Bequeathing viewing diversity to your kids

The movies that are sitting in my iTunes rental area at any given time are, by their very nature, a random collection. They typically represent a mixture of movies made available for 99 cents and those I've selected as part of some ongoing viewing project, plus maybe a title or two that I just want to see for my own reasons.

They do not, it goes without saying, reflect some kind of political agenda on my part, but I sure am glad when a positive political message arises from them.

This week I couldn't help notice my older son looking over my shoulder in iTunes as I was on my rental page. He didn't say anything, but his gaze seemed to linger on the titles in a moment of processing and acknowledgment. Those titles were Ran, The Third Wife, If Beale Street Could Talk, Chi-Raq and Shadow.

If you're scoring at home, those are three titles from Asia -- one each from Japan, Vietnam and China -- and two titles featuring predominantly African-American casts. The posters for Ran and Shadow were abstract enough that he wouldn't have known the difference, but the faces on the other three posters, and the color and look of those faces, were easy to see.

It's great to be able to tell your kids about diversity and champion it in the abstract, but it's even better to lead by example.

It was actually only the day before that he'd seen Dolemite is My Name paused on my computer, and asked about it. I explained that it was about the origins of raunchy comedy focused at an African-American audience. And though I think my son was a bit taken aback by the notion of raunchy comedy, he could see that it was something I valued. What's more, he could see I was watching this movie in the first place, of my own accord and own volition.

I would hope as time goes on, we are raising children who are inherently less racist than we were when we were that age, but it never hurts to buttress this with teachable moments. This week we also watched the (hilarious) video for Lil Nas X' "Old Town Road," at my son's behest, which was a good start. We explained a bit about why this video is so "important," because it is -- not only does it feature a black person using his music to try to promote understanding between traditionally divergent music fan bases, but that black person is also gay. Lil Nas X is like a walking, talking teachable moment. (We also praised the genius of Chris Rock, who appears in the video, and who is one of those comedians who benefited from the legacy of Dolemite's Rudy Ray Moore.)

But words pale in comparison to actions, and I love the fact that my son got to see that six of my upcoming viewings -- including Dolemite -- were movies by and about people of color.

I didn't put too fine a point on it, which was the key. If I'd said "Look, son, at how enlightened I am, watching all these movies about people who are different from me," it wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

Besides, the important part is how they are not, in essence, different from me. All film is about the human experience of life, and all humans experience life in ways that are relatably similar, even if those perspectives may seem different on the surface.

I think, or at least hope, that's what my son took away from my iTunes rental queue.

Dolemite is my name, shuffling devices is my game

Informal record time: Yesterday may be the most number of different devices on which I have ever watched the same movie.

I started Dolemite is My Name after getting home from work early, following a procedure on my frozen left shoulder designed to restore my full range of mobility. The procedure, called a hydrodilatation, was spoken about by my physiotherapist in hushed tones, always describing how painful it would be, which is probably why we hadn’t done it sooner. In truth, that was overblown. It hurt while they were injecting the anaesthetic, it hurt intensely for less than 30 seconds while they were expanding the shoulder joint with an injection of saline solution, but then I felt an incredible release in the joint and all the paint stopped. And the procedure was over. I had prepared myself for the possibility of the period of intense pain lasting for somewhere around 15 minutes. This was nothing like that.

Anyway, it’d be more than hour before the kids and their mother returned from swimming, so I holed myself up in the darkened bedroom by the fan and began watching this movie on my laptop.

When they got home, I had hoped to continue “being the patient,” but sprung into action when I could tell my wife was stressed from her day. Fact of the matter is, I’d already been preheating the oven for lasagna and then cooking said lasagna, so I was not in full “patient mode” anyway.

I entertained the kids with Mad Libs after dinner, giving my wife a break, before she kicked in with bedtime routines. A little tired after all, I slumped on the couch with my phone, away from the wing of the house where they were doing their thing. At first I thought I’d just check Facebook and email, but then remembered I have a Netflix app on my phone. So I fired up Dolemite again. That seeming easier than getting up and fetching my laptop from the other room. 

After about 15 minutes of holding a phone up in front of my face – and actually balancing it on the top of an empty can of kombucha I was holding, to make things slightly easier – I realized there was an easier option still. Namely, the TV that was sitting about eight feet to my left. So that’s where I resumed and finished this movie.

I write this post not so much because it’s such a post-worthy occurrence to watch a movie on three different devices, but largely to have an excuse to write about My Name is Dolemite. Easily Craig Brewer’s best film since Hustle & Flow, this movie is simply a delight – a paradoxical assessment, perhaps, because of how raunchy it can be. But this movie has heart oozing out of its every pore, and gets great performances from its cast of familiar, beloved faces, most notably Eddie Murphy. I think Murphy is always pretty good, but how nice to see Wesley Snipes back from the dead to deliver a really comedic performance as the movie star conscripted by Murphy’s Rudy Ray Moore to star in and direct Moore’s debut feature. You’ve also got Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Keegan Michael-Key, Ron Cephas Jones, Titus Burgess and any number of other compelling performers – I didn’t even mind a truly gangly Kodi Smit-McPhee in those awkward years between being a child and becoming an adult. The revelation, though, was Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the only significant female performer, who really impressed me with her blend of a larger than life persona and real vulnerability.

What was Eddie Murphy doing away from R-rated films for so long? He hadn’t made an R-rated film since 1999’s Life, and I forgot how much I missed hearing him say the word “motherfucker,” as in a scene where a broke Moore chastizes Epps’ character for ordering dessert on his dime. “You strawberry shortcake-eating motherfucker,” he shames Epps.

Dolemite is My Name can be broadly described as a biopic, but those parts are relatively limited in scope, and soon give over to a “making of” movie on his 1975 blaxploitation breakthrough, Dolemite. In that respect the movie is most similar to something like The Disaster Artist, but I found it even funnier and more satisfying. It’s the type of movie that puts good things into the world, and for that reason it brought me to the brink of becoming emotional more than once.

One of its funniest scenes was also one of its most poignant in a way. Celebrating a success related to Moore’s raunchy comedy albums, Moore and his entourage decide to take in a movie, hearing that the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau version of The Front Page is supposed to be hilarious. They sit their stone-faced as an audience full of white faces laugh it up.

There are a couple things that made me really appreciate this scene. For one, I had just recently watched the original version of The Front Page, and found myself similarly stone-faced about its charms. So I was laughing in this scene before the characters even did anything funny. The second thing is the expressions on the characters’ faces as they are genuinely puzzled about what these white people find so funny. There’s subtlety in their confusion, which occasionally releases itself through bigger reactions, timed perfectly. The really poignant part, though, is that there is a realization among the characters that the things they find funny are just not represented in mainstream movies. It’s not so much that these other white people in the audience are to blame; they’re just laughing at what mainstream entertainment has conditioned them to find funny. It’s that no one at a higher level has made an effort to truly reach out to an ever-more-sizeable percentage of their moviegoing public.

That Rudy Ray Moore challenged and ultimately helped correct that imbalance? It made Dolemite is My Name an inspiring viewing experience indeed.