The role I can play in making things better

The past three weeks have been a time of real contemplation for thinking people. I define "thinking people" as those who realize the world has a problem with racism, and that it's time to do something about it. Oh, the rest of you may have brains that function, technically speaking, but I don't think you are really using them if you want things just to go back to the way they were, or worse yet, actively oppose efforts to raise up people of color and treat them with the kind of respect you would expect for yourself.

The contemplation is not around whether things can change, but how, and more importantly, how I myself can make that change.

Many of us have been guilty for too long of thinking that just by not being racist, we are doing our part. Sure, it's good to vote for candidates who will increase opportunities for minorities rather than limit them, and to walk around the world in a way that makes things better for such people rather than worse. But only doing the bare minimum, and congratulating yourself for doing that, is a type of privilege that we can now all recognize as problematic.

We can and should educate ourselves by reading the articles on social media that our friends post, by attending rallies, by making donations. Those things are all good, and they are all things that we all can do.

But today I want to focus on what I specifically, using the platforms available to me, can do.

Before I get into that, I want to say that I'm sorry I have not written about this earlier on this blog. I did touch on my feelings at the start of the month, when the justified outrage couldn't be contained to only peaceful protests and there were incidences of looting. It already feels like a long time ago that we were getting new video footage of police using heinous methods to control crowds. In fact, I'm almost a bit behind now as trans rights have temporarily taken the majority of headlines. (I'm actually planning to review a documentary that considers depictions of trans people on film, Disclosure, that drops on Netflix later this week.)

If I have not returned to the subject sooner, well, now you have some information on why. You now know that my mom was dying.

Because I'm not ready to return to frivolous posting on this blog quite yet, now is the time to speak up about the change I intend to make in the world. It's a change I have already been making for some time, and will continue to explore.

I need to back up again, though.

I live in Australia, a country that does some things very well (hey! almost no coronavirus!) and some things very poorly (hey! stealing indigenous children from their families to be raised in white families as recently as the 1970s!). Although the legacy of treatment of indigenous people is very bad, at least the government is doing something about it now. Before any public gathering -- I mean, any -- an organizer will give thanks to the traditional owners of the land on which the event occurs. The government has also made various formal apologies over the years.

Of course, that does not mean racism no longer exists in Australia. Ha. As if.

Since this is a film blog, today I want to talk about a form of racism that relates to the movie industry, and sad to say, is borne out of commercial practicality.

Of the films made by and starring people of color in the U.S., only a small percentage of them are released in theaters here. That's maybe 20 percent. So while we do get mainstream movies like What Men Want from last year, as well as most movies that explore the minority experience through an independent lens, I don't think a Madea movie has been released here in ages, if ever. The handful per year of black-focused romantic comedies with lesser known casts never see the light of day either. They may pop up on video, but a theatrical window is almost unheard of.

This has always saddened me. But at the same time, if these movies are not selling tickets, then you can understand why a distributor would not book a theatrical run for them. This is a business, and it hasn't been the position of a distributor -- though I hope this might change -- to book a movie just for the optics of it, knowing it will be a financial loser.

Now, that does not mean that Australian audiences do not want to watch movies about the experience of people with brown-colored skin. Any given year, there are a handful of movies that come out that document the experience of indigenous Australians, and many people I know make it a point to see those movies. Good on them.

But it still saddens me that certain types of American-focused films will play here -- in other words, those starring whites -- while certain others will not.

As a film critic, I'm not having any of it. And I have not been having any of it for years now.

As I now run the site I write for, ReelGood, I am now thinking as an editor as well as a critic. And thinking as an editor means running content that you believe will be relevant to your audience. It's running content that will increase clicks and eyeballs, rather than being content without much social media engagement just because it's the right thing to do or you are making a particular stance.

But that hasn't stopped me from continuing to write reviews of as many African American-centric films as I can. Whether or not my imagined audience of Australian hipsters have grown up on such movies, I have used the space available to me to show them that they should care about them, even if they don't.

Before I go too much further, I should point out that I'm not asking you to give me a medal here. I'm not some civil rights hero. I'm just trying to do my part, within my range of reasonable influence, and posting about it is my way of letting you know, and making you think about these issues too. And I'm not saying I couldn't do it better in the future, because I think I can. We all have room for improvement.

So dating back to when I reviewed movies for AllMovie from 2000 to 2011, I tried to get to as many movies made by and for African-Americans as I could. I guess I've always thought that these movies were a tad under-served by a film-reviewing establishment that was composed largely of white men. Especially in instances where people were fighting to review the movies they thought spoke to them most, movies made by and starring Tyler Perry got the short shrift.

For the better part of 20 years, I have been trying to be the exception to that rule.

Again not looking for a pat on the back. But this year alone I have reviewed a large number of movies aimed at African-American audiences, and in a sense, the pandemic has helped with this. The pandemic has pushed me to Netflix for most of the new movies I've reviewed, where I don't worry about whether these movies are getting released in Australian cinemas. They're getting released on Netflix, which means Netflix is endorsing that their audiences, everywhere, should see these movies. And I'm trying to do that too.

I thought about listing them, but I'm not going to do that. It's like listing all your black friends. Ick.

Now, there is a flip side to this. You still have to be a critic. You still have to say a movie is not good if it is not good. And I will never sacrifice my critical integrity, at least not knowingly. It pained me to admit that All Day and a Night, directed by the co-writer of Black Panther, was only a 5 out of 10. But admit it I did.

The thing is, allowing a movie made by and for African-Americans to be judged as you would judge any other film is the type of equality we need to fight for. It may seem better to follow the childhood wisdom "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," and just leave the movie unreviewed. But is that really promoting equality? I think not. I think it's the film criticism equivalent of the "magical negro" and other well-meaning but ultimately heinous portrayals of minorities on film.

The key, I've discovered, is that if you do have something bad to say, say it with fairness, not with snark. I can understand any criticism a person has of a movie if they are respectful in that criticism. And though it's sometimes fun to write a snarky review, when the movie really deserves it, maybe that's not as valuable a form of criticism as we might think. Maybe the lesson is to be a bit more fair toward all films, so that your behavior toward minority-made does not stand out as tokenism.

I think some critics are afraid to review black films because they aren't willing to compromise their integrity, but are worried that they will dislike a disproportionate number of those films that they watch. And then, having to admit their feelings, they will look like someone who doesn't understand the black experience at best, or is racist at worst.

But you know what? Maybe we don't understand the black experience as well as we should. I mean, definitely we don't. Maybe watching more of these movies is a first step toward doing that. After all, Roger Ebert called movies a machine for generating empathy. When, if not now, has that been a more important function?

And you know what again? Having watched a good percentage of the movies aimed at African-American audiences over the years, I've learned that I am not significantly more likely to dislike a film made by a black director than one made by a white one. I hope that's obvious, but this is a time where even obvious things need to be said. We may have this perception that the film is not going to be as good because the black creative team does not have the finances or the experience that their privileged white counterparts have, which is of course true and part of the problem to begin with. But by watching and promoting the films when they are good, we can help bring the quality of the work to the collective attention of those who control the purse strings and the opportunities.

And even if you don't like a movie, there are ways to say that tastefully and tactfully, and maybe focus on the things you do like. Again, it's about respect. We don't have to focus on the failures of a particular film. We can focus on the promise the artist shows for the next one.

Reviewing Da 5 Bloods is not one of those instances of going out on a limb for an unknown black director whose work should be seen. Spike Lee has been directing for nearly four decades and is universally acknowledged to be an important voice in cinema, whether you gravitate toward his films or not.

But I include the poster for Da 5 Bloods because it is yet another film in this weird 2020 that has come out just at a time where its themes speak to our current moment, and need to be heard. I reviewed it just as I reviewed Prentice Penny's film Uncorked a couple months ago, and just as I will review the work of the next black director whose film hits Netflix or, God willing, maybe even an Australian theater.

Black lives matter, black voices need to be heard, and I'm going to continue trying to do right by both of them.