COMM 380:  Media Criticism

The short film, Skin, directed by Guy Nattiv, address racial tension carelessly and violently. I found it was powerful, however, the disgust that I felt for weeks after watching it was haunting. It is a racialized, oversimplified attempt to represent hate culture in the United States and how it is nurtured across generations. The arc of the film shows the journey of a father who quite literally ‘digs his own grave’.
 

The plot of Skin is as follows: A father cuts his son's hair before a shooting trip with a group of friends, next you watch them all shoot at various targets before the child makes a headshot at a watermelon. After this, the family is grocery shopping when they encounter a black man who the father verbally assaults using multiple racial slurs, moments after he checks out, the father attacks the man in the parking lot, aided by the same group from earlier in the day in a brutal group assault. Later, after a day spent couch-surfing, the father from before is abducted by a group of men in a darkened van, all of whom are black.

 

They bring him to a garage, drug him, and proceed to tattoo his entire body black before depositing him back into a street to find his way home. However, when the father tries to get into his house he is met with his wife pointing a gun at him. Just as his wife recognizes him, suddenly the father is shot from behind in a moment previewed by the watermelon practice from earlier in the film. The son killed his father in an extreme example of learned behavior, gleaned from his family.
 

At the beginning of the film, you follow the adventure of a small family going shooting with their friends and wonder if the group’s shared race and preference for similar tattoos might somehow be connected, but you hope they aren’t. While the adults continue shooting at beer cans and other trash, you see the young boy, Troy, picking up a large snake. This terrifying moment adds to the constant unsteady feeling that is present throughout the film.

 

The only relief we get is the minuscule amount of time that we see Troy smiling and laughing when a man plays with a toy in the checkout line at the grocery store. This moment is shattered when Troy’s father, Jeffrey turns and notices whom his child is looking at. He twitches visibly when he sees. Troy’s father, as well as all of the people who shared his company that afternoon, is white. The man who made Troy laugh is black. And so begins the game of opposites that Nattiv plays.
 

This scene marks a point of separation between the nuance of the first five minutes of the film and the remainder of it. Up until this moment in the grocery store, the film was effectively making the viewer consider the situations presented; was the child safe? How much can ‘loving your child’ protect him? These questions should have been a constant throughout the film, evolving with each scene to show the nuance in a story that was objectively simplistic; the two groups at odds are black and white, each group features a young boy watching his elders’ actions, and violence is answered with more violence.

 

For a film attempting to portray racial hatred in America, there needed to be more development and recognition of what racism is. In an article about myths about racism, Blay discusses the differences between racism and prejudice, stating that, “racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits off the oppression of others — whether they want to or not” (2017). This is where Skin missed the mark; it publicized and discussed the movie as a response to hate and bigotry, the director even evoked Holocaust survivors in his Oscars acceptance speech (Bloomer, 2019). What this all fails to express is that racism is not an issue of “both sides” despite the film's claims. To simplify the issue as just a matter of hate neglected an entire history of racial oppression and abuse.

 

Using such harsh violence for shock factor only to reveal a twisted and attempted moral reckoning in the final scene when the father is killed by his son for darkened skin after nearly killing someone based on their skin color.
 

The film continued to confuse in its attempt to express how people should, in the words of producer Jaime Ray Newman, “learn to love and accept each other,” (Oscars, 2019). Is this meant to say that the man who was assaulted should have forgiven and accepted the Nazis?

 

The premise of love and acceptance is meant to be heartwarming. But the idea that “there’s blame on both sides,” is not (Haberman & Thrush, 2017). This film should not have left any kind of confusion about what was or was not ‘right’. I can admit that at first, I thought the film was clever and that Newton’s third law style of karmic consequence was satisfying. However, Skin did not challenge my preconceived notions on how hate operates and the need for acceptance. If anything, it pushed the backward argument that racism can go both ways.
 

Skin is an initially promising film that minimized the complexity of a situation. It used opposites to attempt to explain how a cycle of hate is learned and perpetuated yet could not offer an explanation that did not fully rely on simple eye-for-an-eye principles.

 

References

Blay, Z. (2017, June 6). 4 'Reverse racism' myths that need to stop. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reverse-racism-isnt-a    hing_n_55d60a91e4b07addcb45da97.
Bloomer, J. (2019, February 25). Green book's best picture win wasn't the most embarrassing oscar victory. This Was. Retrieved from https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/oscar-winning-short-film-skin-review.html.
Garber, M. (2017, October 12). An indelible image from trump's 'on both sides' press conference. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/trump-press-   conference-notes-image/537078/.
Haberman, M. & Thrush, G. (2017). Trump gives white supremacists an unequivocal boost. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-charlottesville-      whitenationalists.html?rref=collection/byline/maggiehaberman&action=click&contentCo  lle ction=undefined®ion&module=stream_unit&versi on=latest&contentPlacement=1       &pgtype=collection.
Oscars. (2019, March 25) "Skin" wins best live-action short film [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-fsRO3CbW8

“Ignorance is bliss,” a metaphor commonly used in situations when you’re happier not knowing the truth – a saying that we throw around casually for giving others the benefit of the doubt. However, ignorance is not bliss and happiness is not always the truth, especially, when ignorance is self-destructive and relative to the cyclical nature of racism.

 

Guy Nattiv, director of the short film, Skin masks ignorance and hatred in white America under familial love and a child’s playfulness. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film which created controversial debate online due to its ambiguous and exaggerated representations of stereotypical white America. Thus, allowing some critics to believe it as a masterpiece or straight awful. However, Nattiv purposely does this to raise awareness on the topic of racism and other issues such as gun and gang violence to educate and simplify the complexity of these issues that continue to lurk under modern America.

 

Through the symptomatic meanings, the film presents and with the human action approach, Nattiv focuses on the loss of innocence through stereotypical depictions of gun violence, racism, and gang affiliation to raise awareness on the cyclical nature of hatred.  Nattiv simplifies the characters and allows viewers to assume their actions about the boy’s upbringing. 

 

Skin takes place in a blue-collar town where a boy, Troy (Jackson Robert Scott) is brought up by a family of white supremacists. The father, Jefferey (Jonathan Tucker), is an obvious neo-Nazi devoured in a skin-head culture which is represented through his physical features and tattoos to signify his obvious ideologies. The mother is a regular simpleton that plays the typical mother role despite the clear weakness that occurs throughout the film with interaction with her husband revolving the well-being of the child. Loss of innocence is portrayed at the beginning of the film as the use of guns is valued over the safety of the boy. Troy is seen playing with a harmless snake until his parents tell him to stop playing with the snake and to come to join them in their gun rally. Before joining them, he kisses the snake before putting it down representing a sense of innocent compassion for life. This part depicted the child’s innocence being rejected as he is influenced to take part in the gun rally creating a very contradicting scene. The innocent mother’s role is also rejected as she first does not allow her son to shoot the gun until his father wins a bet and splits the money with her. This creates a conception that the well-being of a child could be exchanged for money – in this case, the child’s innocence is exchanged for corruption. This representation of the leisure use of guns expresses the current debate on gun control in today’s society as it has been one of the main topics of debate in America.

​

Concerning the issue of racism, another stereotype is introduced — the victimized black family. During a grocery run, a black man greets Troy and tries to amuse him with a superhero figurine across the check-out aisle. Portrayed as a harmless act, Jeffrey immediately rejects this act and uses this opportunity to show his dominating ideologies to Troy by starting a gang fight, vigorously beating up the innocent man to a pulp while the black man’s son and wife watch horrifically. Once again, innocence is rejected as the harmless act of the black man represented values of kindness and playfulness until it is disrupted by violence and hatred from Jeffrey. Troy is confused by his father’s actions as he clearly does not understand why his father is beating up the innocent black man. The ignorant behavior that is demonstrated to Troy clarifies the fact that “racism and revenge are values passed down to children. Not directly, or verbally but through actions” (Ng, 2019). White supremacy and police brutality of today’s society is also represented as the African American mother and child are portrayed stuck in the car helpless to make any efforts to save the father. This allowed Nattiv to shed light on similar stories in today’s media about police brutality relative to race.

​

The movie then takes a sharp turn as Jeffrey is kidnapped by a gang. The film uncovers the African American son, Bronny (Lonny Chavis) and his affiliation to the gang as he is seen in the backseat of the moving van. Jeffrey is then seen drugged up in a garage as an African American man tattoos his entire body black. About gang violence, Nattiv changes perspective to Bronnie and reveals he is also brought up in a similar environment as his mother smokes marijuana in his presence.

 

The film introduces Bronny as a stereotype of a child that has already lost his innocence through gang affiliation. A stereotype most commonly used to represent the black community in common media. This was another way of the film portraying the issue of gang affiliation at a young age can also cause loss of innocence and ignorance resulting in a life of violence and the reciprocal hatred towards the “other” (race). Nattiv wanted to express the infiltration of the two issues though different lenses to convey the importance of having an appropriate upbringing despite an individual’s racial background.

​

After weeks of being missing, Jeffrey is thrown out into the streets. Completely unrecognizable, he returns home in which only his dog recognizes him. His wife panics as she hears noises assuming it is an African American robber. As soon as the wife realizes that the “black” man is her husband, the son unknowingly shoots him in the back. The child’s expression after shooting his father showed relief which represented the finalization of his loss of innocence as soon as he pulled the trigger to shoot the “black” man.

 

Through this scene, it portrays the beginning of the cycle of the ongoing racism and violence that will continue through the boy, but it also portrays the self-destructive aspect of ignorance around racism as the boy ends up killing his father or signifying the killing of ignorance in oneself.

​

Though Skin, may have won a nomination for Best Action Short Film, many debates online among critics believe that the film was a horrible representation of the issue. The ambiguity of the characters, ridiculous plot, the tribal racial revenge, and unresolved ending suggested that the film industry “is happy to accept that racist hate violence is a cycle perpetrated from many directions and passed down to children on “both sides” (Bloomer, 2019).

 

To some amateur movie critics, the film may have been very cartoonish despite portraying such a serious subject matter. However, Nattiv understands that this film is not going to receive the love from all his audiences. Racism in Skin is simplified through exaggerated plots and characters because he understands that “racism is one of the most complicated and profoundly important issues in the Nation’s history” (Kulaszewicz, 2015).  He uses the human action approach to cater to the general audience of America in a way that everyone can “negotiate simplified representations of complex issues” (Kukkonen & Stocchetti, 2010) and comprehend the main message easily.

 

The unresolved ending validates that racism has not left and is here to stay unless we, as individuals, do something about it. This allows the viewer to consider personal solutions and attain a collective awareness of today’s racism and violence.

 

Hate crimes that mostly involve racist motives, gun and gang violence are dominant in the media these days. Under the Trump era, many believe racism and bigotry have publicly surfaced in America once again due to the influence of Trump’s campaign.

 

According to Edwards and Rushin, President Trump’s election was associated with a statically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States (2018). This allowed the film to easily address the symptomatic meanings from the events with the current issues in America.

 

Nattiv’s human action approach also sanctions audiences to interact with the uncertainty as it allows viewers to project and discuss possibilities of action against modern racism. The loss of innocence at a young age depicted through stereotypical concepts and characters contributed to the importance of having a proper upbringing concerning future ideologies of bigotry and hatred.

 

As media tends to influence individuals, Nattiv hoped to influence individuals about the ignorance around hatred.

​

References

​

Bloomer, J. (2019, February 25). Green Book’s Best Picture Win Wasn’t the Most Embarrassing Oscar Victory. This Was. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from Slate Magazine website: https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/oscar-winning-short-film-skin-review.html

Kukkonen, K & Stocchetti, M. (2010). Critical Media Analysis: an Introduction for Media Professionals. 55.

Kulaszewicz, K. E. (n.d.). Racism and the Media: A Textual Analysis. 45, 5.

Ng, A. (2019, February 19). Skin | Film Threat. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from https://filmthreat.com/reviews/skin/

Rushin, S., & Edwards, G. S. (2018). The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate Crimes. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3102652