| Review:
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In a case of more spin than spinning, the raw race
conversation-driven drama Spinning Into Butter taps into
timely issues touching on diversity conflicts that persist
in this country. But sorry to say, Spinning Into Butter
is no Crash, and comes off more as good intentions dissipating
into irresponsible moviemaking. Sara Jessica Parker delivers
a top notch performance worthy of a better film, as Sarah
Daniels, a new dean of students at a rural college in Vermont
that has only recently played catchup by recruiting students
of color into their traditionally white bread milieu. Sarah
has just quite her job at a rough ghetto high school in
inner city Chicago, and the rookie on campus has some troubling
secrets about her experiences there, that she's doing her
best not to share.***
There's also a tentative racial harmony at the college
which is more in the nature of a fragile truce. That is,
until accelerating hate crimes materialize against a black
student, beginning with anonymous racist notes left on his
dorm room door, and progressing to a hangman's noose left
outside his window.***
Sarah wants to report the shocking incidents to the
police, but the smug and dismissive dean of the college
(Miranda Richardson), along with her administrative colleagues,
is adamant about keeping matters hushed up, so as not to
adversely affect her own priority, financial donations to
the school. The student himself (Paul James) is also unwilling
to come forward publicly and cooperate, or even change his
single room to a more protective shared space, because he
insists that anything less than stoic defiance would be
akin to cowardice and defeat.***
What eventually does shake up the campus, is the arrival
of Aaron Carmichael (Mykelti Williamson), a persistent local
African American reporter who publicly breaks the story,
much to the dismay of the college authorities. And he's
also intent on ferreting out the perpetrator. The multi-tasking
Aaron makes a play for Sarah as well, who repeatedly rejects
the advances of this can't seems take a hint kind of guy.
Meanwhile, the student body is drawn into open racial warfare,
and an increasingly uncontrollable state of affairs. And
many of these highly charged verbal confrontations give
rise to long overdue candid multi-cultural dialogues that
are rarely touched upon in this society, whether on or off
screen.***
The problem is that once unleashing this emotional
hornet's nest, the filmmakers seem at a loss as to what
constructive direction to follow, and with an ultimately
out of control script not unlike the chaotic campus itself.
But far worse, is the more reckless than meaningless nature
of resolutions served up. And this unfocused state of affairs
has little to do with the production being a talky adapted
stage play.***
Without saying much more about the demoralizing nature
of the surprise elements introduced into the story, racism
ends up being presented as a state of affairs that people
of color, in particular African Americans, have brought
upon themselves. And this damaging perspective, however
fictional, is not so different from Holocaust deniers who
claim that the orchestrated Nazi genocide is a fantasy concocted
by Jews in the service of various ulterior motives.***
Perhaps a key fault with this deplorable production,
is that the director (Mark Brokaw) and screenwriters (Doug
Atchison and Rebecca Gilman, based on the play by Gilman)
are all white. What clearly seems to be problematic here,
is the one-sided, lack of multi-cultural participation in
shaping this story, which was really essential considering
its subject matter. Why advocate dialogue across racial
lines in the movie as remedy, but nowhere in the conception
of the film?***
As the result, the pronouncements of the white characters,
whether meant as positive or negative, range rather narrowly
from patronizing to insensitive. Then factor in a wrongheaded
approach of equal opportunity fingerpointing to go around
when it comes to racial antagonism. That is, all things
being equal, which they never have been, socially or economically.***
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