It’s hard to watch One Battle After Another in the days following the death of fugitive Black liberation activist, Assata Shakur, and not have some questions about how white male film-makers depict revolutionary Black women on screen. Many words have already been written about the good in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film – some say “masterpiece” – including a five-star review in the Guardian. The electrifying pace of the action; that instant-classic car chase sequence and Benicio del Toro’s heroically chill Sensei Sergio, have all been justly praised. So let’s take this as read.
But if a film is worth seeing, then it’s worth taking seriously and in this case that involves asking: dear, revered PTA, what is up with you and Black women? We know Anderson is careful and deliberate in his introduction of a racial dimension to this story. We know this because in the original 1990 novel, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, the character corresponding to Perfidia Beverly Hills (played by Teyana Taylor), is white, with “fluorescent” blue eyes. Her daughter (played by mixed-race Chase Infiniti) is also therefore white, and while the race of the character corresponding to the other prominent Black woman in the film – Deandra, played by Regina Hall – is not specified, she is usually presumed to be white.
Sometimes film-makers go the other way with books about American history, and that’s tricky too. When Sofia Coppola adapted The Beguiled into a 2017 film starring Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, she meticulously excised all the Black and mixed-race female characters from Thomas P Cullinan’s civil war-set novel, so that this southern belle soft-life fantasia needn’t be troubled by the brutal realities of the 19th-century slave economy.
In this context, there’s lots to celebrate about Anderson’s approach. The actors themselves all deliver commanding, compelling performances and, though she’s underused, it’s always a treat to see Regina Hall demonstrate her phenomenal range (For more of this, see her in 2018’s Support the Girls). There is also something undeniably timely (probably too late, actually) about the at-once farcical and terrifying spectacle of a paramilitary border force harassing teenagers at a high-school dance and raiding the “little Latino Harriet Tubman situation” going on at Sensei Sergio’s place.
It would be fair to say that Anderson has boldly stepped up to a moment in American history which requires artists to be bold. Sadly, it seems – with regards to the intersection of race and gender, at least – he’s bitten off more than he can chew. This begins with the character of Perfidia, who is hyper-sexualised way beyond the normal horniness that firework-lighting in the company of late-era Leonardo DiCaprio might arouse. This is a woman who prioritises getting off over getting away from an imminently exploding bomb. When she abandons her family, the given reason is that she resents having to compete for her man’s attention with a newborn baby. Her own baby.
Surely a more plausible explanation would have been that her commitment to the cause made it necessary to put the revolution first? Ie, the same reasoning male ideologues have been using to justify neglecting their families for time immemorial? But no, Anderson went for extreme horniness instead. This is a choice. Just like it was a choice to name another of his Black female revolutionary characters “Junglepussy”, a sexualised spin on the old racist slur “jungle bunny”. Or to have Perfidia express her principled defiance of the fascistic state with the phrase “this pussy don’t pop for you”. (Note to white male screenwriters: not every Black woman talks like Cardi B. And even Cardi B doesn’t sound like a Cardi B record all the time.)
These are choices which indicate that Anderson is unaware of the racist Jezebel trope, which originated during the endemic sexual exploitation of chattel slavery and has been perpetuated by American pop culture in various guises ever since. Either that, or he’s expressing a Tarantino-esque overconfidence in his ability to radically repurpose derogatory language and imagery which is not – and has never been – directed at him.
Also Tarantino-esque, and not in a good way, is the film’s fetishised depiction of interracial relationships. The most overtly icky of these is the one between Perfidia and Colonel Lockjaw, a white supremacist grotesque played by Sean Penn as a collection of lascivious tics in military gear. There’s a scene in which Lockjaw sidles up to Bob (DiCaprio) and whispers: “Do you like Black girls? I love them.” This is intended to demonstrate the character’s repellence, but would be much more effective as such, if we hadn’t just seen lovable Bob describe his attraction to Perfidia in pretty much the same terms, moments earlier. Or Avon Barksdale from The Wire (aka actor Wood Harris) fondly describing his girlfriend Alana Haim as “an ordinary, working white girl”. In the OBAA worldview, all interracial relationships are apparently founded on a race kink, with the possibility of genuine connection only ever a happy after-thought. (Yes, PTA is in a relationship with a Black or mixed-race woman, Maya Rudolph, and no, such personal circumstances do not absolve a film-maker from the need to consider the points I’m raising.)
Sorry to complicate your enjoyment of your new favourite film. I know pointing this out risks upsetting those Letterboxd loyalists who can brook no challenge whatsoever to their favourite film-maker. To them I say: please don’t worry yourselves unduly about Anderson’s feelings. He’s a big boy. I promise you; he can take it. And also, I’d refer you again to the film’s title, which is really another way of expressing that old revolutionary’s credo about being in it for the long haul, accepting that the necessary change likely won’t happen in our lifetimes, but we’ve got to keep at it, all the same: The revolution continues, one battle after another. Maybe we’ll get it right next time.
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