I don’t agree with you, but I recommended your article, because I strongly believe in two sides of the story.
So…she didn’t like the movie. It happens. Read again the part where she said that the movie can relate only to a certain type of an audience “ Only, relevant to whom? Certainly not the audience. Most will be straight, white, middle class. Nor is it particularly “urgent”: the story has been told countless times, against countless backdrops.” She is white and she is middle class, she is also a film critic that couldn’t relate to the movie. White people stereotype black people and black people stereotype white people. Unfortunate, but truth. White men can’t jump, right? She could have spared us the stereotypical rants, but she didn’t. That’s a clickbait effect. How about when you go few lines down her review “…it is one of the most beautiful films of the year, sumptuosly shot by James Laxton…” Now that sounded super racist, right? I’m sorry but I do have a problem with your article Josh because it sounds racist. Yes, racist. “Whiteness fears black creativity” Have I read this right? Let’s reverse now: “Blackness fears white critic.” Wait 3 seconds please. Yes, I can hear the people rising and reuniting in bashing my racist article. Is it becoming more clear now, how racist your article sounds now? The problem is, that you haven’t even tried to simply engage in at least virtual, semi artistic discourse with her review. You aren’t “protecting” the movie, you are attacking a woman who had an opinion. A controversial one, but there is more to her review than her unfortunate remarks. And don’t forget the clickbait again. The marketing. You on the other hand Josh, are blatantly hateful. And please, spare me the Beyonce bit. Ofcourse she’s a narcissist, she’s a performer, this is how she makes money. She’s flaunting her private life in front of a camera making a pregnancy album on instagram. Not a great fan of Piers, but you got to admit that the black people and white people are very often at the same receiving end of his sarcastic comments. I think that if your article would have taken a different route, not down the Victimhood Alley all would be good and we would be clapping and singing to your smart, eloquent artistic sentences that would make Camilla’s review small, pitiful and daft. You could have killed her with a little bit of an intellectual effort. To everyone who is warming up their fingers ready to call me a racist, feel free to do it. I’m a half Arab girl who was growing up in the 80s in a supremely white, communist country with a Senegalese cousin. So spare me. Upon more consideration, I think that Moonlight would do just fine without Camilla’s review and Josh’s rant. But we can’t have it all, can we?
P.S For me, the movie was a masterpiece, completely unrelatable, but wonderfully made. I cried while eating popcorn and feeling for that boy. I truly did. We do need more movies like that. And we also need less stirrers. On both “sides.” Peace to all.