Movie Dare: You make a movie about this…
I dare you to tell a story about the young, educated Black girl and her best friend and roommate—the “white” girl. The white girl starts to date a Black guy and interesting stuff ensues. I am almost certain someone has made a movie—or more likely a miniscule subplot or back story about this—but the time has come, kids, to make this into a feature as long as you are willing to cover these points:
- I dare you to take the opportunity to cover many of the ‘known issues’ in the Black-girl-white-girl relationship. I remember hearing stories about these girls as dorm roommates, fighting over room temperature: the white girl opens the window early in the morning to practice yoga and the Black girl is cold as hell. What about the unsettling ‘hair scene’ when the Black girl is talked into braiding her friend’s hair—the Black girl might reveal that she likes the white girl’s hair “free”…? It is important to go into depth about this woman-to-woman relationship because you need to show the audience how much depth these people need in order to truly relate to each other… There is a whole new generation of upwardly mobile Black women who grew up in the suburbs as the “only Black person” so you have to relate to these affluent people—so avoid the cartooning and cooning! Remember: these are Black folks who have the money to see your movie—unlike my homies from the ’hood.
- One very important element of these two women sharing with each other is the Black girl revealing her opinion of Black people—especially her not-so-hot opinion of Black men. These moments reveal the critical “knowledge transfer” that takes place between “privileged” Blacks and their white confidants. To be frank, “real” Black people systematically developing into self-respecting adults don’t get into and sustain these racialized relationships with white folks. I understand that my statement can be interpreted as ignorant (by “privileged” Blacks—and their white confidants)—so you may want to tip toe away from this one (because you’ll have turn around and sell this movie to them). But, to serve the story I’m pitching to you here, you have to support the complex set of reasons why the Black girl reacts to what happens next:
- Once you establish the depths of this woman-to-woman relationship, the white girl starts to date a Black guy and interesting stuff ensues. Since you folks are going to make this movie and I’m not—I can only suggest to you what the ‘interesting stuff’ is going to be. My preference is to keep it simple: the white girl plays the role of a young, exploratory being—she exhibits the natural behavior of a child. And it is the relatively healthy child that is free enough to test the quality of the information presented. So she tests a Black man—and finds out that the information about him is less than perfect.
Now you can turn this discovery into an epic tragedy or a light comedy. In the epic tragedy, the Black girl must take steps to prove to the white girl that she is “right” about this Black man—the foundations of her identity as a legitimate person depends on her being “right” about the ultimate inferiority of her brethren. In this way, the Black girl plays the role of Iago, the white girl plays Othello and the Black dude plays Desdemona. I leave it to you to show how the Black girl would destroy this relationship. You can make it even more tragic and show at the end how the Black girl discovers, through the total destruction of this Black man, how such a great young man this dude was. The sadness here is that the Black woman had to find her great man by destroying him. My instinct, and years of interaction with folk here in the United States tell me that this route is not very attractive to a “real-world” film audience, conditioned to be unsympathetic for Black men—they would tell you that by definition this story is “unrealistic.” So you might want to make this into a light comedy.
This sketchy story does suggest that the white girl deliberately made herself available to a Black man as a conscious (and subconscious) reaction to her relationship with the Black girl. Why would she do this? You don’t really have to answer this (unless you want to—my answers are not very flattering)… The attentive audience might infer that the “new age” white girl would expand upon her relationship with Blacks and not confine herself to just one “special” representative. Based on your conceptual model of the Black girl, you might want to contrast this aggressive expansion with the rather limited sense of dominion the Black girl might have. And this leads to the other question, “What about the Black girl’s boyfriend? Where is her sexual relationship?”
My view is to have the Black girl eroticize the white girl. It would be too simplistic just to call the Black girl a lesbian. To use a word I picked up from a young, highly-educated sister on Facebook, it is more “complicated” than that. My view is that this particular Black girl is a follower (and you have to understand that being a follower is a key component to what her family would call being “a success”—her family would preserve the memory of past loved ones literally being killed trying to be leaders—so being powerful but passive, finding some kind white advocate, is extremely, extremely important).
She is not a leader. The white girl is her reluctant leader—but it appears that the white girl is ‘leading’ her into a relationship with a Black man’s world and she won’t go there. The Black girl participates in the friendship with the white girl based on the (very subconscious) assumption that the white girl will lead her into a “larger world”—a “safe” place—the white girl becomes “a disappointment” when she “narrows herself down” into this Black man’s world. The twist out of the stereotype is that Black girl is upset about her best friend dating a Black guy because she expected her friend to do “better” than that. You might remember a scene from Christopher Morahan, his epic, The Jewel in the Crown, where Daphne Manners is described as “diminished” for being in a relationship with Hari Kumar. In an effort to show something of what Elaine Brown calls “New Age Racism,” we see a Black girl in 21st century fiction essentially saying the same thing that was said in 1940s-based fiction. You’ve come a long way, baby…
The Black girl has a view (which likely comes from her overachieving-but-self-hating parent(s)) that there is “wide world” out there that she somehow has to be a “part” of… The white girl (remember her practice of yoga?) is self-confident enough and mature enough to nurture an inner world (at a relatively young age)—and this Black guy becomes an important part of this developed inner space. It would be a terrible, ironically racist error for a self-described Black filmmaker to permit the film audience to conclude that this white girl’s inner space is the “universal” desired place to be. The filmmaker is left with the challenge of just simply showing that she has such a developed space—and having this abstract possession is an advantage over those that don’t, regardless of skin color. The only context I am aware of where being a human is not an option is a fascist situation. (You got me: My “hidden agenda” here is to show that almost all ‘properly assimilated’ cute girls in an imperial society are closet fascists—I am not the first to assert this “crazy talk” as Jean-Luc Godard dances around this in Masculin Feminin, two years before I was born.)
By all outward, superficial appearances, you can show that the white girl is participating in this “wide world” and is quite successful in it—but what is really happening is that her manifestations in the “wide” world are products of this inner development. Because the Black girl keeps it real, she never understands this—the Black girl is hopelessly westernized—which is skin-color irony, kid. The Black girl is functioning on family-inherited, white information from the old, openly-racist, Western world and the white girl is functioning on white information from some kind of “new age” green-pop world. You may be wont to ask with true rebelliousness, “Where is the Black information?” Well, kid, that’s another story…
So what about the Black guy? What’s his character’s “motivation”? In case your script page-count gets way past two hours, you can just leave the Black guy as a superficial character. You can depend on the racial consciousness of your audience to assume that he will screw anything he can get his hands on… but at the same time, this horny kid has heart—and he is not a pimp… What I would explain first to the actor playing the part of the Black guy in your film is that he is “Nature Boy”—remember that Nat King Cole song? “The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” You will not have to search far to find real, live, 21st-century Black women who would never imagine that a Black man is dreaming to love beyond love—dreaming to be of assistance—dreaming of the day when his power can be disposed of in carefully laid family plans. My sistren is likely preparing for war and taking even more steps to protect herself against the verifiable realities of the cold, cruel world.
Let’s assume that the Black actor playing this role is really, really sharp and he asks for more depth to his character. Then I would tell him that his character is too young (in his twenties, maybe) to say this in words but he knows non-verbally as feelings that he must function in a love-relationship with someone or face death through a default kind of ostracism. He is youthful and westernized so he is not going to “wait” and risk sacrificing himself for the sake of some “skin-color ideology.” He can tell stories from when he was a little boy about how Black girls were not openly and explicitly declaring any allegiance to him (large or small) under any circumstances. Yes, he knew that Black girls liked him (some even loved him)—and he also knew that they were not courageous enough to stand up for him (or any Black guy like him) and openly reveal their inner desires—instead they would resort to pretentious haughtiness and violent argument to protect themselves from shame. Why should eight out of ten Black women be open and honest about their love for a Black man, when their own divorced mother might call them damn fool? Welcome to The Blues, baby…
Then the young Black actor might get personal and ask me, “Is this work autobiographical?” Then I would answer. Look and see who is my wife—and I have always wanted to be married, never the playboy and never the pimp. And also understand that I refuse to preside over a marriage to a woman who commits crimes against herself with poor nutrition, devotion to cable television, chemicals in her hair and tightly locked in the psychological trauma of an incomplete childhood. It is this refusal to be an accomplice instead of her husband that will probably mean my certain death. Without the true liberation of at least one Black woman within my reach, I am doomed. So I better get to reachin’!
Then most likely the Black actor would laugh, thinking that what I said was not serious. “Real people” who are sane cannot possibly be this idealistic. I’ll say it like my father says, it, ‘Keep livin’ kid…’ Keep living—even in the face of what appears to be certain death.
Hmm… I really, like this movie dare… much better than the last one… In case you think my model of the Black girl in my little unmade fiction is crazy, check out the James Spooner documentary, Afro-punk. This film also inspired my Blog post, “Flippant Remarks about Afro-Punk.” This finished film actually shows Black girls (and women) talking about themselves. You might see a connection. On the other hand, you might not ever make it to the last sentence in this paragraph…