Thursday, January 03, 2008

Lethal Weapon/Heroes in Hard Times

In the movie Lethal Weapon, a viewer notices a change of scenery based on the lead characters. In the past, blacks always posed as a stand in or perhaps anything but the main role. Although in this film, a black man was not only a lead role, but there was a multi-racial duo that starred in the movie. This black cop/white cop duo changes the whole idea of blacks being secondary.

In Neal King's Heroes in Hard Times, there is a chapter where he focuses on White Male Guilt. I related this chapter to the scene in Lethal Weapon where Mel Gibson (Riggs) gets in a fight with drug dealers. During this scene, Riggs experiences a fight that escalated from him paying a price that was not of the asking price of the dealers. Throughout the fight, Riggs loses control and grabs the gun from the dealer, while also demanding that his fellow officers shoot the dealers in order to help him. Riggs clearly did not understand the danger that he was putting himself and his officers into. At one point of the scene you see Riggs sort of dischelved and trying to pull himself together, which concludes that he is not stable. This entire scene relates to Neal King's chapter on White Male Guilt because "cops struggle with their anger toward demanding and intruding others, and then turn it backward toward the most racist and misognyist of white men" (King, p.65).

1 Comments:

Blogger Vladigogo said...

How does this film change the whole nature of blacks being secondary? How does the film disrupt that usual depiction of them on film?

7:10 PM  

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