Score: 6
"Explanation"
date: January 17, 2008
For me, the people who have attempted to explain this movie in their reviews have gotten it quite wrong. For anyone who thinks they got it, please PM me what you thought about it. It's hard for me to tell where the author is coming from, I don't know much about the racial situation in Russia, except there's a much lower population of Blacks there than in the US, where I live. There have been recent and ongoing stories about racial violence against Africans, especially by clubs of hooligans. Whether this is the general picture of relations in Russia; or whether this film is a dissenting response to that, or an excuse for White on Black racism, or neither, I can't say.
But we can look at what's actually in the film. The Black person pulls a white or gray hair out of his writhing head of black hairs, lets it fall to the floor, and STEPS on it (I am not sure why everyone seems to characterize this as stomping). There are a few pieces of information about the drawing from which we can make inferences.
1. The character is wearing Western clothes, a shirt and shorts. His clothes are in a variety of shades.
2. The title is written with white text large on a black background (RACIAL), and black text smaller on a white background (DISCRIMINATION)
These are the main factual, non-value-influenced, pertinent observations I made about the movie.
I also noted that the character is drawn in a way that would be generally recognized as stereotypical, in having grotesquely large lips. Whether this is just the drawing style, or intentional, I can't say. Also, everyone pulls out white hairs, until there are too many of them to pull.
I reason thus. The title seems to be making the statement that racial discrimination goes both ways. White on black, black on white. I don't think it's artistically significant that one of the fonts is smaller, as it has to be to fit the longer word "discrimination." The hair is writhing, to indicate life, or tumult, or maybe to make the character seem more monstrous, like Medusa?
The person is pulling out the white hair, it is different than all his other hairs. Also, white hairs show our age, but I don't see how that would relate to the theme, unless it's that when we notice something different, our reaction to it depends on how it makes us see ourselves.
So he drops it and steps on it. Either it is unimportant to him, or he is angry at its presence. There's no facial expression to indicate any particular anger or really care that the white hair is there, it seems like he does it without really thinking about it.
To me, this speaks to the capacity people have for differentiating between things, and about how the way people apply that to other people almost unthinkingly, making decisions with regard to how to treat others. But it's also interesting in that neither the black nor the white hairs are equal to the man who plucks them. To me, though, the most interesting way to look at this film is to examine how the different parts of it make you think about race, yourself. How do I see his choice of a Black character? How do I see his depiction of the character, of the hairs, of the action? How is that affected by the racial environment I grew up in?