Racial Profiling

When I edit bits of audio, from the Prime Minister to a person on the street, I wonder how often a listener considers what’s left out of a sound-bite. As a journalist, they are supposed to be able to trust me to keep things in context, and I do. Unlike the major political parties who isolate three words of a sentence and claim it’s their opponent’s point of view. But I digress. 

In films, editing is entirely subjective. It’s all make-believe, even if it’s about a true story, so the way a movie is made depends on the point of view of the story-teller. And that’s where Bradford Young takes issue with many movies of the past.

Young is a celebrated cinematographer. It’s his job to design the way a scene will go, from the lighting to the camera angle. He is also black. He grew up around a century-old funeral home. His young life was affected by the way his relatives cared for the dead. “Sometimes they didn’t have dignity in life, so my family gave them dignity in death.”

But Bradford didn’t want to carry on the family business. He’s an artist at heart, and he pursued film where he has designed the look of such movies as Selma and A Most Violent Year. Along the way he noticed something about movies. There was subtle, and not-so-subtle racism in the way African-Americans were lit and shot, dimly and far away, compared to white performers whose roles were of similar importance to the story. He claims it started with Birth of a Nation, the 100-year-old silent film about racism that’s shown to every film student on the continent. I know, I was one of them.

So it’s Bradford Young’s mission, as a now-in-demand filmmaker, to change the way blacks are depicted in modern cinema. He has inspired me to look at movies in a new way. I’ve always considered the editing, ever since a conversation with a film buff decades ago, about scenes cut out of well-known films. But now I’ll pay more attention to the way shots of minorities are set up compared to those of whites. You’d expect a gangster or bad guy to appear in a more sinister light – literally. But if Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are equal partners in a buddy movie, you’d also expect them to get equal treatment. I’ll be interested so see how often this is and isn’t true.

The continuing existence of racism is, in my opinion, one of the biggest blights on our society. Young’s work from the inside of the movie business, and his efforts to educate others about it, are well worth knowing about. If you’d like to read more about Bradford Young and his work, click to access his website HERE.