The Hate U Give

Talk of ​‘civil­i­ty’ and ​‘debate’ has become com­mon in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and media in the face of protests with minori­ties at the cen­tre. For black peo­ple, this not-so-sub­tle cod­ed lan­guage is a call for silent obe­di­ence. The idea means the sup­pres­sion of their voic­es, their char­ac­ter, and more, just to fit in. The Hate U Give, to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess, says fuck all that.

The film opens big, with Starr Carter (Amand­la Sten­berg) receiv­ing ​‘the talk’ from her father Mav­er­ick (Rus­sell Horns­by), about what to do when being pulled over by the cops. This cul­mi­nates in Mav­er­ick describ­ing what he con­sid­ers ​“our own bill of rights”, the Black Panther’s 10 Point Pro­gram – a man­i­festo for what we deserve and how to get it, by any means we can. A lot of the film rests on Stenberg’s per­for­mance as Starr, and she shoul­ders that respon­si­bil­i­ty with ease. After a child­hood friend is killed by a police offi­cer, we fol­low Starr from reluc­tant civil­i­ty to protest as the film links inse­cu­ri­ties large and small, micro-aggres­sions to insti­tu­tion­al oppression.

The title of Ang­ie Thomas’s source nov­el is lift­ed from a 2Pac quote about his ​‘THUG LIFE’ tat­too, which sup­pos­ed­ly stood for ​‘The Hate U Give Lit­tle Infants Fucks Every­body’. The book, and by exten­sion the film, uses this as a the­sis, trac­ing hatred from its insti­tu­tion­al ori­gins to its heart­break­ing end point. It goes for far more painful, pre­scient sub­ject mat­ter than most YA adap­ta­tions, and feels fresh because of it.

The film’s inter­ro­ga­tion of what civil­i­ty real­ly means for black peo­ple is where Starr 2.0 enters the scene – the ver­sion of her­self that goes to a school for wealthy white chil­dren. This ver­sion code-switch­es; she doesn’t use slang, doesn’t speak up, doesn’t want any­one to think she’s ​‘ghet­to’. Her white class­mates are allowed to use the things that would sig­ni­fy her as a black per­son, but in order to fit in, Starr can’t. The film paints a wide pic­ture of what it means to live in a soci­ety that desires the silence of minori­ties, from code-switch­ing, to stop and search encoun­ters, to police shoot­ings and their far-reach­ing aftermath.

The script by the late Audrey Wells takes a blunt-force approach to pro­ceed­ings, mak­ing sure that audi­ences out­side of this lived expe­ri­ence are famil­iarised with what cer­tain things mean or how they make a per­son feel. In the film’s best moments it feels both empa­thet­ic and con­fronta­tion­al; at worst it can feel a lit­tle over­writ­ten, as in the scenes set at Starr’s high school and with her white boyfriend Chris, played by KJ Apa (aka Hot Archie from TV’s Riverdale). There are some odd lines that land with a thud, and it doesn’t help that George Till­man Jr’s direc­tion is most­ly workmanlike.

That said, the film’s suc­cess­es out­num­ber its mis­steps and there are some strik­ing images in the intense third act. Tak­ing big swings at the notion that human rights can be debat­ed, The Hate U Give makes up for any mis­giv­ings over the heavy-hand­ed­ness of the writ­ing with a right­eous anger and burn­ing pas­sion. It’s a well-made adap­ta­tion and a decent YA film in its own right, its occa­sion­al­ly clunky script held togeth­er by pow­er­ful performances.