Emma Hanson explores the significance of the title Carlos López Estrada’s 2018 explosive film Blindspotting. This article contains some spoilers.
To paraphrase the romantic comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, every great movie has a line in it explicitly stating what that movie is about. Notting Hill, for example, is encapsulated by Julia Roberts’s statement that she is ‘just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her’. I hadn’t given much thought to this cinematic device beyond Richard Curtis’s romantic comedies. That is until I watched Carlos López Estrada’s 2018 explosive film Blindspotting.
Blindspotting follows Collin (Daveed Diggs), an ex-felon, in his last three days of probation before his impending freedom. Collin and his childhood best friend Miles (Rafael Casal) navigate the gentrified Oakland, and grapple with intersections of race, class and issues of stereotypes. The vibrant, punchy movie, whilst gripping, left me in the dark about the relevance of the title. What does ‘blindspotting’ mean?
Over an hour into the movie Collin has a phone conversation with his ex-girlfriend Val (Janina Gavankar), discussing terms she has invented to memorise concepts for her psychology exam. Considering Rubin’s vase, a double-image of a face and a vase, Val reveals that she used the term ‘blindspotting’ to remember the concept. She explains the term:
Val: “It’s all about how you can look at something, and there can be another thing there that you aren’t seeing. So you got a blind spot”
Collin: “But if somebody points out the other picture to you, doesn’t that make it not a blind spot anymore?”
Val: “No, ‘cause you can’t go against what your brain wants to see first. Unless you spend the time to retrain your brain, which is hella hard, so you’re always gonna be instinctually blind to the spot you weren’t seeing.”
So here we have our Richard Curtis moment, as Val describes what the movie title means and effortlessly shifts this electrifying movie into a significant and poignant examination of racial stereotypes. Collin, constantly concerned with meeting the conditions of his parole, avoids any conflict with the law and lives as a moral citizen. He stands in stark contrast to his best friend Miles. The belligerent Miles, angered by the gentrification of Oakland, falls back on typical ‘hood’ slang, engages in drug use, owns a gun, and beats up anyone who critiques or misreads the ‘hood’ image he has moulded himself into. Collin is black. Miles is white.
Despite their objective behavioural differences, it is Collin who lives in fear of the police in a city permeated by the threat of violence against black people. After witnessing a black man shot by a policeman, constant flashbacks remind him of his status within the city of Oakland. It is Collin whose ex-girlfriend broke up with him because of his difficult lifestyle (she says to Collin as he arrives early to work drinking a green juice). On the other hand, Miles’s wife accepts him back after their young son finds the gun he brought into their home. In a jarring and uncomfortable flashback, Estrada reveals that Collin’s jail time, the background to the film set in the last three days of his parole, was a result of a fight which both him and Miles were involved in. The black man is arrested, while the white man walks free.
We have all judged a book by its cover. We have all held onto first impressions. We have all ‘blindspotted’ someone.
The contrast and conflict between Miles’s constructed ‘hood’ image and Collin’s careful concern to stay within the limits of his parole reaches an eventual climax. One of Collin’s black friends calls out Miles as a ‘culture vulture’ for his appropriation of black language and behaviour. In the consequential explosive argument between friends, Collin realises that Miles is the ‘n**** they out here looking for’. Miles appropriates black culture to keep the old Oakland alive, before gentrification, but he simultaneously represents the true threat which the police are seeking to quell. He is the stereotype of the violent black man but because he is white, he is not in jail - or dead.
Val’s invented term ‘blindspotting’ sheds light on the injustices of stereotypes. Cops are ‘blindspotted’ as they are upheld as moral citizens, despite the countless occasions when these ‘moral citizens’ have shot and killed black people. Miles is ‘blindspotted’ as he constantly evades punishment for his belligerent and often illegal behaviour. Collin is ‘blindspotted’ by his ex-girlfriend Val as he asks, “When you look at me now, do you always see the fight first?”. She can’t see the morally upright and genuine man standing in front of her. His favourable qualities live in society’s ‘blind spots’, whilst any minor infringement or negative behaviour is held up to the light.
This brief phone conversation proves the most thought provoking and significant moment in a dynamic and buzzing movie. Estrada blindsides the audience with a term that everyone is guilty of. We have all judged a book by its cover. We have all held onto first impressions. We have all ‘blindspotted’ someone. But Estrada’s new term can shed light on this subconscious judgement, moving it out of our blind spot.
by Emma Hanson