Written, Produced and Directed by Justin Simien
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
In a film that is packed to the brim with one pointed line of dialogue after another, thee was one that cut to the bone for me personally. If I am remembering it correctly, one White character asks Lionel Higgins, the Black, homosexual, bespectacled, massively afro wearing and undeclared college Sophomore whether it was easier (or was it "harder"?) for him to be Black for Black people or to be Black for White people. Lionel pensively looks at his questioner and plaintively exclaims, "Neither," meaning it is Hell in both instances. And do I completely understand where he is coming from.
"Dear White People," the satire about racial identity set within a predominantly White college is the debut feature film from Writer/Director Justin Simien and in his hands we have a born filmmaker. It has been extremely rare for me to think about a first film that is so assured and confidant in its entire presentation as well as its concepts, intent and language. In fact, Simien beautifully and brilliantly establishes his entire cinematic universe within the film's very first minutes, firmly giving us a sense of time, place, and the rules and boundaries through which his story is being told, plus the barriers his film is defiantly determined to shatter.
In regards to how race relations are presented within the movies, "Dear White People" not only gave me an outlet for seeing and hearing the very things that I have confronted within my own life but are essentially never presented on film, it also serves as a vehement antidote to the likes of "The Help" (2011) and most definitely, "Me And My Pet Negro"...ooops, I meant "The Blind Side" (2009), movies in which Black people are sidelined by those well meaning White characters who exist in the film to make White audiences feel comfortable with seeing anything exploring racism. I hate to break it to some of you out there but racism, by its inherent nature, is not comfortable and we are definitely not living within a post-racial society. "Dear White People" speaks to those very issues so openly and boldly that it is a miracle the film even got made and released in the first place. While not nearly as incendiary or as game changing as quite a number of Spike Lee's films (more on that later), Justin Simien, without question, possesses the very sharp, satirical teeth that we need to offer some much needed color to our social/political cultural commentary. It is also one of the most provocative films of 2014 and a must see in our 21st century dialogue as well as for anyone who just wants to see a damn good movie.
"Dear White People" is set on the mythical Ivy League college campus of Winchester University over the course of an especially turbulent five days. After a gripping prologue during which news reports detail a clash of racial violence upon the campus, Simien rewinds the story to the surprising election of the ironically named Samantha "Sam" White (an excellent Tessa Thompson) as the head of the Armstrong Parker House, a traditionally Black campus dormitory, over the long standing leadership of Troy Fairbanks (Brandon P. Bell), the son of university Dean Of Students (played by Dennis Haysbert). I describe Sam's surname as being "ironic" as she is the controversial campus radio DJ whose "Dear White People" satirical statements are a constant thorn in the sides of the administrative leaders as well as members of the student body. When one student calls in to her radio show and asks how she and other Black students would feel if there was a show called "Dear Black People," Sam pointedly responds, "There's no need for a 'Dear Black People.' Thanks to Fox News and reality television, we already know what White people think of us."
While Sam embarks upon a anarchistic crusade against the university as new housing rules threaten to demolish the existence of the Armstrong Parker House, and Troy is continuously being groomed by his Father for more political aspirations, the film also introduces us to the glitzy, weave and wig wearing Colandrea Conners, who rechristens herself as "Coco" (played sharply by Teyonah Parris) as well as the aforementioned Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), an aspiring writer/journalist, fan of Mumford And Sons as well as Robert Altman films and is also the campus outcast as he struggles to find a residence hall that will accept him.
All of these characters, their lives, relationships and respective world views all come to an explosive head at the annual Halloween party of the campus humor magazine Pastiche, a full out racist African--American themed event, as led by Kurt Fletcher (played by Kyle Gallner) the despicable, entitled son of the university President.
Justin Simien's "Dear White People" is by far one of the most ambitious films of the year as it not only tackles campus politics and the struggles of racial identity within four distinctly drawn characters but also eviscerates nearly every conceivable media driven image and perception about Black people no matter who has delivered the message, from those horrific "Real Housewives" to Tyler Perry and the "Big Momma's House" franchise to even Bill Cosby (Sam has a tendency to wake from Cosby nightmares that feature straight hair and large sweaters). Even further, the film focuses on our own roles with the continuation and perpetuation of those very same representations with swift and equal venom.
Simien's humor reminded me quite pointedly of his contemporaries like political comedian W. Kamau Bell. "Boondocks" creator Aaron McGruder, and one of my favorite authors, Paul Beatty, whose feverish novel The White Boy Shuffle remains one of the most comedically and politically explosive books I have ever read. Additionally, Simien's voice as a writer is one that forces the audience to stay alert and properly focused in order to not miss any of the nuances as well as the velocity at which the hyper stylized dialogue is presented, a quality that firmly places him in the neighborhood of someone like Aaron Sorkin. Yes, Justin Simien is that good and I applaud him for having the sheer talent and artistic audacity in this day and age to present a collective of intelligent, attractive, highly verbose, complicated Black characters, not only at the forefront of his film but to place them within a college setting at all...a setting in which I cannot think characters of color have possessed a significant presence since the days of Bill Cosby and Debbie Allen's television sitcom "A Different World" and Spike Lee's "School Daze" (1988), and definitely not within a predominantly White collegiate setting. Frankly, it is the film that John Singleton's flat out terrible "Higher Learning" (1995) is still dreaming that it could be.
As ambitious as "Dear White People" happens to be, I would argue lightly that it is perhaps a tad too ambitious or maybe a bit over-stuffed as Simien seemingly wanted to get every single thought he had about his subject matter into one film. I do applaud him for the taking on such a challenge, especially as the film contains a large cast of characters and hey, who knows if he would ever have this chance again anyway? Simien has indeed packed his film to the gills but with a running time of under two hours, some scenes do tend to meander a bit and some of the savage energy is dulled a taste in some of the film's later sections. Simply stated, Justin Simien is not quite the filmmaker that Spike Lee is and while the film undoubtedly reaches for greatness, it doesn't quite get there. Even so, Simien's debut feature is a stronger feature than Lee's debut, the groundbreaking "She's Gotta Have It" (1986) was, and therefore the brass ring is clearly in sight. If Simien gets to make a second film, I would not be surprised at all if he grabs it tightly.
Now the comparison between Justin Simien's "Dear White People" and the work of Spike Lee may seem to be inevitable or perhaps even too easy or even lazy to some of you but indeed, this is a worthy comparisons in my view as this film often took me back to the very emotions I had when I saw "School Daze" for the first time while seated in a Hyde Park movie theater on the South side of Chicago. With that film, Spike Lee unapologetically exposed and unearthed so much of the inner workings and battles of self-perception and identity within the Black community with such a ferocious cinematic voice that I could not even believe that he was actually getting away with airing our "dirty laundry" publicly. While he was indeed taken to task by some in the Black community for speaking about our historically ingrained issues with skin color amongst ourselves, the film importantly began a dialogue. I embraced Spike Lee during those two hours so tightly not just because of his innate filmmaking skills and talents but also because of his fearlessness.
With "Dear White People," first of all, Justin Simien's cinematic voice, like Lee's, is an equally fearless one that never caters to the imaginary White audience in the theater seats, forcing his characters to never exist as approximations of real people but as prefabricated filters for White audiences to better understand Black culture. Simien's characters live and breathe as vibrantly and as vividly as anyone in the real world, as anyone who may have experienced the very same issues our quartet of characters are confronting for themselves.
With Sam, Troy, Coco and Lionel, Justin Simien has given us four people who are all forced to present one face to the world at large while hiding a variety of aspects about themselves so as not to upset any perceptions both Whites and Blacks have about them. "Dear White People" shows precisely and poignantly how those very struggles ingrain themselves within the characters' individual senses of self-perception, as well as self acceptance or rejection, all of which leads to existential crises that are constant and unending within a predominantly White world, and for that matter a highly judgmental Black world.
For what would Sam's peers within the Black Student Union think if they all knew that she was secretly dating a White Teaching Assistant and had Taylor Swift music covertly hidden within her i-pod? What would people think if they knew about the clean-cut, upstanding Troy's secret drug habits? While those are just two instances contained within the film, and Simien is highly sympathetic to them, he is also highly critical of his characters. None of the characters get off easy under Simien's observations and very wisely, he leaves more questions than any pat and unrealistic answers. Yet, it is through Simien's understanding of the compromises his characters make in order to just navigate the world in which they all co-exist, and all of them just wanting to discover a true sense of self.
With Sam, who is so brazenly confrontational and inflammatory, and in many cases rightfully so, Simien does present her as being self-righteous to the point of being nearly irresponsible. And then, let's add on the reality of her mixed heritage and how the world's views of her clashes against how she is continuously trying to figure out how she sees herself. The character of Coco is essentially the opposite side of Sam's coin, as Coco is embroiled in a state of re-invention to the point where she will completely reject her Hyde Park (!) upbringing and refuse to date Black men in order to attain a certain social status, especially as she is attempting to get herself cast in a new reality series. And then, what of poor Lionel who so desperately wants to move himself forward as a writer but finds himself co-opted by the campus White newspaper (where his secret crush is the Editor) to, of course, be marginalized to write about Black culture, a subject he knows little about. All of the conundrums these characters find themselves trapped inside of are all tested, challenged and transformed by film's end and to my perceptions, I am not terribly certain if any of them are truly for the better or not, regardless of their positions. Such is life for Blacks in America.
Dear readers, please allow me to give you a bit of background about myself. At the outset of this review, I mentioned that I completely understood Lionel's inner turmoil. I was born and raised on the Southwest side of Chicago in a predominately Black neighborhood. While my parents were employed within the Chicago Public School system, they enrolled me in a predominantly White private school setting on the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. That experience gave me a profound juggling act to accomplish as I had to figure out my standing among my White peers, plus my Black peers within the same school setting, as well as endure the taunts of my neighborhood peers for being "White" based upon my use of correct English as well as my study habits. And even then, my Black peers in my neighborhood were themselves more accepting of me than my Black peers at church, where I buried everything that I was able, the things that would mark me as being "less than Black" to their perceptions.
While my personal passions for literature, the arts, film, rock music and my overall status as an Anglophile were not even questioned by my White friends at school, I hid them all from the Black kids in my neighborhood for fear of being outcast even further than I already was. By the time of my college years, I actually rejected my admittance to the Black university of Florida A&M solely due to one statement uttered by my Father one day. "You know you can't listen to Led Zeppelin if you go to that school," he said and that was all it took for me to decline any thoughts of Florida because I refused to be forced into yet another box of expectations created by people other than myself.
So, I decided to attend my first choice, my Mother's alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, large, expansive, and predominantly White. Those four years were a constant process of figuring out my own sense of self-perception as I endured the cycle of embracing, rejecting, hiding and mistakenly thinking that I could actually transcend race itself and then returned to embracing my heritage all over again. I had no interest in joining the Black Students Union as I rejected all labels but I also experienced my own sense of solidarity, rage and a bit of fear when a fraternity did stage a mock slave auction during one of their parties in my Freshman year. Overall, my college years in Madison were beautiful and I wouldn't trade them for the world. In so many ways, I was very lucky as I just surrounded myself with people with whom I was always able to just be myself but even so, I was never naive enough to be unaware that I was indeed the fly in the buttermilk.
My adult life in Madison, however, has proven itself to be much more difficult as my Black face in a series of White places, in this case, a collection of private preschools is more than evident, especially as I have been in close contact with some people who may never have ever been near Black people in their entire lives. And again, I am confounding and confronting perceptions, from parents to professional peers and employers, based upon my interests and the way I speak to my skills, talents and professionalism to even wondering just why oh why am I even doing this particular job as a preschool teacher in the first place, even though the sight of a Black man in early childhood education is considered "golden" for schools.
While my own inner crisis has been considerably dulled with age and I am more comfortable within my own skin, I am faced with a world that will never be comfortable with me no matter who I am or my interests and abilities. To the Whites that will always hate me, especially moreso during President Obama's terms in office and prone to enacting now legally acceptable forms of violence against me based upon how I look, there is nothing that I can do. To the Blacks who feel that I am still "not Black enough," what you think matters nothing when the police will pull me over just as quickly as you and see "Black" in both instances. Being unable to simply exist as myself is at times so exhausting when I really think about it heavily and for White people who still do not understand the reality of "White privilege," just ask yourself if you ever have to go through one day of your life wondering how the world will view you simply because of your skin color. If you have never experienced a day like that, then that is indeed a form of White privilege.
I have shared all of this with you because all of those emotions and experiences flooded through me as I watched "Dear White People" and regarded the lives of Sam, Troy, Coco and Lionel unfold on screen and mused about what their lives will undoubtedly become as they age, graduate and enter their adult lives. It is extremely rare for a film to again cut so deeply and for that, Justin Simien should be heralded for devising such a provocative experience for which we can again begin a dialogue towards understanding each other a little better as well as being enormously entertained by a new filmmaker who clearly has the goods.
No, "Dear White People" is not the cinematic Molotov cocktail that I was perhaps hoping that it would be. But it is indeed a brutally funny, deeply perceptive and sadly sobering slow burn of a film that unrelentingly takes a harsh at our racial state of affairs. For any film that is designed to make you think and then feel a desire to find other people to talk about it, then that film in question is a success as far as I am concerned.
"Dear White People" is one 2014's boldest successes.
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