Tight Jeans

  

Tight Jeans

Tight Jeans is a short film written and directed by Destiny Ekaragha first shown at The London Film Festival in 2008. It is a short comedy which, via subtext, comments on deeper ideas about race. 

Act 1 of the film opens with a low angle establishing shot of 3 boys. It immediately sets the scene as taking place on a council state and the costumes of the 3 boys allows the audience to make some basic judgments about them such as they are young and youthful wearing fashionable clothing for the time.

Act 2 begins when the white man walks past the 3 boys. The camera tracks him as he walks in a movement which replicates that of the human eye. This shows the audience that the 3 boys are watching the man as he walks past. 

A close up of the mans 'tight jeans' shows that this is the focus of the 3 boys and starts the conversation to follow.

Throughout this conversation there is a very strong underlying subtext. The boys initially talk and joke about "dick size" but this then starts to provoke questions of race when the boy in blue says that he thinks "when they (white women) have a mixed-race child, they think that's their ticket to the black community."

This conversation goes even further into the discussion of race when the central boy brings up slavery. It initially starts off in a comedic way as he says that black people were made slaves as the white people were jealous of their penises but then develops into a conversation about how black people populated the planet. The boys do not know this is true when they talk about it but life originated in Africa so what they are talking about, sub-textually, is true.

Act 3 begins when their friend comes out and tells them to wait another 5 minutes. This puts an end to their conversation as they become annoyed and irritated. They then become quiet and another white man walks past.

This time the white man is wearing a very tight shirt and the boys comment on this creating a sense of comedy as the film ends.

Throughout the film, the director Destiny Ekaragha, uses the boys as a mouthpiece to talk about deeper topics such as race disguised through the comedic lens of talking about tight jeans.