Antwone Fisher In this report I will analyze the film “Antwone Fisher” using four standard categories to fully analyze this media product, these are cognitive, emotional, moral, and aesthetic. Cognitive is the mental process and thinking which can be something based on your knowledge of being able to interpret a media product or scene, or can be more complex as to knowing how some media products are created in limited ways in order for them to be successful. Emotional catches the feelings of a person and being able to accurately interpret those feelings. Some lower levels of emotion are those such as hate, fear, and lust and these are easy to interpret and most people know them. Some higher levels of emotions are ambivalence, angst, and confusion. The third standard category is moral, the ability to infer the values underlying the messages. Moral is concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. Lastly, the final standard category is aesthetic, which is the ability to enjoy and appreciate from the artistic point of view. Antwone Fisher is an autobiographical drama written by the real life Antwone Fisher. Denzel Washington makes his triumphant directorial debut, and also introducing actor Derek Luke. This film won a few awards including Black Reel Awards, such as best breakthrough performance and best actor won by Derek Luke, and also best director by Denzel Washington. This film is about a young man who is forced to see a psychiatrist after a violent outburst against a fellow crewman. During the course of treatment a painful past is revealed and a new hope begins. Antwone Fisher is a young man who is serving in the U.S Navy, having a troubled past he has quite a temper and doesn’t know how to socialize very well. His father was killed by an ex-girlfriend before he was born, and his mother ended up in jail, which is where he was born. He was placed in an orphanage until his mother could be released to claim him, but she never came back. At the age of 2 he was released to a foster home who was ran by Mr. and Mrs. Tate who were mentally and physically abusive towards him. At the age of 14 he was kicked out and ran away, he stayed at a mission for a day until he decided to live on the streets for a few years until he finally joined the navy. In the Navy, Antwone has troubles and can’t seem to stop fighting, so he’s sent to psychiatric treatment with Mr. Davenport played by Denzel Washington. In treatment he has trouble opening up for the first few days where he didn’t want to talk to so they just sat around. After a few days he finally opened up and tells his story to Mr. Davenport where he discusses his parents, and his childhood growing up from his abusive foster parents, and even about a girl that he likes, Cheryl. He continues to get in fights and is met in Jail by Denzel where he opens up about being sexually abused by Nadine, his foster aunt. Antwone had never been with a girl besides with Nadine, which he did not like so he was scared of building a relationship with Cheryl until she opened up to her, and she felt the same way. Mr. Davenport tells Antwone their sessions are done and he needs to progress on his own and that he needs to find his real family. Antwone feels abandoned by this and feel everyone he opens up to leaves him or abandons him, and brings up the story of his childhood best friend who was killed in an attempted robbery and left him. Realizing he needs to find closure he takes Mr. Davenport’s advice and flies to Cleveland to find his real parents and family. He ask Cheryl his girlfriend to come with him and she does, after getting nothing from the social service office he is forced to go back to his foster home to the Tate’s to try and get some info where he reveals how well he is doing to Mrs. Tate and that he remembers everything, including the sexual abuse from Nadine Tate. As he is walking away Mrs. Tate ultimately gives the name of his father: Edward Elkins.
He spends days looking at phone books and calling all Elkins he could find eventually finding his auntie Annette and goes to visit her. On his visit he finds out that his mother lives nearby, and goes to visit her. Antwone finds closure, forgives her, and leaves. When he returns to the Elkins household he finds a feast that was prepared for him and the family he lost. At the end of the film, Antwone visits Davenport and thanks him for everything. Davenport then replies that it is he who should be thanking Antwone. Davenport confesses that he had been failing to deal with his own psychological problems and that his interaction with Antwone prompted him to finally face that. Some themes of this film were abandonment, abuse, race, psychiatry, and healing.
The cognitive effect for this film I would say is low to moderate. The film follows a flow that explains the struggles of Antwone, but I think it takes high mental maturity to really understand what is going on and why he has been affected by an abusive past. This movie makes you think of the characters that are being played and of how bad Antwone has it. It makes you feel a certain way for certain characters throughout the movie. I don’t think a younger person would be able to realize what is really going on without having the mental maturity and knowledge about abuse, mentally, physically, and sexually. I also feel like maybe there is knowledge needed on slavery. For example, Mrs. Tate had three foster kids, Keith, Dwight, and Antwone, and she never called them by their first name, she called them all “nigga”. She called them “nigga” so much that in the movie there was a quote saying that they knew who she was talking to based on the way she said “nigga”. Also it takes high cognitive literacy to understand some of the scenes of abuse like when he was beat on, tied up, and even figuring out an underlying problem of the issue of Mr. Davenport. The relationship between Mr. Davenport(Denzel) and his wife has issues and it take high literacy to understand what’s going on and why they are so distant towards each other, the scene of them having dinner on the table opens that issue up. Also cognitively, Antwone liking a girl, someone would have to understand how different it is for Antwone to fall for a girl, let alone be intimate with since the only partner he’s ever had was when he was a little boy by Nadine, the aunt who sexually abused him. It takes a moderate level of cognitive to understand the struggles Antwone faces throughout the film. Also cognitively it makes you think of the relationship that is building between Mr. Davenport and Antwone, we all need that person to listen, talk about life, girls, relationships, and even gets invited to Thanksgiving dinner with Mr. Davenports family.
Emotionally, this movie was an emotional roller coaster. It had feelings such as fear, joy, pride, satisfaction, sympathy, anger, abandonment. In the movie you can’t help but feel bad for Antwone for the hardships he has been through. An example would be his mother leaving him and never coming back to claim him feeling lost and abandoned, like he’s not good enough. Also in the film how he says everyone leaves him. Also the physical, mental, and sexual abuse from the Tate’s makes you feel a certain way, bad for Antwone but also sympathy and anger that its happening to a little boy. He writes a poem for Mr. Davenport called “Who will cry for the little boy? This is very touching and makes you think about his life. You are rooting for Antwone throughout the movie so it makes you happy when he gets the girl, and finally, gets to meet his mother, and finding the long lost family he never had. Towards the end when he finally meets his aunt Annette and finds out his mother lives nearby is moving, and to come home to the rest of the Elkins with open arms and welcome signs, and how they had a big feast waiting for him makes you happy for Antwone.
The morals of the film were pretty obvious such as never giving up, forgiveness. A big one is the right and wrong behavior, for example for how the Tate’s treated him. You see the goodness and badness of human character. I also got from it that every child has value and boundless potential, and to do something to better children’s lives in general. You can see these throughout the movie by the bad actions of the Tate’s, but you also see good character and actions by Mr. Davenport, and his girlfriend Cheryl. The abuse of the Tate’s was wrong, but the fact that he had the help of the Dr. and his girlfriend to get his life back and move on from the past was nice to see.
Aesthetically, this film was not very artistic. It had basic camera angles, and music to catch the emotional appeal of the film. This movie does go back and forth with the flashbacks that Antwone has makes him remember certain things about his past. I thought that they were effectively presented. One example is how he was on the Navy ship drawing a picture of a hand and a bug and that picture turned into life and became a flashback and there was a scene of when that happened. Another scene is when he ends up in jail again and is saying that everyone is leaving him and that all he hears is bells ringing in his head, referring to the scene of when his child hood friend died in attempted robbery at the store and he keeps hearing that bell on the door of the store as he ran out. The way they went back and forth describing his life was well done but pretty basic in my opinion. Aesthetically the way the scenes were made I feel caught more the emotional appeal of the audience, like when he was getting hit, or abused.