Can "We All" Get Along?
Social Difference, the Future, and Strange Days
by Mark Berrettinni
Jeriko One and the Opening Sequences
pg 155-157
- Several disparate character-driven narrative threads in Katheryn Biggelow's Strange Days connect with the murder of Jeriko One - African American political leader and rapper
- Jeriko One's entry into the film occurs by way of a television newscast that reports his murder, which we see in Lenny Nero's (Ralph Fiennes) appartment
- two opening sequences show Lenny (white protagonist) in a business meeting with a friend and in his gold Mercedees as he drives through the chaotic nighttime streets of LA
- Shot-reverse-shot pattern constructs a link between the tv, functioning as an alarm clock that displays date and time [30 December 1999, 2:14 P.M.] and the dozing Lenny, who is shown in a bed, turned towards the tv.
- The tv image shifts from alarm mode to a newscast that focuses on an Asian female news anchor and the images of the police as the march in full riot gear, overseeing roadblocks and patrolling the streets of LA with tanks
- We have already seen the police "firsthand" with Lenny driving through the streets of LA in the film's second sequence, so these images are familiar
- The voice-over contextualizes and interprets the images, following newscast conventions, so that the streets are transformed from images of chaos => images of party "preparation" by the LAPD, the aformentioned insurance agents
- Film then cuts from voice-over to rap music, which coincides with two quick visual cuts - newscast to a medium shot of Lenny in front of his refrigerator to a direct-address close up of a black man as he raps in a music video that now appears on the tv
- After several seconds, a sudden wope eclipses the music video with a red-and-black graphic that includes the text "MURDER" and an artistic rednering of a bullet hole as the anchor's voice-over resumes:
The bodies of two men found earlier this morning under the Hollywood freeway have been identified as rap star Jeiko One and band member James Poilten, known to fans as Replay. Both men were shot repeatedlyin what police are characterizing as an execution-style killing. the body of an unindentrified woman was found with them, also shot numerous times. Police earlier said that the killings appear to be gang-related. With his band the Prophets of Light, Jeriko One's outspoken political stance and his violent lyrics have stirred nationwide controversy.
- We determine that the black man who has appeared on the tv is Jeriko One, whose prominent introduction as a character coincides with his death
- The amalgamated televisual format of music video and newscast emphasizes the hybridity of Jeriko's work and his public persona as they are presented throughout the film, a presentation that stresses the ways his work straddels the supposedly discrete spheres of entertainment and politics
- Yet while Jeriko is the focus of the tx sequence, the film turns its attention back to Lenny as it cuts from the close-up of the tx to a wide shot of Lenny eating a red, white, and blue Popsicle
- The tv, now offscreen, keeps its prescense by the path of Lenny's eye line and the anchor's voice-over
- After brief pause, Lenny walks offscreen and the camera tilts down and zooms into a close-up of the tx as it displays a still close-up of Jeriko's face with the text "Jeriko One, 1972-1999" superimposed over the image
Theme of Technological Mediation
pg 158
- This sequence sets up the major generic, narrative, and thematic elements found within the film
- The theme of technological mediation within the sequence is linked to the tqo major genres that Bigelow mobilizes, film noir and apocalyptic science fiction, an association that provides viewers a cetain amount of generic familiarity
- Withing this conventional terraine, the sequence highlights the importance of tx and other technological mediated vidual narrative forms to connect and divide charactersand to fill in the film's narrative
- We are allowed to watch the tx, for example, even if Lenny does not, and are able to ascertain information about Jeriko One, even if Lenny is not interested
- The theme of technological mediation extends to the use of genre as the newscast indicates the film's millenial, apocaliptic future setting and as the simultaneity of Lenny's and Jeriko's appearances on-screen recalls a narrative strategy common to film noir, in which a public, criminal act - often a crime reported in the news or media - and a protagonist are introduced as independent and unrelated, but are drawn together as the film developes
- Chinatown uses this strategy in which the water shortage reported on at the beginning of the film is eventually related to Jake's (Jack Nicholson) investigation of Hollis Mulwray's (Darrell Zwerling) murder
- We can presume that Lenny will eventuallly become involved in some aspect of Jeriko One's murderm most likely as an investigator, while we also begin to appreciate a symbolic duality between Jeriko One and Lenny that will persis throught the film
General Depiction of Social Difference
pg 158-159
- With the early distinction between Lenny and Jeriko One in place, Strange Days draws out its feneric and thematic concens into a general depiction of social difference
- An elusive yet suggestive cersion of racialized social difference already emerges in Lenny's earlier tour of LA and in the televisual representation of New Year's Eve preparations that precede the report of Jeriko's murderm which the film now grounds in its opposition of Jeriko and Lenny
- Lenny's lack of interest in the report on the rap musician can be construed as a lack of interest in the LA "battleground" on which he lives and further can be understood as a disavowal of racialized social difference from his supposed "nonracialized" white perspective
- By virtue of his racialized visual appearance as a black man and his political action directed against racial discrimination, especially as it is practicedd by the LAPD, Jeriko One presents and embodies the exact opposidte of Lenny's viewpoint
- After their introduction as the embodiments of social opposition, Strange Days reinterprets their originary black-white, political-apolitical dichotomy in relation to other characters and to other binary sets - gender and secuality, what might be described as difference defined by conventions of law and order, and to a lesser extent, class
- On immediate example of thiskind of extension is the precise manner in which the Jeriko One-Lenny sequence and the preceding rour of LA sequence refer to the beating of Rodney King and the associated events of 1991 and 1992
- The film's other major site of social difference is its depiction of Lenny and his best friend, an African American woman named Lornette "Mace" Mason (Angela Bassett)
- Lenny and Mace are the films two protagonists, and ocer the course of the film a stark shift in importance - from Lenny to Mace - takes over
- This protagonist shift retuns the film to the King allusions that open it and abruptly combine with these references in the film's redemptory, even happy, ending
- Though these amalgamated prepresentations and their convergence with the theme of audiovisual technological mediation within the film's abrupt conclusion, we see a reversal of the critical view of
- essentialized difference,
- social marginalization,
- and political disenfranchisement
- To begin this consideration - return to film's representation of audiovisual mediation within film noir and science fiction
Techonological Mediation and "Real Time"
pg 159