Movie Recommendation- Black and White
BLACK AND WHITE (1999)
It’s pretty clear that James Toback’s Black and White is supposed to be about the patronizing and unearned co-opting of hip-hop culture by over-privileged white youths. What it’s really about, though, is Toback’s own obsession with – even fetishization of – black people, which is plenty patronizing in its own right. This rambling film is filled with despicable white people and a number of black people, mostly men, who terrify them. As always with Toback, it boils down to his psychosexual hang-ups. Here, most white girls (and at least one white man) yearned to get fucked by black men and most white men, strive though they may, pale in comparison when it comes to raw, violent masculinity. Perhaps at this point, it doesn’t seem like I’m “recommending” this film but that’s because I’ve been glib in order to soften the blow of how weird and challenging this movie really is. If we are to take the view of art that it is a medium by which someone expresses their own inner truth then Black and White, even for how objectionable and clumsy it can be, deserves to be seen. It’s like the ramblings of an intelligent man who has been awake for days and has had his inhibitions eroded. It doesn’t always make sense and it doesn’t really come to any satisfactory conclusion. But it’s an almost unfiltered look at America in the year 1999 through the eyes of a weird and inspired guy.