http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065810/
Sometimes a Blaxploitation film despite the fact that the investors
behind the film demanded nudity etc. to firm up their return on
investment actually gets it right. Halls of Anger is one of those
films.
First and foremost most I believe most Americans would be surprised to
find out just how late in the game education desegregation occurred. I
recall working on a project with a Texan and he utterly rejected my
position as a 'dumb Canuck' for suggesting that desegregation was not
affirmed by the Supreme Court until 1971. The images of television
and film suggested that things were not just a whole lot better for
blacks in terms of integration but were in fact systematically
authorized. Nothing was further from the truth. In 1963 I was
probably in Grade One and even they we lived in a very white Toronto
and even more in a very white neighborhood we had two black students.
I expect it had less to do with racism and more to do with a system
that simply didn't have enough of a black population that drove the
need to put forth a policy, (Canadians have a bad habit of believing
we are somehow exempt from black racism).
Second the film tackled the reality of that Supreme Court ruling that
essentially invoked the forced busing of black kids to predominantly
white schools but also a very small number of white kids to
predominately black schools. Halls of Anger realizes that it is
simply too easy to consider the black experience and instead relates
the reality of the black experience through these white interlopers.
The white students are portrayed as equal victims in a system that is
desperately trying to find its foot hold. They are the lower middle
class white kids whose parents do not have the resources to avoid the
system by putting them into private school, (as was the standard
response), but in demonstrating their plight it only further
highlights the despairing reality that black students face. Some of
it is funny;
- at the cafeteria where the white students sit together at one table
surrounded by a sea of black one says, "they have a name for our
table... Rhodesia".
some race baiting standard but ultimately an example of the sub-issue
that black women feel in being betrayed by black men with regards to
the 'prize of dating a white woman'.
- a pretty but not particularly clever blonde is trying to fit in but
is unaware that the flirtatious attention she receives from some of
the more popular black male students is putting a target on her back
in the eyes of the black female students... yes something happens you
pervs.
but most telling and even at the tender age of 14 this shocked me is
the scene when a very young Jeff Bridges, (the main white
protagonist), waits impatiently with disdain for his turn to "read out
loud" following three black students who are clearly reading four to
five years below the class standard and without a thought he begins to
flawlessly recite the passage. What once a joke, a common failure, is
suddenly brought to light and the looks of utter humiliation on the
faces of the black students is evident as if they suddenly just
realized "when the smoke clears these white kids will leave and have a
good life and we will yet again be left behind."
The timing of the film was spot on and yes it was a overly simplified
variant but for a Blaxploitation film it really addresses the issue of
the time and in current terms probably is still relevant.
... and yes if you can sit through all relevant history you get
rewarded with a short but still pretty hot forced stripping scene.
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