Death at a Funeral is a manifestation of racial identities typical of contemporary American cultural presentations.

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Death at a Funeral

America is at the heart of a fresh era of films with racist connotations. The films define race in a very different way as compared to early films – a far more open approach to racism. Of course, racism has dominated American films for decades. The earliest movie that made racism a subject was The Birth of a Nation in 1915 in which the roots of Ku Klux Klan was celebrated. Movies also highlighted slavery in light of the white perspective on the topic. Classic movies like Gone with the Wild paid greater attention to the manner in which brute slave labor enhanced the lives of the whites – their idealism, romance and gallantry. The civil rights movement came out strongly to strike a balance between whites and blacks by the counter-narrative – Roots – that revealed the disguised cruelty in the white charm. Divisions have intensified since these early times. Movies by white people often justify the struggles whites endure in coexisting with the blacks. Similarly, movies by black people often justify the struggles blacks endure in coexisting with the whites. The division has intensified even in movies that incorporate aspects of both blacks and whites. Jungle Fever and Do the Right Thing were a manifestation of the difficulty in reconciling black and white narratives. At one moment, the two are together as depicted in some films while at yet another moment the two are torn apart in other films. This confusion is even worse than what used to be at the beginnings. Death at a Funeral is a manifestation of racial identities typical of contemporary American cultural presentations.

Introducing the Expert

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Ghanaian of British origin. He is a novelist, cultural theorist and philosopher. His areas of interest are philosophy of mind and language, political and moral theory, and African intellectual history. Appiah was bred in Ghana but pursued his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. He taught philosophy at the Princeton University before proceeding to the New York University early this year. Currently, Appiah is a member of New York University’s departments of law and philosophy.

Appiah’s dissertation at Cambridge University was an exploration of the challenges in semantics. He is attributed to the 1992 award winning novel In My Father’s House. His later books included The Ethics of Identity, Color Consciousness and Cosmopolitan: Ethics in a World of Strangers. He was also an editor of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. In 1995, Appiah became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Appiah believes that racial identities are part of expressing membership to particular groups, but the same should be practiced in a manner that does not violate other people’s membership to the larger society.

Summary of Death at a Funeral

The film is all about a funeral ceremony. Aaron and Ryan’s father is being buried. The funeral is marked by comical events, which are sad at the same time. Race is at the helm of these comic events. One Frank, a white man, comes from nowhere to mess up with the burial arrangements. He claims he had an intimate relationship with the deceased and has photos to prove his point. The funeral owners, all blacks, cannot take any of that. They decide to silence Frank through a heavy dose of a hallucinogenic substance. When Frank is unconscious, they stash him in the coffin. Unfortunately, Frank regains consciousness when the funeral program is underway. He breaks away from the coffin, with the photos scattering all over the ground, raising tensions.

Appiah’s Take on Racial Identities

Appiah is the postmodern Socrates. He questions what being an African or African-American entails. However, the answers he offers raise pertinent issues that are all inclusive (that is, encompass all people). Appiah’s major concern is how people construct themselves individually in the society, privately or publicly, presently or in the past. This situation prompts him to explore the complexity of the process of personal possession. He stresses the dangers and opportunities of self-creation in a world that is culturally hybrid and ethically fluid. He formulates standards to measure the morality of people’s lives today while obliging people to examine those lifestyles and restructure them accordingly.

Death at a Funeral is racially charged. Blacks dominate the cast, and the atmosphere is one against the whites. Aaron and Ryan are determined not to cause shame and embarrassment to their deceased father. The white man – Frank –, who appears from the blues on the funeral day, is armed with loads of evidence to tarnish the deceased’s name. He encounters a combined force of black men. The demonstration of hatred starts when Frank ridicules Aaron’s novels as lacking flavor. This comment angers Aaron to the extremes until Aaron withdraws from the $30,000 deal he had made with Frank to keep him off the funeral. Aaron and his group resort to tyranny of numbers to eliminate Frank. They administer a toxic drug to Frank, which makes him run wild. As if that is not enough, the black group does the extraordinary – they fix the white enemy into a coffin. Although sounding comical, the racial setting and interpretation is quite sad. This incident is one of the gravest manifestations of racial identity. The blacks are so tired of whites that burying them alive is the best remedy.

As Appiah articulates, “…racial identification is simply harder to resist than ethnic identification. The reason is twofold. First, racial ascription is more socially salient… Secondly, race is taken by so many people to be the basis of treating people differently” (Appiah 46). So entrenched is racial identification in American society that all spheres of life, including cultural presentations, want to manifest it. Death at a Funeral is among many other films that present race as a cultural aspect of the society. According to Appiah, “There is not now and there has never been a common culture in the United States” (50). Appiah then argues that collective identities force people to behave in certain ways so that to fit within the ideals of their group: “The large collective identities that call for recognition come with notions of how a proper person of that kind behaves: it is not that there is one way that blacks should behave, but that there are proper black modes of behavior” (57).

The language in the film is laced with racial connotations. The tone is in most cases a commanding one. The word “negro” is prevalent, portraying the extreme extent of division. Frank rubbishes Aaron’s writings as worthless and with no grip at all on sensitive issues. What he means is that Aaron writes issues that do not relate to the “ideal” lives of dominant whites. Frank despises Aaron’s works, saying that he cannot spend a cent his to purchase the same. The same happens to the language of Aaron and his squad. They talk ill of Frank when he becomes unconscious. The decision they make to stash Frank into the coffin is totally against moral considerations. They rejoice at that collective action, which to them is well deserved. Appiah comments as follows, “An African-American after the Black Power movement takes the old script of self-hatred, the script in which he or she is a nigger, and works, in community with others, to construct a series of positive black life scripts. In these life scripts, being a Negro is recorded as being black: and this requires, among other things, refusing to assimilate to white norms of speech and behavior” (59). Blacks are adorned in black suits matching their color whereas whites are adorned in pale colors. The viewer notices this disparity outright.

Conclusion

Death at a Funeral, therefore, is a classic manifestation of the racially charged American society. Much has been done to fight racism from all angles, but it will certainly never end. As Appiah has articulated in his academic work, racial identity is different from other forms of identity. However, in as much as people identify themselves along racial lines, Appiah urges people to recognize contingency and practice irony. It is only better for the film industry to reconsider racial connotations of the films they release. Hollywood influences huge masses, and their presentation of race as a good thing will only polarize American society more and extend it to the world.

Works Cited

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. New Jersey:

Princeton University Press, 1996. 40-60.

Cinema Blend. Death at a Funeral (2010). Cinemablend, 2010. Accessed at

HYPERLINK “http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Death-at-a-Funeral-2010-4581.html” http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Death-at-a-Funeral-2010-4581.html 8 November 2014.