Category: Politics

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Image credits imdb.com

The movie opens with a rant about racism, denigrating the existence of blacks as equals in the society among whites. It is none other than Donald J Trump! err sorry, I meant his SNL alter ego Alec Baldwin. This sets the mood of the film, so if you are a Trump-ster, you have wasted your money. But you sit and enjoy the intelligent comedy played by the characters.
Then enters our protagonist, Ron Stallworth(John David Washington) prepping his nostalgic Afro hairdo, he becomes the first black police officer to join the force of Colorado Springs. Based of the true story, Spike Lee weaves the story from the past to present racism in America.
Ron starts of his duty in records room, who gets bored very soon, requests his chief to assign him a detective work. Due to his persistence Chief assigns him to infiltrate a Black Panther Activist movement headed by Kwame Ture. Ron accepts it as to socialize with his own community, which in turn finds his love interest; the head of the student union Patrice Dumes(Laura Harrier).

While he is rationalizing with his own kind that police are not pigs, who have tortured the blacks at every juncture concealing his identity. He stumbles upon an advertisement in local newspaper seeking members for a new chapter of KKK in Colorado Springs. He picks the phone and dials the number, the man on the other side asks why would he want to join? Ron goes, “I am WHITE man and hate all those N-word who are sleeping with our white girls and raping them”. I dare not spell that n word, Omarosa might be taping. He pronounces the word WHITE with southern accent, VOIIGHT as it can be. The jaws drop in the office as the rant continues from Ron over the phone, hating blacks. Spike Lee shows that how the rest of the white crew in the office are supportive of Ron except to one bad apple. There is always one that spoils the entire basket. Needless to say the KKK clansman is impressed by Rons views and gets accepted and intends to meet face to face.


Ron’s partner, Filip Zimmerman(Adam Driver) reluctantly agrees to be the face of Ron Stallworth, with Ron as voice, Filip as face the duo infiltrate the KKK, they learn the plans to bomb the Black Panther to eliminate the uprising and end up meeting the master himself, David Duke!

Lee has juxtaposed the KKK and Black panther meeting both being intense in their own right although I would say that the presence of Henry Belafonte is real moving. Lee brings in a full circle and gets that one bad apple on the tape and has him removed from the police force, thus saving the basket from contamination.

In the end Spike Lee ends the movie as a documentary highlighting the events of Charlottesville and President Trump delivering the speech ‘There were fine people on both sides‘ at the cost of an innocent life
Heather Heyer.

It’s worth mentioning here that throughout the movie audience is laughing at the jokes played by Ron and his colleagues over the phone with KKK, but when the commentary from Henry Belafonte is delivered there is a pin drop silence and tears roll down as Heather Heyer is commemorated.

Girls: They got voting rights!

We were travelling in a public city bus in Bengaluru. My son then eleven years old, suddenly noticed that there were few seats in the front and yet I asked him to stand behind in the middle of the bus.

He went, “Can we sit there?”

I said, “No, they are reserved for women, see that LADIES ONLY“.

He was appalled, “They always get special treatment”. I hear the middle-schoolers frustration where girls rule the world. With a smile I said,”Stop watching Disney Channel”, and asked him to sit in one of those seats and I would stand beside him. He did not want to sit anyways for the joy of looking through the streets of Bengaluru, where the driver maneuvered through the busy traffic.

After a while the bus came to a dead halt in the middle of the road, he asked, “Why’s the bus not moving”, I looked around and told him that there is a strike ahead, people are blocking the road. Police guided the bus to pass thru the crowd, where a bunch of girls were protesting with placards.  He asked “what’s happening?”

“Girls are protesting for something…”

Actually girls were fighting for the case where Bengaluru was shocked by the heinous incident of a elementary school girl raped by her teacher. I just did not want the kid to know this terrible incident.

Then came a statement out of his mouth that has stuck in my head to this date.
“What more do they want, they got voting rights!”
He was studying about American History – womens civil rights  at that time in his school.

Here we are in a huge election season, electing our first female president of free world with a vitriolic campaign from both sides. My children are actively involved in the process. The eleven year old is now a teenager following the debate process; analyzing it. Yes, DJTs latest locker room rant is out in the open. My younger one, elementary grade son comes home from school and asks “Pops! who are you voting for?” I joked “Donald J Trump”
“Eeew, if he wins I am moving to Canada!”
Personally I don’t consider DJT as a man (This is my locker room rant, don’t quote me on this, baliki main tho yeh kahoon ki woh purush hii nahi hain, mahapurush hai – AAA), if I say it out loud girls will hate me, hmm! what would Caitlyn Jenner think.

Hillary R Clinton should be winning with a landslide victory after DJTs comments. Let’s looks at the stats. She garners around 38% of women votes (source: CNN/ORC), discounting 10% of them as  unmarried, remaining 28% of their spouses are supposed to vote for HRC, 0% of men oppose to their wives (source: WhatsApp).

Sure most of us condemn the objectification of women especially by our presidential candidate DJT. But our focus should be on the women in the society who are doing marvelous things, most recently there are women like Elizabeth Warren; who single-handedly brought down the CEO of Wells Fargo, FLOTUS; who is out to raise women across the world from illiteracy. Talking of objectification, KimK is the epitome of women objectification, like my son said, Girls have right to vote her out of social media.

(It has been extremely difficult for me to put this post articulately, also I am biased, so in the end may the best woman win the Election 2016)

Note I have not hyperlinked KimK, those who don’t know her should be proud of themselves, those who know why check her out. Hint Cailtyn Jenner was her father 🙂