Previous
Ask Saddam Hussein
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews Homi Bhabha, a literary critic, writer, and scholar. Bhabha is in England, so he and Smith talk over the phone. Bhabha describes the period after the riots as a “twilight moment” of being “in-between,” which is characterized by “ambiguity” and “inclarity.” It’s from this moment, Bhabha speculates, that real change can spring forth. Looking at the twilight sky forces a person to see the “fuzziness” of “boundaries.” Twilight requires more interpretation and forces the viewer to acknowledge “how we are projecting onto the event itself.” In contrast, Bhabha observes, daylight provides “clarity” and only requires the viewer to “react to it.”
Bhabha’s poetic assessment of the riots’ impact suggests that crisis has imploded LA’s social order and propelled the city and its people into a state of uncertainty, “ambiguity,” and “inclarity.” But this state of limbo is a good thing, according to Bhabha, for it gives the city the opportunity to start from scratch and create new systems that help more people. In a state of twilight/limbo, he insists that people must rethink everything they took for granted and consider, consciously, how “we are projecting onto the event itself.” That is, he wants people to consider how and why they might unwittingly gravitate toward policy and norms that benefit them, without any regard for how those norms harm others.
Themes
