Discuss the attitudes to poverty conveyed in the film you have studied for this topic. [35]

In the 1995 film 'La Haine', poverty is displayed between the three main characters, 'Saïd' 'Hubert' and 'Vinz'. This can be displayed in the cinema scene with Vinz. The opening shot of this scene features a mid shot of Vinz sat down, reacting to the movie. Due to the camera lacking movement, this creates a sense of realism, we can see Vinz' true/raw reactions. This sense of realism is something the director wanted to convey to show the real problems of poverty and living in the projects in France back in the 80's/90's. The diegetic sounds from the film Vinz is watching are screams and violence. The shot focuses on Vinz and his reactions alone, but he doesn't seem affected by the violence. This portrays how violence has been desensitised in Vinz's culture and how a life, living in poverty makes violence become everyday life, and nothing out of the ordanary. This ideology is again backed up and displayed with a non moving shot, focusing only on Vinz. This again exaggerates how normal issues like this and violence are. The way Vinz acts towards the film is almost wrong, similar to the way he reacts in the gallery scene with Said, when they are arguing over who wants to be introduced to a woman. In this scene and within the mise-en scene, they’re wearing tracksuits, whilst everyone else in the art gallery is wearing smart clothes; I feel that this was done to portray the difference between the two socio-economic groups and also to convey how they do not fit in to the chosen environment. Throughout the scene, we see the other visitors at the art gallery look down on the trio based upon their class and their interpretation of them. This displays the project as being a poor and underclass and the other visitors attempt to belittle and alienate them by giving them strange looks and making snide comments at the group (whom we see Saïd do himself to the homeless lady before "Go get a job like everyone else"). Within this scene the three of them attempt to speak to two women and their use of provocative language and lack of knowledge on how to engage with the women highlights their inability to converse with an alternative class to their own. This indicates all they’re used to is being in the projects and not engaging in a typical social environment. Furthermore, throughout the entire scene the background is constantly out of focus to infer that they’re out of their depth and original environment, displaying their confusion as the. Their lack of respect for women is inferred when Saïd tells Hubert to "go chat up the women for him" (which in itself is lexi's that people of a higher socio economic class wouldn't use themselves in their vocabulary) and when Hubert refuses Said tells Hubert that he owes him because he "bought him a Kebab last week", conveys their lack of their 'gentlemen' traits and gain in childish traits as its something you would hear by a child, linking into the Tessa Perkins theory which indicates that there is an element of truth within a stereotype as they are teenagers and are commonly portrayed as violent by the media.