Amy Adams, Leap Year and interracial romance

Amy Adams in Leap Year

As I write this blog post, I'm about 40,000 feet up in the air on the way to Atlanta, by way of Chicago. It's something like 1AM PST Saturday morning.

The plane is a United Airlines Boeing 777 bound for O'Hare and I'm in seat 24 B. I've had much better seats and much worse seats. But the worst is the movie I just saw called Leap Year with Amy Adams.

Leap Year is one of those romantic comedies I wouldn't pay to see unless I were dragged to do so or held captive on, well, an airplane. Leap Year is not a bad film. Amy Adams plays her role as a woman caught between what she has and what she needs very well. But the problem for me is that like most films of its type, I'm compelled to like it but feel angry after I see it.

When you watch a film you place yourself in it in some way. You can't help it. You think of yourself as one of the characters. It helps if the person you think of yourself as looks like you. In Leap Year's case, I wanted to put myself in the role of Matthew Goode, who plays the Irish taxi cab driver that develops a connection with Amy Adams' character so much she dumps the white doctor guy she originally wanted to marry.

Take this scene for example...



I enjoyed the film until the annoying realization that no one in the flick was black kept clawing at my sensibilities. But it wasn't that really. I kept trying to think of a film, a mainstream movie, that featured an interracial romance between a black man and a white woman where the focus wasn't on skin color.

There have been a number of films that have been the reverse, a black woman and a white guy, like The Bodyguard, or Star Trek (remember Spock is a white Vulcan; there are black Vulcans). There are also commercials like eHarmony's latest segment, for example. Regardless of the reasons, the message is that its more acceptable in the media and in film for a white guy to be with a black woman than for a black guy to be with a white girl.

But the reality away from media and the movies is more black white pairings have been black male and white female, and while the reverse is catching up, it's not there. And so it's really annoying to see a movie like Leap Year and realize that there's no well-distributed movie that's has a black male, white female relationship as its story and yet is not making a racial statement or a weird film like Obsessed...



Obsessed was a movie about this impossibly hot but really screwed up blonde woman played by Ali Larter who makes her black male boss (Idris Elba) the target of her deadly desire, pissing off the impossibly hot Beyonce and leading to an epic cat fight.

Race had nothing to do with the movie, but why did it have to be about a screwed-up chick? (Not saying that Ali is, just that she played one, OK?)

If you say that's impossible, that such a movie that has a black – white romance automatically makes a racial statement, my retort is that a movie like Leap Year makes one as well: that's it's perfectly normal to have white male and white female relationships. So much so that we have big stars like Amy Adams in them.

All of this has to contribute to the overall frustrations men and women have in the 21st Century when it comes to dating. For me, I tried to sum it all up with someone I was out with for a period. I was trying to explain that for me, class and demographic cultural cues were more important than race. It was the first time I was able to clearly articulate what I'd experienced in my life.

For example, if I say "I've got a George Costanza Wallet" a woman who knows what that means is someone I'm more likely to click with and date than someone who's not. See? That woman can have any race or ethnicity, but there are other things which go with that. Food, music, wine. I think you can see where I'm headed.

Skin color becomes less important.

We're in a society where more and more relationships are interracial and black male, white female relationships are common. But what's holding back the completion of society's progress are films like Leap Year that continue to send a racially-exclusive message. Such films add to the image that women have in their mind about what "the ideal guy" looks like.

And for a lot of women in their late 30s and 40s and 50s who've been raised on the idea that "the ideal guy" should be of the same race or ethnicity as they are, they're consistently disappointed. Black and Latino women complain that black and Latino men don't have jobs and have prison records. White women complain that a white guy might be Gay or bisexual. Asian women complain that Asian men aren't as aggressive as they'd like. And all find that some of "their guys" are married. Yikes.

So, many women decide to open up. By contrast and by experience, younger women have fewer issues with skin color. Maybe that generation will produce the kind of movie I'd like Leap Year to be.

It would be cool to see a film like Leap Year that I could insert myself into without feeling excluded in the process. That's true progress.

(I'd like to create a list of movies that have black and white romances but race has nothing to do with the story, because there must be some out there that were just not seen by a lot of people. If you know of such a movie, send an email to zennie@zennie62.com)