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4 Beloved Contemporary Classics That Would Be Hated if They Came Out Today

Now, being late to things isn’t something that’s particularly uncommon with me. I think I was the last person on earth without a cellphone (didn’t get one until 2002), I started binge-watching Game of Thrones last spring, and I didn’t realize the Weeknd was just one person until, like, 2014. With Love Jones, however, I was 15 years late. Which, for a college-educated black person who was in high school when it was released, made me an anomaly: “The guy who hasn’t seen Love Jones.”

 

At a certain point, I had gone so long without seeing it that it became both a point of pride and a status. I actually enjoyed being that guy, in no small part because it had a tendency to intrigue women at game nights and happy hours. (“What’s his story? Maybe I should investigate why this mysterious man hasn’t seen Love Jones yet. And then sleep with him.”)

 

But then I attended a screening of it in 2012 at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture. (And I actually met Ted Witcher, who wrote and directed the film, there, too.) And to my surprise, I loved it. Yes, some of the dialogue was cliché and some of the characters were a tad too melodramatic, but I appreciated the love story, the script, the music, the cinematography and how it was very obviously created by a person who loved black people.

 

I’ve seen it a few times since. And while I still enjoy it, a realization hit me somewhere between the second and third viewings: This movie totally would not receive the same love if it were released for the first time today. Why? Well, Darius Lovehall­—the film’s protagonist and the inspiration for tens of thousands of black men between 1997 and 2005—saying, “F--k it, lemme cop a kufi and try this spoken-word thing cause chicks seem to dig it,”­ was totally, definitely, 100 percent a stalker. In fact, not only was he a stalker, but the stalking is the fulcrum for the entire movie. Without his stalking, nothing that happens in Love Jones happens.

 

Just think about what he did in the first week of meeting Nina at the club: Wrote and performed a sexually explicit poem for her. Then managed to run into her at a record store a few days later and got shot down. Then begged his friend—a clerk at the store—for Nina’s home address, which is totally illegal. And then actually showed up uninvited at the place she was home-sitting, which is totally illegal. Of course, she liked him, so the stalking didn’t matter much. But if Love Jones were released in 2016, every movie review and tweet about it would lead with “Don’t see this because the main character is a stalker and possible sociopath.”

 

Remember, Love Jones isn’t even that old. We’re not talking about a movie from the ’40s or ’60s. But our social climate has changed so much in just the last 20 years that things that were relatively acceptable then would be considered problematic today. And Love Jones isn’t the only beloved and relatively recent classic that probably wouldn’t receive the same love if released today.

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-the root

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