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The Ghetto in the Sky: The (Mis)Adventures of Soul Plane
By Tameka Bradley Hobbs
June 2004
I wanted to see Soul Plane mainly because of all the hype surrounding it.
Could it really be as bad as everyone was making it out to be? As I
purchased my ticket, I reminded myself to temporarily hold back my cultural
politics and to reign in my preconceived notions about the modern-day black
comics and comedies that are simply updated minstrel shows (think
Bamboozled). Just keep an open mind, I told myself. It might be funny and
a little laughter might do you some good.
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In the end, I should have trusted my gut. Instead of being entertained,
Soul Plane depressed me. The best analogy I could come up with is this: It
felt like I had just seen my best friend from high school, my tight girl,
head of the class, homecoming queen and everything, out on the stroll
selling her body for crack. You love her so much. You know that she is
talented and can do so much better, yet she’s degrading herself to this.
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Rather than a comedy, Soul Plane is a tragedy. I couldn’t believe that some
of my favorite comedians could participate in a film as unfunny as this one.
Unfortunately, the writers tried to pass off making fun of the basest forms
of human behavior—going to the potty and having sex—as humor. It’s all the
stuff you drew pictures of on the back of your spiral notebook in middle
school. It’s something you’d expect from an eighth grader, but from
talented people like John Witherspoon and D. L. Hughley, I expected more.
Why go slumming by participating in a film like this? For example,
Witherspoon plays a blind wanna-be playa who ends up having foreplay with a
baked potato. Just sad. Sommore’s performance, if it can be called that,
was disappointing to say the least. Instead of using her comedic talent,
Sommore tapped into her inner porn star as she and her on-screen lover
performed various sexual acts on the plane, with a grand finale tryst on the
wheels of the plane during landing.
In addition to that, Soul Plane dramatized some of the most tired
stereotypes that abound about black people. Hypersexuality? Check! Black
men with large penises? Check! Love of malt liquor and fried chicken?
Check! Lots of hoochies? Check! Spinners? Check! Inefficiency on the
job? Check! Witless African? Check! A flaming male homosexual
(creatively named Flame)? Check!
At its core, Soul Plane highlighted the sad inconsistencies of black life:
the habit of living beyond one’s means by purchasing overpriced, flashy and
frivolous items that give the illusion of wealth and well-living despite the
reality of poverty, widely known as ghetto-fabulousness. It is a cultural
hallmark of black life in America but is a recipe for financial disaster and
perpetual impoverishment. But it makes for good laughs. Wouldn’t be great
to look at high-priced cars in a terminal that also housed a 99 cent store?
That’s how we do!
In the end, it comes down a basic question: how do we perceive ourselves?
I was taught that in order to receive respect, you must respect yourself.
If we apply this same maxim to the black community as a whole, what does
Soul Plane say about us? Dignity is becoming a dirty word in the black
community. We want to get mad with Bill Cosby for the comments he made at
Howard University about the current state of the black underclass, but where
is the outrage over Soul Plane? This is exactly the stuff that he spoke
about. I do not mean the mean-spirited classism that drives wedges between
us, but the perpetuation of behaviors and attitudes that make us our own
worse enemy. “Keepin’ it real” or “keepin’ it ‘hood” may get you the
respect you want on the street, but it keeps us from truly taking advantage
of the opportunities for education, employment, or even business ownership.
Soul Plane hit too close to home to be funny. We allow any and everything
to go on in our communities and in our homes and then we scratch our heads
and wonder why things don’t get any better. My concern is about its effect
on our children, who take in films like these and their messages, which then
become part of their personas and their psyches. If we keep putting out
these images as the norm, we are failing as the parents and protectors of
the next generation.
And, speaking of generations, what about the past generations who fought for
the dignity of the race? They fought against the stereotypes that some
black folks now willingly put on film and circulate around the nation and
the world. I love fun as much as the next person, and yes, we have freedom
of speech and expression in this country. However, prejudice still abounds
in this country; many expect the worst from us, and we continue to live up
to those expectations. Soul Plane proves that, at least on some level, we
are proud of that.
Too many of us are doing too poorly for us to take ourselves this lightly.
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Tameka Bradley Hobbs
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
The Florida State University
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