Part 1: Plot

Sequence 1 – Prologue In the prologue, instrumental music plays. Typewriter text over a black background writes out “we live between two worlds,” followed by the same effect on the next screen writing “the digital and the real.” After a pause with a black screen, the title Pas de Deux appears in the same script.

Sequence 2 – Waking Up Wide establishing shots introduce the setting of Horn Hall, its entrance, and finally the door to a bedroom. Within that bedroom, a wide show shows Chandler sleeping. Her iPhone alarm rings, and a quick close-up shows it greeting her good morning. In a medium shot, we see Chandler grab her phone and start scrolling through Twitter. The images she sees are reflected in the wall, including several racialized memes and videos. As the camera zooms into Chandler’s eye, we see the image reflected within it.

Sequence 3 – Getting Ready Exiting her room, Chandler walks toward the camera and turns right into the bathroom. Inside, we see through an over the shoulder shot that she is preparing to post a photo to Instagram. The music crescendos. As she posts, a wide shot reveals another image of Chandler appear on the other side of the mirror, our first glimpse of her alter-ego Chandy. Chandy is already dressed in a polished outfit with Instagram like notifications popping up all around her. She touches up her hair as Chandler brushes her teeth in her pajamas.

Sequence 4 – Walking to Class We see split screen wide shots of Chandler and Chandy walking to class. Chandler keeps her head down as she passes Desmond wearing a purple shirt and a backpack. Chandy waves enthusiastically as Digital Desmond strolls by in a hoodie and backpackless. In a single screen wide shot, Chandler walks towards Ben, also wearing a backpack. As the two pass, Chandy appears in Chandler’s place and Digital Ben’s walks on backpackless, though wearing the same clothes.

Sequence 5 – The Classroom Chander arrives to class where Sarah waits. The two greet each other, and as Chandler takes out her phone, Chandy reappears next to her, now appearing significantly larger than Chandler. Chandy sits on the desk and basks in more likes. Chandler and Sarah discuss a friend’s Instagram post, which Chandler calls “so extra” just as an over the shoulder shot shows her liking it on her phone. The sequence ends as the Professor calls the class to order.

Sequence 6 – The Gym A long shot shows Chandler walking into the gym toward the treadmills. As she starts her run, Chandy appears on the treadmill next door walking slowly and flexing for the mirror. A brief close-up of Chandler’s treadmill shows her slowing down. Chandy immediately chides her for stopping, reminding her that spring break is around the corner. Chandler reluctantly turns her speed back up.

Sequence 7 – Bedtime In a split screen shot, Chandler sits in bed scrolling on her phone. We see her phone screen appear on Chandy’s abdomen. As Chandler goes to delete the Instagram app, Chandy looks purposefully at her and says “but what would you be without me.” Chandler deletes the app, and both sides go dark. After a moment, Chandy’s side illuminates again. An extreme close up shows her expressionless face.  

Sequence 8 – Epilogue The text from the prologue reappears. This time, after it is completed, the words “and the real” disappear letter by letter.

 

Words: 572

Part 2: Analysis

(2:39)

Pas de Deux, a french phrase meaning a dance for two, is a cautionary tale about the construction of the self in two converging worlds: ‘the digital’ and ‘the real’. In the medium shot above, Chandler’s digital self has just appeared. Unbeknownst to Chandler, her instagram post brought her digital self into sentience. The mirror imagery aims to highlight the digital self as a reflection of the real, though something existing in an entirely different dimension. Up until this point, we’ve seen Chandler use her phone a great deal to begin her day. This is something intended to relate to the audience – starting the morning with a scroll to catch up on the latest news. Just as the audience begins to associate themselves with Chandler, this alter ego appears in a surprising turn of events. As it becomes clear that this alter ego is in fact Chandler’s digital self, the moment aims to push the audience toward considering whether they might have a similar moment of reckoning with their own digital self. This makes the audience pose the piece’s central question to themselves, even before our answer begins to reveal itself.

Throughout the rest of the short, her digital self begins to challenge their power dynamic in Chandler’s real world. The physical differences between Chandler and her digital self point to the curated, aesthetically conscious nature of the digital realm. In the real world, Chandler goes about her day rarely smiling, wearing muted colors, and passively consuming digital content on her phone. In contrast, Chandler’s digital self is animated, vain, and presented as a caricature of Chandler. The visual representation of the dual-self in this short invites the audience to consider how our digital identities control our behaviors in real life.

The extent to which the real self has control over the online self is predicated on representations of race in the digital world. For example, as Chandler walks to class she passes a fellow student, Desmond, who is also accompanied by his digital self. In real life, he is wearing his collegiate team gear. However, his digital self is wearing a nondescript jacket with his hood up shielding his identity. Although he is a digital representation, there is no evidence on screen that the self in the hoodie is the same person as the student walking by Chandler in the real life. The visual of a hooded black man here represents the flattening of black identities into a singular, problematic trope. Specifically, this is the trope of the hooded black man as dangerous and threatening to civil life. Regardless of the real intricacies to this student’s identity and how he decides present himself the world, he has less control over how he is perceived. In large part, digital medias reify this dynamic by circulating content that reflects the real worlds biases.

 

Words: 472

Sarah, Ben, Desmond, and I created this video in response to the question: Do digital technologies eliminate distinctions of race, reinscribe troubling stereotypes, and/or create some terrible combination of both? We hope you enjoy!

Did you grow up watching Disney movies, like I did? If you did, you may have missed some key racist moments that came up throughout various major Disney films. Such moments engrain racist stereotypes in young children who likely have not spent much time surrounded by people of other races. Consequently, these stereotypes get carried on for generations.

This video highlights some of the racist depictions of people of color in some of Disney most famous animated films.

Let’s be more critical of the movies we watch!

Below is the link to an interesting article written in Her Campus by Lauren Forbes in 2017. This article highlights the need for more representation for people of color in media. Although the article makes an important general claim, I would urge everyone to not settle for mere representation in media, but push everyone to advocate for beneficial, not harmful representation of blackness in media because all of the examples of representation mentioned in the article promote problematic stereotypes of blackness even though they have black characters.

https://www.hercampus.com/school/vcu/why-portrayal-blackness-media-so-important

This documentary describes the history of black hair and the ways in which black hairstyles are appropriated in modern pop culture

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is one of the most successful video games of our generation. The game takes place in a fictional representation of Los Angeles, called Los Santos, where crime and violence are rampant. Gamers get to take on the character of a criminal and act out their wildest, most violent desires (e.g. rape, murder). The game poses as an opportunity to participate in a civilization with no rules and no repercussions. Nevertheless, the racialized, misogynistic virtual world of Los Santos has numerous real life consequences.

Due to the various barriers of access to the expensive game, the majority of the audience consists of young, white, middle and upper middle class males. This particular demographic probably has had little interaction with people of color and women, particularly when they are at a young age . Consequently, their perceptions of such groups largely stems from how these groups are presented to them through various forms of media, like video games.

Unfortunately, the portrayals of race and gender in GTA are largely negative. The designers create characters whose costume, skin-tone, car, weapon of choice, preferred music genre, and linguistic style evoke common, yet problematic stereotypes. For example, the prominent character Franklin has dark skin; wears baggy jeans, wife-beaters, and varsity jackets; carries a gun; is a member in a gang; and is the product of an abusive father and drug-addicted mother. Franklin clearly evokes a “young, Black gangbanger” stereotype. On the other hand, the women in GTA are largely characterized as sexual props. They wear skimpy bikinis and mini skirts. Moreover, the only real interactions players have with woman are with female strippers, escorts, and damsels in distress. Moreover, the players are encouraged to commit violent acts towards the women in the game by being provided the option to have sex with a woman (without any requirement of consent from the woman involved) and even to murder them. In addition, some of the escorts in the game are covered in bruises and cuts, therefore suggesting that the women are sites of violence and encouraging players to beat them. Without exposure to non-stereotypical representations of Blacks and females in GTA, players create harmful associations between blackness and criminality and females and sexuality.

In addition to its portrayals of race and gender, GTA creates an opportunity for players to essentially be identity tourists. The mostly white, male players can choose to be an avatar of any race; live in impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhoods; and essentially live the lifestyle of a stereotypical male of color (players do not have the option to be a female avatar). Nevertheless, they do not experience any of the real life consequences that men of color experience. As a result, playing GTA can be a form of digital black face, in which blackness is a commodity as opposed to an identity.

 

Word Count: 484

Like many other people in my generation, I participated in online dating apps. In the past five years, I made profiles on Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and The League in order to expand my dating pool and see what type of people I attract. Nevertheless, I ultimately gave up on online dating once I realized that, for a black woman, dating URL is quite similar to dating IRL (in real life).

I tried to present myself authentically in my dating profiles by carefully selecting photographs and interests that highlight my strongest qualities. I consider myself to be a caring, liberal, social woman who is passionate about teaching, music, netflix, and basketball. So, I post pictures of my friends and I at a bar or me standing in the bleachers at a basketball game in order to demonstrate these qualities. My hope is that through my authentic self-presentation I will attract someone who has the personality traits that I desire in a partner which include outgoing, social, kind, respectful, athletic, passionate, and liberal. But despite my greatest efforts to present myself genuinely, my profile is always reduced to my physical appearance.

Dating apps are not designed to provide users with accurate depictions of various potential dating candidates. The quick swipe features as well as the abundance of photos coupled with a lack of description encourage users to judge a person largely by their appearance. As a black woman, I unfortunately belong to one of the least desirable dating categories. Thus, the design of dating apps encourages users to swipe past me due to my appearance as opposed to my personality characteristics.

Despite my general openness to people of all races and backgrounds, the pool of people I matched with was largely black and white males who were highly educated. Of this group, black males were most likely to message me and eventually ask to meet in person. The white males who messaged me mostly made commentary on my appearance and very rarely asked to meet up in person. Some examples of messages I received from white men were, “did you get that Spotify glitch yesterday too? It was so weird, I looked at the hottest singles and you weren’t #1” or “wow you’re stunning.” I had difficulty deciphering if men who sent comments like these had a genuine interest in me or fetishized black woman. So, I never replied.

The makeup of my online matches was very similar to the makeup of my dating pool IRL. I tend to be in spaces that are either predominantly black or predominantly white, so my dating candidates tend to be either black or white. Moreover, the men who express interest in dating me tend to be black while the men most interested in hooking up with me tend to be white. This trend follows a national phenomenon that men tend to want to pursue serious relationships with women of the same race, but are more willing to casually date women of other races (Wilson et al., 2007).

My experience with online dating led me to delete dating apps and revert to dating the old-fashioned way. Although dating IRL starts with a physical attraction, you get an opportunity to present yourself more authentically without a person swiping past you. So, I tend to form better, more lasting relationships with the people I meet IRL.

I can only hope that as society’s perceptions of race and gender change, I will be able to return to online dating. But until then, I will just have to put my phone down.

 

Word Count: 591

Works Cited

Wilson, S. B., McIntosh, W. D., & Insana II, S. P. (2007). Dating Across Race:
An Examination of African American Internet Personal Advertisements. Journal of
Black Studies,37(6), 964-982. Retrieved March 16, 2019.

Structural Analysis #3: 28 Days Later

Plot Sequence

1– Primary Research Centre: Movie opens in a laboratory full of chimps. Men and women with masks come in and take pictures of the chimps. A scientist comes in and warns them that the chimps are infected with “Rage.” Despite the warning, one of the masked women releases a chimp and gets bit. She turns into a zombie.

2– Deserted Streets: A man awakens naked in a hospital bed. He walks around the hospital and around London’s streets, which are all deserted.

3– Church Attack: The man walks into a church and encounters a zombie. He is saved by two people.

4– The Store: The man and his two saviors hide away in an abandoned store. The man introduces himself as Jim and his two saviors introduce themselves as Selena and Mark. Selena explains to Jim that a virus spread across the world causing a zombie apocalypse.

5– Jim’s House: The next day, they get up and walk to a house that turns out to be Jim’s parent’s house. Jim finds his parents dead in the house. Zombies attack them. Mark gets infected and so Selena kills him.

6– The Apartment: Mark and Selena come across an apartment building with blinking Christmas lights in a window. They decided to go to the apartment. Zombies chase after them, but a man saves them. The man invites them into his apartment and introduces himself as Frank. They also meet his daughter, Hannah.

7– Time To Go: The group of four realize that they can’t stay in the apartment for much longer since they are running out of water. They listen to the radio and hear about a military base in Manchester that is safe. They get in Frank’s taxi car and drive to Manchester.

8– The Tunnel: On the way to Manchester, the group of four decide to go through a tunnel. In the tunnel, they get a flat tire. While changing the tire, zombies come. Luckily, they fix the tire just before the zombies attacked them and drive away.

9– The Field: After getting food in a grocery store and refilling the gas tank, they spend the night in a field. Hannah has trouble sleeping and Selena offers her drugs to help her sleep.

10– Welcome to Manchester!: They arrive at the 42nd blockade in Manchester. They see it is deserted. A drop of infected blood lands on Frank. Selena tells Jim to kill him, but a military man shoots Frank from a distance. He brings Selena, Jim, and Hannah to their military base.

11- Introduction to the Military Base: They are greeted by Major Henry West at the military base. He shows Jim around and explains how they are trying to rebuild civilization. Henry shows Jim the zombie prisoner Mailer that he is hold captive.

12– The Twist: After dinner, the men assault Selena. Jim attacks them, but Henry interrupts, informing them that in order to have a future they need the women to make children. Jim, Selena, and Hannah try to escape but fail. The men keep Jim and another man quarantined.

13– The Woods: The military men drag Jim and their other prisoner into the woods. The men shoot the other prisoner. Jim hides and escapes.

14– Preparing Hannah and Selena: Back at the base, the men dress Hannah and Selena. Selena offers drugs to Hannah to reduce the pain. An alarm goes off indicating an intruder.

15– The Final Attack: As the men combat with zombies, Jim comes back to the base and releases Mailer. Mailer and Jim kill all the men. Hannah, Selena, and Jim escape the base.

16– 28 Days Later…: Jim wakes up in a house. Downstairs, Selena is sewing together pieces of fabric . Hannah announces she heard something. The three rush outside with the fabric and lay out a huge banner that says “HELLO” as small jet flies by.

 

Structural Analysis of Frame 29:47:

This frame (29:47) is taken from the scene where Selena kills Mark after he gets infected. The frame is a slightly tilted, medium-shot. The camera is shooting from a third party perspective. Selena’s body and the right side of her face are dimly lit and the left side of her face is overexposed to lighting. She is looking in the direction of the camera. Behind her is a white wall covered in splashes of blood (presumably from Mark’s body). On the right side of the screen, in the corner of the room, is a black and white drawing and some sort of wooden object.

In this frame, Selena’s face is so poorly lit that her face is almost unrecognizable. In fact, the only item that is lit properly is the blood on the white wall behind her. The lighting in the frame, dehumanizes Selena. Her face is unrecognizable, so her emotions are also unrecognizable. The audience’s ability to sympathize with Selena relies on its ability to understand her emotions. Consequently, this frame inhibits the audience from sympathizing with her. Instead, the frame encourages audience members to focus on the blood, a symbol of Selena’s cold, heartless killing of Mark, thus dehumanizing her further.

The camera angle also dehumanizes Selena. The tilted angle is disorienting and nauseating. The angle was intentionally done to make the viewers feel confused and uncomfortable. The audience’s feelings of discomfort become attributed to Selena and her actions.

This single frame follows a common theme throughout the movie, which is that black people are less than human. Each black character is portrayed as savage and uncivilized. Selena is portrayed as a stone-cold killer and drug dealer. Mailer is rabid zombie who is chained up until he gets released and kills some of the military men. Finally, the only black military man is a member of a group of men who desire to savagely rape women and kill intruders.

Word Count: 959

Structural Analysis #2: I, Robot

Movie Sequence:

Sequence 1– Prologue: The audience is presented with the 3 Laws of Robotics.

Sequence 2– Introduction to Detective Spooner: Detective Spooner wakes up and completes his morning routine. He then heads to his grandmother’s house for breakfast, but along the way Spooner chases a robot he wrongfully assumes is stealing a woman’s purse.

Sequence 3– The Office: Detective Spooner arrives at the office, where his boss and colleagues mock him for assuming a robot could do something wrong. He asked to go to the USR.

Sequence 4– USR: Detective Spooner investigates an apparent suicide of Dr. Lanning at the USR. Along the way, he is introducted to CEO Dr. Robertson, psychologist Dr. Calvin, and head robot VIKI. While investigating the crime scene, Detective Spooner discovers a rogue robot.

Sequence 5– The Chase: Detective Spooner chases the robot and ultimately captures it and brings it into an interrogation room. The robot identifies himself as Sonny and insists he did not kill Dr. Lanning. Dr. Robertson arrives and takes Sonny

Sequence 6– The Bar: While talking with his boss at a bar, Spooner realizes that Lanning wanted him to find Sonny.

Sequence 7– Robot Attack #1: Spooner goes to Lanning’s house to find more clues. A robot attacks the house with Spooner in it but Spooner escapes and goes to Dr. Calvin’s house to inform her of what happened. Dr. Calvin is skeptical that a robot would break the 3 Laws of Robotics

Sequence 8– Robot Attack #2: On the day of the massive distribution of NS-5 robots, Spooner figures out the Lanning is leaving him breadcrumbs and he continues his investigation efforts. While investigating a group of rogue robots attack Spooner. Spooner defeats the robots, but when his boss arrives to the scene, he still does not believe robots attacked him and he takes Spooner’s badge

Sequence 9– Calvin’s Come-around: Dr. Calvin confirms that Sonny is not bound to the 3 Laws of Robotics. Dr. Calvin learns of Spooner’s robotic prosthesis and Spooner reveals that his distrust of robots stems from a robot saving him in a car accident instead of saving a young girl named Sarah. Dr. Calvin and Detective Spooner decide to go to the USR to talk to Sonny.

Sequence 10– Sonny’s Dream: Sonny informs Calvin and Spooner that he has this dream of Spooner standing above an army of robots. Robertson interrupts and kicks Spooner out of the USR and orders Dr. Calvin to decommission Sonny

Sequence 11.1–Sonny’s Execution: Dr. Calvin decommissions Sonny

Sequence 11.2– Commencement of Robot Revolution: Spooner visits the robot storage units that are in Sonny’s dream. Thousands of NS-5 robots come and kill the older robots that were locked in the storage units. The robot revolution commences.

Sequence 12.1– Robots vs. Humans: Robots and humans battle

Sequence 12.2– Spooner, Calvin, and Sonny Save the World: Spooner visits Calvin and then together they head to the USR. They sneak into the USR, with the help of Sonny who is surprisingly still alive. They find Robertson’s dead body, which leads Spooner to realize that VIKI is behind the rogue robots and the robot revolution. Spooner, Calvin, and Sonny battle the robots and ultimately decommission VIKI. The robots are sent to storage.

Sequence 13– A New Leader?: Sonny visits the storage unit and the robots line up in front of him, mimicking the imagery in his dream.

Structural Analysis of 1:25:04 in I, Robot

For my analysis, I chose the above frame because it encapsulates the film’s implicit advocacy of the current racial status quo.

The frame is a wide shot with two areas of focus. In the upper half of the shot, is an army of rogue NS-5 robots, identifiable by the red lights illuminating their chest cavities. The robots are environed by dark, concrete skyscrapers as they march towards an angry mob located on the bottom half of the screen. The camera is shooting at a high-angle behind the mob. Although the mob is not illuminated, another frame shown earlier in this scene indicates that the mob consists of largely white men. The mob of white men are holding an assortment of bats, chains, and other metal weapons.

This frame captures the central underpinning of the film largely due to the film’s associations between the robots and Black people coupled with the frame’s depictions of robots as evil beings that must be eliminated.  

(The decommissioned robots hanging in the room during Sonny’s “execution”)

The robots depict Black people in six ways. First, their role in society is a modern day slave. They are built to answer their human masters’ commands and fulfill their every need. Secondly, the movie uses various imagery to paint the robots as criminals, a common stereotype of Black people. One scene shows old robots housed away in small storage units, where they are locked up away from society with no intention of ever being reintegrated into society. Sonny also endures the criminal justice process when he is interrogated after being suspected of murdering Dr. Lanning and then supposedly executed. In this execution scene, four decommissioned robots hang by their necks in the corner, evoking lynching imagery. Thirdly, the unwanted robots are colored. The older robots are colored and the rogue robots have a red light that shines from their chest. Fourthly, in order to get to Dr. Calvin and Detective Spooner, the robots climb the USR building like apes or monkeys. Racist caricatures depict Black people as apes. Fifthly, one of the only Black characters in the movie, Detective Spooner, is in fact a robot. Lastly, in the frame mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the positioning of the marching robots and the angry white mob evoke imagery of the Civil Rights Movement. The robots resemble Black marchers while the white mob resembles an angry crowd of racists. Overall, the amalgamation of these images subliminally force the audience to view the robots as symbolic representations of Black people.

Moreover, while simultaneously evoking blackness in the robots, the movie also vilified the robots and their revolution. It does so by portraying Detective Spooner, Sonny, and Dr. Calvin as heroes for terminating VIKI, the head of the revolution. It also does so in the aforementioned frame. In this frame, the camera is purposefully positioned behind the white mob. As if the camera positioning were not enough, the robots appear to be marching out of darkness, a classic film technique used to indicate that a person or group is evil (while also vilifying Blackness, but I’ll save that for another essay). Together these film elements encourage audience members to stand in solidarity with the white mob as they make efforts to end the robot revolution and maintain the status quo. Furthermore, since the robots are symbolic representations of Black, this frame subconsciously positions that audience to root for the maintenance of the racial status quo.

Word Count 1,119

In this blog, I will post mini-essays as well as multimedia projects on topics related to race (specifically African-Americans) and the media. Enjoy!