White Woman Obsessed

Postbourgie writes about the new Beyonce\Ali Larter\Idriss Elba flick obsessed, and in the process, goes where I've feared to:

But come on. Who isn't into this flick for the beatdown? Trust. You won't be disappointed (unless you're looking for an abundance of punny smack-talk). Just turn off your brain, embrace the derivativeness, and close your ears to the Beyonce power ballad playing over the credits. ("I wanna run smash into you," Beyonce? Really?)

On one level this is just flicks like Trois, going mainstream--Obsessed carried the weekend. But I've stayed away from this, mostly because I feel the film is feeding on a hostility toward white women.

I'm haunted by an old memory: Back in college I went to see Waiting To Exhale. The theater was overrun with black women, which was cool with me. I actually like seeing films in the hood, given that there's often something participatory, if ignorant about it--Only negroes bring their two-year old to see The Two Towers.

Anyway, the thing that got me was the scene where Anglea Bassett barges in the boardroom and slaps the shit out of the white woman her husband has been sleeping with. The whole theater lost it--I'm talking damn near a standing ovation. Word is that this scene was repeated around the country. Now maybe Negroes just liked Bassett's bop. Maybe they just were happy to see the "other woman" get hers. Maybe everyone just wanted to stand at the same time. But I don't think so. I think race was essential to that scene and the crowd's reaction.

I could have this wrong, but I think pitting a blonde homewrecker against and upwardly couple played by Elba and Beyonce is speaking in crude code to black women. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm stuck on race. Maybe I just need to see the movie. Kenyatta saw the flick at Court Street in Brooklyn, a theater which I love almost as much as the one up here on 125th. She said fools lost it on the fight scene. Anyway here's the trailer, for those who don't know.