Girlhood

I found the documentary Girlhood, by Liz Garbus, to be thoroughly engaging. It tells the story of two young girls in the juvenile justice system and follows them for three years, when they are out of the system.

The two girls, Shanae and Meghan, are both strong willed, and kind of charming. There were certain scenes where the strength of their personalities was particularly impressive. I was kind of inspired by both young girls’ resistance to authority at key moments when those authority figures attempted to insert dominant mainstream values in their definitions of the situation. I am here referring to the scene where Shanae was in “effectiveness” class and the instructor wanted her to judge the stereotypical image of an urban teen as a “scumbag”; and the equally powerful moment when Meghan refused to refer to drug users in her neighborhood as “undesirables”, stating that “if I don’t consider my mother one, I don’t consider him one.”

I felt a lot was missing from the movie, however. Both girls had committed assault (one had stabbed a girl to death) and there was little insight into the violence or aggression that motivated those actions. That is, you never really saw the anger that I assume these girls have in them. Even when Meghan was enraged at her junkie mother, the anger seemed (to me at least) consistent with many adolescent mother/daughter struggles. I didn't really see any special level of rage. And for this reason I felt their crimes were left unexplained.

The movie also carries a strong theme about mother/daughter bonds; the girl whose future looks better is the one who had a stronger more supportive and stable relationship with her mother.