Social Advocacy (Week Eleven)

     

    In class, we learned about liberation psychology. Liberation psychology is "raising critical consciousness about the harms of sociopolitical oppression and discovering avenues for empowerment and liberation"(Gupta, Lecture Eleven, 2023), to better understand this concept and how it connects to creativity, we were told to analyze/give our thoughts on the film we watched in class. The film was called "Back to Natural". It was a really moving film. Back to Natural is about the lived experiences of African Americans in connection to their natural hair. Through the film, you learn about how badly people of color are treated solely because of the hair that grows out of their heads.
    The creator did such a beautiful job in helping people like myself who have never been through this horrific treatment truly understand what it is like. They are made to feel like they are not human beings, just because of their hair, one of many things that makes them beautifully unique. Back to Natural truly depicted the power that art and filmmaking have for a community, as said at the end of the film and by our professor, this film led to many changes within the laws of various states, to help African Americans not be discriminated against.
    Choosing to display her research through film was ingenious, especially as the film is incredibly accessible to the public is easy to understand, and makes one feel empathy. Back to Natural is a perfect example of how important it is to use art to evoke social change and thus allow for the possibility of healing within the community. The readings from this week truly develop this idea even further. In this article about psychology and film, it writes:

"As coeditors, we were therefore inspired to learn by means of this project about the commonalities of healing in film and therapy. Our definition of healing includes seeing and listening to the people and topics that suffer from brutality, and which frequently get pushed into the margins and silences of culture. From this perspective, film can heal collectively by addressing culture as a whole- that is, while representing marginalized and subaltern communities. We sought to collaborate with two fields of experts and their crafts: scholars and their writing and filmmakers and their films. We believe that inviting psychological and cinematic insights from both sets of experts held the best promise to answer the many complexities about film and how it could heal us, individually and collectively." (Greene and Gupta, 2021) 

The reading, co-written by our very own professor, Nisha Gupta, even just within the first two pages articulates the importance of art as an avenue for change and healing. This quote along with the film truly makes you wonder and obsess over all of the different ways that art could and should be used to help bring about much-needed social change. That would then lean to healing for communities and if one dreams big- the world!