Skin

“Skin” by Anthony Fabian

NEVER GIVE UP

Francesca LovisaMadalina Pavel

Plot Characters

Setting

Time

Themes Men

Women

Struggle

Search for freedom

Science

True story

Skin is a movie based on a true story set in South Africa during the Apartheid. The film follows the story of Sandra Laing, daughter of two Afrikaners, who was born with brown skin and black, kinky hair. Although her parents and brother treat her equally, she faces many problems when she starts boarding school, where both the faculty and students treat and look at her as black. Soon the school dismisses her because she is black and call the government and doctors to support their opinion. Her father is obsessed with having her classified as white. He is a racist and when, at the age of 15, she starts seeing a black man, Petrus, he threatens to kill him. She eventually falls in love with him and, desperate for love and acceptance, decides to run off with him. They then have two children, but the moment when group areas acts start he blames her for his bad luck. This will lead him to verbally and physically abusing Sandra, to the point she decides to leave with her children and go to Johannesburg.

The movie ends where it began, with the 1994 elections. The memory of her parents is still alive in her, especially what her father used to say: “Never give up”. On her mother’s death bed she tells her that their memory was all that kept her going during those 20 years of separation.

Plot

Characters

Sandra LaingThe protagonist(Sophie Okonedo)

Abraham LaingThe father(Sam Neill)

Sannie LaingThe mother(Alice Krige)

Leon LaingThe brother(Hannes Brummer)

Petrus ZwaneThe partner(Tony Kgoroge)

Setting

(Mpumalanga) The name means east or literally "the place where the sun rises“.

Swaziland

Johannesburg

1965, at the age of 10 Sandra is expelled from boarding school.

1972, at the age of 17 she elopes with Petrus to Swaziland.

1994, at the age of 39, she and her mother reunite after 20 years. It is also the year of the end of Apartheid, with the first multi-racial democratic election.

Time

They are shown as two-faced figures: they don’t display true love to Sandra:Her brother loves and cares about her at

first, but when she decides to leave the family he no longer considers her his sister;

Her lover loves as her as long as things go well, the moment things start changing he blames her for everything;

Her father loves her only when she considers herself “white”.

The role of men

They are constant figures but they’re oppressed by men:As a child Sandra must not disobey the rules given by

adults, especially by her strict father;As a teenager she cannot choose who to love and

when she starts seeing a black man her dad almost kills him;

As a mother she tries to do everything for the sake of her children so she decides to leave her abusing husband;

Her mother mantains her love and support for Sandra, but because of the society of the time she must do as her husband says.

The role of women

The movie presents the struggle from the point of view of both white and black people.

Even if Sandra’s parents love her and fight against the prejudice people and institutions have of their daughter, when she decides to be in a relationship with a black man they’re full of prejudices and her father doesn’t want to see her again.

On the other hand Petrus blames her for every bad thing that happens to them, because of her “whiteness”.

Struggle

The film focusses on the role of women, and their search for freedom. Not just Sandra’s freedom, as a black woman against society, but even Sannie’s (Sandra’s mum) freedom, against her husband Abraham.For Sandra freedom is when she will finally find a place where she is not judged for her skin color (and she will find this when she goes to Swaziland).For Sannie freedom is when she will be independent of her husband’s decisions (she will find this after Abraham’s death).

Search for freedom

Atavism is the tendency to revert to an ancestral type. It is a “genetic throwback”, where characteristics that disappeared generations before reapper. This could happen because genes from previously existing phenotypical features (phenotypes are physical or biochemical characteristics of an organism) are preserved in the DNA.

Atavism

The movie is based on the real story of Sandra Laing, who helped in the making of the film.The movie ends with anecdotes about her life after 1994 or that weren’t shown during the film. She now has seven grandchildren, her mother died in 2001, Petrus died in a drunken brawl in 1987, her brothers still refuse to reunite with her.

True Story