Review of a Review of The Pursuit of Happyness

Here is the review:
http://wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=9437&Itemid=2

My response. lol:

I know, it's late, but I only have one thing to say:

Please take the high-minded stick out of your ass when reviewing your films. Should Chris Gardner have changed his whole life to meet your politically correct expectations?

The point of every romantic tale is that the hero is exceptional and performing outrageous tasks that the audience could only dream of, yet when the story is "Black man gets ahead by tenacity and insane goals," you tell audience, "this film is telling you your poverty is your own fault, that you are lazy." WAIT, WHAT!?

Is Batman's fight against crime saying "It's your fault that crime is rampant in your hood. What's stopping you from putting on a costume and beating up criminals?"

Every paragraph of The Pursuit of Happyness review is dripping with offended scoffing so self-righteous that the reviewer barely cares about the "based on a true story" aspect and, instead, insists that the story is racist, sexist and classist for reasons that would make sense… IF THE STORY WEREN’T TRUE!

"There are no positive female characters. Look! The wife was a shrew!” Yes, because the real Chris Gardner sold off their whole savings on a crappy product. I'd be pissed, too. Am I the only one who felt pity on her and hoped that the real woman kept in touch with her son after all this happened? Were the writers supposed to change Mr. Twissle into a woman?

"This film is manipulating you to dislike the poor because two or three people in Chris's life were not helpful to him, while the white people were. (This is all wrong. White people are always the problem.)" It’s so sad that you are willing to ignore the flaws of the stock brokers just for a chance at some high-brow cross-victimization. Those white men spent half the movie looking pass Chris, barely paying him attention, thinking about their football game, their next appointment or a damn Rubik’s cube. Stiffing him in cab fare, taking his money, pushing him to do chores… Not because he is Black, either, but because he’s an Intern and that’s his lot in life until he rises higher.

And I suppose the kindness of the Glide Memorial Baptist Church, whose Black director played himself in the movie, means nothing to you? The reviewer comments on how “not possible on this planet,” it would be for a man to go into a men’s shelter with a child, but obviously it was little exceptions like this that caused the real Chris Gardner to have the script changed to add him in. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. He had to be in it.”

“Then he could have added in a woman! There had to have been some woman who helped him during this time!” The story is about a man making a life for his son and the review stops to write about how women are portrayed… as if a hippy stealing some gizmo or a girlfriend at the end of her rope is meant to summarize the moral fiber of %51 of our species. (Nevermind that the movie is full of hundreds of real homeless men, ungrateful men, insensitive men, and too-busy-for-you men. HOW can we raise our sons with so many examples of flawed, normal people around them?!)

“All-white, male utopia,” Prairie Miller? Chris Gardner’s moment of Happyness at the end is realizing he can provide for his son again. He runs to the day-care and grasps the boy. But I suppose Christ would need to become Christina for the underlying theme of the story to matter, since “single dad doing whatever it takes to raise his child” isn’t as archetypical as single mothers.

Of course, if it was a story about small town girl Christina, working a no-pay internship, beating out a room of college-educated men, to work in a prestigious firm after being dumped by her boyfriend, kicked out her apartment, forced to live in a Baptist church shelter and running, running, running all over San Francisco with only her skill “with numbers and people” to help her…

But, no, let’s get back to judging Chris for not calling child services or some government agency, which would probably take his boy away, which is the very point of this movie. Chris Gardner wanted to raise his son. Forget even the Rags-to-Riches plot, which is so easy for political-minded dunderheads to fall back on. The man wanted to stay in his child’s life. He reached for anything that could help him and did many stupid, risky, dangerous, foolish things for that goal. Just like every other hero that has ever been worth telling a story about. But that’s a Bad thing in this case, because he is Black, thus his only real options are to revolt against the entirety of America because he’s poor, yet also get on welfare.

I’ve wasted an hour of my life to this letter, wasted time being offended at you for being offended at this, so now I am just sad. In 1984, a Chinese immigrant mistook Happyness for Happiness and that offends you. A black guy you don’t know wasn’t willing to give Chris Gardner $14 and for Chris to mention that in a retelling of his rise from poverty offends you. Portraying flaws in “people of color” piss you off?

Pretentious people piss me off. Being told that by a presidential candidate that “we need more aid for Blacks, Hispanics and poor whites” pisses me off, because I feel like punching the White guy that thinks that “Black and Hispanic” don’t also need adjective qualifiers like “poor”. “Feminist” commentary on “how women are portrayed” pisses me off because the Critical Woman reviewing the film assign more stereotypes and labels than anyone else. Turning every movie, even action-adventure leave-your-brain-at-home ones into about Issues because the lead character is not a white male. I live for the day that the Everyday Unlucky Dude is an Asiamerican guy or a native girl and some “professionally offended” twit doesn’t hark about how unrealistic it is for them to care more about saving the world, getting the girl, or running for their lives than about Important Racial/Gender Issues!

I should save Prairie Miller’s review, so that I may have a reference for a (actually fictional) pundit in my own fantasy stories, but alas, if I used her as a satirical map, I’d be accused of stereotyping liberal-minded poets with Ivory Tower degrees. “Complaining that the hero is TOO enterprising? Being offended that non-white people can misspell words? Talking about the evils of the brokerage industry in a film about a father going to extreme lengths to care for his son? No, not even the dizziest of New England twits would complain THIS much about how life can really turn out.”

Urg, and to think I once wanted to go to Barnard…