in some book or heard it from some talk radio blowhardACADEMIA IS A FEMINIST LIBERAL REVERSE RACIST HELLHOLE!!! There are NO CONSERVATIVE PROFESSORS, ONLY RAGING LIBERALS GET TENURE!!! It's a CONSPIRACY!!!!
Such subtlety.
Why bother with nuance? Sad, but true.
psI love that despite the overall eloquence of your post, you casually referred to the Kristy Swanson character as "Buffy."
Good post, well said.
"I guess I started smoking when I was aboutfour." -
goatbut29 — 13 years ago(November 30, 2012 10:15 PM)
Spoken like a true liberal. So smart and intellectual but wrong. As always.
If you don't think colleges are breeding grounds for anti-anything right of Mao or Stalin, you obviously aren't paying much attention.
I could bore you with unlimited google links of complete rubbish being taught at schools, anti-American studies, etc., but I think its important to know why.
Why? Because its staffed with flaky liberals.
Who do they vote for? 96% of them voted for Obama-tell me you're shocked.
http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4501
times247.com//four-of-top-10-orgs-donating-to-obama-were-unive
Staffed by the same people like these tolerant and compassionate liberals here who cant hide their hatred for anyone that disagrees with them. Liberals that will champion a movie about racism all while seething hatred and spewing bile towards anyone that votes differently from them.
Public dollars should be removed from these colleges that go out of their way to show how bad they hate America..er, 'embrace diversity'.
Pathetic. But you keep telling us how hateful, stupid, inbred, and worthless all the common proles beneath you are. You're probably a 'distinguished Academic' im guessing -
vfrance-1 — 13 years ago(December 01, 2012 12:48 PM)
Are conservatives now so desperate to pick post-election fights that they have to rant and rave in response to IMDB posts from over 5 years ago about a film that is now 17 years old? That's downright sad. What sort of anti-liberal post quota are you dealing with, anyway?
-
generationofswine — 9 years ago(October 16, 2016 12:04 PM)
Staffed with Flakly liberals?
NO, absolutely not. The difference between a conservative and a liberal is that a conservative looks for a strongman to follow. They want strict order and an authoritarian head and want to preserve a statusquo of "us over them," whomever "them" may be.
Remember how "Un-Patriotic and Un-American" it was to question the president under Bush? Hotlines to call in and report people the questioned the wars?
He was the strong man and the conservatives jumped blindly to an "us over them," frame of thought.
Liberals are more reasoned, they aren't looking for strict order and they reject the concept of a strongman. They want to see the data and make a decision on the facts, not just follow the leader.
That is all higher learning is, teaching people to draw conclusions from raw data. And draw their own conclusions.
Drawing your own conclusions is the counter opposite of calling people "Un-Patriotic and Un-American" for questioning the president.
That's why the American and French Revolutions started in institutes of higher learning, as well as almost every other revolution. It's where people learn to question.
And if you don't like to question authority, everyone that does is going to look extremely far left to you.
"Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop." -
kurtlives85 — 18 years ago(February 14, 2008 10:39 AM)
i love this film and i think that this post is excellent. all those knocking it are taking it far too literally. i believe that these events could occur at university although probably not all at the same university.
also in reference the the person who said the film is racist against whites, what about ice cube and busta rhymes? they were made out to be massive beep
the film was just showing the extremes or society and culture and the way in which people cope with living within these extremes. -
Joy_Ride_74 — 17 years ago(May 28, 2008 09:42 PM)
It's no problem when John Singleton makes movies about all black men shooting, killing, dope dealing, etc. It isn't until he show whites in a negative light, that everyone comes out to say how racist, unfair and unrealistic it is. Hell, not all black people kill each and get food stamps in the mail as a way of life, but I don't complain if someone makes a movie saying they do, because I'm smart enough to know that a movie is just thata fiction movie, baring no real facts about all people of one particular race. I've been black for nearly 34 years and have never sold drugs, used drugs, been to jail, been knocked up as a teenager, collected welfare, or anything else the media considers as "black culture." See, I'm used to my people being accused of everything negative. Apparently, white people are not. The funny part is, I see just as many whites on American's Most Wanted, Forensic Files, and other crime shows. Yet, on a IMDB forum, I see a lot of you "pretending" that you don't.
-
Delirium-Tremens — 15 years ago(December 14, 2010 10:00 AM)
Exactly! Well said, I agree. That's why I'm positive that caucasian raters were offended with the stereotypes and rated the movie low, not because the movie wasn't entertaining but because they felt like they were misrepresented by John Singleton.
-
gabby_bm — 15 years ago(December 14, 2010 04:11 PM)
Are you implying that college-aged females, blacks, Jews and Latinos were accurately represented in this film? Ugh!
But I'll give him credit for depicting a fairly accurate assessment of a college campus frat-house rape.
Aye. The haggis is in the fire for sure.