Simien: Dear White People (2014)

Naturalism and realism are genres so fraught with white values and expectations that any effort to envisage a post-racial society also has to envisage a post-realist style as well. In some ways, that’s what Justin Simien sets out to do with Dear White People, a brilliant college ensemble drama that revolves around racial issues at a fictional Ivy League University, culminating with an “ironic blackface party” thrown for the benefit of an elite fraternity house. While the film, and its diverse cast of characters, is very much set in a realistic and recognisable world, director Justin Simien takes us through an enormous number of genres and styles, encompassing reality television, music video, silent film, radio broadcasting, vlogging and sketch shows in the first third alone. Connecting them all is a smooth, soulful, jazzy groove that’s more or less continuous, and alternately makes it feel like we’re bathed in a Civil Rights soundtrack – albeit with an anarchic, contemporary edge – or that we’re right in the midst of an early 90s Jazz Rap samplescape, gathering every diverse genre under the sign of signifyin’. However, while it is incredible that Simien never manages to lose his narrative thread, or his sense of place and situation, the overwhelming impression is still of a palimpsest, a composite realism that feels as if it’s continually shifting or dodging any style that might be considered realist per se, as Simien takes us on a picaresque tour of different African-American types, different degrees of passing for white or passing black, without settling into any single one for any length of time. Silky and sinuous in its transitions from one style to another, it often feels a bit like flipping from channel to channel, or platform to platform, lingering just long enough each time to revel in the visibility of each African-American character, but not long enough that they have time to devolve or solidify into the stereotypes that everyone in the film seems to be expecting from them. And that’s not to say, at all, that the film itself is free of stereotypes, but that it accepts their pervasiveness and turns its attentions to eluding them as rapidly and deftly as possible, until one of the least stereotypical African-American identities starts to emerge, hesitantly, hiding in plain sight – the queer African-American man, who’s not necessarily throwing shade or flamboyantly fabulous, but just trying to make do as best he can. In fact, by the end, queer blackness feels a bit like an ensemble identity, a combination of every line of flight taken by these characters, and a culmination of everything that's unique about Simien's take on ensemble drama as well. As a result, the film feels as indebted to Marlon Riggs as to Spike Lee - Simien himself came out at the premiere - while original and momentous enough to be independent of both. Certainly, all the white characters are horrible, but the film finally feels like a bit of an experiment in making white people feel as exotic, freakish and cartoonish as African-Americans are usually presented in mainstream culture, right down to the mock-Tenenbaums veneer laid over it all, which brilliantly pinpoints and skewers Wes Anderson as white culture’s answer to Tyler Perry, a purveyor of stock characters every bit as ludicrous and caricatured as Madea.