Its really damn funny.
Perhaps you didnt see the movie version ofDear White People.
Released in 2014, the low budget indie and Sundance darling grossed $4.5 million, a profitable sum.
Credit: Netflix
(Among the few things that unite them, theres Defamation, Simiens nasty parody of ABCsScandal.
Its a weekly hate-watch event at the AP House.)
Holding the center is Samantha White (an excellent Logan Browning), an Army jacket-clad media studies major.
Exasperated by the racism, ignorance and dim, demeaning attitudes of her white classmates (You like Beyonce!
Storm from The X-Men!
Wait what are you?
), Sam has embarked on a mission to enlighten her campus with a combative radio program.
Sample advice, dripping with deliberate, cutting condescension: Dear White People, heres a little tip.
When you ask someone who looks ethnically different What are you?
the answer is usually: A person who is about to slap the st out of you.
Shes polarizing, even an outsider, among her black peers.
Sam is of mixed race and marked by complexities that get tagged as hypocrisies, perhaps unfairly.
The girls began to drift; the police shooting of an unarmed black kid makes national news.
Sam, raised in the suburbs, is shocked and catalyzed to activism.
(Responds Sam: Dear White People, here are a list of acceptable Halloween costumes.
A pirate, slutty nurse, any of our first 43 presidents.
Top of the list of unacceptable costumes?
Dear White Peoplegives you an abundance of characters to care about and entertains with its inspired, hilarious storytelling.
Simien keeps and hones the heightened reality style of his film.
The meticulous compositions and meta-awareness are reminiscent of the Coen brothers and Spike Lee.
His politically-aware, pop-soaked dialogue is amped-up, approaching the dense, warp speed banter ofGilmore Girls.
Suck it, Reagan, Im still here!
The writers and directors that follow Simien sustain the aesthetic and even improve upon it.
Jenkins handles the mix of tines with confidence and subtlety.
