Are The Winning Black Show Runners in Hollywood on Our Side?
Issa Rae’s Insecure propelled her to a sharp ascend to fame and along the way came the interest of savvy Hollywood productions to pander to a niche and marginalized liberal audience dying to get heard. Alas, 2017 finally saw the creation of the “woke storylines of the empowered black women” and one would be tempted to think that said movement is unanimously positive and I would argue that it is it is to some extent. As a black consumer and as a movie commenter, I am proud to say 2017 was a year of greatness for both movies and television overall but unfortunately, black tv shows had almost nothing to do with it’s success. Before continuing I do want to make one thing clear: not every black product was all that bad — TV shows such as Black-ish, Insecure & Atlanta have continued to exceeded expectations. The movie Get out due to its unapologetic execution was able to coin the term the sunken place which rightfully earned its place in today’s pop culture. Having prefaced that, I realized two phenomena happening in the industry that I find quite unsettling and I would be glad to call each of them out in due time.
Hollywood has now identified a growing market for the consumption of the black liberated women genre and they are more interested in the quick mass production of these films rather than they are interested in taking the time to scout directors, cast actors and craft stories that will resonate with the actual audience that will ultimately consume these stories.
To support this argument, the first culprit was Netflix’s execution of the TV show Dear White People created by black film maker Justin Simien. Broadly, the show is about a group of minorities trying to find themselves while they attend a predominantly white college. The show had the potential and the leverage to carry the marginalized voice of a generation and we are all rooting for it. The setting was relatable to any minorities going to college (even as a niche audience, it was a sizable one). On paper, the plot is seemingly interesting: navigating white spaces after a black faced party. Unfortunately, aside from the plot, Dear White People gets nothing else right, the dialogue feels like it’s written for theater, the characters (especially Samantha, the lead character) have almost no redeemable qualities and most importantly the series never really earns the lessons it tries to teach us.
It is important to note that Netflix is often — if not the only culprit since the company is in the habit of throwing money at any black director who wishes to tell black stories regardless of how poorly they are told or how they will resonate with people from black communities.
It is in that same spirit that they allowed Spike Lee to make a comeback with his She’s Gotta Have it series which unfortunately suffers from the exact same flaws that we saw in Dear White People. Only this time, I found the end product to be even more cringeworthily due to the fact that I don’t need 60-year-old Spike Lee to tell me that main protagonist Nolla Darling is not a freak because she has sex with three men. For once, in 2017 living in Brooklyn, I have yet to find anyone who would call a single woman a freak for having fun dating. In fact, Spike, no one uses the term freak anymore. He would have known this had he actually spoken to any twenty something black women living in Bedstuy or Crown Heights. Perhaps this comes from a place of ignorance but from my experience, women of my entourage were quicker to embrace their “hoe-tations” than they were to be triggered by men calling them freaks.
The very last of Netflix’s pitfall comes newly fresh from their new movie Step Sisters, a movie about a black type-A student who is in her junior year of college (played by 35-year-old actress Megalyn Echikunwoke) whose agency in the movie is to teach a group of white sorority girls how to step traditionally. The movie falls flat due to its lack of originality: the conflict is taken exactly out of Bring it On, the plot is parallel to Stomp the Yard and the romantic scene is a carbon copy of the boom box scene of Say anything. In addition to that, the movie makes sure to add a good amount of social justice pandering and somehow manages to sends mixed messages on the explicit concept of cultural appropriation. By the end of it, I had to ask myself if the movie meant to say that cultural appropriation was a bad thing or if it was ultimately deemed acceptable. I have yet to find the answer.
If a black show or movie is trash. We should judge it to the same standard as we would judge any white written products. They can take it. Issa Rae, Ava Duvernay & Shonda Rhymes could certainly take it. They should all be able to take it.
For movies and shows that objectively present so many obvious flaws, why is it that Netflix keeps pushing money to patron those same types of movies/shows over and over again? The first and direct answer is simply because they can. They have an inexhaustible amount of resource and they do not have to answer nor take accountability to the same level as other conventional production companies. For one, Netflix does not have to meet box office projection targets, nor does it care for them. Secondly, I’ve come to believe that Netflix products, especially Netflix’s black writers and producers are not judged to the same level of scrutiny by the critics as it is the case for the rest of Hollywood. I said it.
In this era of social justice, political correctness, #OscarSoWhite and most importantly in an era where our president spews vile comments every other day, it would be impossible to deny the bias that we see in the writing of overcompensating critics. The movie reviewing industry after all, being predominantly white does pride itself in holding liberal views and being too harsh on black-produced series and movies would be social suicide. In addition to that, critics tend to take the voices of Spike Lee and writer Lena Waithe as gospel no matter how out of touch or how offensive these stories are written when compared to the black experience.
Listen, as harsh as my words may be, I am and will always continue to support black-written, black-casted and black-produced movies. I love my people. I have a great respect for the art and I have a passion for movies. I am also aware that shows like Chewing Gum and Luke Cage exist and for which I want to give them an honorable mention. Having said all of that, in the spirit of progress, I urge critics and I urge Netflix to stop encouraging mediocrity. It is a great disservice to the black community overall and it is also dangerous to the evolution of black writers when they are not being criticized with the same level of scrutiny as the rest of the industry. To Quote media commentator Black Girl Being on the movie Step Sisters “Black filmmakers are only given very few opportunities to produce high budget films through major distributors. I’d like to suggest that they don’t waste them on films driven by over-utilized stereotypes and “we are all the same” narratives.
