Here, at the literal End of the West ... Watch as Excepter descends the great stair down to Sand Dollar beach, armed only with a flute and a small bag of percussion. Listen as Excepter walks on Morro Bay to the dread beat of the setting Sun. See Excepter dressed head-to-toe in black in the noon-day heat on a nudist beach (Parental Guidance Suggested). Feel the hostile surf continuously lash the last soundclash.
"Rodgers' & Hammerstein's Cinderella" wasn’t just a fairytale, it's a Black girl's fairytale. It was a fantasy world where the undeniable beauty of Black girls and Women was celebrated and beloved.
The Slumber Party Massacre wonderfully combines the suspense of its horror with its commentary on gender, creating a memorable slasher classic that began a horror trilogy entirely written and directed by women.
One Night in Miami... did not frame the racism and bigotry as something that could be solved by quality time spent between individuals. Instead, it featured four different legends of Black History together in one room disagreeing for about 2/3 of the film.
Two Distant Strangers (2020) centers around Carter James (Joey Bada$$) as he tries to get back home to his pitbull, Jeter, after spending a night at the apartment of his date Perri (Zaria Simone). What gets in the way of Carter reuniting with his dog is that every time he tries to leave Perri’s apartment, he is killed by police and wakes up back in her bed in a never-ending cycle. It addresses the issue of police brutality which rightly has been in the public eye more and more with the unjust deaths caused at the hands of law enforcement.
White audiences saw Peola’s mixed-race passing as a Black woman’s struggle to be white. Black audiences saw it as the rebellion of a Black woman trying to gain privileges only given to white people.
I think these messages and the way they are presented in this small-town in Texas are increasingly more important as the internet/ social media becomes more and more critical and judgemental every day. Love yourself today and every day because as Ru Paul always says: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?”
