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Film Review
Halle Berry's breasts not the only things exposed in "Monster's Ball"
By Yemi Toure
Editor, HYPE
If movies could be convicted of a crime, this one would be on Death
Row.
OK, "Monster's Ball" is beautifully shot. And the music is haunting in
this
tale of race, sex, violence and twisted lives in a small town in
post-Sixties Georgia.
And yes, there is some great acting by Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thorton,
P.Diddy and newcomer Coronji Calhoun.
And yes, Halle Berry shows her breasts in the infamous sex scene --
more on
that later.
But even with all of that, the writers of the script should be charged
with
a crime for the way they created the lead Black female character
Leticia,
played by Berry. She is written to be as weak as a wet paper bag, so
weak
that you wonder if there isn't some twisted white male fantasy about
Black
women going on here.
For one thing, Berry's character Leticia is horribly insulted to her
face
by her white boyfriend's father, an insult involving sex and race, but
Leticia does nothing about it but storm out of a house.
For another thing, she found out that her white boyfriend (Hank) had
been
exceedingly dishonest with her: He was a prison official who directed
the
execution of her husband -- and he never tells her! His silence is
morally
indefensible, but he did not pay any price for this gross dishonesty to
this Black woman, which continued throughout the film -- and she did
not
require anything of him for that crime when she finally found out.
This weakness even carries over into the sex scene you have heard so
much
about. In the middle of it, the scriptwriters had Leticia say to Hank,
"I
want you to make me feel good". More than once. So even in the midst of
the
most talked-about scene in the film, Leticia is still written to be
dependent on someone else -- even for a good screw.
Oh -- about those boobies: They aiight. The scene could have worked
just as
well without exposing them.
On her way to the top of her game, Berry has exposed her breasts in two
films, this one and "Swordfish". Does she worry about what others
think? In
one interview, Berry says: "Without sounding flip or rude, I don't
really
care".
Well, Halle, flip the script:
Julia Roberts is at the top of HER game, and she has exposed her
breasts
not at all to get there. Not even in "Pretty Woman", where she played a
prostitute. Even in the bathtub scene.
And that reminds me -- in "Monster's Ball", there are two women who
expose
their breasts -- Leticia and a white prostitute.
Hmmmmmm.
What understanding did these white scriptwriters have of Black life? If
you
are Black and poor and female, like Leticia, and you are down and out
and
alone, who do you call on? Your family, your community, your Creator.
But
as writer Rori Blakeney points out, in "Monster's Ball" the
scriptwriters
created a character who has no extended family around her. A character
who
does not turn to her community for help. A character whose husband was
executed and whose son was killed and who is about to get evicted from
her
place, and who only turns to a white male for aid.
At four different points in the film, Leticia is without a car, and is
out
on the street in the small town and in need of a ride. The script has
Hank
just happening to drive by -- not once, not twice, not three times, but
all
four times. What an easy out for the scriptwriters. What a poor plot
for us.
By this time, the script has turned into a pile of crap with this white
male showing up -- like in too many other films -- as the savior.
Also, the writers have Hank's son dead and buried before the family
cleans
up his blood from the living room furniture. Excuse me?
And don't get me started about the use of the n-word. In one tense
scene,
Hank uses the term against a fellow prison guard. That's real. No
problem
with that. But the Black guard says nothing about it, does nothing
about
it. Does Hank later pay any price for this? None.
And it gets deeper.
Hank, Leticia's boyfriend, likes to eat chocolate ice cream with a
white
plastic spoon. What's the big deal, you ask? On a movie set, nothing is
accidental; everything has to be selected. So do we have some race and
color symbolism at work here in the chocolate ice cream and the white
spoon?
As writer Blakeney points out, "chocolate ice cream and a plastic spoon
could possibly represent the fact that Hank always
wanted a Black woman. In other words, the spoon serves as a phallic
symbol
that is always dipping into the chocolate."
The race game even shows up in that old symbol of the good guys in the
white hats.
Leticia's Black husband is executed, and she later hocks her wedding
ring
at a pawn shop, runs right across the street to another shop and uses
the
money to buy her white boyfriend a white cowboy hat.
We got that message: Destroy the Black male, get rid of any memory of
him,
take what you have left and use it to pump up the white male.
All that color and race symbolism is deep. Where is psychiatrist
Frances
Cress Welsing <http://www.ayaed.com/hype/babyboy/2.htm> when we need
her?
And where can you get tools to analyze these films?
<http://www.ayaed.com/hype/measure1.html>
You think these writers have little appreciation of only Black folx?
Even
white females don't survive the scriptwriters' slash and burn.
There are three main white females: The white prostitute. The unseen
white
grandmother who committed suicide. The unseen white mother who is
spoken of
so badly. And none of them are likable characters.
This film is not for kiddies. There is a graphic execution by electric
chair, an explicit suicide, the death of a child, more than one
soul-less
sex scene. Characters are emotionally and physically abusive. We don't
want
our children to learn to smoke and drink, but those habits are shown
here
as normal and acceptable.
So why were there so many children in the Atlanta theater where I saw
this
-- even 4-, 5- and 6-year olds? Because so many adults brought them.
Not all the crimes were on the screen.
On the surface, this flick is about sex, race, crime and violence.
Underneath, it is about sex, race, crime and violence. What are the
tools
that while males use to maintain their supremacy? Sex, race, crime and
violence.
By the end of the film, the Black male is dead, the Black female has
lost
her husband, her son and her house, and she has been
thoroughly walked on by the white male, and the white male is eating
that
chocolate ice cream with that white spoon, and
even feeding it to the helpless and child-like Black female.
If this film had said during the opening credits, "This film is about
white
male supremacy," they would not have had to change a single thing to
fulfill that declaration.
By the closing credits, the only one still standing and "whole" and not
dependent is the white male.
And that's a crime. -- (c)2002 Yemi Toure, www.afrikan.net/hype
"Next to God we are indebted to Afrikan women, first for
giving us life and secondly for making that life worth
living." -Mary Mc Leod Bethune
"Don't Hate the PLAYA Boy...hate the GAME," Granddad Freeman of the Boondocks(7-11-99)
*Twenty-three percent of women are "autoerotic singles" — they prefer to achieve sexual satisfaction alone(source-bet.com)
*If U have won a Grammy, one of two things are at play: 1. Your shit is TIGHT
2. U are white
-(Me)
"We are not a problem people. We are merely people, who have problems."-Dorothy I. Height(from We Are Not Vanishing)
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Oooo baby I like it raw. Oooo baby I like it RAAAW!(c)ODB- Shimmy Shimmy Ya
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