Which is completely ridiculous, of course. I'm shocked that these arguments are being dusted up in a post-Great Recession, current-Obama era America, where people should be at least a little more in tune with how things are and how they're shaping up to be. Look at Girls, a popular show on HBO about, well, girls (specifically, young white girls who have [or, more accurately, used to have] money).
The show was created, stars, and is written by one Lena Dunham (who may, at this point, be arguably more or less famous for dating that guy from Fun.), who is white, young (26 to be exact), and somewhat privileged. I say "somewhat" because, as was hinted at earlier, I think it's safe to say that our distinctions of class, welfare, and wealth are far more complex and multifaceted than they once were in light of the so-called "Great Recession." The middle class, for all intents and purposes, has been completely obliterated. It no longer exists. Feel free to argue that point, I don't have hard facts and statistics (not for the purpose of this post, anyway), but it seems apt. Now, noted basketball star-turned-self-congratulatory-critic Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would like to tell you that Lena Dunham and her show should be spurned for its foolhardy attempt to be the voice of a generation (as he invokes, in the same breath, Bret Easton Ellis, which is also debatable on its own merits) as it does not understand the current cultural climate as it exists. Why? Because Lena Dunham is white, her show is about white people, and her and her white characters are all rich. Or entitled. Or whatever the fuck retarded word you want to throw in there. They should feel guilty that they have money and that their worldview is dominated by people who look like them.
This isn't the first time this criticism has been levied at Dunham. Other critics early on during the show's first season complained that Girls was racist because it featured no black characters. Dunham has tried defending herself against this on multiple occasions saying that she wants to write what she knows, something authentic, that speaks to a very real and relatable experience, and to squeeze black characters into that would be disingenuous. She doesn't know the black experience, and therefore cannot write it.
So why do other shows feature black characters? Oh, I thought the answer to that was self-evident... they have multiple writers. Any regular drama you find on television (including other shows on HBO) have entire teams of writers that work together to come up with plots, character arcs, dialogue, etc. It's a team effort. They can pool together their collective knowledge to let the show address all sorts of different things. Girls is no such show. It has a single writer, a single voice. And that voice is strong. And it should not be discredited for that.
As for the characters being too privileged, I think some context should be applied here. In the first episode of the series, the main conflict for the protagonist is established: she has a college degree but no real way of using it, no real skills or job prospects, and her parents have just decided to stop supporting her. Thus the drama unfolds. Abdul-Jabberwocky and other critics would like to argue that this is evidence of stuck-up, assholish characters that we shouldn't celebrate and shouldn't enjoy watching. But newsflash: this story is more common than you think. There's really no other way to refute this ridiculousness than by saying that Dunham is absolutely right here. She has captured the zeitgeist of a new generation of young people who got fucked by the collective toilet-flushing the country has gone through (and continues to go through). Making money, going to school, getting a job: none of these things are as easy as they once were. And, not to devolve into semantics here, but just because the main character's parents have money does not mean she has money. Sins of the father and all that. And, even more semantically involved!, is the fact that by today's standards of wealth, her parents can hardly be considered rich stacked up against the actual 1% of this country. They are merely fortunate, and products of a bygone generation that includes my father and my friend's parents as well. Maybe I'm too "white" and "privileged" to say this, but upon watching the first few episodes of Girls, I was hooked and I'm not even the show's target demographic.
In case that didn't sound disjointed and hackneyed enough, we still have a few other topics to hit before I'm done for the day. Like I said, the 85th Oscar ceremony will be held tonight and one of the buzzwords that's been thrown around this award season is "racist." This storm actually started way back in December when Spike Lee infamously claimed he was boycotting Tarantino's new film "Django Unchained" and basically called the director racist for taking creative liberties with a story that dealt with slavery (not limited to, but definitely including, use of the word "nigger"). What Spike Lee fails to realize about Tarantino is that he's actually the complete opposite of a racist, despite the fact that he sometimes appears on BET and inserts his foot into his mouth, probably on account of being so jumpy because people keep calling him a fucking racist. He's collaberated with numerous black actors who have nothing but good things to say about him, he's written movies featuring strong black characters who do not fall into a cardboard stereotype, and he actually just released a film in theaters that deals with the horrors of slavery (the exact film Spike Lee refuses to see for absolutely no reason).
Moving on.
Another critical article published via the New York Times by Nelson George has postulated that the black characters on display in this year's Academy Award-nominated films are too weak in their three-dimensionality to warrant all this praise. He calls out Django in particular, and the depiction of slavery in Spielberg's "Lincoln." Specifically, in regards to "Lincoln" (a fantastic movie, by the way), he calls out a scene in the very beginning that frames Abraham Lincoln as literally above some black soldiers.
George completely ignores the distinct possibility (and likelihood) that this was an intentional choice on the director's part to convey how looking at Abraham Lincoln and seeing him in the flesh must have been like, especially to a young black man who knows that the man he is staring at may hold the future of his welfare in his hands. Gravitas indeed.
George also goes on to explain how the inherent lack of other black characters throughout the movie is counterproductive to its intended message about ending slavery and embracing civil rights, specifically mentioning the lack of a representation of Frederick Douglass on-screen. Let's break this down real quick. One of the reasons "Lincoln" is up for the Best Adapted Screenplay award this year is because the movie was bold and brave enough to suggest that the story of emancipation was a story not just about civil rights and doing the right thing, but a politically motivated gesture. It uses this message to humanize Abraham Lincoln as well as highlight him. He was a great man, but a conflicted man. An imperfect man.
Also, there's an obvious reason other colossal, towering historical figures were not portrayed in the film (like Frederick Douglass): it's about Abraham fucking Lincoln. You know how hard it is to make a movie just like this one, with one central protagonist who was one of our Presidents? The amount of time and effort put into crafting this on-screen presence? The care and nuance of Daniel Day-Lewis's performance? We can't clutter up the movie by shoving all these other people in there. Sally Field as Mary Todd was risky enough, and it was a move that paid off only because Sally Field is a great actress who slides into any role she's given very easily, and she's playing second-fiddle to Day-Lewis, just like all the actors portraying the men in Lincoln's cabinet. They are not central, towering figures from history. We don't even know what they looked like off the top of our heads. Therefore you can cast any actor in that role and it will suffice. It's stock.
But I digress.
George also wants to kneel down and worship at the throne of Spike Lee in his article (and John Singleton), saying that they were the first and perhaps last in a wave of prominent black directors to take up shop in Hollywood. First, let's get one thing out of the way. Spike Lee isn't that great. And Luke Campbell agrees with me. Good? Good. Also, to count Lee and Singleton and one hand and disregard the other black directors working in Hollywood today is pretty hypocritical. Especially the ones that are doing good work (like Antoine Fuqua) and the ones doing horrible work (like Tyler Perry). But it's okay to criticize white directors who mishandle black characters and ignore black directors who mishandle white characters. =P
There's one other problem I have with George's article, and that's the response he has toward Denzel Washington in Robert Zemeckis's most recent live-action film "Flight."
He calls the performance and the character "beautifully rendered," but lacking "moral complexity." This is a complete misread of the film and the character. Anyone who's anyone should be able to look at "Flight" and realize that its depictions of alcoholism, substance abuse, and addiction are ridiculous and cartoonish (see: chugging a bottle of vodka in the car, frantically spiking orange juice in his car, slyly unscrewing caps of vodka behind his back, swiping a bottle of vodka from the top of a refrigerator in slow-motion), but his moral complexity is relatively in-check. He is a detestable man when he drinks, but an admirable one sober. He literally saves dozens of lives in the film, but is destroying his own at the same time. And right at the end, when he's about to destroy the legacy and memory of a woman he loves, he makes the right decision.
This is stretching on a bit too long. To summarize, although the racist argument loves to get dusted up in the media, especially in an awards season such as this one, it's always important to take a closer look at your art, and take what you're hearing from the talking heads and put it in context. Spike Lee and his comments, for example, will always make national headlines. But not this or this.
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