“Beyond the Lights” is a welcome return to the grand traditions of movie romance, with sizzling chemistry between gorgeous, fabulously charismatic stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker. And it also has some very astute insights about family, ambition, and the pressure put on young women, especially those in the performing arts, to present themselves as sexually provocative and available.
Minnie Driver plays Macy Jean, a ruthlessly ambitious stage mother who sees her talented young daughter, Noni, as her ticket out of poverty and powerlessness. We first see them at a singing competition when Noni is a little girl (India Jean-Jacques). Her performance of Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” gets her a trophy that her mother smashes to the ground because she did not come in first. Then Noni is grown up (Mbatha-Raw), singing and dancing in a steamy music video, featuring a successful rapper named Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly). Macy Jean is pushing Noni hard to do whatever it takes to become a star, and she is on the brink of a breakthrough, with an upcoming television appearance that should launch her into superstardom.
But in the midst of all of this sound and fury, Noni feels lost. The image her mother has created for her is so overpowering that she does not know who she is anymore. She is a singer with a million-dollar voice, but she is also a person who feels that it belongs to someone else, that she is lost somewhere beneath the glitter and fakery. Alone in her hotel room, she goes out the window and sits on the ledge, contemplating allowing herself to just fall off.
She is rescued by a cop assigned to her security detail. His name is Kaz (Parker) and he grabs her hand and looks into her eyes. He says “I see you.” And she believes he does.
Of course, the incident is spun for the press. “We’re selling fantasy here, and suicide ain’t sexy.” Noni jokes about the risks of combining champagne and stilettos and poses with her handsome savior. But Kaz did see Noni. He saw her the way she wanted to be seen. And she saw him, too.
Kaz has a demanding parent, too, a father (Danny Glover) who wants him to run for office, and knows that Noni is not first lady material.
Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball”) keeps the love story glamorous but never soapy, through the subtle, moving performances by Mbatha Raw and Parker, and a script that respects the characters, with thoughtful details and easy humor. In the very beginning, Macy Jean is frantic because she does not know how to handle her biracial child’s hair. Later, Noni is wearing a purple-streaked weave for her music video. And when she begins to be happy again, she frees her hair as she finds her true voice. Prince-Bythewood’s confidence in her own voice as much a pleasure of this film as the love story and the star power, which add up to the best date movie of the year.
Parents should know that this film includes very provocative sexual imagery and musical performances with very skimpy clothing, sexual references and situations, strong and crude language, attempted suicide, and tense family confrontations.
Family discussion: What does it mean to “do small things in a great way?” How did Noni and Kaz help each other? Why did being on the brink of great success was Noni in despair? What can we do to protect girls from the overwhelming focus on appearance?
If you like this, try: “The Rose,” “The Bodyguard,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Dreamgirls,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “Gypsy,” and “Mahogany”
Before I turn to whitesplaining this film, I will begin by suggesting that you read what Aisha Harris at Slate and what my friends and fellow critics Travis Hopson and Stephen Boone have to say first. If I did not have enough humility before seeing the film about my ability to provide some insight into a movie about racism, the best evidence of the power of the film’s message is that I have more now — and that I recognize it might still not be be enough. I liked the film very much and want to encourage people to see it, so I am going to weigh in with some thoughts and hope that if they come across as disrespectful or ignorant, it will lead to some good conversations and, I hope, to greater understanding.
The focus is on four African-American students at an Ivy League school called Winchester University. Sam White (a biting but layered performance by standout Tessa Thompson) is the host of “Dear White People,” a controversial radio program with stinging, provocative commentary along the lines of “Dear white people: The official number of black friends you are required to have has now been raised to two. And your weed man does not count.” Coco (Teyonah Parris) is an ambitious woman who wants to be selected for a new reality TV series, even if that means creating a fabricated backstory and becoming more confrontational. Troy (Brandon P Bell) is the handsome, accomplished BMOC (and son of the dean) who says he has never experienced prejudice and is under a lot of pressure from his father to succeed. And Lionel (Tyler James Williams) is something of a loner because he feels he does not fit in with any of the rigid categories of the campus hierarchical taxonomy. He is invited by the editor of the school newspaper to go undercover to write about race relations at the school.
Each of these characters’ identities and conflicts is represented in their hair. Sam has tight, controlled coils. Coco has long, straight hair. Troy’s hair is cut very close to the bone. And Lionel’s hair is a marvel of untamed frizz that seems to be a character of its own. Each of the characters will face challenges to his or her carefully constructed identity, and all will be reflected in changes of hairstyle.
The dorm that had previously been all-black is now integrated following a race-blind room assignment policy. Sam takes on Troy in an election for head of house, never anticipating that she might win. But she does. This leads to some changes, including a confrontation with the arrogant frat-bro Kurt (Kyle Gallner), son of the white President of the university and leader of the school’s prestigious humor publication. Kurt is the kind of guy who expects to be allowed to eat wherever he likes, even if he is not a member of the house. He also explains that we live in a post-racial world because Obama is President. And he thinks it is a great idea to plan a “ghetto” party, with white students dressing up as gangsta caricatures.
Just to remind us that, while the movie may have a heightened sensibility for satirical purposes, it is not outside the realm of reality, the closing credits feature a sobering series of photos from real “ghetto” parties held on campuses across the country.
It is refreshing, provocative, and powerfully topical, respecting and updating the tradition of “School Daze” and “Higher Learning.” It deals not only with questions of race but with broader questions of gender, class, identity, and the way we construct our personas, especially in our late teens and early 20’s. Writer/director Justin Simien has created a sharp satire with an unexpectedly tender heart.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong language including racial epithets, sexual references and situations, drinking, drug use, and tense confrontations about race, class, and gender.
Family discussion: Where do the people in this movie get their ideas about race, gender, and class? Which character surprised you the most and why? Do you agree with what Sam said about racism?
If you like this, try: “School Daze” and “Higher Learning”
Dear White People: Interview with Writer/Director Justin Simien
Posted on October 15, 2014 at 3:55 pm
“Dear White People” is fresh, provocative, timely, and very funny. In the tradition of “Higher Learning” and “School Daze,” it is the story of four black students at an Ivy League college, all making different choices about adapting or challenging the biases and privilege of their classmates. At the center of the story is Sam (Tessa Thompson), an outspoken woman whose program on the school radio station is called “Dear White People.” Sam is unexpectedly elected to be the head of the house that was once exclusively for black students but now has been opened up to everyone through a school-wide program of color-blind placement. Meanwhile, a white fraternity is holding a party where attendees come in exaggerated and racist “ghetto” costumes. Over the final credits, we see photos from real-life “ghetto” parties on college campuses.
Writer/director Justin Simien sat down with a small group of journalists to talk about the film, and he was as thoughtful and engaging as his film.
copyright 2014 Lionsgate
“I think college is such a great microcosm for a larger American experience. And particularly this sort of vaguely Ivy League college. I wanted to deal with the aspect of America where everyone is sort of cutthroat and has ambition and wants it. I wanted my characters to be in that particular environment because there are a lot of black places and white places. For me, I left my home community. I went out into the world to do something in particular and I found myself always being the only black person in the room. And so I wanted to find a way to create that in a microcosm where we could get into all the issues, Which was just easier to do at the school level. And some of my favorite movies do that. “Fame” and “Election,” and “School Daze” really effectively uses school as microcosm and for me there was just no other place to set the movie really. And also I started the movie in college so it was sort of obvious thing. And as I kind of continued to be the only black person in the room, as I left college it progressed in my professional life. It just still made the most sense.”
When he was in college, Simien began the film as “2%.” “I was in college and I was having a conversation at the black student union and my really good friend and I were musing like, ‘Are we friends with these people just because we are all black or because we would like them?'” That led to the first version of this story, influenced by director Robert Altman, which followed eight or nine characters through a year of college, as a way to talk about identity. “It was terrible! I thought it was funny in certain parts but film school doesn’t really prepare you to write multi-protagonist screenplays so I kind of kept working at it through the years and wrote other things and started life as a publicist. I always returned to it and I reworked it as a TV show and I reworked it as a different kind of screenplay.” The script evolved over time to respond to changes in history and culture. “Obama had been elected president and this ‘He’s really from Kenya’ crap started. The post-racial bubble of America began to burst a bit and that’s when the movie became ‘Dear White People.’ That’s when it really became more about the American black experience at large as I understand it and that’s when I started to take more of a satirical tone, that’s when it really began to be about something. And so I just worked that script with every possible waking hour that I had. And I took it to a workshop, and we all truly loved it and that’s kind of really the beginning of what ‘Dear White People’ is now.”
Originally, there was a blackface party in the script and he took it out as too over-the-top. But then news stories about actual parties on college campuses began “my kind of rabbit hole research experience where like I realized how prevalent the blackface parties were and was just kind of interesting that in the Facebook age, they are now just bubbling up to the mass culture. And so for me, that was really just a really truthful but visceral way to kind of re-create the experience of what it feels like to see myself as interpreted through the eyes of a culture that doesn’t know anything about me. So especially when it comes to commercial black culture, the stuff that sells T-shirts and jeans and shirts and music and whatever, white people are actually setting, creating what black culture is in order to sell products. And often times that culture is confusing, it doesn’t represent me and it’s kind of the viscerally offensive. Nothing articulates that feeling quite like a black face party; people who in their minds are either celebrating or I don’t know what they think they are doing per se but it just feels so oppressive to see that imagery. And it was something that happened. So to me, it was just, as a storyteller, it was like the perfect storm of something that really happens and something that perfectly articulates without words, the feeling that I am trying to get across in that moment.”
With all of the focus on identity and authenticity, it was an interesting choice to have the central character be a woman. “I don’t think there was a part in this where I sat down and decided she was going to be a woman for any particular reason. Sam White just came out as Sam White and that’s the truth. And what I wanted to do with her character is sort of create someone who authentically had an opinion, had a point of view who then became a spokesperson and then that identity became too constricting for her. She was angry at a certain point in her life and she communicated that and now she has always be that in order to hold the movement. And that’s kind of what I wanted to talk about; her character. I can’t really say why but I knew that I wanted, for all the characters, for you to think that you knew who they were at first glance and as you discover more about them, to be surprised at the layers underneath that and the things that sort of went into the creation of that person.” In one funny moment, we find out that Sam listens to Taylor Swift. He has especially enjoyed having black audience members confide that they, too, have some secret “not cool” favorites.
Simien says that all of the characters are aspects of his own feelings and experiences. “I would say that I have been all of them at some point. I have done those things to get along as a survival tactic. I have sort of clinged to no identity. I have sort of hinged everything on my black identity like Sam and sort of tried to be the correct black male like Troy. And I have tried to sort of like use my blackness to get ahead like Coco.”
Hair is very important in the film, as indicated on the poster. All of the black characters change their hair in some way during the course of the movie. “There are so many angles to black hair. Like I remember when I had had that was never as big as Lionel’s fro but it was fro-ish I would say. That line about, ‘It’s a black hole for white people fingers’ was really true. It was like, ‘Get out of my hair please!’ But then there is also like curiosity about hair extensions and weaves and like all like. Black hair just no matter who you are whether it’s natural or whether it’s not natural, whatever, it’s an area that is ripe for micro-aggression and identity. And because African-Americans feel the pressure of being held to a standard of beauty that’s more European. It’s also rich for specifics of racial identity. Like should you wear hair natural or should you straighten it? That becomes like a very racially charged decision for people and it divides us internally and it’s just a interesting rich topic. And so I think for that reason subconsciously frankly it all seeped in. But even with where Lionel nets out with his hair and I won’t say it in case there is anyone who hasn’t seen the film, it was almost a statement for me too because to me it’s really about being authentic to yourself. There are a lot of people walking around with fro’s and natural hair do’s and it has nothing to do with the way they see themselves. That can equally be as about fitting in with a trend or a standard of beauty as wearing your hair straight. And for me, the characters were all battling to figure out how to be authentic, not to be black or authentically black because that’s a moving target that isn’t real. Authentic to themselves because authentically black is, it’s fiction, it’s an illusion. There is no such thing.”
Toye Adedipe was the costume designer who helped create the look of the characters. “It takes place in the heightened reality,” Simien said. “I love the theatricality of film making. I just love movies that immediately tell you that you are watching a movie. And the clothes had a big part to play in that. And because we were dealing with the archetypes and we were dealing with the hyperreality, the hyper style, it was important to me that the clothes reflect that. The black hipster look is something that hasn’t really been in the movies since maybe early, early Spike Lee. I thought would be really cool to showcase that in the film and also at the same time, say things about the characters. And so just like every piece of art in the movie, the clothes were just as much a character that anything is because we were really creating this world. There were lots of references. ‘Well, today Sam is Lisa Bonet and tomorrow she’s going to be Annie Hall and then she was going to be Angela Davis.’ We had that kind of conversation about all of the characters. Because we were thinking about identity and not to get too deep but we are in a postmodern age of filmmaking and everything is very referential and their identities a very referential so it was fun to sort of pull from things that already existed out there in order to create their looks. The only exception to that was Lionel who really pulls from nothing. He is certainly a lot of fun too. To make someone who had no fashion sense was really fun because Tyler is very stylish and Toye is very stylish and that was kind of fun too creating his look, his sort of non-look together to tell the story of his character.”
One of the best new shows of the year is Anthony Anderson’s “Black-ish.” Anderson plays Andre “Dre” Johnson has a great job, a beautiful mixed-race doctor wife, Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), four kids, and a colonial home in the mostly-white suburbs. But now that he has given his children a better life, he worries that they are so assimilated into upper middle class white culture that they are losing their identity as African Americans, that they are only “black-ish.”
The people behind the show have prepared some discussion materials for church and school groups and families. If you’d like a copy, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Black-ish in the subject line.
Kickstarter Campaign for a New Documentary on Diversity in Films: The Hollywood Blackout
Posted on September 7, 2014 at 12:40 pm
I am very excited about my friend Kevin Sampson’s new Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about diversity in the film industry. I’m supporting him — I hope many others will as well. This is a story that needs to be told.
and a possible television series.