I’m going to use this to discuss something I haven’t noticed
in watching this film previously, and that is the opening shot of the slaves
chained together, and the closing shot of the little girls held together by the
rope. I know that this was a question for the homework, but knowing the Coen
Brothers and their use of film knowledge in all of their work, I want to
discuss it to figure out the ties more. The film deals a lot with ideas of
class and race as barriers, symbols, and something that needs to be further
understood.
The film opens with a shot of inmates, all of whom are
black, chained together working on building a railroad. The only inmates to
escape from that group, the characters we follow in the film, are white.
Throughout the course of the film, race pops up as a means of controversy and
questioning, when they are in the recording booth and when they come across the
KKK ritual. In both instances race is questioned because of the denial of negro
music and then the saving of the black man from the KKK when he is to be
lynched. These themes seem to be addressed in the visual connections that are
to be made.
The closing scene in the film depicts the little girls, all
holding on to a single rope and all white, walking across a railroad track.
Now, knowing the Coen Brothers, the fact that they walk across a railroad track
seems deliberate. It seems as though they are bringing the little girls on to
the level of the men in the beginning as to eliminate race and state and bring the story
full circle. In contrasting the visuals of them both, they create a connection
between the two. It does also, as the text states, bring about a symbol of marriage and positive family ties,
but I think from these visual indicators, it is also commenting on race and
it’s stature.
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