Black Lives Mat­ter – Social media activism and the pol­i­tics of protest

Just as Rea­gan had Die Hard and Bush had The Dark Knight, so America’s 44^th Com­man­der in Chief, Barack Oba­ma, will come to be asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic films from the last eight years. So what exact­ly is Oba­ma Era Cin­e­ma, and what does it reveal about the world we live in today? Have your say @LWLies #Oba­maEraCin­e­ma.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma praised the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment as ​“real­ly effec­tive in bring­ing atten­tion to prob­lems,” which is a sen­ti­ment artists and film­mak­ers like Ryan Coogler, Justin Simien, Ava DuVer­nay and Bey­once Knowles have enact­ed through their work. Whether expos­ing police bru­tal­i­ty and insti­tu­tion­al racism or revis­it­ing piv­otal moments in civ­il rights his­to­ry, each has shined a light on key issues in chal­leng­ing, impas­sioned and enter­tain­ing ways.

Most recent­ly Coogler has released a series of videos called ​“My Life Mat­ters” fea­tur­ing David Oyelowo, Ava DuVer­nay, Com­mon, Mara Brock Akil and many oth­ers as part of his Black­out For Human Rights move­ment, which aims to ​“imme­di­ate­ly address the stag­ger­ing lev­el of human rights vio­la­tions and injus­tices against fel­low Amer­i­cans through­out the Unit­ed States.” Coogler’s inter­est in rais­ing aware­ness of lives cut short by vio­lent acts, often at the hands of those sworn to pro­tect and serve, is some­thing he has tack­led pre­vi­ous­ly, most notably in his 2013 debut fea­ture Fruit­vale Station.

Oscar Grant III was killed in the ear­ly hours of New Year’s Day, 2009 by a BART police offi­cer at an Oak­land train sta­tion. Aged 22, Grant was unarmed and face down on the plat­form at the time he was shot in the back at point-blank range. His shoot­ing made head­lines around the world due to fact that it had been record­ed on a mobile phone and shared on social media. At the start of the film Coogler shows the actu­al footage of this hor­rif­ic mur­der, before pro­vid­ing a drama­tised reen­act­ment of the last 24 hours of Grant’s life, based part­ly on infor­ma­tion obtained via pub­lic records and per­son­al statements.

Fruit­vale Sta­tion pre­miered at Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2013 to huge acclaim and was released the­atri­cal­ly in the US in July of that year. At the same time the tri­al against neigh­bour­hood watch vol­un­teer George Zim­mer­man, who shot dead 17-year-old Trayvon Mar­tin as he made his way home from a con­ve­nience store in Feb­ru­ary 2012, was reach­ing its con­clu­sion. The jury deliv­ered a not guilty ver­dict and Zim­mer­man was acquit­ted of manslaugh­ter. Mar­tin had only an iced tea and a bag of skit­tles in his pos­ses­sion at the time of his killing yet was ​“posthu­mous­ly placed on tri­al for his own mur­der” accord­ing to activist and writer Ali­cia Garza, who post­ed an impas­sioned ​“love let­ter to black peo­ple” on her Face­book page fol­low­ing the news. Her friend and fel­low activist Patrisse Cul­lors turned her words into #Black­Lives­Mat­ter on Twit­ter. Alicia’s hus­band, Malachi Garza, was a key fig­ure in bring­ing mur­der charges against the offi­cer who shot Oscar Grant III.

Two years lat­er, #Black­Lives­Mat­ter again came to fore fol­low­ing the bru­tal mur­der of Eric Gar­ner in New York City. Then again the hash­tag came into effect after the shoot­ing of unarmed black teenag­er Michael Brown by a white police offi­cer in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri. After a grand jury decid­ed not to indict the offend­ing offi­cer, protests and riots broke out high­light­ing racial ten­sions between a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white police force and the black com­mu­ni­ty. Though the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has so far sought to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from Civ­il Rights lead­ers such as Mar­tin Luther King and the SCLC, the fun­da­men­tal idea that togeth­er a few can make a dif­fer­ence through peace­ful protest is some­thing they have in common.

Ava DuVernay’s pow­er­ful dra­ma, Sel­ma, explores the tac­tics and pol­i­tics of protest. It stress­es the fact that rad­i­cal action may invite retal­i­a­tion and explores the inte­gral part the press plays in influ­enc­ing change and opin­ion. It tells the true sto­ry of how a march from Sel­ma to Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma led by Mar­tin Luther King in 1965 brought about a change which enabled res­i­dents in the south to vote with­out hav­ing to go through oppres­sive rig­ma­role. The erup­tion of vio­lence is vis­cer­al show­ing local law enforce­ment employ­ing bar­bar­ic tac­tics against the pro­tes­tors. Yet amid all the pain and suf­fer­ing there is also hopeful.

Released in April, 2016 Beyonce’s visu­al album ​‘Lemon­ade’ direct­ly deals with the after­math of vio­lence, pay­ing trib­ute to those who have fall­en. The moth­ers’ of Trayvon Mar­tin, Eric Gar­ner, Michael Brown, Syb­ri­na Ful­ton, Gwen Carr and Lesly McFad­den appear in a seg­ment enti­tled ​‘Res­ur­rec­tion’, hold­ing pho­tographs of their late chil­dren while sit­ting in a regal pose and attire. Spo­ken word plays out ask­ing, ​“How are we sup­posed to lead our chil­dren to the future?” A sober­ing, per­ti­nent ques­tion when faced with images of these young men cut down in their prime.

Justin Simien’s 2014 debut fea­ture Dear White Peo­ple (which the direc­tor is turn­ing into a series for Net­flix), exam­ines race rela­tions in a sharp and insight­ful way. He uses satire to make a seri­ous point about the roots of insti­tu­tion­alised racism. Simien took inspi­ra­tion from real-life exam­ples of African-Amer­i­can themed col­lege par­ties where white stu­dents wore black­face, and researched the black expe­ri­ence at Ivy League col­leges. Set at the fic­tion­al Win­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty, Dear White Peo­ple sees rad­i­cal pro­tes­tor Sam White (Tes­sa Thomp­son) con­front the issue of cul­tur­al and racil appro­pri­a­tion via her epony­mous talk show. She’s call­ing out hypocrisy on all sides – ​“mass media already makes it clear what it thinks of us,” she says in the run up to the elec­tion for head of house. After she wins the pres­sure is on for her to deliv­er change and results, some­thing which she strug­gles with due to a hier­ar­chy built upon old fash­ioned and small-mind­ed values.

In a recent pod­cast ses­sion with Igor Hiller, Simien stat­ed that, ​“In order to sur­vive we have to piece togeth­er the past, the future and the present in sto­ries… we oper­ate in sto­ries. Peo­ple say things like movies can’t change the world, I think that’s bull­shit because maybe see­ing a movie or doc­u­men­tary about an issue doesn’t change that issue but it becomes the fab­ric of our cul­ture.” His opin­ion epit­o­mis­es the very rea­son why these films and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment are so essen­tial: they tell vital sto­ries that might oth­er­wise not have been brought to the public’s attention.