'For Colored Girls' on Proenza Schouler's 'Act Da Fool'

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'

Bobby Hebb of "Sunny" Fame Goes Home

Bobby Hebb, Singer of 1966 Hit ‘Sunny,’ Dies at 72
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NASHVILLE (AP) — Bobby Hebb, whose 1966 hit “Sunny” became a pop classic, died here on Tuesday. He was 72.

His death, at Centennial Medical Center, was announced by his family. No cause was given.

“Sunny” reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart. At the height of the song’s popularity, Mr. Hebb opened for the Beatles on their last United States tour.

“Sunny” was recorded by many other singers, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, José Feliciano and Cher.

The song is an upbeat ode to a woman whose smile “really eased the pain” when the singer’s “life was filled with rain.” It features the catchy refrain “Sunny one so true, I love you.”

Mr. Hebb said in several interviews that he wrote it to lift his spirits when his brother was killed outside a Nashville nightclub in 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Hebb never had another hit as big as “Sunny,” but remained active as both a singer and a songwriter. In 1971, Lou Rawls won a Grammy award for “A Natural Man,” which Mr. Hebb wrote with Sandy Baron. As recently as 2007, Mr. Hebb was still writing songs and had his own publishing company and record label, Hebb Cats.

Born to blind parents and raised in Nashville, Mr. Hebb played trumpet in a Navy jazz band and later worked with the country singer Roy Acuff, becoming one of the first black musicians to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.

Survivors include a daughter and four sisters.