Akeelah And The Bee

I read several reviews of this film, hoping to find the phrase, "inspired by actual events", or some words to that effect. I also studied the official web site for the film, hoping to find some similar phrase. Then, out of heightened curiosity, I paid $9.50 to see the film, and searched the opening credits (just a title) and the closing credits (extensive), again in vain, for the phrase, "inspired by actual events", or words to that effect.

This film would have been terrific if it had been grounded in some form of reality. Surely there must be some real success stories out there that this film could have drawn on for it's source material. Surely there must be some real black kids out there, who do reasonably well at English, and who would do much better at it if they simply had the same parental and school guidance as other kids who do well at English.

Unfortunately, this film is a complete fabrication. And what a fabrication it is. It's about a black kid from South Central L.A. who not only embraces the idea that she must master standard English, but who masters it well enough to compete in (and win, on her first try), not just her local spelling bee, and not just her school district's spelling bee, but the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the most competitive contest of its kind in the nation, and perhaps in the entire English speaking world.

However, a thorough perusal of the list of winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee over the last 25 years or so, reveals lots of girls with names like Amy and Amanda, and lots of boys with names like Scott and George, and even a few kids with exotic East Asian names like Anurag and Pratyush. But there are no kids on that list with names like Demondre or Twontonette. And that's not just a coincidence.

All sarcasm aside: the idea that the way to get kids to improve academically, is to do what this film attempts to do, namely, to boost their morale by inspiring them to feel good about themselves, has already been so thoroughly debunked that it's a wonder anybody still believes it. The sad fact of the matter is that African American kids today, already have the highest self-esteem of any racial group of students, yet their math and English performance remains dismal.

And the idea, strongly suggested throughout the film, that there is some special combination of circumstances or support that disadvantaged black kids require, in order to succeed academically, is the only truly racist idea involved here. Akeelah only succeeds because she has a UC Professor of English (Lawrence Fishburne) tutoring her, for months and months on end, at no charge. And, of course, he has to be black. And, of course, he has to include lots of black history lessons in his English tutoring. And make no mistake about it, this is the only way Akeelah can succeed: toward the end of the film, she looks up at her free, volunteer, Ph.D. tutor, and literally says, "I wouldn't be here without you" (she even pronounces 'without' correctly).

But even that, by itself, isn't enough. Everybody in her neighborhood had to pitch in to help her study. The military-bound big brother, the Korean grocer, the well-to-do Hispanic kid from Westwood, the homeless panhandler, even the homies and gangbangers had to help out. And of course, her overworked mother (Angela Bassett) had to stop standing in her way, and of course she had to have a picture of her slain dad to always look up to. After all, it takes a politically correct village to raise a child. Even the ending of the film is politically correct: Akeelah and the Asian boy who is her last remaining competitor play to a draw, so they're both co-winners, and nobody's a loser.

Look: anybody, including me, would be inspired by any story about a kid who succeeds academically in spite of long odds. I was probably just as choked up as anybody at the end of the film. And I have no doubt that the people who made this film had their hearts in the right place. But tugging on people's hearts isn't what's going to make the difference. And the fact that it's supposedly a "kid's film" doesn't let the the filmmakers off the hook. Besides, the film is actually directed as much at adults as it is toward kids.

It is certainly true that many black kids do face a special obstacle, in that they first have to un-learn the concept that Ebonics is a language and that "aks" is a word. But the fact remains that the way to get kids, all kids, any kids, to improve academically, is to teach them to take school seriously and to knuckle down and work their butts off. And that's a job that can only be done effectively by parents. Any substitute is a poor substitute. And when kids start by taking school seriously and working their butts off, then their performance improves, and when their performance improves, then their self-esteem and morale improves genuinely, because they've earned it.

(Which reminds me. Starbucks, which is underwriting the distribution of this film, has ads in all their stores in the style of flashcards, with a slogan at the bottom saying, "What's your word?" Well, okay, my word is "aquila", which, in addition to being an actual word, in not one, but two languages [being both the Spanish and Italian word for "eagle"], would probably be a perfectly fine name for a girl, provided that her parents could pronounce and spell it correctly. Sooner or later, a real "Akeelah" will probably want to know why her mother couldn't.)

The perfect companion/antidote to this film is a *real* documentary, made several years ago for PBS, entitled "The First Year". It follows the experiences of five real rookie teachers in the real Los Angeles Unified School district through their first academic year, and shows what these and other real teachers are really up against every day. Intended to have the same effect on adults as "Akeelah And The Bee", namely, to inspire them to come up with creative, special new ways to teach disadvantaged minority kids, the film has exactly the opposite effect. The experiences of these five young teachers were so awful that all of them, including the idealistic young black man of whom so much was expected, ended up quitting after their first year.

"The First Year", which was originally intended to be shown annually, all over the country, as the cornerstone of the "Teach America" program, in an effort to inspire young college students to persue public school teaching as a profession, was, instead, shown only once, on a handful of PBS stations, mostly at midnight, and then quietly shelved. Any adult who decides to become a teacher or tutor after seeing "Akeelah", should be required to also see "The First Year", so that at least they'll be going into the experience with open eyes.

The Notorious Bettie Page


Some of the reviews of this film were quite disparaging, but this is one of those occasions where I must disagree with many of the professional critics. It probably tells the story of Bettie Page's early life and modeling career about as well as any film could, given the source material that was available to work from, including, primarily, the surviving photos, and, of course, Bettie herself. And thank goodness the film was made while she was still alive so that she was still available as a source.

If the film does come across as shallow and uninsightful, well, it's probably mostly because Bettie herself is basically a rather shallow and uninsightful person. But in the case of this film, that's probably as much of a blessing as it is a fault. The film seems to be a straighforward effort to portray the porno industry of the 1950s, and the events of Bettie's career in that industry, without being either preachy or condescending.

And make no mistake about it: tame as they may seem by today's standards, the photos and films Bettie made were indeed pornography. Men bought these pictures to jerk off with, and the people who were making them knew perfectly well (at least for the most part) that that's exactly why they were buying them.

Bettie herself, however, genuinely seems to have been blissfully unaware of the real reason that men wanted to look at these pictures. And while the combination of a religion-influenced upbringing and apparent sexual abuse could easily have twisted anyone's personality in some rather ugly ways, that doesn't seem to have been the case with Bettie. If she really was abused as a teenager and even gang-raped as a woman, that would certainly be something she had in common with a large percentage of the women who do pornography. But something else she had in common, with probably an even *larger* percentage of the women who do pornography, is that she just wasn't a particularly bright person.

Assuming, however, that one is willing to accept the source material on its own terms, the film comes across as a mostly honest attempt to convey the atmosphere, style, and sensitivities of the people, their times, and their circumstances. Perhaps the closest the film comes to being mocking is in the music used during the Senate hearings, which is deliberately sinister and melodramatic (although, even here, the music is not out of character with the type of music that would have been used during that period.)

Even during these Senate hearing scenes, however, the film remains mostly straightforward, including its depiction of the testimony of a man who describes discovering his son dead, after what sounds like an episode of auto-erotic asphyxiation. The father goes on to describe how he also discovered, after going through his son's belongings, a collection of bondage photos that sound very much like the ones Bettie participated in making. Whether Bettie ever actually heard such testimony in 1955 is not really known. But it's entirely plausible to suppose that she would have heard such descriptions at some point in her life.

Gretchen Mol conveys Bettie's persona with pretty much exactly the sweet, friendly, and naively trusting characterisitcs one would expect, given the tone of the few interiews she's given over the years. And I must say that she looks absolutely lovely in those 50s outfits. And I don't mean the bondage gear or lingerie, I mean the conventional dresses and such.

This is particularly true in the Florida scenes, which are shot in color, with a reliance on primary colors and a level of saturation that elegantly recreate the color motifs and style of the mid-1950s. The cinematography, in general, tries to be consistent with the material. The black and white cinematography in the New York scenes does leave something to be desired, probably mostly due to the use of modern equipment and film stock. But many of the color Florida scenes are beautifully composed, and several are quite faithful to the style and color composition of the Bunny Yeager photo sessions.

The film, which was produced by HBO, also features a generous helping of character actors who have figured prominently in several HBO television shows. John Ventimiglia, who plays restauranteur Artie Bucco in The Sopranos, is a member of an amateur "photographer's club". There is also a party scene featuring Ventimiglia together with Max Casella, who plays Artie's recent nemesis Benny Fazio in The Sopranos. Chris Bauer, who was featured in the HBO series The Wire, plays photograher Irving Klaw, and Lili Taylor, who had a regular recurring role in Six Feet Under, plays his sister Paula. And Bunny Yeager, who did several color shoots of Bettie in Florida, including the 1955 Playboy centerfold, is played by Sarah Paulson, who was featured in the HBO series Deadwood.

Additional character actors in the cast include David Strathairn (who recently starred as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night And Good Luck), in a very straighforward performance as Senator Estes Kefauver. John Cullum, of Northern Exposure, plays a southern preacher. And, bringing up the rear, the indelible Austin Pendleton, who plays a teacher in Bettie's acting class.

Any film attempting to tell the story of Bettie Page's career is limited by the scarcity of surviving documentation, and by the rather uninsightful details that Bettie herself has provided. But reaching for a deeper level of analysis would require speculation, along with the interjection of the filmmaker's own personal opinions and biases. Writer/director Mary Harron has admirably managed to use this film to tell Bettie's story, on Bettie's terms, without ramming her own personal viewpoints down our throats. And for that, she is to be commended.