Diversity Without Pity #30: An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

[responsivevoice_button voice=”UK English Female” buttontext=”Listen to Post”]

For the past several years when a critically-acclaimed movie with a predominantly-Black cast comes out inevitably someone, often a White, liberal-leaning person wants to talk to me about it. I’m starting to call it Big Important Black Movie Season:

Have you seen The Butler?

Have you seen Fruitvale Station?

Have you seen 12 Years A Slave?

Have you seen Selma?

Have you seen Hidden Figures?

Have you seen Fences?

Have you seen Moonlight?

Have you seen Get Out?

The answers to most of these are yes, but that’s not the point. I get that people want to engage me in what they believe is a meaningful subject matter: Being Black. And a naive part of me wants to believe some are movie buffs like me and are truly interested in beautiful storytelling. But their approach — whether they are aware of it or not — serves as a way to determine the circumstances under which I am going to talk about my Black experience. It’s always on their terms. I know because when I respond,

No. Have you seen Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench?

No. Have you seen Beyond the Lights?

No. Have you seen Magic Mike XXL?

No. Have you heard of Kuso, Flying Lotus’ trippy new indie flick?

Each of those movies presents a very different experience of being Black in the world that I find just as important as Oscar-winning Big Important Black Movies. But when I get that deer-in-the-headlights look, it indicates not of simple ignorance because they’ve never heard of these works. Google is free and so is IMDb. It’s that time-tested failure to acknowledge that maybe not all Black people want a conversation about their experiences on someone else’s terms. When not even our own thoughts on art and culture are not up to us to discuss it’s a form of White supremacy, in case you weren’t sure.

Ostensibly, I began to write DWP as a way to document media that uses smart design and considered the diversity of its casts. The goals were and continue to be a catalog of great design as a vehicle to move culture. And in the tradition of great culture writers, speak universally while maintaining my own voice. But if I’m being honest, I really wanted to create a space in which I determined what my Blackness is. It is layered, diasporic, and international. Sometimes I look at being Black through the lens of being a nonwhite person in the world as well as what it means to be of African descent. Sometimes I look at being White, heterosexual male. Sometimes, it celebrates work that would normally get lost in history like Bad Company or Sapphire. Other times it celebrates well-known works like Do The Right Thing, just to keep it part of the contemporary conversation. Eventually, I want to get into diversity based on political ideology, disability, language, age, nationality… there are numerous ways to intersect this work. But what I also want to do is say no one — especially Black people — is morally obligated to see every Big Important Black Movie to find art that you love.

This brings me to An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.

Directed and starring newcomer Terence Nance, the movie tells (and retells) the story of a young man simply wanting to meet a woman. But as it continues, it becomes an examination of the main characters emotional vulnerability toward being (possibly) rejected or truly loved for who he is. I won’t give away the juiciest parts, but An Oversimplification of Her Beauty possesses all the meta qualities of a Charlie Kaufmann screenplay, with the poetic expressiveness of a Michel Gondry film. It utilizes various illustrators and animation techniques such as rotoscoping and stop-motion, an approach that director Richard Linklater similarly used for Waking Life. It was co-produced by, among others, writer and activist dream hampton and hip-hop icon Jay-Z. This movie married all the things I love about creative personal expression and was financially-backed by some heavy-hitters. Yet, when I bring it up, almost no one knows what I’m talking about.

Some Black folks have a bad habit of telling other Black folks what movies they should go see, instead of movies they want to see. My beef is not with Black audiences. It’s with White audiences; namely White critics or critics of color with larger (re: Whiter) platforms. Reviews for An Oversimplification were good but never made it to anyone’s Best-of lists. These critics are the same people who hold a lot of influence on the long-term relevance of “great” movies. The same people who’ll see films like this, hold them to another standard, then ignore them while eventually putting Inherent Vice, Dogville, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Her — movies that are equally demanding, complex, self-indulgent, but grow on you over time — in their Best-of Lists.

And you may even argue the title is too long. But The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford just made The 21st Century’s 100 Greatest Films, a movie almost no one saw, most didn’t like at its release, and also bears a painfully long name.

My case for making critically-acclaimed indie-darling lists isn’t an economic one. It’s a human one. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty affords us an experience of love that is both universal and specific. Everyone knows the anxiety of not knowing if the one they love will love them back. And, yet, having that very real human experience in all its Afro’d, gap-toothed, brown-skinned beauty still matters. But the thought that I’d need to make a case for its importance, rather than White audiences and critics figuring it out for themselves, speaks to their weaknesses that I alone cannot fix.

Diversity Without Pity is a blog series from IDSL, highlighting media that uses smart design, and considers the diversity of it’s casting without selling the viewer or consumer, short.