![]() ![]() The simple presence of that love story is what makes Southside with You special - even more than the fact that we're watching full-length fan fiction of a sitting president and First Lady. The realm of black love on screen continued to grow into the '90s, with hits like Waiting to Exhale in 1995, Love Jones in '97, How Stella Got Her Groove Back in '98, and Love & Basketball in 2000.īut in 2016, it's once again become rare to see two black characters fall in love on screen. and must be submitted 24HRS or more before your selected showtime. But unlike Poitier, Washington didn't keep playing the perfect guy in movies - Training Day and American Gangster were hardly rom-coms. Find the latest movie showtimes at Landmark Cinemas Tamarack Edmonton - buy your. Later on, it seemed that Denzel Washington might fill that space, with roles like Demetrius Williams in Mississippi Masala in 1991. Over the years, Poitier became the paragon for a black male romantic lead in the movies. The film starred Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, and was, in many ways, a showcase of normal black love. In 1961, that began to change with the film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. He and Karen theorize that stylizing black love with music was a way of making it safe for white audiences - because, as Karen ponders, "Who has sex in a musical?" (OK, we know, we've seen Spring Awakening, too.) Some of the earliest examples he's found were musicals - full, operatic productions, like Cabin in the Sky, Porgy and Bess, and Carmen Jones. You don't see African-American characters behaving in a way that is just, sort of, normal."īob says the film industry has a bit of a checkered history when it comes to black-on-black love. "What's remarkable about the film is that at any given moment, it's not being remarkable. The film is "not about other things, it's just about the two of them getting to know each other," Bob says. ![]() The film takes place over the course of a single afternoon, and, as the title suggests, is set on the South Side of Chicago.įamous subjects notwithstanding, Southside with You is your typical date movie, complete with meet-cute antics (Barack shows up late Michelle refuses to admit she's on an actual date.)īut, as Karen and Bob point out, there's something amazing in the film's simplicity - and that's because it's pretty uncommon to see everyday black romance on the screen today. ![]() Good news: We've got a Code Switch podcast extra for you this week - Karen Grigsby Bates sat down with NPR's movie critic, Bob Mondello, to talk about Southside with You, a new independent film about Michelle and Barack Obama's very first date, back in the summer of 1989. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |