Race matters in America. You can choose to conceal or reveal whatever parts of yourself you want but you cannot hide the color of your skin. Dear White People deals with young black identity better than any movie I’ve ever seen – despite its title, it’s really not tailoring itself to a predominantly white audience. It’s about how our Anglo-centric culture fragments the young black mind, how appropriation devalues black people, and how a lack of substantial representation in mass media perpetuates racism. White people are not only to blame in this film – black characters have to constantly question how their actions have, perhaps, helped to perpetuate racist attitudes. They contribute – in their own ways – to the black-face party that is thrown at the end of the film. And yes, while horrifying, a similar party was thrown at Dartmouth College in 2013.
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| Samantha White - don't let her film you in the wrong moment. (Lionsgate, Roadside) |
This complicated point-of-view makes the film worth seeing. Director Justin Simien opens up a conversation that is a breath of fresh air. But Dear White People isn’t good enough to overlook its flaws. The weak narrative, the various thinly-drawn characters, the inconsistent tone and faulty camera-work renders this movie a frustrating experience for those who want this movie to better than what it is. You’ll really enjoy this film in certain moments, especially the phenomenal and radiant Tessa Thompson, and it certainly mines brilliant and original comedy. Yet it’s always hampered by the filmmaker’s inability to make this film cohere narratively and tonally.
Simien’s interested in the performance of black identity. He presents with four black students – Lionel, Samantha, Coco and Troy – who embody the kaleidoscopic experience of “blackness” on college campuses. Lionel (Tyler James Williams) is introspective, gay, and a potential journalist. He’s looking for somewhere to fit in but he’s also looking for love. Coco (Teyonah Parris) wants to be famous – but it isn’t until she plays up her “blackness” up on her YouTube channel that she’s given the attention she desires. Troy (Brandon P .Bell) is the legacy student who places more importance on being a leader than on being black. And Sam (Thompson)– her radio show Dear White People is echoing the sentiment that racism is not over. The film makes clear that this isn’t Howard or Spellman. You are black at Winchester – a primarily (fictional) white college. It’s up to these characters to determine on what grounds race is to be understood; their conflict is that there is no consensus to draw from.
Sam White embodies the complexities of racism in the modern day. She provides the movie with the necessary humor and zippy-one-liners that allows Dear White People to stand out. On her radio show, she wants us to know that racism is still a thing, that black people are not commodities through which white people can prove their lack of prejudice. Her struggle is not conciliatory – she’s the ‘Malcolm X’ for this moment in time. She’s the unpopular radical. A white student even refers to her as the “angry baby of Spike Lee and Oprah.” Her comments on the show are incisive and witty, and make listeners uncomfortable: “Dear White People, the minimum requirement of black friends to not seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, but your weed man Tyrone does not count.”
The backbone of white privilege rests on how black people are appropriated by white people in a variety of different ways and how the white students cannot recognize it. She firmly believes in this but also struggles with her identity as half-black and half-white. The love of her life is the white TA in her media studies class and, even as they argue about these issues of representation and appropriation, she’s passionate about him nonetheless. She doesn’t know how to reconcile these two areas of her life so she keeps them separate instead.
Sam White is a spitfire and isn’t going to sit idly by as film continues to marginalize her: “I sat through Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind and Tarantino Week,” she exasperatedly exclaims to her teacher. Sam at a movie theater is the best: in a perfectly framed shot, her posse is yelling at the ticket boy and angrily lamenting the dismal state of black cinema. When the ticket boy replies that the movie currently playing has Wesley Snipes as a secondary character, their reaction is priceless. “Really,” Sam goes, “Did he really just say that?” The film is confident in its comedy; the film works best when its making you laugh. And, trust me, you will laugh many times.
But the film falls flat in its dramatic moments. A lot of dialogue goes to racist extremes that never feel justified. In one scene, Sam White is arguing with the President of the school to repeal the housing act which would randomize student placement. “You wish you existed back in the times of lynchings and white mobs for you could have something really to complain about!” he tells her. It’s incredulous to think the president of a university would say this so openly and bluntly to a young black student, even if he is white (and very well could believe it). Perhaps it could happen, but the white characters are drawn so thinly you never believe them. If it’s supposed to be dramatically compelling or overtly satirical or a combination of both, you can never tell.
This happens in another instance: Lionel overhears his love interest, newspaper editor George (Brandon Alter), rant about how black people are so obsessed with living out the problems of the past, and that the story Lionel is writing for him is going to get him into a top journalism school because it’s dealing with race. Lionel lets him off the hook for that, however, and takes him to a party where he proceeds to tell him he wants to “eat him up like a Hershey’s bar.” Another case where the obviousness of the writing shows; it reflects a lack of depth that Simien is simply not interested in. He could go comedically broad if he was consistent. But he’s all about chronicling the anxieties and fears of his characters. He spends a lot of time on issues such as Sam’s sick father and her infidelity to Troy’s weed habit and affair. It’s a lot to juggle, but Simien attempts to shade all the dramatic, overwrought subplots. This is why his attempt to craft satiric dialogue often falls flat – it’s always accompanied by unsuccessful, broad melodrama.
You never even get a sense that the plot matters in the film. At one point, it’s about repealing the randomized housing act that would break up the house where black student are safe to congregate. In another instance, it’s about Troy trying to join the school’s primarily white comedic newspaper and the challenges he faces. The momentum of the narrative loses its drive; the climatic party scene consequentially loses much of its power.
Parris and Bell never quite make the emotional impression that Williams and Thompson do. Parris, in particular, is marred by the superficiality that her character is drawn with. Troy, on the other hand, is simply unlikeable: he’s a blockhead concerned with status and nothing else. Simien tried shading him in the moment where he confronts his father – also the Dean – to stop the party, but it’s a moment undone by the film’s conclusion.
Lionel, for better or worse, is the emotional center. In Baldwin-esque manner, he lives in the netherworld of “gay” and “black” and can’t decide where he best belongs. What’s great about his story is its insistence on the importance of black identity – during the party, when he’s making out with the journalist, he’s hidden away. Yet when he leaves, he looks on, horrified at the white students donned in blackface. In a welcome moment of triumph, he asserts his identity and works with others to force the party’s end. Interesting, fun and conflict-ridden as this is, it remains the only real development that he gets – other than that, he feels too separate from the main action and Simian can’t seem to fit him into the movie in a substantial manner. He started off as a central character but fizzled midway through – more as an afterthought to reflect on a broad experience about race than to create an interesting, substantial gay character.
David summed it up best in my mind when we were talking about the movie: it felt more like a pilot that needed a little more time to retool, to rifle through what did and didn’t work. Too much was happening for a strong landing, even if the ending worked better than what came before. The film worked best when it committed, not only to its comedy, but to its cinematic sensibility.
Dear White People, as a comedy, is stillborn; as a drama, it’s poorly drawn. The strength is in the ideas and in its central performance. But it’s too plagued by novice filmmaking mistakes to stand in my mind as a great – even good – movie. Yet it remains important. There are enough good qualities in this movie where I can recommend it, even highly recommend. It’s a trailblazer for the types of movies we need to be seeing more of, where risks are taken and appropriation is seriously considered. Even if these films don’t always yield the results we want or expect, they remain vital additions to the cultural conversation.
B- / C+
For David's more positive and more concise review, go here.