Review of Dear White People (2014) by Christopher Llewellyn R — 17 Nov 2014

I must confess that I found both the trailer and the hype surrounding "Dear White People" more than a little annoying. The jokes and the premise, itself (white people are racist!), seemed clumsy and unoriginal. Racism exists and pervades our culture - of that I have no doubt (just look at the lack of diversity in major films coming out of Hollywood) - but that doesn't mean that any film that takes on that subject is going to be good. Still, one of my favorite films from the 1980s remains Robert Townsend's biting satire on race and popular culture, "Hollywood Shuffle," and that had plenty of crude humor in it, so I finally made up my mind to go see first-time feature director Justin Simien's movie. Much to my pleasant surprise, it was a lot better than I expected. Yes, it was messy - the way many first movies are - but it was also pretty smart in many places, and filled with appealing actors delivering fine (and often nuanced) performances.

The four main actors - Tyler James Williams ("Everybody Hates Chris") as Lionel, Tessa Thompson ("For Colored Girls") as Sam White, Teyonah Parris ("Mad Men") as Coco, and Brandon P. Bell ("Hollywood Heights") as Troy - all deserve immense credit for what works in the film, as they make the dumb stuff seem smart and the smart stuff seem brilliant. Lionel is the gay black (Trekker) nerd with a huge afro who fits in nowhere; Sam is the conflicted bi-racial ("tragic mulatto" as her otherwise sweet white boyfriend mockingly calls her) who hosts the titular "Dear White People" on-campus radio show; Coco is the aspirational reality TV wannabe who will do anything to draw attention to herself; and Troy is the man-about-campus son of the Dean of Students who is normally so un-confrontational that he has no real identity to speak of. All four come together in ways both contrived (the white President and black Dean of Students not only went to college together but now have children attending the same university and dating each other?) and amusing as a white-run humor magazine throws a "negro"-themed Halloween party, complete with blackface, fried chicken and watermelon, which leads to a race riot. It may not be entirely believable (why don't the black students have their own party, as the folks over at NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour" pointed out - would they really be sitting around having a Black Student Union meeting?), but much of it is good fun. And the ultimate "why can't we all get along message" of the movie, coupled with its cynical take on (campus) politics (which is believable), is hard to argue with. So it's a mixed bag, for sure, but one filled with lots of goodies.

On a final note: one interesting way in which we can argue that popular culture has changed a bit over the years is that there have been no alarms over how this film might incite racial rioting, as there were back in 1989, when Spike Lee released his seminal masterpiece "Do the Right Thing." We're still far from a post-racial world (if that's even possible), but that may count as progress, of a sort.