This guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.
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Freedom Writers – Movie 2007 USA 122 Mins
Not just a story about disadvantaged people of colour, but a story of white privilege.
In 1994, in Long Beach, California, an idealistic first timer has been accepted to teach English for at-risk students at a school where racial tensions have increased since the Riots of 1992.
Inspirational teacher stories are my drug. When I first saw Freedom Writers I was on a plane flying from the UK to Australia - one of the modern world’s longest, most torturous journeys - so I watched this on a loop to pass the time. I was wrecked by the time I got home.
Let’s start with the most obvious problem - non-white teachers have been helping at-risk children in similar situations for years, and nobody sees what they are doing as special. I get it – why is something only important when white people do it?
Freedom Writers is not just a movie about something being important because somebody white did it, though the marketing could make it seem that way.
Like To Sir With Love (1967) this is not just a story about the students, it is also a story about a teacher being transformed by their teaching experience.
At the very beginning of Freedom Writers, Erin bravely ignores all the people who are being condescending arseholes to her about her idealism. Some might watch this and see a “white teacher” being unrealistically devoted to her students. All I could see was a woman prepared to ignore the scorn of her peers, and prepared to make a total twat of herself in front of her students. Yes, she was clueless, but when someone is trying to do the right thing they don't necessarily deserve a kick in the head for failing. Nobody knows something til they learn it.
The turning point occurs when someone sends a racist caricature around the room, and Erin finally snaps. There follows a discussion that reveals just how wide the gap is between her own perception of her role at the school and how the world ticks, and what the students believe is happening. It was also the discussion that helped me finally understand what my own white privilege really means, not to me, but to others.
This is the bit that makes a movie like this movie necessary, and makes it necessary for this particular teacher to be a very privileged white one.
So, watching this movie through the eyes of a white person, this was a big deal. Nobody likes to be an object of scorn, we all want approval (especially from our daddy) etc etc. Through the eyes of a person of colour, yes, thanks a lot, Erin, you made a choice. We don't have the luxury of choice. Racism shouldn't happen, you don't get a medal for not being a racist etc etc.
I hear the objections and I don't dismiss them, but may I say this?
Yes, if we "colourless" people care we will make an effort to learn: People of Colour are not responsible for ‘splaining it to us all the time – but it’s stories like this one that make it possible for us to learn independently. And sadly, some of us need to hear a message over and over before it "clicks" and suddenly has real meaning.
That said, this is also a story of a teacher who would be good value regardless of colour. What makes Erin a hero to me - what made me weep watching this movie - is that Erin sees her students as people. Being visible is a basic human need. This is the scene that tore me to shreds, every single time:
She got this, that Andre was Andre, not his brother. And she understood how to share this with all her students – that it is in seeing each other and in living “respect” that we become the heroes of our own life stories.
Apart from that, the soundtrack is great.
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