Finally sat down to watch The Best Man. I’ve been avoiding a lot of black films as of late, namely because Tyler Perry’s narrative doesn’t relate to me and because of his box office success, this has become the dominant black narrative. The Best Man is seperate from that narrative and is very much in the mold of the dominant black ideology I was raised with. The film provides an accurate window into an ideal that, unfortunately, remains inaccurate to the reality.
The film in question hit theaters in 1999, so I don’t feel the least bit bad about spoilers. The central conceit of the film is that in the world of black men, the further you stray from God and towards pride, the closer you get to becoming a mess. The deeper truth for me in the film is that the leads were undeniably working to define themselves in the trappings of American culture and success while somehow uniting those values and mores with the core idea of what it means to be black.
Here’s what I learned: I need to watch more black cinema. I need to stop being afraid of how these films shape outsider (and perhaps insider) perceptions of the black experience and start learning from these perceptions.