Because it so plainly, generously reveals to all of us, who suffered through this movie, just how much of a lie it is that the young white people who move to inner areas of NYC are the progressive, liberal, equality driven, cultural enthusiasts that they and the media promotes and purports them to be (and even politics, when elections roll around and identity politics fly around everywhere and these aforementioned gentrifying hipster charlatans pretend to be your friend and beg you to vote their way, because they live in NYC so they can't be racist, right?).
Wrong. On the surface, so that you don't attack these people when they walk down the street which they neurotically believe will happen (or they certainly act that way hence the duo in this movie getting the heebie jeebies buying food from a Brooklyn bodega and being hesitant for about a 2 minute dialogue to publicly park their bikes or not), they claim to be harmless little artsies who aren't ignorantly afraid to live in certain areas, but it really takes no digging and barely any scratching the surface off to realize that they are exactly the hateful, prejudiced, classist, hypocritical, selfish morons the rest of us say they are, who live off their parents to sustain a living in NYC and are completely unwilling and incapable of contributing anything to the communities that they apathetically move into and stupidly opt to bicycle through. You don't live in this area and you presumptuously get lost in it and you have the nerve to insult the neighborhood and the people innocently walking by and call them "ghetto." Is this supposed to be funny? I lived in NYC majority of my life since being born there and I honestly have never been unsafe (except the times when it's after midnight and I'm walking alone of course and I still was perfectly safe. I've been in more danger in smaller towns actually because there's less witnesses around!) Anyway do you think you're doing yourself or your demographic any favors by demonstrating this ignorance?
At least Tiny Furniture 2010 intelligently nuanced the classic regional separatism of NYC through witticisms, I suppose, such as "I live in a sh-thole called Bushwick" or "Where are you gonna move, Fort Greene?" because these statements are full of social context alluding to the fact that, yes, young white people who are wealthy enough to do nothing all day except pretentious art are in fact moving to Bushwick and Fort Greene (I'm not proclaiming Tiny Furniture to be Shakespearean in the slightest but it is compared to this movie, the raggedy headed stepchild of the genre).
Or even Broad City on Comedy Central showed obnoxiously fearless young white women from upper middle classed backgrounds volunteering to live in NYC squalor to prove they live on the edge and sell it off as comedy while mocking the lifestyles of native New Yorkers that they struggle to adapt to. While it was annoying, it still was never ever offensive.
But these guys in Fort Tilden 2014 just come right out calling Flatbush ghetto. One of the best universities in the city is in Flatbush. It's so ghetto, yet here you are in lala land getting lost in it. I don't understand racist, classist people. If you hate it so much, why are you there?! What are you doing anyway deep in Brooklyn? Do you think being young white women in Brooklyn makes you ballsy? Ok? Now why make a movie about it? To someone somewhere, this is funny. But to most people, this is pointless and stupid. Why? Idk. Maybe invest in a map or gps, take the subway, call a cab or better yet, gtfo of NYC if it is just too ghetto for you to commute in, dummy. And you might say, hey it's just a movie. It's passed off as realism, and I'm sure we all know someone like the characters in the movie who move to NYC and then complain about it. And two, it's definitely racial because one thing you will learn about NYC if you ever go is that the demographics change neighborhood by neighborhood. They go to one area and say it's so beautiful (it is) in a scene where the two leads get harassed by a bunch of snobby, dramatic white Karens (I know nonwhite people who live in beautiful parts of NYC and other cities but this movie will have you think otherwise) yet when they bike through an area full of literally black and brown people and it looks no different than the other areas they were in, they use the word ghetto and are too disgusted to eat the food that Hispanics prepared for them??? What? Yet they buy a dirty barrel for $200 that a white homeless guy was merely sitting next to, assuming he was selling it? Then they buy drugs in broad daylight at a neighborhood park. Who's ghetto now??? Is it not ghetto because a white guy sold it to you, and it's pills not crack, so it's fine? Is riding a bike not ghetto too? If you're a person of color on a bike, you're poor and ghetto, right? Two young white women on a bike is fine though? They're not passing this off as a comedy mocking the characters such as Night At The Roxbury or something. They really expect us to find the characters funny as if their attitudes and reactions are relatable and reasonable. If there was a joke here, it's a bad one and they need help developing a sense of humor, a plot, characters, a script...everything. But no. Again, I'm glad they made this movie. All of my thoughts and feelings about gentrification in NYC have been confirmed here. Thanks!
On top of that, watching them ditch someone's bike they borrowed because their reasoning is so nonexistent is painfully annoying. Watching them call clothes cheap and tacky--meanwhile they ask other people for everything specifically money for basic things--is painfully annoying. It's not funny. I think even wealthy people would find them insufferable. At least Frances Ha 2012 showed her trying. I loved that movie. I didn't relate to her background, but I related to trying in NYC and in life as a single young woman. I think I even cried at the end.
This movie is about to make me cry too, but from agony.
NYC is for people who were born there, poor jobseekers, enrolled students, businesspeople, and entertainers (more so those who have concrete plans than those with open ended goals and dreams such as in Los Angeles). If you are not in the above groups, you should leave NYC. That specifically includes these two nasty pieces of you know what who snide and scorn everyone across the entire region of Brooklyn when they are no one to judge anyone.
And then one of them sarcastically says, "you're gonna be really comfortable in Africa" to the other one going to the Peace Corp in an African country. Was this a cue for viewers to laugh? I wanna meet whoever laughed and have a nice little chat... First of all, Africa has some very "comfortable" places, hence why so many people can't stop invading the place to take what's there. Secondly, if you know anything about the Peace Corp, they put you in places on every continent that no human would decide to go; that's the point of being a world volunteer! I read one of the job placements just now and they specifically stated for every position, including the ones that aren't in Africa, that you "may be without water, plumbing, electricity, internet" and that you may have to "walk miles to and from location" due to a lack of infrastructure and transportation. Therefore, this is not about Africa being uncomfortable; this is about Peace Corp placements intentionally being in uncomfortable places to propagate westernization and modernization, or to just help for a little while; it's like the Army but for teachers. So why was this made racial when every character in the movie kept insulting Africa?
Also, how typical of them to smack dab in the middle of the movie have them argue like it's some pivotal plot driver. The conversation was unbearable and nauseating, the way they argue so vapidly and vacuously. Ugh. I told myself when I first came here and read reviews, "they've been annihilated enough as it is, don't do it." Well that went away by the minute watching these two birds say and do the hateful nasty things they said and did.
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