Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Fruitvale Station / Courtney Bell







Fruitvale Station is a movie recreating he final 24 hours in the life of Oscar Grant, a young black man who, in the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, was shot dead by a police officer on a train station platform in Oakland, California. The shooting happened at point-blank range, while Grant was unarmed, handcuffed and lying face-down. The police had been called after a reported rowdy incident on a train; jumpy, aggressive cops appeared to pull the suspects off the train, and Grant was shot by an officer who later claimed he intended to pull out his Taser, not his handgun. Many people filmed the incident on their mobile phones. The footage started protests and riots.

Fruitvale Station makes it clear that Oscar Grant is a example of this unfair justice system. In the film’s flashback scene, we learn that Grant was incarcerated in 2007 for drug dealing. Oscar got a visit by his mother Wanda, and an private conversation between a mother and son is destroyed when Oscar is distracted by another inmate and eventually starts a fight with him. In this moment, Oscar comes off as a selfish, arrogant, and short-tempered young man who still has much to learn about life.

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