Dear White People was actually a pretty interesting movie.

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have an open mind

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lololol

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and you have an open mind

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I did and it was still shite

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you have an open mind

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I have to listen to NPR everytime I'm over at my folks house, does that count?

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I have to listen to NPR everytime I'm over at my folks house, does that count?

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I like that quiz/comedy show that comes on NPR in the afternoons.

I'm not watching a movie called Dear White People. frick that.

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Yeah, thought it looked intriguing from the jump, but man, that title... it's so bad. It makes it seem like it's about to be the preachiest, most entitled, black power movie of all time.

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I think that's the point

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But I think I recall from the trailer that it actually was probably pretty funny and at least worth starting a conversation that, frankly, needs to be had in an honest and open forum with rational people, outside of the hearing of bigots and bleeding hearts.

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Yep. From what I saw from the trailer it seemed to try to show the ignorance from both sides regarding racism, in a satirical way. I doubt this is something I'll ever go rent, but if it pops up on Netflix or TV one day I may give it a shot.

Digging up an old thread because I finally got around to watching this. It came off as the lowest stakes version of Do the Right Thing possible. Really, it's about narcissistic kids at an Ivy League school who complain that they aren't privileged enough despite being, perhaps, among the most privileged people on the planet.

However, there was a really good movie underneath the speechifying and the cardboard cutout villains (even Do the Right Thing's racists are well-rounded characters at the very least). There's something to the fact that the character most willing to adopt "white culture" is the one who came from actual poverty. Coco is from the projects, so she doesn't have time for petty BS, she is not going back. It doesn't make her immune to racism, but it touches the true third rail of American life: class. She'll do anything to climb the social ladder, and I can't really blame her.

The movies best lines pretty much all come from Lionel, a gay, awkward, nerdy, undeclared sophomore who keeps getting excluded from every social group and dorm on campus. It's sad, but funny as hell. He's the one character in the movie, white or black, who is a true individual who does his own thing, and the campus pretty much unites to exclude him from everything. There is no place for an individual. I would have loved a more thorough exploration of that, though I did love his exchange with the Asian girl at the Black Student Union meeting:
"If there's an Asian student club, why are you here?"
"You have better snacks."

But the film's center is Sam, the militant mixed race girl fighting the system and hosting her Dear White People radio show. She finds her stridency and genuine outrage manipulated into her being a symbol in a fight, and she ends up leading a cause she doesn't really want to lead. She's a figurehead getting tosssed along with the storm.

SPOILERS BELOW

However, the movie had a perfect end point. She probably set the riot in motion but didn't participate at all. She didn't take part in the protest she was supposed to be the keynote speaker in because of her dad suffering a stroke. And at the end, she tells her white boyfriend that her dad is doing better, and she tells a beautiful story as a black kid getting taken to school by her white father and her pushing him away. It's a devastating emotional moment, and it shows how we put up walls around ourselves by relying to heavily on identifiers. She ends the story by, for the first time, taking her boyfriend's hand in public, not caring who sees. It's an honest emotional moment that gets to the core of the film: we're all people. We should identify as individuals not as symbols of our race.

And then they tacked on a cynical, terrible scene at the end of the film to take another potshot at the cardboard cutout evil president. So I don't think the director understands his own film. He really does identify with Sam's stridency and not her emotional honesty.

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I might check it out if its on Netflix or something.

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It's on Netflix, just by the title I don't think it's something I would enjoy watching.