Essay About Twilight Los Angeles And Message Of Paul Parker

Twilight Los Angeles; 1992
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Twilight Los Angeles; 1992 very accurately depicts the L.A. Riots. It shows the hardships the citizens of L.A. Underwent during one of the cities most devastating tragedies. The monologues that Smith chooses all show the relationship between greater things than the L.A. Riots such as prejudice and tolerance, guilt and innocence, and class conflicts. These are all issues that are very prominent in most of the monologues. The actual events provide the focus, and stated or implied a reference point for all of the monologues that make up Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, however it is easy to miss many of the central ideas surrounding the testimonies.

Closely related to themes of race and racial prejudice, anger and hatred have a powerful, resonating presence in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Some of the persons, like Rudy Salas, Sr., the Mexican artist, seem almost consumed with hatred. His is directed against “gringos,” especially white police officers. This is illustrated by “the insanity that I carried with me started when I took the beating from the police” (Twilight 2). His anger is shared by others, mostly by inner-city blacks and Latinos who resent the treatment afforded them by the LAPD, what Theresa Allison calls “the hands of our enemy, the unjust system.”

While many ill feelings were left after the L.A. Riots there were also feelings of atonement and forgiveness. Some of the more reflective voices in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 express a prayer or hope that what LA citizens experienced throughout the unrest will give way to a future reconciliation and community harmony and peace among different ethnic groups. It is the room that Reginald Denny plans for his future house, a room that is “just gonna be people,” (Twilight 110) where a persons race will not matter. It is the hope, too, of Otis Chandler, former publisher of the LA Times. He believes that someday LA can become “a safe, pleasant city, for everybody, regardless of where they live or what they do or what the color of their skin is” (Twilight 220). The new harmony would be the communitys atonement for the past, and it would have to involve forgiveness. Others are far more pessimistic, however. There is, for example, Mrs. Young Soon Han, who said “I wish I could live together with eh Blacks, but after the riots there were too much differences, the fire is still there” (Twilight 249). She believes that racial hatred still burns deeply and can ignite at any time, although, as a Korean, she would like to find a way to live together with blacks. And there are those like Gladis Sibrian, Director of the Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front, who believes that “there is no sense of future, sense of hope that things can be changed.” (Twilight 252)

A feeling of victimization is ubiquitous in Smiths drama. It lies at the root of all complaints about injustice and is the source of much of the frustration and anger. It is expressed by members of all involved minorities–black, Latino, and Korean. It is, for example, the focus of Mrs. Young−Soon Hans poignant litany. The former owner of a liquor store destroyed in the riots, she complains that “Korean immigrants were left out from society and we were nothing” (Twilight 245). It is a charge paralleled in the monologues of blacks and Latinos, too. It is sometimes tied to the idea of revenge, justifying the carnage of the rioting. That is the message of Paul Parker, for example, and it is the warning of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who insists that people who have “been dropped off everybodys agenda” will grow angry and take to the streets to vent their anger and frustration. Racial intolerance also threads through the speeches of various persons and is intrinsically bound to other themes. L.A.s ethnic diversity still lies at the root of some of its problems. Images of white cops and black or Latino victims are common in the accounts, but so too are statements of mutual intolerance voiced by the blacks and Korean Americans. For Paul Parker, the chairperson of the Free the LA Four Plus Committee, “The Koreans was like the Jews in the day and we put them in check” (Twilight 175), store owners from an earlier era, and targets of much of the black rage.

Twilight