Nina?

This is the first rant that I’ve ever published, so here goes…

I LOVE Nina Simone. I have worshipped at her altar since the first time I heard her sing “Black is the color of my true love’s hair”. Nina Simone is not just an icon of black justice and black culture for me. Her music has connected me with countless other misfits who just wanted to fall into the deep and often painful notes that she beamed from her voice and piano. She even gave me a way to connect to my father, an amazing pianist himself. So, when I heard that a biopic was being made about this woman who is so many things to me and many others, I was skeptical. For a figure like Nina Simone who could often be polarizing, I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in how she would come out after a Hollywood treatment. I still remember what Salma Hayek did to my beloved Frida Kahlo; not much confidence here. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that Simone’s daughter was protesting the project. I wasn’t surprised to find out that Zoe Saldaña had been tapped to play Nina. And I was relieved to not hear anything else about the project, and hoped that that meant it was over. 
Fast forward to today, and here are a movie poster and stills. Stills that show Saldaña in some seriously ratchet looking blackface. I want to be clear before I continue; my main beef is not with Saldaña. She is a cog in a system that has made whitewashing and disappearing people of color, quite literally, an art form. I hold Saldaña partially responsible for accepting a role that truly just isn’t the best fit, but a good actress is paid to act and I’m sure that she did her best with the role. My issue is with the Hollywood machine that just doesn’t seem to care about people of color anymore. They don’t care about diversity. They don’t care about representation. And they don’t care about how we feel about it. We will be thrown bones, and we will accept them. We will have our BET, Stella, HOLA, and AFA awards, and politely be quiet about the cogs of the big Hollywood machine continuing to turn. Occasionally a biopic or culturally specific roles will be offered, unless, of course, they have anything to do with royalty in Egypt. We will take these roles, and we will shine in them, and maybe we will get some attention from them, but we should not let it go to our heads. 
To date, some of these biopics have actually been fairly well painted. Malcolm X, Ali, and Ray were all good movies. And maybe Nina will be a good movie too. Maybe Saldaña will be able to act around the obvious blackface that she is wearing in the movie and prove us wrong. But I don’t think that is what will happen. I think that this is Hollywood saying, “You want to complain, people of color, we will give you something to complain about. We will show you how little you mean to this machine.” This machine that will keep on turning and making money no matter what. Boycott if you want. It doesn’t matter. There will always be more bodies out here seeking attention at any cost, even if it is their own integrity. I can’t think of anything more counter a woman who sang “Mississippi Goddamn” at the top of her lungs, but nobody asked me.