By Angela Bronner Helm
Writer and director Justin Simien is sorry if you’re “butthurt” over the name of his debut feature, Dear White People, but Simien’s choice of words, like the tone of the film, stands to create a LOL funny, yet elevated conversation about race and identity in America today.
“Ultimately it’s helpful to have controversy because with smaller black movies, it’s easy to be overlooked,” says the former studio publicist. “But most people when they’ve seen the film, they leave with a completely different idea of what the title means.”
Dear White People is a satirical look at life on a fictional Ivy League campus and follows four black students—The Rebel, The Token, The Poster Child and The Diva—as they negotiate their “black experience” both within the community and on the campus at large. The Sundance Special Jury Award-winning film stars Dennis Haysbert, Tyler James Williams and Tessa Thompson and has landed Simien on Variety’s 2014 “Ten Directors to Watch” list.
“One of the things that was interesting about Dear White People is that I show these archetypes in the beginning, and we just dismantle them to a complete pulp by the end,” says Simien, 31.
“I think the film is saying a lot of things that we don’t want to say. And that to me is the purpose of art. Hold a mirror up and society can figure out what to do.”
Dear White People opens October 17.