Higher Learning

Lets be honest

The 90s were a weird set of years. I don't really know what totally set it apart from the 80s but suddenly everything became a big deal. Homosexual characters started showing up on TV shows, even having a TV show surrounding the idea of a gay man and a sassy woman became huge entertainment. Also people were willing to talk about issues of race. I'll be it in the most awkward way possible but still, race became an issue, gay rights became an issue, war was no longer popular, it was just a different time.

But again, it was awkward. Not only the fact that it was the 90s and everything was awkward but it also had to do with these issues never really being addressed on a global scale. And in keeping with the theme of awkward mediums of entertainment, there came the movie Higher Learning.

I watched this movie as part of a class called Revolution, Resistance and Liberation. You can probably guess what that class is about. We watched the movie with the purpose of finding the different faces of oppression and seeing how those stages evolve into one another.

But I'm more interested in looking at this movie from a straight up movie stand point. I will keep the purpose of the movie in mind and actually use the elements of the movie as ways to show whether or not it fulfills that purpose or if its just... awkward.

The movie focuses on a small handful of college students at a college. They all come from different walks of life, walks of life you'll really only know from their appearance. For example: Kristen (played by Kristy Swanson) is a white woman. Malik (played by Omar Eeps) is a black man. Remy (played by Michael Rapaport) is a socially awkward... just overall strange guy... whos also white.

The movie mainly focuses around these three along with the people they interact with and the circles they join in order to feel accepted in a new environment.

An environment that is fucking insane.

Seriously, imagine the most dramatized college party you can imagine, like something from animal house. Apparently those happen every day in this strange universe. The university openly calls out students who don't have the financial aid to pay for college in class and kick them out. The campus safety is like Officer Krupke from West Side Story, openly favoring white students and busting black students for lesser offenses. I know college campus security probably weren't the most culturally aware people in the 90s but these guys are just ridiculous... oh and they're fully armed.

Anyway, Kristen, Malik and Remy really immerse themselves in college life but find it difficult. Malik has trouble running track and getting good grades, Remy finds it hard making friends and ends up being a social outcast, and Kristen is raped... Now you may be saying that escalated quickly, and you'd be right. That happens a lot in this movie.

Let's start with Kristen's story. She goes to a party and is raped. When she goes home from the rape, she's crying and her roommate (played by Regina King). When the boy who did it calls her, Regina tells her she doesn't want to talk to him and then he calls her a "Black bitch". Then Regina King calls in Ice Cube... I wish I was kidding and he beats the crap out of the guy who raped Kristen. But Kristen's friends don't look too highly on that and turn their backs on her... And I get what the movie is trying to do, its trying to point out how victim blaming happens, but if you watch the scene and see Kristen, you'd either have to be stupid or heartless not to see that she is the victim here. Which makes the scene somewhat effective but at the same time obnoxious. From there she gets involved with a group of activists on campus led by a very young, lesbian Jennifer Connelly. She spends a lot of the movie questioning her sexuality and develops a kind of "We are the World" mentality. I don't want to say it gets this far... but it gets this far.

Her storyline kind of gets overshadowed halfway through and in the end her character doesn't really amount to anything. I won't say she's pointless but her storyline ends kind of anticlimactically.

The story of Remy and Malik kind of connect so I'll describe their plots as interconnected as I can. Malik runs track. He spends the majority of the movie riding a line between being a good college student, improving his writing and eventually getting involved with Tyra Banks (yeah she's in this movie) and developing a mentor/student relationship with his professor (played by Laurence Fishburne). Fishburne's character in this movie is really good. He's by far the most sensible of the entire cast but unfortunately this movie isn't about him so his screen time is limited, which is a bummer.

On the other hand you have Remy.

And I'd like to say that Remy is more of a tragic character and what happens with him is just a series of unfortunate twists and turns and while what he eventually becomes is awful, its sad because he was a nice guy at the beginning.

But no. Remy is a douche this entire movie. He's a douche when he can't find friends, he's a douche when he joins up with a neo nazi group, and he's a douche when he perches on top of the school with a sniper rifle for the "good of the Arian nation"

Again... that escalated quickly.

Yes Michael Rapaport gives a performance of a lonely boy who finds companionship with neo nazis. This causes troubles between him and Malik eventually, going as far as Remy just going on a slew of racial slurs and pointing a gun at Malik. But does he get in trouble? No that would assume people were smart at these colleges.

I'm going to talk about the campus security again. Again, I realize that they're suppose to represent how racism and prejudice can seep into law enforcement but there's a scene where Remy points a gun, not only at Malik but at his roommate, A WHITE GUY! I don't care if he's jewish or not, I don't care if Remy drops out of school, there is absolutely not repercussions for Remy pulling out a Glock on two students. None at all.

In which I say... bullshit!

Well Remy and Malik's paths cross and it really incites what I can only call, a race war.