I am currently in the midst of watching a French television show called Lupin. In this show, a black man named Assane goes through extensive amounts of strategical techniques to get revenge on an individual who treated Assane’s unjustly.
Many years prior to Assane’s revenge, his father worked for a very rich individual. This individual carries a particular complex where he treated a young Assane and his father as inferiors in his house. He did not care for them and he did not respect them regardless of the work and respect they gave that individual. There came a point where a necklace was supposedly stolen from the rich man’s wife, and he immediately blamed Assane’s father of stealing the necklace, for no reason other than the fact that he was black.
Fast forward to the present, where Assane works tirelessly to get revenge on this individual, and ultimately avenge for the injustice his father faced, who had been sent to jail and eventually killed himself out of sadness and disappointment. Throughout his master plan for revenge, Assane commits a couple minor crimes and illegal activities, but he is constantly able to get away with it, and as viewers we are more committed to standing by him as we know his intentions are good and he plans to give justice to the rich man who treated his father so poorly.
By following Assane in show, the audience gets perspectives of his treatment as a black individual in France both in his youth and as an adult. In his youth, we get to see experiences that definitely reverberate and speak for the entire black community in countries like France and the United States, where he is treated incredibly differently, called a thief, he is belittled, and he is ultimately given constant disadvantages that his white peers do not face. We see how those experiences as a teenager shaped him into the adult he becomes, where he is forced into this role where he has become the other in the community.
Thus far, just one season into the show, it’s clear the creator had the idea to present much of the racial problems going on in France. From the community and minor experiences Assane faced as a child, to the rich white man he and his father had to deal with, it’s clear the basis of the show is about the struggles of black people in France, and probably in Europe as a whole. There are lots of black individuals who have immigrated to Europe and are forced to work laboring and low paying jobs for rich white individuals who self proclaim themselves as superiors and treat black people as inferiors, as in Lupin. Assane’s father is mistreated and is falsely framed due to his race, and it results in his unjust arrest and eventual suicide. In the bigger story, it results in Assane’s spiraling behavior into crime to get revenge on this rich man, and thus far the viewer is unsure if Assane will ever get his revenge or if he will get caught first.
Lupin tv show