Black trauma doesn’t have to be melodramatic
… and sometimes delivery through humor can make it easier to digest
Roku has a mind of its own. As soon as I press the power button on my remote, it starts downloading streaming apps and directing me to new movies that I barely ever want to see. Apparently I pressed a wrong button because a movie called “50/50” started playing last night. I’d never heard of it, but the first face I saw was Joseph Gordon-Levitt taking a jog. In my top 10 list of actors who I’ll (attempt to) watch anything they put out, he’s one of them. Even as the prosecutor Richard Schultz in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” a character I loathed, I still enjoyed his performance.
So I was definitely going to watch “50/50” — even though I didn’t know what the plot was. How I managed to miss this 2011 film is beyond me, but I’m still giggling at his out-of-the-shower scene in the amazingly underrated film “Project Power.”
Per usual, I enjoyed the film. I was pretty certain I would anyway even though I’d never been a fan of the other actors in the film — minus my new interest in Anna Kendrick. I knew who she was all this time and found her crashing Trevor Noah’s “Between the Scenes” on “The Daily Show” to be kinda annoying. But it’s hard not to like a woman who is this entertaining playing trampoline dodge ball with Kevin Hart or getting her first pair of Timberland boots on “Desus & Mero.” She’d sorta won me over with the last two.
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So by the time I finished “50/50,” I thought, “I’m going to follow her on Twitter and Instagram. I like this lady.” But before I could press the follow button, I noticed a video from comedian Amber Ruffin and wondered why it was there. It was a story about how Amber had been racially profiled and harassed by the police — for skipping down an alley. That’s it. Nothing else. No weapons. No yelling. No fighting. No drugs (even after leaving Amsterdam). Just a happy ass black woman skipping in a Chicago alley, and that situation became so tense with the officer that a white guy had to get involved to save her.