Write a critical analysis of Barry Jenkins’ film adaptation of James Baldwin’s Novel If Beale Street Could Talk. Your paper should respond in one way or another to notions of individual freedom, independence from the degraded and degrading social order.
Institutions come in for a lot of criticism in Beale Street: the courts, the jail, the projects, the school, the church – all are condemned, implicitly and explicitly, by a variety of characters. What larger point might Baldwin (and later Jenkins) be getting at? What prospects are there for a life outside of –unimpeded by, unmarred by – institutional walls? Can you opt out, as Ernestine, for example, seems to do when she comes of age and stops reading newspapers and going to movies? (Interestingly, for her the alternative to college is the hospital – another institution.)
Context:
The novel’s title comes from W. C. Handy’s “Beale Street Blues” (1917): “… if Beale Street could talk/Married men would have to take their beds and walk,/Except one or two, who never drink booze,/And the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street Blues.” In view of the context, what issues in the novel does the title highlight, and what does it say about them? One would seem to be secrecy: if Beale Street really could talk, the first consequence would be that “Married men” would be embarrassed by – and punished for – their secret transgressions. Their misbehavior contrasts with that of the prim and proper teetotaler who “never drink[s] booze,” which resonates with the contrast between the Rivers family and the Hunts. What other connections and associations are there?
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