Insecure (2016-21)

Issa Rae's breakout hit Insecure closed out its fantastic five season run. She succeeded in writing contemporary black life on screen. She personified the side of Los Angeles that portrays neither the glamor nor the ghetto. She depicted that in-between period of life in your late twenties/early thirties that Friends put on screen when you are still trying to figure out your life and your "friends are your family". Perhaps it's fitting that the finale sees Issa's best friend Molly getting married. It is their friendship that sits at the center of the show. It's what makes season 4, the one where their friendship is on the rocks, the strongest. Their romantic relationships with a rotating cast of eligible black men (and Alexander Hodge) revolve around Molly and Issa's love for each other. While Lawrence was the emotionally earned choice (though maybe abrupt for the finale), I don't think it's the most adult choice. Yes, Lawrence has grown but Issa has too. And following her heart is the more immature option, and I think she has grown into a new phase of her life in which she would have been able to move on. Overall though, I loved the time-jumping finale. 

It is a beautifully shot show, with lighting and makeup befitting black skin tones. It was sometimes uneven, but Insecure took big swings. It was at once funny, endearing, moving, raunchy and authentic. And it all evolved from a little web series featuring Issa rapping to herself in the mirror. Certainly, by the end she is no longer the insecure girl pumping herself up in the mirror anymore--the final shot is the empty mirror. The music supervision was always really good. They find the right song for the moment, while serving as a platform for new black talent, doing exactly as Issa Dee does in the show. That goes not only for the musicians, but also the cast of supporting actors (a standout discovery in Yvonne Orji) and in Issa Rae's real post-Insecure life with her production company Hoorae. 

The Hate U Give (2018)

Don't judge the movie by its trailer. The trailer looks like a cheesy teen movie. It is so much better than that. The narration at times sounds a little forced, I'll admit that, with the cheesy street slang needed to be spelled out for the white folks in the audience.

So let me frame the movie for you the way it ought to be presented in a more just world. This is the story of Starr, an African American teenager of immense courage. The movie opens with a scene that is universal for black families in the US, the talk. Immediately the audience is thrust into a world in which young children must learn to remain composed in the face of the state. We are shown the incredible restraint this young woman must display everyday to those who know her best as she straddles two identities between two neighborhoods worlds apart. We see Starr display bravery as she enters hostile territory everyday at the fancy white private school she attends. At the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail called out those white moderates frustrating the cause of civil rights, and today those white moderates continue to feign utter blindness. And of course there's Starr's awful white friend Haley who doesn't help either.

The story is driven by a terrible, all-too-common case of police brutality. But it gets much deeper than that. It is about a black community terrorized by THUG LIFE, as so astutely put forth by 2pac decades ago. There is a secondary conflict between the drug lords that run Starr's neighborhood and her family that sort of dilutes that primary message about the death of Khalil. The fact that Khalil dealt drugs is irrelevant to his murder. Starr could have plausibly said presented her witness statement while making no comment on whether he dealt drugs, as she didn't even know firsthand. It is only when you take it in the wider context of a people systemically oppressed does its inclusion in the story make sense. It is perhaps this that makes the movie so much better than I had expected.

It is a very emotional movie, particularly a scene in which the children stand out in the yard and recite the Black Panther Ten Point Program. The ending is also really well done. Amandla Stenberg as Starr gives a starr-turning performance. Her father also has some very memorable lines, including showing the audience his tattoo of his reasons to live and die. The lists are the same. I think it gets at the source of emotion in the movie. It is not death, but life, survival, that evokes emotion.