Have you ever been to Peckham Multiplex? It’s amazing if you’re on a budget. The last time I went the tickets were £4.99, the carpets were sticky, we were watching Attack The Block and the banter that shot across the audience made the film even better than it was. That was the night I fell in love with John Boyega. I didn’t know how much of a star he’d become but I remember feeling he was special. At the end of 2014 when the Star Wars teaser was released, I screamed a scream from my soul when John Boyega jerked onto the screen. Star Wars has never meant anything to me, but when I saw he was in it, instantly I knew I had to get a ticket, I had to brush up on my knowledge, I needed to know everything there was to know about this war in the stars. That’s the power of representation.
Read moreJoel Osteen : When Politics Meets Religion
I am as Christian as I am British. I was born in London, I have British Citizenship but I don’t possess enough of the characteristics of “British-ness” to fool the natives. When people ask me “where you from?” and I say “London” they say, “No, where you really from?” Similarly people are little taken aback when I tell them I’m a Christian because my “Christian-ness” doesn’t meet their idea of what a Christian is supposed to be. That’s fine. See my name, Danielle, means “God is my judge” so He’s the only one who’s opinion of me I’m truly interested in. In the words of Real House Wife of Atlanta and the reigning Queen of the single greatest read in the history of Bravo- Ms. Phaedra Parks “Only God can judge me and He seems quite impressed.” LOL. Impressed is a strong word. I think God likes me.
Read moreThe Curious Dragging of Amber Rose
In an interview with The Daily Beast Amber Rose questioned why Beyonce's semi nudity when performing on stage and in music videos was acceptable to the general public but both she and Kim Kardashian face intense slut shaming for their pasts as sex workers. The backlash was instantaneous. The Beyhive (Beyonce super fans for the uninitiated amongst you) swarmed her instagram with the obligatory 🐝🐝🐝 bee emojis awarded to anyone who falls short of the glory. To the Beyhive it was unfathomable that Amber Rose deign compare herself to the Queen! Even when she drew for the receipts, reminding The Hive that she herself was a carded member, the stings and vitriol kept coming.
Read moreSharapova & The Protection of Mediocrity
I don’t know sports, but I know Tennis. No, that’s an exaggeration. What I mean is I know Serena Williams. I started watching and playing (mostly watching) tennis because Venus and Serena played tennis. Everything about them was perfection to me; I wanted beads in my hair, I wanted the cute, short tennis dresses- I wanted to be them. If you know Serena Williams, you know Maria Sharapova, one of only 10 women to hold a Career Grand Slam and the highest earning woman athlete in the world for the past eleven years.
Read moreBlackness In The White House : Film Vs Reality
In Zimbabwe, when the TV turned on at 6pm and the newscaster read the news, they spoke of President Robert Mugabe. Blackness in the highest echelons of political office only became a myth when I returned to Britain. Since childhood, I have understood that seeing a black person as the leader of a country in the western world could only be realised in America. Wanna know even as a child I knew? The movies. Yes. Don’t laugh. Movies have long prophesied the coming of what would be. There have obviously been British Prime Ministers in film but they weren’t the films I was watching as a child and they definitely weren’t black.
Read moreNina, Reverse Colourism & Lazy Casting
Reverse colourism is not a thing. In this instance, colourism would see light skinned people of African decent viewed as more palatable and acceptable because of their complexion’s proximity to whiteness. Like racism, colourism is a social construct centuries in the making and while those it subjugates are able to be prejudice towards light skinned people, they are unable to fully subject light skinned people to what they as dark skinned people have endured. Reverse racism and reverse colourism are not real things. Watch Aameer Rahman explain it in his bit for his tour Fear of a Brown Planet.
Read moreWhen Your Fave Is Problematic
I have said some honest to God nonsense in my life. When I say “nonsense” I’m talking about Grade-A, 5 Star General Problematic Shit. Like Rev Run and Tyrese I have said in the past “dress as you wish to be addressed.” *le sigh* The younger iteration of me genuinely saw, defended and perpetuated a correlation between the way women presented themselves and the way they were treated by men and society in general. “If you don’t want to be treated like a whore, then don’t dress like one” was my Key Stage Two analysis and understanding of what I now know to be Respectability Politics. Now, however, I understand that it doesn’t matter how a woman dresses, she should be respected and protected. It sounds so simple, but I have had to grow into this understanding, but back then? HAHA! Even with all my intelligence and Christianity, basic Jesus principles “treat people the way you want to be treated” missed me to the point where I became a misogynist. So I have patience for Lianne La Havas in light of her uniformed tweets this past week. No one wakes up woke. Alas Miss Lianne is sleep. But like me, she has time wake up.
Read moreChi-Raq & Spike Lee's Accidental Misogynoir
Spike Lee is to Woke what Wiley is to Grime; The Godfather. What is “woke”? Well, it can be used as a noun or an adjective. To be woke is to be conscious or enlightened specifically about socio-political current affairs and history. At the end of School Daze [1988] Spike Lee has Morpheus shouting “Wake-Up!” as a call to action not only for the other characters, but for the audience as well. Throughout his films and documentaries Lee’s desire to encourage viewers to be conscious of the effects of colonialism, racism, segregation and police brutality, to name a few of society’s ills, have been both artistic and effective. Chi-raq is no different. It is a beautiful, powerful, heart breaking retelling of Lysistrata, the Greek satire by Aristophanes. In all his hyperconsciousness, one subject slipped past him in creating Chi-Raq- misogynoir.
Read moreFilms No One Asked For - Kindergarten Cop 2
It is quite presumptuous of me to call this series of posts Films No One Asked For. Maybe you do want this film. Maybe all your life was missing was Kindergarten Cop 2. Maybe rather than dusting off your VHS of the original and enjoying the 90’s nostalgia high from watching Terminator bend children to his will, you’d rather watch Dolph Lundgren and Bill Bellamy (*whispers *Bill Bellamy) do whatever it is they’re doing in this trailer, but I don’t want. I never asked for this. Return to sender- immediately.
Read moreBritish With American Taste... In TV
“Watch where you’re going nigger.” Shouted a large, leather clad biker after he nearly knocked me down one spring afternoon in 1998 when my mother and I were on our way to what is now the Morrison’s in Peckham. Even at that age I had to look around for who he was talking to because I personally didn’t know any niggers and I knew for damn sure I wasn’t one. Look, the truth was I didn’t even know I was black until I returned to Britain or rather I didn’t know it was a thing. I had lived in Zimbabwe with my grandparents up until late 1996 and had started life with black, brown and white friends who I considered all to be the same, to me we were all Africans. More than that we were all just people. When I got to London I didn’t understand why the houses were so close together, why the cold was a palpable thing you could almost touch or why people who looked like me were so hard to find on the TV. Thank God my mum, in her infinite wisdom, always knew which channel and at what time black people would be on the TV. As the nineties wound down and the noughties took hold it became harder and harder to find black or brown people on mainstream British Television in shows made for and by us. One by one my favourite British TV shows for people of colour were killed off; 3 Non-Blondes 2003, The Crouches in 2005, The Kumars at No.42 in 2006, Little Miss Jocelyn in 2008 and soon all I had left was my beloved Sky channel; Trouble.
Read moreBeyonce & The Reclamation of Black Hair
I was getting ready to get food when Beyonce dropped her epic, Melina Matsoukas directed video Formation. It was two hours later when I heard my stomach groan in protest that I realised I was still sitting naked and hungry, face awash with tears. “Is it that serious?” Yes. Beyonce has long signified to me, and many others, what true glory looks like. In this, her latest in a never-ending parade of wig snatching masterpieces, Beyonce presents us with so many powerful images; the police car drowning in Katrina, the black boy wearing a hoodie dancing in front of a line of police officers, “stop shooting us” spray painted on the wall. I could spend hours analysing each of them. But because I know for a fact that Beyonce wants me to win in my own life too, she’ll be happy if I focus on just one; black women’s hair.
Read moreA Quick Read : Can't Wait To See - Race
The title of this film is a double entendre in its most pure form. Race looks like it’s going to be good. The historical biopic sees Stephan James (Selma, Home Again) playing the original Usain Bolt; Jesse Owens. Big up to my side boo Jason Suedikis playing the quintessential white saviour in ALL sports films. The following is a list of my receipts: Sylvester Stallone in Creed, Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, Tom Cruise in Jerry Macguire, Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I rest my case.
Read moreA Quick Read : Underage Cinema - Independence Day
I was a latchkey kid. My mum gave me the house key when I was 8 and told me not to open the door to anyone. After school from 4 to 7 o’clock on school days and all day on school holidays I was in control of what I watched. And what did I watch? Films I had no business watching. In this Underage Cinema series of posts, I talk about the films that I loved as a child that were definitely not for little girls with too much autonomy over the images she was able to consume.
Read moreJanet Hubert & The Angry Black Woman
Janet Hubert’s Aunt Viv built a place for herself in my heart when I first laid eyes on her over 20 years ago. Aunt Viv was more important to me than Will, Phil, Hillary, Ashley or Carlton because she looked like me. She wasn’t just their aunt, she was my Aunt Viv . Regal and authoritative like my dearly departed grandmother. The defining moment that cemented her in my psyche was an episode in the second season The Big Four-Oh" when Aunt Viv decided she wanted to dance. Her vindication at the end of the iconic dance sequence was a shared experience amongst all black women who had ever been told they’d never be good enough.
Read moreA Quick Read : Kristen Stewart
Listen here, Bella Swan, at one point last year I was fully employed as a post production coordinator, left work on Fridays to go work as a waitress for the weekend and ran rehearsals on Sundays for the fourth season of my SELF FUNDED, multi-award winning web series and the second season of its multi-award nominated spin-off.
Go do something? We are doing something, we've been doing something, but the "something" we do is consistently ignored by solipsistic people like you
Ride Along 2
Ride Along 2 was funny enough to keep me in my seat at the cinema last night, but not funny enough to make me want to watch it again in the future. I’m not mad at the efforts put forth by Kevin Hart and Ice Cube, they played their roles well. While the film has the components to be a successful buddy cop movie and while I laughed and held on during the chase scenes, the end results left me wanting. What exactly did I want? To go home and watch Rush Hour again to remember how it’s really done.
Read moreA Quick Read : Why I Binge Watched House of Cards
I don’t know why I resisted the force that was House of Cards for so long. I was just denying the inevitable. Here are my 10 Reasons To Binge Watch House of Cards. This post does contains spoilers. Don’t get lost in the game, lost in the sauce and try to blame me.
Read moreA Quick Read : Stacey Dash
I have long separated my love for Dionne, the character Stacey Dash played in 90s sitcom Clueless and my disdain for the Fox News contributor Stacey Dash is now. The diatribe she spews from her facial orifice is so damaging to the advancement of people of colour it is hard to fathom how as a black woman herself she would so easily contribute to any and all anti-black rhetoric that comes her way.
Read more#OscarsSoWhite & Hotep Tears
I can now instantaneously diagnose tweets, so when Chris Sumlin made it his mission to point out that while we were “worried about Leonardo Dicaprio not having an Oscar Will Smith has never been honoured either” I swiftly categorised his tweets as Hotep. "How can we be actively wishing the white man success while our black brothers are left to suffer?" Please visit The Visibility Project so you too will be able to easily identify members of Hotep twitter.
Read moreThe Ratchet & The Represented
I was asked in a magazine interview a few months ago if I thought the representation of black people in reality television was responsible for the deterioration of “the family, brotherhood and sisterhood codes that existed in the Black community.” I wanted to send them this GIF of Kanye West asking “How Sway?”
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