Daddy's Little Girls

Deb and I hit the 9:10 viewing of Tyler Perry’s “Daddy’s Little Girls” on Monday evening. I saw the Departed last weekend and watched an Inconvenient Truth and the Children of Beslan about the Terrorist seige at a Russian school in 2004 and really, I needed something a bit lighter. Global warming, Irish Mafia/Police corruption and Terrorists with religious extremism are not light and fluffy and don’t evoke giggles and loose chatter. Tyler Perry productions will give you a message overall, but all the while you are taking that in you’re going to connect to the characters and likely recognize yourself and others in them and you’re going to laugh.

Going into the theater with that in mind, the film didn’t disappoint. The movie’s premise is very boy meet girl, but the message is that there are good Black men around with values and decency and intelligence that are dedicated to their children, their families. It was so so so nice to see that on the big screen. We have gaps growing in our community in education and earnings potential and if we allow them to, they can separate and alienate us from each other. The war on drugs didn’t really happen. The war on terror was a sham. The war on Black men is alive and well. Do you know how many new prisons have been built in Southern California in the past decade? This country is sending a message loud and clear to our sons ( and to our daughters…just ask the ones widely accepted) and we don’t have the luxury to ignore it any longer.

In a day and age where my 3 year old has only men of his grandfather’s generation to look up to for his examples of Black men because Hollywood plays and preys on this street mentality, slave mentality, slovenly, sadistic and that’s just the 18 to 24 group. I won’t even get into the set up that the music industry is doing on young girls…essentially deeming our next generation of Queens capable of nothing but shaking what they have enhanced for the benefit of their male counterparts who prefer them to be light, bright and damn near white, and near a bed. I work tirelessly to assure my daughter that regardless of the ethnicity of her father and his Mayflower pedigree, she is her cousin Ny’Asha. Not that they are the same. They are EACH OTHER. When a Black woman is targeted or excels, they are each other. It matters not the texture of their hair or melanin in their skin, they are each other.

I am grateful to Tyler for this film because it was timely and I found a connection to all of the characters. The lead female character, Julia, portrayed by Gabrielle Union, is a high powered attorney in bustling Atlanta, single and then some and searching. Her well intentioned friends set her up on blind dates that provide some of the funniest parts of the movie. Debbie and I fell out when, on the phone with Tracey Ellis Ross’ character, Julia exasperated by her dates announces that she will scream if she sees another brother in a throw back jersey and then DOES! A few men in the theater had to cover up at that point. That was a high five and “aww hell naw” moment because, pointing to my forehead, I’m so there. I mean, if you didn’t play for the Minnesota Vikings in 1998, take off that Randy Moss jersey! Oooh, flashback to 1998 Minnesota Vikings playing the Altanta falcons in the NFC championship and that crushing, heartbreaking knee that Randall Cunningham took and Gary's missed field goal. *hangs head, raises my Helga braids and Vikes horn in a fist for sad pathetic unity* If I could have beat Denny Green’s ass myself I would have. Manage the clock, man! They did the Dirty Bird IN MY HOUSE! But I digress. See, it’s still painful. That was our year though. Ugh. My Cris Carter jersey has sat in cold storage since that day and I’m not bringing it out until we retire his number in the Dome. How did I get to football?

Anyway, there were a few points in the movie where the script needed to be tightened. A few times where I was screaming inside, “show, don’t tell” and I would have loved to see the Maya character be some of the stitching in tightening that script up. Why was Maya single? If she was single, wouldn’t Monty have been right up her alley? Questions, ya know. It would have made sense that she be the one to tell Julia about the court hearing rather than Julia walking by as happenstance. We saw Monty’s character and background fully developed…did Julia’s end up on the cutting room floor? Her depth wasn’t there. I related to her on a surface level because as women, as Black women, we share so many common threads that don’t need translation but no need to dumb it down for us either. It’s ok to explain that Black women are sometimes vulnerable and debunk the myth that we are angry, loud and able to handle anything that comes our way. We can break too and it was clear that Julia had, but what was not was that her father and a past love had done that to her to create the woman she now was. It was spoken, but never really explained.

I did have a funny awakening in the theater though. As much as we think we change…lol. Just as the lead characters were arriving at a jazz club, I surveyed the scene and turned to Deb and said, “Um, doesn’t look safe to me. Make my order to go,” so I found it insanely funny that Julia had the very same thoughts. I’m not sure what that says about that character and I don’t even want to know what it says about me. But another scene did tell me something about myself. Julia’s closest friends are very much like her, pristine and reared to perfection. In one scene, one of her friends questions Julia’s sanity in choosing to be with a working class man; correction, a working class man WITH children from the hood IN the hood. She’s a lawyer after all and a pairing of that nature is stretching the bounds of class, which is just behind religion and race in terms of challenges that couples face. I lost about 2 minutes of the movie because I really had to think seriously about things in my own life and things I have felt, thought and said. As my sister nears graduation day in May from law school, I have tried my best to not say those words to her, but I know she has sensed my concern for her. I struggle to hide my feelings. Oh, let me quit. I don’t struggle at all. I just don’t bother trying to hide it.
My sister’s boyfriend is from the shanty town here, not even the ghetto. He grew up rough. He grew up poor. He moved in to my parents home( correction: my step mother’s home now) when my sister was 16 (mind you, after my father moved out, of course) and I blew a gasket. I mean, when my dad ran out on those kids, I bought this house 3 blocks from them to help raise them in his absence. I stopped with the minimum wage jobs, went back to school and got my shit together with a quickness. I got married! I went corporate and was promoted 5 times in 4 years with the second largest discount retailer in this country. It’s no small feat when you consider that I still dropped out of college again. LOL! Sometimes, I am Mama and Daddy to them and since I’m 18 years older than the youngest, they rebel just the same too.

Back then, I offered to get my sister’s boyfriend an apartment because I thought that allowing two 16 year olds to live together wasn’t such a bright idea especially since my parents had ME at that age. I called places to get him back in school, I called in favors, I offered a lot. He refused it all. Instead, he worked. He got his G.E.D and worked. At 22, he has supported my sister emotionally and financially through her Bachelors degree and now her Juris at break neck speed compared to her peers. She shaved 2 years off the average timing to become a lawyer…and she did that because she had him supporting her and the ambition and motivation to do that. How can I fault him? For what can I fault him? She’s a student so she’s broke as hell so he’s not around for the money. He has stuck by her longer than some marriages last and they love each other so who am I to judge them? I really wanted to slap Brenda in the movie for being such a hater and I had to seriously look at myself and think about the role I had played in my own sister’s life. Message received. Lesson learned.

I wonder if it’s tacky to give my sister a trip to the Bahamas for her graduation and then go with her. LOL! Well, she’s still my baby sister! I’m not going to let her go alone. Aww damn…ok, this would be a moment where I’m supposed to look over what I just read, the lesson I claim I just got and let her boyfriend have a second ticket because he has earned it through being there for her and enabling her to finish her education. DAYUM! I was all set to wear a bikini ( with a wrap, don’t play) and wind and grind on the beach, getting drunk and waking up with jerk chicken breath. Guess this Stella will have to get her groove back another time. DAYUM for real! It’s a good thing. Let me just keep saying that and I won’t want that ticket. LOL! It’s a good thing and he deserves it. See…but my little cousin is graduating from law school in May too. We’re the only 3 girls, I mean mind you, I’m the official old as hell chaperone. Oooh, that did it. I am too old to be traveling with 22 and 21 year olds and I would have lost my mind if someone my age would have done this to my while me and my girls were in our Wild daze. In fact, I’m almost positive we woke up early and left my Aunt Pete in Louisiana right before we went to Hollywood in 1990. LOL! Issue settled.

Oh, but the bathroom scene in DLG... Someone please tell men that women do not hide their “toys” in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Not that I know or anything about that, but I've heard.*whistles and looks off into space* HA! But, that’s reserved for a nightstand or for some, a case packed with an arsenal. You just don't know! Debbie and I looked at each other and just cracked up. The whole theater of women did. Says something about where some of our money is going. Speeds 1,2 and who needs a man. Of course, that scene was transitional though and it was funny as all get out so it worked.

I’m not sure if it’s Lauryn or China, but the youngest of the daughters had the best lines in the script in DLG and she is going to have a very bright future. The IT factor all over that little girl. I’m sure all 3 of the girls will be able to chart their own course. And Tasha Smith, wow, she played hoochie to no end. I was so ready to knock her on her ass by the end of the film. She represented so much that is wrong with our community and it was tough to keep watching her, let alone Gary Sturgis and not wishing them immediate bodily harm.

I really do hope and pray that something in those last two characters resonates within people and makes them as ill as it made me, so much so that people do really rally as the community did in the film. I mean, we have “Stop Snitching” shirts on sale all over the US. Stop snitching? For real? For what? Who benefits when someone doesn’t snitch? If people were living on the up and up, they wouldn’t need to worry who was snitching in the first place. “Stop tripping” shirts are a better option. Stop tripping on the strip clubs. Stop tripping on trying to “make it rain”. Hell, just make it sprinkle with a J.O.B. and that’s good enough. Light showers never hurt nobody.

It was interesting that there was some realism in the film at a pivotal moment when two characters go head to head where people just stand there and watch. Complacent, not wanting to get involved, no one wants to make that first move. Sadly, that’s reality. Too many people allow fear to dictate their convictions. They hesitate. They second guess and that’s all the time it takes to change the course of life and death.

Overall, I really did enjoy the movie and the night out. It was good to laugh like that. It was even better to see Black people on a screen wearing clothes and not rapping or trying to sell me their name to wear on my back. It was nice to see a happy ending and know that those are possible when we think outside of societal means and limitations and think for ourselves allowing our hearts and minds to dictate our path. There are good and decent Black men out there. They may not earn 6 figures and they may be pushing a broom or a bus or even a pencil, but money isn’t everything and to be honest, it really isn’t much. A house is not a home.
I walked out of the theater feeling positive and even a little hopeful. So now that we know that good Black men are out there and that the concept can make it to the big screen, it’s time to do the same for good Black women. My fingers are itchy..must be time to write.