White Wedding Crashers

Ridiculous piece in Salon today, wherein a black woman bemoans the lack of black weddings in The Wedding Crashers.

The woman's speaking about the long montage near the film's opening, where Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn crash a variety of multicultural weddings. There's a Jewish wedding, an Irish wedding and an Indian wedding, to the best of my recollections, but there are possibly one or two more in there I've forgotten.

But they don't go to a black wedding. I didn't really notice the absence at the time, though I can see why a filmmaker would reasonably leave it out. Jokes about white guys pretending to be "down" with black culture have gotten entirely tired (Vaughn already played that character earlier this year, in the reprehensibly stupid Be Cool). Would we really want to see another scene with Vaughn and Wilson trying to do some cool black guy dance but looking dorky, or trying to give a toast in street slang? No thanks.

But author Debra Dickerson doesn't consider any options but racism. She boldly declares that the lack of black brides in the opening of Wedding Crashers results from the filmmakers "inability to comprehend Negro culture."

Is she insane? Every 10 seconds, I see an ad for a major Hollywood film reveling in Negro culture. It's everywhere. In fact, Hollywood has ripped off black culture to such an extreme, it's almost a relief to see a mainstream comedy free of dumb jokes based on white vs. black racial differences. If she really wanted to go after a racist movie, how about one in which Cedric the Entertainer does his offensive "black preacher" routine, wherein he jumps around and hoots like a mental patient. Or what about one of the films in which Marlon Wayans plays a spastic, incomprehensible psychopath who loves guns just a bit more than he loves casual sex without condoms?

But Dickerson doesn't want to talk about those genuinely racist movies. He has an entirely separate agenda, you see. Not only is Wedding Crashers insensitive for not depicting a black wedding, but the film reflects Hollywood's (and white male's everywhere) acknowledgement that black women can't be sexy.

Owen, Vince: We long for those things. It's a misery to black woman why our strength, the strength that kept our people from extinction and which holds the community together yet, makes us seem manly somehow, as if no white woman has ever roughened her pink hands or survived rape for her family's sake. Or been a bitch.

Okay, I'm not saying that the issues this woman brings up aren't accurate about society at large. There is a stigma about black women, and they are depicted in our culture frequently as cruel, loveless matriarchs. But that is so only part of the story, and it has nothing to do with Wedding Crashers. Putting blame on Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, as this woman does, is random enough to be delusional.

I mean, she's upset that the montage in Wedding Crashers doesn't include any black women, which already is kind of an odd, silly complaint, and then she extrapolates that into a lament that the history of slave rape makes black women unsexy? What?

This is when feature-y cultural commentary goes totally haywire. It's fair to analyze a film for subtext and try to get at what societal truths lie buried in pop culture. But to take one scene in a mainstream comedy, a scene that isn't about the interrelation of races so much as the sparkling personalities of its two leads, and twist it to suit an argument you've had in mind for months that only tangentially relates to the movie...that's just irresponsible and pointless.

And, besides, I don't think Hollywood's problem is that it doesn't find black women sexy. Sanaa Lathan, Christina Milian, Beyonce Knowles, Vivica Fox, Halle Berry...are these not sexy black women who make films? Lots of films? I think Hollywood's problem is that there aren't enough black people in positions of power or black filmmakers, so all too often talented black performers and creative artists are saddled with poor material and tiny budgets. Why can't we get an article about that?

Could it be Debra Dickerson wanted to write a piece about how it's hard for a middle-aged black woman to feel sexy in 2005, and had to link it to Wedding Crashers to get it published or something? Because I'm out of other explanations here.