A few thoughts about Whiteboyz

1. When I watched the first few minutes of the movie, I thought it was really annoying. Usually I can get over “annoying” and find out things about the movie that will get me thinking about other things. What I found out about this movie is that i really didn’t like watching it. I thought it was vaguely painful and I kept wanting it to end. I guess what I got out of the movie was the reality check about race that the boys faced when they got to Chicago. Flip “playing black” isn’t the same as actually being black. We see that the cops treat Flip differently than Kalid at the party. We also see the cops shooting at the black man in Chicago instead of Flip.

2. I’ve looked up reviews online and I found one that says the movie has trouble “decid[ing] whether it wants to be a sort of Friday for the Limp Bizkit set or a serious social satire about the aimlessness and delusion of today’s lost youth.” I don’t know if I like that review of the movie. How does a white person pretending to be black = aimless, maybe deluted, but aimless? I just don’t see the correlation. Anyway, I agree with this reviewer because I don’t think the movie really achieves much of anything.

3. Im having some trouble thinking about the part in the movie when Flip says that he really is black and that his skin doesn’t mean anything. I remember that he seemed so serious and intent on the other person believing him. It seemed like he really thought that. It makes me think differently about Flip and the movie, but I don’t know how it makes me thing…it just is kind of unsettling.

Thoughts on Whiteboyz

I kind of found this film disturbing and sad in terms of the portrayal of blacks, or rather, how they are perceived—blacks appear as under-educated, foul-mouthed criminals (drugs, jail, weapons, etc.) and this image of black people is what Flip and his friends want to emulate.  In this way, the peformative aspect of racial identity—or what’s perceived to represent black identity—is definitely visible throughout the duration of the movie.  

I found the contrast between Flip and Khalid’s reaction to being arrested and placed in jail interesting; while Khalid recognizes that he is an automatic target due to his race, he’s angered and is conscious that an arrest signifies a tainting of his record, Flip glorifies the experience because he thinks it will legitimate his thug/hustler type persona.  Instead of being ashamed or worried, he is excited.  Khalid points out that he (Khalid) is in jail on account of his race whereas Flip’s stupidity is really what got him arrested.   

Flip continually asserts his blackness, but what does being black mean?  The definition of blackness is so arbitrary—it means different things to different people and historically, the categorization of people according to race was arbitrary as well.  Science and law have both been used to legitimizes of racial classification—science offered “reasonable” determinations and law enforced these classifications…sometimes, even the law doesn’t follow its own guidelines. For example, in two Supreme Court cases, Plessy v. Ferguson and US v. Thind, the Court employs different standards to reach their judgment; in the former, it used scientific/biological reasoning, saying that Plessy couldn’t ride in the white train car b/c he had too great a percentage of black blood (it actually wasn’t all that much…).  In the latter case, the Court ruled that Thind, a Sikh male native of
India, wasn’t white because he didn’t look like it…in one case race is based on genetics and in the other it’s based on appearance.

Sorry…I know went off on a tangent there…

Whiteboyz: Khalid and Flip on Blackness

I found it interesting how in the film Whiteboyz (1999) the “whiteboyz” (Flip, J, Trevor) and Khalid perceived blackness completely differently. To the boys, blackness is about living a certain kind of lifestyle; in particular, a desirable lifestyle. Flip, for instance, associates it with a “ghetto hustler” lifestyle, complete with girls in bikinis, shooting rivals, rapping, eating great food, etc. Indeed, this belief is so strong that Flip regards Khalid as a gangster and a drug dealer and assumes he must have connections to crack dealers in Chicago simply because of his race and hometown (about 39 minutes in). This is in spite of all indications to the contrary: Khalid is going to college (and already planning to apply to law school!) and his family is fairly wealthy. The dichotomy between expectation and reality is especially awkward when the boys are sitting in Khalid’s house: Khalid’s mom speaks to them with a fairly accentless voice while Flip uses his exaggerated “black gangster” accent and slang (about 54:30 in).

By contrast, Khalid sees blackness as associated with a social condition that is, largely, negative. When he is arrested at the party, he is immediately targeted by the police—and he is not surprised (about 45 minutes in). I also suspect that much of his desire to enter law school is to escape the constraints of race (though it’s possible that here I’m projecting my own views on race onto Khalid and his family). Khalid’s aversion to the word nigga/nigger further supports this view of his attitude toward race (by contrast, the “whiteboyz” cannot understand the prejudice in the word’s history and thus cannot understand Khalid’s feelings).

So why the difference between their views? The obvious answer is, of course, that Flip is plain ignorant. When he enters Chicago he finds a much more dangerous and much less glamorous place than he expected, a place where even hanging one’s arm out the window while riding in a car can be fatal (1:09:10). The presumably well-respected crack dealer who helps them (I don’t know his name) is living with his grandmother in a small apartment, and dresses very simply (around an hour in). (It is also worth noting that he, like Khalid, sees blackness as a struggle.) And, of course, the final shootout between the gangsters and the police contrasts bitterly with Flip’s vision of prison life with Snoop Dogg, where Flip strikes down a prison officer for bringing him poor champagne (1:14:40 vs. 48:00). By the end, Flip realizes that there is much more to blackness than being a gangster, which is what leads him to throw away his gun (1:17:10), confront his past (1:20:00 on), and finally regret that he represents white oppression of blacks (1:23:30).

I get the feeling the movie can’t possibly be that “black and white,” but no deeper insight has occurred to me yet. Could anyone help me out? As it is I’m not terribly impressed with the movie since I think it’s too predictable (boy wants to be X, boy’s attempts to be X endanger him and estrange him from his loved ones, boy realizes X isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, boy abandons X and finds a greater purpose in Y). I realize that X and Y are somewhat more complex in this movie than in some others (X is blackness, Y is working to stop discrimination rather than perpetuating stereotyping/discrimination by desiring to perform a twisted stereotype), but unless I’m missing something, the movie seems to me overly moralizing and straightforward.