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Reviews
Dear White People (2017)
A great show if you are willing to stay unbiased for a few hours
I am not sure how many people here watched this show but from what I read seems most people reviewing this show made their mind before finishing the first episode.
Is this show about white people? No and Yes. Is this show about black people? Yes and No. But is this show about millennials dealing with the reality that exist out there no matter how we want to perceive it? YES.
In America I am not black and I am not white. By the book I am technically white but in reality I am part of the "nobody knows what I am" group. This is hard at times because it made it a challenge for me to find my identity but it also gave me the advantage of having a broader viewing field. I can see where people coming from.
This show is polished and painted very pretty. And yeah it tries hard at times but it also taps into everything I seen and experienced in my college years. We partied and we had fun but also tons of social issues and drama and there were some of us that cared and stressed more about it.
Have in mind this show portrays a fictional ivy league school and I just attended a normal one and still experienced this. I was part of a majority white fraternity and we had black and Asian brothers. Yes they loved them and they cherished them as much as they could but some brothers also had code words for them and talked much crap (stereotypes) behind those guys. Girls went through the same problems.
Remember college is where our minds are made. It was in college where I learned to love and respect others opinions and not to go out of my way to provoke them.
This show tries to portray the society at college scale. In actual society things are way more dim and harsh. Black people are actually discriminated against and go through a harder environment growing up. It is like we all have the same goal but minorities have to work 10 times harder to reach it because the country's mood, ideology, and culture is usually set by the majority and they tend to be oblivious to the reality minorities face. It has been proved time and time and there are plenty studies proving how skin color, gender, and even height changes perception specially in US.
Do minorities need to work on plenty stuff too? YES. You have to try harder and you have to open dialog. The whole social justice warrior thing not gonna work. If you ban people from speaking and always yell and scream nobody will listen to you. Keep your calm and open up a dialogue without losing your cool all the time. Its understandable that you are angry but do not accept people to understand your pain and anger if they have never experienced it. This show does exactly that. It tries to open up dialogue with a hint of comedy and drama.
I give this show a solid 9 out of 10 for trying. There are enough detective and ER shows out there. I even take a bad show trying to tap into social problems over a good HBO show as at least it tries to start a conversation.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
A beast of its own
Don't let people discouraging you from watching this great movie. Anyone with half a brain should know making the original its impossible even in 2017. You are looking at a production employing thousands of people with high salaries that need to be paid. People expect the director to go total indie and create something philosophical and complex as the original without realizing that such movie 100% will fail with an American audience. Not disrespecting Americans but the society here is not even close where GITS stands. The social changes within the GITS world has gone way beyond what we are right now in USA. We are rather a backward xenophobic society (hence the whitewashing) and you want a Hollywood company to risk millions and create something that has aged beyond what we are at. Well its not going to happen. Have in mind the original is more like a cult movie in US. You go out and ask people nobody knows what GITS is. Its anime, its manga, and a certain group of (highly intelligent) diverse group of people are into those. Watching the GITS is like staring into a Crystal ball. It would take another 100 years for our society to understand its complex world full of details and hidden messages.
Now the movie itself. Its a little gem. It starts slow. Seems like the makers of this movie were almost obsessive with the original environment and it looks amazing an faithful. The story is dumped down to a revenge story to sell and be understandable within our society. It hurts because such beautiful movie could've been so much if we actually could stick to the original script but as I said that is just impossible right now. It be me and 10 more people watching that production while rest of the country scratching their heads. The movie picks up after the introduction phase and becomes very powerful toward the end. Michael Pitt portrayal for Kuze is nothing short of amazing so if you are GITS fan you will start to like the movie from that point on.
My advise is to look at this movie for what it is. The acting is superb and the environment is beautiful. You may not trust the story but the movie as a whole deserves a chance.