Cinematography: Pariah

Gay & Lesbian Film & Lit.

10/15/2014

Midterm: Pariah

Pariah is a 2011 independent film depicting the story of a young black lesbian in Brooklyn who is trying to come to terms with her identity. Though you might not guess that at first if you were to go in blind. The film makes very little attempt to directly affirm a lot of information to the audience right away. In the opening of the movie, for example, we are introduced to a dim and noisy nightclub, or more accurately thrown in. The shots here are close, the lighting is very dark, and the dialogue is sparse and minimal.While we’re not formally introduced to these characters, we still learn things like how Alike’s character already identifies as a lesbian from the start, in contrast to many other coming-out stories. We’re not directly told a lot of things, but we’re still given a lot of information about the characters and their stories through these film techniques. These uses of cinematography, sound, editing, and narrative to help tell the story are prevalent throughout the whole film, and are used effectively to elevate a convincing coming-of-age story into something much more unique.

The use of lighting, color, shots, and angles all work to create a distinct visual style that changes as the story does. The movie constantly shifts colors and levels of brightness from scene to scene in a way that visually conveys Alike’s progression as a character. As the environments and colors change, so too does Alike. In her first poem that we see her read in class, she compares herself to a butterfly imprisoned by its own cocoon. “Cramped in the darkness of the too-tight cocoon of its own creation.” Mirroring this, the film starts in the previously mentioned women’s club with extreme-closeups and incredibly tight shots of Alike and the other patrons. The lighting is very dim, and the shots are filled with hot purples and pinks colors. Alike never outright states in dialogue how she is feeling in this scene, but through the editing and cinematography we can get visually get a sense of it. The title shot of the film is a good example of this. A slow pan out of Alike with her back to the wall, looking around and sitting alone a foot from another lesbian couple. Her positioning in the frame is a little awkward here, but its that positioning that visually communicates her own awkwardness to the audience better than any expository dialogue could. Once Alike leaves the club with her friend Laura she is left alone on a bus as she changes out of her “butch “ outfit into a more feminine one, and this is where we’re revealed to one of the main internal conflicts of Pariah, Alike’s identity as a young black lesbian.

This manifests on screen in a few ways, one of them being the differences in her wardrobe and personality from scene to scene. Alike has a masculine side that she tries to conform to mainly through her tomboyish clothing, and we see this whenever she is with her more masculine, lesbian friend Laura who regularly tries to get her to hook up with people in the women’s night club. Later though, we see a softer side to her character, a side that prefers things like writing poetry and listening to music. This is what makes the change in lighting, color, and angles fit with the story so well, because Alike herself is a character who struggles to figure out where she belongs in life, and since she cannot find an established personal image to stick with, she is forced to constantly adapt to new environments and new “colors.”

One scene that does a good job of illustrating this is the scene when Alike is with her mom and sister on the way to church. In the moments previous to this, Alike’s mother insists on her wearing a bright pink blouse, an extremely feminine outfit that she strongly objects to, proclaiming “This isn’t me!” The subsequent car ride scene afterward then visually shows how right she is in saying this. Unlike a lot of the previous scenes leading up to it, the lighting here is from natural sunlight and very bright with the only major color difference being her pink blouse. And again, rather than being told so through unnecessary amounts of dialogue, we are instead given this visual contrast to communicate to the audience just how much the blouse conflicts with Alike’s personality and how out of place she feels. It also serves as a good visual representation of the ideas that Alike’s mother imposes on her, as she refuses to accept the idea that her daughter might secretly be a lesbian.

One interesting use of the narrative and editing has to do with Alike’s poetry. It is never directly said but it is fairly obvious how her poetry mirrors her journey throughout the film.. Before we reach the scene when we first hear her poem about the trapped butterfly in class, Alike meets Bina, the daughter of one of her mom’s friends. This is the first character in the movie outside of Laura that we see Alike actively get along with, despite how reluctant she seems to be about doing so at first. In the conclusion of her poem, Alike writes, “A crack appears, a thin jagged light connecting the inner to the out world; A butterfly, briefly...discovers life is possible.” It is probably no coincidence that as Alike reads this section, the camera slowly shifts over to Bina who listens intently, smiling. In this context, Bina can very easily be seen as that jagged crack of light that Alike is looking for to liberate herself from her cocoon, and in a way, she does, though unfortunately not through the way we might have hoped. After spending a romantic night together, Bina admits that it was ultimately nothing more than “playing around.” This devastates Alike, but it is also the breaking point that ultimately motivates her to come out to her parents and “liberate” herself. Once the film reaches this point, and excluding the particularly dark coming out scene, the shots start to become wider, and the lighting starts to feel a little more natural.

At this point we’ve reached the end of the Alike’s story. In the last scene, she tells her father that she has finally chosen to move on and pursue her own personal goals, mainly her education. Alike is finally “liberated” from her limitations, from both her mother’s impositions and the expectations of her community. She realizes that it is okay for her to simply be herself, which signifies her finally being free. To visually express this, we are given one of the widest shots in the film, a shot of Alike standing on a rooftop set against a sunset backdrop as she talks to her father. The lighting is perfectly clear and the coloring is golden, which perfectly communicates a sense of freedom by standing in stark contrast to the dark and narrow shots of the movie’s opening.

Pariah is a film that effectively uses visual film techniques to tell a story beyond just the script. Everything from lighting, colors, shots, sound, and editing are used to great effect to create a truly convincing coming-of-age story