Difference between revisions of "Rat Film"

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==References==
 
==References==
 
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[[Category:Black Racism in Documentary Movies]]
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[[Category:Black-Targeted Racism in Documentary Movies]]

Latest revision as of 06:21, 15 March 2021

Rat Film Movie Cover

Rat Film is directed by Theo Anthony, is a documentary utilizing strategies of essay and collage, published in 2016. Rat infestation in Baltimore is a starting point in this documentary to investigate issues regarding segregation, redlining, poverty, and the allocation of resources in American urban areas. [1]

Synopsis

Across borders, rats not only uncover our barriers of separation but also make homes in it. This documentary film uses rat, as well as humans that adore them, live in the same place as them, and also kill them, to go through the history of Baltimore. "There's never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it's always been a people problem".[2] The film director, Anthony, looks into a 1911 Baltimore law mandating the segregation of its neighborhoods. In 1917, that law was overturned and replaced by the private enforcement of segregation, by means of restrictive covenants in title deeds. Anthony follows the advancement of the city's isolated areas—and the unwholesome conditions where the city’s black residents were forced to live. He interfaces the city's endeavors at rat destruction to the public authority's dread, during the Second World War, that Germany would utilize the bubonic plague as a natural weapon. (The eradication exertion included experimentation with untested substances in black neighborhoods.) Yet, after the war finished, endeavors at bug control disappeared. Working with a demographer, Anthony finds a nearby connection between's the pervasiveness of a wide scope of present-day burdens and the predominantly black neighborhoods set up a century prior—including, obviously, the unrelieved commonness of rats.[3]

Controversy

Rat Film’s attempt to expose systemic racism through Baltimore’s overwhelming infiltration of rampaging pests, it is too often distracted with experimentation. Horrifying history lessons encompassing segregation law, undercover logical analyses on the black population, and the racist redlining of city blocks will start a sound, and genuinely necessary portion of anger. [4] Baltimore was the first city in early 20th century America to pass a residential segregation law — later scrapped by the Supreme Court — restricting blacks and whites to certain parts of the city. “Ain’t never been a rat problem in Baltimore; it’s always been a people problem,” says one of his interviewees, a wise and wizened rat exterminator who noticed that the critters thrive in poor housing areas. [5]

The filmmaker highlights the historical city government practice of denying home and business loans to people living in majority-black neighborhoods. The same language to talk about the "infiltration" of black populaces was used the way when city officials talk about rats as they talk about it now. To underline his point, Anthony lays statistical maps of present-day Baltimore's unemployment and mortality rates over a racial segregation map from 80 years ago, showing how accurately they dovetail.[6]

References

  1. Rat Film. Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19 2021.
  2. Rat Film. Memory. Retrieved January 19 2021.
  3. Brody, Richard Three Genre-Expanding Documentaries About Racist Crimes of the Past. The New Yorker. 8 March 2017. Retrieved January 19 2021.
  4. Gulllickson, Brad. ‘Rat Film’ Nibbles at the Systemic Racism Plaguing Baltimore. Nonfics. Retrieved January 19 2021.
  5. ‘Rat Film’ highlights Baltimore’s rodents, racism. Arabnews. 14 October 2017. Retrieved January 19 2021.
  6. 'Rat Film' highlights Baltimore's rodents, racism. France24. 14 October 2017. Retrieved January 19 2021.