Week 9: A family member’s favorite film
Film: Freedom Writers (2007)
Genre: Drama
Watched on: YouTube
There's no shortage of "inspirational" films where a white person steps in and transforms the lives of people of color. Some notable examples include Avatar, The Blind Side, Blood Diamond, and The Help.
I was skeptical going into Freedom Writers, which is one of my sister's favorite films. It's based on a true story of a white woman, Erin Gruwell, starting a new role as an English teacher in a once-prestigious school that has since undergone drastic changes after voluntary integration. She's assigned to a freshman class of "at-risk" youths, which consists of students who are Asian, Black, and Hispanic, with the constant joke being that there's only one white student in class. It's 1994, and racial tensions are still high after the Los Angeles riots. We see her attempt various unusual teaching methods to engage with the students, from using Tupac's Keep Ya Head Up as an assignment on poetry to hearing the experiences of Holocaust survivors over dinner. It was intriguing to see her unconventional methods and the way the students responded.
Watching the students who were so hostile against one another eventually become friends was heartwarming. As people of color, we're really not different from one another; in fact, we have more in common than we think. It's a curious occurrence when people grow up in the same town, yet they view different races as having experiences worlds apart from their own. Initially, I found it strange, but then I reflected on my own high school experience in Malaysia, where there's still a tendency amongst some students to befriend people of the same race. To deepen the divide, some Chinese students would only befriend other Chinese students who spoke Mandarin, whereas those who spoke English would befriend other English-speaking students. I'm sure there's an argument here about class and the remnants of colonial segregation.
An aspect of the film I do appreciate and wish they would do more of is to highlight the stories of the different students in the class. I understand that the film is biographical and based on the book written by Erin Gruwell, but I wanted to learn more about the students – who were they as people, what were their aspirations, and why did they think the way they did? We do get snippets from their diaries that Gruwell encouraged them to write daily as a way of sharing their life story and experiences, but I wanted more.
In the film, there were a lot of references to the Holocaust, which the students weren't familiar with, except for the lone white student. It was one of her methods of illustrating that being a different race shouldn't stop them from befriending one another. During one of the classes, she drew a line in the center of the room and asked them questions that ranged from "Have you listened to Snoop Dogg's new album?" to "Have you ever lost a friend in a fight?" From this activity, they realized how alike they were, breaking down the false assumptions they erected about one another. That was a powerful scene for me, as it is similar to an ice-breaker activity that we ran at New Naratif's Sekolah Democracy workshops. Not only does it allow people to get to know one another, but it's also a way to illustrate how similar we are and not to judge a book by its cover. Even if people disagreed, we welcomed that as democracy cannot exist without opposing views.
By the end of the film, I felt moved by the students' determination to expand their minds and the camaraderie that they had established.
Although it has all the ickiness of the white savior complex narrative, I did appreciate the voices highlighted in the film of the students who have been pushed to the margins. It showed that with some care and attention, these students can flourish. More importantly, they need the support of an institution such as a school more than ever. Most children in poverty are only able to get their main meals of the day in schools; for instance, public schools in New York City provide free breakfast and lunch for students all year. This is why the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program was so radical at the time – a lot of students were going to school hungry. How can you focus in class when your stomach is growling? It should also go without saying that food is an essential need that EVERYONE should have access to.
But I digress. Freedom Writers has a lot of heart, and I couldn't help but feel moved by the students' relationships to one another, the advocacy they received from Erin Gruwell, their responses to literature, and the beauty of an education. I rated Freedom Writers 3.5 stars.
