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Netflix Pick: Fruitvale Station

(I'm re-running this blog post from 2014
due to the events in America this week. 
This post is about a movie based on real-life events
that were captured by cell phone video.
If you think the events of this week are new, think again. 
Do I think cops doing their jobs should be shot?  No.
Do I think black men in traffic stops should be shot?  No.
Do I think we need to rethink gun policy,
racial treatment and inequality in America?
Absolutely.)
I watched this movie last night and had to spend today processing it.  It was fairly overwhelming, as it should be.

If you don't know already, Fruitvale tells the true story of Oscar Grant, a 22 year-old  unarmed black man shot by a police officer in a train station in Oakland.  He died the next day from his gun shot wound on January 1, 2009.  The officer who shot him, who said he reached for his gun instead of his taser by mistake, served 11 months in prison.

The movie begins with actual cell phone footage that capture Oscar's shooting.  The movie itself follows Oscar through what will end up being his last day alive: New Year's Eve 2008.

As a film, this one is really fantastic.  It's filmed in a shaky camera documentary sort of way that lends itself to the true story unfolding.  It works hard to show you how important cell phones were in 2008 and are in our lives today.  And it doesn't shy away from showing the good and bad characteristics of Oscar Grant. 

Actually, my favorite scene in the movie is the in which he calls his Grandma Bonnie to instruct a young white woman on how to fry fish.  Only a few moments after Oscar is showing how caring and respectful he is, he rough-arms his former boss and even threatens him in trying to get his job at the fish counter back. 

The movie also goes the length to show what a dedicated dad Oscar was to his young daughter.

It also hints at an infidelity to his long-time girlfriend and shows a scene of him in prison.  And a drug deal.  And he also picks up a dog after it was hit in the street and comforts it until it dies.

In other words, he's a man.  He has flaws.  He's human. 

But did he deserve to be shot on that train platform?  Of course not.

These are the things Fruitvale Station left me thinking about all day today:

~What is it really like to be a black man today?  Do you ever feel safe?  Do you ever let you guard down?  Do you always feel watched?  Do you ever feel like you can trust authority?  Do you ever feel like they're on your side?

~If you were a white man who back-talked or questioned the police, would you have been treated nearly as brutally as Oscar and his friends?

~Would you have even been dragged off the train if you weren't black?

~Should transit station cops even be carrying guns?  And if so, if they are so quick to discharge them or mistake them, shouldn't they be better trained?

~Are some cops looking for a fight?

~Does having a criminal record mark you for life? Do you ever get a second chance.....really?

~In all these cases in recent times in which a person is needlessly shot: Trayvon Martin, the man shot for texting in the Florida movie theater, etc.  I can't help realizing that if the person didn't have a gun, NO ONE would have been shot.  Tasered maybe.  Beat up maybe.  But not shot.

There's so much more to consider, but this is just what I thought about today.  My husband didn't want to watch the movie with me because he knew it would be upsetting.  He was right, it was.  Even though I knew what was going to happen, my pulse pounded through the scene in which Oscar was shot.  And it hurt to know it was true. 

But then I said to my husband, in the always true and beautiful lyrics of the Indigo Girls, "it's one perfect world when you look the other way". 

Movies like this have to be made, so people who weren't on that train platform are aware that things like this have happened and can happen again. 
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