{"id":50829,"date":"2016-12-20T20:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50829"},"modified":"2016-12-20T20:00:16","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T20:00:16","slug":"barry-director-on-race-identity-and-why-the-young-obama-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50829","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Barry&#8217; director on race, identity and why the young Obama matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2016\/12\/19\/barry-director-interview\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>&#8216;Barry&#8217; director on race, identity and why the young Obama matters<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\" target=\"_blank\">Mashtable<\/a><br \/>\n2016-12-20<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/promawhatup\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Proma Khosla<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm1871577\" target=\"_blank\">Vikram Gandhi<\/a> didn\u2019t direct the Netflix biopic <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barry_(2016_film)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Barry<\/em><\/a> because he cared about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a>. He made it because he cared about a kid named Barry.<\/p>\n<p>Gandhi set out to discover who Barack was before he was Barack, back in 1981. The film follows a portion of Obama\u2019s life then as a student at Columbia University, and how it shaped who he would grow up to be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know who Barack Obama is,\u201d Gandhi told <em>Mashable<\/em> in a phone interview. \u201cI didn\u2019t study that. I studied who Barry was. I related with Barry. The things that he\u2019s struggling with are things that people around me have struggled with, I\u2019ve struggled with, and I think that I still struggle with. Barack Obama\u2019s the president; I have no idea what that\u2019s like, but I know what it\u2019s like to be a confused kid, a 20-year-old kid in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\">New York City<\/a> trying to figure out where you belong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 1981 iteration of Barack Obama held particular resonance for Gandhi, who studied at Columbia some 17 years later. He remembered the classes, the bars, the diners \u2014 he even lived next door to the building that once housed a future president. The film is an intersection of two identity crises: What it means to grow up and what it means to be mixed race in America&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2016\/12\/19\/barry-director-interview\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Barry&#8217; director on race, identity and why the young Obama matters Mashtable 2016-12-20 Proma Khosla Vikram Gandhi didn\u2019t direct the Netflix biopic Barry because he cared about Barack Obama. He made it because he cared about a kid named Barry. Gandhi set out to discover who Barack was before he was Barack, back in 1981. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,63,1245,8],"tags":[4415,24956,25815,25814,25813],"class_list":["post-50829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-barack-obama","category-biography","category-media-archive","tag-columbia-university","tag-devon-terrell","tag-mashtable","tag-proma-khosla","tag-vikram-gandhi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50830,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50829\/revisions\/50830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}