La Ron S. Readus
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Are You Black Enough for The Blackening? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2023-08-02 20:00:53 +0000 UTCThis video is sponsored by BetterHelp.com
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Depending on the type of person you are, this little bit of trivia may or may not surprise you.
Some of y’all will probably go “Really? I know you were excited about it, but damn!” While others might go “...No, yeah; that hella tracks, actually.”
The trivia in question? The first movie I saw in theaters in the year 2023 was M3GAN.
This is important, because walking to the theater when I went to go see it on its opening weekend in January, was when I see THIS movie poster for the first time
And my interest was peaked IMMEDIATELY
Now I had seen the original 3Peat sketch for The Blackening quite a while ago and thought it was hilarious. And after doing my research and realizing that this was going to be a feature-length version of it -- especially after seeing the trailer for it -- I was immediately on board.
A comedy horror that was more on the comedy side, starring, directed and written by black folk, that actually allowed us to be our genuine selves while also giving us the room to properly critique and poke fun at the decisions a lot of the pale protagonists in traditional horror films would make? It was satire that was right up my alley, and I couldn’t wait to see when it came out!
The irony was that I was actually FORCED to see it later on, because I no longer had my car.
But when I tell you the moment The Blackening made itself available on digital, I watched it as soon as possible
And while I found it just as funny as I expected it to be -- partially thanks to it having an ensemble of black characters that consciously knew NOT to investigate the strange noise that just occurred outside -- the commentary it was making with its satire was biting enough to get me to lay back on my couch after the killer was revealed and go...
Damn. I wish this took itself more seriously. And here’s why I said that. Let’s begin
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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
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Here’s the thing about satire...
There are peeps who tend to get it confused with parody-slash-spoof films.
Parodies and Spoofs are mostly known for being deliberate exaggerations of things to comedic effect. The most common examples in film and music are respectively the Scary Movie franchise and pretty much everything in Weird Al Yankovic’s discography.
Satire, however, uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize vices; behavior that some can see as self-destructive.
In the case of The Blackening, it’s definitely more satire than parody. While there are tropes present in its story that are pretty common when it comes to the horror genre, nothing about them is being overly exaggerated like in the Naked Gun films, or being blatant copies of films that are played up for laughs like the Scary Movie franchise.
Like, just because the movie takes place in a cabin in the woods doesn’t mean we’re gonna be getting a highly exaggerated comedic version of The Evil Dead with black folk.
/The reason why The Blackening is more satire than parody in this case, is because the entire basis of its original story with familiar horror tropes, is using humor to provide criticism of a specific vice; mainly how we as black folk police blackness within our own community./
While we get a chance to see aspects of black American culture that this group of friends share among themselves...
/Specifically in exaggerated ways that highlight the truth of the tropes with comedy/ (bitches, I see y’all exchanging looks. What y’all shitty-asses hiding? Nothing)
There’s at least one instance with almost every character in the main ensemble over the course of the movie that kinda contradicts and goes against what can be seen as the general parameters of blackness in real life.
Allison’s blackness is contested due to her being mixed with a white father (white people scare me. But your daddy is white. Exactly)
King’s blackness is contested because he’s married to a white woman (she ain’t white-white. She ethnic white)
Shanika debunks the popular stereotype of black folk not knowing how to swim when the group splits up and she has to show off her training in order to try and find help. (Okay, I’mma swim across. They wont suspect it. They probably assume we can’t swim anyway. They be assuming right, cuz I can’t. Wow. Way to be a fucking stereotype)
Lisa and Nnamdi’s actions aren’t necessarily foreign to some people’s definition of blackness, but it’s still a negative reflection of it.
/Specifically Lisa tending to take advantage of her friendship with Dewayne as the stereotypical “gay bff” whenever she got her heart broken by Nnamdi’s just as stereotypical fuckboy antics of the past/ (this time’s different)
/And let’s not forget that every one of the core group admitted to watching at least one episode of Friends in their lifetime./ (The correct answer was, “I don’t know. I don’t watch that show. I watch Living Single)
Then we get to Clifton; the weird outsider and the mastermind behind the Juneteenth crisis.
While everyone else’s examples of how they individually contradict aspects of blackness both before and during the situation was treated passively among others when it was noticed...
It’s the way the lot of them treated him during their college days 10 years ago that prompted everything when he was seeking community among other black folk
/And the hypocrisy that spawned from him not knowing how to play Spades and making a “simple mistake” as a result that caused a specific type of alienation/ (A mistake that you all couldn’t let go. You turned it into some ultimatum about how black I was. And you laughed at me and attacked me about my blackness)
This is why The Blackening counts more as satire despite having traces of parody in its DNA. While it’s still a comedy, the movie addresses the preconceived notions about how we African Americans have the tendency to deny community to fellow individuals who don’t tick all the boxes on the proverbial checklist of blackness, all while highlighting that those who gatekeep it don’t have them all checked either.
And the critique is both stronger and more validated because it’s being made by fellow black folk in the form of the film’s writers; Tracy Oliver, writer of Girls Trip, and Dewayne Perkins -- playing a more exaggerated version of himself in the movie -- who more than likely experienced this isolation and alienation from members of said community in the form of homophobia due to him being gay, just like his Blackening counterpart.
Because black liberation can never truly exist as long as we continue to hold on to the colonizer’s weapons of queerphobia, transphobia and misogynoir.
What’s funny is that as I was dwelling on this once it was clear to me what The Blackening was commenting on in its satire, I couldn’t help but ask myself this question in wonder:
Where Have I Seen This Before?
While it isn’t EXACTLY the same, there are moments that made me reminisce about another satirical comedy that’s also centered around American blackness, and who has the right to say if someone should have access to it.
/2002’s Undercover Brother/ (solid)
Content warning for Dave Chappelle, despite this being before he got jacked and coincidentally became friends with white billionaires who have personal issues with trans women.
/The character, played by Eddie Griffith, was rooted in 1970’s blackness in everything from his drip, to his ride, to his home decor and initial personality, throwing off everyone he regularly encountered -- white and black alike -- during the early years of the 21st Century./
And thanks to his Robin Hood complex for the sole purpose of redistributing wealth from the white-led multinational corporation -- the film’s main adversary rightfully called “The Man” -- to low-income black families and neighborhoods, the film was 13-year-old me’s introduction to socialism without knowing it was actually socialism.
Then when UB joined the BROTHERHOOD -- the African American intelligence agency that dedicated itself to thwart The Man’s schemes...
He had to go deep undercover in said corporation in order to find a prominent black figure who was being mind-controlled out of running for president. For the youngin’s out there, this movie was made before Barack Obama was elected.
/And Undercover Brother did so under the guise of the “respectable” black marketing agent designed to be a token minority to infiltrate white spaces/ (Jackson. Antoine Jackson. And no, not a member of the Jackson 5)
But, as you’d imagine, The Man eventually caught on and helped keep UB’s Antoine Jackson’s persona in tact to keep him out of the way by giving him proximity to whiteness
/And to help make sure that proximity wasn’t severed, The Man assigned his best agent to UB, White She-Devil, brilliantly played by Denise Richards, whom I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw again/
It was these multiple aspects of the movie’s satire commenting on what happens when black folk try and integrate themselves with white folk, mostly in the form of showing what happens when one is allowed to simply graze the concept of whiteness despite never being able to fully grasp it...
And playing into the trope of cishet black men seeking female companionship from a cishet white woman the moment they get an inkling of success...
/Undercover Brother is considered a sellout by members of the BROTHERHOOD thanks to the tokenness of his Antoine persona, and how willing he was to get lost in the persona after the initial rejection and alienation from someone he initially cared for./ (Perhaps we’re all sold out)
But soon it got to the point where Sistah Girl, one of the BROTHERHOOD’s best agents before UB came on the scene, and also one that initially judged him for being a walking talking cutout of a black man from the 70’s in the year 2002...
/Noticed that while him being lost in the Antoine Jackson persona was part of The Man’s plan to keep him out of the way, how others have been looking at UB since he got lost in Antoine was how she was looking at his genuine self./
This prompted her to, thanks to UB’s past displays of personal identity and pride, reexamine and reevaluate who she was in order to get the courage to affirm her own personal blackness. That way she could properly pull UB out of the at-the-time unnamed Sunken Place and help him reconnect with his own via reminding him of his own personal code.
/This was why it was incredibly important when showing up to White She-Devil’s home to save him, she said/ (Oh I don’t judge people by how they dress, or what music they listen to. But I remember a brotha that wasn’t afraid to be himself. Who taught me to follow my own funky path)
The only difference between Undercover Brother and Clifton in The Blackening however, is that while UB began to lose his affirmation to his sense of blackness when those in his circle began to accuse him of abandoning it, that never happened with Clifton. Just like with those he had a vendetta against in the film, Clifton was always personally affirmed in his blackness despite not properly knowing how to play Spades.
/Not only was this proven in the black trivia he forced the group to answer for the board game that he clearly knew the answers to.../ (recite the second verse in the Black National Anthem)
/But also in the fact that he was just as capable of understanding Lisa, Nnamdi and Dewayne’s silent conversation they were trying to have in front of him. Only attempting to do so because they instinctually thought that he wasn’t black enough to be able to hear it./ (Wait. Did you hear all of that? Yes motherfucker, I did. You dun fucked up now)
That’s also part of the reason why I believe Clifton only said he voted for Trump twice because he knew they’d vote him off if he did.
Because just like Clifton has shown -- as well as the others that were showcased in the movie -- there are multiple ways black folk can personally affirm to their own sense of blackness without subscribing to the myth that it’s monolithic, and have.
Y’know, without having to kill anyone to prove it.
Just like when Lisa said it to Clifton during the Spades incident 10 years prior to the movie, I’ve had members of my immediate family ask me to turn in my “Black Card” for not meeting their standards of blackness plenty of times. For instance, like Clifton, I don’t know how to play Spades. OR Dominos
/And also like Clifton, I had friends and family that never even bothered to teach me/ (you can sit on the sideline, you can watch. If you learn, cool. If not...)
Others, like a few of my black friends, were into skateboarding and other things that were branded as “white people shit” and were looked at funny by their black peers because of it. It wasn’t until Lupe Fiasco entered the scene that those who classified at least the likes of skateboarding as such stopped doing so.
Hell, the same can be said about our presence and fandom in things that we as a people initially founded but was appropriated to the point of whiteness being the face of it, such as rock and alternative rock music.
A lot of peeps didn’t know how much of a black presence there was in Punk Rock until they saw Hobie in Across the Spider-Verse, and it shows. And if you want a video that shows said presence, I highly suggest you watch Lil’ Bill’s video he made on the subject after this.
Most of those individuals who were casting judgment on others like Clifton regarding another individuals’ level of blackness, had their own meters that matched the levels of the Cliftons that they were judging in one way or another. And the fact that this isn’t even the first satirical comedy starring, written and directed by Black Americans highlighting Black American culture to critique this aspect of it -- direct or indirect -- shows how much of a problem this level of alienation is in our own communities.
And considering the interesting route that the satire of The Blackening decided to tackle this problem, made me wish after I had finished watching it that the take of this premise wasn’t made initially for laughs; that it was taken more in the direction of a thriller that took itself a bit more seriously so that there were more ways it could be explored and fleshed out among the narrative.
But I know that not everything can be a Jordan Peele film. And I also know that when it comes to this type of alienation...
One should keep this in mind
Just because addressing the alienation one feels when others question their blackness is important, does not mean that all skinfolk are kinfolk.
It’s important to realize that because of what America was founded on, the alienation one feels upon not being deemed black enough can push those into seeking the acceptance of whiteness via tokenism, or just use the separation to justify their internalized racism in their journey to be in proximity to whiteness.
I should know. Through my Baby Boomer upbringing, my lack of street smarts and eventually my queerness, I spent my mid to late teenage years both seeking white acceptance and isolating myself from most of my black peers because I felt I didn’t belong; that I was better off without them.
It didn’t take me long for me to realize that I was in my own sunken place, however. And I was able to pull myself out of it before it was too late and learn to both love myself and my people again. But I personally can’t say the same for those who personally still seek it.
As both history and personal experiences have taught us, there are still people in existence who refuse to see the warning signs that they're too deep in the tokenism of the Antoine Jackson persona because they KINDA have an idea of what whiteness feels like.
No matter how many times they have to deal with white folk freely saying both the light and hard “R” around them because said white folks know they can get away with saying it in front of them.
Or making sure that they’re the only black person in the room, circuit party, business meeting, etcetera.
Or even denying others that look like them the same opportunities in life that got them to where they are just because they got theirs first.
/It’ll get to the point where they’re gonna have to come to the realization on their own because nobody no longer has the patience to help show them otherwise./
Conclusion
Was Clifton too far gone by the time The Blackening happened? Was he one pair of light blue eye contacts away from giving up on black folks?
Well, I can’t necessarily say that considering how excited he initially was to be with peeps that looked like him 10 years prior and how easily rooted in his own blackness the film constantly displayed himself to be.
If anything, it just REALLY helped me confirm that he only said that shit about voting for Trump twice because he knew that he’d get voted out of the safe room because of it.
Trust me, I’ve watched enough Scream movies to see when the killer is trying to do something to separate themselves from the group and put their plans into motion.
But that’s just another reason why I’d love to get a treatment of this plot that’s taken a bit more seriously and does a bit more exploration and development with its characters.
/But if The Blackening is all we get for now, I’m definitely glad it exists./
Even though I, personally, would’ve IMMEDIATELY drove my black ass back home after seeing that the getaway was in a cabin in the woods.
But I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section what you thought of The Blackening if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, what movie or television show you’ve recently seen that you feel does a good job at tackling the topic of one being alienated from their own community despite desperately seeing a connection to it, satire or otherwise.
No, Killmonger from Black Panther doesn’t count; I’m SO tired of that whole-ass Hotep being used as an example when he’s clearly both a product and a weapon of white supremacy.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts
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Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
