🕑 Added 2015-05-01 02:07:22 +0000 UTC
This was a scene that was going to take place between Mindy and Lucia as an intro to their sequence with Seb, and the idea here was that you see a lot of media where teenage girls are silly, and yeah, everyone's silly, but you very rarely see two teenagers, especially teenage women, having heady, intellectual conversations, even if they're also joking around and teasing each other--the most you'll get is people bantering about pop culture. So I liked the idea of going full Bechdel Test and showing two women not just talking amongst themselves, but having something of a political debate. But at the end of the day, it's the definition of a Director's Cut scene. It goes on too long (it's 1,000 words long, practically a Yuletide story on its own), it doesn't really have anything to do with the story, and really can't defend itself from the chopping. But I do think it's a fun scene of just seeing what these characters are like with each other and how they see the world.
After school, the next day, they met up to drive to Seb’s house while his host family was still at work. In the light of day, Lucia wore her foundation again. It was a short drive. Lucia didn’t wear her seatbelt, which Mindy almost chided her for, but after all—she was dead already. Besides, they had more important matters to discuss.
“There’ve been like ten different Batman movies, we can’t have more than one movie about slavery?”
“I’m not saying that,” Lucia shot back. “I’m saying they’re all the same movie, they’re just escalating how bad the slavery is. It’s exploitation. It’s torture porn. They just wanna show whips and rape and people acting hard—“
“They wanna explore a piece of American history—“
“That’s been explored like a million times before—“
“They hasn’t been explored, not by black creators and not with the level of detail—“
“It’s a formula, Mindy, it’s like movies about musicians.”
“You don’t like movies about slaves and you don’t like movies about musicians?”
“Every movie about a musician is the same exact movie.” Lucia put on a few voices. “’Wow, kid, you’re really good!’ ‘Hey, drugs are great!’ ‘Ugh, drugs are awful!’ ‘I’m not doing drugs anymore, yay!’”
“That’s not every musician biopic.”
“Yes it is, Mindy. ‘Oh, I forgot, I had a traumatic childhood too to get the audience on my side!’”
Seb’s house was a single-story ranch-style on the cul-de-sac of Lobo Street, right up against Quest Park, in the elongated streets of the boonies between the railway and the toll road. People lived for generations in those homes, and tipped well. Mindy caught a few curious or suspicious eyes scrolling her way as she and Lucia walked to the door.
“Black audiences deserve movies too,” she argued. “You can’t complain about what they enjoy.”
“So you like Tyler Perry?”
“He’s their Adam Sandler. I don’t have a right to complain, my parents have Fifty First Dates on Blu-Ray.”
“I saw a Denzel Washington movie once, he was a private eye, it’s after World War 2, he’s hired by this mayoral person—“
“Candidate,” Mindy said as she rung the doorbell.
“Candidate to find a woman, he teams up with this badass gangster—you know the guy, Tony Stark’s friend in Iron Man?”
“Terence Howard?”
“Tony Stark’s other friend. They’re solving crimes, they’re beating people up, they’re interviewing suspects, finding clues, drinking whiskey from shotglasses—you’re telling me black audiences don’t like that?”
“I don’t know, they’re into what they’re into. White kids like Cars, I don’t get that either.”
Seb answered the door.
Mindy said hi, Lucia said “One sec!” and turned to Mindy. “I’m just saying, how come we only have one movie about Denzel Washington being a private eye and twenty movies about people being slaves? I mean, how many times has Denzel Washington even played a slave?”
“I don’t think that many.”
“He probably doesn’t like playing a slave!” Lucia insisted. “And I bet black people don’t like seeing him play slaves. They want to see him fighting gangsters, but because anyone can fight gangsters, those are white movies, and since slavery movies can only be about black people, those are black movies. The only black movies. And the Tyler Perry ones that cost ten bucks because Tyler Perry plays all the women.”
“So now it’s a racial thing?”
“Probably. I bet there’s at least one studio guy, he’s pumping out all these slavery movies like ‘alright, negroes, I’ll take your money, but don’t forget, we used to whip you guys.’”
Mindy folded her arms. “Why is it that you not watching movies about slavery has now become you taking a stand against racism?”
“Are you calling me a racist?”
“Did I say racist?”
“I have a black friend, okay? And that’s not easy in this town; we have like five black people.”
“If I had friends, a lot of them would be black.”
“Should I come back another time?” Seb asked, standing in the doorway.
Mindy pushed past him into the house. “Thanks for having us, Seb. Sorry about Lucia, she is so concerned about diversity that she won’t watch movies with black people in them.”
“I’ll watch a pirate movie about black people, I’ll watch a Western about black people, but no one makes those because they keep making slavery movies and white people keep feeling guilty and going to see them to feel even more guilty…” Lucia tried to follow Mindy in, but stumbled and had to brace herself against the doorframe. “And you think black people don’t feel obliged to see slavery movies? It’s like at my church, every time a Christian movie comes out, everyone has to see it because only one in thirty movies are at all Christian.” She tried to go through the door again, but it was like she had no depth perception. Her shoulder rammed against the doorframe and she fell back, off-balance.
“Oh, so Christians have it as bad as black people?”
“I didn’t say that!” Lucia tripped on the door mat trying to get in. “I was making a comparison—“
“’Christians have it as bad as black people’ is a comparison.”
“Not the comparison I was making! Seb, what the hell is wrong with your—“ Lucia stopped. She was still getting used to the vampirism thing. “Real funny, Minz. Seb, can I come into your home, please?”
Seb looked at Mindy, who was smugly leaning one shoulder against a wall. He was fairly concerned.
“As a Christian,” Mindy said, “Lucia feels it would be rude to come in without being invited. She’s like a black person that way.”
“Jesus loves you so much he’d say that you’re being funny right now,” Lucia said, smiling.
Seb looked around, like he expected to see a hidden camera.. “Sometimes I wish I had been born in America, so I could understand the women here.”
“Now that’s funny,” Lucia replied. “Invite me in.”
