From Film to Thought… A continuation of Small Axe
Whereas Lovers Rock was the more experimental film, the gritty reality of Red, White and Blue attests to Newland’s diverse writing range (this isn’t including his numerous novels!). With John Boyega as Leroy Logan, this film got a fair amount of attention due to the star quality but deservedly so. Boyega was phenomenal at relating the story of a man trying to take down the system from within. Logan was a forensic scientist with a Phd but he decided to put that aside to become a police officer instead.
The story is immediately set up, in media res, as a young Logan is searched by the police whilst waiting outside school before being stopped by his father, played by Steve Tousaaint who can also be seen protesting by his daughter’s side for the rights of homosexuals and HIV positive people in Russel T. Davies, It’s a Sin. Soon after, Logan’s father is beaten by these policemen as he shouts “My Name is Kenneth”, identifying himself as a human and not another anonymous black body that they can abuse.
Despite all this, Logan chooses to join the force as essentially, he is not the kind of person that sits behind a desk all his life. He is the kind of person that needs to get back into the community, his community, to change the negative attitudes of the police and towards them. However, the community he tries to help don’t want it, calling him a coconut for his betrayal. In being this bridge, he is alone. A young boy, Abraham (Tut Byuot) is even knifed due to Logan’s seemingly kind intentions.
His father, of course, thinks this is a waste of his life. This same man is also called out for stealing the breath from his own wife’s mouth which is indicative of the domineering presence of Kenneth Logan. As Logan confronts his father, he tells him it is his fault as ‘you wanted us to be more British than the British’. He seems to be blaming his father for the erasure of culture as they assimilate to fit in, attempting to remain untouched by the dangers of society.
As Logan trains, it becomes clear that the police have a not-my-problem attitude and they menacingly call him a grassroots community policeman. There are examples of clearly racially motivated attacks yet his fellow officers fail to see this with racial motivation being shrugged away. This reminded me very much of the attitude of the police towards the Atlanta Spa shooting on 16th March 2021 where six of the eight murdered were women of Asian descent:
Xiaojie Tan, 49
Daoyou Feng, 44
Hyun Jung Grant, 51
Suncha Kim, 69
Soon Chung Park, 74
Yong Ae Yue, 63
These names were sparingly mentioned in the initial press and reports of the attack and the murders were put down to the shooter having ‘a bad day’. It is devastating that these stories need to be told In Small Axe but even more so that they are continuing to be lived today.
The film, however, is sprinkled with lightness as the good humour of Boyega shines through including him and his cousin, Leee (Tyrone Huntley), listening to music and dancing enthusiastically. One of my favourite scenes is them all gathered around the dinner table laughing and loving. They start to talk about nuances of each of their recipes. I love a food description in stories as I think it brings up a sense that is often ignored onscreen or on page, like another dimension of their reality. In particular, they were talking about the sweetness of the food and how some prefer to make it more savoury but even this little vegan salivated slightly over their description of putting demerara in the oil to give the chicken sweetness and using coconut cream in the rice and peas. Mouthwatering…
Overall, this film is a lot more story based as you observe the journey of Logan’s struggle, even contemplating quitting at one point. It ends with his Father, a cyclical moment as this was for him from the beginning, telling him that this is a slow-turning wheel he is a part of. Logan concludes that you must scorch the earth in order to regrow, leaving a feeling of hope.
When asked about these stories, Newland said he believes there is kind of a Renaissance happening right now with a good creative space that needs to be maintained. However, he wants to get past this renaissance stage to where black British stories don’t need to be special but are mainstream and ordinary. They do it for themselves instead of allowing for a white audience.
At a Women of Colour Conference I recently attended, they said that they didn’t want to separate bipoc as ‘others’ and white as ‘us’, especially as each of these categories have all their own smaller communities embedded in them. It should encompass everyone as the audience. A British audience contains all and that is what should be what presented to us onscreen as well. Content creators have a responsibility to show representative faces onscreen. As the saying goes: There is no story about us without us. These stories have worth and value. They deserve to be accessible everywhere and anytime, not as an exceptional occurrence.
