Review of Dear White People (2014)
Seen in 2020.
Black-themed parties at Obama-era US colleges. Some real-world examples are shown to the credits.
A brief summary of the plot is that an anarchist false-flags a racist invitation to a black-themed party originally planned by but already cancelled by campus satirists, stirring controversy to aid a Malcolm X-ish wing of the black student union at the fictional Ivy League university in reversing a decision to randomize dorm assignments. This faction prefers to have a more traditional dorm for blacks only.
Shot like a mainstream TV comedy-drama; the characters are simple and everybody’s very pretty. As in Do the Right Thing (1989), it’s debatable whether the central characters are doing the right thing or not.
It’s not clear why the anarchists want to preserve their black-only dorm. No arguments are heard for or against it. It is clear that the nominally random housing assignments are corrupt and non-random, as per the 2019 college admissions scandal, but that’s not the problem the activists go after, so the reasons for it are left unstated. That’s odd, since corruption seems to be cementing racism at the school. It’s clear that the president and his son both hold racist attitudes, but heroine Sam’s argument that her forgery merely revealed that racism, is specious. Her invitation was designed to provide a sense of social and moral legitimacy for passive racists by putting words in the mouth of an authority. The risks involved, such as criminal liability and loss of political credibility for impersonating your opponents, are ignored.
The technial details of Sams’s hack, like her election victory, are implausible, and the implementation of text messages on film is below average for the era. The creators were more concerned about the pretty people.