Movies - Hi, Mom!

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	Movies - Hi, Mom!

Hi, Mom! (1970) is a dark comedy by Brian De Palma, and is one of Robert De Niro's first movies. It's about a fledgling "adult filmmaker" who has an idea to post cameras at his window and video tape his neighbors, a la Hitchcock's Rear Window.

Be Black, Baby

Its most memorable sequence is one where a black radical group invite a group of WASPs to feel what it's like to be black, in a sequence called "Be Black, Baby". It is both a satire and an example of the environmental theater and cinéma vérité movements. Shot in the style of a documentary film, it features a theater group of African American actors interviewing Caucasians on the streets of New York City, asking them if the whites know what it is like to be black in America.

Later, a group of theater patrons attend a performance by the troupe, wherein soul food is served. The white audience is then subjected to wearing shoe polish on their faces, while the African American actors sport whiteface and terrorize the people in blackface. Robert De Niro shows up as an actor playing an NYPD policeman, arresting members of the white audience under the pretense that they are black. The entire sequence plays with natural sound, and is "unrehearsed" and in "real time." De Palma's familiarity and collaboration with environmental theater informs the sequence and ratchets up the emotional impact of those who view it, simultaneously engaging their personal responses to racism and commenting on the deceptive and manipulative power of cinema. "If truth itself is plastic," the sequence asks, "then filmed truth is deeply-flawed."

The sequence concludes with a thoroughly battered and abused audience raving about the show, showering praise on the black actors, crowing "Clive Barnes was right!"

Be Black, Baby remains one of the most challenging and intriguing sequences from its era, and its use of an audience's willingness to become emotional accomplices sheds light on De Palma's subsequent career.

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