Discovering Who the Other Is: Finding Forrester
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document in english
film studies
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published 17/06/2008
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SummaryPeople create their lives based on the environment surrounding them. In Gus Van Sant’s 2000 film, Finding Forrester, Jamal Wallace, a black sixteen-year-old basketball player from the Bronx, was always a C student until his test scores showed his true intelligence and potential. This resulted in a New York City prep school taking notice. Jamal’s life would take a dramatic turn when his old life clashes with his new life. This clash is similar to what Richard Majors, an Associate Professor of Psychology and cofounder of the National Council of African American Men, describes in his essay, Cool Pose: Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America. Majors discusses the idea of what it means to be “cool” in a black society. Majors cites Wilkinson and Taylor as saying, “Playing it cool had been a defense for blacks against exploitation. Sometimes being cool may be automatic and unconscious; other times it may be a conscious and deliberate façade. In either case, being cool helps maintain a balance between the black male’s inner life and his social environment” (9).
Table of Contents
- In Majors book, the chapter, Cool Pose: Expression and Survival, discusses several aspects that characterize a person as 'cool.' Among them is the idea that a black man cannot demonstrate their 'inner life.?
- Majors also characterizes the 'cool pose' as adapting to culture and not being different.
- His teacher understood why Jamal could score so well on assessment tests and perform so poorly in class
- He was given the option. He wanted William to read his stuff but he did not want to be weak by the standards he had grown up with. He was a man and had to be in control.
- He was unaware, at first, that the 'other' was actually his friends.
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