Detroit

Since its limited release, the movie Detroit, directed by white female Kathryn Bigelow, has received mixed reviews. The critics love it; viewers (Black viewers) mostly don’t. Not that it’s badly made, I don’t think. But there is, as there always is when “Black stories” are told from a white lens, some backlash. The amount of violence, the brutality which the Black characters are treated, understandably causes some anxiety. I have read several accounts written by Black men and women, who were moved to tears or had to leave the theater midway through the movie or who felt assaulted themselves as a result of staying through the movie. And I understand it. As a white female, the movie was tough for me to watch. And I don’t have the generations of mistreatment (to put it mildly) nor personal experiences that I have to struggle with. So I get the backlash.

My intention here is not to criticize those who feel this story should not be told from a white lens. My intention here is to ask some questions and make some observations with respect as I do not want to hurt or offend anyone.

The first thing that I noticed in the film was that the background leading to the riots felt, IMO, very glossed over. There were images with a little text that tried to set the stage, but it felt entirely too little, too generalized and too incomplete. I have to wonder if the “white lens” is part of the problem here. Showing harsh images and explaining that predominantly Black neighborhoods were policed by aggressive white officers and it created tension seems a tad underwhelming. Also: the opening scene where there was a police bust of an after-hours club seemed to be the fuse that lit the riots, but that whole scene to me was confusing.

Be that as it may, I thought there were areas of the story that were not well-told. The Black security guard (Melvin Dismukes) introduced himself to some of the National Guard, yet when all hell broke loose and he showed up at the Algiers, the cops didn’t blink. Here’s a Black man with weapons and they don’t even give him a second look? No suspicion?

In addition, afterwards, when Julie identified the officers who beat her and killed her friends, she included Dismukes in the identification… even though it was he and one of the National Guards who got her out of the hotel. What the hell was THAT? No explanation. No recant. Nothing. Maybe that’s how it really went down, but she was beyond angry at what was happening and I don’t see her falsely accusing Dismukes. Not to say that she wasn’t just mistaken from the trauma of the experience but it was never addressed.

To be perfectly honest, how and why Dismukes was even lumped in with the police who actually beat, tortured and murdered those kids is beyond me. He never raised a finger, and in fact made every effort to try to de-escalate.

The one thing that ran through my mind throughout the movie was “nothing’s changed”. Meaning here we had a group of police officers who shot and killed a looter as he ran away from them, despite a “no shoot” order. When confronted, the officer lied about it and went right back into a highly antagonized scene. We saw him shoot another Black man in the back, then drop a knife so that he could claim that he feared for his life, and it was a justified shooting. It wasn’t. We see that shit today.

We see officers on trial for their murderous behavior, and yet it’s the Black men that they beat and tortured who were basically put on trial. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been doing anything criminal… did you ever get arrested? How many times? How many nights in jail did you spend?

Acquittals on all charges… of course. Isn’t that what we see every time?

This shit is STILL happening.

One of the biggest criticisms I hear is the brutality that is portrayed. And brutality is putting it mildly. And here’s where I get a little confused. If this had been a Spike Lee or John Singleton or Ava Du Vernay film, would there be the same reaction? Many times, when a “Black story” is told from a white lens, the criticism is that the reality of the situation is softened. That the white director eases up on certain things to make it more palatable to white audiences. That’s not the case here.

I didn’t find there to be gratuitous violence here. If anything, the scene where Julie’s dress is ripped off, leaving her completely naked, may have been gratuitous. But then again, sometimes violence can be portrayed without the shock value. So maybe there is some validity in that criticism. Regardless, considering that the vast majority of Black Americans have either personally had a violent experience with police, I can understand that those scenes will absolutely affect them differently than they do me. And if I had to avert my eyes, and had the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and literally lost my breath, and was brought to tears… well, that’s nothing in comparison. So gratuitous? I don’t think so but was it necessary? Maybe not.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if the backlash is strictly about race. I understand the need for stories to be told authentically. And I understand that the voice and lens of movies and TV and books and art in general are important. But I also have to wonder… why is all the anger saved for the white writers and producers and directors, and their Black contemporaries seem to get a pass? By this I mean there are a LOT of really talented Black writers, producers, directors, etc. Why aren’t they telling these stories instead of making yet another Madea movie, or Girl’s Trip, or a movie about gangs or drugs or basketball? That’s not to say that there’s not a market for all of these topics because there is. And yes, I know that Hollywood is still #SoWhite and movies have to be funded. But more and more actors/artists are creating their own production companies and are putting themselves in positions of deciding what gets made. Need money? GoFundMe. I mean, Spike Lee had no problem raising $1.5 million to make a movie about Black vampires.

Additionally, if Black movies told from a Black lens are going to “get” Hollywood backing, they have to make money. The reason there’s now 12 Madea movies in existence is because people go and see those. When Boo! A Madea Halloween, it pulled in over $25 million opening weekend, as compared to $7.1 million for Birth of a Nation on its opening weekend.

Birth of a Nation was Black written, directed, produced. It was also actively boycotted by many in the Black community, mostly women, due to a past allegation of sexual assault against Nate Parker. A charge, by the way, that he was acquitted of in a court of law.

In the credits of the movie, it is stated that Detroit is an attempt to tell the real story of what happened, and that when possible, the story is based on the recollections of those who were actually there. When details were unavailable, they kind of “filled in” the blanks. So there’s some question about accuracy and authenticity.

But given the reaction to the film, I think it’s clear that we’re not nearly as post-racial as we’d like to think we are. And that there is a lot of complex pain that we as a whole don’t yet know how to talk about. There are hundreds of years of healing that have yet to be healed.