Film Studies: “Out in the Night” by Blair Doroshwalther

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Reflection
The inside story and revelation
Separation and mistreatment
Institutionalized discrimination
Conflict management
Conclusion

Introduction

The film, Out in the Night, highlights the case of a group of four young African-American lesbians from New Jersey who go out for a night in the West Village streets. The four women, viz. Venice Brown, Terrain Dandridge, Renata Hill, and Patreese Johnson, pass by a man by the name Buckle, who is selling films on the streets. The man provokes Patreese, after which she responds by telling him that she is a lesbian, but he reacts by spitting and throwing a lit cigarette on her.

The girls engage in self-defense, and thus a fight erupts. Patreese stubs Buckle with a penknife in retaliation. When the fight intensifies, the women walk away with bruised faces and bleeding lips. The girls are confronted by the police, arrested, and later charged with different degrees of gang assault, and thus they end up serving sentences of 3-11 years of incarceration.

One cannot understand the subtle manner in which the girls are labeled as gang members, yet they acted in self-defense, while Buckle, who provokes them, comes out as an innocent victim, yet he is the aggressor. This paper seeks to explore the injustices faced by several groups due to disparities of gender, race, social class, sexuality, and region in respect to what is perceived as self-defense by the society and the law.

Reflection

Out in the Night challenges individuals to reflect on their life experiences and think of how they have helped to change their current situations and cases of others who happen to share similar events. One critical question that comes up is whether people act when they feel that their rights are threatened. Also, if people act by reporting the cases, is the law justified in its course to rational conflict resolution procedures?

The movie reflects on how contemporary society responds to the offenses directed to individuals whether intentionally or unknowingly. In the case of the four girls, the court is viewed as an institution that decides who gets what and why concerning gender, sexuality, race, and class.

The court intentionally looks at one side of the story, which perceives Buckle as a justified admirer, not based on facts but racial background and gender. On the other hand, Blair views the four accused women as gender non-conformists who know their rights and they are ready to fight for their liberation. The film is vital since it adds to the debates of race injustices around the globe and especially against the black community in the United States.

The inside story and revelation

The film carefully unleashes the events leading to the four girls’ imprisonment with a primary agenda of revealing the faulty in the law systems coupled with how the system works unjustly for the people perceived as superior at the expense of the minority groups. Out in the Night is not just a revelation, but also a kick-starter to reflect and think of the complex issues of racial discrimination and the possible ways out of the issue.

Failure and pressure by the court do not bar the girls from telling their side of the story. During the interviews by Blair, the girls are calm, and they bravely believe that their fight for justice will save future victims from racism and injustices. The story highlights the many challenges and stereotyping that minority groups go through in society and the law enforcers who press charges erroneously based on racial and sexuality grounds coupled with a partisan justice system that propagates shabbiness.

Separation and mistreatment

This film evokes numerous unanswered questions, but it gives insight to people to fight for what belongs to them without relenting. The issue of the four African American lesbians is just but a representative of the many cases of mistreatment that are never reported and the numerous individuals under incarceration for unclear reasons based on biased and subjective evidence.

The rights of the convicted girls are infringed because they are convicted based on shoddy evidence, and the court separates them from their families through distance. Renata’s mother has to travel 371 miles overnight to go and share a moment with her daughter at the Albion correctional facility.

Renata is deprived of her rights to see or communicate with her son. The prison policies are highly constraining alongside gender and sexuality cases. In the interviews, Renata talks of the stretching panties that she is forced to wear and how she misses her boxers. Later, she learns of her mother’s death through a phone call from home, but she is denied the chance to go and mourn her mother.

Institutionalized discrimination

The institutions that the society relies on to get justice have been compromised, and thus forsaken the concerns of the minority groups. The media is expected to steer debates to call for justice and the well-being of all people, the police officers are not concerned with taking consistent investigations when one party is perceived to be superior, while the courts cannot be relied on to bring justice to all people irrespective of their race or sexual orientation among other aspects.

The prisons are located very far from the residences of the four victims, which is an attempt to sever family links. Renata, during an interview with Blair, claims that the girls had decided to go out to New York because they thought the place was cool and they did not anticipate such discriminations.

Conflict management

The United States’ right to self-defense allows the use of force while responding to threats intruding an individual’s life. This definition does not include other attachments, but the law and the media construct biased assertions to favor some racial affiliations, higher social classes, and the heterosexuals. Media inflames the pain further by backing and glorifying the court decisions.

A headline in the New York Post labeled the girls as killer lesbians, and the journalist had the gumption to accuse the lesbians as a group of individuals who were out to get blood, thus painting the wrong picture concerning the case and the innocent girls. Although the film shows some light camera footage showing that Buckle provokes the girls who then act in self-defense, the court overlooks this evidence and sticks to the claim that the girls are the aggressors.

With all the evidence, the police officers fail to carry out proper investigations by ignoring the obscene language used by Buckle. Judges, while deciding a case, are allowed by the law to allude to previous similar cases and make judgments based on the same.

In this case, the judge does not consider the occasional assaults that African American women encounter and the need for self-defense from such injustices that are common in contemporary American society. This movie evokes the debate of who is eligible to self-defense or who gets to be called a gang member. Conflict resolution measures look very promising, but the law enforcers are easily moved by mere disparities, thus compromising the entire justice system.

Conclusion

Out in the Night is a sensational film, which highlights injustices and discrimination that befall the minority groups in the United States. Patreese, who is the last to complete her prison term, walks out to join the rest of society knowing that she has won justice for African-American women. Buckle comes out as a coward and a loser guided by instincts and perception of superiority of his race, gender, and sexuality.

The roles of the media and the prosecution chambers are laced with prejudices. Framing the women as a lesbian gang is the highest degree of a mockery of individual liberty, which should not be tolerated under any grounds in contemporary times. This film should serve as an awakening call for people to see the big picture of the society and learn to accommodate everyone regardless of the inherent disparities whether by nature or nurture.

The media should eliminate substandard and discriminatory reporting. Instead, the media and law enforcers should ensure that amicable conflict resolution procedures are in place. However, self-defense may never work if the victims of the injustices do not come out strongly to fight for what they own rightfully and constitutionally. This film is an all-time reminder of the role that everyone should play in the fight against racism, injustice, and inequality.

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