La Ron S. Readus
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How THE HARDER THEY FALL Highlights Black Family Trauma (VIDEO SCRIPT))
🕑 Added 2021-11-08 21:01:00 +0000 UTCReaders, I think its safe to say that there was genuine hype across the board when Netflix announced their film “The Harder They Fall.”
/Not to be confused with the 1956 Humphrey Bogart movie, it’s like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But instead of it consisting of characters from various works of literary fiction, its fictional depictions of real-life cowboys, outlaws and lawmen in black history./
And after watching it myself, someone who doesn’t really care for westerns that much, I definitely enjoyed what it brought to the table.
/Idris Elba and Regina King brought stellar performances as per usual, seeing Edi Gathegi being allowed to thrive after the racism he experienced on the set of X-Men First Class was EXTREMELY refreshing, RJ Cyler -- aka Billy from the Power Rangers movie -- plays the spunky newcomer kid VERY well, and Cuffy is and forever will be the GOAT, no questions asked, not up for discussion, I have spoken./
Now despite me enjoying the cast, it’s just GOOD, not PERFECT. Because Zazie Beetz had no business playing Stagecoach Mary
I love Zazie, but considering that the REAL Mary was a heavyset dark-skinned black woman...
/And after seeing that the Mary in THIS movie was meant to be the love interest for Jonathan Majors’ Nat Love, it KINDA reveals a bit about where the casting director stands on colorism and fatphobia, considering everyone else was pretty accurate when compared to the facial features and skin tones of their real-life counterparts/
Not enough to throw out hard accusations, but definitely hard enough for me to comfortably judge them.
But that one aspect of the movie isn’t enough to turn me off from enjoying it, because I definitely did enjoy it.
And when it comes to the writing in the movie and the delivery of said writing, there’s something else I feel we need to pay attention to and properly digest.
/One aspect that I’m absolutely sure is universal across multiple ethnicities, but one that’s unanimous with the upbringing of black folk up until it became Millennials’ time to pass on the torch./
Now before I continue, just know that this video WILL contain spoilers fro The Harder They Fall. So if you haven’t seen it yet and you wanna avoid spoilers, I suggest you catch it on Netflix first before you finish this video. Cool? Cool.
So in order to understand the commentary The Harder They Fall makes, we have to focus on the film’s villains; Idris Elba’s Rufus Buck, and his right hand woman Trudy Smith, played by Regina King
/As we know from the movie, Trudy and the rest of Rufus’ gang free him from being transported to a different prison in order for him to properly run Redwood City -- a black town he helped found -- and to save it from going under after his one-time friend Wiley Escoe jeopardized it in a way where they have to come up with 50 thousand dollars in order to make sure the land isn’t bought by bigger business/
That’s where Nat Love and his gang get in the way, since they recently intervened in robbing a gang working for Rufus of their score of 25 grand to help come up with the funds.
Now despite Redwood being a town of predominantly African Americans, what’s first and foremost on Nat’s mind is offing Rufus.
/That’s because back when he was ten years old, Rufus came to his home, killed his mother and father right in front of him, and left a cross styled scar on his forehead to remember him by. And over the course of his time as an outlaw, he’s been hunting down everyone who was involved in the murder of his family ever since./
Mary, suggesting a more diplomatic approach to gain intel, offers to go in the town to offer a business proposal -- since she owns plenty of saloons among black western towns as seen earlier on in the movie -- knowing Rufus needs 50K to save Redwood.
/As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over too well and Stagecoach Mary is now made the damsel in distress for Jonathan Majors’ Nat to save/
However, while I admit I’m not the BIGGEST fan of this use of Stagecoach Mary, this was actually a very necessary step into allowing us into getting a look at the headspaces of two of the films most prominent villains.
/And it all started with Trudy’s monologue about the day her polio diagnosed sister was assaulted by a girl named Hope./
Hearing Trudy tell the story of the attack on her sister and how she retaliated was the first thing.
/And that’s mostly because of what she explained her father did to Trudy for not defending her from her assailant Hope.../(he beat me)
/And what he did when he put two and two together and realized Trudy slit Hope’s throat before her “whuppin”/(He was speechless. The next day, he sent me to live with my grandparents)
Now of course, because I’m black and I’ve lived that experience before -- although on less of an extreme scale as Trudy, of course...
I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that her father did what he did back when he thought she was being cowardly, saw what she ACTUALLY did to the child in retaliation, and chose to send her away instead of looking her in the eyes and letting two words genuinely come out of his mouth.
What two words am I talking about? I’m sorry.
/Now because there isn’t really that much about Treacherous Trudy -- real name Gertrude Smith -- that’s chronicled as much as the other figures that made it to the movie, her backstory as given to us in The Harder They Fall is a bit more fictional outside of being from San Fran’s Barnaby Coast and then deciding to travel./
But even the details of in-movie Trudy’s background outside of that one story is very limited, so we don’t necessarily know if the abuse -- not discipline, abuse -- her father bestowed on her was just a one-time occurrence or not.
/But look at how hard Regina acted her ass off in this monologue. The body language. The facial changes. The way her voice cracks when recalling the incident. How CLEAN she peels that apple. I could tell from all those elements that wasn’t the ONLY time Trudy’s dad beat her like that./
Now I’m not saying that these actions are excuses or reasons for why she’s as ruthless in this film as she is.
But having experienced that level of discipline before, along with knowing what its like to never hear an apology from my mother when it was warranted, I know internalized trauma when I see it.
I ALSO know what we as black folk have to do in order to convince ourselves that what we experienced ISN’T trauma.
That it was tough love and our parents or caretakers instilling respect for our caregivers and those older than us.
That it was nobody’s business but our own -- and by that I mean our family -- regarding what happened within the walls of our home as their answer to seeking healing through the likes of therapy, because it's seen as a weakness.
/And while I’m ABSOLUTELY sure that such a state of mental health assistance was hard to find in Western America during the 19th Century, Trudy’s handling of said trauma -- or lack thereof -- could be one of the reasons why she gravitated toward and became so loyal to the film’s villain Rufus Buck...
/Who, according to his spiel at the end of the movie when finally confronted by Nat Love in a final showdown, revealed his kinship to him by telling him a story a bit similar to Trudy's own./
And it was in that explanation that all the bingo slots were being filled.
His father was an abusive alcoholic and regularly beat him and his mother, his father KILLS his mother and leaves him to fend for himself while he gets his life together and starts over, and then when he gets older...
/Rufus tracks him down to learn he changed his last name to Love, is now a preacher, has a new wife and a little brother in the form of Nat, and then proceeds to give Nat a reason for wanting revenge/
Now it's clear that how Trudy and Rufus handled their familial trauma are a bit different.
Trudy never sought a form of reconciliation for what her father did to her and instead channelled her trauma in the way black folk -- especially women -- traditionally do.
/They work, they make a name for themselves. They fight to show that they deserve to have a place at the table who’s population is predominantly male. And depending on how they go about it, they reinforce -- for better or worse -- the “strong independent woman” stereotype as a result./
But when it comes to Rufus and how he handles Nat Love after telling him that they’re brothers, it’s a bit different, and a lot more toxic
The trauma that Rufus suffered runs so deep that getting payback on his father for what he did wasn’t enough. He had to invoke it on an innocent.
/And that innocent in question was his own flesh and blood/ (you everything he tried to run away from...)
What Trudy and ESPECIALLY Rufus represent in The Harder They Fall is the generational curse of a good chunk of African American families regarding a cycle of familial trauma and violence -- both brought about by self-justification and induced by superiority respectively.
While Trudy’s case is more extreme, there’s a sense of relatability there.
Those of us who had parents used a belt, or a switch, or -- dare I say it -- an extension cord to physically discipline us knew where she was coming from when she told her story.
The same can ALSO be said of the measures a parent will take to do anything BUT apologize if they were proven wrong or were IN the wrong.
/And because we experience that type of discipline and emotional neglect thanks to parental pride or whatever -- regardless whether or not it was deserved -- it does something to us that, despite what older generations tell you, will almost always reflect negatively on our mental health in one way or another, whether we want to admit it or not./
In the case of Rufus’ mental manipulation of Nat, it's to make himself feel justified in what he did to his father in front of Nat as a 10 year old boy.
He couldn’t kill Nat because he needed Nat alive so he could kill HIM.
/And the only way that Nat would do it is if he turned out just like him; everything Rufus knew his dad used to be before receiving his clean slate, in order to prove that his bloodline isn’t as absolved of his past transgressions as he thought he was./
Its the equivalent of a parent holding a grudge over their own child just because they remind them of the absentee parent, and justifies the mistreatment of said child because they turned out the same way as said parent thanks to the constant bickering, belittlement and downtalk.
What Rufus is doing is making sure a generational history of familial violence and trauma carries on by making sure his decision to kill his father and his wife were justified, and doing so by using Nat’s want for revenge as proof to convince himself that he never truly changed.
/Which is why when Nat hesitated to pull the trigger at first, Rufus flinched and instigated him until he did/
So if Trudy is the black aunt who tells your cousin “Your grandaddy beat me and I turned out fine,” then Rufus has the spirit of your friend's mom who constantly tells their kin “You nothin’ but a bum, just like your bum-ass daddy.”
/Where real life and The Harder They Fall meet in that parallel however, is that depending on the amount of damage done to people like Nat, they’ll eventually actually start to believe it/(Is the Devil dead? I don’t know)
Now while I admit that these experiences aren’t just exclusive to black america, its black americans that are referring to these experiences the most.
They’re sharing their stories, making jokes out of their experiences in stand up and social media, critiquing and bonding over their upbringings because they’ve been lived and experienced by multiple people who relate
And while its absolutely fair to think that a western of this caliber that highlights the stellar performances of so much black talent should be the main focus first and foremost...
/It’s only a matter of time before we watch a movie of this caliber and see ourselves reflected in it. Not just the good, but also the bad, and ESPECIALLY the ugly./
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what YOU thought of The Harder They Fall if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a film you saw that was able to subconsciously critique some aspects of your heritage or upbringing that left an impact on you, mostly because the creator-slash-creators of said film had the same upbringing as you did.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d LOVE to know your thoughts.
