American Animals: Humanity is a (White) Luxury
In a series of moving shots, the world is upside down. So begins American Animals, a dramatic hybrid documentary depicting the 2004 amateur library heist, complete with adolescent musings reminiscent of Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto. The retelling of four white middle-class college men and their pursuit of significance through a single ambitious crime follows them from the misguided roots of ideation through the eventual collapse of their maladroit holdup, all the while hinting (perhaps unintentionally) at certain inverted operations of racial and class-based privilege in crime.
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While the American Animals portrayal does avoid a romanticization of the men involved, societal perception starkly disadvantages their non-white peers who seldom receive the luxury label of misguided intentions. Talking of the boys behind the movie’s famous art heist, New York Times writer and movie critic A. O. Scott observes:
“Interviews with their parents and glimpses of their noncriminal pursuits emphasize that these are nice kids. What that seems to mean, mostly, is that they are white and middle class, entitled to the benefit of every doubt even when they are showing their cruel, selfish or stupid sides.”
Whiteness is a transparent lens through which one’s humanity is witnessed, rather than (in the case of non-whiteness) being that thing through which it is obscured. This flipped reality is apparent through reams of personal experience and anecdotal evidence giving rise to phrases such as “___ while black.” This “insert any verb” phrase makes reference to everyday activities that have led to the suspicion and even murder of PoC as they commit the crime of going about daily life. Being observed by those armed with deep bias leads to their harm, which comes in various forms across such narratives. The ability to engage even in obvious violent crime and be afforded your full humanity is applied selectively, landing with greatest frequency on those who fit racially grounded paradigms held by those in power — whether that be authoritative or documentative.
While individual perception may be controlled by a host of unknowable or implicit factors, larger trends in Western treatment of criminals — perceived or convicted — confirm the less than kind reality our generationally rooted stereotyping imposes on those outside of socially advantaged class and racial profiles. In the case of our four aspiring heisters, it is interesting what safe narratives you are entitled to when your race allows America to see you as human, not animal.
