How are postcolonial attitudes to ‘the other’ represented in La Haine?

La Haines primary story focuses on the characters of Vinz, a young Jewish man, consistently shown as angry and confused. Said, an Arab man who seems to be hell bent on keeping his friends together throughout the film. Finally, we have Hubert, a black man who seems to be very pacifistic and attempting to rise from the seemingly shady area from which they all live. It's this intense eclectic mix of backgrounds and beliefs that really highlight the attitudes of 'the other' La Haine really shows. All three characters while sharing different families and idealogies still end the film willing to quite literally die for one another. Despite this their avid distain for the seemingly oppressive law who regularly single out our trio remains a constant during the film, this constant battle between the 'French' and the 'other' only serves to showcase -the impending destruction of the way of life as the French know it- if they continue to separate from one another ."La Haine's central message is explicitly about an impending crisis for French society. The exclusion of minority populations from this society will lead to increasing violence and destruction of the social order."(Sharma, 2000, p.105)

We meet our characters within a Banlieue, a immediate choice by Mathieu Kassovitz ( the films director ). Banlieues being low income areas in and around paris highlighted with there high immigrant numbers. While there is no direct segregation happening it does feel almost like our characters begin corralled and shunned, in a space where seemingly tension and distain are growing exceeding amounts. "while France may not be a colony, the organization of Paris, in particular into a central space of proper Parisians and national monuments and peripheral Banlieues of radicalized others, many of whom are it's (former) colonial subjects, re-create the colonial relation wherein, the native's muscles are always tense." (Cherian R, 2023, P.8)

While the main characters lash out due to their current lack of acceptance from society, the characters still feel lost and unease within the places they still find themself at current. They constantly, borrrow and take ideas from things they've seen and use it themselves. This is showcased early during the extremely famous mirror scene, shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jBHRhVSJlE borrowing from film culture where Vinz repeats Robert De Niro's famous line from Taxi driver "You talkin' to me?" but within his naitive language of French. The trio constantly struggle to settle, but they also don't seem to understand their own positions in all of this. Vinz when the group is confronted by the man in the bathroom in Paris talking of war experiences seemingly related to jewish experience, Vinz himself questions ' Seriously, what was the geezer on the loo on about?'. Furthermore, take the dolly zoom shot when the trio finds themself in the centre of the nation, a place that is always discussed when discussing France itself. Yet the shot isolates and alienates them further "where the boys are pulled away from the city that symbolizes the French nation."(Doughty R, Griffiths K, 2006, P.2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv41W6iyyGs

La Haine is a incredibly unique and powerful film, that offers extreme amounts of thought-provoking postcolonial attitudes towards 'the other' and ways that many peoples lives were impacted in France. The film gives us characters who all have seemingly insurmountable issues, as does anyone who's struggles arise from race and background. It gives us a powerful critique of society during the time and how it shunned and marginalized those who are different.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cherian, R. (2023). The Jew, the Arab, the Black: La Haine and the Structure of Anti-Black Violence. Black Camera: An International Film Journal, 14(2), 204–226.

Doughty, R., & Griffiths, K. (2006). Racial reflection: La Haine and the art of borrowing. Studies in European Cinema, 3(2), 117–127.

Sharma S, Sharma A (2000) 'So far so good...' La Haine and the poetics of the everyday

Culture Theory& Society; 2000 June; 17(3): 103-116.