Fruitvale Station. Visual & Performing Arts Research Paper

Fruitvale Station
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Released in 2013, Fruitvale Station is a biographical drama film directed and written by Ryan Coogler. The story is based on the events that led to the death of Oscar Grant. In 2009, this 22-year-old African American was shot by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California.
The American film (meaning Fruitvale Station) basically shows how the last 24 hours of Oscar Grant’s life had been, what types of things he did and how he lost his life. Throughout the movie, we can see that this victim of police was given tough times. The core themes of Fruitvale Station are gang culture, police brutality, family, romance, injustice, and racism. Out of all these themes, injustice, police brutality and racism are the best ones. This is because the film reveals how African Americans are treated and what leads them to lose their valuables and even their lives.
In different parts of the United States, African Americans are not given as many rights as are given to other people or locals. They are pushed behind the competition and often kept from accessing the best educational and healthcare facilities. In some situations, they even have to suffer from losing their favorite jobs since companies or organizations they apply to want white people to work at top positions. This leads many qualified, skilled and experienced African Americans to feel bad. Some of them even live a miserable life or face various day-to-day challenges.
The situation gets worsened when African Americans are threatened by white police officers and often killed on the name of religion, caste, and gender. The same thing happened with Oscar Grant when a police officer (Johannes Mehserle) shot him in California. The whole fight took place in a crowded train called Bay Area Rapid Transit. He was returning from San Francisco. All of a sudden, BART Police officers detained Oscar Grant and a few other passengers on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station. Officer Anthony Pirone kneed Oscar Grant in the head and forced him to face down instantly. When he is holding him tightly, another police officer (Johannes Mehserle) draws his pistol and takes no time to shoot the 22-year-old young guy. All these moments were captured with many privately owned smartphone cameras; some official digital videos were also made.
From the performances of Michael B. Jordan, Kevin Durand, Melonie Diaz, Chad Michael Murray, Octavia Spencer and Ahna O'Reilly to the narrative structure, sound, editing and form, everything in Fruitvale Station gives us a feeling that we were actually present at the place where this incident took place. It is true that the filmmaker spent months with the family of Oscar Grant to get to know them and the victim in a better way and to make the movie look impressive and engaging.
The film was scripted in a way that not everything that happened in reality was shown to the audience. In addition, some concepts or scenes were added to give Fruitvale Station a better look. For example, there is a scene in which we can see a dog. In 2009, when the real incident happened, no dog was found there so this thing was added to the film in order to make it look engaging.
Editing was done in some ...