Darabont's Previous Film example essay topic
The fact middle-class, white males listening to "black music" would hardly raise an eyebrow today only serves as a testament to the enduring power of blackness as a cultural trope. Whether it be jazz in the 1950's or hip-hop at the turn of the century, white youth have continued to find avenues of self-expression and self-formation through what Toni Morrison calls an Africanist presence. This cultural phenomenon is not exclusive to music, of course. One need not be a sociologist or anthropologist to clearly see this Africanist presence operating in the linguistic as well as aesthetic elements of popular culture today; however, a particularly fascinating and recent development in the use of blackness can be seen in recent Hollywood cinema. No longer a mere source for cultural self-realization, blackness now actively aids in the empowerment and redemption of whiteness and in no other film is this made quite as clear as it is in Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's The Green Mile. A period piece not unlike Darabont's previous film, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile is also set in a prison during the first part of the twentieth century.
The central character, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), is an affable guard placed in charge of Cold Mountain Correctional Facility's death row, called The Green Mile by the prison population. As the film opens into the prison, we are meant to understand that death row, while filled with anxious tension, is also a place of isolated calm. Edgecomb and the other guards struggle to maintain a sense of tranquility so as to make the inmate's lives not necessarily pleasant but at least tolerable. The normal rhythms of this micro-community start to unravel when John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a giant of a man and the lone black person in the entire film, is brought into the Green Mile. At first we are meant to be awed by his intimidating size only to realize minutes later that Coffey possesses a childlike innocence and demeanor.
As the film's melodrama progresses, Coffey is revealed to possess miraculous powers of healing that cures not only physical ailments but can also enforce justice in the highest form.