We went to the movie to have a girls night. And it’s true, we did learn a lot about our failed romances of the past and future. As a white woman, I enjoyed the movie. The problem is, as it has sometimes been for me, that I am only half white. Can a “chick flick” speak to me as a woman when it does not address all parts of me? The only person darker than me with a name in the movie was Javier . . . the construction worker.
White People Part:He's Just Not That Into You has about 10 main characters and some pop up halfway through the movie (Q: Ben Affleck? A: Drew Barrymore but no Cammy Diaz!) There are too many characters to call them by anything but the actors’ names and in reality, all of the actors are on screen for such short time that they cannot play anything but Clint Eastwood versions of themselves. Plot description aside: this is not really that kind of movie review. Anyways, you already know what movies like these are about and if you don’t I’m kinda about to give away the plot. They are mostly late 20 somethings trying to eff, with Jennifer Aniston’s overtanned old lady whiskers still desperately hanging on. Although her voice grates and still reminds me of Rachel at every turn, her Old Yeller familiarity makes her one of the most likable characters. Dang! This movie’s got me crazy! When did I start rooting for J-An?
Brown People Part:He’s Just Not That Into You is set in the city of Baltimore, (decidedly not “B-More” or “Bawlmore”) among a circle of white yuppies. It was refreshing to see a movie with white people set in a real city, because most white people in movies seem to be citizens of a secret garden that the rest of us never see, as if Hollywood backlots have a hidden population of 100 million people and--that’s where all the white people in California went!
Most American movies, in their capitalist attempts to be universal and appeal to a wide audience, assault us innocent in our armchairs with visions of no place. (Interestingly enough, the Truman’s Show’s fake town is the very real Disney sponsored “New Urbanist” suburb of Seaside, Florida, another case in which life imitates TV in a bad way). Ex: Of all people, those involved in the drug trade are known for their cunning linguistics. Yet in
Pineapple Express, we hear maybe hundreds of slang words for weed but not one mention of the nickname or the actual name of the city.
But here is a movie that mimics real life in its on location shooting and daily reference to place. What itched me about the movie is that it seems false while being at the same time very true. Although “Baltimore” drips off the tongues of all of the characters and is featured on their business cards and the names of their independent publications, although yoga mats are rolled up and sushi is taken in, although they walk past black men carrying what look to be moving (out) boxes on the streets of their proudly acknowledged “neighborhood in transition,” still the characters immediate worlds are 100% Mayberry 1950’s I-love-Lucy-but-Ricky-is-a-tad-Commie white. That the characters still live in a yupper-class white bubble that could just as easily be suburban Oregon proves true the theory that increasingly people do not live in the same mental world as their immediate physical neighbor but instead orbit in a series of like minded neighborhoods in various cities (“Williamsburg meet Silver Lake,” “And Silver Lake my good friend, Williamsburg”).
(On the other other hand, man, I’m sumthin like Shiva, it was also refreshing to see white people who don’t use the phrase “aware of my privilege.” After all, what I am asking is for white culture to acknowledge it's exclusivity, but the minute it does, I’m on my period and I changed my mind! Bitches is crazy . . . but only cus you got crazy first. Still, thank you Baltimore elite for not mimicking the San Franglos who date Affirmative Action, listen to Heiroglyphics or drop Barack Obama’s name so much that they should wash out their mouth after with 10 “no homo” Hail Marys.)
There are rare glimpses of John Waters' beloved working class and proudly cracker city such as Kris Kristofferson as Jennifer Aniston’s crusty retired longshoreman father (I see a limp like that I’m going straight On The Waterfront). When Scarlett Johannsen pours her ample breasts onto the fold out ironing board and says “we had one of these in my house growing up, only my mom used it as a desk,” you can re-envision her bleached curls and hussy sexuality as a working class girl speaking the truth and living it, while the upper classes hide their libidos behind the Crate&Barrel curtains in their refurbished townhomes.
In a city that is 65% black (according to Wikipedia, The People's Source) only once does a black woman appear as a close up and she is simply an interaction. Justin Long interrupts making out with her to answer Ginnifer Goodwin’s call, so her only lines are “slop, slop, slurp--”
The only other nameless COCs are Drew Barrymore's posse which includes, you guessed it!, a Gaysian and none other than Ms. Wilson Cruz of
My So-Called Life and
Rent fame checking both the Latin and Black boxes for Barrymore's aptly named Flower Films production company. Always the advice giver, never the BJ getter.
When Luis Guzman appeared as Javier (as in “Javier, didn’t I tell you to tarp the table before you sanded the walls?!”), Natasha and I turned to each other and said “He’s going to get with Jennifer Connolly! Best plot twist eva!” But alas, she berates him for smoking when really the cigarettes she has found belong to her cheating husband. She berates him with the same robotic rage that she later throws a carefully antiqued mirror to the ground and then quickly sweeps it up. After, in a bout of semi regret she says “Are we cool, Javier?” and he says “Yeah, we’re cool” (. . .crazy white bitch).
For a moment that sacred Fourth Wall drops on the construction site and the supposed white audience makes accidental contact with Luis Guzman’s squinty brown eyes. We see that Jennifer Connolly is a cold bitch whose ignorance (and this is a stretch) can only be pitied because, like my 6 year old laptop, she is too far gone for repair. Eventually her husband will leave her, so that she is unlovable by ethnic people standards is superceded by the fact that even white people don’t like her! This is a 21st century tactic used to keep Casper the friendly ghost of racism alive. The original lovable bigot was Archie Bunker and in the 1971 that was original (racial timeline: Barack Obama is 10 years old and being mistaken for native Hawaiian because in the white eye black people don’t look like that yet).
But be here now in “post-racial” 2009 with two little Indira Gandhi looking mixed babies plunking down $20 in hard cashed unemployment checks to see a romantic comedy (psych! It was 2 for 1 day at the discount theatre). Hollywood was like, damn I know the 80’s are over, but I gotta do these white lines and pretend the cleaning lady can't see. So, just as with Michael Scott in
The Office, they stuff their ignorance in a likeable but unfortunately ‘tarded character. 21st century White America: Likeable but Unfortunately ‘Tarded.
And This Is For My Laaadies: The movie’s underlying message, that women are so preoccupied with analyzing men’s actions while men are off actually having fun, can also be applied to American race relations. (Who knew? I did!) Justin Long seems to imply to Ginnifer Goodwin that women enjoy this masochistic analytical minutae because without it, we would realize the emptiness of their lives. (Our interests as women, afterall, are supposed to be shopping and gymmin it aka wasting time to look more fuckable). So do we, the emasculated “minority” population of both men and women, hate on La Whitey so much to distract ourselves from the fact that there’s not a whole lot else that we really have? I’ve been called a Pocha and I’m not even Mexican. (“That was way harsh, Tai.”) It’s like what I “overhear” the under 18 set saying these days on facebook: “iF yOu hAtE mE, tHeN wHy yOu aLwAyS kEePiN mY nAmE iN yO mOuTh?"
Moral of the story: White America wants to buy you a drank and F the S out of U but will not return your calls, texts or MySpace messages. Welp, at least I’m drunk!
There was another message that women were the true winners because at least they had feelings and a certain. . . sensibility. Maybe I was distracted from this message by Ginnifer Goodwin’s goofy delivery (she’s no Molly Ringwald and I had that awful haircut and color my junior year in college during one of my 95 identity crises). But the idea of sensitivity as a certain superior form of living and superpower has been mentioned specifically for women of color by Gloria Anzaldua (“La Facultad”) and Angela “My” Nissel (“Colored folks have a certain sixth sense” her mother says. I’m misquoting cus I leant the book out, but
you know). I’m sure others have said it. We hope for a more ethical three dimensional ordering of the world.
Maybe all the hating is because we notice the absence of our total selves and the inclusion of our partial selves in multiple worlds. It’s true, I could so easily fit in this movie like I do in car commercials, as the light skinned-ed vaguely ethnic but obviously white washed best friend or coworker (apparently we ride in the back, but damn we are having a good time!). What we notice is the absence of friends and family more frighteningly ethnic. Does anyone want to buy a car marketed toward underweight Fobby Asian seniors who can only sometimes reach the pedals?
(What frightens me then is that I could so easily fit into this world of ethnic products but no real ass ethnic people. I was asked once if I was a WOC. I replied what, “woman on computer?” If I am in fact a woman of
color, would people need to ask?)
The only movie in the theatre that wouldn’t have pissed me off was Tyler Perry’s
Madea Goes to Jail. There I may have noticed my exclusion as well, but it is for the inclusion of all into pop culture, so I forfeit my rage. (Respect where respect is due: Wu-Tang was pro-AZN like a decade before white people started eating raw fish). So ?uavelove suggests, why not an multiracial buddy movie: Madea and Ernest Go To Jail? Le sigh. I guess I’m waiting for the next Harold & Kumar installment. Or we make our own 21st Century Reality Bytes: Elroy Caballero’s Martina Goes To Therapy.
I write this now as a grown ass woman who can separate "white" from "wong" as
they say. But remember seeing
Now & Then and wishing so hard that that was your life, your mom? Yeah. So thank you White America, for spicing up another one of my Friday nights. And for distracting me from what I really didn’t want to think about: my ex-boyfriend. Cus really, I wouldn’t want to call a crazy bitch back either.
“I mean to put you in company with the young African-American girl who discovers she is like Jane Austen. How so? In temperament, in sensibility, in some way she recognizes and approves. Then this thrilling recognition brings a cloud of shame to her spontaneity-I write of myself, of course . . . She notices her absence. Another girl her age, or a girl from another age, would not notice: would not need to notice.”
–Richard Rodriguez*,
Brown: The Last Discovery of America, 2002.
*sorry y'all hate him. more for me!
