i love nino and angela and their cozy italian restaurant where ricco and cronyn and nino play cards and eat way too much pasta and everybody loves each other

How was the sequel to Tales from The Hood, a shitshow?

The original Tales from the Hood, while having some campy horror elements, still managed to present its stories and tone competently while still incorporating themes of struggles of black Americans in urban areas. 

Examples: 

A black politician who’s been trying to fight against police corruption gets beaten to death and injected with drugs post-mortem by said corrupt cops to slander his name. The politician returns from the dead to exact vengeance. Obviously this short tackles police brutality and corruption.

A little boy and his mother who are constantly beaten and abused by what he draws and identifies as a ‘monster’ who, it turns out, is the mother’s new boyfriend. The theme here is Domestic Violence and how often people try to brush it under the rug as just a way of life in the community. 

A former klansman-turned senator buys a building called ‘The Dollhouse’ that is of high historical significance to the local black community, despite their wishes and complaints, to serve as the headquarters for his racist campaign to become governor. The house in of itself was where a confederate-supporter, after the loss of the Civil War, decided to murder all of his slaves rather than see them freed. Their restless souls haunted the place until a ‘voodoo woman’ managed to calm their souls and place them into dolls. You can pretty much guess where this is going and the themes.

The final entry centers around a gang-member who, after getting hunted and shot down by rival gang-members, is taken into police custody and is given one last chance for freedom by a doctor’s new, radical behavioral therapy program. Said therapy takes a note right out of A Clockwork Orange and bombards our main character with alternating images of brutal gang-violence and KKK lynchings. After which, he is berated with apparitions of all the people he’s shot and killed; including a little girl who was a victim during one of his drive-by shootings. Of course, this kind of therapy will only be successful if the subject shows some remorse...

And all of this is wrapped in a framing device of three gang-members trying to find some drugs at a funeral-home, even harassing the funeral-director, which turns out to be a portal into hell.

... *deep breath*

I have to do a ‘Read More’ because this post got long. But I implore you guys to read on to see the abyss of insanity and bad directions that were taken in regards to the sequel of this movie. Please.

The sequel decided to throw ALL NUANCE AND TACT out of the window and give us such wonderful stories as: 

A white girl and a black girl are on a road-trip and decide to go to the... ugh... Museum of Negrosity where the owner chastises them on thinking that the uncomfortable racist memorabilia he owns (collections of minstrel show cartoons, golliwog and pickaninny dolls) are things of the past instead of acknowledging them as parts of America’s racist past. And, for some reason, the white girl is obsessed with buying one of the golliwog dolls because she had one when she was little. Anyway, they sneak back in later with the white girl’s brother who happens to be the black girl’s boyfriend, so they can steal one of the dolls. Through hijinks, the doll comes to life and grows to the size of a human being. The brother/boyfriend gets whipped to death, the black girl gets cut in half by a minstrel-colored guillotine, and the white girl... Fucks the giant golliwog doll, gets pregnant, and a few days later, has her stomach torn open as a bunch of baby versions of the doll go flying out everywhere.

Some gang-members track down a former pimp who’s changed his ways to try and shake him down for some owed money. He doesn’t comply, so they kill him but, golly-gee! How are they going to get the money now~? Oh, I know! Hold a scam medium hostage so he can perform a seance to talk to the pimp to find out about the money. But, oh no~ It looks like the medium’s powers decide to actually work this time~ Ooh~

Two douchebags hookup with two hot chicks and, after the world’s worst game of Cards Against Humanity, they decide to roofie the girls so they can record themselves raping them so they can post it to ‘le dark web’. ... Lo’ and behold, the girls turn out to be vampires who were playing 4D chess to rope the two douchebags in so they can use them for their own recording-something-brutal-to-post-online scheme. 

And... The LAST one. Oh my God, the LAST ONE. *deep breath* Okay.

So we follow a black republican councilman who is married to a white woman and they’re expecting a baby after a long line of miscarriages. But the wife is having weird bouts of bad dreams and insomnia. What are the bad dreams about? 

... I need you guys to understand. That I am not shitposting when I type the following words. *deep breath* Okay. 

The wife is being haunted by the ghost of Emmett Till telling her that she doesn’t deserve to have her baby. You know? Emmett Till? The victim of one of the most brutal, horrific murders in America due to one of the most disgusting, vile acts of racism? THAT EMMETT TILL?!

So..! The black councilman is working for a white politician who... I’m just going to put a direct quote from the movie so you can get where they were coming from.

“That man wants to close down ten more voting locations, all of them in black districts!”

Anyway, after a house-call from a doctor who brushes off the dreams as hormones, the councilman hosts a party for the politician who’s running slogan is ‘Let’s take Mississippi back!’ Gee-golly-willickers! Can’t imagine where they were coming from with that one!!

So the party goes on, the politician even congratulating our councilman on his ‘white wife’, but said wife rushes downstairs after having another dream; ranting about ‘that boy from the field has decided to LIVE! And if he lives, our baby’s going to die!’ And she runs outside with a machete to try and kill the ghost of Emmett Till (who, again, very real person and victim of racist brutality). 

So the councilman’s mother and the local voodoo expert drive up and the voodoo expert tells the councilman that Emmett Till is trying to talk to him about the nature of sacrifice. The next day, the wife is talking about how her stomach is getting smaller, but the councilman doesn’t want to hear any of it and calls the doctor again. And, guys..?! If shit hadn’t jumped the rails before?! The train just starts doing cartwheels from here. 

The doctor is suspiciously short-tempered with the politician this time around and he does examine the wife to confirm that her stomach is indeed shrinking. However, when he’s told that the councilman is the father, he storms out and snaps “I don’t work for coloreds!” 

Then the wife runs out of bed and tells the doctor that the councilman isn’t her husband and that he kidnapped and raped her. So both the wife and the doctor drive off and the councilman realizes that the world has somehow gone back to the era of Jim Crow. 

... Oooh my gosh, typing this is making me want to commit toaster-bath but it gets so much worse..!

So, after the voodoo expert comes to chastise the councilman about not ‘respecting the sacrifices that have been gifted to you’, he is able to see the ghost of Emmett Till (who was a real person, why is this happening..?!) who is there to tell him that he’s decided that he wants to live. Which means that the world will never see the brutal images of his body at his funeral and that will cause a Butterfly Effect in history that will make it so that the Civil Rights Movement never happened. 

You may be questioning the logistics of this, but don’t worry! The ghosts of the girls killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham come to explain and further berate the councilman about ‘respecting the sacrifices that have been gifted to him’ and working for a racist politician. 

But wait! There’s more! *whines* I keep crying out to God but he won’t answer...

They’re soon joined by the ghosts of the three Freedom Riders who were killed during the Mississippi Burning Murders, the ghost of Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers, and DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 

Not to mention several other unnamed figures who walk up while everyone else starts chanting about ‘respecting the sacrifices that have been gifted to you’, who look like Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass, just to name a few. 

... I need a drink. I need a cold, stiff drink. ... Almost done. 

So, in comes the Klan. You know, the white-robed bastards; I hear they have an outreach center a few cities away from me. Sure, fine, whatever. The wife is leading them along with the white politician who hits the councilman’s mother in the face with a baton and Emmett Till stops time just as reinforcements show up to tell the councilman that, in order for everything to go back to normal, he has to join the ranks of those who sacrificed. 

“If what you want is worth us dying for, how come its not worth you dying for?!”

And, at first, the councilman disagrees; even being dragged away by Klansmen. However! It’s his wife angrily spitting in his face that makes him realize that this world isn’t the world he wants to live in. So he runs over to Emmett Till to tell him that he will join him... And then he’s beaten to death, becoming a sacrifice to get the world back to normal. And, once it is, his spirit joins Emmett Till’s and walks off into the great beyond. 

So! Not only did this schlocky, B-movie horror movie sequel decide to use a REAL LIFE VICTIM of racism-driven brutality as a story-device, but it also wants to put forth the message that the people who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement? Yeah, they HAD to die! Otherwise the Civil Rights Movement would never have happened~!

You see why I hate the sequel to Tales from the Hood so much? Not even mentioning the terrible framing segments of a racial-profiling robot being told these stories so it knows what ‘criminals’ to go after, but this movie is just a temple of ‘WHY?! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!?!?!’

In a slightly different world, Fargo season 4 might never have happened. After the FX anthology drama ended its third season, creator Noah Hawley admitted that he didn’t have an idea for a follow-up. And, he figured, “the only reason to do another Fargo is if the creative is there.” So, if there was to be a sequel, Hawley estimated it would take three years. That was in June 2017.

Thirty-nine months later (it would have been 34 had COVID not temporarily halted production), the show has reemerged with a story whose timeliness is obvious. It marks a significant departure from the earliest seasons of Fargo, which pitted good and evil archetypes against each other in arch, violent crime capers that ultimately erred on the side of optimism. Season 3 flirted with topicality, from an opening scene that hinged on Soviet kompromat to a hauntingly inconclusive final showdown between the latest iterations of pure good—represented by Carrie Coon’s embattled police chief Gloria Burgle—and primordial evil (David Thewlis’ terrifying V.M. Varga). Five months into Donald Trump’s presidency, that ending simultaneously reflected many Americans’ fears for the future and suggested that the battle for the human soul would be an eternal one. You can imagine why Hawley might have considered it a hard act to follow.

Instead of trying to top the high-flown allegory of its predecessor, the fascinating but uneven new episodes tackle conflicts of a more earthly nature: race, structural inequality, American identity. To that end, Fargo season 4 ventures farther south and deeper into history than it has gone before, to Kansas City, Mo. in 1950. For half a century, ethnic gangs have battled over the midsize metropolis. The Irish took out the Jews. The Italians took out the Irish. Finally, just a few years after a brutal World War in which fascist Italy numbered among the United States’ enemies, the Great Migration has brought the descendants of slaves north to this Midwestern city whose complicity in American racism dates back to the Missouri Compromise.

This upstart syndicate is led by one Loy Cannon (Chris Rock in a rare dramatic role), a brilliant, self-possessed power broker who doesn’t relish violence but is determined to exact reparations from this country, on behalf of his beloved family, by any means necessary. Loy’s deputy and closest friend is a learned older man by the name of Doctor Senator (the great Glynn Turman, all quiet dignity). In an early episode, the two men walk into a bank to pitch its white owner on an idea they’ve been testing out through less-than-legal means in the Black community: credit cards. (“Every average Joe wants one thing: to seem rich,” Loy explains to the banker.) He turns them down, of course, convinced that his clientele would have no interest in purchasing things they couldn’t afford. We’re left wondering how the ensuing saga might’ve been different if Loy and Doctor Senator had been allowed to channel their considerable intelligence into a legit business.

Elizabeth Morris/FXSalvatore Esposito and Jason Schwartzman in ‘Fargo’

The Italians, meanwhile, are starting to enjoy the rewards of their newfound whiteness—a largely invisible transformation marked in The Godfather by Michael Corleone’s relationship with naive WASP Kay Adams. (In keeping with previous seasons’ allusive style, Fargo often playfully evokes Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy.) In the wake of their capo father Donatello’s (Tommaso Ragno) death, two brothers battle for control of the Fadda clan—a crime family that has Italian-accented patriarchalism written into its very name. Crafty, spoiled, crypto-corporate Josto (Jason Schwartzman, doing a scrappier, cannier take on his Louis XVI character in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette) has long been Donatello’s right hand. But his younger brother Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito, imported from Sky Italia’s acclaimed organized-crime drama Gomorrah), a brawny brute who came up in Sardinia busting heads for Mussolini, stands between Josto and the consolidation of power.

Generations-old tradition dictates that if two syndicates are to share turf in Kansas City, their leaders must raise each other’s sons. These exchanges are supposed to be a sort of insurance policy against betrayal; never mind that they never work out as planned. So Loy very reluctantly trades his scion Satchel (Rodney Jones) for Donatello’s youngest (Jameson Braccioforte). The boy finds a protector in the Faddas’ solemn older ward, Patrick “The Rabbi” Milligan (Ben Whishaw, humane as always), who double-crossed his own Irish family in an earlier transaction.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (E’myri Crutchfield from History’s 2016 Roots remake) is the show’s other innocent youth, a bright and insightful Black teenager whose parents (Anji White and indie rocker Andrew Bird) own the poignantly named King of Tears funeral home. Every Fargo season needs a personification of goodness, and in this one it’s Ethelrida. Not that her virtuousness makes her life any easier. In a voiceover montage that opens the season premiere, she tells us that she learned early on that, as far as white authority figures were concerned, “the only thing worse than a disreputable Negro was an upstanding one.” Her inscrutable foil is Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley), a white nurse neighbor whose patients tend to die before they can experience too much pain. Oraetta’s quaint Minnesota accent (another Fargo staple) belies the racist views she politely but unapologetically espouses; she seems fixated on making Ethelrida her maid.

Elizabeth Morris/FXE’myri Crutchfield in ‘Fargo’

It’s fitting that Oraetta is both the most tangible link to Fargo’s home turf and the first character who ties together the mobster’s story with that of the Smutny family. As her loaded last name suggests, she seems to embody a particular form of evil that has been a constant in American life since the colonial period: white supremacy. Oraetta harms, kills and plunders with minimal consequences. No wonder she has eyes for Josto, the first Fadda who knows how to wield his white identity, building alliances with government and law enforcement that would be impossible for the Cannon syndicate. (Josto’s version of Kay Adams is the homely daughter of a politician.) “I can take all the money and pussy I want and still run for President,” he boasts at one point.

The reference to our current President’s briefly scandalous Access Hollywood tape is so flagrant as to elicit an involuntary groan. It’s lines like this that expose the limitations of Hawley’s attempt to fuse the topical and the elemental. Fargo still creates an absorbing, cinematic viewing experience, with painterly framing, pointedly deployed split-screen and arcane yet evocative needle drops. A not-at-all-gratuitous black-and-white episode could almost stand on its own as a movie. And, as in past seasons, the show gives us many remarkable performances: Rock may seem an odd pick for a gangster role, but the same shrewdness and indignation that fuel his stand-up persona also simmer beneath Loy’s measured surface. The pain Whishaw’s character carries around in his body goes far beyond what can be conveyed in dialogue. Bird broke my heart as a meek, loving dad. But in his eagerness to make a legible, potent political statement, Hawley struggles to find the right tone and keep the season’s many intersecting themes straight.

Elizabeth Morris/FXJessie Buckley in ‘Fargo’

The show is simply trying to do too much within a limited framework. Fargo wouldn’t be Fargo without some eccentric law enforcement, so an already-huge cast expands to fit a crooked local detective with OCD (Jack Huston) and Timothy Olyphant—whose roles on Deadwood and Justified made him prestige TV’s quintessential cop—as a smarmy, Mormon U.S. Mashal who snacks on carefully wrapped bundles of carrot sticks. Yet Hawley also realized that he needed to break from previous seasons that, like the Coens’ film, cast a white police officer as the avatar of goodness; hence Ethelrida, whose investigation into her city’s criminal underworld takes the form of a school assignment, and whose soul is stained by neither corruption nor white privilege. She’s a wonderful character, but her and Oraetta’s story line can feel peripheral to the gang war.

With such a crowded plot, it’s no wonder the show can’t maintain a consistent tone. Each season of Fargo creates a hermetically sealed moral universe, doling out divine and definitive justice to each character according to their position on the spectrum spanning from good to evil. In the past, its archness has served as a self-aware counterbalance to the sanctimony inherent in such a project. And there’s still plenty of irreverence in season 4, particularly when it comes to Hawley’s depiction of the Faddas, Oraetta and the other white characters. But there’s nothing funny about the oppression and discrimination that Loy, Doctor Senator and Ethelrida face. Each of their fates is shaped at least as much by a society that is hostile to people who look like them as it is by the moral choices they make as individuals. So the scripts give them the dignity they deserve at the expense of inflicting earnestness—along with frequent reminders, such as Schwartzman’s Trump line, that the story’s themes remain relevant today—on a format that isn’t built for it. Realistic characters and absurd ones awkwardly mingle.

Hawley’s attempt to correct his show’s political blind spots is laudable, and some pieces of the allegory work well; the ritual of ethnic gangs trying—and failing—to work together by raising each other’s sons makes an inspired metaphor for America’s fragile social contract. Even so, Fargo seems fundamentally ill-equipped to address systemic inequality. Though that failing may well render future seasons similarly flawed, if not impossible, in our current political climate, it doesn’t negate the pleasures or insights of what remains one of TV’s most ambitious shows. Like this nation, the new season is a beautiful and ugly, inspiring and infuriating, a tragic and sometimes darkly hilarious mess. As frustrating as it often was to watch, I couldn’t look away.

Bad Series Idea

It's a group of friends. 5 ppl, all really badass and cool but in their own way.

The hero is like real strong and smart, has a maze and rides a dragon that can transform into a human (they grew up together) and the other ppl in the group are just as amazing. He is always pitted against this nonbinary hulk of muscles and smarts, who only wields an axe and even though it is proven time and time again that they are the better planner, better team captain and better fighter, they still manages to give of so much "dumb ass energy" that everyone forgets they have a brain half the time. Oh yea, the other 2 people in the squad are a slow burn lesbian maybe-couple, the dragonling who is an aroace girl and the hero, a black pan guy.

So this plays after a big apocalypse event, basically the humans made the world so mad she became sentient and just threw destruction and magic on us? A lot of humanity got transformed into magical beings and stuff, some did not survive the transformation, some became corrupted and thus try to attack anything magical. So our team is formed, only iron can hurt these corrupted beings, that is why they fight with swords and mazes, and doubleheaded axes, yadda yadda yadda.

The twisty part is: the series has this weird timelime format. The first episode plays after the apocalypse, short explanation of what has happened in the intro, we see the group and they have only just decided to take on the enby hulk. The hero knows them from a chance encounter in the past and they do not get along vry well, the hero wants to make them go away but they end up saving the hero at the end of the episode bla blah blah, friendship, magic, the dragonling is enamored, et cetera et cetera pp.

But with the second episode it really starts. The first 3 scenes of every episode play in "the past" which is our "now", before the collapse of the web, everyone has smartphones, globalisation and global warming are still things that develop slowly, you know the drill. Each scene focuses on a different person from the group, they all are the exact same length of time. The group do not know each other personally before the whole magic shit happened!

Anyway, we see the not-yet-dragonling and wanna-be-hero be woke students who are activists and rally up the campus and demonstrate against police brutality and corrupt governments and racism and all that good stuff. In this episode, they hold an interview.

This is the transition to the next scene. We see our beautiful not-yet-couple of bestie lesbians discuss this interview and work a growing platform of fans on Instagram, Youtube, Twitter etc. They are influencers (one of them make diy "build-and-programm robots" vids, and Let's Play's while the other does movie reviews (she studies cinematography), roadtrip vids shot from her motorcycle and from time to time they bake together.) They try to make the world a better place by using their platform to inform the public about important issues and raising money for feminist activism and environmental projects.

And then in the third scene, is our not-yet-hulky-not-yet-axe-swinging brainiac who just lies on the couch watching the tail end of one of the girls road trip vids. And then, the vid stops. And they still stare at the screen. After a few seconds viewer time, the screen becomes black and we notice the light in the room fading as the sun goes down in fast-time. We can see a part of the window, neither the camera not the actor has moved at all, as the moon makes its way over the sky. After a full minute viewer time of this, they jump up suddenly from the couch and the scene fades to them waking up 10 years in the future (after apocalypse), startled by some corrupted guy.

They kill them and start the ceremony to give their magic back to earth as the others slowly wake with the sunrise. Now this episodes' adventure starts.

Every episode after that, starts the same way. 3 scenes of their past lives, then the rest of the 45 min runtime is magical adventures. With an over arching plot of "destroy this former industry power plant with magic, as it is slowly corrupting the wildlife around it and making even ppl who survived the initial transformation go weird."

We see the not-yet hero and dragonling work hard for their college and community, we see them struggle with rascists and bigots and harsh professors and exam season. We see the girls grow closer and struggle against haters and ppl who send them unsolicited "gifts" and sometimes even downright dangerous stuff. We see them fight against haters and homophobes and fans that try to ship them, even tho they are really just friends. The way they handle their issues is always empowering and motivating.

We also see the lanky apathetic being that struggles with getting out of bed every day and struggles to go to university and therapy, who misses doctors appointments and can't hold down a job. Who gets scolded for not caring about the world by all sides. We see them struggle to talk to their friends, even though the friends are really nice and loving and understanding of their issues. We see them isolate themselves and then we see them try and fail to reach out.

We see them be aprehensive of the most normal things and say stuff like "Today's gonna be awful" and then see the day work out incredibly fine. The days they fear the most are filled with the greatest joy, and as the publicum, we wonder why they are afraid of such days at all, until in the middle of the first season where we see them actually anticipate a day.

And we get happy and hopeful for them because even though they don't fight the "big demons" their past and problems are still given the exact same amout of time and development as the other characters'. And then the day arrives and it's like a punch in the gut to watch it. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong, even though they stood up in the morning with a smile and took their meds and said "Today is gonna be great". Then it happens, one of their friends tells them something about them that we know is just not true. But we see them react to it as if burned, we see their other friends agree with the first one and we see how they are so thrown off of their course by this misunderstanding of their whole persona, that they royally screw up the big event they had been so excited for.

(That is where they met the hero btw, and made a really bad impression on him. Nothing rascist or homophobe, don't worry guys, just their "i don't fucking care, you guys can go and wake me when the planet is saved, i really need to sleep the day away. Now, before i do something worse." - attitude they put on to mask how much living hurts them, tends to not carry well with ppl that are passionate about stuff.)

We see them go home, alone and dejected and we see them hide beneath the covers even though there should be an after-party this evening, which they had been really exited for, even gone clothes shopping and friends helped them put together an outfit, and they invited friends to spend the evening with them at this party.

And we see the party going great while they lay in bed, nobody's missing them and then we hear their door bell ring at 11, and their best friend shows up and they climb to the roof to drink beer together while they banter.

(Beforehand we have only ever seen the best friend 5 times, a few times as a phone call that got rejected, as text messages and as pictures on their Instagram profile. They never really shared a scene. Always only a kiss on the cheek, a hug, an: "I have to go now, have fun everybody." when they pass each other in university.)

And while these two sit on the roof, the moon climbs higher and higher. Until they look at their watch, see that it's 2 in the morning and then they smile wistfully at their best friend. They say "Today is gonna be awful" and their best friend laughs and stands up, clearly drunk and nearly falling down the roof as open their arms in a come-get-me attitude as they yell: "I bet you it will be!" and the camera pans away as this echoes down the streets. We see the city skyline and their silhouettes at dawn and once again we are in the future and the dragonling is dragging the axe, that is larger then her, to them. (They forgot it in camp, got attacked while bathing and sent for her to get it while they try to stop the corrupted from getting to the others) And the dragonling yells "What the fuck do you mean today's gonna be awful? We will be fucking awesome and if today doesn't want to comply, we will make it." And this 2 meter something person of magical muscles, covered in blood and black magical goo after having killed 3 guys with their bare hands and the tiniest iron dagger, looks down at the small dragonling, smiles and says "However could i doubt your wisdom little friend?" and then they clean themselves in the river while the dragon mutters about being a lot bigger in dragon form and why did she even drag that axe here if they didn't need it, grumble grumble, grumble. And the episode continues on, as the group makes their way through the increasingly corrupted forest. Then, at the end of the episode, they all sit around a fire, laughing and trading stories as it gets really foggy and we can't hear their voices anymore as we realize that we are watching them through a kristall dome and hear a smiling voice that sounds eerily familar as they say: "Wasn't all that awful was it?"

Dam Dam DAAAM

.

Fuck, i got carried away.

Anyway. I want a story where fighting for your mental health takes the same importance as fighting for intersectionality and the continuation of life on this planet.

Is that asked too much?

All along the quote: "You all have a bit of *i wanna save the world inside you* and sometimes it really is enough to save just one person, especially if that person is yourself."

.

BlacKkKlansman: Double Consciousness & Extremist Identities

I saw BlacKkKlansman last night, and I’m still trying to properly breathe around the cold stone it left in my chest. I’ve been thinking about it constantly, and whenever that happens I always feel the need to write some sort of analysis to try to articulate why I’ve reacted so strongly to something. So, here’s my half-baked BlacKkKlansman review.

First things first, I’m white. Of course, that affects the way I view the world and whatever art/media I choose to consume. I fully recognize that my experience and takeaway from this film are likely very different from those of a viewer of color. And sure, I can say that I try to be progressive in how I live my life and I took college courses on race politics and minority marginalization, but at the end of the day, this is a film about black voices and black equality and those are topics I have no right to discourse on. So please, if something I write below seems misguided or uneducated, please let me know so I can self-examine and adjust.

First of all: The simple fact that this movie had such an effect on me as a white viewer. I was in a crowded movie theatre, with an audience of diverse age and race, and never in my life have I felt such a powerful moment of silent, unified shock when the credits started. The ending left every single person speechless. White privilege means that when I read news articles or books about institutionalized racism in our country, I have the option of closing the book, walking away and thinking about something else for a while. Not the case whatsoever with this movie - It didn’t discriminate in its devastating impact. While I’ve read about Black Power ideologies, there’s always an aspect of such movements that are designed not to be fully understood by those outside of it. These are not for me. This seems as intentional as it is justified. Black communities are excluded from so many mainstream ‘white’ narratives or locuses of power, these movements are the sole spaces that belong entirely to them and which they entirely control. They are designed to alienate, the same way these communities are alienated from so much else in society. However, BlacKkKlansman seemed accessible to a multitude of viewpoints and cultural/racial positions. The film does not strive to tell the audience how they should feel, but leaves elements of interpretation up to the viewer by presenting a chorus of voices, rather than a single one; By presenting multifaceted characters experiencing conflicts of identity - Rather than a single protagonist with a single political message. This is certainly not to say that a film is only good if it panders to the understanding of white viewers, but in this case I was impressed by the multiplicity of narratives and perspectives that were portrayed.

What’s so thought-provoking to me about the film was the decision to tell the story from the position of the undecided and conflicted center. By following Ron and Flip’s investigation, we watch each character grapple with the opposite sides of extremism. While Flip has to ingratiate himself with the Klan members who would revile his Jewish heritage, Ron has to spy on his own community at Black Student Union events as they call for war against the police. Both characters must play roles in order to pretend to fit into the groups they look like they should belong to. In Flip’s case, feeling threatened and despised by the Klan’s ideals makes him re-evaluate the meaning of the Jewish identity he never thought much about. For Ron, he feels torn between his loyalty to his people, and to his own hard-sought and prized work as a policeman (an institution equally reviled by Patrice and Klan members). Ron and Flip both wear masks, and their feelings of separation from “their” respective communities makes them each consider the conflicting identities within themselves.

Aptly, Patrice speaks to Ron in one scene about double consciousness. She questions whether it is possible to be both a black woman and American citizen. To her, putting her country first would be a betrayal to her black identity. In juxtaposition, the Klan members dress up their intolerance behind the values of “America first” (I can barely describe the chills that went through me when the Klan members all started chanting it.) Ron’s struggle throughout the film is exactly this - His determination to be both a black man and a police officer. He and Patrice disagree on whether it’s possible to change a corrupt system from within, and the movie leaves ambiguous how much Ron succeeds in this front. It’s crushingly infuriating when, towards the end of the film, Ron is himself detained and beaten by policemen who don’t believe he’s an undercover cop. But shortly thereafter, he enjoys a triumphant entry into the police station where all his white colleagues congratulate his work and embrace him. The scene when he calls David Duke to reveal his identity with his three colleagues giggling on either side of him is downright charming in its camaraderie and gaiety. It looks like acceptance; But tempered by the fact that all his hard work on the investigation was ultimately scrapped in the end. 

These themes of double consciousness and ambiguity permeate the film, and lend to its impactful success. Split-screen parallels are presented between Klan and Black Power movement meetings - Certainly not to equate the two, but to show in stark, unmistakable terms that these are the polar opposite, yet intimately interrelated effects of racism. This is how distantly racism divides our country - And how it leads to beliefs on either side that people will kill for. Towards the climax, a Black Student Union meeting listens to the horrific history of a young black man being brutally lynched, while the Klan members cheer and applaud a scene in Birth Of A Nation depicting the hanging of a black man. Neither side exists without the other to perceive it as a threat - And both stand firm in their respective beliefs that their hatred of the other side is justified. 

Yet, the film wasn’t the story of the Klan, nor of the Black liberation movement - It was the story of the two men caught in the middle, looking for footing on quickly-shrinking ground between the two sides, as their mutual hatred brings the two warring sides to an inevitable conflict. It is the same story of many modern viewers, wondering how in hell we’ve come to the present moment with “Black Lives Matter” on one side and Trump proclaiming “America First” on the other - with not an inch of common ground or even common perception between the two. 

Although I hope most viewers would intuit which side is truly more justified in their grievances, a strength of the film was its balanced, rather than caricatured depiction of the Klan members; Who believe that yes, they live in a racist country - “An anti-white racist country.” The chilling brilliance in the depiction of David Duke was how harmlessly normal he first seems - Cheerfully spouting off phrases like “you’re darn tootin’“ on the phone to Ron and ending the conversation with a chipper “God bless white America!” This is exactly how ideologies of hate become disguised as civilized, mild-mannered “values.” David Duke has given up the flashy title of “Grand Dragon” for the more innocuous “National Director” (or something to that end). The first time he goes undercover, Flip is quickly admonished never to call the Klan “The Klan,” but rather “The Organization.” In a conversation between Ron and one of his superiors at the police station, it’s even discussed how a high-ranking Klansman might have the long-term goal of placing “one of their own” in the White House, after they’ve disguised their intolerance and bigotry under the empirical rationales of policy. It’s one of the most painful moments of the entire film. 

Yet, while Flip has to endure the Klan members’ talk of killing black people, and Ron hears Kwame Ture speak about race wars with inevitability, another stroke of the film’s thoughtful genius is the choice of individual who actually enacts violence - Felix’s utterly apple pie looking housewife. She looks like the plump, harmless woman you wouldn’t want to be in line behind at the grocery store because she’s likely to have fifteen coupons. She is the last person you would expect on sight to leave a bomb at the house of a young black woman. And yet, this is another powerful message: How the vulnerable and susceptible can so easily become radicalized. I certainly don’t have sympathy for her because she’s an adult who made her own decisions; But I’m also aware of the way her Klansman husband manipulated her into becoming what she was, and it’s an extra layer of nuance I appreciated. 

Finally, I’ll wrap this up on a personal, perhaps silly, note. There were multiple layers of this film that really disturbed me, and it’s taken me a good 24 hours to put my finger on this last one: I’m not sure I enjoyed Adam Driver as Flip. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m all over that shoulder gun holster look and he looked 500% finer in flannel than any man has a right to. Also, I’m not sure I would feel this same discomfort if he’d been played by a lesser-caliber actor, or one who I don’t have such an attachment to. But I realized that on an instinctive level, it upset me to see his face under a Klan hood, and to hear him say vile racist comments. Rationally, of course I know that A) He’s acting, and B) Even his character is acting, but Adam’s an utterly convincing actor, playing an undercover detective who’s very good at his job. Maybe both his and Flip’s performances were too good. I asked myself why it didn’t bother me the same way to hear Ron spout racist bullshit on the phone. Part of it is because he isn’t played by an actor I happen to deeply respect and admire, but there’s more to it than that. There’s a passage in the NYT review that got as close to my nebulous discomfort as anything I could express:

"The most shocking thing about Flip's (Adam Driver's undercover detective role) imposture is how easy it seems, how natural he looks and sounds. This unnerving authenticity is partly testament to Mr. Driver's ability to tuck one performance inside another, but it also testifies to a stark and discomforting truth. Maybe not everyone who is white is a racist, but racism is what makes us white.”

Adam’s performance as Flip is discomfiting because it shows how easily a white person can take up the mask of extreme bigotry and intolerance, and how easily they can be perceived as supporting a hate movement, regardless of their true internal ideologies. I know Flip doesn’t mean the things he’s saying, but he’s damn convincing because he looks the part. His whiteness paired with his words - regardless of whether they’re genuine - is powerful and terrible. And racism is what lends him the ability to put on that convincing mask. And if racism is what “makes us white,” Adam as Flip makes me wonder if I could do the same. If, for whatever reason, the situation was such that I had to convince someone I believed in these things... Would I surprise myself by finding that I’m capable of saying things equally terrible? Is this a role that every white person is capable of, at a certain subconscious level, because of systemic racism and implicit biases? 

In conclusion: This movie has fucked up my life. It’s genius and I think I need to see it again. (If I can stomach it...)

On Retribution in Tales from the Hood

As previously mentioned, one of the major themes of the Black horror aesthethic is retribution. By definition, retribution is “punishment that is inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act”. I thought that it would be interesting to examine the ways in which retribution is represented in the 1995 Black horror anthology film Tales from the Hood. I had never heard of this film prior to enrolling in the Black horror aesthetics course at UCLA. As I watched it, the film slowly added itself onto my list of favorite horror films. It is not just horror, but comedy as well; I laughed so many times during the viewing, it was great. But that is besides the fact! Let us go to analyze the stories from Tales from the Hood through the lens of retribution.

There were four (and a half) tales that were told throughout the film; they were “Rogue Cop Revelation”, “Boys Do Get Bruised”, “KKK Comeuppance”, “Hard-Core Convert”, and “The Mortuary” (half tale). Additionally, the major themes from the film and the different stories are police brutality/corruption, Black complicity in racism, child abuse, community responsibility, racism in U.S. politics, slavery, crime, and of course, retribution. I won’t discuss the “half tale” because you’ll just have to watch the movie to figure it out! 

In the “Rogue Cop Revelation” story, the themes of police brutality/corruption and Black complicity in racism are the most prominent. It depicts three white police officers killing an African American coummunity leader who was known for exposing the corruption of the police force. There is also a Black police officer who did nothing to help the community leader, so he is portrayed as being complicit in his murder. The community leader comes back from the dead as a ghost or spirit and he dishes out retribution to all four officers for their responsibility for his death. 

Next, the prevalent themes in “Boys Do Get Bruised” are child abuse and community responsibility. There is a young Black boy who frequently comes to school with bruises and scars and his teacher is worried about him, so he asks who harmed him. The boy always responds with “the monster did it” and he even draws a visual of the monster, but of course the teacher doesn’t believe him. The teacher goes to the boy’s home to speak with his parents only to find out that “the monster” is the boy’s abusive step-father. The boy ends up getting retribution for his suffering by crumpling up his drawing of his step-father, ultimately killing him.

The themes presented in “KKK Comeuppance” are Black complicity in racism, community responsibility, racism in U.S. politics, and slavery. It tells the story of a racist white politican who moves into a house that was being preserved due to its history of being a plantation during the Antebellum period. The politician is warned that the spirits of the slaves are in the house and that he needs to move out immediately, but he ignores the hint. The politician’s African American publicist, who doesn’t call him out on his racist tendencies, dies in the house first after he mysteriously trips and falls down the stairs. Fast forward, the politician ends up getting killed by these dolls or puppets that are being possessed by the souls of African Americans that died during slavery (retribution!). 

The last tale, “Hard-Core Convert”, portrays the major theme of crime and has a hint of Black complicity in racism. This story is a bit hard to describe because there was a lot going on and very graphic imagery was displayed. However, I will say that this was my favorite story from Tales from the Hood. It essentially showed an African American male prisoner getting re-socialization through this psychological intervention that portrayed crime in the Black community as contributing to the issue of white supremacy. I would highly recommend this film to everyone, and I know there is a #2 and maybe #3, but I haven’t watched those movies yet.

Bright (2017) Review

[Spoilers ahead]

Grade: F+

What I hate about it:

I hate all the overarching metaphors for racism, full stop. It was hard for me to make it through the first half of the movie because I truly hated them that much. I don’t care that it was about species. I hate any film or other piece of media that tries to reconstruct actual issues that people of color face, especially black people so that it’s more digestible for white and non-black audiences. I hate that people feel like they can describe our experiences for us and they somehow “got it”. I hate that people feel they can somehow connect on these issues because now they see the same shit presented just slightly different on screen. I have a strong resentment towards filmmakers and storytellers who do this. It’s a shitty self-righteous and self-serving way for them to cater to an audience that clearly cannot accept our actual real-life experiences. It’s a way for them to pat themselves on the back and make it easier for them (and their audience) to sleep at night knowing that they made something that will truly get people to understand black experiences in some “new” or “unique” way. It keeps non-black people a step removed from reality on shit like this. It’s part of the white savior/white ally complex. Fuck a l l of that to be honest.

Here are a couple other instances in media/pop culture where white people have done shit like this (i.e. - creating media involving racism metaphors so white people can continue to live in the comfort of their worldviews and privilege/altering or using unchangeable features people have to make racism more digestible/removing or ignoring the element of intersectionality/creating their own version of real-life issues so that the narrative is easier to understand than the actual issue itself):

Detroit

JK Rowling’s using blood lineage as a way to depict racism/discrimination, as if I’m supposed to believe actual fucking black people didn’t experience racism in the magical world as regularly as they would among muggles

The political tone of the film with these damn metaphors extends throughout and I’m kinda mad at Will Smith especially for agreeing to do some shit like this. I understand you gotta get money, but why do you feel like you have to help these white people reimagine our experiences this way? Especially in 2017, when issues of police brutality, corruption, and police killings are at the top of the list of political issues black people face?

The metaphor I hated the absolute most: near the beginning when Ward confronts Jakoby about if some shit goes down with some orcs, is he gonna choose his job or his species. Honestly, what the fuck was this? Are we supposed to sympathize with people in real life being forced to choose between their job and fighting racism? At the end of the day, whether the person is a cop or unemployed, they will still be fucking black and stand a chance of facing the same racist shit as the rest of us. When black cops go home at night and take off their badge & uniform, guess what? They’re still black af. Not sure what the fuck the movie-makers were trying to do there, but that’s the real life bottom line. I hated everything about that: that filmmakers would have Jakoby state what he thinks the “right” decision might be, that they think they can even understand what real life ass people experience in those situations enough to portray that shit on screen, and that this is must be the only instance of sacrifice cops of color apparently face when they have a non-black partner. I hate that any of that shit was perpetuated. Period.

I also hated Ward’s entire dynamic tbh: the role of the guy that’s clearly fucking racist and just sticks with the situation because he has no choice- and because of that he’s about to be extremely resentful to the minority and make his life fucking miserable. Because his character made some decisions in regards to Jakoby that were clearly causing some internal struggle, the story perpetuated that it’s ok for racist ass resentful white guys to demonstrate this behavior as long as “at the end of the day, they’ll make the right choice” and “this person of color should be grateful you helped/befriended them” even though they’re still clearly a piece of shit that believes this person to be lesser/subhuman. That’s what his entire behavior and dialogue perpetuated, point-blank.

I also hated that the cop corruption issue was never really addressed. I hated the cover-up Ward did at the end for the sake of the story-telling. Who knows how far that kind of corruption extends. And we get a piece of it at the beginning I think, when they have that whole bit with internal affairs and framing Jakoby to get him fired.

What I liked about it:

Jakoby. Honestly just his authenticity and perseverance alone to a real-life, good-natured person was A+.

Noomi Rapace. Even though her lines were wack and I hated her weave, she still fine af.

The one Mexican sheriff guy that [kinda] believed/helped them.

#detroit #detroitmovie is an intense, stressful and powerful #movie. I knew this was going to be great just from the trailer and man it did not disapoint. Shot so brilliantly and intimately that you really get a feel for each character, their personalities and motivations. Performances are slick and excellent all round also and everyone is a joy to watch. The feel of the film is also magnificent capturing the time period amazingly with a unique kind of grittyness. Old footage and video are spliced in seemlessly and old programs/music even play on tv's and radios in the backgrounds which is a nice touch. I truly felt transported back in time by it all. Racism plays a strong part here along with other things such as #hatred, the abusing of power, corruption, incompetence and because of these heavy themes at times the #film can be a tuff, intense and higly distressing watch with scenes so shocking some people might be forced to look away (it reminded me of #wolyn but not quite as brutal). I truly believe this is an important film and although some of the evens may have been over dramatized for film sake its messages are still extremely strong/clear and leave a huge impact. Its not quite perfect however as a couple of scenes don't quite work/fit and the last half hour seems a tad rushed but make no mistake these are just tiny flaws in this amazing epic. Im so glad i got to see an early preview and believe this is the directors best film to date. #odeon #odeonlimitless #mafia3 #soul #black #police #trustme #race #power #review #2017 #horror #war #vietnam #army #murder #homicide #soulman #dance #music #important #message #starwars #hurt #johnboyega

Friends and family, I’m going to tell you a story about myself, whether you choose to keep reading is up to you.

When I was in high school, I started to embrace my heritage as I am a mixed person. My mom is Mexican and my dad is white, but since I lived in California and my parent’s are from New Mexico (mom’s side) and North Carolina (dad’s side) that sense of who I was didn’t really matter. I was just a teenager who enjoyed drawing, dinosaurs, movies, and basketball.

It wasn’t until later when I started hanging out with my friends who are mostly of Asian descent that I felt a sense of not belonging or needing to find my individuality. So I researched, and fell into a world that stole my heart. I belonged into a culture and found a sense of belonging and all through high school I felt apart of something.

Saying this now, I can hear everyone telling me that I can’t since I don’t know Spanish over and over again, that i don’t have an accent, etc. But I didn’t care, another piece of my individuality had expanded and I embraced it. But as I learned about it, a divide started to form, as I learned about the persecution, the racism, and that feeling like I didn’t belong came crawling back. I started to become aware of the slaughter and rampant land grab as well as disease that threaten the indigenous people of North and South America. The dark history of America started to anger me. Slavery, trail of tears, internment camps, everything about it from current events like police brutality. I felt a need to rebel and do something but I couldn’t I didn’t know what I could do. All I could do was keep learning about how the U.S. had become a world power but have complete disregard to certain races, and changed other nation’s governments so it can benefit the U.S. and then get mad when that Nation betters itself for “its own people.” The corruption ran deep through history, as it did through me, morphing my mind to make me hate the other half of me. To disregard my white heritage all together because I felt responsible and the victim at the same time, as internal strife tore me apart. I hated everything about the U.S. and wanted to fight it as best as I could.

After highschool, those feelings faded and remained dormant as I started to find my calling, Buddhism. I would learn and practice it’s ways and fell in love with its purpose to care for all living beings and respect it and only to move forward with love instead of hate. I learned that a balance dwells in all aspects of life from one thing to be filled with content while another can throw out of balance and make it feel hate. I felt a calling that I must bring peace within myself in order to bring it upon the world. I devoted all my focus on the fact that our planet was at the verge of collapse that to restore it we must work together despite our differences against companies that tear apart the land for gas, coal, and oil that would be responsible for the demise of the natural world.

Unfortunately these past few years have been filled with one police shooting after the other and slowly anger started to full my soul that I tried every time to say peace is what I must focus on. Then I saw the headlines of Standing Rock as people, the ORIGINAL PEOPLE of this country were being terrorized by the police. Suddenly a deep rage broke my heart as I realized what I was witnessing was similar to my readings about Wounded Knee and my fear for the protesters grew as I feared the worst is to come.

I saw indigenous people protecting the only thing that they have left, our planet and their identity. As the tear gas canisters filled the air and water cannons freezing them, while they are only protecting THE WATER!! OUR LIFE SOURCE!! THE VERY THING THAT GAVE BIRTH TO EVERYTHING LIVING ON THIS PLANET! Right now hate has filled me once again, as I see a man who stands against everything I believe in. Who plans to let companies bulldoze the land to fill pockets until nothing left is barren rock. To let my brothers and sisters be bullied and injured, and to see them feel the same hate that fills me, to commit acts that would label them criminals but would otherwise make white people just mentally ill. I see a nation divided but filling to the brim with hate. And if this continues than I fear the worst is yet to come if we don’t unite together as this country was meant to. I’m an American citizen that is tired of what these politicians have done, what this country has done in the past to Millions of people that only wanted to be free from the oppression.

In the past I never tusted the government and I hated it for a long time, but this country was founded to push back tyrants in the name of freedom and I will always remain loyal to that. Maybe we lost our way along the path and maybe we will never be equal. But now this man is separating us from what this country means to be a UNITED America, while Republicans want everyone to just accept it? I do believe we can work together but not as long as this man is in power. A man who used hate speech throughout his campaign, has gained power and it infuriates me.

I’m not that type of Democrat who is a tree hunger that will tie himself to it to keep it from having it cut down. I’m not the anti-gun guy nor was I anti-violence. I believe that if peace isn’t going to bring us together then I must fight for what is right. All it takes is the first move when that first tree comes down in the national park. When the that first act of hate crimes fill the streets, then I will fight back.

As a president, it’s the sole responsibility to build “bridges” not “walls”. To bring people together and unify them. All I say? If he can’t unify the people to embrace love and to restore and protect our natural world, then he gives me a reason to fight, “by any means necessary” if I must.

Blog Post #3

In week four of Professor’s Dues class of Special Courses in African American Studies: Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic, we learned about a book called, “The Good House” and a movie called, “Tales from the Hood.” In the novel, I first recognized the name of the author, it was our own professor, Professor Due. We learned how although it was not a non fiction book, it had many real points that related to events in Professor Due’s life. The first example being that the city the book is placed in, Sacajawea, a made up city in Washington, had similar facts to a city she lived in, Longview, Washington. Up in the North West of America where not many black people lived, a theme in allot of horror movies, isolation. When there is isolation, many people tend to look for their ‘own’ people and pick on the person that speaks another language or in most cases, looks different then the rest of the community. This happened with Professor Due, growing up in a white neighborhood. She had tomatoes thrown at her and rocks placed in the exhaust of her parents car, not because she did something bad or said something bad at school, but because she was another skin tone then the people of that city. Another theme in this book is secrecy. While many families tend to keep their conversations in the house, many black families will not even discuss racial or sexual violence acts. While some may think will make the memories pass, it will in fact do the opposite of that. Causing the person who went through that trauma to rage on the inside until they let it out. Instead of this happening, talking about these past bad events can sometimes banish these deeds, talking will help elevate the pains one is going through. The next thing we learned about the book was that while is seen as bad, making the inside of your house bad, some people see mud as good. If their is mud, that means their is rain. And as we all know, without rain we would not be able to survive. The Tales from the Hood by Rusty Cundieff is about four and a half separate events that occurred to black people. The movie was made to show that black people face a struggle that many others do not face, simply based on their skin color. The story we saw in class was, “Rogue Cop Revelation”, police brutality. How a routine traffic stop became a beating, the man who the three white police officers beat was a black council man who fought against police corruption in the city. This movie was released after the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles. A similar occurrence of how a routine traffic stop in Los Angeles, California, became a violent beating all because his skin color was darker then the police officers.  

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has all the makings of an Oscar frontrunner. The festival favorite boasts a riveting turn from lead Frances McDormand, a deliciously sharp screenplay from director Martin McDonagh, and a tour-de-force performance from Sam Rockwell as a self-loathing corrupt cop. It received near-universal praise at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. At key awards ceremonies, Three Billboards swept — winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama, the SAG Award for Best Ensemble, the TIFF People’s Choice Awards, and landing a spot in the AFI top 10 of 2017.

Most importantly, it was timely. Three Billboards is a story about a bereaved mother Mildred Hayes who shakes up a small Midwestern town with her bitter attacks against the beloved Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for his department’s inability to find the culprit behind her daughter’s rape and murder. The film hit the festival circuit right at the crest of #MeToo movement, an industry-wide reckoning of the systemic abuse and harassment of women at the hands of Hollywood’s most powerful men. It seemed fitting, then, that the Oscar frontrunner would be about righteous female vengeance, led by a middle-aged actress whose furious performance threatened to sear through the screen.

And yet, Three Billboards finds itself facing its own reckoning, with a backlash as fierce as Mildred’s single-minded quest for justice.

You could chalk it up to the usual polarization of the Oscar race, wherein the nuances of the best films of the year are boiled down to their most basic flaws. La La Land fell victim to this last year — seeing itself transformed from “charming love letter to classic Hollywood musicals” to “nostalgic relic emblematic of the racial tumult overtaking America.” Backlash and Oscar favorite almost always go hand-in-hand, with public opinion turning on a perfectly fine film for want of a narrative with a villain and an underdog.

Opening to Critical Acclaim

The thing about Three Billboards is that it seemed poised to take on that underdog role. When the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, it was presented as the polar opposite of Oscar bait: a brutal, barbed black comedy that dared you to like it.

Its borderline farcical approach to grief cut away any semblance of pretension, yet it carried an Important Message on female wrath in the form of McDormand’s caustic Mildred Hayes. Owen Gleiberman wrote in his Variety review, “She’s woke, she’s fierce, she’s beyond shame or scruples, she’s screaming truth to power, she’s charged up with the wrath of an avenger.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday wrote in its rave review, “McDonagh couldn’t have anticipated the moment when his movie would arrive, a time when sexism in its most virulent forms has been revealed in a daily drumbeat of stories recounting unspeakable exploitation and abuse.” In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, Mildred soon became the standard bearer for the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, 2017’s embodiment of female rage.

The movie hit a nerve. It won a standing ovation at its premiere at Venice, where McDonagh won the best screenplay prize. It would win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival over crowd-pleasing movies like The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Molly’s Game. But the movie’s initial full-bodied support would soon change once it hit general theaters.

Out of the Festival Bubble

As Three Billboards spilled out of the festival circuit, there were rumblings among critics of color about the film’s clumsy (some would say non-existent) handling of race. The criticisms were aimed at Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a racist, violent cop who was rumored to have tortured a black man in custody. Rockwell plays Dixon as a pathetic dope rigged to explode, and for the first half of the film, Three Billboards doesn’t ask you to sympathize with him. He’s an alcoholic, he commits horrific, senseless beatings, he lives with his emotionally abusive mom. But Chief Willoughby is convinced that underneath that veneer of intolerance, there’s a “good man” in Dixon, which triggers a transformation in Rockwell’s character, from revolting villain to sympathetic ally.

Vulture’s Nate Jones points out, “The second half of the movie largely belongs to Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a ne’er-do-well cop with a history of racist violence who gets some measure of redemption by the end of the film. Dixon’s arc has made Rockwell a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor races at the same time as it’s rubbed some viewers the wrong way thanks to a noticeable bit of sleight of hand: McDonagh never lets us meet the black person Dixon is said to have tortured, which lets his past crimes stay entirely in the abstract.” Jones’ Vulture colleague Kyle Buchanan notes that the film’s only other black characters are all “good-hearted ciphers.”

The issue of redemption remains the point of contention for many defenders of Three Billboards. “What if Three Billboards is a tale of damnation, not redemption?” Washington Post critic Sonny Bunch writes. The film “has a much stronger message about the dangerously fascist impulse that goes along the desire for total and perfect justice.”

In the most thoughtful analysis of Three Billboards and its race problem, Allison Willmore at Buzzfeed astutely points out that the film takes place in the state where three years ago, tensions between police and the black community came to a head after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. But “in striving to make Ebbing feel like a lived-in place, rather than just an idea of one, Three Billboards treats racism like it’s just another quaint regional detail — part of the local decor,” Willmore writes. “Three Billboards is so sharp when it comes to depicting Mildred’s pain, and yet so clumsy when it comes to depicting the habitual racism of the place in which she lives, that it feels indicative of the terrible fallacy that we can only focus on one type of oppression at once.”

Willmore points to McDonagh’s roots commenting on Irish working-class conflicts as the issue, which the director attempts to try to transport to Middle America. The Daily Beast‘s Ira Madison doubles down on this assertion, writing “Whether it be through malice or ignorance, McDonagh’s attempts to script the black experience in America are often fumbling and backward and full of outdated tropes.”

These kinds of criticisms continued to roll in as the film expanded to general theaters in November. Why the sudden outcry? NPR’s Gene Demby posited that the film’s rave reception at Toronto was an indictment of the overwhelming whiteness of the festival circuit and the critical establishment. Demby said on Twitter, “I think festival audiences are so used to the centrality of white people’s inner lives treated as the Actual Emotional Stakes that they don’t get what’s janky about a movie set in a town where cops torture black [people] but the plot is about thwarted justice for a white lady.”

Catapulted to Awards Favorite

The difference between Three Billboards and past Oscar “favorites-turned-pariahs” is that this criticism began before the film became an awards frontrunner. But as awards season kicked into gear, it became apparent that Three Billboards was the clear favorite. Three Billboards swept the Golden Globes, winning the most film awards of the night with Best Drama, Best Supporting Actor for Rockwell, Best Actress for McDormand, and Best Screenplay. It also won the Best Ensemble Prize at the SAG Awards, an award that often goes to future Best Picture winners.

The Golden Globes was Hollywood’s first public show of the reckoning of men in power. Actors and actresses wore black in solidarity with the anti-harassment and abuse coalition Time’s Up, series and films dealing with the sexual assault and the female experience won big (Big Little Lies, Handmaid’s Tale), stirring speeches against sexism were given by Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey. Three Billboards, with its wrathful tale of female vengeance, became part of that narrative with its four wins. Some critics accused the night of being “performative” in its wokeness, while others were encouraged by how these movements would rock the Academy Awards, an institution that is well-documented to be averse to progress.

Essentially, critics are saying, it’s hypocritical for a film that has been propelled to the front of the Oscar race because of its pertinence to one movement (#MeToo) to be completely indifferent to another movement (#BlackLivesMatter). It all sounds very political, because awards season inevitably is political, New York Times writer Wesley Morris writes. Three Billboards “can’t be just the misfire that it is,” Morris says. “The enthusiasm for it has to represent the injustice the movie believes it’s aware of — against young murdered women, their suffering dysfunctional families and black torture victims we never see — but fails to sufficiently poeticize or dramatize what Mr. McDonagh is up to here: a search for grace that carries a whiff of American vandalism. Of course, few movies can predict their moment, but “Three Billboards” might be inadequately built for this one.”

The post The ‘Three Billboards Against Ebbing, Missouri’ Backlash, Explained appeared first on /Film.

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has all the makings of an Oscar frontrunner. The festival favorite boasts a riveting turn from lead Frances McDormand, a deliciously sharp screenplay from director Martin McDonagh, and a tour-de-force performance from Sam Rockwell as a self-loathing corrupt cop. It received near-universal praise at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. At key awards ceremonies, Three Billboards swept — winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama, the SAG Award for Best Ensemble, the TIFF People’s Choice Awards, and landing a spot in the AFI top 10 of 2017.

Most importantly, it was timely. Three Billboards is a story about a bereaved mother Mildred Hayes who shakes up a small Midwestern town with her bitter attacks against the beloved Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for his department’s inability to find the culprit behind her daughter’s rape and murder. The film hit the festival circuit right at the crest of #MeToo movement, an industry-wide reckoning of the systemic abuse and harassment of women at the hands of Hollywood’s most powerful men. It seemed fitting, then, that the Oscar frontrunner would be about righteous female vengeance, led by a middle-aged actress whose furious performance threatened to sear through the screen.

And yet, Three Billboards finds itself facing its own reckoning, with a backlash as fierce as Mildred’s single-minded quest for justice.

You could chalk it up to the usual polarization of the Oscar race, wherein the nuances of the best films of the year are boiled down to their most basic flaws. La La Land fell victim to this last year — seeing itself transformed from “charming love letter to classic Hollywood musicals” to “nostalgic relic emblematic of the racial tumult overtaking America.” Backlash and Oscar favorite almost always go hand-in-hand, with public opinion turning on a perfectly fine film for want of a narrative with a villain and an underdog.

Opening to Critical Acclaim

The thing about Three Billboards is that it seemed poised to take on that underdog role. When the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, it was presented as the polar opposite of Oscar bait: a brutal, barbed black comedy that dared you to like it.

Its borderline farcical approach to grief cut away any semblance of pretension, yet it carried an Important Message on female wrath in the form of McDormand’s caustic Mildred Hayes. Owen Gleiberman wrote in his Variety review, “She’s woke, she’s fierce, she’s beyond shame or scruples, she’s screaming truth to power, she’s charged up with the wrath of an avenger.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday wrote in its rave review, “McDonagh couldn’t have anticipated the moment when his movie would arrive, a time when sexism in its most virulent forms has been revealed in a daily drumbeat of stories recounting unspeakable exploitation and abuse.” In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, Mildred soon became the standard bearer for the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, 2017’s embodiment of female rage.

The movie hit a nerve. It won a standing ovation at its premiere at Venice, where McDonagh won the best screenplay prize. It would win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival over crowd-pleasing movies like The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Molly’s Game. But the movie’s initial full-bodied support would soon change once it hit general theaters.

Out of the Festival Bubble

As Three Billboards spilled out of the festival circuit, there were rumblings among critics of color about the film’s clumsy (some would say non-existent) handling of race. The criticisms were aimed at Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a racist, violent cop who was rumored to have tortured a black man in custody. Rockwell plays Dixon as a pathetic dope rigged to explode, and for the first half of the film, Three Billboards doesn’t ask you to sympathize with him. He’s an alcoholic, he commits horrific, senseless beatings, he lives with his emotionally abusive mom. But Chief Willoughby is convinced that underneath that veneer of intolerance, there’s a “good man” in Dixon, which triggers a transformation in Rockwell’s character, from revolting villain to sympathetic ally.

Vulture’s Nate Jones points out, “The second half of the movie largely belongs to Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a ne’er-do-well cop with a history of racist violence who gets some measure of redemption by the end of the film. Dixon’s arc has made Rockwell a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor races at the same time as it’s rubbed some viewers the wrong way thanks to a noticeable bit of sleight of hand: McDonagh never lets us meet the black person Dixon is said to have tortured, which lets his past crimes stay entirely in the abstract.” Jones’ Vulture colleague Kyle Buchanan notes that the film’s only other black characters are all “good-hearted ciphers.”

The issue of redemption remains the point of contention for many defenders of Three Billboards. “What if Three Billboards is a tale of damnation, not redemption?” Washington Post critic Sonny Bunch writes. The film “has a much stronger message about the dangerously fascist impulse that goes along the desire for total and perfect justice.”

In the most thoughtful analysis of Three Billboards and its race problem, Allison Willmore at Buzzfeed astutely points out that the film takes place in the state where three years ago, tensions between police and the black community came to a head after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. But “in striving to make Ebbing feel like a lived-in place, rather than just an idea of one, Three Billboards treats racism like it’s just another quaint regional detail — part of the local decor,” Willmore writes. “Three Billboards is so sharp when it comes to depicting Mildred’s pain, and yet so clumsy when it comes to depicting the habitual racism of the place in which she lives, that it feels indicative of the terrible fallacy that we can only focus on one type of oppression at once.”

Willmore points to McDonagh’s roots commenting on Irish working-class conflicts as the issue, which the director attempts to try to transport to Middle America. The Daily Beast‘s Ira Madison doubles down on this assertion, writing “Whether it be through malice or ignorance, McDonagh’s attempts to script the black experience in America are often fumbling and backward and full of outdated tropes.”

These kinds of criticisms continued to roll in as the film expanded to general theaters in November. Why the sudden outcry? NPR’s Gene Demby posited that the film’s rave reception at Toronto was an indictment of the overwhelming whiteness of the festival circuit and the critical establishment. Demby said on Twitter, “I think festival audiences are so used to the centrality of white people’s inner lives treated as the Actual Emotional Stakes that they don’t get what’s janky about a movie set in a town where cops torture black [people] but the plot is about thwarted justice for a white lady.”

Catapulted to Awards Favorite

The difference between Three Billboards and past Oscar “favorites-turned-pariahs” is that this criticism began before the film became an awards frontrunner. But as awards season kicked into gear, it became apparent that Three Billboards was the clear favorite. Three Billboards swept the Golden Globes, winning the most film awards of the night with Best Drama, Best Supporting Actor for Rockwell, Best Actress for McDormand, and Best Screenplay. It also won the Best Ensemble Prize at the SAG Awards, an award that often goes to future Best Picture winners.

The Golden Globes was Hollywood’s first public show of the reckoning of men in power. Actors and actresses wore black in solidarity with the anti-harassment and abuse coalition Time’s Up, series and films dealing with the sexual assault and the female experience won big (Big Little Lies, Handmaid’s Tale), stirring speeches against sexism were given by Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey. Three Billboards, with its wrathful tale of female vengeance, became part of that narrative with its four wins. Some critics accused the night of being “performative” in its wokeness, while others were encouraged by how these movements would rock the Academy Awards, an institution that is well-documented to be averse to progress.

Essentially, critics are saying, it’s hypocritical for a film that has been propelled to the front of the Oscar race because of its pertinence to one movement (#MeToo) to be completely indifferent to another movement (#BlackLivesMatter). It all sounds very political, because awards season inevitably is political, New York Times writer Wesley Morris writes. Three Billboards “can’t be just the misfire that it is,” Morris says. “The enthusiasm for it has to represent the injustice the movie believes it’s aware of — against young murdered women, their suffering dysfunctional families and black torture victims we never see — but fails to sufficiently poeticize or dramatize what Mr. McDonagh is up to here: a search for grace that carries a whiff of American vandalism. Of course, few movies can predict their moment, but “Three Billboards” might be inadequately built for this one.”

The post The ‘Three Billboards Against Ebbing, Missouri’ Backlash, Explained appeared first on /Film.

from /Film http://ift.tt/2DAs5qh