Language in The Brother From Another Planet

In the previous class, we discussed how language represented power dynamics within the film "The Brother From Another Planet," as the main character had seemed to be stripped of his voice and while the slave catchers that pursued him throughout the film retained their mechanical version of English. However, I wanted to talk about the ways in which language represented protection and connection within the film rather than power, even in those instances where the Brother was unable to speak.

One example of this can be seen as the slave catchers follow the main character's trail and begin interrogating people he's interacted with so far. When the catchers interrogate Hector, the arcade employee that helped the Brother earlier in the movie, he pretends as if he can't understand English (even though he talked to the Brother in both fluent English and Spanish in the aforementioned encounter), and instead speaks in Spanish in spite of the catchers' demands that he speak in English in order to protect the Brother from being pursued. Here, langauge becomes used as a form of protection from oppression, a barrier that can be used to keep oppressors out. One could even argue that this same use of langauge barrier as protection occurs later in the film when one of Sam's social worker coworkers regurgitates legalese and bureaucratic jargon in order to keep the slave catchers who are interrogating her off of the Brother's trail.

Furthermore, language serves as a connection to the past within the film. As we discover, the Brother's psychic powers seem to re-activate the voices of the past when he touches certain objects, including the walls of Ellis island that bring forth of the voices of immigrants from decades past, as well as the graffiti that lines many walls throughout the movie. So, then, within the filmic language of the movie, language itself becomes the vehicle through which the Brother can connect to the past, and connection also becomes tied to the word art of graffiti and tags that similarly represent a transmission of language.

Lastly, language serves as another point of connection between the Brother and the other characters in the film. While it's very obviously demonstrated that the Brother can understand multiple languages given his interactions with Hector and the other characters (thereby allowing him to connect to others by listening), the main character's own muteness—while a possible representation of the power or language that has been stripped from him by his enslavers—also serves as a powerful tool for connecting to other people. When the Brother doesn't respond verbally to others, the cast of characters quickly begin openning themselves up more to him, allowing them to do the talking. The Brother's quietness endears him to other characters like Randy Sue (who connects the Brother's silence to her son Little Earl's own timidness) and Malverne, who develops a form of signing with the Brother but still comments "How come I like you so much? You could be anybody?" While the men in the bar initially treat the Brother more like somebody they ought to "diagnose" because of his unresponsive, the Brother's lack of langauge in this instance still makes the men in the bar take a particular interest in him, eventually forming a strong-enough connection for the men to physically defend the Brother from the slave catchers in an all-out brawl.

So, in addition to the interpretation of langauge as a symbol of power and disempowerment wihtin the film, it's possible to view langauge—or the lack thereof—as a vehicle by which the Brother can be protected by and connected to the people and environment around him.