FILMS: Dear White People, The Skin Game

Go ahead, white people, try making funnies about blacks.  Or maybe not.  My working principle is to only make fun of my own stuff, though these days white female old lady jokes aren't even safe, because then people try to make me feel better because because I'm old. Then I can't own my own age after all.  They don't want to think about their own futures.

I once discussed with a black friend how a white person can work for racial equality without blundering.  Her advice, was, "just keep trying, dear,though you may be misunderstood".  Wise words. Maybe someday I'll get it right.  

In the meantime, I go to PC movies for etiquette coaching, and some that aren't so I can actually laugh. 

A wise friend, a southerner whose special area is Faulkner, once chatted with me about "permission to laugh" at stereotypes, whether those of black comedians satirizing black cultural behaviors, or whites laughing at them.  He advised that we should, because it's just another PC trap not to. It's all in the level of awareness, as I understand his point.

It's a very timely issue - consider the removal of a scene from The Death of Klinghoffer portraying a New York Jewish family scene which evidently had stereotypical Jewish types in it.  Not going to be caught laughing during this opera, no sir!

By the way, this film has a smart, really funny musical score - lots of clichéd masterpieces that stand for the boring, materialistic yet well-intentionededucational institution.  (One time at a party on the East Coast I heard two old guys discussing the size of their schools' endowments - each mentioned sums in the millions of dollars, but it was definitely a "mine is bigger than yours" conversation.)

I liked Dear White People a lot.  Yes, students actually do have racist-themed parties; I found six listed on the web, not all black.  Equal op racism. I'm almost more disappointed with the privileged college fun scene portrayed. Where is the intellectual journey part? It's the back story, you make it out in the distance, as the literary "cuties" try to out-do each other with clever party themes, pretentious literary magazines and blogs.

Skin Game, a comedy western (1971) with a young Lou Gossett and James Garner, is surprising.  Lou Gossett is a free black pretending to be a slave as partner in a con with Garner.  The "n" word is used casually and frequently, racism is presented in all its ugliness, and Gossett fakes black southern slave dialect, and we'd call his acting "coding" his behavior to suit his surroundings - all very non-PC, but the comedy gets away with it, despite my raised eyebrows. It's naiveté and date seem to have slipped it by the PC police.  

In a plantation scene, Gossett's character discovers Songhai Africans kept in the barn as cowboys.  They speak no English, and Gossett, who has pretended to speak an African dialect in an earlier scene, makes up words until after a few missteps, he hits on words they understand, and all become fast friends.  It's such rich send up of fake dialect.

The film does include chains, a whipping scene, slave auctions, the Kansas slave/free vote, and in the framework of the comedy, is very hard-edged and unpleasant to watch - who thought this was ever funny? (Despite my earlier statements about comedy, I still have my limits.)

All the folks Garner cons seem to richly deserve it, rationalizing the deceit,and Garner is a good guy when prevailed upon.