Pressure (Horace Ové, 1975), SEQUENCE ANALYSIS

lledomroig
20 abr 2021
4 Min. de lectura

Pressure (Horace Ové, 1975) is an historic and artistic film that puts on the table the situation of black man and women in the mid-seventies in England. Tony, the main character, is a black young man who, unlike his family, was born in the UK. That pulls the family into a tense situation with the rising of the Black Power movement and the fight for human rights, hence the family breaks its stability among the whites when the son follows his elder brother into the organisation. Unlike colonialism films such as Four Feathers (1939) stared by white men in colonial countries, Pressure (1975) is located in London and stared by black immigrant people. For me, there’s one sequence that summarises the whole conflict of the film and that shows how identity, racism, intergenerational conflict , diaspora and whiteness interact within the film. This is when Tony returns home after being arrested to find his home completely devastated, just as his parents, because the police destroyed their home seeking for drugs. This scene goes from 01:29:37 to 01:36:16 and is the one we are going to analyse.

In this scene, black identity is seen from various and different points. First, we’ve got the mother, who refuses her identity as a full and capable human being to fit in the white society she dreamed once. Pines refers to the female member of the family as the primary source of familial and racial angst, just as Flame in the Streets (1961) and Sapphire (1959) (2001:120). During the whole film, we’ve seen that she conceives herself as a second class human that has to thank the whites for letting her live within their world as a maid or someone supportive in the community, but not as a part of it. At the beginning of the film we have seen that she tried to pass her thoughts to Tony, her youngest son. He was raised among the whites and with the goal of being part of the working class even if it is with low payed jobs that white people refuse. All this facade starts to crumble during this scene when Tony realises what being black truly means and rejects his mother’s conformity. As Pines explains, the woman’s “reaction is rooted in a deeper sense of insecurities (...) within and about their family” (2001: 120), and Bopsie tries to transfer these insecurities of hers to them. In this scene, she is ashamed and mad about what happened because other people saw it and defends herself by saying that black must have respect for the whites, who maintain all the power, the laws and the guns by working hard and staying out of trouble. In racial films, the construction of the blacks is made either as exotic or the threatening other (2001: 118) and in Pressure (1975) we see the black boys as the threatening others by Bopsie, who forbids Tony to go out with them. In this scenario, the mother is being racist with her own because she wants to reach the white’s status. This is clearly seen in this scene during the fight, when Tony pulls her wig out, and says that it makes her look alike to the white women.

The father has adjusted himself to the situation after moving to the UK in order to achieve the white dream for his family. He works in a grocery shop and pretends wealthiness to fit with his wife’s ideas. However, in this scene, after Tony leaves, he reproaches his wife for ever leaving Trinidad (their hometown) to reach a social class they will never be part of among the whites. He regrets about their diaspora, he feels he is no one in England and blames his wife for making him, and their son, being ashamed of being black. Here we see how the old generations, mostly Bopsie, are satisfied living in a society where the whites have all the power or just resigned without fighting back for their rights, but it changes with the second generation.

In counterpoint of the parents, and following the racial approach of Pines, the sons, who would be the center of the drama “possess the capacity of rationality” (2001:120), and this may be why their father finally joins the boys beliefs in front of the mother, who was always a burden for their pride. The elder son, Colin, is part of the black power for human rights. He knows how white people treats them and tries to spread that they are not thieves or criminals as white people portray them. He feels a strong black pride, unlike his family, and tries to change Tony’s beliefs from the beginning of the film. In this scene, we can clearly see how Tony has finally got the message. Anyway, he feels his black identity in a different way from Colin’s: he was born in England and raised among the whites. He has the utopian idea of the world in which there’s nothing to fight for, because black and white people are the same. The film is a path in which he goes on to find out that everything that his mother has taught him, is not real: the black do need to fight, because they have no rights, they are seen as second class citizens and are condemned unfairly. Tony is disappointed of the English society after what he has seen, and makes it clear in this argument with his parents. This scene makes a very important inflexion point in Tony’s mind, because when he’s trying to defend himself from his father’s accusation is when he’s starting to realise how they were accused unfairly for just being black. He says “how could they, pa? How could they?”, but in this question, he’s not really asking his father for answers, he’s finally opening his eyes on how white people treat them. “We are human too” is the sentence that summarises his whole path, because he can’t have the respect his mother is asking him for the whites when they don’t have that respect for them. They just want to be part of the society and hold the power side by side.