Tag: Delroy lindo

Something I hope we can all agree on

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Fuck, and I mean this with all imaginable disrespect, the BAFTAs.

I wasn’t going to put my two cents in on this one. As a white guy with no particular disabilities it’s probably safe for me to sit it out, and I don’t really need to have an opinion on every single thing that happens. But I learned a couple of things today about the BAFTA’s setup for this event and their reaction to John Davidson yelling the N-word at Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan, and … man, seriously, fuck these guys.

In case you’ve been off-planet: John Davidson is a British disability activist who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, specifically the version known as coprolalia, which is the unwanted uttering of obscenities and slurs. There was a movie made about him, called I Swear, and that film was up for some awards at the BAFTAs, so Davidson was invited. Lindo and Jordan were on stage to present an award unrelated to Davidson, and he shouted the N-word, and all hell broke loose.

Now, to be clear: people with disabilities have the right to exist in public. Black people also have the right to exist in public without having the worst slur in the history of the English language shouted at them. How one chooses to sort out those two rights when they come in conflict with one another is something that I’m going to allow people with better qualifications to address, and if you want there are any number of posts and videos out there of people talking about that.

But go read this article from THEM magazine.

I was already aware that the program was aired in the US on a lengthy (two hours, I believe) delay, and I believe it was broadcast on a short delay even in Britain. And apparently the BAFTAs did see fit to edit it out when an award winner said “Free Palestine!” at the end of his acceptance speech. Two things I was not aware of, however, were that:

  1. The BAFTAs deliberately set up a hot mic near Davidson, and
  2. Davidson also yelled “Pedophile!” at host Alan Cumming, who is gay … and they edited that out too.

The amazing thing is it’s Davidson himself who is calling them out in this article. You would think “Hey, the Black guys weren’t the only people I yelled horrible slurs at” would not be much of a defense, but it’s really starting to look like the guy yelled a whole bunch of offensive shit that got edited out and the only thing they left in was the N-word. “Pedophile” gets edited out. “Free Palestine!” (not from Davidson, but still) gets edited out. Half-a-dozen uses of the F-word get edited out. The N-word? Nah, that’s fine. It can stay.

That’s a huge fucking problem, and it’s racist as fuck, but it’s a problem that can be laid directly at the feet of the BAFTAs, and not John Davidson. On top of everything else, apparently nobody from BAFTA said anything to Lindo and Jordan afterwards, which is just insane.

I also read another opinion piece, which I can’t find now, that included the words “John Davidson can’t spend his whole life apologizing,” which … I feel like he kind of can? And maybe should. People apologize for things that happened inadvertently all the Goddamn time. You apologize when you hurt someone’s feelings and you feel bad about it. Davidson, by all accounts, seems to be a lovely person, and I cannot imagine that he enjoys yelling racial slurs at people. I don’t feel like apologizing when you do yell racial slurs at people is that big of an ask. This is not a perfect analogy, but I’m a big motherfucker. I try my best to keep all of my body parts to myself in public, particularly when I’m in the midst of a crowd, but the very nature of being large and surrounded by people means that occasionally I bump into them, and anybody that isn’t paying attention and runs into me is very likely to end up on the ground. And do you know what happens when that happens? I apologize. Every time. Whether it was my fault or not. I apologize and I check to see if the person is okay. It’s not an imposition, it’s kind of a required part of trying to be a good person. And it’s not especially complicated, either.

Again, I don’t feel qualified to comment on how to handle the intersection of guy-who-inadvertently-shouts-racial-slurs and people-who-get-racial-slurred-at as a matter of policy. It feels unfair to tell Davidson he can’t be in public and it’s deeply fucked up to keep Black presenters off the stage in case Davidson yells something. But what I do feel comfortable with is the idea that, however you do handle this, you definitely don’t handle it by doing what the BAFTAs did. I can identify fucked-upedness without having to solve society’s problems. And what they actually did is completely fucked up, and some heads need to roll because of it.

#REVIEW: SINNERS (2025)

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a movie review. It’s been a while, I can tell you that.(*) The thing about me reviewing movies– and if you’ve been around, you’ve seen me say this before– is that I have to guard against my own enthusiasm a lot of the time. There are plenty of times when I’ve written a movie review quickly after watching the movie and in retrospect it’s been more positive than maybe it would have been if I’d waited a few days.

Last night, after watching Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners, I commented to my wife (and posted on BlueSky, I believe) that I’d have been more positive about it had I never seen From Dusk Till Dawn. And since FDtD is easily the movie’s most obvious point of comparison, let’s go straight at this: the two movies are similar enough that you could tell me Sinners was deliberately meant as a remake and I wouldn’t be surprised at all. That might feel like a slam; it’s not, as From Dusk Till Dawn is a great movie. But that’s where I was; I enjoyed Sinners quite a bit but I felt like in large part I’d seen it before.

I’m sitting here right now, fifteen or so hours later and having slept on it, wishing I’d bought the thing instead of renting it, because I want to watch it again.

Sinners is that rarest of things: a movie that’s growing on me. I think I’m just going to assume that everything Ryan Coogler makes for the rest of his life is going to be gold; Michael B. Jordan is amazing playing two of the three leads in twins Smoke and Stack,(**) and the entire supporting cast ranges from solid to outstanding– I haven’t seen Delroy Lindo in anything recently, and I could watch that man read the phone book. I’m not familiar with Wunmi Mosaku, but her Annie is tremendous, and Hailee Steinfeld disappears into her role thoroughly enough that it took a good 2/3 of the movie before I realized who she was.

(A quick word about that: apparently there are people mad about Steinfeld being cast as this character, who says at one point that her “daddy’s daddy was half Black,” which makes her an eighth Black. The fact that Americans have a word for someone who is 1/8 Black is part and parcel of how fucked up this country is, and light-skinned Black people moving away and quietly passing into the white community has been a real thing for going on two centuries in this country. Steinfeld herself is literally an eighth Black. She is the exact race of the character she portrays. Pick up a book, Goddammit.)

Anyway, I always forget to talk about the plot so let’s do that: it’s 1930-something, somewhere in Mississippi, and Jordan’s Smoke and Stack have returned to their hometown after leaving years ago, loaded with cash and guns and planning on opening a juke joint. The first half of the movie is getting ready to open, pulling everyone else into their orbit, including the actual main character, Miles Caton’s Sammie, himself an extraordinarily talented blues musician. Sammie is Smoke and Stack’s younger cousin. They open up the joint to a successful first night, and then everything goes directly to Hell in more or less exactly the same way it did in From Dusk Till Dawn, and if you haven’t seen FDtD and don’t know the twist (although they haven’t done much to hide it) I’m not going to go any further than that.

Other stuff: everyone’s praised the music, for good reason, although Buddy Guy’s 88-year-old voice coming out of Sammie’s mouth is a little odd. Guy actually shows up in person in a stinger at the end of the movie, so don’t turn it off when the credits roll, although you probably won’t be in enough of a hurry to turn it off that you’ll miss it. The movie is almost a musical but not quite. There are numbers, but they make more sense in context than, say, Alexander Hamilton randomly bursting into song.

(Okay, yeah, it’s a musical, but it’s not the type of musical that people who don’t like musicals should avoid. Just fuckin’ trust me, please, plus blues musicals are amazing, as it turns out.)

So, yeah. Two thumbs up. Check it out. But it’s only five bucks more to buy it from Amazon Prime than to rent it, so buy it; you’ll want to watch it again.

(*) It was over a year ago, and ludicrously enough, it was Abigail, which I also compared to From Dusk Till Dawn.

(**) I would not have called myself an MBJ hater, but I’ve never quite gotten the hype about the guy? I mean, he’s good, but he’s got the reputation of the second coming of Denzel Washington or something, and I haven’t seen that from him yet. Okay, y’all. I get it now. Plus, not for nothin, he’s insanely sexy in this movie. Do what you want with that information.