Unfortunately, children go missing around the wold everyday not excluding the Caribbean. According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person File, juveniles under the age of 18 account for 36.5% of the records. (as of December 31, 2017). When this occurs family and friends become panicked in their search to find lost loved ones. The number of missing persons in Trinidad and Tobago continues to fluctuate as people go disappear daily without a trace. The disappearance of children or teenagers poses as a large concern for the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. In recent times there’s been an increase in the number of teenagers, especially girls, missing from their homes. Within the year of 2017 to 2018 there had been thirty-seven (37) reported missing children, of this number only ten (10) have been said to returned home (Missing girl, 2018).
Movie Summary
What happens when a young girl of colour goes missing? Who searches for her? Who tries to bring her home safely? Not the police, as the short film Muted shows. Even though only 18 minutes long, Muted contains an impactful emotional punch as viewers are taken into the terror-stricken world of single black mother who wants nothing but to see her daughter again but gets zero support from the local police and the media.
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Their experience with law enforcement motivates Lena and her older daughter to rally friends and family, flier the neighbourhood and continuously reach out to media in hope of finding Crystal, all to no avail. They soon come to the realization that not all missing children are equal. In the final scene Lena calls out the media and police for their lack of responsibility when it came to find her daughter, in comparison to another girl that is missing, and is also white.
Many social issues are brought to attention during this movie. Racial bias, socioeconomic class, gender stereotypes, lack of social justice activism and lack of support from law enforcement as well as media coverage will be explored in this paper.
Theories
Missing White Woman Syndrome is a phenomenon noted by social scientists and media commentators of the extensive media coverage, especially in television, of missing person cases involving young, white, upper middle-class women or girls (Sommers, 2016). The phenomenon is defined as media as well as law enforcement’s undue focus on upper-middle-class white women who disappear, with the disproportionate degree of coverage they receive being compared to women of colour and of lower social classes (Armstrong, 2013). In the movie this phenomenon could be clearly seen. After four days missing, the media issues an amber alert for a missing child to the Gladwell’s surprize it is not for Crystal but instead a missing white teenage girl.
The phenomenon is characterized by critics as a short and cynical equation: Pretty, white damsels in distress draw viewers; missing women who are black, Latina, Asian, old, fat, or ugly do not (Foreman, 2018). One may draw the conclusion that if indeed police were looking into Crystal’s case, the attention brought on by the missing teenage white girl overshadowed Crystal. The media only felt a sense of urgency to have Crystal’s story heard after the fact of her death.
Conflict theory can also be spotted in this movie, suggested by Karl Marx, conflict theory claims society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources, those with wealth and power often try to hold on to it by any means possible, mainly by suppressing the poor and powerless (Staff, 2018). This can be noticed in two scenes; when the officers arrive at Lena’s home, they suggest that Crystal is a runaway who will “come home when she’s ready.” After questioning about the whereabouts of her father, they claim they don’t have the manpower to look for her and refuse to even issue an Amber Alert.
This scene is a clear example of how law enforcement took the Gladwell’s class and race into perspective when they decided not to assist her. Evidence to this can also be seen when a local white girl also vanishes, her face and the pleas of her affluent parents quickly become the topic of discussion, and an Amber Alert is sent out immediately pending her return.
Conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society. According to conflict theory, social stratification benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. Creating a system of winners and losers that is maintained by those who are on the top, capitalist economic competition unfairly privileges the rich, who have the power to perpetrate an unfair system that works to their advantage (Courses.lumenlearning.com, 2018).
