The Intern is White Supremacy Brooklyn
On Thursday, September 24, at 9:50 p.m. in Brooklyn, New York I decided to go see the very cute, very campy movie called "The Intern" starring two actors that I love, Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro. I saw many previews for in over the past few weeks, and every time that I saw a preview I would think how adorable and funny it looked, and I was right. The movie was indeed comical, and endearing, with a lot of heart-felt moments. I enjoyed the movie throughout, until I began to look at the larger picture of the city being presented in "The Intern", and began to notice how well the director did at portraying the refined, contemporary city that is Brooklyn, New York.
In the movie "The Intern" we see a very modern day version of Brooklyn, which is now very white washed and gentrified. All of the color and culture that was carved into the city and made up the city (and literally plastered on sidewalks and buildings) are quickly being erased and replaced with Skyscrapers and Hotels. Fire escapes are almost non existent and fire hydrants are even being removed. All of the black and Hispanic neighborhoods are now becoming monotonous white neighborhoods, with white "yuppies" moving in causing all costs, including rents, to skyrocket and push the minorities out.
Brooklyn (the borough in NYC that once belonged to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers before being moved to Los Angeles because Brooklyn was seen as the dumpster of NYC) went from a very homely borough to the "new Manhattan". Brooklyn is now the borough where tourists come to stay or site see, and the borough where young, white out of towners move to start their "new" lives. This is the Brooklyn that we see in "The Intern", where there were probably two or three people of color seen throughout the films entire 2 hour run time. We never see Anne Hathaway have a conversation with a person of color (minus the 5 second scene where she is speaking to minorities that work in the factory to her business), see Robert De Niro look at a person of color (how could he when there were none to look at?) or even see a black or Hispanic person walking down the street during the outdoor scenes or inside the coffee shop where Robert DeNiro's character picks up coffee for his young boss (there are also no people of color working directly for Anne Hathaways character in her business. Nope. All young white people minus the older white interns that are hired as an experiment, to Hathaways dismay, as she only wants young people in her business). The entire movie was youthful white people living in "white" Brooklyn and living very luxurious, exorbitant lives with no fears or worries of having to deal with any real issues or having to "deal with" minorities (this is probably why they were all so calm and preppy all the time, no black man to scare them by doing nothing). In other words, the movie "The Intern" is as racist as Brooklyn has become over these past few years (a white woman recently called a black co-worker of mine a nigger after he accidentally bumped into her).
Many will argue that the city of Brooklyn itself can not be racist, but I beg to differ. When the government of NYC decides to "gentrify" all of NYC to "beautify" and "fix" all of the neighborhoods all the while raising rents and prices to an all time high, to me (along with many others), that is racism and classicism. They are not pathologizing black neighborhoods, but completely erasing them. Gentrification is something that is celebrated and promoted by the media as a good thing when in reality it is the process of uprooting communities. Gentrification is white supremacy (with their intention to segregate in an inconspicuous manner) with a nice, thick coat of sugar over it to make it look like something sweet and beautiful and pleasurable (when in reality gentrification should be seen as a human-rights violation). Many white people do not feel safe living in mostly Hispanic and/or black communities, and the mostly white government makes sure that they can live where they please without having the burden of many minorities living in their neighborhood (as well as Politicians manipulating zoning laws to allow major developments with very few low income housing available).
Gentrification in NYC (and every area being taken over by the white man that then pushes out the black man) is blatant racism, and this movie, "The Intern", depicts the outcome of a post "gentrified" Brooklyn quite well (where everyone is young, white, living in over-priced apartments, working with only white people with few minorities working for them in labor jobs, while sitting back and enjoying lattes at the new coffee shop or bakery that was just put in the place of an old low-income apartment building or house). This is the NYC that we are shown in the movie and this is the NYC that is really being built up as I type this, sadly.
Maybe I read too into the scenery of the movie "The Intern" as I watched it, but as someone that was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY (it is my hometown and I am a third generation Brooklynite) what I was watching hit close to home for me as I am witnessing minorities being run out of their homes (many people that once lived near me are now living on the streets a few blocks away) and jobs (I know young Hispanic and black people with their Masters degree being laid off jobs only to come to find they were replaced by a white person from out of town) all to move in white people and raise the prices to assure that the blacks and Hispanics no longer are in the area. Something has got to change before it is too late.
- Edwin Montanez