‘Learning’ Hits an Emotional Chord

In “Higher Learning,” university freshmen find student life to be a mix of beer-soaked frat parties and inner-city chaos, involving black rage, white supremacy, feminist anger, sex, athletic exploitation, sex, a demanding professor, sex, and a shootout in the quad. (Rated R)

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After viewing director John Singleton’s controversial exploration of racial tension on campus, one group of friends wasn’t convinced it raised the level of debate much, but the discussion it provoked among them and others was lively and intense.

“I go to the cinema to learn something,” said Adrian Turley, 17. “It’s not like ‘Forrest Gump’ or ‘Pulp Fiction,’ where you come out and really have something to talk about. This is kind of just showing anger.”

Adrian was more impressed with Singleton’s “Boyz N the Hood” and gave this film a B. His friends, however, gave it an A, a rating apparently shared by many: In its first six days, the movie took in a very healthy $17 million.

“It was kind of disturbing, but it kind of made me think,” said Ben Reeves, 16. For him, the movie raised questions about the persistence of prejudice. “You can be the greatest person in the world, but what you’re exposed to, it’s pretty much what you have.”

The movie focuses on two freshmen at the fictional Columbus University in California--Kristen, a white ingenue from Orange County, and Malik, a black athlete with a partial scholarship and limited academic skills. As they deal with roommates, dates, parties, class, the financial aid office and lovers, they cross paths with Fudge, a tough-talking “black power” leader, and Remy, a psycho loner who hooks up with heavily armed skinheads. Like magnets, the characters repel and attract depending on which way they’re positioned--blacks versus whites, men versus women, black men versus black women, racial separatists versus assimilators, straights versus gays, inner city versus suburbia.

Maria Erdelyi, 15, said she was surprised to see the amount of hatred among the groups. She said she hasn’t experienced any parallel tensions at her high school, University High in Irvine.

But others thought it was realistic.

“Even at high school, you go out to the lunch area, and it’s always segregated,” Adrian said. “Only when you have a sports team, people will talk, but when class is over, they always go to their little groups.”

Adrian, who is white, felt the movie was one-sided. He referred to one scene when Kristen automatically clutches her purse when alone in an elevator with Malik, before she gets to know him. In others, campus security officers favor the white students, often asking the black students for identification, or assuming blacks are the troublemakers in any incident.

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Ben argued that stereotypes in the first half of the movie gave way to more rounded personalities in the second half and the movie ended on an upswing.

Chris Hornyak, 14, who was seeing the movie for the second time with his own friends, said the movie paralleled some of his own experiences. “If I’m walking with another black guy, the cops will stop us and search us and stuff. But if I’m with a group of white kids, they will do nothing,” said Chris, whose ethnic heritage is mixed.

“It shows the reality of how it’s like out there, but some people don’t see it. If you’re white, you can see how it really is, if you can believe it.”

He agreed the movie was “kind of one-sided.” But he observed it also showed how blacks could be racist as well as whites. “In the movie, the people who were booing against the skinheads, they didn’t see the other side. There were two sides,” he said, “people just didn’t recognize one of the sides.”

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Justin Wiltse, 15, who saw “Higher Learning” with Adrian, Ben and Maria, was sure there was a message in the movie but wondered what it might be. For those who didn’t get it, it was spelled out in the final frame with the word “Unlearn.”

Ben concluded “unlearn” must be a call to “to discard what society has told you about what is right and what is wrong. Wipe the slate clean and look at it from a new standpoint.

“It really is hard to look at everything from a really neutral perspective because of the way you’re raised, your nationality, your gender. It’s a pretty complicated mix of situations at work.”

He said that he tries to be careful not to insult any group but that it’s difficult. “It’s like you’re on edge all the time. I’m constantly apologizing for what I’m saying. It’s stressful,” he admitted.

“There are moments when I’m insulted when people expect me to be a racist because I’m white.”

In the end, the students felt their peers would benefit from seeing the movie. “It tells them what’s happening in different areas of the country and in the world,” Adrian said.

“Definitely, we’re living in a little bubble here.”