‘The Visit’–obnoxious white rap and an empty ‘slice of life’ moment

*SPOILERS?*

Minding my own business, my sister asks me if I want to order a new M. Night Shyamalan movie… I was all, “Oh, it can’t be too bad. Its M. Night. And, look, producers from Insidious and Sinister.”

The Visit is a film about a two children who, for a week, go to stay with their grandparents. Grandparents who their mother has not spoken to in fifteen years (over something stupid) and that they have never seen before. There, they discover a shocking secret.

Where to begin?

1. A lot of people might not, but I accepted the idea that the children have never seen even a photo of their grandparents before as a basic premise of the film. As ridiculous as the idea might seem.
2. The rapping white kid? Not funny (Okay the last rap was a little funny). I’d want to slap him upside the head even if he was Black. Misogynist lyrics and attitudes–not cool, not when anyone does it. I don’t care how many Black guys you bump fists with or how many “hos” and “bitches” you add to the verse. And this white kid had no flow whatsoever, plus T-Diamond Stylus is a stupid name. Co-opting and appropriation of Black culture/arts will never be a good look, whites. For the record.
3. What was the mom even mad about??? One, white people have illegitimate anger issues; deny them even something simple and they go crazy because they’re used to getting what they want when they want it, even using violence to get it–WHITE PRIVILEGE. Two, her parents were actually right and they only concerned for her. Three, she’s so mad she never even showed her kids a picture of her parents?
4. Having involuntarily lived with someone who needed serious care for his mental health and oftentimes neglected it on purpose, you can imagine why The Visit was disturbing for me.
5. Becca, the young woman in the film, seemed more sad than angry over their father abandoning them yet she gets the whole “Don’t hold onto anger” anecdote from her mom. The movie nears its ends with Becca showing the glowing, nostalgic video footage of their now absentee father playing with them when they were little. As a man directing this film, at a glance, Shyamalan is potentially sending the message that Becca’s earlier refusal to forgive her father and use the footage in her movie was misguided. The guy coldly abandoned her and her family for another and Becca’s refusal to remember him fondly and warmly suspiciously and silently transforms into the same glowing footage she refused to include in her film near the end. And right after a conversation about holding onto anger when the situation between Becca and her father versus that of her mother and her mother’s parents wasn’t remotely analogous. Has Becca forgiven her father? Was her resolve to see his actions for what they were and her own feelings that weak? Or has she imply accepted their past together along with his abrupt and callous departure? The whole situation rubbed me wrong, as someone whose sperm donor was absent until I was a teenager, told my mother that me and my twin were her children alone, and only showed his face because he expected me to take care of him after he aged, as he had used women this way his entire life and has like ten kids. The whole thing sends a bad message that might work for girls on that patriarchal stuff or all into forgiveness regardless of the situation but it didn’t work for me.

In summary, aimless white anger, the obnoxious rapping white kid, the “grandparents”, and that empty slice-of-life crap on Becca and her experiences with bye-bye daddy are the things that stood out the most to me. And that plot twist was the sickest I’ve seen in a long time.

just shaking my head

Since there’s nothing else to watch while I work that’s of any substantial depths or length to keep my mind occupied while I work, I turned to something familiar–

Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I’ve never watched the any of the series that predates my birth, like this one (I’ll be 26 this year), but I’ve seen the movies related to them. I guess its Patrick Stewart but I like Captain Jean-Luc Picard (probably the cadence of his voice :-), haha).

Oooohhhhh, its sooooo racist!

And there’s nothing better or worse than a good story that has racist-sexist-eurocentric-colonialist-white supremacist bumps all along the way. Its amazing how white writers and producers can take the most amazing ideas with the greatest potential, carry them so far, then stick their heads up their asses–taking the whole beautiful idea with them.

My mom is pretty much a trekker and I see why, the fact still remains. What else should I expect though. The nature of this crap isn’t going to change dramatically in my lifetime. Its just going to turn on that flash and glitter then change its ugly face just a little bit to make most people think they’re looking at something new.

Dressing as Trayvon Martin for Halloween? Wtf, racist much?

I was very disappointed and low-key pissed off when my sister told me that white kids were using Trayvon Martin as a Halloween costume with hoodie, candy, beverage, and even the bullet wound, equipped with blackface. I wish my sister would stop telling me this stuff, lord knows I don’t go looking for it. What did I expect? Really, I mean they’ve been dressing up like faux Pocahontas forever. This is America where nothing is respected and nothing is sacred except little pieces of green paper and white skin.

Let’s entertain a cautionary Goosebumps special version of this scenario. If this was a television production. Even if little white Tommy dressed as Trayvon Martin and was turned into this hunted and murdered Black boy for an entire evening by some whim of spooky magic, they’d still have to cast an actual Black person to play his transformed self or it would defeat the entire point of audiences thinking he actually learned any lessons about systemic white racism and the continuing failure of the justice system in America. Because everybody knows Tommy isn’t Black—that’s is what so many people think is funny about blackface.

 

The audience would actually have to believe this white child is Black and the only way to do that is to cast a Black person pretending to be a little white shit who is pretending to be a murdered Black boy for Halloween by putting on blackface and pretending he has a bullet would in his chest. The white child and his white people would probably learn nothing except what they already know: Its great to be able to get some laughs, listen to some nigger music, eat some Skittles, drink some Arizona tea, and wash the black off at the end of the day to go back to being squeaky clean white. Consequence free. Not having grow up in and live in that life or die that death, ever.

 

See how racism just doesn’t cut both ways? Nothing good can come of blackface except showing us who the racists are.

 

The Black identity and experience is not a fucking costume.

 

That’s why I always say white people will never know what its like to have people commit racism against them. I would be showing (what appears to be the majority of) them a kindness by even rationalizing that they are the victims of their own racism.

Little white lies

Even the color of a lie must be made “white” to distract from its potential for harm or rather its deceptive nature.

I guess regular lies must be big and black then, in all humor?

A lie is a lie where truth is necessary. A lie is deception, and if it must have a color, then to me a lie is white. White but not benign.

Whiteness portrayed as a universal symbol for innocence, purity, divinity, and goodness is the true deception, therefore a lie. A bleached white lie.