CriticSociety- film reviews

Article

John Singleton's 'Higher Learning': Defining the Message, Offering a Solution

Posted by

a.k.a. Janet

Article date

Sunday, July 13, 2003

John’s Singleton’s 1995 film Higher Learning uses the campus of the fictional Columbus University in California as a metaphor to address larger issues of political, sexual, and racial conflicts and prejudice that permeate American society. Colin Jacobson comments that Singleton “tried too hard to pack a huge variety of events into a short period of time” (para 12) . He also claims that because the film attempts to make such a big statement, it “can come across as heavy-handed and melodramatic” (Jacobson para 5) . Indeed, Singleton took on quite a task when he set out to make this movie—to deliver a meaningful and cohesive message about prejudice and conflict in just two short hours. Singleton’s message, as Christopher Atkinson defines it, is this: “[…] racism is a system that has been institutionalized within the very fabric of American social, economical, educational, and governmental institutions, and has always sought to dehumanize, devalue, and even destroy the black man and woman” (para 2) . So—Atkinson has defined the problem. Does Singleton offer any solutions?

A careful viewer can see that, instead of being a heavy-handed melodrama, Singleton’s film uses subtle, colorful, visual clues to piece together an imaginative puzzle that connects the stories within the larger story to construct something whole. Opening credits, with their simple design and color scheme, hint at conflicts within by presenting the title in bright red over a stark black background. The red of the title then turns to white as credits roll, moving across the screen at various angles. Then gray titles appear, with following credits still in white, always against stark black—signaling that the issues about to be addressed are often perceived as “black or white,” right or wrong, good or bad.

The film’s opening scene sets the stage for what could be called the artistic motif or design that Singleton envisioned for his film. An enormous red, white, and blue American flag fills the screen as viewers first hear martial music and then see a marching band dressed in blue jackets and white pants, the sun glinting gold off tubas and French horns, pom-pom girls dressed in blue skirts and gold tops. A podium stands under the American flag, with the white California flag flanking it on one side, the Columbus University flag in gold with blue lettering on the other. At the center of the scene stands the campus centerpiece, a gunmetal gray statue of Christopher Columbus, surrounded by beds of gold flowers, with green grass and green, leafy trees in the background. The camera pans over the crowd—all dressed in some combination of red, white, and blue—chanting and saluting in militaristic fashion. Occasional dashes of gold, drawn from the C.U. flag, pop up on T-shirts here and there.

Malik (Omar Epps), wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, works his way through the chanting crowd. Next the camera focuses on Remy (Michael Rappaport), “[…] the whitest white-bread boy one could imagine” (Jacobson para 3) , dressed in a red plaid shirt, observing the speakers and the crowd with just a trace of a smile on his face. He opens his plaid shirt, exposing under it a gray T-shirt that features an unpleasant picture of a skull, complete with staring eyeballs, hinting darkly at Remy’s troubled character. Finally, the viewer is introduced to blond (white) Kristen (Kristy Swanson) as she walks across campus near the statue dressed in a blue sweater, red and blue plaid skirt, and navy knee socks. Singleton’s use throughout the film of vivid reds, whites, and blues, the colors of Americana drawn from the flag, creates for the viewer a visual bridge between the events taking place on the fictional college campus and the larger struggles in American society.

The color red, first glimpsed in the title and later in Remy’s shirt, carries with it implications of competition, sexuality, conflict, and finally violence. As Malik heads to the track and field for his first practice, we see the brick-red track—scene of competitions to come—and the red stadium seats. Partying in the street the evening before classes start, a rowdy crowd works together to tip over a bright red Volkswagen. At a frat house, the couch is covered in red leather, party-goers hold drinks in red plastic glasses, and Kristen is raped as a red neon sign blinks on and off on the wall above her. In other scenes, a bright red coke machine, empty coke cans, and beer bottles with red labels serve as props. The pool table felt is red. Professor Phipps’ office is furnished with a desk and bookcase made of rich red mahogany, and a red leather briefcase lies off to one side on the desktop. Kristen hands out fliers telling about the diversity festival she’s planned, the bright red of the printed papers foretelling the festival’s violent conclusion.

The most striking uses of the color red are seen in the angry posters tacked to the walls in Remy’s room, on the cover of the book he reads about Hitler, and as Remy visits the neo-Nazi skinheads at their apartment. In the apartment, the viewer’s eye is led directly upward from a blue swastika painted in a white circle on the floor to a huge red Nazi flag, complete with a black swastika, dominating the wall above with its message of hate and intolerance. Remy and Scott have a confrontation in that apartment opposite a smaller red Nazi flag hanging on another wall. Remy runs up flights of red stairs on his way to the roof of a building, carrying the rifle he’ll use to terrorize the campus. And finally, the viewer sees Deja’s bright red blood—the symbol of ultimate violence—as she lies dying at the foot of the Columbus statue.

The next color in Singleton’s Americana triad, white, symbolizes something quite different from angry red. It represents, among other things, the naiveté of a freshman from moneyed suburbia, as blond Kristen bleaches her hair to white and her two equally blond “friends” label her a tramp. Bright white lights glow over the party scene in the frat house. A huge white board, representing the fresh slate of a brand-new school year, organized learning, and critical thought, serves as the background for Professor Phipps as he lectures his political science class. Kristen’s white face is shown center-screen surrounded by darker faces—black, Hispanic, and Oriental—as she sits in Professor Phipps’ class listening to Malik read the list of names, a subtle suggestion that the struggles all minorities face tend to center around interactions with whites. White papers cover the professor’s desk, ready for his thoughtful notes. The starter and timers at the track meet all wear jaunty white straw hats banded with red, blue, and gold ribbons that flutter in the breeze.

The whiteness of Remy’s bare chest reflects the sad emptiness of his life as he runs down a white-painted stairwell into the evening to flag down a security van—painted a bland, institutional white, with a gold stripe and red and blue flashing lights—to ask the security officers to break up a party so he can get some sleep. The clean, white innocence of Professor Phipps’ shirtsleeves contrasts starkly with the violent red of Malik’s bloody hands and shirt as the professor holds and comforts him on the sidewalk after Deja’s death and Malik’s final confrontation with Remy.

The blue of Singleton’s Americana triad flows from scene to scene—in Kristen’s preppy knee socks, warm-up suits and uniforms at the track meet, student ID cards, and the safety lights lining campus sidewalks. Billy’s rumpled sheets are blue, as are the sheets on Kristen’s and Remy’s beds also. At the track meet, a vivid blue sky contrasts with fluffy white clouds. Campus security officers wear blue uniforms. A blue leather couch anchors the room where Taryn’s nonsexist society group meets. The blue glow of CRT screens is seen at the financial aid office and again in the library. A television reporter, who stands near the Columbus statue to report news of the campus tragedy, wears a blue blazer. In one striking shot, the viewer looks through a windowpane framed in blue to see Fudge sitting at a table playing cards. Singleton’s effective use of a luminous blue light, which seems to stream downward from a source above and to the left of the screen, illuminates night scenes such as when Taryn catches up to Kristen as she walks alone on campus. Singleton consistently uses blue to symbolize everyday sameness, commonalities, the ordinary places and things that weave the tapestry of our lives, a constant neutral ground positioned somewhere between the angry violence of red and the quiet innocence of white.

Accent colors on Singleton’s palette include flashes of gold on the patches on campus security uniforms and a C.U. pennant hanging on the frat house wall. A gold note pad rests on Professor Phipps’ desk calendar. Malik seems spotlighted in his bright gold T-shirt as he sits center-screen in Professor Phipps’ office to talk about his plans for the future. Light is filtered through gold window shades on either side of the Nazi flag in the skinheads’ apartment. In the final scene, where Malik and Kristen meet near the statue, the camera picks up patches of autumn gold among the green of distant trees. In the stadium, green grass in the infield contrasts sharply with the red track and the silver viewing stands with their red seats—a soothing color from nature to contrast with the alarm red of competition. Malik wears a soft, muted green shirt in two scenes, a variation on the usual bright green, perhaps indicating that he is growing and changing. A lovely green plant glows in the white light streaming through a window into Professor Phipps’ office, a positive image of life and renewal in the midst of tension and disorder.

The gunmetal gray of the Columbus statue is mirrored in the starter pistol at the track meet. A close-up of the gun fills the screen and then focuses down to the starter’s finger pulling the trigger, a warning of things to come. Shadowy gray figures of neo-Nazi skinheads as Remy first approaches them with Scott and later when they stand guard while Remy heads up the stairs to the roof with his rifle, the dark gray gun case that Scott opens to show Remy its contents—both symbolize evil.

Todd Ritter argues that “The film's message, if there is one at all, is muddled” (8) . It is more likely that Singleton’s message isn’t at all muddled. True, he doesn’t neatly resolve the conflicts presented in his film; almost certainly he didn’t intend to. What he does do quite effectively is to use his vivid and carefully chosen color palette as an imaginative and artistic tool to unite not only the visual aspects of his film but also his message about institutionalized racism—using the colors of Americana to telescope the problems of the larger arena of American society down to those of a smaller and more manageable college campus.

There is no neat, tidy solution, but, in the end, Singleton subtlety proposes a broad, universal solution as an unseen typewriter clatters out the word “unlearn” across the screen. “Conscious-raising education is the solution to the system. […] So, African Americans must unlearn what the system has programmed them to learn, and once they become conscious, they then can decide, intelligently, the needed solutions for the liberation, education and salvation of the black nation” (Atkinson 9).

Author: Janet Peters
May 7, 2003

Works Cited

• Atkinson, Christopher A. “Critics in need of “higher learning.” Digital Collegian 17 Jan. 1995:
  9 pars. 14 Apr. 2003 <http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1995/01/01-17-95tdc/01-17-95dops-column2.asp>.
  
• Jacobson, Colin. “Higher Learning.” DVD Movie Guide 21 Sept. 2001:
  12 pars. 21 Apr. 2002 < http://dvdmg.com/higherlearning.shtml>
  
• Ritter, Todd. “Clichés, hazy message ruin Singleton's latest film effort.” Digital Collegian 13 Jan. 1995:
  6 pars. 14 Apr. 2003 <http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1995/01/01-13-95tdc/01-13-95darts-2.asp>.
  
  CriticSociety en Twitter | CriticSociety en Facebook
  
  Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter