Media Analysis

Freedomland presents Brenda as a determined mother whose child has gone missing. The story begins with her entering a New Jersey hospital claiming that she had been carjacked while driving through Armstrong, a predominantly black project back to her predominantly white neighborhood in Gannon. Detective Lorenzo Council was dispatched to the hospital to take a report from her but things take a twist upon his arrival when the victim announces that the perpetrator had taken off with her 4-year-old son sleeping the back seat of the car. Detective Lorenzo knew the residents of Armstrong very well. He worked closely with that neighborhood in which Brenda stated the offense had taken place in giving him special interest in the case. Two things I found interesting is the victim has a brother Danny who is a detective for the Gannon police department that is predominately white. She never made any attempt to contact him, but it did not take long for the information to reach him. Immediately he brought his troop into the Armstrong development and set up barricades in pursuit of finding his missing nephew. Soon racial tensions started to flare, leaving Gannon tenants vulnerable to a bunch of eager white cops determined to arrest a black male in connection to this crime. A crime that evens her brother seemed convinced have some leaks in. She betrayed Felicia, the woman who helped keep her safe while searching for her son by having sex with her boyfriend Billy and who was somehow connected to the entire incident. This is almost stereotypical because most blacks would perceive this as "another black man leaving his own for a white woman."

Apologizing for being a black male came to mind when watching this movie. It was as if Lorenzo wanted to see the case to the end to prove that not all black men line up to the stereotypes that society has labeled them with. When the residents of Armstrong community had turned their backs on him for what they perceived as not taking their side he experienced hell on wheels. No one could see that he was only one man and there was nothing that he could do physically to get Gannon’s police squad off their backs other than to solve the case. All they saw was the officer that they had all befriended running through the complex with a white woman who is the cause of all the drama that was going on in their neighborhood. She was the reason behind the police interrogating and arresting their brothers, sons, husbands, or boyfriends. This began to separate a community that was once close knit and make them turn on one another.

For me it is amazing how African Americans can look at another African Americans and cast the same judgment upon them as individuals outside of our race. How can we expect to better ourselves if every situation that occurs we are the first to cast the stone. They never gave Lorenzo a chance to explain himself, further more why should he have to. I think we should live up to the Constitution. "Innocent until proven guilty" instead of "guilty until proven innocent."

This movie caused me some frustration and anger as its storyline comes from a real life event that took place in 1994. A case in which a Caucasian women alleged that she had been carjacked by an African-American man who drove away with her two sons still in the car. Like Brenda she made tearful pleas on television for the return of her children. A little over a week after all of the nationwide searches had been conducted, she confessed to drowning her children inside her vehicle by releasing the break and letting it coast into the lake. It is not often you hear the dirty laundry of the dominant Caucasian group aired on television. It is as if their life is portrayed