The Remarkable Bounce of Blindspotting

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2018

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The excellent new movie Blindspotting deals in complex ways with issues of race, gentrification, and police brutality. But it’s a drama both leavened and enhanced by its unique use of rap and verse. Co-writers and stars Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) and Rafael Casal (Def Jam Poetry) play best friends Collin and Miles who, over the course of the last few days of Collin’s probation, navigate their rapidly gentrifying hometown of Oakland as well as their relationship to each other.

That Diggs and Casal also grew up together and share a background in music, theater, and poetry makes the sometimes surreal moments of rap monologues not only believable but also, remarkably, effective. But, as poet Maya Phillips points out, there’s more meaning behind the pretty bounce language. “Rap was a black form and it was commodified,” she tells Kurt Andersen. “It’s very much involved in this aesthetic. We have this idea of a black man who is a rapper and that is packaged and that is sold.”

Blindspotting isn’t the only summer movie to uniquely use language and manners of speaking to talk about race. Phillips digs into the linguistics of Blindspotting, BlacKkKlansman, and Sorry To Bother You and considers the inflection point of the future of black cinema.

Read more of Maya Phillips’ poetic takes on film at Slate.com and her website.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	from PRX.
0:06.4	This is Studio 360. I'm Kurti Anderson.
0:12.1	The excellent new movie Blindspotting deals in complex ways with complex issues around race and gentrification and policing and injustice, but
0:23.6	it's a drama leavened with all kinds of charm and comedy as well.
0:28.6	And although it's almost entirely a realistic film, it is studded in a way I've never seen before
0:35.6	with rap and verse in big and small moments throughout the movie in a way I've never seen before with rap and verse in big and small moments throughout
0:39.6	the movie in a way that is really central to the movie and its story. And to help me dig a little
0:45.8	deeper into the linguistics of blind spotting and some other movies is the poet and essayist
0:52.2	Maya Phillips, Maya, welcome to Studio 360.
0:54.8	Thanks for having me.
0:56.2	Instead of just letting me rant on, why don't you give our listeners a basic idea of what blind spotting is about?
1:04.3	Sure.
1:04.9	So it's very much based in Oakland, very much an Oakland film.
1:09.0	And it's about these two friends, childhood friends,
1:12.1	played by David Diggs, who's known for Hamilton and Raphael Casal, who is known in the poetry world.
1:19.2	He did slam. Yeah, he did slam. So it's focusing on David's character, Colin. and it's the last days of his probation.
1:28.8	And he's just trying to get through it, not violate his probation, but he sees one night a black man, an unarmed black man, get shot several times.
1:39.1	And he is a black man.
1:40.3	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
1:42.0	Get shot several times as he's running away from a white cop. So he's dealing with those in emotional ramifications throughout the movie. And then he's also just dealing with his friend Miles, a white man, who is just hot-tempered, totally crazy, and they're just navigating their relationship to Oakland as it's being gentrified
2:03.3	and their own issues with race and their relationship to each other.
2:07.0	Well, well put.
	...

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