Question

White People , officiel full Doucumentary MTv

Narrator, summary, periode of time addressed in the film, what academic disciplines does this film addresses ?, film location, Identify key people in the film, scholars experts in film, what were 3 key points of imformation that you learnrd from this film? what the single most important fact or idea that you learned from this film? , what the least imformative part of the film? if you could advise the film maker on a 2018/2019 remake of this film, what 3 suggestions would you make in order to improve or update the film?, what key words would you use to describe this film?, what in your opinion is the "message" of this documentary film?

Answer 1

The documentary ‘White People’ questions the politics of privilege behind the experience of racial identity in the mainstream White American population in the 21st century. Using first hand interviews and focus groups discussions with White American youth, it projects the issue of racial inequality outside the common academic framework of subaltern perspectives and instead paves way for a new formulation on race and identity by making the dominant mainstream section a study its protagonist or the main characters. The film maker, Jose Antonio Vargas engages in a question answer dialogue with college students and engages them in an informal conversation about their personal stake in the politics of race and special protection. A highlight of the documentary is its dialogic quality which allows the viewer an insight into what average the White youth thinks about racial differences and at the same time challenges the very notion of privilege that underlie the participants’ inability to see race as a significant determinant in their reality. It thus not only provides answers or a solution on how to minimise racial inequality but also puts the seed of doubt within the opponents of ‘White privilege ruby allowing them see the reality from beyond the comfort of their own racial identity which has made them recipients of greater social and economic resources.

The documentary is found to be highly informative especially in the matter of educational opportunities and privileges which are available to the White American college population and is yet not conceived as a racial privilege because it is rendered invisible over the prevailing dominant discourse of affirmative action in favour of the racial minorities. The issue of Whiteness is another major concept discussed in the documentary. This notion throws important light on the fact that the colour of our skin does matter, and impacts how the world interacts with us. However, as the film maker engages his participants to reconsider their own racial positions, he leads the audience to reflect on the irony of the mainstream reality that for the majority White population, race is not even issue leave alone a perplexing issue because they have not experienced discrimination due to the colour of the skin. The movie thus builds a very cogent view of the politics of race in the contemporary society and shows how discrimination can be tapped not only in actual cats of inequality but also in the differences in the thoughts about the existence of race between the mainstreaming and the subaltern populations of youth.

However, it is noted that while the documentary raises poignant issues, it could perhaps improvise and tweak the topic according to the present time of 2018-2019. To begin with, perhaps a possible remake of ‘White People’ in 2018 could benefit from throwing light on the relationship between emergent nationalist sentiments and the invisibalisation of differential treatment based on racial identity. The Fact is that visual arts such as documentaries and films become a representational voice for the political issues of the time as well. From the time of the documentary that is 2015, to the present 2018, the United States has undergone massive political changes and such changes have also began to reconstitute the racial composition of the larger geographical entity of the country. A 2018-2019 White People could thus be a good media to explore the question of how White and free is this alleged White America under the current government.