Watching The Hate U Give

by NARA MOHYEDDIN ‘21

For MLK weekend, unfortunately and coincidentally right before exams, ONYX and The Hollywood Filmmaking Club united to screen The Hate U Give, a movie on the eponymous book. The film follows a black high school girl (dark skinned in the book but light skinned in the movie… hmmm… colorism?), Starr, as she balances a double life: while the school she goes to and the boy she dates are white, her community is predominantly black. One night during a “routine police stop,” an anxious, aggressive, and racist white cop shoots her childhood friend as he was holding a seemingly threatening hair comb. The movie deals with her experience between these two communities and her being the only witness to the unjust death of her friend. The movie grapples with other dynamics and questions as well—her family can afford to move out of their community to a better neighborhood, so should they? Also, the movie tackles the effects of and relationship between drug dealing and a community, blended families and infidelity, white privilege and ignorance, and the generational and traumatic effect these issues all have on kids, otherwise known as THUG LIFE (the hate u give little infants f*cks everybody).

This was more than a movie. It was an experience. Twenty things would happen at once, and you’d think Starr and her family was finally safe, when, in fact, they never were. Through the film, the strength and pain, the resistance and despair heightened. Righteous anger found a voice. But then, the last five minutes quite literally used a different camera lens, with sun flares making everything bright and warm. The wider community issues were resolved, the family moved past their trauma, and Starr only kept the white friends in her life that were willing to shed ignorance. It was a perfect ending to a movie of extremes, where five minutes ago a child was pointing a gun at a drug lord; nothing made sense! It was just a quick and easy resolution to the crazy big problems that realistically take years to fix.

In a dimly lit Straus, the audience went through all the heightened emotions together—the hilarious and loving moments, of which there were many, rapidly interrupted by tragedy and despair. There was sobbing, joking, and yelling, encouraging Starr to do this or that, muttering for this or that character to do some action to themselves and their mamma. Watching it alone, or even with a small group, would have been so different from seeing an entire audience become so invested in the story; the audience became part of each other’s experiences, shaping how each viewed the film. The majority of the attendees were black or other POC. There were very few white people. I only wish the crowd was more reflective of Milton demographics.

It’s a shame! What Wednesday assemblies and other mandatory race talks miss is that no matter what issues people understand intellectually, they won’t truly get its importance until they understand it emotionally as well—the pain, the anger, the power, the urgency. Listening to another speaker’s lecture on the importance of political activism, their life story, or the terrors of history, while valuable, will not help people get any closer to understanding others’ perspectives. But that’s what art is for: understanding what people other than you go through. Movies can change mindsets because they target emotions, something unrecognized at most assemblies (though the defamation case had the right idea).

Please go ahead and stream The Hate U Give online (or read the book), it’s a must-see!