"To Be Young, Gifted and Black"

“We all know what it is like to be the tail and not the head (...) We knew we had something special that we wanted to give the world, a vision of the world that we wanted to see.”

Chadwick Boseman and the cast of Black Panther at the SAG awards thanked everyone there. In my latest podcast episode on iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud I spoke about how excited this year has me about best picture because of the quality of movie making and themes behind the movies in the list. I do not appreciate The Favorite and Vice to much as nominees for the best picture, I believe they are great movies and AMAZING performances but as movies compared to the other 6 films I thought they are just a level below. 

So yesterday, I saw the last movie I was missing before the Oscars: Green Book. And WOW just WOW. I love that this movie was completely under my radar, I heard people talk about it being good, others great, others amazing. The plot is based on a true-life story in the 60's about racism and how complicated it was socially to try to not be racist from one day to the next in the American South. An Italian from New York gets a job to drive around a successful black musician and the cultural and social workings begin to make you realize that to change traditional social and cultural constructs is not easy for BOTH sides. Being kind to black people after growing in an environment of looking down on them is as hard as living in a white man’s world in transition from hate to acceptance of people with different skin color.

Green Book took place in the sixties and even so (just like BlacKkKlansman) it is emotionally and socially relevant today. Two people who are in the opposite end of the racism spectrum and the economic spectrum learn from one another. The black man teaches the white man, the poor man teaches the rich man and vice versa. The things they learn are things everyone needs to either hear for the first time or be reminded about.

“The world is filled with lonely people afraid to take the first step”

“Violence solves nothing. Dignity wins ALWAYS”

“So if I’m not black enough, and I’m not white enough, and I’m not man enough, tell me Tony, WHAT AM I?”

Great movies are not just meant to entertain, they evoke emotion, they make the audience think, rethink and look around with a little different perspective. I believe the road from Green Book to Black Panther as movies and what they represent in terms of the changes in our society should make you smile. Is the world perfect? No. But when you see both movies and listen to the people involved in them you realize that we should be grateful, hopeful, positive and change the micro to affect the macro.

One white man, black man, gay man, woman at a time… The world is filled with people that can inspire and create change as much if not more than Captain America.