NO! -- Slavery Scenes
In our class discussion of "No! The Rape Documentary" I got very frustrated listening to many of my classmates critque and say that the scenes of the black female slaves and their masters were annoying and pointless. I did understand that they were renacted and a bit corny, but with such little resources this is probaby the best that they could do. Movies are not just about the image they are also about the message. The message that these scenes represented was very important because even today they are not being mentioned. This idea of the white, male being more powerful and taking control of the black females was not addressed 100 years ago, but it is still not being addressed today. I can't even begin to tell you all of the alerts and warnings that the University has sent me through email this semester. They are keeping us updated about the crime and violence going on around campus, but almost every email has described the attacker as a black or asian, male, age 19-24, and usually wearing a hooded sweatshirt. There is also an excerpt at the bottom of all these emails stating that racial segregation is not something to act on alone, but with all these emails repeating the same image people are going to associate them with crime. My point is that there are other people out there commiting these same crimes, so why aren't we getting emails about them? Well, this is due to the same issue that the film "NO!" brought up people are too scared to report crimes commited by white males, because it is more likely that officials will not listen or act on these reports especially if the males are wealthy or upperclass. White males are still receiving power and privelege over females especially over women of color, which is giving them easy access to not only rape, but abuse verbally and physically. Not enough attention is being directed toward this issue, which is why I was so upset after our discussion because I believe those scenes were very important.