SSC Film Studies

Hubert in his bedroom scene

The scene starts off with a low angle close up of Hubert which places the audience closer to him, there are posters of African American athletes, such as Tommie smith, Tommie smith is doing the black panther salute at the 1968 México city Olympics. The fact smith is doing the black panther salute shows he is proud of his ethnicity and has came out on top which is influential to Hubert because they are both oppressed black men.

The flower wallpaper in Hubert’s room suggests that he has or currently is sharing a room; it could also suggest that the family just couldn’t afford to buy new wallpaper so he covered it up with posters instead.  Hubert is shown cutting blocks of marijuana and smoking it. The fact he is home in the middle of the day smoking drugs shows how there is very little opportunity in the projects. The sequence before this we see Hubert’s mother who is pregnant, she mentions his brother in jail who needs textbooks to do his exams while he’s in there, the fact he is doing school exams shows that he is quite young, which is a good example of how it’s the youth who are getting In trouble for many reasons. Another example is  Hubert selling drugs to pay bills, which we see when he walks in the kitchen and puts money on top of the fridge, this suggests he doesn’t want to sell drugs and that he only does it because there is no other form of getting money. Also Hubert’s hands where shaking when he was cutting the drugs, which strengthens the point that he does not want to sell drugs.

The sequence is then cut to a point of view shot of the project from Hubert; he sees the youth and the elders next to each other. This suggests that Hubert thinks the youth will make the same mistakes the elders did and end up like them, like a cycle of crime, which keeps everybody trapped.

When Hubert looks out the window there is a diegetic sound of a helicopter, this creates realism and connotes a feeling of surveillance. We are shown Hubert’s view of the projects because he is the most aware of his position in society due to him being the most different, and because he sees the projects for what they are.