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Memories. They are a profound and powerful influence on our actions and thoughts. Our experiences –and more importantly, our interpretation of them—affect how we react in the future to other people and situations. This is exemplified in Peter O’Keefe’s short film, Race Memory.
Two men, one white (Mack) and one black (Detective Horton) are hanging out at a cop bar. Rod turns to Mack and comments, “You remind me of this cop…” He proceeds to tell the story of how, when he was ten, a white cop took his newly-earned Schwinn bicycle because, “it was too good for a nigger kid.” Horton continues, relating the prejudice he experienced as a black cop on an all-white police force. He then backtracks to his childhood again, telling of how the cop that took his bike nearly choked him by pulling him alongside the patrol car by his necktie. At this point, Mack joins in, talking about his then-13-year-old sister being gang raped by a group of young black men and how he was repeatedly held up by groups of black thugs.
As the tension between the two reaches a climax, Sgt. Seeger, an attractive young female cop, comes up to the bar for refills. She has been recently promoted and is celebrating with several other cops in the back of the bar. As she waits for her drinks, Mack launches into another narrative about how when he was growing up, the black kids and the white kids used to fight over the local baseball field; to this, Seeger responds with a quizzical look, “Why didn’t you just pick teams and play each other?” Mack doesn’t respond, but continues brooding, while Horton changes the subject and asks about her promotion. After the drinks arrive and Seeger returns to her party, Mack and Horton comment to each other about what an arrogant bitch she is. Realizing that they share their dislike of such females, Mack proceeds to buy a drink for Horton as they sit together at the bar in agreeable camaraderie. An indeterminate amount of time passes, and Horton turns to the man next to him (who might or might not be Mack, depending on your interpretation) and says, “You remind me of this cop…”
Although this film is only 15 minutes long (including credits), there are several possible meanings that can be derived from it. However, I will only mention the two that are the most apparent. On a literal level, this is the story of two men of different races sitting in a bar, reminiscing and reacting to each other based on their memories. Each man’s “race memory” affects how he sees and treats the other. It is not until someone different comes up (Seeger), that they realize that there is an “enemy” (of sorts) that they dislike more than they dislike and distrust each other. In this shared sense of kinship, they are willing to put aside their prejudice with each other for the time being. When, at the end, Horton says to the guy next to him, “You remind me of this cop…”, it is presumed that he says that to just about every white cop he encounters, because to him, all white cops look alike, and they all remind him of the one who stole his bike when he was a child.
The other interpretation is that Mack and Horton are representations of their respective races. They represent how black people and white people see each other. For them, it is nearly impossible to see the person without simultaneously recalling the painful or uncomfortable experiences they had with them. As such, this is a continually occurring event: each person recounts the terrible and unjust things they’ve experienced at the hands of the other; then they face each other at an impasse until someone else comes along; they agree they hate this new person more than they hate each other; things settle down until one person says to the other, “I remember when you did…” and it starts all over again in an unending cycle.
This film brings up many interesting points: how much of a factor is memory in our prejudices and how we treat one another? Are practical ideas (such as Seeger’s suggestion of “Why didn’t you just pick teams and play each other?”) able to be realistically implemented when it comes to solving these issues or are memories too deep for such ideas to work? The most important question the audience seems to be left with is, “Is it possible to overcome our ingrained race memory and break the cycle of distrust and anger?”
Content
The writing for this film was very well done, especially considering how complex the topic is. It is pretty difficult to try to get such a dense concept down to less than 15 minutes. The acting is decent, although I felt that Horton looked a bit too young for his character.
There are a few things in the story that were unclear. In the transition scenes, O’Keefe shows passage of time with a shot of Horton from the back and lots of people rushing back and forth behind him in fast motion. Using this as a method of transition was rather awkward, and I kind of wish that O’Keefe had made it a little more clear what it was supposed to be. While I interpreted this as the passage of time, my husband saw it as memories flooding through Horton’s mind. To show the passage of time, you could fade to black, or cut away to a clock as it progresses forward a half hour or so; to indicate memories, show the action (from stock footage or filmed action) as a half-transparent overlay on his face, so we know he’s remembering.
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