Spelling It Like It Is

Washington Post has an article about how 'Akeelah and the Bee' - a film opening on this Friday about a black girl from a rough neighborhood who makes it to the national spelling bee - flies in the face of racial stereotypes. The article argues so does Laurence Fishburne, who stars in and produced the movie in order to get it made. "In his new movie, 'Akeelah and the Bee,' Fishburne, 44, plays a former college professor named Dr. Larabee, a mentor and father figure to a brilliant 11-year-old inner-city Los Angeles girl with a gift for words that rallies her neighborhood and carries her to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The movie is a drama about friendship and competition and the seldom-seen interior world of a little black girl who must learn to fill out her canvas. To keep her community's most affirming textures, but get beyond all the neighborhood things that conspire to keep black girls small. It's a different theme for a predominantly black movie these days, one Fishburne says is more authentic and evocative of the places black people remember, like his old neighborhood in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn."

"The things the [Hollywood] studio makes a place for, the gangs and pimps and hos and guns and killing and [expletive] doesn't negate the fact that there is a real need for death and birth and relationships and jobs and struggle and grandma's house and life." And even a spelling bee, said Mr. Fishburne, who argued that mediocrity rules the day in today's movies.

"'When's the last time you've gotten a movie with a black family that's a drama and you can take your whole family?' asked Doug Atchison, the film's writer-director 'When was the last time you saw a movie about a black youth that's not singing or dancing or playing sports? When was the last time you got a movie where the black mentor character was a PhD?' For years -- a little like Akeelah -- Atchison didn't know if he, a white man, was entitled to step into a different world. 'Terrible lies have been told about the abilities of black folks, about what they could and couldn't do, and it was white folks who told those lies. Why is it not appropriate for a white person to tell the truth?' he finally asked himself."