‘Soul Plane’ seriously misguided

In Greg Braxton’s report on the furor behind the movie “Soul Plane” (“Bumpy Takeoff for ‘Soul Plane,’ ” May 28), director Jessy Terrero says, “I’m part of Generation X, part of the hip-hop culture, and I just wanted to make a good comedy for my generation. I don’t see this as a movie about race, it’s a movie about class.” It’s not that simple.

Without deference to history and the roles of minorities in cinema, you can make an ignorant statement like that. Maybe if you never knew the history related to “tar baby,” “Sambo” and other derogatory images of the 20th century, you can make that ill-informed statement. But if you are a student of cinema and responsible for directing a motion picture, you should know better. No, you have to know better. Comedy without responsibility equals minstrel show.

Here’s my take on the movie.

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“Soul Plane” is a bad movie.

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(pause)

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OK, so I lied. To say it was “bad” is just flat-out untrue.

This movie is absolutely horrible.

It is abominable. It is atrocious and seven other negative synonyms I can’t think of, because my thesaurus is in the other room and this movie isn’t worth the walk to get it.

Think “Good Times” + “The Jeffersons” at 30,000 feet, with double the stereotypes and one-eighth the laughs. Those shows were fine in 1978, not in 2004.

How about this: Think of a contemporary African American stereotype -- any one that comes to mind.

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Yep, it was in there.

Now think of five more.

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Yep, they were in there too.

And they weren’t limited to African Americans. Caucasians, Middle Easterners -- you name it, nobody was above being abused in that respect. But don’t get it twisted: That type of equality is not to be revered. It’s not taking what’s funny about us as people and asking us to laugh at ourselves. This is taking the path of least resistance and finding any excuse to degrade, deride and debase people on racial and gender terms.

The premise of the movie was simple, born from numerous comedians’ jokes about “What if there were a ‘black’ airline?” Somehow, some way, that got spun into a feature-length “comedy” pandering to the lowest common denominator. It was 90 minutes of shameful humor that elucidates why African Americans often don’t get the respect they deserve, on and off the screen. If it matters whether African American actors, writers and producers are appropriately acknowledged by Hollywood, then never should we strive to create or support something so decidedly self-hateful and derogatory, much less defend it after the fact.

The worst part is that movies like this give the impression that not only are African Americans like this in real life, but that African Americans are also craving more movies like this. The influence of movies such as “Soul Plane” extends long after the credits roll by. You can be sure there will have more garbage like this, and less credible and meaningful black cinema.

More than that, movies like this make it seem silly when we go out and allege that racism is at the root of our problems as African Americans. We can’t readily discuss how we are mistreated in society if we willingly mistreat and disrespect ourselves. One influences the other, one shapes the other. The correlation is undeniable.

This shouldn’t even be up for discussion. We shouldn’t have to debate whether movies “celebrating” African Americans’ use of the N-word in adoration of one another, playing basketball all day and snacking on fried chicken and malt liquor are appropriate or appreciated.

Is there a real and measurable segment of society that falls into these stereotypes? Yes. But I’ll be damned if that mentality is going to be given a platform in which it can be subsequently and wrongly construed as acceptable, normal or, even worse, humorous.

The backward thinking that supports “Soul Plane” is akin to that which gave us “Amos & Andy” and every blackface minstrel show conceived. In the simplest of terms, caricatures of race drawn from hatred and negativity simply are not funny. Not funny 70 years ago, not 30 years ago and definitely not today.

Morris W. O’Kelly is a freelance entertainment writer. He lives in Studio City.