Fruitvale Station Reflection

Ryan Coogler's "Fruitvale Station" portrays the last day of 22 year old Oscar Grant's life leading up to his untimely and unjust murder at the hands of a police officer. The biographical film allows viewers insight to Grant's family, interests and aspirations that he unfortunately did not have the opportunity to fulfill, but within the wider scope shows how recent events of police brutality and injustices are captured and covered since the introduction of camera phones. As this narrative has become more frequent and has gained more exposure in mainstream media coverage, we have seen a rise in uncensored amateur videography and photography by ordinary people who witness and record the incidents on their phones. The rise of accessibility of cameras and phones has certainly lent itself to the abilities and capabilities of potential victims of police brutality, as well as bystanders of these situations in their right to capture and report these instances of excessive uses of power in an attempt to not only stop specific perpetrators, but hopefully stop these occurrences entirely. The impact of everyone's ability to become an amateur videographer has greatly impacted the coverage of these atrocities and abuses of power, as we have seen a sharp increase in the violence illustrated, especially within visual digital media, spanning from news casts, online articles, Facebook posts, and tweets. This begs the question of how this is effecting the consumers of all this visual data, and whether or not we are intaking and processing these horrific visuals that spark us to not only speak out but act against them, or if the exposure to this scarring and horrid imagery has become normalized, where we think about it, feel bad, but quickly move on. Additionally, this type of uncensored coverage has gone far beyond police brutality, extending into mass shooting and terrorist attacks among others, with such as the recent tragedy in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, as of this moment, while I know change does not come as quickly as it should on most occasions, I believe we have seen the commentary, but not enough action in response to these gut wrenching and visceral documentations, and therefore while it is powerful to be able to record these events, I am not certain that our exposure from various media outlets is productive and is not simply and sadly normalizing us to seeing these harrowing affairs.