Milk and Froot Loops

 

Rose drinking milk and eating Froot Loops

In her childhood bedroom, Rose tries to find a new boyfriend through researching top NBA prospects while snacking on Froot Loops and sipping a tall glass of white milk through a black-colored straw. Although Jordan Peele has noted that the co-development of milk into a white supremacist symbol was coincidental to the creation of this scene, the scene nevertheless has important ties to the beliefs underpinning white supremacy. First, the separation of the milk and Froot Loops belies Rose’s beliefs in the segregation of people by skin tone. She is figuratively separating white people from people of color by literally refusing to mix the white milk and the colored Froot Loops. Second, Rose is pursuing her white supremacist “job” of seducing black men (and occasionally women) to fulfill her white communities’ “need” for black bodies while in her childhood bedroom. While childhood bedrooms are often associated with innocence and comfort, Rose subverts this idea by her new, white-clothed and slicked-back style, stiff back, and her actions of researching her future conquests. She comes off as cold and calculating, even in the room that she grew up in. Finally, the mixture of the childhood objects (the bedroom itself, Rose sitting on her bed, and the cereal) and the more mature ideas (Rose’s posture and attire and her “research”) suggest a certain emotional stuntedness in Rose, and by extension, her family and community. Coupled with the fact that there is a vicious battle going on downstairs but Rose has carefully sectioned herself away from that conflict, we see that Rose has little ability to balance the aspects of her life, especially change and conflict. The milk and Froot Loops scene suggests that Rose has become fundamentally incapable of feeling for others and for living a normal life in any sense because of her upbringing and participation in her family’s business.

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