Us Against the World
by Jennifer Williams (For Colored Girls)
Proenza Schouler called up Harmony Korine to direct a film for their new ad campaign. Korine is best known for writing Kids (1995) and writing and directing Gummo (1997). He brings his usual surrealist and nihilistic aesthetic to Act Da Fool, a short shot in the Nashville projects, featuring a crew of black girls.
The film is shot beautifully. The juxtaposition of fashion and the detritus of the projects is provocative enough to make viewers think critically about consumerism, if we weren't being encouraged to go out and buy Proenza Schouler's hip gear. There are also parts of the voice-over narrative that I think adds brilliantly to the setting: "I believe that the earth is a big ball of shit. That's why the dinosaur died out." "Sometimes I can spend up to an hour staring at a bird in a tree. I wish I was that bird and could just fly away." I couldn't help but think of similar lines Richard Wright penned for the iconic Bigger Thomas who would stand and watch airplanes and dream of flight.
The narration supports scenes of the girls lingering near trash heaps and old tires and downing 40s. In one uncomfortable scene, the girls's lips form a tight seal around the bottles and they drink the malt liquor like babies taking in milk. Korine is clearly trying to critique poverty, but what, if anything, does all of this have to do with fashion?
Or maybe it's just that black poverty seems to be in fashion as of late. Echoing some of the responses to Lee Daniels's controversial film Precious, critics are weighing the artistic merit of Korine's short film against the exploitative nature of it. Sharon Toomer at BBN encourages readers to call retailers who sell PS and express their anger about the ad's debasement of black girls. Geneva Thomas at Clutch reads the film very differently, describing it as "a deeply honest, strong and undisguised narrative about an underclass of obscured urban Black girls in America." Nsenga Burton agrees with Toomer that the film is exploitation posing as art and argues that the girls are objects of a colonizing gaze. A spot-on critique by Minh-ha Pham over at Threadbared discusses the film as a kind of cultural tourism. The largely white fashion industry as well as PS's target consumers (preppy and wealthy white girls) get to fetishize exotically classed and racialized "others" from a position of comfort and privilege.
Read the Full Essay @ 'For Colored Girls'
by Jennifer Williams (For Colored Girls)
Proenza Schouler called up Harmony Korine to direct a film for their new ad campaign. Korine is best known for writing Kids (1995) and writing and directing Gummo (1997). He brings his usual surrealist and nihilistic aesthetic to Act Da Fool, a short shot in the Nashville projects, featuring a crew of black girls.
The film is shot beautifully. The juxtaposition of fashion and the detritus of the projects is provocative enough to make viewers think critically about consumerism, if we weren't being encouraged to go out and buy Proenza Schouler's hip gear. There are also parts of the voice-over narrative that I think adds brilliantly to the setting: "I believe that the earth is a big ball of shit. That's why the dinosaur died out." "Sometimes I can spend up to an hour staring at a bird in a tree. I wish I was that bird and could just fly away." I couldn't help but think of similar lines Richard Wright penned for the iconic Bigger Thomas who would stand and watch airplanes and dream of flight.
The narration supports scenes of the girls lingering near trash heaps and old tires and downing 40s. In one uncomfortable scene, the girls's lips form a tight seal around the bottles and they drink the malt liquor like babies taking in milk. Korine is clearly trying to critique poverty, but what, if anything, does all of this have to do with fashion?
Or maybe it's just that black poverty seems to be in fashion as of late. Echoing some of the responses to Lee Daniels's controversial film Precious, critics are weighing the artistic merit of Korine's short film against the exploitative nature of it. Sharon Toomer at BBN encourages readers to call retailers who sell PS and express their anger about the ad's debasement of black girls. Geneva Thomas at Clutch reads the film very differently, describing it as "a deeply honest, strong and undisguised narrative about an underclass of obscured urban Black girls in America." Nsenga Burton agrees with Toomer that the film is exploitation posing as art and argues that the girls are objects of a colonizing gaze. A spot-on critique by Minh-ha Pham over at Threadbared discusses the film as a kind of cultural tourism. The largely white fashion industry as well as PS's target consumers (preppy and wealthy white girls) get to fetishize exotically classed and racialized "others" from a position of comfort and privilege.
Read the Full Essay @ 'For Colored Girls'
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