The Hate U Give Gives a New Face to the Black Lives Matter Movement

WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

Last Wednesday, I went with some of my peers to see the brand new movie The Hate U Give, based off the bestselling young adult novel by Angie Thomas. I read the novel last spring, and due to my affection for the story, I had high hopes for the film. In short, my expectations were very much met.

The opening of the movie immediately grabs the audience’s attention with a frank discussion between the main character, Starr Carter, played by Amandla Steinberg, at age seven with her family. Her father sat down Starr and her two brothers, aged ten and one, to instruct them how to behave if a police officer pulls them over: keep your hands out of your pockets, don’t move suddenly, keep your hands on the dashboard, and answer questions directly.

This picture is, shockingly to my privileged self, a norm for many black families and sets the scene for the tone of the rest of the movie.

My attention was then snatched with popular hit song DNA. by Kendrick Lamar, which followed the prior scene. My friends and I commented after the movie that the soundtrack was particularly on point with what a lot of teenagers listen to. We found ourselves dancing and singing in our seats to Billie Eilish, Travis Scott, and Pusha T.

I realized later, though, that the producers used a trendy score to pull in teens’ attentions to the main message of the film. The Hate U Give hits viewers hard with themes of black oppression in America and police brutality. Starr Carter lives the life of an African American teen who witnesses the murder of Khalil, her childhood friend, by a white police officer.

Producers did not remotely hold back in showing the devastation and graphicness of such a situation. Steinberg gives a phenomenal and convincing performance that honors the families and victims of police brutality. It’s truly a painful scene to sit through and watch the terror of losing someone to an unnecessary murder.

Starr attends a predominantly white private school far from her home in Garden Heights, a neighborhood full of crime, and does not tell her friends of the event and instead leaves her grief for when she’s at home. Starr bites her tongue as her ignorant classmates and friends make comments about who Khalil was and why he was killed, never addressing the police officer himself.

Starr does speak out, though, in an interview for the local television station with her face blurred out and voice distorted. After questioning about Khalil selling drugs, Starr had to cite the popular gang in Garden Heights to help white people understand how selling drugs does not depict who Khalil was. Starr and her family was seriously threatened for the rest of the movie by the gang members.

Chris, Starr’s boyfriend, is used in the movie as almost a voice for the general view of white people on the issue of police brutality. In a heart-to-heart moment on the issue at hand, Chris expresses how he does not see color and loves Starr for who she is. To this, Starr directly replies “If you don’t see my blackness, you don’t see me.” An African American woman sitting behind me yelled out, “Thank You,” and the situation became very real to me.

At the end of the film, Starr reveals herself at a protest as being the witness of the shooting and cries out to the crowd “Khalil did not just die; KHALIL LIVED!” The police began to throw tear gas at the peaceful crowd,to which Starr chucks it back to them in a remarkably powerful and tear jerking moment.

In an effort not to spoil the most climatic moment of the movie, I will not reveal one of the most important scenes of the movie, but I will give you the general gist the creators were trying to get across. Within the film, there are many references to 2Pac’s famous acronym for THUGLIFE: The Hate U Give Little Infants F***s Everybody. The vicious cycle of black poverty and the way the authorities scheme the lives of blacks is portrayed in an easy to understand manner that is still thought provoking.

By the end of the film, tears were streaming my face with anger and sorrow and motivation to fix this system. I looked to my left to see my friends feeling the exact same way. The cycle of black oppression will take time and effort from all sides to break. Films like The Hate U Give are the first step forward.

By Annie Levy