Two Distant Strangers

When I was in the 2nd semester of law school, I did a crazy thing for first year law students to do: I joined an undergraduate class about community relations because it was required to become an RA, and I wanted to be an RA at the law school dorm I had spent my first semester in. I was still in my college phase and didn't want to go into my adult phase of renting my apartment, plus I wanted to make more friends in L.A. The class was pass-fail, so I wasn't worry about grade or anything, but apparently we were evaluated based on how often we raised our hands in class and contributed to the conversation. The problem was, there were about 25-30 people in the class, and everybody knew we were being evalulated based on that criteria, so guess what? Everybody raised their hands all the time. And the class dealt with important topics like race relations, ethics, etc., but everyone reaffirmed what everyone else was saying, so no difficult problems were solved. No one really said anything out of line of what the instructors were pushing, a lot of "agree and I have an example in my life to demonstrate this." (In hindsight, it was my first experience of what an echo chamber felt like). There was even a retreat at the end of the class where we spent time overnight at a camp, and one of the leaders/instructors kept drilling into us that we had to "change," and that we needed to follow the values that had been set forth in the class. Sounded a little cultish, but I still just bought into everything since I was trying to get something out of it. During the interviews at the end of the class, the instructors called me in and nicely, gently, told me that I was being "recommended with reservations" for a spot as an RA. I naively thought this was normal, just a tier down from "recommended strongly." Turns out those were probably the only 2 options there were, or if they didn't recommend us, they probably didn't even conduct an interview and just sent it through the mail. Needless to say I didn't get selected to be an RA. Perhaps I should have volunteered more and been more passionate about what I was saying, but I really just didn't feel it: I kept wondering, "How do they know I need to change? What if I was already fine?" 

I bring this up because I feel like this is the state of talking about race in America today, that there is just this one narrative, and we're all encouraged to speak up (silence is violence) but only as long as we say the right things. And the ones who raise their hands really high and say it with the most conviction, get prizes and are applauded for their bravery for speaking up. I stumbled upon the film "Two Distant Strangers" the other day while searching for time loop movies similar to "Groundhog Day," and this 32-minute short film popped up with a 94% Rotten Tomatoes movie. Short and sweet, good for me. I realized this was filmed after George Floyd soon after it began, when the African American main character was pushed to the ground by a white police officer and died because he couldn't breath. He woke up only to repeat the same day over and over again, always the white cop being the aggressor and killing him, either shooting him or some sort of violence. The white cop even barged into a private home to shoot him in one of the days. It was sensationalized, and just when I thought the movie would have a somewhat optimistic ending by having the white cop give the main character a ride home and be on the verge of surviving the day (spoiler alert), the white cop betrayed him and shot him in the back. Just a complete tear-down of the white character with no redeeming qualities. If I were a black person, or a black child without a full world view and watched this movie, I would be convinced that white people were out to get me every single day, around every corner, and even if I befriended them and they acted like they were being friendly, they were just waiting to kill me later. This kind of movie, I fear, was made not to help society "and open eyes to the world about what black people have to deal with," but it was made to win an award and advance a career. Or maybe it had good intentions when being made, but it certainly veered off that course. It reminded me of the people in my undergrad class who raised their hand and told a great story that confirmed the point the instructor was giving, but it only made themselves look good, didn't really help solve problems for the future, and no actual good was done. "Two Distant Strangers" just cuts out all nuance of situations and paints one side as completely innocent and the other side as completely at fault, acting mercilessly and cruelly. If only it were that easy, that there was a bad guy in a movie that we could pin all the problems on and if we just get rid of or fix that one guy, then we could all go back to living our lives again. Unfortunately, this wasn't the first movie that tackled this issue that I felt similarly about: "When They See Us," about the Central Park Five, had a similar vibe of complete good on one side and complete evil on the other. Rated 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, I agreed with the sound, acting, cinematography, etc., but I couldn't get on board with the message. 

I think this is another issue with conversations nowadays, is that when anyone speaks to a large group of people (I certainly felt this when I raised my hand back in that undergrad class), everyone feels like their whole image is at stake, the brand they have built for their whole lives of "I'm a good person," so they take the most popular opinion out there that they know will get "likes," "head nods," applause, whatever the audience is, which we like way more than hisses and groans or disagreement. Everyone is their own publicist anytime they post anything on the internet or say anything publicly, and everyone should speak up......as long as it's the right message.