'Rachel Getting Married' as Racist Recruiting Tool and Indictment of Multi-Culturalism

posted by Jett Loe

Rachel Getting Married / Directed by Jonathan Demme / Written by Jenny Lumet / Featuring Anne Hathaway

Recently we had here in the States an event labeled ‘Tea Parties’ – billed as an expression of outrage over Federal tax policies, it seemed to this writer that for many people this organized shout fest was, in fact, a way to express, in public, fear and loathing at having a Black Man in the White House.

The above photo by Matheiu Young says it all.  While you may disagree with Obama’s policies there is nothing so radical, (returning to the tax rate of the Clinton Years?), as to justify that sign, (the end of the Republic?), unless you feel that since the U.S. has been founded and run by white men since its inception it must always remain so.

But wait a minute – what does that mean: white men?  ‘Cause the thing is we’re all the same species – all related to each other, (depending on how you want to cut it – how far you wanna go back, Africa??, – we’re all in the same family), yet the fear of the ‘other’ is still so dominant that a ['me/not me' - 'my tribe/not my tribe'] psychologically organising binary principle still looms in much of U.S. culture and behaviour.

Which brings me to ‘Rachel Getting Married’.  Though thought of by most as an insightful, innovatingly shot and well-acted portrayal of addiction, struggle and family relationships wrapped in a cocoon of positive multi-culturalism, in actuality it can be read as a deeply racist picture that would make a wonderful recruiting tool for the Klan.

I should mention now that I don’t feel this was the intent of Rachel director Jonathan Demme, (a skilled practitioner of commercial cinema whose works such as ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Stop Making Sense’ I enjoy and respect).  Demme’s movies are not reworked over and over again with added multiple meanings, signs and allusions as in Stanley Kubrick’s – instead I believe the underlying racist subtext in ‘Rachel’ is an unconscious dream narrative of the film.

First and foremost here one must talk about the ‘wedding design’ itself:  it’s Hinduesque Indian-themed.

Yet, no one in the film is Indian.

Much time is spent discussing traditional Indian dress – we see in close detail the cutting of an ‘Indian-themed-Elephant’ cake.  No attention is paid to the symbols of Hindu culture – what they mean – because the film’s characters don’t know and don’t care.

A wedding, a union between two people – is shown in this movie to be layered with affectation – rituals in this multi-cultural world have become stripped of meaning – the narratives that help us navigate our lives are shown in this film to be dissolving; falling apart, meaningless.

So we see in this film the characters wrapped in a drape of a culture they neither know, nor care to know, (one wonders about the same practice in India – are there Hindi Hindus getting married in faux churches, decorated with crosses everywhere? shades of this urban myth?).

What about the people who are getting married?  Rachel, a white woman with sharp, European features, is a psychologist – a student of the mind; she is marrying Sidney a black man and musician, (in the film the musicians are shown to be earthy – less attuned to social mores – so much so that a group of musicians who are seen playing throughout the film just for the joy of it – they’re not getting paid to practice and hang out – they live before capitalism, before civilisation), are told to stop – they’re just not aware of the adults, the civilised business around them.

About the husband to be: ‘Rachel Getting Married’ was written by Jenny Lumet – daughter of famed director Sidney Lumet – so one would not be making too great a leap to think that the Sidney character is named after her father.

Her father’s first film for theatrical distribution?

’12 Angry Men’; in which a group of white men are convinced by an architect, (architect = architect of the film – the director), to let a colored boy go.  We see in ’12 Angry Men’ the beginning of the breakdown of white power asserting itself through its own law and the rise of a more equitable way of administering justice.

So Sidney represents the decline of white rule in the U.S. and the coming of…what?

One must also ask – Rachel, this doctor, this psychologist, is wedding herself to a primitive – why is this allowed?  Because the family protector – the male who would stop such an unwise and normally proscribed event has died.

Who is this?

The family’s younger brother: Ethan.

The name Ethan is said repeatedly throughout the film and seen in text.   Now, who’s the most famous Ethan in cinema?  This guy:

Yep, John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in ‘The Searchers’:

A racist soldier who spends years of his life tracking down his niece, a young white girl, who was abducting by swarthy American natives.  And when he finds her?  His initial thought is to kill her, as she’s polluted, gone native.  At the end of the pic he’s isolated and alone, trapped by his inability to accept and integrate into a more civilised, tolerant society.

So in ‘Rachel Getting Married’ the soldier, the protector of Rachel’s family is gone.  No one is there to stop the miscegenation.

What of the mother?  Can she do anything?  No.  With Ethan gone she flees the family home, divorces the father and takes up with another man, (who interestingly enough is styled in such a manner as to evoke a Republican Senator – absolutley the ‘straightest/most conservative’ male in the film – they leave the movie at the end to go to ‘Washington’ – so the Mother has abandoned the mixed family and retreated to the last bastion of white power).

What of the father?

He is powerless, emasculated.  A clown.

Literally.

He is played by Bill Irwin, one of our greatest clowns – an acknowledged master at playing the fool.  What happens to him in ‘Rachel Getting Married’?  He too has succumbed to the jungle rhythms – musical instruments are on every wall of his home – and, most damningly, he has taken up with a woman who’s racial characteristics make classification difficult – it’s just easier for the bigot to identify her as the Other.

So the mother is lost, the father too.

Ethan the soldier is dead and sister Kym, who is the real focus of the ‘above-ground’ narrative is shown to be drug addict.

She’s gone native – the drugs are meant for those who should be controlled, not for the ruling class (as we see in the ‘Godfather’ selling heroin to blacks is acceptable because as one gangster states “they’re animals anyway, so let them dig their own graves”).  So Kym is out of the picture, (an interestingly and in keeping with this post her ‘recovery shepherds’ are a black female and male).

Is there no one to stop the union of Rachel and Sidney?  No solider like Ethan back from the wars who is affronted by this change in the community that allows such goings on?  Well yes, there is one solider, back from another seemingly endless war of expansion against natives – this time in Iraq – who could do something – and it is here we find the ultimate horror of the racist: Specialist Gonzales.

Who?

Well, in a film that has dozens upon dozens of party guests flitting in and out of the narrative; some given just one line, others whole speeches – only ‘Specialist Gonzales’ is addressed clearly at the beginning and the end – the sound mix of the picture makes it very clear we are supposed to hear his name.  Specialist Gonzales.

He is a black man.

A black man with a Hispanic name.  The ultimate nightmare of the bigot is realised in Gonzales – the unknowability of race – of one’s place in the order – is found here.  Specialist Gonzales transcends race and class and he is armed by the federal government. But not just with a gun.

In a film that’s shot as a faux-documentary only Specialist Gonzales is singled out repeatedly as a cameraman – we cut between shots of him shooting with his Handycam and the actual footage itself – Specialist Gonzales is the film-maker, the architect of this pic.

At the end of the film Specialist Gonzales is told put the camera down.

The movie’s unconscious knows that soldiers should just do their job – and not bother with taking pictures.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:14 pm. It is filed under Blog, Drama, Jett Loe, Jett Loe Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.