... Now imagine she's white -- A Creative Prompt

       The '90s brought us a lot of cheesy movie experiences as well as some beautiful and heartbreaking scenes of human frailty and tons of theatrical swells of emotionally manipulative film scores to bring us all to tears. Take for instance this this scene from the film "Amistad", in which Matthew McConaughey plays a lawyer with delightful hair, and the gorgeous Djimon Hounsou is recently shipped slave cargo who has miraculously learned some key words in English despite being unable to communicate in English for the rest of the film.

    Somehow, as Hounsou stands and makes his pleading case for freedom to an openly hostile American courtroom, a chorus of angelic voices swells to remind us of the glory that is freedom and righteousness in the face of racial oppression and human rights violations. This isn't unusual in '90s films; filmmakers of the era put a lot of energy into commissioning scores that left no doubt to the audience just exactly how they are supposed to feel in any given moment of the film's plot. It's a heavy-handed approach that's been less popular in recent decades.

       Interestingly, MacConaughey playing woke-ass lawyers with sexy hairdos is also iconic for the '90s era (and remember when he played a sexy priest in "Contact"?), as evidenced in the popular courtroom drama "A Time to Kill", in which Sandra Bullock is mildly lynched (I mean, if there is a mild version of lynching, it's the version she got, what can I say?), and that still didn't steal the scene in the movie. Instead, when people think about "A Time to Kill", they usually think of one thing right off the bat:

       I thoroughly encourage anyone who has not tried it yet to loudly and emphatically exclaim, "YES THEY DESERVE TO DIE, AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HE-YELL!" It's incredibly satisfying. And of course Samuel L. Jackson is a national treasure who was just coming up in his career at this time, and Matthew MacConaughey had not yet obliterated his building career with a slew of heinous rom-coms at this point. But that's all besides the point. My point has more to do with another clip from the movie, in which the filmmakers blessedly refrained from embedding a swelling score.

       Before I show that clip, a refresher. Jackson's character, Carl Lee Hailey, is on trial for murder because he shot the men who raped and lynched his daughter -- not because they raped and lynched her, but because the court system let them go free. This scene occurred to me recently despite the fact that I haven't seen the movie in ages, because so many of us are living in an era in which we find ourselves looking at existing systems upholding injustice in the name of a "rule of law" that allows people to be hurt or killed or imprisoned, facing the question that for many had existed only as a retrospective hypothetical contextualized by study of Nazi Germany: "How did regular people stand and accept these atrocities taking place around them?" Carl Lee Hailey is the everyman who doesn't stand aside accepting the rule of law that is wrong; his is the cathartic and long-suffering internal hero that we all wish we could be in the face of injustice. 

       Now watch this clip, because it's the scene that represents the climax of the film and the premise for this creative challenge. Matthew MacConaughey, as the lawyer Jake Brigance, speaks to the jury after meeting with his embattled client, who in no uncertain terms tells him that Brigance's whiteness is the key to his freedom, and that Brigance must stop pretending that color is not a factor in their relationship as well. Instead, Hailey tells him, Brigance should think about what it would take to persuade a white person oblivious to their own prejudices to see his case as a human rights issue. Here's the scene that followed.

       My favorite part of that scene are the couple of seconds at the end when Hailey looks at the jury stone-faced to gauge their reactions. But the larger point is this: maybe we should stop wondering how it can be that we live amongst people who cannot admit to human right violations happening right under their noses, and start thinking about the narrative, imagery, and symbolism that would help them see the facts for what they really are by forcing them to imagine those horrors inflicted on people who look more like them? 
       The goal is simple: sometimes, in order to make someone see you or others as human and therefore worthy of human compassion, you first have to fully acknowledge the fact that when they close their eyes and think about the word "human", it would never occur to them to think of someone who looks like you.

So here is the art prompt:
1. Choose a human rights issue that speaks to you.
2. Determine the demographic that stands in vocal yet ignorant opposition of justice regarding that issue.
3. Create a story/ad/cartoon/infographic/etc. that depicts that demographic suffering the same injustice.
​4. Share.

Happy arting around! And if you should choose to do this prompt for your own entertainment or edification, feel free to share it with me, and I'll post it here and on my social media. You should absolutely share it on your own media, of course; I'm just happy to help (and get free accredited content). If we're lucky, we'll get more people walking around resembling Chris Cooper's character in "A Time to Kill", who was called on the stand after one of Hailey's stray bullets permanently paralyzed him.