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• Jesse Owens' quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy.
• In the 1930s, Jesse Owens is a young man who is the first in his family to go to college. Going to Ohio State to train under its track and field coach, Larry Snyder, the young African American athlete quickly impresses with his tremendous potential that suggests Olympic material. However, as Owens struggles both with the obligations of his life and the virulent racism against him, the question of whether America would compete at all at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany is being debated vigorously. When the American envoy finds a compromise persuasive with the Third Reich to avert a boycott, Owens has his own moral struggle about going. Upon resolving that issue, Owens and his coach travel to Berlin to participate in a competition that would mark Owens as the greatest of America's Olympians even as the German film director, Leni Riefenstahl, locks horns with her country's Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, to film the politically embarrassing fact for posterity. — Kenneth Chisholm ([email protected])
• This drama based on true events focuses on legendary black athlete Jesse Owens (Stephan James) and his inspiring journey to overcome racism at home and abroad, culminating in his triumphant track-and-field performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the tutelage of gruff Ohio State coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis).
• In a time of racial bigotry, discrimination, and anti-Semitism, the humble African-American track-and-field athlete, Jesse Owens , catches the eye of early-1930s Ohio State University's coach, Larry Snyder. Against the backdrop of heated debates and political clashes as to whether the United States of America should boycott Berlin's 1936 Olympic Games, eventually, Owens arrives in Nazi Germany, as Adolf Hitler , and Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels , intend to turn the Olympics into a showcase for Aryan superiority, through the lens of the young filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl . However, as the track knows no colour, there can only be fast winners and slow losers. And Jesse is already a winner. — Nick Riganas
• In the 1930s, a young black man, Jesse Owens (Stephen James) is running through the streets of Cleveland, Ohio. He runs through the slums and into a rundown neighborhood home. He gets to packing his bags as he is getting ready to move out of his parents' home. He hunts around for his only shirt while his mom, proud of her first boy going off to college, finishes tailoring a nice suit coat for him. Jesse is afraid it is too expensive, but she insists and says he was meant to do great things. He says goodbye to his dad and gives him an envelope with $2. In a large college stadium, a track race is going on, and things aren't looking so great for coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis). Ohio State loses the meet and radio commentators are wondering if coach Snyder is concerned about his job because he hasn't had any national wins while at Ohio State. Larry goes to his office on campus, upset and cranky, and his secretary comes in with his day's appointments and files of "fresh blood" - all potential track stars and Jesse Owens is among the files. Jesse's next stop before getting on the bus to Ohio State is to see his girlfriend, Ruth (Shanice Banton), and their little girl. Ruth works at a salon and Jesse's appearance warrants a stern look from her boss. Jesse says things are going to be better, and he's going to come back and marry Ruth. Jesse's friend, Dave (Eli Goree), also headed to Ohio State, tells Jesse to hurry and get on the bus. Jesse says goodbye and gets on the bus (in the colored section), and they are off. At the school, Dave and Jesse are jogging on the track while Larry times him. After their workout, Dave and Jesse head to the locker room and are about to hit the shower when the all-white football team walks in. They toss around racial slurs and force Dave and Jesse to let the football team shower first. Jesse, not wanting to get in trouble, accepts this as his lot, though Dave is upset. While they are waiting, a young man tells Jesse that coach Larry wants to see him. Sweaty and gross, and unable to shower, Jesse throws on his clothes and heads to Larry's office. At the office, Larry greets him, but Jesse won't look him in the eye. Jesse is also surprised when Larry invites him to sit in the chair opposite him. After some small talk about past victories coach, Larry asks if Jesse can work and that he's got to work on his manners because he should be looking a man in the eye when he's talking to them. Jesse says he can work, and his records should speak to that. Larry says records don't mean shit because some kid will come along and take those records away from you. Medals are what count. Jesse notices a picture of an Olympic team and asks if it is indeed. Larry says yes, it is the Olympic track team from Paris, 1924. But Larry wasn't there. He asks if Jesse will go to Berlin in 1936 for the Summer Olympic Games. Jesse wants to, and coach says that he needs commitment: when not in class Jesse is to be on the track. "You belong to me." Out on the track, the coaches are watching the "fresh blood" and coach Larry says Jesse is good. They time him on the 100-meter dash and, while his starting position is crap, he's fast (9. something seconds). The coaches are impressed. In New York City, the US Olympic Committee is having a meeting. They are concerned about the rumors coming out of Germany under the Nazi government and are debating whether or not to boycott the 1936 games in Berlin. They eventually agree to send a delegate to Berlin to assess the situation and make sure the Nazis play fair. They decide to send Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), who is somewhat reluctant but wants to move forward with the games and doesn't put a lot of stock into the rumors about the Germans and their "Jewish problem" and racial discrimination. Back at Ohio State, Jesse is training hard. In a letter back to Ruth he talks about a job he found at a fill station, and how hard it is to keep up with practice, work, and school, but he's doing it. He's sent $2 and talks about having applied for a marriage license. Coach catches up with Jesse and is frustrated that he's been missing practice. Jesse explains that he's got to work his job to take care of his baby girl. Larry is surprised at the news. "You didn't tell me you had a daughter." "You didn't ask." In Berlin, Avery is escorted to the stadium, currently under construction, and sees Jews being tossed from their homes, loaded onto trucks, and signs everywhere that say "Germans defend yourself" and other anti-semitic propaganda. At the sports club, he meets Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat), a couple of other German Olympics officials, and Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten). Ms. Riefenstahl was handpicked by the Fuhrer to film the proceedings at the Olympics (the first time it will have been recorded, it was a big deal). Avery starts in on what the Olympics would look like without American involvement, and the Nazis are very keen on appeasing the Americans. It isn't a problem with facilities, but with politics. Avery accuses them of using the Olympics to sell their nasty ideas about Jews and non-Aryan races. A deal is struck, the press will be reigned in, anti-Jew signs taken down, and they'll stop shipping people out of their homes. Back in Ohio, Jesse goes to coach Larry's office where Larry gives Jesse a legislative paige ID. The job gets $60 a month, and all Jesse has to do for the job is train. A win-win situation. Jesse's training starts in earnest, and coach starts training him to start low and improve his form and cadence. After practice, the team hits the showers, and the football team walks in. After having distracted Jesse in practice, the coach provokes them into hurling horrible insults to teach Jesse a lesson: block it out. He gets the message loud and clear. He celebrates later with some friends, all egging each other into a jumping contest. Jesse gets cocky and jumps over a pole but falls and hurts himself. Coach is upset with him, but tell him to rest for three days, and maybe he will be able to compete in Ann Arbor. Three days later, it is the Big 10 of 1935 in Ann Arbor, MI. Jesse is obviously hurt but insists on competing. If his back doesn't make it through the 100-yard, dash coach can pull him. He takes his place on the track, amidst loud boos from the racist white crowd, but he blocks it out. He takes first with 9.3 seconds on coach's watch. The officials won't accept the New World Record (NWR) and insist his time was 9.4. Coach is pissed, but Jesse shakes it off and moves on. He goes to do the broad jump and scopes out the track. He asks an official what the world record is, then asks for a handkerchief and sets it at the world record line. He makes the jump.... and sets a NWR! Next up is 200-yard dash: he sets a NWR. He competes in the hurdles: another NWR. By now the crowd is going nuts and cheering for him. On the drive home, he is excited about the wins. Coach tells him that he also set a new school record for most points earned in a meet. "Which cracker did I take that from?" "This cracker" coach says. "Well, you know what they say about records. Some kid will come along and snatch it away from you." Jesse quotes back Larry's own words. June 25, 1935 Ohio State is competing in Los Angeles, and the guy they need to watch out for is Eulace Peacock (Shamier Anderson). The press is waiting for the team when the bus pulls up, and the press asks how it feels to be the world's fastest human. Must feel great because Jesse smokes the competition in L.A. Jesse, Dave, and another friend go to a jazz club after the race. A girl in a pink dress, Quincella, comes in. The guys don't think Jesse has a chance getting her, but to their surprise, she knows who he is and approaches him first. She's got trouble written all over her, but Jesse falls hard. In Germany, Avery is following up with his requests for the Berlin Olympics. Things look "swell" and he pledges his support. He is also present with a business opportunity: he is a builder, and the Nazis want him to build the new German Embassy in Washington DC. It would be a huge deal, and they insist to Avery that this is not a bribe, but a securing of the best builder in America for their project. He points out some design problems, and appears to accept the deal. In Nebraska, Jesse, with Quincella, receives a telegram. Apparently Ruth has seen that Jesse and Quincella are cuddly and close, and she's angry and is threatening to sue Jesse. He is distracted at his track meet and loses to Eulace Peacock. Coach comes by to talk over what happened. Jesse is curt and in the middle of a pity party and says he was just having a bad day. They get talking about relationships, and Jesse asks if Larry was ever married. Larry says he is currently separated from his wife, and his daughter is almost grown. His focus was on coaching, not his family. Jesse says "You never told me you had a daughter." "You never asked." When the team loads up the bus to head back to Ohio, Quincella shows up and is getting ready to follow the team and drive Jesse back to Ohio. He loads her things into her car... and breaks up with her. She's ticked, and leaves quickly. Jesse says he's got some explaining to do back home. Back at home, Jesse goes into the salon where Ruth works and apologizes. And proposes marriage. She shuts him down. He goes outside and waits all day in the rain for her to get off of work. She scolds him for missing races; he says he'd rather miss races and work at a gas station if it meant he got to spend his days with her. He proposes again and wants to get married that day, and this time, she agrees. He runs off to find someone to perform the wedding for them. Back in New York, the US Olympic committee is there to vote. Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) says that they need to vote against participating in the games, that a vote against participation is a vote against tyranny. Avery encourages everyone to vote for the dream of participating, thinking of the athletes and the chances this could ruin for them. In the end, the vote is close, 58 in favor of going, 56 in favor of a boycott. In Ohio, a representative of the NAACP comes to the Owens' home to try and talk Jesse into not going to Berlin, only because they need to show the Nazi's that their discrimination in intolerable. Jesse's father disagrees, but believes that the choice should be Jesse's. Jesse asks if the representative runs. He doesn't. Jesse explains that on the track race is the last thing that matters. It is just fast or slow, and in that there is freedom. Back at the school, everyone is listening to a boxing fight, a Nazi fighter vs. an American fighter. In the end, the Nazi fighter wins. Coach says that at least in three week's time they'd be beating the Nazis at the Olympics. Jesse says he's not sure he's going. Coach is livid and can't understand how he would give up the chance to be a part of history. He says race doesn't matter, but Jesse says he can say that because coach is white. At the track that night coach Larry is drinking and upset. He stupidly decides to go for a broad jump and hurts himself. The next morning, Jesse is on a jog when Larry catches up with him in his car. He gets out, using a cane, and encourages Jesse to give himself the option to go to Berlin by at least going to the Olympic Trials. At the Olympic trials, Jesse qualifies for three events. At the press meet, the topic keeps veering from the sport and to the politics. Two of the track team are Jewish, and then there is Jesse and Dave. How can they participate given the discrimination abroad and at home. It isn't a pretty press meet. Afterward, coach Larry tries to get the Olympic coaches to bring him on as an additional coach for Jesse. They won't have any of it. On the way back to his hotel, Jesse runs into Eulace Peacock. He tore his hamstring and is never going to run again. He says to go to Berlin just to stick it to Hitler. At the hotel, Jesse is having a hard time sleeping and wakes Ruth. He is worried that he will lose, and then Hitler will be right. She tells him to stop thinking, he's not very good at it, and to just run. The next morning he packs up, gets a special locket (to keep him focused on his girl), and he takes a small lock of his daughter's hair. On the boat he turns when coach Larry starts talking to him. He's glad that coach is there. When Larry goes to leave Jesse stops him because he's headed in the wrong direction. "Everyone is up there in first class." "On my own dime? I'm in steerage with you and Dave." In Berlin, Ms. Riefenstahl is showing the Olympic committee the beginnings of her promotional movie. She asks for no restrictions; she wants to film every event, and she needs 46 cameras. Dr. Goebbels reminds her that these are his games. She reminds him that this is her film. Without it no one would remember the games a year from then. In July 1936, the American team arrives in Berlin and are given the royal treatment at the Olympic Village. Marty and Sam wave their David's Stars in the faces of some of the Nazi security guards, and everyone is a little surprised when there are no colored dorms or tables. (Aside from Jews, segregation laws against blacks and other ethnic groups apparently don't exist in Nazi Germany or in the rest of Europe). During dinner, everyone sits together with whites and blacks side by side. Dave suggests that the Nazis aren't so bad. Sam and Marty aren't so sure. Ms. Riefenstahl shows her finished film of the running of the torch, and Dr. Goebbels loves it. Ms. Riefenstahl is encouraged. Jesse and Dave set out to train and get ready for the games, but the US team coaches are awful and racist. Coach Larry catches up with Jesse later and asks "Did you really tell Dean he's not fit to train fleas on a dog?" He did. They are ambushed by the other coaches to try to settle the dispute. Dean insists on an apology. Jesse insists on Coach Larry or he's not competing, hope they like singing the German national anthem. The relent, and Coach Larry is instigated as a coach. Larry says this is a twisted way to thank him; medals would be better. He asks Jesse about his new shoes, but Jesse says they never showed up. Coach Larry goes looking for the shoe shop where the shoes (from London) were supposed to come from. He gets totally turned around (he doesn't know any German) and ends up walking up on a group of Nazi soldiers forcing a Jewish family into a military truck. He's finally able to communicate to one of the soldiers that he's an American, has papers, is with the Olympic team, and is looking for a shoe place. The soldier guides him off, though Larry can't stop looking back at the truck. On the morning of the Olympic competitions, Larry can't stop fussing over Jesse. Jesse, on the other hand, is totally cool and calm. They start off for the stadium, which is huge, filled with people, and has a zeppelin flying overhead. Everyone stands as Hitler comes into the stadium. Jesse gets his new shoes on, looks at the picture of his wife in the locket, and then prepares the track. He wins the 100-meter dash and easily gets his first gold. Avery congratulates him, then takes him to go meet someone special (it is custom for the hosting dignitary to do a meet and greet with gold medalists). He escorts Jesse through the middle of several dozen high-ranking Nazi officials. They meet Dr. Goebbel, who doesn't even look at Jesse. They are informed that, in order to avoid the traffic home, Hitler had to leave early and will not be meeting Jesse. At least, that's what the translator says. Goebbels really asks how Hitler could be expected to shake hands with "that." Aver is livid. The American team has a small party to unwind for the day. Jesse catches a glimpse of the famous broad jumper, Carl 'Luz' Long (David Kross). He's the guy to beat in the broad jumping as he holds all of the records in Europe. Larry goes over the strict rules they have about broad jumping for these games, though Jesse seems a little distracted. At the qualifying event, the next day Luz easily qualifies. Jesse, up next, goes to scope out the track like he did in Ann Arbor, but gets fouled when he steps over the line trying to get a good look at the rack. It is counted at his first attempt. His "second" attempt is also red flagged when he doesn't jump at just the right moment. Luz, seeing this, grabs a towel and places it at the side of the jumping lane so Jesse will know where to jump from. Jesse qualifies on his third attempt. He catches up with Luz and thanks him for the help. In the end, the broad jump comes down to Luz and Jesse. Luz does well, per his normal, but then Jesse passes him with a distance of 7.74 meters. On his second jump, Luz makes it to 7.78 meters, a new European record. Jesse takes his second jump: 7.94 meters! Luz goes for his third attempt, but stumbles at the last second and fouls out of the last attempt. The game is in the bag for Jesse; he doesn't need the last attempt, but Luz insists he do his best. On his third jump, Jesse lands an 8.60-meter jump, a new Olympic record! After the medals are awarded, and anthems played, Luz suggests they take the lap of honor together. This is career suicide for Luz, as he goes around the track arm in arm with Jesse. Ms. Riefenstahl's cameraman asks what Luz is doing; his career is over! She says he's making her film. At the end of the day, Jesse gets beers and takes them to Luz's room. They sit and chat for a while. Jesse says Luz's girlfriend is pretty, are their any ugly girls in Germany? Luz says yes, they just keep the ugly things hidden. He talks about a lot of the awful stuff the government is doing, and talks about a girl that had been sent to his room the night before on orders to get pregnant. Jesse asks if Luz is going to get in trouble for the stunt he pulled earlier int he day... Luz tells Jesse to win the 200-meter dash. Not for any political agendas, but for Luz. It would make losing to Jesse that day a little easier to swallow. The next day, everyone back home is gathered around radios to listen to the broadcast of Jesse's last race. In Berlin, however, Ms. Riefenstahl's team is not set up or ready to roll cameras. They've been ordered not to film the race. She sends them out, quickly, and they hurry to their posts and getting rolling just in time. She goes to the big-wig box with Dr. Geobbel and Hitler and points a camera right at them rather than at the race. She's going to catch their reaction as Jesse easily wins his third gold medal. After the race, Avery and Ms. Riefenstahl find themselves alone with Dr. Geobbel. She went to insist that the good doctor not tells her crew what to do. Dr. Geobbel asks her to translate for him as he talks about being a good party guest to Avery. He makes it known that the host (the Nazis) are offended that their guests have not treated them with respect and tells Avery that the Jewish boys (Marty and Sam) can't run in the 400-meter relay race. Avery basically says the hell they can't, but Goebbels reminds him of the business deal they have. How would the US Olympic committee feel about Avery's endorsement of the Berlin games if they knew about the business deal they had? Avery caves. The US team holds a quick meeting, claiming that the Germans have been holding back their better runners and that they are now afraid that they need to change up the lineup. Sam and Marty are out, Dave and Jesse are in. Sam and Marty call bull, they know it is about the fact that they are Jewish. Jesse doesn't want to run and the team is at an apparent stalemate. At the fencing arena, Coach Larry is sitting thinking when Jesse joins him. They get to talking, and coach talks about flying airplanes. He says that what spectators like most is not the thrill of the takeoff and flight, but of the potential crash and the ensuing carnage. Turns out he crashed his plane before the 1924 Olympics, and woke up three weeks after the crash with a newspaper clipping about the gold medal winners. His dad called him some kind of idiot for blowing his chances at the Olympics. He gives Jesse the clipping and leaves. Jesse opens it and sees that across the news story is written "Next Time". That evening Sam and Marty go to Jesse's room and tell him not to lose the relay race, giving him permission to run it. That next day, at the relay race, the team sets a new world record: 39.8 seconds. Hitler doesn't show up for the race. Jesse is packing up his room, and his FOUR gold medals (a big deal as it was something that had not been done in decades), when coach Larry comes in. He looks one of the medals over and smiles, proud of Jesse. Ms. Riefenstahl shows up and asks Jesse for a favor. She wants to film him doing the broad jump. After a few takes he asks if this isn't cheating, it won't be the real jump in her film. She says it is so that people will never forget what he did. Back home in New York City, Coach Larry, his secretary Peggy, and Jesse and Ruth Owens are going to a special, formal dinner held in Jesse's honor. Sadly, they party is stopped, and Jesse and Ruth are told they will have to use the service entrance (due to the segregation laws). Larry is angry and ready to go to war over this, but Jesse calms him down, and they go to the service entrance while Larry goes through the front door. When they get to the service elevator, a young fan (a white kid) asks for Jesse's autograph. While the last scene plays out, captions about what became of the people in the movie are played: Three years later, in September of 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began. Luz was forced into military service and sent to the front lines. He and Jesse remained friends and in contact up until Luz was killed in action in 1943. People lined the streets to welcome Jesse home from the 1936 Olympics, though the White House never publicly acknowledged Jesse and his accomplishments. Larry Snyder continued coaching at Ohio State until he retired. Several of his athletes went on to be major record holders. He went to the Olympics in Rome in 1960 as the track coach. Jesse and Ruth had three daughters and remained married until his death from lung cancer in 1980. Jesse was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Fine performances propel well-intentioned Owens biopic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Laudable (if somewhat idealized) message that spor

Jesse is talented, determined, and kind, but he's

Scenes of Nazi round-ups, racist signs, and armed

Passionate kisses, references to premarital sex th

Occasional strong and racist language: the "N" wor

Coach often drinks whiskey straight from the bottl

Parents need to know that Race is partly a biographical drama about legendary gold medalist Jesse Owens (Stephan James) and partly a historical drama about the American Olympic Committee's controversial decision to attend the Nazi-run 1936 Olympics. Reflecting the subject matter and the 1930s setting, the…

Positive Messages

Laudable (if somewhat idealized) message that sports should transcend politics and social strife. Makes it clear that there was more at stake than just medals when the U.S. Olympic Committee voted to allow the athletes to compete in a country run by a tyrant. Friendship between rivals shows the strong mutual respect between competitors. Perseverance is a major theme.

Positive Role Models

Jesse is talented, determined, and kind, but he's also flawed. The movie doesn't gloss over his infidelity or the fact he had a child before getting married. Coach is focused on guiding Jesse to victory, even when it requires him to spend his own money to accompany the team to Berlin. Ruth is a true partner to Jesse and helps him figure out what he wants.

Violence & Scariness

Scenes of Nazi round-ups, racist signs, and armed soldiers threateningly demanding papers from a lost American.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Passionate kisses, references to premarital sex that led to teen pregnancy, and some jokes about whether the guys can get a particular woman into bed. Jesse slow dances and caresses a woman who isn't the mother of his child. He's unfaithful to his fiancee (sex is strongly implied).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional strong and racist language: the "N" word a few times, "jigaboo," "coon," and "negro," as well as "cracker," "s--t," "a--hole," "a--," "son of a bitch," "goddamn," "screw," etc. Subtitles reveal anti-Jewish signs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Coach often drinks whiskey straight from the bottle/a flask and is rumored to have a drinking problem. He seems intoxicated in one scene. Jesse drinks a couple of times, socially and by himself. College athletes and their friends drink socially.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Race is partly a biographical drama about legendary gold medalist Jesse Owens ( Stephan James ) and partly a historical drama about the American Olympic Committee's controversial decision to attend the Nazi-run 1936 Olympics. Reflecting the subject matter and the 1930s setting, the language includes several uses of racial slurs (the "N" word, "negro," "jigaboo," "coon," and "boy," as well as the more jokingly used "cracker"); characters also use the words "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--," "son of a bitch," and more. There's the implication of violence in Berlin when Olympic official Avery Brundage visits; he sees Jewish civilians forcibly carted onto transport vehicles, Jewish businesses defaced, and signs saying "No Jews or dogs allowed." There's also a tense scene when Nazi soldiers demand, at gunpoint, that Owens' coach show his papers. Characters also drink (it's suggested that Coach might have a drinking problem), kiss passionately, and make some racy comments/jokes. As part of a portrayal that presents him as both inspiring and realistically flawed, Owens is shown being unfaithful to the mother of his child. The movie, while imperfect, has good intentions and can be a conversation starter between parents and their tweens/teens. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (7)
• Kids say (14)

Based on 7 parent reviews

A great movie.

What's the story.

RACE tells the story of the indisputable hero of the Nazi-run 1936 Olympics in Berlin: not an Aryan athlete of the Fuhrer's motherland, but African-American track-and-field athlete Jesse Owens ( Stephan James ). Instead of going to a more progressive college on either coast, Owens accepts a scholarship to run and jump for Ohio State University's track coach, Larry Snyder ( Jason Sudeikis ). The two form a quick bond, and when Owens reveals he has a toddler to support back home, Snyder even gets Owens a no-show job with a lucrative paycheck. Owens proceeds to astonish the track and field community by setting three world records and tying another at a Big Ten track meet in 1935. As he becomes the most prominent track-and-field athlete in the nation, the American Olympic Committee (AOC) fights an internal battle about whether to boycott the 1936 games being held in Nazi-run Germany. The story then switches to the behind-the-scenes dealings between American businessman Avery Brundage ( Jeremy Irons ) and the Germans, under the leadership of Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat), who uses filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl ( Carice van Houten ) to help ensure that the Americans will compete in Berlin.

Is It Any Good?

This well-meaning historical drama features a wonderful performance by James, but it oddly shifts the focus from Owens' legend and life to the inner workings of the most controversial Olympics. James, who also memorably played a young John Lewis in Selma , inhabits Owens as a natural talent who's pleasant, kind, and hardworking. He's so sweet and disciplined that even when he's unfaithful to his fiancee, Ruth (Shanice Banton), with a vain groupie, he almost immediately does the right thing and begs forgiveness for the indiscretion. But, like most everyone else here, Owens is depicted in an overly sanitized way -- uncomplicated and unthreatening. The relationship between Owens and Snyder is only contentious in one scene, giving the impression that the white coach was an enlightened man who was just somehow above the casual racism of his athletic department colleagues.

Director Stephen Hopkins takes a similar approach in depicting two highly controversial figures: Brundage, whose legacy as a sportsman and Olympic official is tarnished by rumors that he was both a Nazi sympathizer and openly racist, and Riefenstahl, who managed to survive accusation after accusation that she was a true believer in the Nazi cause, rather than just a filmmaker who benefited from Hitler's patronage. Irons plays Brundage as a perfectly oily master of the universe who knows what's going on but tells the Germans to tone down the uglier aspects of their regime for the sake of the Olympics, and van Houten portrays Riefenstahl as a director who's just coincidentally a Nazi. The director continuously interrupts the relatively tame plot of Owens' superstar college track career with behind-the-scenes drama at the AOC, where at least one Olympic official, Jeremiah Mahoney ( William Hurt ), led the charge to boycott the games in solidarity with the oppressed victims of Hitler's regime. But, the film posits, sports is supposed to rise above politics -- so much so that when an NAACP official asks Owens to personally boycott the Olympics, the issue doesn't seem seriously considered. Ultimately the performances are fine, although it's hard to consider Sudeikis in a dramatic role, and the story educational, but Race is isn't quite the extraordinary narrative Owens deserves.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the implied violence and overt racism depicted in Race . What do you think about the movie's use of the "N" word or the various ways Owens and his fellow black runners were mistreated? Do you think the movie's title has more than one meaning?

Is Jesse Owens a role model? How does he demonstrate perseverance ? Do you think the filmmakers portray him exactly as he was? Why might facts sometimes be changed in movies based on true stories?

The movie switches from a biographical portrait of Owens to a historical drama about 1936 Berlin Olympics. Did you like that shift? Given what you know, do you think it's right that the United States went to the Olympics that year?

Do you agree with the idea that politics have no place in sports? How does that apply today?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 19, 2016
• On DVD or streaming : May 31, 2016
• Cast : Jason Sudeikis , Stephan James , Carice Van Houten
• Director : Stephen Hopkins
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Focus Features
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Sports and Martial Arts , Great Boy Role Models , History
• Character Strengths : Perseverance
• Run time : 134 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements and language
• Last updated : July 29, 2024

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The Most Powerful Piece of Film Criticism Ever Written

James Baldwin's  The Devil Finds Work , a book-length essay on race and America and cinema, movingly demonstrates that analysis of art can be art itself.

Who's the greatest American movie critic?

A lot of folks probably would say Pauline Kael or David Bordwell or Manny Farber; some might argue for more academic writers like Linda Williams, Stanley Cavell, or Carol Clover. For me, though, it's an easy question. The greatest film critic ever is James Baldwin.

Baldwin is generally celebrated for his novels and (as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently) his personal essays. But he wrote criticism as well. Mostly this was in the form of short reviews. There is, though, a major exception: his book-length essay, The Devil Finds Work , one of the most powerful examples ever of how writing about art can, itself, be art.

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Published in 1976, the piece can’t be categorized. It's a memoir of Baldwin's life watching, or influenced by, or next to cinema. It's a critique of the racial politics of American (and European) film. And it's a work of film theory, with Baldwin illuminating issues of gaze and identification in brief, lucid bursts. The dangerous appeal of cinema, he writes, can be to escape—"surrendering to the corroboration of one's fantasies as they are thrown back from the screen" And "no one,” he acidly adds, “makes his escape personality black."

The themes of race, film, and truth circle around one another throughout the essay's hundred pages, as Baldwin attempts to reconcile the cinema he loves, which represents the country he loves, with its duplicity and faithlessness. In one memorable description of the McCarthy era midway through the essay, he marvels at "the slimy depths to which the bulk of white Americans allowed themselves to sink: noisily, gracelessly, flatulent and foul with patriotism." It's clear Baldwin believes that description can often be applied to American cinema as well—whether it's the false self-congratulatory liberal Hollywood pap of The Heat of the Night or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or the travesty made of Billie Holiday's life in Lady Sings the Blues , the script of which, Baldwin says, "Is as empty as a banana peel, and as treacherous."

Yet, for all its pessimism, The Devil Finds Work doesn't feel despairing or bleak. On the contrary, it's one of the most inspirational pieces of writing I've read. In part, that's because of the moments of value or meaning that Baldwin finds amid the dross—an image of Sidney Poitier's face in the Defiant Ones , which in its dignity and beauty shatters the rest of the film, or "Joan Crawford's straight, narrow, and lonely back," in the first film Baldwin remembers, and how he is "fascinated by the movement on, and of, the screen, that movement which is something like the heaving and the swelling of the sea … and which is also something like the light which moves on, and especially beneath, the water."

But more even than such isolated images, what makes the essay sing, and not sadly or in bitterness, is its sheer power of description, and its audacity in treating self, society, and art as a whole, to be argued with and lived with and loved all at once. You can see that perhaps most vividly in the concluding discussion, in which Baldwin talks about the racial subtext of The Exorcist .

For, I have seen the devil, by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me: in the eyes of the cop and the sheriff and the deputy, the landlord, the housewife, the football player: in the eyes of some governors, presidents, wardens, in the eyes of some orphans, and in the eyes of my father, and in my mirror. It is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. The devil has no need of any dogma—though he can use them all—nor does he need any historical justification, history being so largely his invention. He does not levitate beds, or fool around with little girls: we do. The mindless and hysterical banality of evil presented in  The Exorcist  is the most terrifying thing about the film. The Americans should certainly know more about evil than that; if they pretend otherwise, they are lying, and any black man, and not only blacks—many, many others, including white children— can call them on this lie, he who has been treated  as  the devil recognizes the devil when they meet.

I like The Exorcist considerably more than Baldwin does, but even so, I think it's indisputable that he transforms the film. A pulp horror shocker becomes a meditation on how evil is displaced and denied—and on how denial of sin, personal and social, is central to evil. Baldwin's scorn doesn't destroy the movie, but turns it into something wiser, more moving, and more beautiful. As the blues that Baldwin loves changes sorrow into art, Baldwin takes American cinema and makes it look in the mirror to see, not the devil, but the face it could have if it were able to acknowledge its own history and violence. It's a face that would be, yes, blacker, but also more honest and more free.

In her first post at her blog at The Washington Post , Alyssa Rosenberg explained that she writes about pop culture because "art and culture are deeply engaged with big, important ideas about the way we live our lives, the conditions we’re willing to let others live in and our most important priorities." I don't disagree with that, and I doubt Baldwin would either. But I think The Devil Finds Work also makes a different case for writing about pop culture. That case is the case that Shakespeare makes for writing drama, or that Jane Austen makes for writing novels, or that Wallace Stevens makes for writing poetry, or Tarkovsky for making films. Baldwin shows that criticism is art, which means that it doesn't need a purpose or a rationale other than truth, or beauty, or keeping faith, or doing whatever it is we think art is trying to do. When I write about pop culture, I'm trying, and failing, to make art as great as The Devil Finds Work . That seems like reason enough.

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Articles and "Free lesson plans on the go"

Lesson plan; Race to Glory: The Jesse Owens Story

Learning Objectives:

• Students will analyze the life and achievements of Jesse Owens.
• Students will examine the historical and social context of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
• Students will explore themes of racism, discrimination, and perseverance.

Materials : The movie Race (2016)

Introduction

• Brainstorming: Begin by asking students what they know about Jesse Owens, the 1936 Olympics, and Nazi Germany. Record their responses on the board or a chart paper.
• Context Setting: Briefly introduce the historical context of the 1936 Olympics, highlighting Nazi Germany’s ideology of Aryan supremacy and their use of the games for propaganda purposes.  
• Watch the movie “Race” together.
• Pause for discussion: Pause at key moments throughout the film to facilitate discussions based on the chosen pre-viewing activity, film guide questions, or other prompts related to the learning objectives. Encourage students to share their thoughts, feelings, and interpretations
• Distribute the Race Film Guide from Into Film, which contains activities and questions to help the students engage with the movie. You can also use the Race – Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics PowerPoint presentation from TES, which has more information and images about the historical background and the main characters.
• Watch the movie together, pausing at key moments to discuss the questions from the film guide or the presentation. Encourage the students to share their opinions, feelings, and reflections on the movie.
• Write a biography of Jesse Owens, using the internet to research more details about his life and achievements.
• Write a review of the movie, expressing your likes and dislikes, and comparing it to other biographical movies or documentaries you have seen.
• Write a letter to Jesse Owens, thanking him for his inspiration and asking him questions about his experiences and challenges.
• Create a poster or a collage that illustrates the main themes and messages of the movie, using images, words, and symbols.
• Have each group present their work to the rest of the class, and give feedback and comments to each other.
• Conclude the lesson by summarizing the main points and asking the students to reflect on what they have learned and how they can apply it to their own lives. You can also show them this video from TPT, which features interviews with Jesse Owens’ daughters and the actors from the movie

Essay questions

• Analyze the significance of Jesse Owens’ achievements at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. How did he challenge the Nazi ideology of racial supremacy and the Jim Crow laws of his own country? What were the personal and professional challenges he faced before, during, and after the Games? How did his victories inspire other athletes and civil rights activists around the world?
• Compare and contrast the portrayal of Jesse Owens in the movie “Race” with historical accounts of his life and experiences. How does the film depict his relationship with his coach, his family, his rivals, and the Nazi officials? What are the main differences and similarities between the film and the reality? How does the film use cinematic techniques to convey the themes of racism, discrimination, and perseverance?
• Imagine you are a journalist interviewing Jesse Owens today. What questions would you ask him about his life, his experiences with racism, and his advice for future generations in overcoming challenges and promoting equality?
• Race Film Guide: https://www.intofilm.org/resources/346
• Race – Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics PowerPoint presentation: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/race-jesse-owens-and-the-1936-olympics-11287429

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Remember The Titans — Race And Social Issues In The Movie Remember The Titans

Race and Social Issues in The Movie Remember The Titans

• Categories: Racial Discrimination Remember The Titans

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Published: May 14, 2021

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• Awards Shows

Green Book builds a feel-good comedy atop an artifact of shameful segregation. Yikes.

The movie is named after guides published for black travelers in segregated America. But its spin is all Hollywood.

by Alissa Wilkinson

Green Book took home three Golden Globe Awards on Sunday for Best Comedy, Best Screenplay, and supporting actor Mahershala Ali — and that’s hardly a surprise. A period piece that’s also a road trip movie and a buddy dramedy? Based on a true story? With two strong performances and a heartwarming message about overcoming prejudice? That ends at a Christmas celebration? Sign America up (or at least the Hollywood Foreign Press Association).

The film, directed by comedy veteran Peter Farrelly , stars Viggo Mortensen and Ali. It’s “inspired” by the true friendship of Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American chauffeur/bodyguard from the Bronx, and Don Shirley, the black pianist Vallelonga is hired to drive and protect on a concert tour through the deep South in 1962. It’s often funny, with some poignant moments and a heart that feels like it’s in the right place.

Yet curiously, the Green Book itself doesn’t play much of a role in the film. Mortensen’s character, Tony, takes it on the trip and leafs through it several times. Early on, he briefly explains its purpose to his wife Delores (Linda Cardellini): to provide black travelers with information about “safe” places to stay and to eat while they travel. He’ll need to refer to it to do his job, getting Shirley from gig to gig safely throughout the musician’s eight-week tour.

But after that, the book is not mentioned by name, even as the pair encounter the full gamut of racism during the trip — ranging from casual remarks to “genteel” discrimination to violent hostility from civilians, bar patrons, and police. Indeed, we typically see it only when Tony quietly picks it up to find motels in which Shirley can safely stay.

When Farrelly took the stage to accept the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, he used the opportunity to reiterate the film’s themes (and demand that the orchestra not play him off):

Green Book is a story of a trip that — [ to the orchestra ] please, no, turn that off. No, go away. Off. Okay. This is a story of the trip that Don Shirley took in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Don Shirley was a great man and underappreciated genius who couldn’t play the music he wanted to play, simply because of the color of his skin. Yet he went on to create his own music that still resonates to this day. ... This story, when I heard it, gave me hope, and I wanted to share this hope with you. Because we are still living in divided times, and that’s what this movie is for: It’s for everybody. If they can find common ground here, we all can. All we have to do is talk and to not judge people by their differences, but look for what we have in common. And we have a lot in common. We all want the same thing: We want love and happiness and want to be treated equally. And that’s not a bad thing.

Farrelly’s speech is of a piece with the film’s approach to racism, common to Hollywood films, which is to suggest that relationships between individuals will heal centuries of racism. And indeed, Green Book ’s treatment of racism is uneven at best. In an early scene, for instance, Tony throws away two drinking glasses that black construction workers used in his kitchen, suggesting he draws a hard line about even coming into contact with black people. But a movie like this needs a “likable” hero, and after that moment, he doesn’t engage in such blatantly offensive behavior for the rest of the film. As an Italian American, Tony would have experienced plenty of discrimination himself, but the film only hints at it.

But even setting aside the characters’ development, for a movie named Green Book , it’s light on details about the actual, well, Green Book. It also seems to imply that such a guide was only really necessary in the Deep South, which rang false to me. Watching it, I worried that the screenplay — written by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie, and the real-life Tony’s son, Nick Vallelonga, who clearly drew on his father’s remembrance of the trip — might have glossed over the reality experienced by black Americans like Shirley.

But before seeing the movie, I didn’t know much about the Green Book itself, so I dug into its history to learn more. What I learned helped me see the ways in which Green Book doesn’t go nearly far enough in confronting its subject, and winds up trivializing serious matters as a result.

Here are four things I learned about the Green Book, and what it says about Green Book .

If you were a black American in the middle of the 20th century, you almost certainly knew about the Green Book

For middle-class Americans in the 1930s, the newfound availability of safe, affordable automobiles was not just a matter of convenience. It meant new possibilities, the ability to travel around the country at their leisure, without relying on anyone else. That was also true for African Americans, even in a country that was legally segregated in some places and functionally segregated virtually everywhere else.

But while white travelers could move with relative freedom, stopping into restaurants, bars, entertainment establishments, and places of lodging as they pleased, road travel was more fraught for African Americans. Staying in the wrong hotel, or trying to eat at the wrong establishment, could get you kicked out or much worse.

The Negro Motorist Green Book wasn’t the only travel book aimed at black motorists in America, but it was the most popular. It was created by Victor Hugo Green, an African-American mail carrier who lived in Harlem and worked in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey. Green worked on the project for three decades, from 1936 to 1966, shortly after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, with a break during World War II for about four years. The Green Book swiftly became the most vital document for black travelers in America, detailing places where they could eat, drink, and spend the night without being harassed or worse.

Twenty-two editions of the Green Book (and one supplement), published from 1937 to 1966, have since been collected and digitized by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. “From what I can tell, [Green] had a car, he was very interested in cars, and he decided to create a travel guide that helped black travelers, or black motorists, be able to take advantage of the newfound freedom of having a car,” Maira Liriano, the chief librarian and curator of the center’s Green Book collection, told me.

The Green Books were mostly devoted to options for lodging and dining, but they contained other information too. “There were listings for rest stops, restaurants, barber shops, beauty shops,” Liriano says. And in some towns, especially smaller ones, no hotel would offer lodging to black people. For many of those, the Green Book listed “tourist homes,” which Liriano describes as “sort of like a precursor to Airbnb.” Black homeowners, mostly in the South, would rent a room in their home to black travelers looking for somewhere to spend the night.

That was especially important in so-called “sundown towns,” which passed laws designed to drive black people out of town that prohibited them from being on the road at night. One such town is depicted in Green Book .

Sundown towns weren’t specifically mentioned in the Green Book. But there were about 10,000 sundown towns in the US as late as the 1960s, and not just in the South : Levittown, New York; Glendale, California; and most Illinois municipalities were among their number. And while it could be dangerous to be on the road at night, it could be equally dangerous to check into the wrong hotel. In an age where you couldn’t just whip out your phone and look up Yelp reviews — and in which you could literally risk your life by being in the wrong part of town with the wrong skin color — you needed a guide.

So if you were traveling while black, you knew about the Green Book, because you had to, for your own safety. In his 2000 memoir A Colored Man’s Journey through 20th Century Segregated America , Earl Hutchinson Sr. (believed to be the oldest black American to publish a memoir, at age 96), wrote that “the Green Book was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and the early 1960s. You literally didn’t dare leave home without it.”

In the film, Shirley never mentions or even looks at the Green Book — only Tony interacts with it. In fact, the Shirley character in the film seems to have consciously distanced himself from many elements of black culture, while remaining richly aware of the discrimination he will encounter on the trip. But in real life, Shirley had previously traveled throughout the country before embarking on his tour with Tony, and would almost certainly have known all about the Green Book. It simply wouldn’t have been safe not to.

The Green Book was necessary no matter which part of the country you were traveling through

Green Book depicts a range of ways in which the racist attitudes that were dominant in American life in the early and mid-20th century manifested themselves, from snide comments and racial epithets to outright hostility. But it strongly suggests that a guide like the Green Book was only really necessary in the Deep South, where under Jim Crow laws, segregation was not just encouraged, but legally enforced.

The first time Tony consults the Green Book comes after several stops on Shirley’s concert tour, in Ohio and Indiana. Once they cross into Kentucky, the Green Book becomes his guide, and we see it in his hands and on the car seat beside him several times. And a key scene near the end of Green Book suggests that while Shirley was harassed and worse by police in the South, once they returned north of the Mason-Dixon line, he was safe from that experience.

But the reality was different.

Victor Green himself lived in Harlem, a predominantly black neighborhood in New York City, and his first Green Book covered mostly the New York metropolitan area. “It was very much a local guide that listed auto repair shops, but also places in the suburbs, like nightclubs and restaurants,” Liriano told me. “It was highlighting businesses that were friendly and open, and that would be of interest, to the African American motorist.”

But interest in the book was high, and subsequent editions expanded very rapidly. “In two years, they included pretty much the whole country,” Liriano said.

That meant the Green Book didn’t restrict its listings to places like Georgia and Alabama, or other states with explicit Jim Crow laws — it was a lifeline for travelers virtually anywhere in the country.

In the 1962 edition of the Green Book , published the year in which Green Book is set, you can find listings for restaurants in Wilmington, Delaware; hotels in Billings, Montana; entertainment establishments in Seattle, Washington; and antique stores in New York City, all of which were friendly to black clientele. In many editions, listings spilled over US borders into Mexico and Canada, going as far north as Alaska. And in every city where establishments were listed as friendly to black travelers, there were almost certainly establishments that were unfriendly.

“In states that didn’t necessarily have laws on the books, there was definitely a custom to discriminate,” Liriano said. “The country was pretty much very racist, everywhere you went.”

Certainly, black travelers experienced different conditions in places where segregation was legal and where it wasn’t, and conditions varied across the north as well. In his 1998 memoir Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement , Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a Civil Rights pioneer, writes about a 17-hour road trip he took with his Uncle Otis in 1951, packing their lunches and carefully plotting which bathrooms were safe to use along the way from Alabama to upstate New York. “It wasn’t until we got to Ohio that I could feel Uncle Otis relax, and so I relaxed, too,” he writes, later recounting his amazement that his relatives in Buffalo had “white people living next door to them. On both sides.”

But there was no magical line that a black traveler could cross to find safety on the other side. “I think that’s the part that maybe people don’t think about as much,” Liriano told me. “You can blame the South for their laws; but the North was very much also a very segregated place with spaces that were white and spaces that were black, even though it wasn’t by law.”

What the Green Books omitted is as significant as what they contained

Green Book does well in illustrating how Shirley adapts his behavior to be more acceptable to the mostly white crowds who gather to hear him play, even though, as he knows, once he leaves the stage he’s back to being just another “Negro” in their eyes.

His strained, pained smile at the end of every stage set is the dead giveaway. It’s a stark reminder of the long American tradition of respectability politics . And the film is at its best when Tony and Shirley are discovering the limits of those politics, and learning how to challenge the white-defined status quo.

Some of the need to watch one’s step was reflected in the Green Books, which were intended for black readers but required broader support to remain in production. “Green had to collaborate with a lot of people, including the federal government’s travel bureau,” Liriano says. In interacting with the “Negro Affairs” office in that bureau, as well as other collaborators like gas and oil companies, Green often wound up working with other African-Americans.

But knowing that he needed the support of the government and various companies to keep producing this vital lifeline, Green tended to not rock the boat too much. “He’s not going to criticize or blatantly state things,” Liriano said. “You sort of have to read between the lines in a lot of what he writes in the Green Books.”

That meant not outright criticizing the very laws, customs, and racist attitudes that made 30 years of Green Books necessary. It also appears to have meant not identifying sundown towns.

Still, the sadness inherent in the very existence of the Green Books came through. The end of the introduction to the 1949 edition made this clear. After thanking the United States Travel Bureau’s “Negro Affairs” office for their support, and asking readers to send their feedback and mention the book to establishments that might want to be listed, Green concludes:

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.

“But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year,” he writes.

It’s inherently disingenuous to cite the Green Books in the title of a feel-good film

The Green Books were Green’s effort to make the best of a terrible situation, and to offer some kind of freedom to a wide swath of the American population who were considered inferior to white people, not worthy of being treated as equals. In America, barely more than a half century ago, it was legal in some places to be hounded off the road because of your skin color, or to be turned away by a “No Negroes Allowed” sign in a hotel lobby.

In 2010, Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, told the New York Times that the Green Book “allowed families to protect their children, to help them ward off those horrible points at which they might be thrown out or not permitted to sit somewhere. It was both a defensive and a proactive mechanism.”

So as much as they’re a triumph of ingenuity and hard work, the Green Books represent something else: decades of great pain, and a history which ought to be regarded with shame.

That’s ultimately why Green Book feels wrongheaded to me, no matter how well-intentioned: The movie clearly exhibits Hollywood’s unfortunate tendency to elide reality when making movies about historical racism. It takes the name of an important artifact of history, one whose very existence was a result of prejudice and entrenched white supremacy, and makes it the basis for a broad comedy. It centers its story on a goofy, lovable white man who learns to be less racist after spending time with a black man who, though he’s aloof and unlikeable at first, becomes more “sympathetic” after he’s beaten up a few times.

And curiously, the two never talk about the Green Book itself — its history, its necessity, its very existence. Green Book ’s end credits show pictures of the two men and briefly explain what happened to Tony and Shirley after the tour, but never show or even mention the actual Green Books. That’s a bafflingly missed opportunity, given the very name of the film.

It also leans into the always-present danger that comes with movies about racism set in the past. They give audiences — particularly white ones that are eager to consider our era “post-racial” or “color-blind,” or who think black people keep pulling out the “race card” — the ability to leave the theater saying, Whew, the 1960s were a crazy time. Glad we fixed racism!

To be sure, there are a few scenes in which the movie overcomes this setup, to say something real about how expectations based on race, class, and identity can wreak havoc on a person’s soul. And at its best, Green Book may raise interest in the actual Green Books among viewers, particularly white audiences who’ve never heard of them before.

But borrowing the name of such a fraught piece of history and making a feel-good comedy about it, then failing to do that piece of history justice, is at best a misstep. At worst, it’s yet another example of Hollywood’s obliviousness and its willingness to feed into its audience’s self-satisfaction. As a piece of conventional Hollywood cinema, Green Book has plenty to recommend it. But as a film named for Victor Green’s books, it’s got a lot to answer for.

Green Book opens in limited theaters on November 16 and wide on November 21.

• Golden Globes

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Race and Cinema

Introduction, casting and representation.

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Race and Cinema by Diane Negra , Zélie Asava LAST REVIEWED: 28 January 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 28 January 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0127

Because of the influence that American cinema has had on ideas of race globally, both as film representations and as sociocultural concerns, and in keeping with the large output of its film industry and of American academic writing on issues of race in film studies, American films and film studies will form the central focus of this examination. Because the black/white binary defines the history of US racial discourse, this bibliography will centralize this binary and consider other racial groups (under terms constructed according to American discourse, using “black” as an umbrella term) in relation to black/white screen politics. Critical race theory has proven race to be a construction, yet racism remains a part of lived experience and racial stereotypes frequently recur even in an era marked by discourses of race transcendence and “postracial” cultural celebration. Hollywood can be read as an ethnographer, reinforcing the hegemony of whiteness onscreen by producing experiences of the black racial types it creates. Representations of blackness in early and silent cinema were largely characterized by the ideology of a landmark 1915 film Birth of a Nation , which would form the template (textually, visually, and in many ways, thematically) for filmmaking that followed. This film centers on racial politics and supports a white supremacist standpoint; here (as in most Hollywood films until the civil rights era), black men were loyal chattel or aggressive “Bucks,” black women were fat, caring housekeepers, and mixed-race women were tragic, disturbed beauties (see Bogle 2001 and Gaines 2001 , both cited under Screening Blackness ; Courtney 2005 , cited under Casting and Representation ). The American film industry has produced many distorted representations that have positioned screen characters as “Other” because of their designation as nonnormative (whether black, gay, etc.). In such ways, both visually and narratologically, film codes can position the Other as inferior to the white (male) hero, even where a superficial egalitarianism might seem to prevail (e.g., the “buddy movie,” where black men play foil to their white hero partner). Very recent cinematic productions, such as The Help (2011), deploy race knowledgeably but still problematically. Thus films may both deny and recognize the notion of race as visible given that social and cinematic language still uses “race” as a social framework. In fact, while it has been established that there is no biological basis for the idea of race, notions of racial difference are routinely dramatized by filmmakers and expressed through film and visual media technology.

A 2007 study by the UCLA School of Law and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center found that Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American actors have few acting opportunities available to them. It suggested that 69 percent of roles were reserved for white actors and another 8.5 percent were open to white actors as well as nonwhite actors. Nonwhite actors were limited to between 0.5 percent and about 8 percent of the roles, depending on their racial background. Thus nonwhite actors continue to be marginalized and cast according to largely denigrating racial types (e.g., black man as criminal, Native American as savage—see Miller 1980 , Aleiss 2009 ). The study also found that American cinema remains deeply patriarchal and centered on white masculine heroes. In a content analysis of major films, men were almost three times as likely as women to work in the first-billed lead role. Women made up 44 percent of second-billed roles and 40 percent of third-billed roles, but were outnumbered by men in each category. Due to institutional and cultural sexism, filmmakers still privilege male characters and limit female roles. Thus nonwhite female actors continue to be the most marginalized within the system. Scherr 2008 claims that even films that appear to pose a challenge to dominant representations of identity “do not successfully confront the implicit whiteness of U.S. cinema” (p. 3). Courtney 2005 says that it is imperative to interrogate this cinema’s “history of white vision” (p. 4) (see also Davies and Smith 2000 , Bernardi 2007 ). (References to whiteness as a hegemonic structure are expanded upon in the section titled White .) Hence contemporary references to the miscegenation taboo in films such as Hancock (2008), where races are positioned as incompatible and interracial romance is rejected in favor of racially homogenous unions. As Robinson 2006 observes, casting breakdowns prove that the cinema industry is subject to extreme racial and sexual discrimination. As Shohat and Stam 1994 notes, fictional identities are creative ventures, and so casting can be seen as unimportant. But casting must be seen “in contingent terms, in relation to the role, the political and esthetic intention, and to the historical moment” (p. 191). Hamilton and Block 2003 explores the history of racial representation in American cinema, while Davies and Smith 2000 considers contemporary issues.

Aleiss, Angela. Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies . Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.

Aleiss examines the history of Native American representation onscreen, examining the positive and negative stereotypes that have emerged across a range of films. She finds that Native Americans have been positioned as sympathetic more than savage/tragic and explores the contradictions of race onscreen with reference to primary sources.

Bernardi, Daniel, ed. The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema . London: Routledge, 2007.

In this collection, scholars explore the role that narratives of race and ethnicity have played in Hollywood representations, also considering the role of class, gender, and sexuality. Scholars explore these discourses across a range of genres, styles, and stars of American filmmaking.

Courtney, Susan. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Courtney’s comprehensive analysis of interracial relationships onscreen unpacks ideas of whiteness in order to establish how historical visualizations of blackness manifested insecurity and undermined narratives of equality. She notes a continuing degree of resistance to change; many films appear to renounce the miscegenation taboo yet reassert it and other classical Hollywood stereotypes (e.g., Guess Who , a 2005 remake of miscegenation classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner ).

Davies, Jude, and Carol R. Smith. Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film . Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.

Considering how screen representations of race are reflective of political and cultural attitudes toward multiculturalism, this work on identity politics explores contemporary representations of race and ethnicity in American cinema.

Hamilton, Marsha J., and Eleanor S. Block. Projecting Ethnicity and Race: An Annotated Bibliography of Studies on Imagery in American Film . Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.

In this bibliography, Hamilton and Block review nearly five hundred books, essays, reference works, and book chapters on American cinema published between 1915 and 2001 that focus on racial, ethnic, and national representations on film.

Miller, Randall M., ed. The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups . Englewood, NJ: Jerome S. Ozer, 1980.

In this collection a range of scholars examine Hollywood as ethnographer of various racial and ethnic groups exploring Irish, Jewish, Hispanic, Italian, Slavic, Asian, German, Indian, and black representations in American film.

Robinson, Russell Hollywood’s Race/Ethnicity and Gender-Based Casting: Prospects for a Title VII Lawsuit . Latino Policy and Issues Brief 14. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2006.

The study finds that the absence of a balanced casting system denies minority groups a substantial voice in the cinematic sphere and leads to distorted representations onscreen.

Scherr, Rebecca. “(Not) Queering White Vision.” Jump Cut 50 (2008): 1–19.

In this analysis of racial, sexual, and gender representation, Scherr challenges what she calls the “implicit [heterosexual] whiteness” of American cinematic vision, showing how it structures both the study and production of film and representations of identity politics.

Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media . New York: Routledge, 1994.

This theoretical analysis of multiculturalism and the media explores all aspects of racial imaging and colonial discourse from an historical and contemporary context. Taking a post-structuralist approach, Shohat and Stam explore the possibilities of polycentrism, new forms of representation, and new esthetic and identity politics coming from the cinemas of the developing world.

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In this excerpt from her essay for Regeneration’s companion volume, film scholar Ellen C. Scott considers how a late-period race film examined the wrongs of the criminal justice system.

An established and prolific mode of production in the silent cinema era, race filmmaking often portrayed aspirational narratives of Black success while also revealing, if sometimes inadvertently, the realities of racial injustice and poverty. While race films saw a decline in the late 1920s with the arrival of sound and associated increased costs, Reform School (1939), made by white producers who could get the capital to finance it, continued the race film’s unique mode of engagement with the complexities of the Black community.

Harry M. Popkin and Leo C. Popkin’s Million Dollar Productions, the company that produced Reform School , is notable for having consistently worked closely with Black community members to make race films that reflected social issues such as criminalization, justice denied, fugitivity, and Black-on-Black crime. [1] The Popkins broached racial oppression but did so without pessimism. They maintained good relations with the Black press and the white trade press, eliciting consistently positive reviews in Variety and regular coverage in the Black press. They also sold their films to both Black and white theaters. [2] Reform School tells the story of Freddie Barton (Reginald Fenderson), a Black teenager convicted of a petty offense who consequently cannot find work and falls back into a life of crime. When Mother Barton (Louise Beavers), an understanding and tough probation officer, witnesses Freddie in agony as he’s confined to reform school under a cruel superintendent named Stone (Edward Thompson),  she works to have him removed and takes over as superintendent. Barton places the troubled youth on an honor system to teach them to respect the law rather than fear it. The boys take advantage of her at first, but eventually they grow to respect her. So successful are Barton’s policies that they are implemented statewide, and the boys secure good jobs upon leaving reform school.

Barton, who embodies the “lifting as we climb” ideals of the historical Black women’s club movement, condemns the criminal justice system for the ways that it imperils “her” boys. [3] Dressed in furs and high hats as matron of the reform school—a far cry from the mammies Beavers often played in white Hollywood films—Barton takes on all the dignity of middle-class Black uplift that we might expect from Mary Church Terrell. [4] In transforming Barton into the upstanding “mother” to a community of Black boys, the film represents the important roles that Black women have historically played in their own communities, roles that Hollywood largely erased. Reform School admits of the violence that haunts Black life but believes more wholeheartedly in the goodness of Black youth and the necessity of removing the punitive edge of reform than do many crime dramas today. The film’s history provides a rare window into the unique filmmaking practices of one of the only production companies in Hollywood making race films, one that took its production techniques from the studios but its cues on racial representation from members of the Black community.

Full essay available in the Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 exhibition catalogue, available for purchase at the Academy Museum Store .

[1] The Well (1951)—a later film from the Popkins that treats race riots with a singular combination of force and racial delicacy—is a good example of this.

[2] For more on their being marketed to white theaters, see “‘Bargain with Bullets’ Is Cinematic Bargain,” New York Age , December 4, 1937. The author states that the film was shown to the Loew’s theater chain.

[3] See Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994 (New York: Norton, 1999).The concept of“lifting as we climb” has been an ethos guiding Black feminist political activism for generations and was also the motto of the National Association of Colored Women.

[4] Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) was an influential Black suffragist who devoted her life work to the idea that Blacks could help diminish white racism by advancing themselves through work, education, and community organizing.

Ellen C. Scott is associate professor of cinema and media studies and associate dean of the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA. Her research focuses on the meanings of media in African American communities and the relationship of media to the struggle for racial justice and equality. She is the author of Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era(Rutgers University Press, 2015). She is currently working on two projects, one exploring Black women film critics and another examining the history of slavery on the American screen, which has received a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Scholars program.

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Hillary clinton on kamala harris’ presidential campaign: “a race democrats can and must win”.

In a guest essay for The New York Times, the 2016 Democratic candidate shared why she knows why the vice president "can defeat" Donald Trump.

By Tatiana Tenreyro

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Hillary Clinton was quick to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign . And now, in a guest essay for The New York Times published on Tuesday, she shared more thoughts about the 2024 election and Harris’ campaign.

Clinton reminded readers that while the “next 15 weeks will be like nothing this country has ever experienced politically,” this is “a race Democrats can and must win” with Harris, who seems likely to be the Democratic nominee.

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“The country mattered more,” she wrote. “As one who shared that dream and has had to make peace with letting it go, I know this wasn’t easy. But it was the right thing to do.”

Clinton then shared why she is “excited” that Harris is running. “She represents a fresh start for American politics,” the former First Lady opined. “She can offer a hopeful, unifying vision. She is talented, experienced and ready to be president. And I know she can defeat Donald Trump.”

With Harris, Clinton argued, there is now “an even sharper, clearer choice in this election. On one side is a convicted criminal who cares only about himself and is trying to turn back the clock on our rights and our country. On the other is a savvy former prosecutor and successful vice president who embodies our faith that America’s best days are still ahead.”

“It’s old grievances versus new solutions,” she added.

Clinton acknowledged that as the first Black and South Asian woman to be “at the top of a major party’s ticket,” Harris “will face unique additional challenges.” However, she advised voters not to be afraid of those obstacles, as “it’s a trap to believe progress is impossible.”

She also praised many of Harris’ accomplishments throughout her career. “As a prosecutor and attorney general in California, she took on drug traffickers, polluters and predatory lenders. As a U.S. senator, she rigorously questioned squirming Trump administration officials and nominees and was inspiring to watch,” Clinton wrote.

She closed her essay with a message for voters: “The time for hand-wringing is over. Now it’s time to organize, mobilize and win.”

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What Kamala Harris has said so far on key issues in her campaign

As she ramps up her nascent presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is revealing how she will address the key issues facing the nation.

In speeches and rallies, she has voiced support for continuing many of President Joe Biden’s measures, such as lowering drug costs , forgiving student loan debt and eliminating so-called junk fees. But Harris has made it clear that she has her own views on some key matters, particularly Israel’s treatment of Gazans in its war with Hamas.

In a departure from her presidential run in 2020, the Harris campaign has confirmed that she’s moved away from many of her more progressive stances, such as her interest in a single-payer health insurance system and a ban on fracking.

Harris is also expected to put her own stamp and style on matters ranging from abortion to the economy to immigration, as she aims to walk a fine line of taking credit for the administration’s accomplishments while not being jointly blamed by voters for its shortcomings.

Her early presidential campaign speeches have offered insights into her priorities, though she’s mainly voiced general talking points and has yet to release more nuanced plans. Like Biden, she intends to contrast her vision for America with that of former President Donald Trump. ( See Trump’s campaign promises here .)

“In this moment, I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” she told members of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta at an event in Indianapolis in late July. “And with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”

Here’s what we know about Harris’ views:

Harris took on the lead role of championing abortion rights for the administration after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. This past January, she started a “ reproductive freedoms tour ” to multiple states, including a stop in Minnesota thought to be the first by a sitting US president or vice president at an abortion clinic .

On abortion access, Harris embraced more progressive policies than Biden in the 2020 campaign, as a candidate criticizing his previous support for the Hyde Amendment , a measure that blocks federal funds from being used for most abortions.

Policy experts suggested that although Harris’ current policies on abortion and reproductive rights may not differ significantly from Biden’s, as a result of her national tour and her own focus on maternal health , she may be a stronger messenger.

High prices are a top concern for many Americans who are struggling to afford the cost of living after a spell of steep inflation. Many voters give Biden poor marks for his handling of the economy, and Harris may also face their wrath.

In her early campaign speeches, Harris has echoed many of the same themes as Biden, saying she wants to give Americans more opportunities to get ahead. She’s particularly concerned about making care – health care, child care, elder care and family leave – more affordable and available.

Harris promised at a late July rally to continue the Biden administration’s drive to eliminate so-called “junk fees” and to fully disclose all charges, such as for events, lodging and car rentals. In early August, the administration proposed a rule that would ban airlines from charging parents extra fees to have their kids sit next to them.

On day one, I will take on price gouging and bring down costs. We will ban more of those hidden fees and surprise late charges that banks and other companies use to pad their profits.”

Since becoming vice president, Harris has taken more moderate positions, but a look at her 2020 campaign promises reveals a more progressive bent than Biden.

As a senator and 2020 presidential candidate, Harris proposed providing middle-class and working families with a refundable tax credit of up to $6,000 a year (per couple) to help keep up with living expenses. Titled the LIFT the Middle Class Act, or Livable Incomes for Families Today, the measure would have cost at the time an estimated $3 trillion over 10 years.

Unlike a typical tax credit, the bill would allow taxpayers to receive the benefit – up to $500 – on a monthly basis so families don’t have to turn to payday loans with very high interest rates.

As a presidential candidate, Harris also advocated for raising the corporate income tax rate to 35%, where it was before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through Congress reduced the rate to 21%. That’s higher than the 28% Biden has proposed.

Affordable housing was also on Harris’ radar. As a senator, she introduced the Rent Relief Act, which would establish a refundable tax credit for renters who annually spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent and utilities. The amount of the credit would range from 25% to 100% of the excess rent, depending on the renter’s income.

Harris called housing a human right and said in a 2019 news release on the bill that every American deserves to have basic security and dignity in their own home.

Consumer debt

Hefty debt loads, which weigh on people’s finances and hurt their ability to buy homes, get car loans or start small businesses, are also an area of interest to Harris.

As vice president, she has promoted the Biden administration’s initiatives on student debt, which have so far forgiven more than $168 billion for nearly 4.8 million borrowers . In mid-July, Harris said in a post on X that “nearly 950,000 public servants have benefitted” from student debt forgiveness, compared with only 7,000 when Biden was inaugurated.

A potential Harris administration could keep that momentum going – though some of Biden’s efforts have gotten tangled up in litigation, such as a program aimed at cutting monthly student loan payments for roughly 3 million borrowers enrolled in a repayment plan the administration implemented last year.

The vice president has also been a leader in the White House efforts to ban medical debt from credit reports, noting that those with medical debt are no less likely to repay a loan than those who don’t have unpaid medical bills.

In a late July statement praising North Carolina’s move to relieve the medical debt of about 2 million residents, Harris said that she is “committed to continuing to relieve the burden of medical debt and creating a future where every person has the opportunity to build wealth and thrive.”

Health care

Harris, who has had shifting stances on health care in the past, confirmed in late July through her campaign that she no longer supports a single-payer health care system .

During her 2020 campaign, Harris advocated for shifting the US to a government-backed health insurance system but stopped short of wanting to completely eliminate private insurance.

The measure called for transitioning to a Medicare-for-All-type system over 10 years but continuing to allow private insurance companies to offer Medicare plans.

The proposal would not have raised taxes on the middle class to pay for the coverage expansion. Instead, it would raise the needed funds by taxing Wall Street trades and transactions and changing the taxation of offshore corporate income.

When it comes to reducing drug costs, Harris previously proposed allowing the federal government to set “a fair price” for any drug sold at a cheaper price in any economically comparable country, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Japan or Australia. If manufacturers were found to be price gouging, the government could import their drugs from abroad or, in egregious cases, use its existing but never-used “march-in” authority to license a drug company’s patent to a rival that would produce the medication at a lower cost.

Harris has been a champion on climate and environmental justice for decades. As California’s attorney general, Harris sued big oil companies like BP and ConocoPhillips, and investigated Exxon Mobil for its role in climate change disinformation. While in the Senate, she sponsored the Green New Deal resolution.

During her 2020 campaign, she enthusiastically supported a ban on fracking — but a Harris campaign official said in late July that she no longer supports such a ban.

Fracking is the process of using liquid to free natural gas from rock formations – and the primary mode for extracting gas for energy in battleground Pennsylvania. During a September 2019 climate crisis town hall hosted by CNN, she said she would start “with what we can do on Day 1 around public lands.” She walked that back later when she became Biden’s running mate.

Biden has been the most pro-climate president in history, and climate advocates find Harris to be an exciting candidate in her own right. Democrats and climate activists are planning to campaign on the stark contrasts between Harris and Trump , who vowed to push America decisively back to fossil fuels, promising to unwind Biden’s climate and clean energy legacy and pull America out of its global climate commitments.

If elected, one of the biggest climate goals Harris would have to craft early in her administration is how much the US would reduce its climate pollution by 2035 – a requirement of the Paris climate agreement .

Immigration

Harris has quickly started trying to counter Trump’s attacks on her immigration record.

Her campaign released a video in late July citing Harris’ support for increasing the number of Border Patrol agents and Trump’s successful push to scuttle a bipartisan immigration deal that included some of the toughest border security measures in recent memory.

The vice president has changed her position on border control since her 2020 campaign, when she suggested that Democrats needed to “critically examine” the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, after being asked whether she sided with those in the party arguing to abolish the department.

In June of this year, the White House announced a crackdown on asylum claims meant to continue reducing crossings at the US-Mexico border – a policy that Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, indicated in late July to CBS News would continue under a Harris administration.

Trump’s attacks stem from Biden having tasked Harris with overseeing diplomatic efforts in Central America in March 2021. While Harris focused on long-term fixes, the Department of Homeland Security remained responsible for overseeing border security.

She has only occasionally talked about her efforts as the situation along the US-Mexico border became a political vulnerability for Biden. But she put her own stamp on the administration’s efforts, engaging the private sector.

Harris pulled together the Partnership for Central America, which has acted as a liaison between companies and the US government. Her team and the partnership are closely coordinating on initiatives that have led to job creation in the region. Harris has also engaged directly with foreign leaders in the region.

Experts credit Harris’ ability to secure private-sector investments as her most visible action in the region to date but have cautioned about the long-term durability of those investments.

Israel-Hamas

The Israel-Hamas war is the most fraught foreign policy issue facing the country and has spurred a multitude of protests around the US since it began in October.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late July, Harris gave a forceful and notable speech about the situation in Gaza.

We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

Harris echoed Biden’s repeated comments about the “ironclad support” and “unwavering commitment” to Israel. The country has a right to defend itself, she said, while noting, “how it does so, matters.”

However, the empathy she expressed regarding the Palestinian plight and suffering was far more forceful than what Biden has said on the matter in recent months. Harris mentioned twice the “serious concern” she expressed to Netanyahu about the civilian deaths in Gaza, the humanitarian situation and destruction she called “catastrophic” and “devastating.”

She went on to describe “the images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.”

Harris emphasized the need to get the Israeli hostages back from Hamas captivity, naming the eight Israeli-American hostages – three of whom have been killed.

But when describing the ceasefire deal in the works, she didn’t highlight the hostage for prisoner exchange or aid to be let into Gaza. Instead, she singled out the fact that the deal stipulates the withdrawal by the Israeli military from populated areas in the first phase before withdrawing “entirely” from Gaza before “a permanent end to the hostilities.”

Harris didn’t preside over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in late July, instead choosing to stick with a prescheduled trip to a sorority event in Indiana.

Harris is committed to supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, having met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at least six times and announcing last month $1.5 billion for energy assistance, humanitarian needs and other aid for the war-torn country.

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Harris said: “I will make clear President Joe Biden and I stand with Ukraine. In partnership with supportive, bipartisan majorities in both houses of the United States Congress, we will work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine so badly needs. And let me be clear: The failure to do so would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”

More broadly, NATO is central to our approach to global security. For President Biden and me, our sacred commitment to NATO remains ironclad. And I do believe, as I have said before, NATO is the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.”

Police funding

The Harris campaign has also walked back the “defund the police” sentiment that Harris voiced in 2020. What she meant is she supports being “tough and smart on crime,” Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair for the Harris campaign and former mayor of New Orleans, told CNN’s Pamela Brown in late July.

In the midst of nationwide 2020 protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Harris voiced support for the “defund the police” movement, which argues for redirecting funds from law enforcement to social services. Throughout that summer, Harris supported the movement and called for demilitarizing police departments.

Democrats largely backed away from calls to defund the police after Republicans attempted to tie the movement to increases in crime during the 2022 midterm elections.

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Netherlands' Femke Bol steals 4x400 mixed relay win from Team USA in Paris Olympics

SAINT-DENIS, France — The U.S. 4x400 mixed relay team broke the world record in the opening round, but the final had a different outcome at the Paris Olympics .

After breaking the world record in the preliminary round, the USA's Kaylyn Brown was caught on her anchor leg by Netherlands' Femke Bol with about 10 minutes to go.

Bol then passed Brown and crossed the line in 3:07.43 to win the mixed relay for the Netherlands. Brown and Team USA's team featuring Vernon Norwood, Shamier Little, Kaylyn Brown and Bryce Deadmon came in second at 3:07.74. Great Britian rounded out the top with at 3:08.01.

The U.S. team led nearly the entire race but Bol, who runs the 400-meter hurdles, was too strong on the final leg.

“I just went for it," Bol said after the race. "We just wanted a medal this time, we didn’t think it would be gold, just a medal. Well, we got gold and are the Olympic champions. It is absolutely crazy for a small country like ours.”

≻ Get Olympics updates in your texts! Join USA TODAY Sports' WhatsApp Channel

Team USA had previously set the 4x400 mixed relay record last year at the 2023 world championships before they broke the mark again during the qualifying round. However, they settled for a silver medal in Paris.

The mixed relay was first introduced at the 2017 IAAF World Relays. Team USA finished third in the 4x400 mixed relay at the Tokyo Olympics, which was the first mixed relay competition at an Olympic Games.

The USA TODAY app brings you every Team USA medal — right when it happens.  Download for full Olympics coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and much more .

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Guest Essay

What the Polls Tell Us About Harris vs. Trump

By Kristen Soltis Anderson

Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion’s series of focus groups.

Whatever your feelings are about Donald Trump as a candidate, the pollster Tony Fabrizio, a top adviser for all of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns, knows his business. He saw a path to a Trump victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 that others didn’t. Campaigns often leak polling memos to drive a preferred narrative, so it’s sensible to take such memos with a grain of salt, but when Mr. Fabrizio puts one out , I take it seriously.

So when he warned last week of a “ Harris Honeymoon ” as Democrats were rallying around the vice president, I knew it was only a matter of time before the public polls would show what the Trump campaign was likely seeing privately. Two days later, there it was: the New York Times/Siena College poll showed the race narrowing to just a one-point Trump advantage nationally over Vice President Kamala Harris among likely voters, a major shift from a prior Times/Siena poll which showed Mr. Trump ahead of President Biden by six points.

This is, to use the parlance of our time, a vibe shift. It’s hard for me to overstate the euphoria Republican activists were feeling about the election coming out of their convention in Milwaukee. And, indeed, before the shake-up atop the Democratic ticket, most voters said that they thought Mr. Trump would win in November, according to a July poll by Echelon Insights, where I am a founding partner. Now, with around $200 million raised for Ms. Harris in a week, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a somewhat different result if you asked voters that question again.

There are two things giving Ms. Harris a lift in the short term: unity and energy.

The first is the party unity she enjoys by virtue of being the presumptive nominee without having had to endure a bruising Democratic primary battle. I’ve described this as the equivalent of a video game cheat code that lets you skip past some difficult but tedious early levels on the way to directly fighting the big bad boss at the end of the game. Harris didn’t have to spend the last year getting pummeled by, or trying to pummel, Democratic presidential rivals, almost certainly including some of the very Democrats who are now under consideration to be her vice-presidential nominee. While some of the out-of-the-mainstream views she espoused during her unsuccessful 2020 presidential run will no doubt follow her in this election, Ms. Harris benefits greatly from not yet having had to renavigate several issues that divide the Democratic Party these days, including border security, crime and policing and the war in Gaza.

The second thing Ms. Harris gets is a Democratic voter coalition reset to Obama-era factory settings. Democrats haven’t always done better with younger voters, but starting with the 2008 cycle, Democrats really began running up the numbers in that group. Advantages among voters of color grew substantially as well, triggering Republican panic . The Trump-Biden rematch, however, saw a reduction in polarization along generational and racial lines, with Mr. Trump narrowing Mr. Biden’s margins among groups like Black men and Generation Z. With Mr. Biden out and Ms. Harris in, early evidence suggests some reversion to the before times; according to last week’s accounts of the Times/Siena poll, Ms. Harris is “faring better among groups that Mr. Biden had been the weakest in, especially younger voters and nonwhite voters.”

America is a pretty evenly divided country. We are fairly split down the middle in terms of partisan identification. We’re also deeply polarized, with few people breaking from their own side to express support for a candidate of another party. I believe Mr. Biden’s age and apparent decline functioned like a black hole that bends light around it, warping our view of the evenly divided electorate. Now, with that distorting force removed, we’re back to the very close race we could have and should have expected all along.

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Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

This essay is aimed at discussing the way in which race and ethnicity can be represented in modern films and artworks. In many cases, they can throw light on the changes that take place within a community during a certain period. In particular, it is necessary to analyze such a movie as Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich. Furthermore, one can consider the famous X-Men comics. These examples are very informative because they can eloquently illustrate the values and attitudes, which are proclaimed by American society. Overall, their main message is that America is a diverse community in which racial and ethnic differences must not act as dividing lines; moreover, they should not be viewed as the underlying causes of conflict within the community.

This is one of the messages that these artworks are supposed to convey. On the whole, filmmakers and artists can achieve this goal in different ways. In particular, they focus on characters who are not very concerned about racial or ethnic distinctions, which are completely irrelevant to them. Apart from that, various authors may try to dispel some of the stereotypes that people can easily take for granted because these false assumptions often lead to the marginalization of social groups or individuals. This is the main thesis that should be elaborated in greater detail.

At first, one can consider the movie Independence Day because it shows how the representative of different ethnic and racial groups can be empowered with the help of cinematography. In particular, this film depicts an alien invasion of Earth, and this plot enables the director to describe various representatives of American society and their interactions with one another. For example, one can mention such a character as Captain Steven Hiller, whose part was brilliantly played by Will Smith. It should be noted that he is a courageous and independent person who is ready to risk his life for the sake of his country. In addition to that, he serves in Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 1 .

One should keep in mind that at the time when this film was released, there were not many movies that portrayed African Americans as soldiers. This is one of the details that should be taken into account. To some degree, such a character is supposed to break different stereotypes according to which black people are predominantly engaged in criminal or anti-social activities. In contrast, Steven Hiller is an example of a person who is able to achieve high social status. Moreover, there are stereotypes according to which African Americans are not able to defend themselves against injustice. They can be regarded only as helpless victims who cannot withstand injustice. In contrast, the character played by Will Smith is not a person who can be easily intimidated. To some degree, Steven Hiller is an eloquent counter-example that can break many racial stereotypes existing in the community. This is one of the strategies that film-makers can adopt in order to change public opinion about the notions of race and ethnicity. Moreover, they can shape the values and attitudes of the audience.

Furthermore, it is possible to consider such a character as David Levinson, who invents a method of defeating aliens and eventually saving the planet. One should keep in mind that he is an MIT graduate working as a satellite technician. To some degree, this image is supposed to dismiss the widely held assumption according to which Jewish people are concerned only with material prosperity and their own well-being.

They have been very widespread in the United States and other countries. In contrast, this person is an individual who is not afraid of confronting danger. One should keep in mind that the volunteers to accompany Steven Hiller, who has to launch an assault on the aliens. Thus, one can argue that this character is also a very eloquent example of how negative stereotypes can be refuted in cinematographic work. To some degree, the movie Independence Day is supposed to demonstrate that American society has succeeded in eliminating the legacies of racial or ethnic discrimination. One can say that Independence Day depicts people who may come from different countries or even continents. In turn, an alien invasion is an event demonstrating that racial and ethnic distinctions should not be regarded as dividing lines which do not even need to exist in modern society. This is one of the aspects that can be distinguished.

It should be noted that the representation of race and ethnicity in artworks and films have been examined by various researchers and art historians. For example, one can mention such an author as Albert Boime, who examines the way in which racial minorities could be portrayed in various artworks. This scholar notes that they were normally placed at the bottom of the social pyramid. Moreover, they had to be “in a humble or service position” 2 . One can say that these people could be easily dehumanized.

Overall, such an approach denied many people the very right to dignity and individuality. To some degree, this trend has persisted for many years. Yet, during the last three decades, many film directors, writers, and artists have attempted to refute some of these stereotypes. In turn, the film Independence Day demonstrates how public opinion can be changed. There are many other films in which the issues of race and ethnicity are explored in a more subtle way. Nevertheless, this specific movie provides many vivid examples showing the ideal image of American society can be constructed by film-makers who represent the power of mass media. This is one of the points that can be made.

It is also possible to examine the famous comics called X-Men because they are an eloquent example of popular art incorporating both visual images and text. These comics were first published in the early sixties, and since that time, they have remained rather popular among diverse readers. To some degree, this artwork can also highlight the diversity of the modern American society that is represented by people belonging to different ethnic, racial, and religious groups. One of the main messages explored by this film is that race or ethnicity should not become a cause of conflict among individuals who represent a specific community. The characters included in this comic book are not concerned about being white or black. Similarly, they can belong to various ethnic groups. These characters can be of Jewish, Scottish, or Russian origins 3 .

Moreover, they have diverse religious backgrounds. Nevertheless, these differences never become a cause of conflict or hostility. This is one of the details that should not be overlooked. Certainly, the readers of these comics can learn about the ethnic background or cultural background of the major characters. Moreover, readers can learn that some of them could be the victims of discrimination in the past. For example, one can speak about such a character as Magneto, who was a prisoner of the concentration camp. However, this comic book does not lay stress on the ethnic origin of this character. More likely, this episode is necessary for showing why Magneto has turned into a sociopath who despises people, especially those one who are not mutants.

The characters depicted by the author can accept their racial or ethnic identity; nevertheless, this issue is not of the greatest importance to them. To some degree, this behavior can be explained by the fact that these people are completely self-sufficient. These are some of the main details that can attract the attention of the viewers.

Admittedly, it is possible to argue this emphasis on diversity can be partly explained by the willingness of directors to target a larger audience. In this way, one can increase the box office of a movie or sales rate of a comic book. In some cases, these characters are designed to appeal to a specific demographic group. Thus, one should not forget that films and artworks are commercial products which can be developed according to certain marketing standards. Therefore, directors and artists may have other considerations, apart from aesthetic criteria or social considerations. This is one of the issues that should not be disregarded by viewers or readers.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the behavior of characters described in these comics reflects some of the trends that manifest themselves in modern society. For example, in her article, Susan Saulny argues that the influence of the color line becomes less significant, even in those regions in which racist attitudes were very widespread several decades ago. This author exemplifies this idea by discussing such a trend interracial marriages, which are becoming much more widespread. Moreover, the percentage of such marriages has increased significantly in such regions as North Caroline and Georgia 4 . One should keep in mind that these parts of the United States were profoundly affected by racism that existed at institutional and informal levels.

Additionally, Janny Scott and David Leonhardt also describe the experiences of people who do not usually pay much attention to such notions as ethnicity, race, or religion; in particular, one should speak about those individuals who belong to the middle-class 5 . Such people are less likely to emphasize the importance of race and ethnicity because they do not believe that their lives are significantly affected by these factors. Thus, the artworks, which have been selected for the discussion, reflect some of the major social trends affecting the lives of Americans.

On the whole, the chosen examples indicate that rate and ethnicity can be explored in modern art and cinema. One of the main ideas that the film-directors and artist are trying to convey is that racial and ethnic distinctions should not be perceived as some barrier that can prevent people from understanding one another. Moreover, such barriers can result in the dehumanization of a person. Furthermore, by refuting some of the stereotypes about ethnic or racial groups, film-makers and authors are able to demonstrate that such distinctions are often artificially constructed. Furthermore, such assumptions should not be taken for granted. These are the main arguments that can be advanced.

Works Cited

Boime, Albert “Blacks in Shark-Infested Waters: Visual Encodings of Racism in Copley and Homer.” Race-ing Art History . Ed. Kymberly Pinder. New York, Routlegde, 2002. 169-190. Print.

Irwin, William. X-Men and Philosophy: Astonishing Insight and Uncanny Argument in the Mutant X-Verse , New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print.

Independence Day . Ex. Prod. Dean Delvin. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1996. DVD. Web.

Saulny, Susan. “ Race remixed: Black and white and married in the deep south: a shifting image .” The New York Time. NYT. 2011. Web.

Scott, Janny and David Leonhardt, “ Shadowy lines that still divide. ” The New York Time. NYT. 2005. Web.

1 Independence Day . Ex. Prod. Dean Delvin. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1996. DVD. Web.

2 Albert, Boime “Blacks in Shark-Infested Waters: Visual Encodings of Racism in Copley and Homer,” Race-ing Art History , ed. Kymberly Pinder (New York, Routlegde, 2002) 170. Web.

3 William Irwin, X-Men and Philosophy: Astonishing Insight and Uncanny Argument in the Mutant X-Verse (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009) 185. Web.

4 Susan Saulny, “Race Remixed: Black and white and married in the deep south: a shifting image.” The New York Times. NYT. 2011. Web.

5 Janny Scott and David Leonhardt, “Shadowy lines that still divide.” The New York Time. NYT. 2005. Web.

• The Film "Pocahontas" by Walt Disney Pictures
• Gender in Film: "Penelope" by Mark Palansky
• The "Lincoln" Movie by Steven Spielberg
• American literature: Steven Wallace
• Lincoln by Steven Spielberg: A Movie Review
• Chinatown' by Roman Polanski Film Analysis
• “The Breakfast Club” Film Analysis
• Business Management Issues in the Film "Office Space"
• The Female Role Analysis in the Film "Rear Window"
• “The Intouchables” a Film by Olivier Nakache
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 20). Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films. https://ivypanda.com/essays/race-and-ethnicity-representation-in-art-and-films/

"Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films." IvyPanda , 20 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/race-and-ethnicity-representation-in-art-and-films/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films'. 20 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films." May 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/race-and-ethnicity-representation-in-art-and-films/.

1. IvyPanda . "Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films." May 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/race-and-ethnicity-representation-in-art-and-films/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Race and Ethnicity Representation in Art and Films." May 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/race-and-ethnicity-representation-in-art-and-films/.

Austria Submits Berlinale Prizewinning Thriller ‘The Devil’s Bath’ for Oscars International Feature Film Race

By Elsa Keslassy

Elsa Keslassy

International Correspondent

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“ The Devil’s Bath, ” a period psychological thriller which competed at the Berlin Film Festival, has been submitted by Austria as its official Oscar entry for the international feature film race. The film picked up the Silver Bear for best cinematography (for Martin Gschlacht) at the Berlinale . 

“The Devil’s Bath” is directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the Austrian filmmaking duo behind “Goodnight Mommy” which had bowed at Venice and had also represented Austria in the Oscar race. It went on to be remade into an English-language film released by Amazon under the same title, starring Naomi Watts.

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Based on historical records, the film is inspired by the true stories of women who attempted to end their lives by committing murders in order to escape the damnation promised to men and women who committed suicide. “The Devil’s Bath” sheds light on the plight of women whose lives during that era was defined by religious dogma and taboos.

The movie is being handled by  Shudder  in North America. The streamer also picked it up for the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It’s been sold around the world by Playtime.

“The Devil’s Bath” was produced by Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion, in co-production with Heimatfilm and Coop99 Filmproduktion.

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