"Somebody told a real life woman that her skin was too brown to play an imaginary creature. That basically in the whole fictional world of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, where you have dragons and trolls and talking trees, where you draw the line, where imagination is capped out, no more room, is for a brown hobbit.

"Like, fiery eyeball thing, no problem, but don't even try to imagine a Samoan elf. That shit will blow your mind."

--Wyatt Cenac

(via Lavender Labia)

Photo

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

The entire premise of the film "The Impossible" disgusts me.

The trailer played when I saw Anna Karenina and then again when I saw Perks of Being a Wallflower, and both times elicited a visceral reaction of disgust from me, like seeing a cockroach or getting a big whiff of garbage truck while I'm walking to work. The words that flash across the screen during the trailer are as follows: "In 2004...tragedy struck southeast Asia...This is one family's true story of survival."

...Note that the entire premise of the film has been established now that we are 47 seconds into the trailer, and we. have. yet. to. see. a. southeast. Asian. person. Because OBVIOUSLY the ONLY possible way to make a movie about the tsunami that will do well in an American market is to whitewash it so completely that the 75,000+ Southeast Asian people who died in this tragedy aren't even mentioned, so that the focus of the film is rather a British family who was vacationing at the time, because then it's like this could happen to you, American moviegoer who is presumed to be white and wealthy enough for vacationing in Southeast Asia to be a feasible possibility in your life. Because Southeast Asians aren't people you can relate to, obviously. Their deaths are a statistic--this British family's true story of survival is an emotional triumph! 

If you can stomach watching the rest of the trailer, you see that we finally see people of color at a minute and 28 seconds in! The movie is set in Southeast Asia and it took 60% of the trailer before we saw a person of color. Okay. It's actually a group of people of color. What are they going to do? Oooh look, it's as if they've been magically conjured to save the poor injured white woman, who will weep and profess her thankfulness. Oh, they're gone so quickly, appearing only for a few seconds. Wait...we never see them again? BUT I THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS ABOUT A TRAGEDY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. 

To paraphrase the quote at the end of the trailer, "Nothing is more powerful than the human spirit people's sympathy for unsuspecting White people."

Not what I think about when I think about transracial adoption:

(Via)

So, basically, I need to see this.

If Middle of Nowhere is playing in your city, go see it. Right now.

Between independent films and webseries, I'm pretty much giving up on the overwhelming majority of commercially-produced video entertainment.



I had the pleasure of attending the opening night of the newest big independent Black-written, Black-directed, and nearly-entirely-Black-acted film of 2012, Middle of Nowhere, on Friday night. It was a beautiful, beautiful film. The acting was exquisite. I felt that I got to see multiple layers of each of the characters--even the ones I came to dislike (some quite strongly) throughout the course of the film, I felt like weren't wholly bad people. Ava DuVernay has created a film about the lives of Black women left behind by men in jail or otherwise gone without presenting a single character I could confidently called victim OR villain. On the contrary, each character, each scene, is an exercise in nuance. It is masterful, which is undoubtedly why DuVernay became the first Black women to ever win "Best Director" at Sundance. 

To me, this was a tale of tenacity with the potential to turn into triumph. It begins in uncertainty and ends unresolved. Absolutely nothing about it is neat, and I was surprised by the number of common tropes it set up and then distinctly veered away from. I was wholly impressed by this film, and as such, all my readers in DC, NYC, Philly, Atlanta, and LA, I urge you to spend the twelve bucks or however much a movie costs in your city and go see it. You can thank me later.  

I went to an African Diaspora International Film Festival on Friday night

kind of on a whim. It was a meetup for my Black Film and Media Meetup group, but it didn't seem like very many people were going to the showing on Friday night, but Friday's showing was the only one I could make, so I decided to make EY proud and go by myself.  

I knew the general area that the festival was being held in, so I figured I'd just get off the metro and walk up the street until I found the address. It was definitely on the Chinatown side of the Chinatown/Gallery Place area (not that our Chinatown is *remotely* authentically Asian, by anyone's standards), but imagine my surprise when I realized that it was at the Goethe Institute, better known as the German Cultural Center.

...So that's how Diasporic we're talking, huh?

There were these delicious African meat pastry things that I had at an AKWAABA meeting once but don't know the name of, and the people standing around eating it at the pre-film reception were mostly Black, some white, some in African or African-inspired clotihng/jewelry, some in general office attire and/or jeans. There were like only two women with straightened hair, though, which I thought was an interesting commonality between the otherwise quite diverse-looking crowd.

I saw another girl sitting by herself, so I crossed the room to introduce myself to her and she became my buddy for the night. We talked about being new to DC, her job hunt, our blogs, and other getting-to-know-you stuff. She was pretty cool.

The film was called Lover's Rock. I was expecting some sort of romance story, I suppose, so was more than a little surprised when it turned out to be a documentary about a softer form of reggae music that was popular among Black Brits in the late 70s through early 90s. To be honest, when I realized this, I was expecting to be disappointed. To the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised by the film as a whole, but altogether intrigued by some specifics...

1) The Sus Laws: a series of litigation in England and Wales similar to many "stop-and-frisk" practices in the US, whereby the police had the power t"o stop, search and potentially arrest people on suspicion of them being in breach of section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824." (source) I couldn't listen to the musicians and producers talk about the fear Black men carried in them walking down the street in the late 70s without  seeing Trayvon Martin's face, without thinking about the fact that there have been more stop-and-frisks of Black men in NYC than the entire population of Black men in NYC in 2011. I don't know why this similarity surprised me--institutionalized racism is everywhere, duh--but perhaps due to the particularly police-brutality-rife time we're in, seeing these connections hit me deep. George Zimmerman is not the only man to automatically equate Blackness with suspiciousness. The US isn't the only place where "neutral" laws promote this kind of behavior among those supposedly protecting and serving.

2) The bombing of a sixteen year old Black girl's birthday party, which resulted in 9 deaths and upwards of 30 injuries. I couldn't set up a clearer parallel to the four little girls who lost their lives in the 16th Street church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. Watching footage of the riots that began when the entire city of London protested police inaction on this case, I felt a surge of pride. Pride for a people and a place that are in no way my own...or are they? I felt pride, and at the same time a hint of dread, as I wondered if it would take another such tragedy to move us to action.

3) A major theme of the film was the expression and, in some ways, even creation of a Black British identity through this genre of music that was distinctly originally British and Black in the same way jazz is distinctly originally American and Black. And this is the part where I shocked myself with my US tunnel-vision. Black British identity isn't really a concept that I'd ever explored, perhaps that I'd ever even recognized as being a thing. One of the musicians talked about feeling like there were social spaces for either Black or British, as if the two were mutually exclusive, and all I heard was Du Bois writing "and one ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" (The Souls of Black Folk, 3). I was instantly taken back to the first pages of the first book that I read in my first African-American studies class with my first Black teacher (the honorable Dr. Cornel West) and was surprised to find myself hearing myself in this man, just with different words. Double consciousness is diasporic.

4) The concept of dance as symbiotic, creating a tiny space of figure-8 hip movements wherein the rest of the room falls away, leaving the dancers in a world composed of nothing more than beat and bodies. The way you feel when you fit with the person you're dancing with. ...Brought back memories that made me catch my breath.

5) The first reggae song to break number 1 on the popular music charts in the US was British. It wasn't Bob Marley. It wasn't any Jamaican artist at all, despite the fact that generally our entire concept of reggae is as a Jamaican art. I've actively participated in the perpetuation of a single story I didn't even know I was oversimplifying. I think that the amount of times this happens in a life, in a week, in a day, would astound me.

6) This quote. "Whether you know about it or not, it's part of your memory." I saw myself in these young Black Brits. If they saw a documentary about my life and our times, I think they would see themselves in me. We are part of each other's memories. I think that's what the Diaspora means.  

Breaking away from my US focus for a moment

Check out this cool trailer for a documentary film about the first post-apartheid generation in South Africa and their activism to make Nelson Mandela's dreams and the governments' promises realities:

#projectsIwantoseebecomemovies

My fingers started snapping of their own accord at "Can we get a movie with characters in it, rather than stereotypes wrapped up in Christian dogma?" By "There's no need for a 'Dear Black People.' Cops, reality tv, and Fox News already let us know what you think of us," I was metaphorically on. the. floor. I love this. I love everything about it. 

Is it problematic? Maybe a little. Sure. But life as a Black student at a PWI is pretty damn problematic sometimes, and that's something I want to see addressed in things other than scholarly journals and weird corners of the internet like this. This film, if it goes to full production, will address issues like tokenism, hair, Greek life, "being Black enough," "ways to be Black," and whether Black people can be racist (answer: for damn sure), among others. And it'll piss off some White ignorant blissfully-uninformed-due-to-the-privileges-of-their-identity-categories people in the process. It will call attention to these issues in a public platform, whether it reaches only indie fame (a la Pariah) or national fame (a la Precious).

One of the white frat guys calls Sam, the main character, "Spike Lee and Angela Davis's pissed off baby." First off, I muthafuckin wish Spike Lee and Angela Davis had a kid, because that kid would run shit. That kid would be the Blue Ivy of and for the people. That kid would come out of the womb with its fist raised high and a full fro. But more importantly, we need Spike Lee and Angela Davis again. (Yes I'm fully aware they're both still alive and kicking, but go with me here.) We need the era when Do the Right Thing and Bamboozled were blockbusters, not just Black cult classics. (Confession: I've still never seen Bamboozled or She's Gotta Have It. They're on my to-do list.) Yes we are living in a time when Blackness is being re-examined (a la Toure, Baratunde Thurston, Issa Rae, and others), and I LOVE IT, but when my 21 year old cousin who's a student at Rutgers has never heard of Awkward Black Girl, we need to be doing more. 

Dear White People could be it, if it has the chance to come to fruition.    

I finally saw Pariah!

I didn't tell you all about it earlier because I saw it the weekend before my thesis was due and then I kind of forgot all about wanting to write this post until right now.

I really, really liked it. First off, it was kind of amazing to see it on campus with a large group of LGBT and ally-identified students. It created this alternative sort of social space within this quaint little theater right off campus where it was totally normal for me to be snuggled up with and lightly fondling CC throughout the show. It felt "normal" to hold her hand or run my fingers up and down her thigh as we watched (not that heterosexuality is any more "normal" than any other form of human sexuality--it's just more common). I'm not sure I had ever before been in a space where I was surrounded by more non-straight-identified people than straight-identified people, at least consciously, and it made me want to seek out such spaces more often.

I was drawn in to the movie from the beginning. The characters felt refreshingly real. They seemed like actual people I could know in the world, which has happened so rarely for me with "Black movies" recently. Alike was the perfect combination of vulnerable and determined, cautious and exploratory--watching her come into her own sexuality and style and identity reminded me of my own struggles, even though they're not the same in the slightest. I don't think it was hard for viewers to identify with her, above simply sympathizing with her. I saw the relationships as realistic, if painful. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to punch bitches in the face, I wanted to give the characters hugs. 

...But my friend MH compared it to Precious, an independent Black film which I absolutely detest. (More on that here if you're interested.) And this has made me step back and critically examine my interpretation of the film, because the comparison is not unwarranted. From an objective standpoint, this is a film about a specific marginalized Black female experience directed towards a largely outsider audience which conforms to various stereotypes of the African experience (homophobia, strict parenting, domestic violence, infidelity among men) and ends with the main character rejecting normative structures in favor of a brand of radical independence which she may or may not survive. It may not feature as many horrible life experiences or as thorough subjugation on the part of the main character, but the film is structurally quite similar to that of Precious. So how could I interpret them so differently?

Perhaps I need to check my privilege. I'm both closer to and farther removed from the specifics of this story in some interesting ways. Wrestling with my own sexuality, check. Putting all of myself into a first romantic encounter only to be told my supposed partner "isn't ready," check. Little sister coming to sleep in my bed when the parents are screaming at each other in the middle of the night, check. But my heart broke when this teenage girl came out to her very unaccepting parents, and part of that heartbreak was thinking that I will never go through what she's going through in that scene. I'm about 95% sure that my attraction to women is something my parents will never know about, unless I find myself in a serious long-term relationship with a woman, which doesn't seem likely at this point in my life. For right now, at least, that aspect of my life isn't such a large aspect of my life that they need to know about it. In fact, as I didn't come into this aspect of myself until semi-adulthood, I could feasibly never tell them, even if I do get into a relationship with a woman, because they're not overseeing my life like that anymore. They don't get to question/control me like that anymore. 

And then on an entirely other level, the stereotypes in this film aren't stereotypes that people would put on me. In fact, I didn't really even recognize them as stereotypes to begin with. They aligned so well with my interpretation of African cultures and intolerances that I didn't question...and that worries me. So I guess I'm wondering how that in-group received this movie, and whether I should be less quick to love it. Which then makes me wonder if I should be less quick to judge all the people who loved Precious. Also, the juxtaposition of the terms "Precious" and "Pariah," which have basically opposite meanings, to represent these characters with similar lives fascinates me. There's some critical commentary there that someone should unpack...

Foreign Films are really cool.

This one is Norweigan, about a teenage girl coming into and wanting to express her sexuality, and then actually acting on it. WE DON'T HAVE SHIT LIKE THIS IN AMERICA.

From the website:

TURN ME ON, DAMMIT! is a whimsical and refreshingly honest coming of age story about the blossoming sexuality of a teenage girl, set to open in theaters on Friday, March 30. The feature debut of Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, the film was awarded “Best Screenplay” at the Tribeca Film Festival, “Best Debut Film” at the Rome Film Festival, and “Best European First Feature” at the Mons International Love Film Festival (Belgium).
15-year-old Alma (Helene Bergsholm) is consumed by her out-of-control hormones and fantasies that range from sweetly romantic images of Artur, the boyfriend she yearns for, to down-and-dirty daydreams about practically everybody she lays eyes on. Alma and her best friend Sara live in an insufferably boring little town in the hinterlands of Norway called Skoddeheimen, a place they loathe so much that every time their school bus passes the sign that names it, they routinely flip it off. After Alma has a stimulating yet awkward encounter with Artur, she makes the mistake of telling her incredulous friends, who ostracize her at school, until Sara can’t even be seen with her. At home, Alma’s single mother is overwhelmed and embarrassed by her daughter’s extravagant phone sex bills and wears earplugs to muffle Alma’s round-the-clock acts of self-gratification.
Laced with warmth and quirky humor, TURN ME ON, DAMMIT! is a light-hearted take on a story that is told so often about boys and so rarely about teenage girls.

Trailer:
Turn Me On, Dammit! trailer  

Sadness: It's coming to DC at the beginning of June, and I won't move until the middle of June at the earliest. I need to find a way to pirate indie films. XD 

Ice-T is making a documentary about rap

Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap



It actually looks kind of dope, though. #thingsyallmightnotknowaboutme: I went through a very intense rap phase, and Eminem is most likely still the artist whose music I have the most of. There is no part of me that won't call Weezy a poetic genius, even when I hate what he's talking about. There is some part of me that just feels at home when Jay and Em team up for Renegade, or whenever I hear anything by Pac or Biggie. 

And on top of all of that, I love it when pop culture becomes a subject of critical study, especially when it includes the perspectives of the people producing the culture. I'm also particularly interested in how subcultures become dominant (or at least dominating) cultures, and when/how appropriation is involved in that process.

...So I might have to see this.

I'm going to DC!

Not sure exactly when yet, but I got an email from a woman I had a phone interview with before Christmas for this awesome-sounding Survey Associate position at one of the country's leading policy research centers asking my availability during the month of January to come to DC for an in-person interview! I'm trying to be as conveniently flexible as possible, so I basically gave her every day that I'm on campus in January besides Dean's Date, the day before Dean's Date, and the day before my last take-home is due. And I was sitting at my computer wondering how to get to DC (I'm thinking NJTransit to Trenton, Septa to Philly, Amtrak to DC--they'll reimburse me) when I realized that DC is a major city. So major a city, in fact, that Pariah might be playing there.

So I went to check the website and YES! It opens in exactly one theater in DC this Friday. So I'm basically buying a ticket as soon as my interviewer nails down a date. Maybe I'll even contact a few of my friends who live in DC and make an adventure out of it. 

I'm BEYOND excited for the chance to interview and the opportunity to see Pariah, because it will certainly never open in Mays Landing. I could potentially try to pull all sorts of Princetonian strings (the Women's Center, LGBT Center, Af-Am Studies program, Gender and Sexuality dept, Carl A. Fields Center for Diversity and Multicultural Understanding, etc.) to organize a trip to NYC to still it, but...hmm, actually, no buts. I might still try to do that, haha! 

And for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, check out the trailer below. It's a feature film based on an independent Black film that won all kinds of awards at Sundance in 2007, about a young Black lesbian coming of age in Brooklyn, and I've been itching to see it since I first starting reading about the short film AGES ago.  These are the stories of Black America that I want to start hearing more and more about. These are the voices that have been silenced.

Trailer:

 

Watching Christmas classics on DVD like a BOSS.

And I wanted to pause to tell everyone that my favorite Christmas movie characters, the ones nearest and dearest to my heart, aren't any of the heroes. Not Rudolph or Frosty or any of the 90374593749347 Santas. Not even a more obscure hero like Jack Frost. Nope. Most special to me will always be the Misfit Toys. 



I don't care that this movie is older than my mother; I feel like they'd just GET me. We're ALL misfits, it's true, but I feel like it's a very small percentage of us that embrace that misfit identity. And maybe the rest of the world doesn't try to cast us away to deserted ice-covered islands anymore, true, but...I still feel like we should stick together. I <3 being different. And I <3 the Charlie in the Box, the spotted elephant, the sinking boat, the swimming bird, the train with square wheels, and all the other misfit toys. I just so happen to think they're quite charming. 

What's the matter with misfits? That's where we fit in!

I'm So Uncultured:

Black Enterprise Magazine released a list of the top-grossing Black independent films of all time, and I've only seen two (maaayyybbbbeeee three) of them. This disgusts me, and I'm pretty sure these need to work their way onto my viewing list immediately. In my defense, I spent considerable time and effort searching for Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It this summer and could not find it anywhere on the internet, even legal places like Netflix, so if you've got any kind of a hookup on that one, lemme know.

The list, if you're interested:

-Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
-She’s Gotta Have It
-Trois
-Sankofa
-Precious (I have seen and written an academic paper about why I don't approve of this.)
-Hotel Rwanda (I mayyyyyy have seen this, but that means I should probably watch it again.) 
-Paid In Full 
-Ray (I have seen this.)
-Daughters of the Dust 
-I Got The Hook Up

The categories Netflix creates for me must say something about my life.

• "Underdog Movies based on real life"
• You root for the little guy because you've never stopped viewing yourself as one.
  
• "Sentimental Tearjerkers featuring a strong female lead"
• Strong female lead? Hell yeah that's me. And "keep in mind that I'm an artist, and I'm sensitive about my shit." (Erykah Badu)
• "Critically-acclaimed sentimental documentaries"
• For the sociologist in me.
• "Witty Romantic Opposites Attract Comedies"
• Even though I would much rather find someone similar to me than someone who is very unlike me in a great many ways, I love it when the two characters you aren't supposed to expect to get together (except you do expect it because, well, this is a genre) get together.
• "Girl Power Movies"
• Does this really require explanation?
• "Cerebral Suspenseful TV Dramas"
• I like crime dramas and medical dramas because they fascinate me. I want to be fascinated when I watch TV, not just entertained. 
• "Inspiring Sports Movies"
• I don't really know what it is about these, because I'm really quite the opposite of a sports fan in real life, but if you give me a movie about a struggling football/basketball team that overcomes its issues as a result of some male bonding and a few impassioned speeches, I will be crying like a baby. 
• "Movies About Food" 
• I actually laughed out loud at this one. It's "based on my interest in Soul Food and The Spitfire Grill. I mean, I do like food, though.
• "Steamy TV Dramas"
• Mmm, well, I do like steamy...
• "First Love Teen Romance"
• Oh my heart is melting just reading that description.

I Co-Sign this with the biggest pen I can find:

"I am past the point where I have any patience for people telling me how I should feel about how black women are presented in the media. Especially people who have never walked a moment, much less a mile in the shoes of black women in America. And before someone decides to break out the face paint & do a documentary? Let me tell you right now that a day or a week or even a month in makeup won’t touch what it’s like to hear from birth that you are worth less than every body else because of you hair, your skin, your culture, your history, & your gender. You know, all those things that make you human? Yeah, the message we get is that we’re not really human. We’re beasts, we’re Mammy, we’re bedwarmers, we’re everything under the Sun but people who are valued & valuable. Well, we’re valuable when we can be exploited by someone else, but pearl clutching ensues when we want to profit from our own labor.
Black women have a reputation for being strong that is sometimes helpful & sometimes harmful. We do our best to survive everything that gets thrown at us. We fight the messages, we teach our kids to fight the messages, but it is 2011 & I am still seeing books, movies, TV shows, & articles lauded for explaining exactly how much less we are worth than everyone else. We can’t even tell our own stories without having to argue over whether or not we’re qualified to speak. If we’re silent others speak at top volume until we are rendered down to Mammy, Jezebel, or Sapphire with no room for reality. When we do speak up suddenly we are too loud, too angry, too confrontational, simply too much. Even when we whisper, we are doing it wrong, but trust & believe we will be heard whether anyone else likes it or not. We are women. We are black. We will not stop speaking for ourselves. Get used to it or get the fuck out of our way."

A PSA From A Loud Angry Black Woman -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

A small bit of nostalgia:

I watched Larry Crowne on Sunday night, and I really liked it. I'd figured it was the kind of movie I would enjoy from the moment I saw the first preview. It reminded me a lot of the kind of movies my dad and I used to watch together--dramas, peeks into people's lives, stories that were only extraordinary in the fact that they were on the silver screen. This is his favorite genre, and by default of the fact that he's a huge movie buff and I was an impressionable child, it became mine as well. The entire time I was watching this movie, part of me wanted to be watching it with him. We used to see everything Julia Roberts made (Denzel too). This, in  turn, reminded me of the years in high school where every single movie I saw in theaters, I saw with S. This, in turn, made me wonder if I will ever have a period of my life like this again, where my movie-partner is so comfortably predictable.   

So, true to my word, I saw "The Help"

K and I went to see it last night. I must say, right off the bat, that my expectations for this movie were greatly surpassed. I laughed, I cried, I was angry, I was sympathetic...this was, by most of the measures by which I usually judge movies, a very good movie. It was the kind of movie that makes me think I should be calling it a "film." It was incredibly well-acted. So much attention was paid to detail, from the clothing to the decorations in the homes to the cars to the clips of news footage from the Civil Rights Movement. It was just as sexist and racist and racistandsexist as it needed to be for the period. I looked at and listened to some of these characters and saw women I know. I shouldn't have just assumed that a White woman couldn't portray Black women with any sort of authenticity. I have been proven wrong on that account. Also, I think they did an excellent job of balancing the two stories here: one about Black women standing up for themselves and one about a brave White woman who fought against all the racists. I was led to believe that the story was more about the White woman helping the maids, but they had WAY more autonomy than I was expecting to be presented with, and I am surprised and grateful. 
Yes, this was a "let's-alleviate-a-little-bit-of-White-people's-guilt" movie, which The Oreo Experience [a blog I like when I think about it as an exercise in exaggeration and social criticism, but which saddens me whenever I think she might be serious] renames as the "White People to the Rescue" movie. You know this genre--The Blind Side, Driving Miss Daisy, most movies about education reform, almost any movie about a predominantly black sports team and a white coach--where there is a person of color or a group of people of color who obviously need help and have the power to be something [which implies that narratives that don't follow the American Nightmare Dream to the letter are "nothing"] or maybe even to help themselves, but don't realize this until some benevolent White [or, more recently, racially ambiguous] person steps in to show them how to achieve. It's a pretty popular unofficial genre. But this was a GOOD white guilt movie, if such a thing can exist.
I say that for two reasons. Reason 1: A lot of white guilt movies just have, you know, some privileged White people, well, feeling guilty and doing charitable things to quell that guilt. We also occasionally get the used-to-be-a-hardcore-racist-but-sees-the-error-of-his/her-ways White person in these movies. What we don't usually get, but this film gave us, is the hardcore-racist-White-person-who-despite-being-socially-criticized-and-exposed-to-the-other-side-of-the-story-DOES-NOT-STOP-BEING-A-HARDCORE-RACIST White person. But this film gave us those people. I said it to K last night, and I'll say it again now [warning, this is NOT P.C.]: This movie made me remember what it's like to hate White people. Like I would be in jail right now if it were possible to walk into a movie and choke a bitch, because I was DONE with those women quite a few times. The fact that our White protagonist was clearly the exception to the rule in Jackson, Mississippi, and could not convince the majority of the other people in her social circle to come over to the good side is unusual and daring for this genre. And I think this is productive, because while guilt isn't a pleasant feeling, I don't think anyone could sit through the beginning of this movie without feeling profoundly uncomfortable, regardless of race. And being uncomfortable is promising for those of us who advocate change. 
Reason 2: The White protagonist didn't don a red cape and put an S on her chest and swoop in to save these women. She didn't boldly go where no White woman had gone before and advocate for the plight of these women publicly. HER ASS WAS HIDING. She wasn't Freedom-Writers-what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-caring-about-these-[derogatory slur] until the very end after the book was published; before then, she interviewed women behind closed doors and drawn curtains, strategically avoided saying she was refusing to publish a racist proposition in the newspaper because she disagreed with it, and she watched the news of the Movement on TV rather than going to march. I'm not saying she wasn't brave or courageous, I'm just saying her bravery was undercover. She remained overtly only a little less than neutral in public, and even in the end no one could prove what she had done. I like that she didn't take all the credit here. I like that this movie is about the two maids who made her project possible just as much as it's about her. I like that they get more recognition from their community than she gets from her own. 
Bonus reason: I like that racism didn't blindly lessen in severity by generation. The oldest White character we see is fighting her daughter for her maid's rights a lot, though she can rarely do anything to stop her. 

But then the movie had to come to a neat little close, as movies must do, and then everything I hate about this genre and was hoping to avoid reared its ugly head. Our benevolent White protagonist spreads the wealth from the book's earnings, then high-tails it out of town, off to a fancy job in NYC after having managed to change very little for the Black women of Jackson except their mindsets. The Black women of Jackson are now getting even further demonized/taken advantage of by White women, to the point where the main maid loses her job and walks determinedly down the street, talking in a lofty manner about how much it mattered to her that someone wondered what it was like to be her, and about finding her voice and becoming a writer. That end scene reminded me a lot of Precious: she hasn't a damn thing going for her--no hope of getting a job in that town ever again, no money to move, few skills besides literacy and childcare/housekeeping, no family to rely on...I worry. But more than any of those practical things, I worry that this ending leaves a happy taste in audience's mouths about how far we've come or some shit about how empowerment is psychological. Fuck that shit, man. Yes, getting your mind right is a critical component of empowering oneself, but it doesn't mean SHIT if you're still living under a system of oppression. 

So there were points and deductions. Other deductions included propagating the happy Black mammy role when the White female protagonist remembered her own childhood maid/nanny (whom she didn't imagine having had any of the same struggles as the women she interviewed), an abusive Black husband, and a focus on Black women as "dirty". Violence is present without being addressed--wealthy white woman suggests her Black maid leave her abusive husband, despite the fact that she wouldn't be able to care for her children on her (and her daughter's) incomes alone. The White protagonist gets to walk away from everything leaving the people she endangered-by-helping with uncertain fates. Black women still just have to be strong and take White people's shit. The larger Civil Rights Movement is present--as a person who knows the intimate details of the Mississippi Burning era, watching the small news clip of Medgar Evers's death and hearing the characters talk about his family undid me--but the role played by regular women like our characters in the larger movement isn't really addressed either; they're all anonymous. They cannot be recognized for their contribution, as most of the people who fought this battle will never be recognized--that might actually be a point of non-romanticization that I approve of, actually. I like that happiness existed right alongside pain and disgust in this film--that felt real. And the sisterhood and standing up for what you believe in and having courage themes really did come through. Some of these deductions get a point or two back for raising issues that still need to be addressed, though.
All in all, it was a good film. Could have avoided a few potholes, but it surpassed my expectations greatly.

I'm so conflicted about whether or not to see 'The Help'

On the one hand, sisterhood! friendship! standing up for what you believe in! stories that haven't been told! a movie about Black women! 
On the other hand, though, yet another tired old film about Black people whose lives really are interesting and meaningful, but made so only through the intervention of a benevolent White woman! (The Blind Side, anybody?) celebration of Black women's stories as long as they're told from a White woman's perspective! making people feel like the conditions of 
oppressed minorities weren't (aren't) so bad!


Some people are telling me I'm making too big a deal about this. That there are [much less successful] movies and books about Black persons who stand up and tell their own stories. That I shouldn't look at these things as Black v. White, but in terms of other divisions, like religion or class. That I should see the patronizing White female savior as really just a friend like any other friend, and not pay attention at all to all the privileges she has over her Black female domestics "friends". That I should validate her for working against societal expectations by caring about these Black women. Or, my fucking favorite, that Hollywood isn't about historical accuracy or truth-telling, but rather is for entertainment purposes only, and presumably has absolutely no societal responsibility to speak of. That it somehow shouldn't bother me that, with few exceptions, the most widely popular films that feature or are about Black people offer those characters little more than belittlement and backhanded compliments. Self-sufficiency and positive narratives are few and far between.


I'm terrified that this will someday get shown/read in history classes in high school, and be taken as an accurate representation of what life was like for these women. NOTHING GOOD can come of members of a dominant group writing the history of members of a marginalized group. Nothing. So when someone asks me what I expected from a White woman's telling of the story, I say this: that I expect White people to finally learn that maybe they shouldn't be trying to tell the narratives of Black experiences. But alas, they will never learn this, because this book was wildly successful, and the film most likely will be too, because unlike when a Black person tries to talk about a Black experience, this appeals to White audiences [sugar-coating history has a tendency to do that]. 


The friend I'm arguing with on Facebook [I hate Facebook arguments] raises the incredibly valid point that the representations of Blackness coming from within our community are arguably worse. I agree 100%, a la the post immediately prior to this one, but that just means I'm not going to stand for either one.


My friend says the only way to change this is to go out and do something about it, instead of just bitching about what's wrong with the images we're being presented with. Again, I agree 100%, but we have to recognize that if a Black woman had written a novel about Black women's experiences as maids in the South, it would be relegated to the huge pile of "African-American literature to be ignored by the general public unless one has a very progressive high school English teacher" and the idea of a movie deal would be laughable. So, as I am not a filmmaker or a screenwriter, but an academic, all I can do is talk about why I don't think these images are acceptable, why I don't think these movies will do anything good for anyone (except put money in the hands of the people who made them, and making wealthy White people feel less guilty--which I'm pretty sure is only beneficial to them, not to the people of color and/or in poverty who could use a program or two that might be created [or, at the very least, not ripped to shreds] by people who have stopped recognizing that guilt is entirely appropriate). Maybe wanting to hold Hollywood to some level of social responsibility is naive of me, but how can we change the dominant cultural perceptions of a community if only narratives that perpetuate those perceptions are allowed to be seen/heard?


I suppose I have to see it now that I've talked so much shit about it though, huh? Damn.

Disney Doing What It Does Best.

Dealing with problems of race ambiguously at best, not dealing with them at all at worst, right? Wrong. I'm used to Disney ignoring racial issues. Even being marginally racist at times (going back in history there's all kinds of animalization of black peoples--the baboons in The Jungle Book, the crows in Dumbo, etc., and don't even get me started on everything that's wrong with Aladdin). So evidently, in an effort to combat these issues in the company's past, or maybe just riding along on this recent American wave of post-racialism/colorblindness, Disney has now chosen to IGNORE AMERICAN HISTORY COMPLETELY and mark the struggles of African-American soldiers (like my paternal grandfather, a decorated WWII veteran) entirely irrelevant. Great choice.

What am I talking about, you ask? I had the night off from work tonight, so I decided to go see Captain America with K and a couple other friends. [No major spoilers coming up, I pinkie promise.] We trudge along through America's involvement in WWII, from the volunteer army to the Uncle Sam posters and the war bonds...then suddenly we're in Italy facing the 50 or so members of the 107th infantry who didn't get captured by the evil Germans...and there are Black and Asian faces intermingled with the White guys. Huh? Hold up. Wait just one goddamn minute. No they didn't... 

Dear Disney, the United States Armed Forces were not integrated until President Linden Johnson's Executive Order in 1948. During the second World War, African-American soldiers were segregated into their own troops, who were rarely sent to battle, and if so sent into zones considered too dangerous for their white counterparts. They were grunt workers, easily disposable. Their officers were not widely respected, their men treated with more respect by civilians abroad than by their own countrymen. Do I need to bring up the Tuskegee Airmen? (Don't even get me started on Tuskegee in general!) I don't care how many billions of dollars your company is worth; I don't give a shit how much easier it is to cast your movie without regard to race; if you thought it didn't matter, it does. I will not stand by and let the honor of my grandfather and the thousands of African-American men like him who had to fight for the right to fight for their country, and came home to find no honor, no love, no respect, and certainly no veteran's benefits like the GI bill (which could have singlehandedly erased the Black-White wealth gap, had Black veterans been given the opportunity right to go to college or purchase homes as were their White counterparts) be trampled upon. In the same way I cannot tolerate history textbooks that relegate Blacks', womens', or LGBT-persons' histories to colorful boxes and side notes, if they mention them at all, I cannot and will not tolerate you erasing the struggles these men endured. I cannot and will not sit idly by while you piss all over their legacy.

Aren't there people whose job it is to make sure you don't do anything blatantly ignorant like this? Shouldn't someone be checking these things when you're casting? Doesn't anyone care? Minor historical inaccuracies like the details of a uniform or the use of a car that didn't exist yet don't bother me; I realize that it's not actually possible to travel back into time and get everything perfect. But we're not talking about something minor like that. We are talking about the struggle for basic human dignity endured by my father's father, Black peoples of his generation, of previous generations, and to an extent even of today's generation. We are talking about civil rights. We are talking about the way the media likes to subtly cover up the sordid details of our nation's past and pretend everything is all hunky-dory. 

Captain America can't be shown as fighting for an America that actively denied its citizens the very "inalienable truths" it was founded on, huh? That's not gonna sell tickets. Disney, I love you, but this is not okay.