Review: Dear White People
When a film is as brave, bold and bracing as Justin Simien's Dear White People, infractions such as a slack middle section and overly schematic plotting can be willingly overlooked and forgiven. This is a film that addresses race, class, and culture; a dissection on the complexities of black identity in an America where racism is supposedly dead and gone. It's inciting and insightful, articulate and anarchic, and tremendously funny to boot.
The film opens with news reports of a race war that has erupted at the prestigious (and fictional) Winchester University. The cause: an African-American-themed Halloween party organised by predominantly white students. Lest one think that such egregiously insensitive incidents are the stuff of fiction, one only need wait for the end credits to view the roll call of real-life campuses whose students have donned blackface or worn gangsta gear propped with guns, watermelons, and fried chicken. The media and university's donor base are up in arms, calling for the resignation of Dean Fairbanks (Dennis Haysbert), an African scholar installed as the dean specifically to address diversity issues within the campus body.
Simien then casts the narrative back five weeks earlier to reveal what seeds were sown that reaped the riots resulting from the party, and to introduce his cast of characters. There's Dean Fairbanks' son Troy (Brandon Bell), the university golden boy who's the right kind of black for the school's rich, white donors, and who's just been dethroned from his seat as Armstrong/Parker Hall house president by ex-girlfriend Sam White (Tessa Thompson). Sam is a biracial media arts major whose radio show antagonises the white contingent with such provocative pronouncements as "Dear White People, the minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has been raised to two." Or "Dear White People...stop dancing."
Sam's unexpected win enables her to push her agenda: bring a petition to the university president to rescind the "Randomization of Housing Act," which would force the historically black Armstrong/Parker Hall to diversify. A dining hall showdown between Sam and Kurt Fletcher (Kyle Gallner), the president's son and editor of the Lampoon-like Pastiche, piques the interests of Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), campus misfit and aspiring reporter who senses a potential story in the brewing racial conflict; Helmut West (Malcolm Garrett), a reality TV producer looking for the "conflict [that] is a commodity in my industry" and believing he's found it in Sam's divisive proactivism; and Colandrea "Coco" Conners (Teyonah Parris), a blue-eyed, straight-haired, fame-hungry vlogger who's more than happy to take Sam down a peg or two.
All of the characters could have been mere mouthpieces but Simien and his talented cast ensure they are not rhetorical talking heads. All are multi-dimensional figures that undergo a reassessment of their values and viewpoints over the course of the film. Simien doesn't pretend to know any of the answers, but the questions he puts forth are there to encourage debate and reflection. Kurt posts that the hardest thing to be in America is a white guy, pointing to the dominance of black figures in sports and music (not to mention the black man who happens to be President of the United States) as proof that that popular culture is no longer a white man's monopoly. Yet, Simien notes that popularity doesn't exempt prejudice, and acceptance has its gradations.
His screenplay is overflowing with hilarity. Whether looking to diversify the newspaper team ("My staff, God bless them, they are whiter than Michael Jackson's kids."), calling out Troy on his blackness ("I forget: is your major shucking or jiving?"), or finding Gremlins to be a film about the suburban white fear of black culture ("The gremlins are loud, talk in slang, are addicted to fried chicken, and freak out when you get their hair wet."), the numerous zingers never fail to reach their target.
Dear White People
Directed by: Justin Simien
Written by: Justin Simien
Starring: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle Gallner, Brandon Bell, Teyonah Parris, Dennis Haysbert, Brittany Curran, Justin Dobies, Malcolm Barrett
