White girl is a fast-paced, party of a film that in an effort to tackle real and systemic racial issues, becomes apart of the problem itself.
White Girl follows Leah (Morgan Saylor), an incoming college freshman that works at a pristine internship but finds herself in trouble after selling drugs to her boss (Justin Bartha) with her boyfriend Blue (Brian Marc),
Last night I attended the film’s premiere. If the film intended to highlight, systematic white privilege, then it did a wonderful job at doing so. I found the film “White Girl” to be the distilled essence of racial superiority complex and white privilege in America. Throughout the film Leah lives life with no limits, doing excessive amounts of cocaine. While the minority characters around her are punished for partaking in the same antics as Leah, she never seems to be punished by the system. I liked that the film showcased the inequitable and unjust treatment many minorities face as apart of their daily lives, that many of their white counterparts are not subject to.
However, I was not exactly a fan of the way many of the minority characters and the Brooklyn community were portrayed. Leah essentially gentrifies the part of Brooklyn she moved into to, starts dating the neighborhood drug dealer and throughout the film remains confused as those around her face harsh consequences. The film has been called a raw portrait of NYC youth, but the only raw portrait being depicted is that of privilege. I thought some of the writing in the film depicted minorities in a belittling fashion. Once the main character “Blue”, enters the apartment Leah and her friends share, his friends “Nene” and “Kilo” also want to tag along, so they stand outside of Leah’s apartment, shouting for her to let them in. Blue says “They’re just mad because I got inside of the castle first.” Implying that entering a white woman’s home is some sort of goal or achievement for minority men and playing into the false stereotype that because a white woman now lives in the building across the street, it’s somehow become this majestic castle in the neighborhood or a standard of luxury. The screenplay also left me feeling uneasy. In one moment, Leah eats a pizza while sitting across from a black man on the train who is admiring her and smiling. Playing into the age old Hollywood narrative that paints black men as people who idolize whiteness, and predators seeking to ogle and lust after white women.
I spoke with the filmmaker, Elizabeth Wood, to find out what she wants audiences to feel and think about in the car ride home from seeing this movie. “I’m hoping the people will have their own reaction, I don’t need to tell them what that is. Mostly just that they’ll will have a reaction at all. If they discuss, something, if they argue about it. Some people disagree on what it’s about. I just hope that it will somehow make an impact and get into people’s brains so that they’re thinking about something when they leave the theater. “
“White Girl” hits theaters September 2nd.
