Lisa Bolekaja – Bitch Flicks

‘Into the Badlands’: Will Blasian Love Last?

‘Into the Badlands’, based on the classic Chinese tale ‘Journey to the West’, is set in a futuristic dystopian world where past wars have created a new feudal society. It’s gratifying to finally get an onscreen Blasian couple where they kiss, have sex, and get to have a real relationship.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja, this article appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

For the last few weeks, fans of AMC’s Into the Badlands have been waiting to hear if the series will be renewed for a second season. Its six-part first season story arc hooked a number of viewers who eagerly await more episodes of the dystopian, martial arts fantasy extravaganza. The show is a throwback to the action excitement of 1970s Kung Fu theater with large doses of mystery, adventure, beautifully choreographed fight sequences, and a forbidden romance at its core. I am a big fan and find myself constantly checking social media to see if I will be gifted with another season.

Into the Badlands, based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West, is set in a futuristic dystopian world where past wars have created a new feudal society divided up between seven “Barons” who run everything on various Louisiana plantations — harking back to images of a slave society and a brutally defined hierarchy. People pick poppy plants instead of cotton, and everyone’s clothing looks like updated Gone With the Wind duds, only cooler looking with lots of leather. Guns have been banished, and although people originally flocked to the various Barons for protection and guidance in a world turned upside down because of war, the “protection” eventually lapsed into forced servitude. There are townspeople; healers, merchants, bar owners, brothels etc., and then there is the warrior class who live on the plantations.

Under the leadership of the Barons are lethal trained killers known as Clippers. Children with the potential to become Clippers are called colts and go through military training in the martial arts. Everyone else who isn’t trained in the art of war is forced to work on the plantations growing the poppy plants that are harvested into opium. They are known as cogs. (read: slaves).

The top Clipper on any given plantation is known as a Regent, and action star Daniel Wu is Sunny, the baddest Clipper in all the Badlands. He has tattoos on his back for the number of people he has killed. Sunny’s Baron is the conniving and ruthless Quinn (Martin Csokas), a man determined to control all of the Badlands. Quinn doesn’t know that the other Barons are plotting to overthrow him, and his personal life is a hot mess (two wives who dislike each other, and a son itching to take over). He depends on Sunny’s loyalty and fighting prowess. All Clippers are beholden to and only live for their Baron. They are not allowed to marry, have children, or have personal lives outside of the Baron’s wishes. Everyone in this society lives at the discretion and bidding of the various Barons. To go against this hierarchy of power and position is to risk immediate death.

Orphaned as a child, Sunny only knows the life of a Clipper. When we first meet him, he has been dispatched on his motorcycle to check on a cargo of new cogs that have not arrived at Quinn’s plantation. Sunny finds that the cogs have been killed, their bodies still chained together and rotting on the side of a desolate road. He notices that there is a person missing from the shackled group of slaves and sets off to find Quinn’s stolen property.

This scenario sets into motion two events that change the course of Sunny’s life forever. The first event is finding and rescuing M.K. (Aramis Knight), a young teen who wears a mysterious pendant that represents a fabled city called Azra that lies outside of the Badlands. People don’t believe it exists, but Sunny recognizes the pendant as something that matches a compass he owns and has hidden away from his own childhood. Sunny is intrigued with M.K., curious to know why he was kidnapped and not murdered like the other cogs. The second event that shakes up Sunny’s life is that the forbidden romance he’s has been secretly having with Veil (Madeliene Mantock), a Black woman who works as a healer in town, has borne fruit: Veil is pregnant and she’s keeping their baby, rules be damned.

What makes Sunny’s relationship with Veil exciting to me is the fact that it is a unique interracial pairing between two people of color. And not just the usual (almost cliché) interracial pairing of a White person with a person of color that we often find in film and TV. (On the flip side, the real shocker would have been to cast a talented Asian actress as Sunny’s love interest. Two people of color from the same racial background who are in love and have a romance at the center of the narrative? What? I can only dream.)

My mouth literally flew open when the show premiered on the east coast first and I saw a picture posted on social media of Sunny and Veil in bed together. The first reaction was, “Wow an AMBW couple on TV in bed together! Blasian love!”, and immediately afterwards I thought, “Damn, should I even bother to be invested in that relationship? They are probably going to kill her in the first episode.” I was bummed that my reactions were excitement about a Black woman being loved on, and then automatically assuming that she would be killed off because it has been proven that Black characters tend to be bumped off first. It’s tradition; this assumption about Veil’s immediate demise had levels to it.

Typically, women are used to motivate male characters into action, via revenge or to have someone to rescue. They exist as plot devices (with tropes like Damsel in Distress or Women in Refrigerators) to help the story move along. This problem is exacerbated at times when that woman is a woman of color because they are not often deemed as important as a white female character. If Veil had been white, in my mind, she may last a few episodes. But because she was Black, I girded my loins and waited for the big chop. This saddens me because by the time I was able to watch the entire show during its west coast broadcast, I had already prepared myself to let Veil go. And praise ye old Gods, Veil has survived all six episodes, and actually has some agency.

The rare pairings of an Asian male character and a Black female character has a tenuous history in cinema. The few films that even touch upon the slightest hint of a possible romance between AMBW couples has been disappointing. The two most recent films that my cinema friends and I still complain about is Ninja Assassin and Romeo Must Die. There was obvious chemistry between Naomie Harris and Rain. There was even a rumored shower scene between them that was supposedly cut. But Ninja Assassin just toyed with us, and fans of the film created fanfiction to fill in the gaps of romance that may have been there more overtly had Naomie Harris’ character been a white woman.

The travesty that is Romeo Must Die has always irked fans of that film. Jet Li and the late Aaliyah couldn’t even get a kiss at the end? All that sexual tension, and flat out cuteness together didn’t warrant a little lip action? It has been said that there was a kissing scene at the end that was cut because a test audience didn’t like it. I don’t know who was in that test audience that ruined the earned love scene of Jet Li and Aaliyah, but in the words of Sam Jackson, I hope they die and burn in hell. We were robbed.

The closest thing that I’ve seen that even tried to have a recurring Blasian couple was Flashforward (2009) with John Cho and Gabrielle Union. But then Cho’s character ended up getting a lesbian white woman pregnant on purpose and…yeah, that sucked.

There are other films and TV shows that have had AMBW pairings:

Virtuality (2009)

Robot Stories (2003)

Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (1999)

Cinderella (1997)

Fakin’ Da Funk (1997)

But it’s a nice surprise to see a deeper relationship between Veil and Sunny. It would be great if we could see more of their love scenes developed. The arrival of M.K. and Veil’s pregnancy have created an urgency in Sunny that tests his loyalty as a Regent/Clipper. Some of the writing of the show has me questioning why Sunny is so loyal to the unstable, villainous Quinn. Quinn murders Veil’s adoptive parents. Sunny tells Veil what happened when she confronts him about it, and yet he still goes back to work like “I can’t do anything.” Sunny finally making plans to escape with Veil and M.K. come a little too late. We needed to see him stand up for his woman and baby sooner.

Thank goodness Veil isn’t allowed to be a weak damsel in distress waiting for Sunny to save her. She works through difficult situations to keep herself and her unborn child alive when he’s not around. Veil even tells Sunny that she may or may not leave with him once he secures passage on a boat for them to escape. It’s a small moment that lets the audience know that she will make it with or without Sunny.

Sunny and Veil are set up to be a surrogate family for M.K. and the boy is pretty quick to pick up on the fact that the secret affair of Sunny and Veil is pretty obvious whenever they are near each other. M.K. himself has the beginnings of his own interracial romance with Tilda (Ally Ioannides), the Clipper daughter of a female Baron known as The Widow (Emily Beecham — one of my favorites on the show), which brings on another set of problems that mirror Sunny and Veil’s forbidden union.

Into the Badlands is an imaginative show that is here for fans of dynamic martial arts, and also kickass women. More than half of the main cast is made up of women full of agency who drive the series just as much as the men. My only criticism in that respect is that Veil is the only regular cast member who is a woman of color. I see a lot of female background extras that are women of color, (just like there are tons of men and boys of color on the show, even those with regular speaking roles), so it would’ve been nice to see another woman of color who is a major player. It’s pretty lazy casting to have six female speaking parts, and only one is a woman of color? And no, The Widow being a redhead does not count as diversity in women. They could have given us at least three women of color. Asian, Native, Latinx…so easy to do. But no. There’s just Veil.

The season finale left us with a cliffhanger. M.K. kidnapped again, Sunny tied up on the boat and what that means for his family’s safe passage out of the Badlands, and Veil left alone in town wondering what happened to her man. The six episodes were fast and furious fun, and I hope that Sunny and Veil’s relationship continues over the long haul. It’s exciting to see a handsome Asian male actor shine as the hero, be a sexually desired hottie, and NOT be a stereotype or sidekick to a white male character. It’s also gratifying to finally get an onscreen Blasian couple where they kiss, have sex, and get to have a real relationship. At least I hope so. C’mon, AMC. Renew Into the Badlands. The fans are waiting.

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja is a writer, screenwriter, and podcaster. She’s an Apex Magazine slush reader, a member of the Horror Writers Association, a former Film Independent Fellow and a Twitter fiend. You can find her posted up on the AMC Into the Badlands fan page waiting for word of Season 2.

Moonfaze Feminist Film Festival: Her Story Illuminated

Writer/Director/Actress and Moonfaze Film Festival Founder Premstar Santana has taken on the challenge of not waiting for Hollywood to feature feminist cinema. She is creating the platform that elevates feminist viewpoints from marginalized voices that rarely get the opportunity to shine.

On December 5, 2015 Writer/Director/Actress and all-around badass Premstar Santana created a phenomenal short film festival centering powerful feminist narratives. Presented inside of LA Mother, (a non-profit organization and multi-purpose creative space that is dedicated to nurturing women in business and the arts), Premstar carved out a safe space for diverse voices from around the globe to flourish. By creating this platform in conjunction with LA Mother, Premstar has taken on the challenge of not waiting for Hollywood to feature feminist cinema. She is creating the platform that elevates feminist viewpoints from marginalized voices that rarely get the opportunity to shine.

The one day evening event started off with a mixer where patrons could nibble on fresh popped popcorn, enjoy some libations and partake of tasty bites provided by a Korean BBQ food truck. Premstar introduced herself the moment I walked in and thanked me for supporting her event. I was immediately struck by her warmth and her sincere appreciation for every person who turned out. And there were a lot of people there. When it was time for the short film showcase to begin, every seat was filled, with an overflow audience sitting on the staircase and standing in the back. A packed house.

The opening film, Luna — written, directed by, and starring Premstar herself — immediately set the tone for the rest of the festival. Premstar’s film let me know that she was not bullshitting about her clarion call to elevate the game. Luna, is an experimental film that introduces us to a woman performing a sacred ceremony inside a circle of burning candles in a dark room. There is a blood offering, an incantation that opens another dimension, and the woman finds herself surrounded by nature and facing a mirror image of herself who simply says “Hello, I’ve been waiting for you…are you ready?” Our protagonist then responds by asking “For What?” Her question is answered by her second self, “To dance.” The film ends with a gorgeous shot of Premstar standing on a sunlit beach watching ocean waves, the full moon high above her head. The piece resonated with me emotionally, and I had the rare moment of instantly recognizing a fellow sister/creator. After watching her other work in the festival (the sci-fi tinged Dos Lunas) I understood Premstar to be a thoughtful and gifted artist. Her work is deeply personal, poetic, and at times haunting. She creates compelling cinema, so I felt confident that I would enjoy the films presented. I felt like I was at a cinema tapas bar, nibbling on all the various films she was spreading before us at LA Mother.

The films themselves ranged from comedy, horror, experimental, dramatic thrillers, documentaries and even a Bollywood drenched piece that had a shocking ending that delighted the receptive audience. One of the crowd favorites was a 6-minute French comedy film called Papa Dans Maman (Dad in Mum) written and directed by Fabrice Bracq. In the film two young sisters hear their mother and father having sex. They try to decide if they should go inside the bedroom to investigate when they hear an unexpected arrival downstairs. The humor worked because of the expressive faces of the young actresses, and the tension that was created by the one sister peeking through the bedroom keyhole and telling the other what she sees.

Another standout piece was the aforementioned 12-minute U.S. Bollywood-Punk Musical, The Pink Sorrys, written by Ben Stoddard and directed by Anam Syed. A deadly girl gang seeks retribution after one of their own is sexually assaulted. The graphic ending was pretty bloody and followed the rape/revenge trope popular in ’70s exploitation cinema. I enjoyed the unique mash-up to tell an unpleasant story about violence against women’s bodies. And come on — Bollywood. Punk. Musical. You got me.

Afghan rapper Sonita Alizadeh directed and stars in a music video called Brides for Sale where she spits her own rap lyrics advocating for the end of forced marriages globally. In Diyu (written and directed by Christine Yuan), a teenaged girl is caught between heaven and hell in a strangely hypnotic experimental film that won the Best Director Award at the end of the evening.

The festival found the right balance of showing some serious life-altering narratives alongside lighter fare that was equally compelling in different ways. One of my other comedy favorites was a film starring Moonfaze’s Festival Manager Sarah Hawkins. Roller Coaster (written and directed by Sarah’s father Bradley Hawkins) is a sweet tale about Emily, an aspiring actress who sets out for an audition, only to encounter obstacles that may cause her to miss her big break. The film playfully highlights the plastic-looking homogeneity of casting calls where women feel the need to look a certain way (mainly white, thin, surgically enhanced or bleached in some way). What struck me about Sarah Hawkins as an actor is that her face had that classic oldschool natural beauty that I miss. In fact, that is what struck me about most of the films in the festival. All these wonderful new faces that don’t have the bland manufactured Hollywood “look.”

At the close of the festival, awards were given in various categories for Best Screenwriting, Cinematography, Acting, Best Experimental Film, Best Documentary, and Best Director. I left the festival elated and impressed with the quality and variety of the films I watched.

A few days later, still excited about the festival, I contacted Premstar and invited her and Festival manager Sarah Hawkins to talk about Moonfaze on the Screenwriter’s Rant Room Podcast I co-host. It was important to give these feminist filmmakers another platform to talk about their work. You can listen to the podcast here.

Premstar said she conceived the idea for the festival in the summer of 2015, and less than six months later it came to fruition. Feminist filmmakers are hungry and ready to share their stories and 2016 will see another Moonfaze Film Festival. As I told Premstar and Sarah on the podcast, the work that Moonfaze has done is reminiscent of song lyrics done by the acapella singing group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. The lyrics are, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Simply put, we don’t have to wait for someone else to do this work. Fam, we got this. We really do.

Premstar Santana and all the filmmakers involved in the very first Moonfaze Film Festival are bold, unapologetic, and creating new life-giving narratives. I look forward to the 2^nd Annual Festival. You should too.

For more information about the Moonfaze Film Festival and Premstar Santana, check out these websites:

premstarsantana.com

moonfaze.lamother.com

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja is a speculative fiction writer, screenwriter, podcaster, Sci-Fi slush reader for Apex Magazine, and a devoted cinefile. A former Film Independent Fellow and a member of the Horror Writers Association, her fiction can be found on Amazon.com.

Shieldmaidens: The Power and Pleasure of Women’s Violence on ‘Vikings’

In ‘Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies,’ Neal King and Martha McCaughey assert that “cultural standards still equate womanhood with kindness and nonviolence, manhood with strength and aggression.” Under the Victorian cult of true womanhood, womanly virtue was supposed to encompass piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Thank goodness writer/producer Michael Hirst ignored those virtues by creating two dynamic women warriors with his historical drama ‘Vikings.’

This post by Lisa Bolekaja appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

It is rare to find films or television shows where women characters are actively violent without some cause. Conventional storylines that portray women resorting to violence are typically ones in which women are attacked, raped, or protecting loved ones, most likely children. Women are pushed to extreme acts of violence because of patriarchal dominance, or some form of outside threat that usually targets them because they are female and perceived as weak. Female passivity is the expected norm. Men “do” things, women have things “done” to them. The 80’s and early 90’s ushered in a bumper crop of American films portraying kickass women (mostly White—Pam Grier held it down for Black women in the 70s); however, given closer inspection, most of these violent women were reacting to something and not necessarily acting out.

In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, Neal King and Martha McCaughey assert that “cultural standards still equate womanhood with kindness and nonviolence, manhood with strength and aggression.” Under the Victorian cult of true womanhood, womanly virtue was supposed to encompass piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Thank goodness writer/producer Michael Hirst ignored those virtues by creating two dynamic women warriors with his historical drama Vikings. Writer Giselle Defares does a great job giving an overview of the show here, however my focus is on two particular women, both warriors (known as shieldmaidens on the show), who represent a new type of bad-assery that some feminists may argue replicate male domination and aggression. The women, Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) and Porunn (Gaia Weiss) are two women warriors who derive pleasure and wield power by going to battle alongside their men. Real talk: sometimes a woman wants to knock the stuffing out of people and wreck shop just like the guys.

Watching these two women maneuver the world of the violent dark ages is fascinating because they are not constructed as emasculating or overly masculine women who need to be put in their place by their men (although it does occur on occasion). They are presented as Viking women who are part of the fabric of the violent society they live in who also further the goals of their aggressive Northen European/Scandinavian culture. They are providers of home and hearth, defenders of home and hearth, and will go raid some other country’s home and hearth to take what they want too. This egalitarian treatment of women as warriors is the best part of watching Vikings. Unlike the English or Parisian women who stay posted up on the show waiting for their men to defend them, Viking women are straight up in the mix, leading charges, and beating their enemies.

Lagertha: Baddest Chick in the Game

Lagertha Lothbrok is depicted in the first episode of the show as a typical farm wife caring for her two young children inside their humble abode in a place called Kattegat while her husband Ragnar is away on some manly quest. Two men, strangers, enter their home under the pretext of seeking food and warmth. It soon becomes clear that they are there to sexually harass and rape her. In any other historical drama, the woman may put up a valiant fight, only to be brutalized once she is overpowered. A husband/lover/shining knight may arrive to save the day at the last minute, or be spurned into action by man pain after their woman has been violated or murdered. Not so Lagertha. She sends her children outside, pretends to be compliant to the two men, and proceeds to fuck them up with kitchen utensils. In this moment we learn that:

Lagertha does not need a male savior.
Men may have to be saved from her fighting prowess.
She likes to fight.

Lagertha physically fights with her husband Ragnar when he wants her to stay behind and care for their children when she would rather go on the raiding party into the new land of England. We’re talking real knock down, dragged out fisticuffs in the house. And she bruises Ragnar up pretty good as well, taking full hits from him like a boss. Even in the midst of their physical altercation, viewers can tell they really love each other. This aggression toward each other isn’t new, and they will most likely fight again about other raids Lagertha wants to participate in. She isn’t afraid to become violent to get what she wants. And Ragnar doesn’t expect her to back down ever.

Viewers want this couple to win in life and love (and oddly enough their domestic battles too), but when Ragnar becomes an Earl and later impregnates a woman from another clan, he tries to convince Lagertha to let him have two wives; Aslaug his new pregnant sidepiece, and herself in an egalitarian polyamorous household. Ragnar loves both women (but Aslaug mainly because she can have the sons that Lagertha’s body can no longer carry to term), however, Lagertha is too proud and full of self-respect. Once again, in any other movie or television show, Ragnar would most likely force Lagertha to obey him with threats of violence or death, or he would abandon her. Instead, Lagertha chooses to divorce him. Their young son, Bjorn, chooses to go with her. She literally leaves Ragnar standing in the dust crying over her and his beloved son as she rides off into a new land and life without him.

Lagertha’s warrior ways don’t leave her as she re-marries and eventually defies her new husband, the Earl of Hedeby, by bringing a phalanx of warriors to help her ex-husband Ragnar defeat a mutual enemy four years later. Once Lagertha gets word that Kattegat has been overrun and Ragnar (with his new wife and children) has fled to the hills, she comes to his rescue with their now grown son Bjorn doing what she does best: kicking ass and taking names. When her new husband tries to humiliate and sexually harass her in front of their court, Lagertha stabs him in the eye and snatches up his title and power, becoming the new Earl of Hedeby.

In her new position of authority over an entire people, Lagertha stands with the newly crowned King Ragnar by fighting with him overseas and sitting next to him at the seat of power with other Earls and Kings making strategic decisions on their planned raids. She helps Ragnar force an English King to negotiate monetary rewards and a new alliance. She leads a small contingent of fierce shieldmaidens on a secret night attack against the city of Paris that galvanizes the male Viking warriors after devastating setbacks in their battles against the French.

Lagertha claims her right to be a woman, mother, warrior, pagan, and political leader without gender constraints. Granted, her people do participate in patriarchal terrorism towards other countries and the women go along with it, but in the context of that culture, it is the norm, and shieldmaidens will kill women from other countries without hesitation. Nationhood supplants sisterhood on the battlefield. And as anti-feminist as that sounds, there is something to be said about bold women with agency, even if they are anti-heroes in someone else’s narrative. Many fans of the show (myself included) believe Ragnar was stupid for letting Lagertha go, a woman who was truly his equal, unlike his new Queen Aslaug whose only power as a woman comes from being alluring, birthing sons, and supporting Ragnar as his trophy wife. Aslaug’s gift of “second sight” seems banal and useless at best, and in the third season Ragnar is no longer enamored by her. He looks bored. And if it sounds like shade is being thrown, it’s because I’m #TeamLagertha.

PORUNN: On the Come Up

Porunn is introduced in a later season of Vikings as a young slave woman who works for King Ragnar and Queen Aslaug. Bjorn, Lagertha and Ragnar’s son, becomes smitten with her, and has eyes to make her his woman. Although a lowly slave in the household, Porunn does not allow herself to become a common bed wench without letting Bjorn know the uneven power dynamics of their relationship. She knows that he is the firstborn of the King and that he can have anything he wants, even women. But Bjorn has really fallen hard for her and they soon become lovers even though Porunn still has to work for the Queen and King. Queen Aslaug notices this budding relationship and how happy Porunn makes Bjorn, so she grants Porunn her freedom and gives her new clothing suitable for a young free woman of Kattegat.

Does Porunn run after Bjorn to access the status and resources she now has as a newly freed woman who is partnered with the King’s son? Nope. Porunn, immediately goes to train as a shieldmaiden, to become a warrior like her hero Lagertha, not a future Princess sitting on a throne and birthing babies for her man.

Porunn does become “with child” in a matter of time, and yet she still insists on sailing with Ragnar, Lagertha, and the other warriors into England to pillage and kill while pregnant. This fact enrages Ragnar and upsets Lagertha when they find out Porunn is fighting while carrying their grandchild. They blame Bjorn for being stupid and weak for not stopping his lover, instead of recognizing the fierce warrior status Porunn wants to uphold.

Porunn becomes severely injured and disfigured with a vicious sword cut to her face during a savage battle against the English. Back in Kattegat she falls into a depression thinking Bjorn doesn’t want to marry her now because she is ugly and not worthy of his love or that of their unborn child. She is wrong of course, but her looming pregnancy depresses her even more and she tells the other women that she doesn’t want to have the baby now.

Months after the birth of her daughter, (and while Bjorn, Lagertha and Ragnar are away), Porunn abandons her child by leaving her with Aslaug. She takes off into the hills in search of her destiny as a shieldmaiden, perhaps regaining the confidence she lost after her disfigurement. The audience is left to wonder if she will return to her child and Bjorn. Sometimes women aren’t maternal and don’t want children. A squalling baby hanging off her breasts is not for Porunn the moment she leaves. Maybe the spilling of more enemy blood and high adventure is. She, along with Lagertha, subverts the trappings of conventional femininity and the cult of true womanhood by engaging in so-called masculine pursuits such as war and territorial expansion.

Lagertha and Porunn drink, fuck, celebrate their Norse Gods and wish a muthafucka would start some shit because they will finish it. They undermine assumptions about gender, female violence, and the pleasures they obtain from bloodshed. About to enter its fourth season, Michael Hirst has set the bar high for his women warriors on Vikings. Time will tell if Lagertha and Porunn can survive the violent world they help create and shape.

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja is the co-host of the increasingly popular Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room podcast. She’s a member of the Horror Writers Association, a former Film Independent Fellow, and a writer of speculative fiction. Her latest short story “Ninja Fishing” can be found in the new Awkward Robots Orange Volume available now. She divides her time between Twitter, Italy, Southern Cali and various Sci Fi conventions. You can find her @LisaBolekaja

‘The Tribe’: Navigating the Beauty and Horror of Silent Children

The film moves through arcs of pity, empathy, and then downright horror. Violence is abrupt and can come from anyone. I was blessed to watch the film with an audience that was one third deaf, and the experience of witnessing visceral scenes with the sounds of hands pounding, slapping, moving around me with frantic finger blurs of American Sign Language made the viewing electric.

“The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema; the only thing they lacked was the sound of people talking and noises. In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema. They are mostly what I call ‘photographs of people talking.’ When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.”

Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, by François Truffaut

Writer/Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky said in an interview that he was inspired to write his film The Tribe because he attended a school that was near a school for the deaf when he was younger. (Incidentally, Slaboshpitsky filmed The Tribe at his old school.) There were fights from time to time between students from his school and the deaf students. He carried these memories for many years, finally unleashing them in a film that has gathered both praise, and in some places, ridicule for being a gimmick film, a one-trick pony only being celebrated because it is a story told completely in Ukrainian Sign Language.

There are no subtitles, no voice-overs, no music or sound design. The only sounds we hear are natural noises around the actors–à la dogme films— when they move within rooms slamming doors, are in cars, are outside walking in snow, or the excited vocal inflections emitted from an agitated signer who often uses sharp finger pokes and hand slaps to catch the attention of people not looking them in the eye. Viewing the film is pretty close to Hitchcock’s idea of “pure cinema.” Viewers don’t even know the names of the characters because our eyes have to do all the work, and we are basically resorted to assigning actors descriptive traits for names like New Kid, Kingpin, Boss Man, Blonde homegirl, and Brunette homegirl to track folks. (After viewing the film, I had to go online and check to see if the actors were even assigned names.)

Not since the silent films during the pre-sound era assigned to me during college have I experienced a film where I had to work at understanding and interpreting human interactions with visuals only. The fascinating part of Slaboshpitsky intentionally making viewers work at comprehension is that my interpretation of the film might be completely different from someone else.

Sergey (Grigoriy Fsenko) is a deaf high school student who tries to fit into his new boarding school and becomes ensnared in a criminal enterprise ran by a gang of older male students and a woodshop teacher. They are into everything. Petty theft, burglary, prostitution, bullying, and assaults on other students. These kids are the poster children for Thug Life Ukraine.

For the first ten minutes of the film, we are forced to orient ourselves. What may appear to be a slow and tedious start is really narrative time designed to acclimate and settle hearing viewers into leaning on visual cues full throttle. We become Sergey trying to figure out the place and its pecking order. Sergey is given instant sympathy because he has no idea what he is getting himself into. He can barely find a room and a bed to occupy before he’s pushed around and forced to sleep in the hallway on his first night. Eventually Sergey is jumped into the “gang” and the film branches out to the other characters. We are witness to the evening prostitution where two teen-aged girls, who are part of the crew, are driven off campus to truck stops by the woodshop teacher and a student handler/pimp. The girls have quick hook-ups inside the trucks, the teen handler/pimp collects the money, and at the end of the night, the woodshop teacher drives them all back to school.

There are only two main female characters in The Tribe, a blonde and a brunette who are dorm roommates and apparently best friends. It would be easy for me to write that they are just objects used throughout the film. They are. But all the underlings in the gang are objects. All bodies are commodities used for profit, from the elementary-aged boys sent out to sell cheap souvenirs on the trains and streets (while also lifting a wallet and a purse or two), to the crews that roam the streets at night to roll over some unlucky citizen walking home at night with groceries.

Unfortunately for this film, the female presence is only used for sexual exploitation. The females are not calling any shots and aren’t bossing any underlings around. They are there to pleasure men. Perhaps it would be different if there were some teen-aged boys also being prostituted along with the girls when they were dropped off at the truck stop. Or at least more girls participating on the stroll and other girls involved in different parts of the criminal enterprise other than prostitution. At least there would be a balance and a sense of “it is what it is.” (I’m not advocating that seeing more girls pimped in the film makes it better in that world, but it might give a semblance of business is business and the female characters were there to make money and have agency for themselves too.) This shouldn’t deter people from seeing the film, it’s just my observation that sometimes screenwriters stick women in scripts for titillation purposes and not as fully realized characters integral to the plot.

There is a lot of sex in the film that isn’t romanticized. People fuck. And not for love. This leads to one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Anya (Yana Novikova) completes a night of sex work and Sergey (her new handler/pimp) walks her back to their dorm. As handler payment (a reward given to the guys who escort the two girls at night to the trucks), Anya hikes up her skirt inside a cold dirty room, bends over and offers her backside to Sergey to do what he will. It’s very clinical, no foreplay, just stick your penis here boy and be done. Sergey flips the encounter on Anya and makes a pallet on the floor and mounts her missionary style so he can see her face. He tries to kiss her, but she protests and turns her head. Eventually they switch positions again, and while sexually spooning her, he manipulates her clitoris and Anya appears aroused and surprised that a male would take time to pleasure her during the act. We watch everything in real time (and full nudity), and when they climax, Anya kisses him. It’s a lovely scene because the sex moves from a passionless unfeeling payment fuck for Anya, (although Sergey is clearly in love with her) into a tender moment where we witness the first sign of emotional connection between anyone in the film. It’s a plot point that eventually spirals the film toward a cringe-worthy abortion sequence and then onto its horrific conclusion.

The sex added a layer to Sergey’s character that I wasn’t expecting. The audience assumes from his earlier awkwardness that he was just a virginal follower, clumsy with girls, and knowing nothing. But watching their sex scene I was struck at how insistent he was at touching Anya in a particular way, moving her into positions not with awkward fumblings, but with an experienced need to please her. It was the first clue Sergey wasn’t what he seemed. Later in the film we find out that we were wrong about him from the start.

The conclusion of The Tribe reminded me of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. It is brutal and heart-wrenching in its abrupt closure. The film stays with you. I spent a few days trying to process what it meant to me as a viewer. Was my interpretation of the events correct? Did my eyes deceive me? What social clues did I miss because I don’t know Sign Language? The Tribe was pretty close to pure cinema. It has a seventies realism that I miss in movies today, and the actors look like regular people, not Hollywood augmented look-alikes. The cast is made up of deaf untrained actors who do a hell of a job bringing this world to life. It’s not a film for everyone, but I hope people will step out of their comfort zone to watch it. It will haunt you.

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja can be heard co-hosting Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (the latest episode featuring Empire TV series writer Carlito Machete). Her most recent Sci Fi short story is in Uncanny Magazine, and she can be found on Twitter lurking in the tags #SaturdayNightSciFi and #FridayNightHorror @LisaBolekaja

‘Living Single’ and ‘Girlfriends’: The Roots of Sex Positivity for Black Women on TV

There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, ‘Living Single’ (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and ‘Girlfriends’ (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).

Women in the African diaspora have had a hard time claiming healthy ownership of their own bodies. From slavery to the present, Black women (and Black girls) have endured the stigma of having their bodies shamed and sexualized in ways that have been physically, psychologically, and spiritually damaging (see the history of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman). They had not been afforded healthy representations of Black female sexuality. The Black female body has been viewed as naturally wanton, lascivious, or “fast-tailed” because of sexual exploitation during enslavement. If the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s liberated White women to explore their bodies with abandon, this sex positivity didn’t free Black women from the baggage of their inhumane body history.

Historically in U.S. film and television, Black women have never been allowed to have sexual agency without stigma. If Black women actually showed up in the media, typically she was boxed into several known stereotypes— the Mammy (the asexual being who fixes white people problems while neglecting her own), the Sapphire (angry Black woman or Sassy Black woman), Tragic Mulatto (the light-skinned Black woman who can’t seem to fit into the White world because of the stain of Black blood), or a Jezebel (the hypersexual, loose woman, known today as a THOT—that hoe over there), and even the Respectable Negro (a Black woman who is married/widowed, often pious, and successful based on selfless motherhood. She often places judgment on other Black women who don’t fit her mold).

From the earliest days of television featuring Black characters, shows like Beulah, The Amos ‘n Andy Show, Julia, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and right on through Gimme A Break, and 227, Black women have played riffs of the traditional stereotypes. The emergence of Claire Huxtable, the successful attorney and mother of five children on The Cosby Show, fashioned a new type of Black woman we hadn’t seen before (although low-key, she could be sassy and gave off a whiff of subtle respectability in some episodes), and yet she was still bound up in family life. There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, Living Single (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and Girlfriends (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).

These two shows revolutionized Black female sexuality on television by giving Black women sexual agency without falling back on tired tropes. They also opened the door to later shows featuring Black single women who embraced sex as a part of good living without stigma (Half and Half, Single Ladies, and Scandal). Two characters in particular stood out from both series that became the precursors for sexually carefree Black women:

Maxine Shaw (Erika Alexander) and Lynn Searcy (Persia White)

Living Single

Living Single followed a group of four female friends and their two male neighbors living in a Brooklyn brownstone apartment. They were upwardly mobile in their careers as lawyers, magazine owners, stockbrokers, and independent building maintenance handymen. The show gravitated around rap star Queen Latifah’s character, Khadijah James, and each week found the crew in various complications related to their jobs, love lives, and each other. It was rare to see a show dominated by Black professionals. Finding “Mr. Right” is often the end goal for women-centered shows, but thankfully Living Single didn’t spend too much time having the women lament about not having found “the one.” One character, Régine (Kim Fields), was painted as a gold-digger, but she was the only one who had a hint of desperation in terms of having a relationship based on material comfort. Khadijah’s cousin Synclaire (Kim Coles) was the naïve, sweet-natured friend who dripped with positivity and wholesomeness. But it was Maxine, the high-powered attorney who was the standout favorite.

From her shaved head with braids, gorgeous dark skin, and power suits, Maxine had healthy sexual relationships without strings. She dated often, and was typically the one to cut relationships short when men wanted more serious (and more monogamous) relations. Some women who watched the show faithfully wore their hair like Maxine as well as imitating her fashion sense. She lived her life on her own terms (she was not a roommate with the other women because she had her own place), and she had the income to do as she pleased. She was verbally assertive, and was quick to challenge men, especially her epic battles with Khadijah’s neighbor and friend, stockbroker Kyle Baker (T.C. Carson). Their verbal spats underscored the sexual tension and attraction they really had for each other. When they get drunk one night and slept together, they choose to keep the relationship a secret, with Maxine pushing to keep the hot sex in the realm of platonic fuck buddies.

Unlike Black women from previous TV shows, pleasure and freedom was the goal for Maxine. This didn’t mean that marriage or motherhood, or some form of connection wasn’t a possibility for her, it just wasn’t the ONLY goal in her life. Her career and her friendships meant just as much as having a man, or dreaming of a family. After finally revealing their sexual connection to their friends, Kyle accepts a job in London and asks Maxine to join him. Kyle was the best sex partner Maxine ever had. He was successful, gorgeous, and her equal in every way. And yet Maxine turned him down because she valued her autonomy and wasn’t willing to give up her life and lifestyle to follow him. She didn’t try to convince him to stay (even though she really wanted him), and they parted as lovers who respected each other’s decision, even though it was a difficult one. Maxine had such a sense of self that she allowed her dream man to leave without a fight. That was a revelation to the core audience.

Unfortunately, in the last season of the series, Maxine was shown to miss Kyle, and had the wild idea that her life would have meaning if she had a baby. She goes to a sperm bank and inadvertently gets inseminated with Kyle’s sperm. In the series finale she reconciles with Kyle and we are left to believe that they will be happy raising their baby together. It is a cliché happy ending, especially since Maxine had been presented as the ultimate carefree Black woman. However, the fans loved it, and on some level, it was nice to see her get the partner she deserved, one who was as sexually uninhibited as she was, and one who respected her choice to be that way. She owned her beautiful Black body. Maxine offered Black women watching the show an opportunity to embrace their sexual sides with humor and much needed positivity.

Girlfriends

Much like the template of Living Single, Girlfriends followed the humorous trials and tribulations of four young success driven Black women living in Los Angeles. In this world, attorney Joan Clayton (Tracee Ellis Ross) was the main protagonist who set the pace for her three friends– Maya Wilkes (Golden Brooks) her Compton hood girl personal assistant, Toni Childs (Jill Marie Jones) her college roommate and a high end real estate agent with a taste for expensive things, and Lynn Searcy (Persia White), another former college roommate with several post graduate degrees and counting, but no real job because of her unsettled bohemian lifestyle.

All the women on Girlfriends were sexually active and enjoyed good sex (although Joan had a ninety day waiting period for her beaus prior to sex which became an issue with some), but it was Lynn who was the most sexually experimental. She openly discussed her sex toys and personal sex tricks (The “Lynn Spin”), ménage à trois, group sex, sex swings/chairs, and same-gender hook-ups. There was no sexual experience she hadn’t tried or was afraid to engage in. She even had her own fuck buddy arrangement with the clique’s mutual male friend, the lawyer William Dent (Reggie Hayes).

Lynn essentially stepped up the sexual freedom of Maxine on Living Single, and overall, the women of Girlfriends were a little more nuanced in their performances than the characters of Living Single (except for Maya, who took some time to lower the hood shtick she displayed in earlier episodes). Both Maxine and Lynn brought a refreshing and openly accepted sexuality that had never been present in Black female television characters. These two women were the ones viewers like me wanted to sit around with holding glasses of wine and listening to the details of their sexual exploits.

None of the women from either show carried the stigmas of the past that haunted the Black female body. They revealed to the world the Black Female Gaze in sexual matters which upset some critics (including Bill Cosby, and Spike Lee who accused them of being oversexed embarrassments). Like most new shows, it did take time for Living Single and Girlfriends to hit their stride, and each had their corny struggle moments to figure out their voice. However, in the end, they brought forth Black women with positive and healthy sexual pursuits. They left the sexual baggage and shaming in the past in order to present Black female sexuality in a healthy new light.

Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative fiction short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She divides her time between California and Italy. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja lurking in the hashtags #SaturdayNightSciFi and #FridayNightHorror

‘Straight Outta Compton’: N.W.A. as Messenger, Myth, and Erasure

And I don’t buy the excuse that Gray gives by calling these women story criticisms “side stories.” He showed Snoop Dogg in the film twice, and even had Tupac Shakur ( A.k.a. 2Pac) in a scene. Wouldn’t they be considered side stories too? Also, the movie is already long, so adding three minutes just to give us a glimpse of Yo-Yo with Cube, or a kick ass scene with The Lady of Rage in the sound booth rapping “Afro Puffs” with Snoop couldn’t hurt the narrative flow or length. It would take so little to show the world that women were there and are a part of N.W.A.’s legacy.

Straight Outta Compton poster featuring actors and original members of N.W.A. — *Straight Outta Compton* poster featuring actors and original members of N.W.A.

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all of the time” – James Baldwin

“To be a woman who loves hip hop at times is to be in love with your abuser. Because the music was and is that. And yet the culture is ours.” – Ava DuVernay after viewing Straight Outta Compton

To love hip hop as a woman, and as a Black woman in particular, is to wage a continuous battle of cognitive dissonance. One can love the beats and artistry of music production, head bob with the best of them while marveling at the creative lexicon spit over a mic, while also cringing at the ubiquitous violence, sexism, misogyny, and mysogynoir. This has always been the burden of women who love rap. And yet we still listen and participate in all its incarnations as a culture. It has redefined music, dance, art, and fashion.

I remember my middle sister bringing home her first N.W.A. album by Ruthless Records. I was already knee deep into East Coast rap, and was initially put off by the antagonism towards women. When the Straight Outta Compton album dropped, I heard it on full blast everywhere when visiting relatives in Los Angeles. I was a fan of Ice Cube’s vocal confidence and that indignant anger he carried in all his rhymes. When he went solo, I used to laugh and marvel at his storytelling skills on his albums. They were at times hyperbolic performative masculinity comedies to me. Street poetry as hardcore storytelling.

Top: Ice Cube, Director F. Gary Gray and Dr. Dre. Below: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, and Corey Hawkins. — Top: Ice Cube, Director F. Gary Gray and Dr. Dre.
Below: O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, and Corey Hawkins.

I was young, but smart enough to know that flinging terms like “bitches” and “hoes” was a reflection of male rappers’ insecurities with women, and the learned behavior of patriarchy. Rappers were no more, sexist, violent, or homophobic than America as a whole. But it was annoying to watch teen boys take on the negative mannerisms and posturing of their new rap Gods. Gangster rap blew up, and the only issues I had with the growth of that subgenre of rap is that it dominated everything. Instead of hearing a variety of rap styles and unique tall tales on wax and cassette, everybody wanted to be “hard” and a thug. Rap became boring. I had to leave for a minute to enjoy Fishbone, Living Colour, and the new music coming from the Black British R&B scene.

I remember the N.W.A. split, the bitter rivalry, the first time I heard Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline,” the shock of the Dee Barnes‘ assault (and others like Michel’le Toussaint) and how I could never be comfortable with Dr. Dre ever again, even though his beats were always banging with his work on Death Row Records. I remember the shock of Eazy-E’s death from Aids. Heck, I was blasting “Fuck Tha Police” when the Rodney King verdict became the L.A. Uprising. Truth be told, I still blast it now with the current policing problems we face today. Shit ain’t changed. There was just so much rich drama and bad blood surrounding the rise and demise of N.W.A, I was not surprised that a Hollywood studio decided to tell their story with Straight Outta Compton. The movie is a myth-making bromance steeped in the erasure (and hierarchal colorism—the casting call was racist colorism at its worst) of Black women in the rap game. It also highlights the historic and systemic law enforcement aggressions Black people still face.

It’s also one of the best music biopics you’ll see in awhile.

I went to see it three times. Once at the first showing it opened on Friday with only five people in the audience. (It was early in the morning.) My second viewing was with my family and friends in a predominately Black and Mexican audience. The third time was in a rich white neighborhood where I was the only Black person in the audience. Don’t let Hollywood fool you. A culturally diverse audience with women representing many of the viewers went to see this film. I predicted on its second day that it would make at least $60 million dollars opening weekend. It did. It’s an origin story, a coming-of-age tale, a historic snapshot, and a rare glimpse into Black male friendships on the come up.

Let’s be real: Ice Cube, Dr. Dre (and Eazy-E’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright) are executive producers, so there is bound to be a watering down of controversial or less than flattering portrayals of their legacy. With that said, Straight Outta Compton’s greatest strength (besides a slamming soundtrack) lies in the casting of its key players. It really helps that they are all relatively unknowns, and the two standout s in particular are Jason Mitchell (Eazy-E), and Ice Cube’s spitting image, and real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Ice Cube). These two are the nucleus of the film, and quite honestly, I’m not sure if the film would’ve been as good to me if Jackson hadn’t been cast to play his own father. It’s such a meta film viewing experience to see Jackson’s version of Ice Cube telling a record executive that he’s about to have a baby (which was himself at that time). Jackson brings a low-key urgency to Cube’s persona within the movie version of the group’s dynamic. It is a wonderful contrast to Jason Mitchell’s vulnerable and playful depiction of Eazy-E.

O'Shea Jackson Jr. playing his father, Ice Cube. So meta. — O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his father, Ice Cube.

The synergy of all the actors pop, and you find yourself rooting for their success. It’s typical rags to riches lore, and the plot hums along despite the two and a half hour length. In real life they may have been considered the World’s Most Dangerous Group, but in the soft focus light of film, there is no complexity or hard edges. Eazy-E was a drug dealer, but he’s the nicest drug dealer you’ll ever meet. He’ll act hard when he’s jammed up, probably compensating for his small frame, but that’s about it. Cube is the family man, fighting to earn his fair share of profits. Dre (Corey Hawkins) just wants to make music and hates having to choose between homeboys when the inevitable group break-up happens. The cops may be external antagonists in the film, constantly reminding us that Black men need to be kept down just for being Black and breathing, but it’s the in-fighting over money that is the root antagonist. Many a group has broken up over big egos and non-paydays.

DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) and the obligatory booty shots.

Women in the film, not surprisingly, play small tertiary rolls as doting mothers, comforting wives/girlfriends, and of course playthings to be used and disposed of immediately. There’s the obligatory pool parties with plenty of low angle male gaze booty shots, the after parties in hotels and tour buses with groupies who are tossed aside, and locked out of rooms naked. It is what it is. A film made by men who want to see T and A and think it’s funny to use women as punchlines. Typical. A drawback of the film is the erasure of women artists who were part of the success of Ruthless Records and Death Row Records. Women like the rap group J.J. Fad (who performed at my highschool back in the day), whose album Ruthless Records released first, to great success, which solidified the company as a legitimate business in the eyes of the music industry. Their album paved the way for the Straight Outta Compton album to come through blazing. These ladies opened the door, but there is no mention of them. Nor is Yo-Yo who rapped with Ice Cube with his Lench Mob Crew, or The Lady of Rage (one of the best lyricists to represent the Death Row crew).

Missing from the story, the women of West Coast rap, Yo-Yo and The Lady of Rage.

Both the screenwriter Jonathan Herman and director F. Gary Gray have made comments regarding the lack of visibility and the importance of the women to the accurate portrayal of the group (F. Gary Gray’s remarks in this one was disappointing). In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Ice Cube said some things that made me question why he still holds onto an outdated binary of women and sexual agency.

As a screenwriter, I must concede that I understand that a movie can’t have everyone and everything in it. To get everything in would require this to become an HBO/Showtime mini-series (which would be dope as hell). The take on the group this time around is just focused on the group. Juggling several narrative/character strings is difficult, and Herman does a good job of helping us track the core group. Like I said, I get this. It keeps the script tight and the plot moving. But it lessens the power of the story in the end.

By tabling the real-life misogyny for a less complicated narrative that would force people to see the group as flawed humans like everyone else, we get a sanitized version that doesn’t interrupt the audience’s investment in their likeability. There is no complexity to them, and therefore no messiness. This lack of complexity in showing how patriarchal police brutality, American racism/sexism/classism create self-hate in Black men that is then projected onto Black women and their rap lyrics, keeps Straight Outta Compton from being a great film classic. And I don’t buy the excuse that Gray gives by calling these women story criticisms “side stories.” He showed Snoop Dogg in the film twice, and even had Tupac Shakur ( A.k.a. 2Pac) in a scene. Wouldn’t they be considered side stories too? Also, the movie is already long, so adding three minutes just to give us a glimpse of Yo-Yo with Cube, or a kick ass scene with The Lady of Rage in the sound booth rapping “Afro Puffs” with Snoop couldn’t hurt the narrative flow or length. It would take so little to show the world that women were there and are a part of N.W.A.’s legacy. Scenes with Dre’s future wife could’ve been cut to make room for women in the rap game. Those scenes added nothing to the story.

Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) facing everyday police harassment in Compton. — Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) facing everyday police harassment in Compton.

L.A. Uprising after the Rodney King verdict. The film shows the relevance of N.W.A.'s music and real life police aggression. — L.A. Uprising after the Rodney King verdict. The film shows the relevance of N.W.A.’s music and real life police aggression.

With the strength of its weekend haul, their viral marketing campaign, and great word of mouth, Straight Outta Compton should be in the top five successful films of 2015. I doubt if it will be nominated for any major awards because there are no slaves, maids, hookers or overly downtrodden Black people. (There may be director award nomination nods for Gray, maybe even screenwriting noms for Herman, but I don’t see them winning because of Hollywood’s notorious lack of diversity in the Academy and other big time film awards members.) This is a movie about young Black men with odds against them turning themselves into iconic rap legends. All because a young drug dealer took a chance on some friends who had talent, and invested in the possibility of being more than what they were, and more than what people thought them capable of. It’s a classic Horatio Alger story, with dynamic young actors bringing life to the fabled history of West Coast Rap. It does what it is supposed to do: entertain. Once again, I will live through my cognitive dissonance, lament not seeing my girls Yo-Yo and Rage, but admire the music, nostalgia and history Straight Outta Compton brings to the masses. It’s a film with heart and soul, not perfect or completely honest with itself, but so worth the viewing.

‘Sharknado 3’: TV’s Guilty Pleasure

Don’t judge me.

I am a fan of the ‘Sharknado’ franchise put out by the SyFy Channel.

Don’t judge me.

I am a fan of the Sharknado franchise put out by the SyFy Channel. In a nutshell, all three of the movie plots are pretty basic. Literally there are tornadoes erupting in major U.S. cities that are filled with man-eating sharks of all types and sizes. In the first installment it was Los Angeles. The second took place in New York. In Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, we start out in the White House and end up at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Flying sharks appear suddenly, eat, kill, and maim people, and then dissipate to form tornadoes again in another part of town. I know, stupid.

A shark taking a break from causing mayhem by visiting the Lincoln Memorial.

The quick and dirty rundown is that Ian Ziering and Tara Reid return as Fin Shepard and April Wexler who are now expecting a new baby together. Fin is accepting the “Order of the Golden Chainsaw” from the President in the White House (Mark Cuban) for saving New York in the last film. While Fin is in D.C., April is in Florida at Universal Studios Orlando with their oldest daughter and Bo Derek (who plays April’s mother, May Wexler). Storms begin eight minutes into the film and it’s the usual farce of flying shark mayhem. Fin tries to get down to Florida to save his family, and he meets up with his former bar employee, Nova Clarke (Cassie Scerbo). Nova tools around in a reinforced RV fighting sharks like a Mad Max movie reject with her nerdy sidekick Lucas (Frankie Muniz). They (minus Lucas) make it to Florida and reunite with Fin’s family. Fin soon finds his way inside a space shuttle with his father Gilbert Shepard (David Hasselhoff) to save the planet from the sharknado infestation.

The only reasons to watch Sharknado 3 (or any of them really) are:

Cameo Appearances.

There are so many familiar and sometimes controversial faces in Sharnado 3, and part of the fun is chuckling at who actually signed up to appear in it. Most known actors in the SyFy Creature Feature programming are former (minor) stars from the ’80s and ’90s, and some are even names who used to be in blockbuster films a few years ago (Vivica Fox from Independence Day and Kill Bill appeared in Sharknado 2). Sharknado 3 boasts cameos from R&B singer Ne-Yo, Lou Ferrigno (the original Incredible Hulk), Harvey Levin (TMZ host), Jackie Collins (author/socialite), Frankie Muniz (the Malcolm in the Middle star who looked so old in this), and real-life political figures like Anthony Wiener (who now works for a crisis PR firm–oh, the irony), Ann Coulter (why did she not get eaten in this thing?), and Michele Bachmann (so random).

Landmarks Destroyed

The White House, the Washington Monument, the Capitol Rotunda, and of course, if you saw the other two films set in New York and Los Angeles, you saw the Statue of Liberty lose her head and the Santa Monica Pier’s Ferris Wheel destroy the boardwalk.

Ridiculous Shark Deaths, Lack of Realism, and Poor CGI

Sharknado 3 is not afraid to show how low-budget it is and how obvious the CGI is crafted. It’s part of the joke in many ways. The producers pour on the cheap-ass quality, and we love it. As our hero Fin gets caught inside his car as a new storm rages around him, he jumps out and has to grab ahold of his car door to keep himself from flying away. Mind you, everything else around him that is heavier than his car is being lifted into the sky, but his vehicle stays put on the ground, barely shaking from the high winds of flying sharks. But we don’t care. Sharks swallow people whole, they slap people to death with their fins, and they bite off all your limbs. Some even gulp you down in outer space. They have no chill. Bonus: George R.R. Martin has a Game of Thrones bloodfest comeuppance.

Nostalgia for Old School Creature Features

If you grew up loving Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger series, Roger Corman’s American International Pictures, or the old Hammer Film Productions, then Sharknado 3 is for you. It’s for people who enjoyed Saturday afternoon Creature Features like Godzilla and Gamera that were often followed by Kung Fu Theater classics.

That’s it.

Sharknado 3 is the Krispy Kreme donut of movies. There is no nutritional value whatsoever for a cinephile, but damn it, as soon as that “Hot Now” sign goes on, you have to have it. It is so god-awful that it’s good. I made Patron flavored cupcakes to snack on as I indulged in the sublime foolishness. Sidenote: Sharknado films are for drinking parties. It’s always better with liquor.

The actors themselves know that this awful TV movie is a fluke to be such a success. Ian Ziering has stated that he took the job only because he needed to work and support his family. The actor Steve Guttenberg reportedly was offered the role of Fin Shepard but turned it down. He regretted it later after the first Sharknado film blew up. (But no worries, he can try to make up for his faux pas by being comical in the upcoming SyFy original movie, Lavalantula. Yes. LAVALANTULA.)

You thought I was playing. Lavalantula. — You thought I was playing. *Lavalantula*.

All the Sharknado TV movies owe their popularity and longevity with their mockbuster sequels to us, the fans. We made this cultural zietgiest happen. Social media and livetweets propelled this thing into the fandom stratosphere. The SyFy network have had other audacious TV movies like Frankenfish, Sharktopus, Piranhaconda (stop laughing), Dinoshark, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, and a few days ago, Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf (hand to God). But somehow, only Sharknado became a thing. I confess, I own a Sharknado T-shirt, and Sharknado leggings, and wear them proudly like I would my Wonder Woman, Batman, and Loki fan gear. There’s something life-affirming about cherishing pure D-level entertainment. The collective eye-winking warms my heart.

The Shepard family reunited for a final showdown in Florida.

The PR end of Sharknado 1, 2, and 3 was smart to engage the public. As the second movie was being made, there was a contest on Twitter to name the movie subtitle. The best title winner would win actual props from the movie along with having the prestige of naming a campfest. Sharknado 3 is already priming the pump for a new installment. As the premier ended Wednesday night, the SyFy channel posted two Twitter hashtags, #AprilLives and #AprilDies. (Sorry Tara Reid, I tweeted #AprilDies because #teamnova.) The fans will decide the fate of Reid’s character April, who gave birth to Fin’s baby inside of a shark falling to earth from outer space. No, for real. That happened. This type of interaction is gold for fans like me who wonder how the writers/producers will level up from sharks in space. What could they possibly have in store for us hardcore stans in Sharknado 4? The only thing I can add is to have the producers cast me in a walk-on role, where I run from sharks and maybe bash a few upside the noggin with coconuts somewhere in the Fiji Islands. I’m just saying.

Until Sharknado 4 appears, I’ll eagerly await giant spiders spewing lava from their butts. Bring it SyFy channel. I’m a ride or die fan waiting for my close-up.

Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja is the co-host of Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room. When not watching cheesy SyFy flicks, she can be found in the Twitter hashtags #SaturdaynightSciFi and #Fridaynighthorror. She divides her time between Italy and several cities in California. You can read her short SF/F story “Three Voices” at Uncanny Magazine.

‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’: A High Priestess Speaks of Rebellion

Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

What Happpened, Miss Simone Netflix One Sheet — *What Happpened, Miss Simone* Netflix One Sheet

“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”

–Nina Simone

Director Liz Garbus could’ve stopped the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? six minutes into its run time. Nina Simone steps onstage after a lengthy absence from show business. She takes a bow and then stops cold, stares at the audience for what seems like an eternity. Her eyes take in the scene but from my viewpoint, it looks like she is seeing beyond the crowd gathered before her. It’s like she can see the future, what’s coming up for Black people around the bend of time.

Her face is filled with long simmering rage, pain, insolent dark beauty, and unchecked defiance. Here stands an artist struggling to create timely, relevant, serious Black art in front of an overwhelmingly white audience outside of America. She remembers the feeling of isolation and hatred against her for being Black. Nose too big. Lips too full. Skin too dark. Daring to dream of becoming the first Black classical pianist. Denied entry into the Curtis Institute of Music after a short stint at Julliard. Then she sits down. Speaks a few words, and then starts her performance.

"I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I'Ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces" — “I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I’ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces”

This small moment, a few seconds really, told me all I needed to know. The documentary could’ve ended right there for me, the look on Simone’s face was that forceful and telling. I have seen that look before. In the eyes of my grandfather when I was little, in the eyes of aunts and uncles and older friends who have been through some shit in America. It’s the eyes of a weary soldier who knows the battle will be long and not finished soon enough.

What makes this documentary extraordinary is that we get to hear and see Nina Simone talk about her life herself. In her own words at the exact times she says them. This is not a typical documentary film where the artist is reflecting back, perhaps shading the truth a little because of time. Garbus uses film footage of Nina speaking, and we are allowed to be time travelers, visiting exact moments in Simone’s life as they are happening. Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

Nina Simone performing "Mississippi Goddam" in Selma during the historic March — Nina Simone performing “Mississippi Goddam” in Selma during the historic march.

What I enjoy about the documentary is that Nina is bold and Black with no filters, exactly as I imagined her to be. I started listening to her music with serious intent while in college after presenting a paper on protest music in a History for Teachers class. I wrote of folk singers, like Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Odetta, et al, moved into James Brown’s seminal “Say it Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” and introduced my professor and classmates to Simone’s “Missississippi Goddam.” No one had heard of the song or her. I dug into music archives, listening, learning, trying to imagine being a singer of righteous indignation in a world that only wanted Diana Ross and the Supremes type pop music from Black women. I wondered what Nina Simone thought about her work going against the musical dictates of her time. In this documentary, Simone lays it out there for me. And it’s a heartbreaking motherfucker to watch. I had to pause several times in my viewing to catch my breath and process Simone’s words. A reporter interviews Simone late in her life and Nina laments that all she wanted to be was that cherished classical pianist, and tears swell up in her eyes. I had to stop and cry for her too.

The High Priestess adorning preparing for a show. — The High Priestess adorning hersel for a show.

What Happened, Miss Simone filled me with a lot of anger. I’m angry a lot these days I confess. Angry at the overt racism she lived through, angry at the depression and undiagnosed bipolar disorder she suffered through for so long, and angry at her husband/manager Andrew Stroud. Angry that American racial baggage is still with us as I write these words. The footage of Stroud talking about his life with Nina Simone is a goldmine to have, because we hear directly from the horse’s mouth his adverse reaction to her radicalization during the Civil Rights Movement. In one journal entry Simone wrote:

“I don’t mind going without food or sleep as long as I am doing something worthwhile to me such as this.”

As for her husband’s response to her involvement with the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement, she wrote:

“Andrew was noticeably cold and very removed from the whole affair.”

"Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.' Nina on the Civil Rights Movement. — “Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.” Nina on the Civil Rights Movement.

While Simone stands on stage shaping her music to reflect the times she lives in, hoping to inspire and encourage young people to recognize they were young, gifted, and Black, in a world that wanted to crush the life out of them, Stroud sits on film stating with disdain, “She wanted to align herself with the extreme terrorist militants who were influencing her.”

Here was a Black man who was calling young Black radicals fighting oppression terrorists. Black People. In America. Getting their asses bombed, beaten, and bloodied in the streets of a country they built. Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?

No wonder Nina Simone left Andrew Stroud.

It wasn’t enough that he was beating her, working her to death, and dominating her life. He was disrespecting the work that she found meaningful which was making music for her people. I found it condescending and – surprise- sexist, that he believed Simone had no agency of her own to think for herself. He really believed that others outside of her own thinking mind were influencing her decision to write and sing radical Black music, to take up the cause of the Black Panthers and to question the utility of non-violence in the face of violent white Americans. Theirs was a complicated, volatile relationship, and I could only feel deep sorrow for their daughter Lisa Simone Kelley who was caught in between them. Lisa discusses how she later suffered physical abuse at the hands of her own mother after her parents broke up. (Side note: One of my favorite performances of Simone’s “Four Women” includes Lisa Simone Kelly. Watch it here.)

Nina Simone's only child, Lisa Simone Kelly. — Nina Simone’s only child, singer Lisa Simone Kelly. She is also an executive producer of the documentary.

Simone explains that she was responsible for the livelihood of 19 people who worked for her. The pressure, stress, and physical/mental fatigue made her suicidal. What happens when your soul can’t do what it needs to do? When the thing that you love doing, slowly turns into the thing that you dread and eventually hate? It eats at you and often your mind turns on itself. Another journal entry during this crisis has Simone lamenting, “They don’t know that I’m dead and my ghost is holding on.”

The documentary showcases the highs and many lows, and it gives the viewer an opportunity to glimpse the genius Black woman that Simone was. Her music catalogue and this documentary are like a grimoire for those of us who need to reach into it to conjure up spells of protection and invocations of remembrance. I had to watch it four times to revel in her magic.

Nina free in Liberia — Simone in Liberia, Africa. The only time she felt free in her life according to Simone in the documentary.

Near the end of the documentary Nina reflects on how singing political songs hurt her career.

“There is no reason to sing those songs. Nothing is happening,” she says. She is so wrong. We need her songs now more than ever. We need that bold, bruising canon of radical Black music. We are calling on old Black Gods during this Black Lives Matter Movement (and the racist, terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina that ended nine lives, including that of a State Senator), and this High Priestess of Soul can show us the way.

I hear her influence in the recent works of D’Angelo (the Black Messiah album) and Kendrick Lamar (“Alright”) who are writing protest music for this generation. As writer/cultural critic Stanley Crouch says in the film, Nina Simone is the Patron Saint of the Rebellion. All praises due. The struggle continues. This documentary tells us that. Call upon her name. Nina. Simone.

Amen.

High Priestess of Soul and The Patron Saint of the Rebellion.

_________________________________

Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative fiction short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She divides her time between California and Italy. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja. Follow at your own risk.

‘Ackee & Saltfish’: There Are Other Narratives to Explore

We need new filmmakers like Cecile Emeke to break new ground with digital media. Smash the stranglehold of white filmmakers being the only ones telling Black stories that often dredge up old stereotypes and tired narratives. We need the specificity of Emeke’s vision. And dammit, I need more Rachel and Olivia in my life.

“It would be nice to have a story where it doesn’t always have to relate around men, or drug dealer boyfriend, babymama drama, (gun crime), or my Daddy’s gone. It doesn’t have to be like that. There are other narratives you know.”

–Michelle Tiwo (Olivia in Cecile Emeke’s Ackee and Saltfish)

I happened to be on Twitter the day Ava DuVernay hosted her 12-hour Rebel-A-Thon social media conversation with 42 Black filmmakers on May 27. With the hashtag #Array, various screenwriters, directors, and producers answered questions from fans and interacted with one another. I gave a shout-out online with my support, but also stated that I wanted to see more underrepresented filmmakers outside of the U.S.

Another Twitter user following the hashtag dropped filmmaker Cecile Emeke into my mentions. I quickly went to YouTube and discovered her humorous comedic web series Ackee & Saltfish.

Cecile Emeke, creator/writer/director of "Ackee and Saltfish" and "Strolling" — Cecile Emeke, creator/writer/director of *Ackee & Saltfish* and *Strolling*

Completely crowd-funded, Cecile Emeke has created quite an impression with her work. She is redefining what Black female writer/directors can bring to the table. And this is critical, especially from a Black European female. Just like Black women in the U.S., it is hella rare for Black women in Europe to bring their voices to the table. The excitement I have for Amma Asante and the success of her critically underrated (and underplayed) Belle only makes me hunger for stories about Black women across the pond. Emeke herself has some strong words about being tired of white filmmakers telling Black stories with a white gaze. This familiar complaint is even more searing especially with the release of Girlhood by French filmmaker Céline Sciamma. (You can read what Emeke has to say about that here.)

Ackee & Saltfish is a very important piece of work that should be signal boosted with viewership and financial support immediately. It has an authentic, playful, low-key coolness that I want to see more of. The two lead characters in the series, Michelle Tiwo (Olivia) and Vanessa Babirye (Rachel), are not contrived stereotypes, and are not dealing with the usual negative tropes ascribed to Black female characters (refer again to Michelle Tiwo’s words I quote at the beginning of this piece). They are carefree Black women just living their life.

Michelle Tiwo (Olivia) and Vanessa Babirye (Rachel) having a typical chat that revels in sharp verbal zingers.

Let me stress this: we hardly ever see Black women just dealing with themselves and their friendships without contrived outside interference. Every webisode centers on Olivia and Rachel just chilling within their friendship. Some viewers may mistake this for being a plot-less series (or may be reminded of the old American comedy Seinfeld being a show about “nothing”). The show hinges on subtle character-based humor. Olivia and Rachel are the plot. The conflict in Ackee & Saltfish is the differences in how Olivia and Rachel interact with one another. Olivia is the more assertive, outspoken realist, whereas Rachel is the more laid-back and soft-spoken one, often looking at her friend Olivia with an expression of incredulous wonder at the things she says. The friendship feels real to me, and the way Emeke films the series, the viewer may often feel like the third person in the room simply hanging out and listening to the two banter about Lauryn Hill tickets, bread backs, how one’s breath smells, or why Solange Knowles should adopt Olivia. The easy back and forth between the two actors may have the feel of improv, but their lines are scripted by Emeke.

Rachel's boyfriend prepared a dish of Ackee without Saltfish and Olivia has come undone over it. — Rachel’s boyfriend prepared a dish of Ackee without Saltfish and Olivia has come undone over it.

My favorite episode is about Olivia and Rachel hanging inside a carpet store because it’s raining and they don’t want to get wet. While trying to stay dry they have to contend with a faceless store owner who keeps pestering them with “Excuse me!” when he sees they are not there to buy carpet. Eventually they hear music playing in the store, and they start dancing, doing moves I’ve done myself (like The Butterfly). It’s silly and reminds me of the random moments I’ve had with my friends.

Olivia thinks she's the next Serena Williams. Rachel is not impressed. — Olivia thinks she’s the next Serena Williams. Rachel is not impressed.

Thus far, all the episodes (including the original short film) only show Olivia and Rachel interacting with each other. I’m hoping that as Emeke’s fan base grows, and she can secure more funding to make more episodes, that she will eventually allow us to see these two besties engage with other characters. I want the web series to be picked up and turned into a TV series with longer episodes. There are six episodes available to watch online. There is also a 10-minute “support” video where Emeke and her actors talk about the work they’re doing while encouraging viewers to give financial support with donations so they can create more content. (I have done that!)

The other project Emeke has in her creative arsenal is the intriguing documentary series called Strolling in the U.K., and Flâner in France. Emeke films young Black people strolling in their neighborhoods as they talk about what it’s like living in their respective spaces. Over nine episodes (about 10 minutes each) participants discuss race, class, gentrification, colorism, colonial legacies, Afrofuturism, what it means to be a Black British person, or a Black French person (or British Jamaican, or British Nigerian), Black mental health, sexuality, sexism, misogyny and the list goes on. The power of this documentary series for someone like me, a Black American, is the decentering of African Americans as the dominating cultural force in the African diaspora. I can listen to new Black voices who share the same transatlantic African history, but who have a differing perspective on how the African diaspora should connect based on where their ancestors landed after enslavement. They are echoing my Twitter call to hear from underrepresented voices from across the pond. Strolling is a Black cultural call and response, a digital “How your people doin’ over there Fam?” and they answer “Living like this, Sis.”

Strolling in the U.K. with young Black Brits in the Strolling documentary series. — Strolling in the U.K. with young Black Brits in the *Strolling* documentary series.

In Flâner, Emeke allows young Black French voices to be heard speaking their own truth. — In *Flaner*, Emeke allows young Black French voices to be heard speaking their own truth.

Emeke would like to take the Strolling series to other places outside of Europe, and I am here for it. How amazing it would be if she were able to travel to Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia, Indonesia or parts of Canada to record unique voices with unique perspectives? People of African descent are everywhere, blended into other cultures with rich stories to tell the rest of the world. The Strolling series is also an opportunity for White and non-Black people of color to understand that there is not one monolithic “Black” experience. Thank goodness. That would be boring.

Friendship goals. Rachel and Olivia. More please.

P.S. I know you were wondering, here it is:

Ackee and Saltfish the dish. Google the recipe and enjoy.

Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja

‘Bessie’: Unapologetically Black, Female, and Queer

‘Bessie’ is one of the rare mainstream films that shows an unapologetically Black, female and queer protagonist. That alone is groundbreaking in an otherwise straightforward biopic.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja.

See-line woman
Wiggle wiggle
Turn like a cat
Wink at a man
And he wink back

Now child
See-line woman
Empty his pockets
And wreck his days
Make him love her
And she’ll fly away

Writer/director Dee Rees opens the film Bessie with the Nina Simone classic “See-Line Woman” playing as the camera takes in Queen Latifah in close-up, her face drenched in resplendent blue lighting. The color, framing and music told me from jump that the narrative would be coming from a place of womanist Blackness. Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul, was signifying musically the proper introduction to Bessie Smith, the woman known in her day as the Empress of the Blues.

The story of Bessie Smith has been a long time coming, and it was quite timely that she should be given her due just a few days after the passing of the Blues legend B.B. King. Most people know very little about Bessie Smith, and it is almost a given that biopics are never truly satisfying, typically following a rise to fame and falling into trouble narrative. All I wanted to know was, would Rees be true to the highly unorthodox life of Smith? Or would we be subjected to a safe narrative that tip-toed around the raunchy, bisexual and profane realness of the Bessie Smith I read about in college?

Rees kept it real. Bessie is one of the rare mainstream films that shows an unapologetically Black, female and queer protagonist. That alone is groundbreaking in an otherwise straightforward biopic. Within ten minutes of the film, we see Bessie fooling around with a male paramour whom she beats up after he gets a little too fresh for her tastes, and then we see her in bed with her longtime female lover, Lucille (the gorgeous Tika Sumpter). It comes off natural, not some forbidden plot device to be used later to create conflict. It is what it is, and Bessie doesn’t waste time fretting over it. When she jumps on a train owned by Ma Rainey (Mo’Nique) to beg for a singing job and observes Ma interacting with her own female lover who prances around comfortably topless, Ma asks her straight out, “Watchu know about it?” Bessie tells her, “Same thing you do.” And that is that.

It was very powerful to see Black queer women openly affectionate with one another, and openly sexual in private spaces, especially for that time period. Black queer women, hardly ever get to see themselves on film without the narrative making them act secretive of fearful. Throughout the viewing, I kept waiting for Bessie’s bisexuality to become a big issue with her family, her band, or even her husband (and many lovers). It didn’t.

Ma Rainey takes Bessie under her wing, teaches her the ropes and how to sing the Blues to make the audience want more. She even teaches Bessie how to dress as a man and enjoy the thrill of smoking and gambling with men dressed that way. It reminded me of the stories I read that told of private clubs where women could be gender fluid and embrace masculine expressions without fear of bodily harm from violent homophobes.

Black love in all forms is front and center, and a new love comes in the form of Jack Gee (Michael Kenneth Williams being fierce and nuanced in this role), a man who sees Bessie perform, and goes to her hotel uninvited. As Bessie lies in bed, still in her nightgown and headscarf, her brother and business partner Clarence (Tory Kittles) watching her back, Jack Gee tells her his personal stats and proclaims without haste, “I’m auditioning to be your man.” He’s bold as brass and Bessie eventually marries him, and keeps her girlfriend Lucille too.

Jack seems very much Bessie’s equal, and they do go toe to toe with their hard loving, hard fighting and hard drinking. It’s a fragile relationship that hinges on Bessie’s Achilles heel, which is a bottomless hunger that stems from the loss of a mother at an early age, and the dysfunctional relationship she has with her older sister Viola (Khandi Alexander). Viola used to lock up food in the family refrigerator and beat on Bessie. This back-story told in flashbacks is the key to Bessie’s insatiable need for more success, more money, more lovers, and more control over her family. She eventually buys a large house without telling Jack, bringing everyone (including her sister Viola and Lucille) under one roof. She ignores her husband’s complaints and forces her will on everyone. She will live the life she felt was denied her, and even brings home a little boy on Thanksgiving to be her and Jack’s son. It’s Bessie’s world and everyone is expected to fall in line and gravitate around her.

The best part of Bessie is how she handles the intrusion of the White Gaze on the storyline. Bessie’s world seems insulated from white intrusion, and this allows us to focus on the Black characters just being themselves without having to focus on the known and ubiquitous racism. Whiteness does seep in through the colorism issues that Bessie encounters with the infamous paper bag test (Black performers, even in Black entertainment spaces of the period, did not hire darker skinned Black women who were not lighter than a paper bag). White intrusion is most prominent in two scenes, one involving the Klan showing up at one of Bessie’s performances, and the other at a prominent white patron’s home.

In the Klan sequence, Bessie simply walks outside and cusses the white men out and chases them away. She doesn’t quake in her boots or shrink behind the protection of Black men. She then turns around and goes back to performing, winning over the respect of the frightened Black men and women who were prepared to run away from White terrorism intruding onto Black space. In the home of Carl Van Vechten (Oliver Platt), a controversial patron of Negro artists whom he finds crude, primitive, and folksy, Bessie turns the White Gaze (and cultural appropriation) on its head by being true to her unfiltered Blackness. When a white woman puts her hands on Bessie in an attempt to hug her and says, “I heard that you were wild,” Bessie pushes her away and says, “Get the fuck off me.” Bessie in one fell swoop refused to let the white woman turn her body into a commodity. She turns on Carl Van Vechten too when he tells her about his book Nigger Heaven. This is a tremendous sequence because Bessie doesn’t allow the White characters to hijack the narrative and center the story on Bessie having to impress Van Vechten to get something from him for her survival. Bessie doesn’t give a fuck about anyone in that room except for herself and the two lovers she brought with her. In fact, Bessie doesn’t even care what Langston Hughes (Jeremie Harris) has to say when he tries to warn her about Van Vechten’s fetishizing of Black culture and Black people.

I found it fascinating watching Hughes take in Bessie’s behavior towards Van Vechten, because Hughes had to depend on White patrons much like Van Vechten to supplement his income in order to write and survive. Bessie didn’t. She had her voice and she had regular working class Black people who came out to see her when she travelled. Eventually she made records, (there’s the hilarious moment where she goes to a Black record company called Black Swan Records and discovers the company isn’t as Black as she thought, and that she is too Black for them), and was able to gain new revenue from vinyl sales. Bessie never had to water down her personality to make White folks feel comfortable. Unfortunately Hughes and other writers of their time (like my favorite Harlem Renaissance writer, Zora Neale Hurston) had to walk a thin line of creating the art they wanted without offending Whites who funded that art. It still happens today. Recently, poet and Buzzfeed Literary Editor Saeed Jones wrote about this same issue with his recent piece Self-Portrait Of The Artist As Ungrateful Black Writer.

Bessie is a good primer movie for people who know nothing about Bessie Smith, and it is a breakthrough performance for Queen Latifah. The cast is flawless and I expect Emmy nods for Queen Latifah, Mo’Nique and Khandi Alexander. (Khandi can do anything and just be dynamite. Period.) It was a pleasure watching unapologetic Black, female, queerness. I hope HBO takes more chances on projects like this. Somebody get Dee Rees financing for a new movie stat. It is maddening to think that she hasn’t had an opportunity since Pariah in 2011 to show us her voice. She has more radical stories to tell. I can feel it.

‘It Follows’: More Dread Than Bloody Red

It’s not the best horror movie I’ve seen, but it’s a decent flick that can be added to the pantheon of solid fares to check out this year. Many of my horror comrades hated it or were disappointed, but I encourage everyone to see it just for the masterful use of dread instead of the usual one-note slasher or gore-riddled bloodfests that are passed off as great horror cinema. The genre I love is more concerned with spectacle rather than genuine fear.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja.

It Follows answered the question I was curious to know in the first seven minutes.

“What happens to you after it follows and catches you?” Short answer: you get jacked up. I’ve said this on Twitter and I will say it again here. I sincerely apologize to my fellow viewing audience for laughing with great joy after the first victim is killed. I do have home training. But I was giddy.

We are introduced to an unknown young woman, visibly anxious as she runs out of her family home wearing flimsy underwear and heels in the middle of the night. It’s like we caught her in a state of undress after a long day at work, or maybe after a date, but we never know because there is a great 360-degree camera pan that sets the tone for the rest of the film. The writer/director David Robert Mitchell is forcing the audience to not trust anything or anyone that moves within eyesight. The 360 camera turns are used to great effect numerous times in this film which creates a relentless creeping dread. We never see what kills our first victim, but we do view the aftermath, and it ain’t pretty. While the audience I was with had a collective “Oh shit” moment after gazing upon the unnaturally twisted remains, I laughed with giddiness because I was now fully engaged. The discordant sound design and music score added to the atmosphere of this slow deliberate terror. Imagine if Portishead had made a horror soundtrack without any singing. It caught my attention, and held it for the first half of the film.

Disclosure: I am a horror connoisseur.

This is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I’ve enjoyed horror from across the globe and from every era. (I even enjoy bad horror. Stinkers can be a lot of fun to hate watch. I relish it.) It’s also a terrible curse because as hardcore as I am, it’s hard to impress me. I radiate so much joy whenever a new horror film comes out, but then I am quickly disappointed when it doesn’t live up to the hype. Granted, It Follows has a lot of hype surrounding it (“The scariest movie to come out in 10 years!” is a recent example), but most of the overblown hyperbole is because horror, in particular American Horror, is in a sad state of affairs. Overused tropes, clichéd jump-scares, little to no character development, plus sequel after goddamned sequel has stifled the genre. (Don’t get me started on re-makes.) So anything that looks a wee bit fresh and tries to be serious is pounced on as the next great thing. And alas, many filmmakers don’t respect horror. There, I said it. A lack of respect has given rise to a collection of recent horror films that are mediocre at best and straight trash at its worst.

It Follows in those first seven minutes made me believe there is some hope for us jaded Horror Hounds. It’s not the best horror movie I’ve seen, but it’s a decent flick that can be added to the pantheon of solid fares to check out this year. Many of my horror comrades hated it or were disappointed, but I encourage everyone to see it just for the masterful use of dread instead of the usual one-note slasher or gore-riddled bloodfests that are passed off as great horror cinema. The genre I love is more concerned with spectacle rather than genuine fear. (Remember all the Saw sequels that just gave us diminishing returns each time out? Yawn.)

What makes It Follows click on all cylinders in the first half is the empathy we have for our protagonist Jay (Maika Monroe). She reminded me of the classic old school white female heroines in the mold of Sissy Spacek or Jamie Lee Curtis. The set designs, the cars, and even the hairstyles have a retro 70s feel. The color scheme looked slightly muted, a little drab, and this added a dark texture to the film that takes place in Detroit. The mentions of 8 Mile and the demarcation line separating white Detroit and Black Detroit are quite evident. One of the characters talked of her parents warning her about crossing over that implicit physical/racial line due to safety concerns. Just as there is a transgression of the division between the supernatural seeping into the natural world, there is a definite class transgression between rich and poor (and the inferred racial one between Black and white).

What draws us to Jay is her longing to be loved and to have a boyfriend. She’s pretty much a dreamy-eyed plain Jane, but she spruces up quite nicely when she goes on a date with Hugh who uses the alias Jeff (Jake Weary), and this is where her troubles begin. What Jay doesn’t know is that Hugh is slumming with her. Pretending to be interested in Jay for companionship, Hugh has transgressed class lines. He uses the lower class Jay to save himself from the unknown entity that stalks his upper class suburban landscape.

After some hot sweaty sex in the backseat of Hugh/Jeff’s car (which she initiated), Jay eventually finds herself tied to a wheelchair still in her underwear from the afterglow of lovemaking. Hugh/Jeff quickly runs down what her fate will now be. Apparently fucking the wrong person in this world will give you something worse than an STD or AIDS. You now get the unwanted attentions of an “It” that will literally follow you around. And this It can be anyone you know or don’t know. It takes on the embodiment of anyone in order to get close to its intended next victim. Hugh/Jeff tells Jay that the only way to get rid of It is to have sex with someone else, passing on the creeping dread to them. This all smells of the influence of The Ringu Virus films and all the superior J-Horror/K-Horror that the U.S. has ripped off and repackaged. However, I respect David Robert Mitchell’s attempt to spin an oldie but a goodie into something new. The catch is, if you pass It onto someone else, and they get killed before they have sex with a new partner–Surprise!—It will come back after you. Ain’t that a bitch? This menace is truly relentless and inescapable.

Our emotionally bamboozled protagonist enlists the help of her younger sister and a rag tag bunch of friends to survive. This is what made the film work for me overall. Her friends are just regular teens, no snarky, overly beautiful, or unrealistic characterizations. Just awkward young people yearning to help her. They know something has gone horribly wrong in Jay’s life. They presumed a date rape, but when Jay tells them her new reality, they don’t shine her on or call her crazy, they support her even when they don’t fully believe in the supernatural weirdness. All of this works well, especially when Jay is the only one who can see It –random strangers of all ages, with pale flaccid faces (sometimes naked) , making slow and eerie movements towards her no matter where she goes. Much like many Asian horror flicks, the beauty of It Follows is that nothing is explained and we don’t waste time trying to figure out the mystery of how it all started. Jay either has to have sex knowing she’s dooming another life or forever be haunted until her own death. She eventually gives in to a form of protective weaponized sex that isn’t degrading. The teens-having- sex-and-then-dying trope (Ahem, Halloween and Friday the 13^th) is subverted into something new and dilemma-inducing.

Unfortunately, all promising starts often fizzle out, and halfway through the film the plot lost steam for me. There is some elaborate scheme to try and stop It, but the execution of said scheme doesn’t quite make sense. I also felt that some of the rules of the world got jettisoned, which led to a lackluster ending. There’s nothing wrong with open-ended finales, but I was bored the last 20 minutes, mainly due to the loss of character/plot momentum.

Love it or hate it, It Follows is a thoughtful addition to the horror genre. Hopefully David Robert Mitchell has more dread-inducing gems up his sleeve. But please, no sequels.

See also at Bitch Flicks: An interview with David Robert Mitchell and Maika Monroe

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja enoys watching classic Horror Films when they play at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the summer. Co-Host of Hilliard’s Guess’ Screenwriting Rant Room Podcast, and a story editor for Apex Magazine, Lisa’s newest short story “Three Voices” comes out next month in Uncanny Magazine.

‘Still Alice’: The Horrors of a Mind Interrupted

Julianne Moore as Alice, a performance that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja.

I was the youngest person in the theater. And I’m grown.

Still Alice was not a movie on my radar. I heard that Julianne Moore put in an Oscar-worthy performance prior to her actually winning the award. It looked like one of those small art-house films that I normally adore, however the subject matter was not up my alley.

Four years ago I helped care for an older Aunt who suffered from dementia after living a remarkable life as one of the first Black nurses in the U.S. Navy. We had talked for years about me writing her life story. Her mind was sharp, she was proudly independent in her own home, and liked to take drives around town on her own and still traveled the world. She was proof that an unmarried, child-free, financially independent woman could live a full life despite what a sexist and racist society from her generation deemed socially acceptable. My Aunt Grace was in her 80s when she died. I endured her shockingly fast deterioration with my mother and sister. It was literally experiencing the invasion of a body snatcher who stole my amazing Aunt’s mind. Robbed her of all agency. So nah, watching a movie about a woman who suffers early onset Alzheimer’s was not on my list of Must-See-Movies.

My mother saw the trailer and was really curious. She is retired and often takes classes for retired persons to keep them active and to gain access to information to help them live full lives during retirement. Lately, she had been reading up on dementia and Alzheimer’s. She wanted to see the movie with me.

“Why do you want to see a movie that looks depressing?” I asked, trying to persuade her to watch something more entertaining. In reality, what I wanted to say was “Look, I don’t want to re-live Aunt Grace onscreen.” I eventually did say that out loud as we walked into a theater full of people that looked my mother’s age and older. I did a double take. I could not believe there was no one else there my age or younger inside the theater. I got the distinct impression that everyone wasn’t there just to be impressed with a tour de force performance or a brilliant plot. I listened to the whispers in the crowd before the preview trailers. Most of them I imagined (like my mother) were here to see what could happen to them. I felt like they were here to learn the warning signs. The anxiety in the room was that visceral.

Alice and her husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Their normal life about to be disrupted.

Because of that energy, my experience watching Still Alice was akin to viewing a horror movie. Going in we knew a horrible event awaited Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) before she did. And we, the audience, waited with bated breath for signs of the coming terror. Every minor occurrence in her life within the first 10 minutes was cause for anxiety. Every fumble of a word, every physical action Alice made that looked like a mistake caused my stress level to rise as the movie continued. I wondered if my stressful viewing would’ve been different if I hadn’t experienced the same drama that the Howland family goes through in the film. I wasn’t alone in my stress. My viewing audience gasped when Alice reintroduces herself to her youngest son’s girlfriend after meeting her five minutes previous. When Alice momentarily forgets where she is on her regular jogging route, a woman behind me said out loud, “Oh! She doesn’t know where she is already! Oh, no!”

Alice reintroduces herself to her son's new girlfriend after meeting her minutes before. — Alice reintroduces herself to her son’s new girlfriend after meeting her minutes before.

Still Alice unfolds in an episodic fashion. It is not interested in subplots, or melodramatic movie moments. It is a quiet film that builds on the rapid downward spiral of a successful linguist who has spent her entire life studying language and how the mind works with words, only to find herself losing the power of those words herself. In screenwriting circles this means she is the perfect character in which to explore this sudden change of events in her life with this disease. The film quickly runs through the basic plot drill of learning about the disease, disclosing this tragic news to her family and job, and then making the necessary lifestyle changes to prepare for the inevitable. Going in, it is obvious there will be no happy ending, nor even a satisfying resolution. Like real life, shit happens, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic scale, your life choices can be limited or better than most.

In this case, Alice Howland has sufficient income from her own work as a linguist (she has seminal books written, she goes on speaking tours, etc.), as well as the income of her doctor husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Unlike most people, this upper income family has the best health insurance to see a specialist right away. They have the disposable income to survive without Alice’s salary after she leaves the career she loves, and they also have access to an in-home caretaker without changing any of their spending habits. There are no worries about losing their home, or even their second home near the beach. In fact, John is up for a prestigious new job with the Mayo Clinic, and the only downside is that they will have to move, which is a real concern for Alice’s condition. With Alzheimer’s, routine is very important. Familiar surroundings help people maintain security. Alec Baldwin is really good at conveying with his eyes alone the desire to thrive in his dream career, but also the pain of coping with and caring for his ailing wife, a woman who was an equal to his own brilliant mind. He wants to be there for her, but he doesn’t want his life circling around the drain too. To most, this might seem selfish, but it is a pressing issue and cause for real overwhelming angst.

Alice teaching linguistics, trying her best to maintain her normal life.

Until the end, Alice and John’s own adult children really don’t have to change their lives or routines because there is money to handle that. How different this story would be if there was no abundance of income. For average Americans, a serious illness ruins families forever. Jobs are lost, homes are foreclosed, and people become homeless or slip into poverty that they can’t escape from. Despite the horrible circumstances the Howland family finds themselves in, they have a safety net that can keep them together. Even with devastating pain, certain privileges will help certain families overcome challenges better than others.

John and Alice during a consultation with a specialist. Higher incomes have access to better medical treatment.

There is a poignant moment in the film where Alice, still in control of her mental faculties, makes a video for herself to watch when the time comes that she can no longer remember her name, her children’s names or even where she lives. In a rational and loving voice she tells her future self to swallow a bottle of pills and never tell anyone. She plans to kill herself when her mind betrays her. And there is a harrowing and quite dark comedic moment when the ailing Alice stumbles across the video and attempts to follow her own directions.

Alice tries her best to hide her condition. She is terrified of the stigma. She goes so far as to tell her husband that she wishes she had cancer instead, because people knew how to deal with cancer, and she would still have her mind. Her attempts to hide her illness at work backfires when her annual job evaluation reveals that her university students have raked her over the coals for being a terrible professor. Then and only then does she confide in her boss that she has Alzheimer’s. The look on her face as her boss comforts her says it all: this is the end of her life, the one anchor outside of her immediate family that held her in the fold of “regular Alice.” And let’s be honest, she’s right about the stigma. Our society still does not know how to deal with individuals whose minds seem to be turning against them. People struggling with mental health often feel like unwelcome pariahs around family and even close friends. When Alice’s youngest daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart) asks her point blank, “What’s it like?” we can see Alice visibly relaxing as she tries to explain this frightening change to her sense of self. She thanks her daughter for not being too afraid to talk openly about it. Lydia appears to be the only person in the family dealing with Alice in the here and now. The rest of the family walk around on eggshells thinking of the old Alice and how she used to be, and also thinking about the problems they will deal with in the future, but always in the context of how it affects their personal lives.

Lydia (Kristen Stewart) showing great compassion and support for her mother.

The parting shots show Alice nearly a year later, sitting on her couch, oblivious to her family making plans for her future. John is moving for the new job. Once settled, he may or may not send for her. We hope so. There is reconciliation with Lydia who wants to be an actress in Hollywood which is the only real hiccup in Alice’s life before the progression of her disease. Alice has three happy, healthy, unbothered adult children. The fact that Lydia wants to be an actress and is pursuing her dream is such a petty thing for Alice to be concerned about. But appearances seem to be what she and her ice queen older daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth–with the best resting bitch face ever), live for. I guess everyone in this family is supposed to be a big impressive SOMEBODY in Alice’s eyes (Anna’s too). Lydia leaves L.A. to live at home for the sake of the rest of the family, (who continue to thrive unencumbered.) It is the free-spirit daughter who copes the best, and is the better person out of all the Howland clan to help Alice transition into this new life.

Sadly, writer/director Richard Glatzer died from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) on March 10, 2015, a month after Julianne Moore won her Oscar under his direction. I will miss his creative voice after being first introduced to his work with his spouse and collaborative film partner Wash Westmoreland through the film Quinceañera. He and Westmoreland have a body of work to be proud of.

Still Alice was not an easy film to watch and process. The audience (and my mother) didn’t seem pleased with the ending. I heard people murmuring “That was it?” as we left. “I thought there would be more,” my mother said. There was nowhere for it to go really. And that was the point. Enjoy and love your family while they are still capable of knowing you. Then love and enjoy them when they forget. They are still themselves, trapped inside their minds, doing their best to not be frightened of the changes. It taught me to be thankful that my own mother, also named Alice, is still here with me, pushing her own mind to keep learning and growing.

Writer/Director Richard Glatzer (pictured in wheelchair) died recently under the loving care of his partner.

Professional raconteur and pop culture agitator, Lisa Bolekaja can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja or co-hosting on Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (Stitcher and Itunes). Her latest short story can be found in the SF anthology How to Survive on Other Planets: A Guide For Aspiring Aliens from Upper Rubber Boot Publications.