- Hey guys, it's Jouelzy and it's a bit
of a different background, because the sun
is setting at like 5:15
and we're not functioning.
So I'm trying to be able to record
in different times of day,
even when the sun is low.
So let me know in the comments down below
if you like this aesthetic.
If you follow me on Snapchat,
you know I was having a bit of a ordeal
with this bookshelf, however,
one day it will eventually
be color coordinated.
Once my sister does it for me.
So let's get into this
review of The Hate You Give,
and if you're new here be
sure to comment along, engage.
It's always about a critical thought,
a critical dialogue, whether you agree,
whether you disagree,
whether you like it, love it,
or you know, you not
really here for it at all.
As long as you keep it respectful,
we're here for it, and subscribe,
turn on your bell for notifications,
thumbs up the video because
all that kind of stuff helps.
You know, we're tryna grow,
we're tryna grow here.
So The Hate U Give is
based on a young adult book
by the same title, by Angie Thomas.
Now, I purposefully picked up the book
to read before I went to see the movie
because I had heard some
rumblings about the casting
and I wasn't really planning
to see the movie initially,
but I'm never one to be left out
of conversation now, so hey, hey.
So The Hate U Give was
actually a good book.
Not really my cup of tea
precisely in writing style,
and that's really just because I'm old
and the book is very aptly
written for teenagers.
It would be like rereading
The Coldest Winter Ever
and realizing how basic
some of the things I thought
were so fascinating and
deep really are, or were.
It's up here, oh god,
you can't even see it
on the frame, it's further up.
That's kinda where I was
with The Hate U Give.
Which I definitely think is worth the read
and if you have teenagers,
I mean, read it with them.
It's a good, like, I'm all
about family engagement.
Read with your cousins, your nephew,
your daughter, your son, hey,
hey, read with everybody.
Per reading the book, I felt like
the main character, Starr, was a riff
on Rachel Jeantel, the young lady friend
who was the last person to speak
to Trayvon Martin before he was murdered.
Now, Rachel was humiliated
by the prosecutors
as they were condescending
and talked down to her.
Then she was belittled
by mainstream media.
And her image was ridiculed
when broadcasted on the news.
Now, we do not love all black women.
This is exactly what I was talking about
when I said focus on
learning to love black women
in that video about them white womens
y'all tryna make popular 'cause
they black fishing, yeah.
But this exactly what I was
talking about when I say focus
on learning to love black
women and don't be worried
about the "I got a black
grandmother" girls,
quabbling over whether
they are black or not.
Which is why the casting of Starr
should have been all the more important.
The character of Starr has more affluence
and access than Rachel, but the parallels
are so obviously there with Starr being
the only witness of her friend, Khalil,
being murdered by a cop
after a traffic stop.
And the way Starr is written about,
both in the care she
gives to code switching,
between the hood she lives
in and her private school,
to the way she encounters
the media attention,
is explicitly the experience of
an identifiably black woman
who does not fit easily
into the guidelines of
mainstream beauty ideals.
This should have been
more carefully considered
in the casting of the movie.
Which overall to say, the casting
of the movie is just not good.
Let me get to the point.
The book is far, far, far better
and it offers so much material
that I do not understand what
happened in the writing room.
Oh.
Guess I should have known.
The movie is just poorly written.
The character arcs are
off and some are so close
to stereotypical that
they read as cartoonish.
The casting of biracial Amandla Stenburg.
It's just wrong on so many levels.
And I don't have an issue
with Amandla being mixed
so we can all chill with
the "black people aren't mixed" comments,
that's not what we getting at here.
But no light skinned actress should
have been casted as Starr.
Someone like myself would not have
been appropriate playing Starr.
Starr needed to be identifiably black,
no question about her heritage,
brown skin, dark skin, black girl period.
And then Common, ripping
any sort of nuance
that Angie Thomas carefully
crafted into the character
of Uncle Carlos, to
Anthony Mackie not having
an OG gangsta bone in his body,
especially for a character
who is described more like
a Suge Knight in the book
and here we end up with Anthony Mackie.
And, this pains me, it pains me,
it pains me so deeply to say but sis,
Issa Rae has one tone that
she elevates the volume on
and it does not work with her playing
the civil right activist
lawyer, Miss Ofrah,
like it's not good, like I cringed.
Now Regina Hall and Russell
Hornsby playing Starr's parents
were decent, her siblings were fine,
but dear Lord, the way
they handled Seven's momma
was just an unintentional
comedy unto itself.
That was entirely unnecessary
and low key disrespectful.
Like, come on, sis, that's not it.
Angie Thomas wrote a book that was meant
to connect with young black teenagers.
There's a lot of dialogue, juxtaposition
and descriptors that are meant to evoke
the authentic experience
of a black teenage girl
through a tumultuous black
lives matter scenario.
And none of that, except
maybe the Jordan sneakers,
made it into the movie and
I don't understand why.
You just can't convince
me that that white boy,
that white boy with
his non-lip having self
has Starr swooning over him, like sis.
No, that wasn't it either.
Just didn't have the black
girls like me je ne sais quoi,
you know what I'm talking about?
Like, he didn't have, it
wasn't, swag wasn't there,
it wasn't on, it wasn't
on tell, it wasn't right.
And DeVante never makes it into the film,
making Maverick, who's
played by Anthony Mackie,
the non OG, and King,
who's Starr's father,
making their relationship or beef a thing
that's just kind of like
a thing that goes nowhere,
doesn't have any root to it.
And then we have Common.
I mean, has he ever even
played in a good movie?
Like, is he actually a good actor?
I mean, he's just a sanitized
version of Uncle Carlos
who originally was meant
to show the duplicity
of being a black cop
who came from the hood
and still stands for his people.
Instead, we're just left with
a stereotypical black cop
without a real storyline.
Blue lives and respectability
politics matter, I guess.
But that's not what the book was about.
The movie just doesn't connect
in any of the ways the book does
and there are so many
storylines that could've
been extrapolated from the
book to elevate the film
and give it the nuance it deserves
and really tell a story
that pushes the message.
Now, it doesn't feel
good to criticize a movie
that centers the black
lives matter movement.
But when seeing things that
are important to me finally
get the mainstream they
deserve, I don't wanna see
a half cooked frozen dinner
taking up that space.
I want black excellence,
not pithy offering.
We're allowed to critique.
We're allowed to have this conversation.
With all that said, I
still think The Hate U Give
is worth seeing,
especially if you have kids
and teenagers, I'm not mad at all.
There's some people,
especially those who have
never read the book, like it or enjoy it.
I actually think maybe
teenagers will probably enjoy
the movie but I am disappointed that such
a great opportunity to build upon
a beautiful body of work that already laid
a strong foundation got lost
in sauce, didn't do enough.
Such a waste.
