Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (hereinafter DTMtBD) is a remake of the 1991 movie of the same title but with a predominantly African American cast, the most notable exception to which is the titular babysitter. I smell a double standard.
Was the babysitter in the original a Malcolm Xerox Angry Black Woman? Nope. So why is the babysitter in the remake an unreconstructed, bigoted, racist, old white woman?
My guess is that, since the character obviously has to die, the filmmakers were wary that, had the character been black, that might somehow be construed as her life, as it were, not mattering — which of course is weak and fucking lame, but then so is this film.
A black babysitter who sees racism everywhere would have been a better fit, especially given that, whether by design or accident, that’s the movie’s underlying theme. The African American protagonists keep, preemptively and paranoiacally, drawing attention to all the ways in which they will be prejudiced against, not only before it happens, but even though it never happens.
This constant focus on racism and prejudice makes the film heavy-handed and lacking in nuance. It would have been more impactful to see a black character who navigates real instances of discrimination rather than just anticipating them.
Anyway, when Mrs. Sturak (June Squibb) kicks the bucket, the young heroes refrain from calling the police: “We got a dead white woman in our house. They lynch people for much less.” Less than what exactly?
An elderly woman dies peacefully in her sleep of natural causes (we’re supposed to believe that the shock of witnessing a house party populated by black teens is what done her in, but she didn’t drop dead right on the spot; she still had the wherewithal to go lie down) with no signs of struggle or foul play whatsoever. What’s the big fucking deal?
The kids didn’t actually kill her, so it’s not like the coroner is going to find finger marks around her neck or poison in her blood. One of the main characters is a pothead skater, but they’re all portrayed as possessing above-average intelligence — except when it comes to their irrational fear of ‘The Man.’
I really don’t know what these little fuckers are so worried about. Despite the pothead’s fronting, they’re not ‘real niggas’ straight out of the ghetto. They live in a big-ass house with a “massive yard” and a swimming pool in a nice neighborhood. They’re not black-black; they’re Fresh Prince of Bel Air-black.
In other words, they’re as white as dark-skinned people can be. They live privileged and sheltered lives, yet they act like they’re oppressed, as though they were facing the same hardships as those from disadvantaged backgrounds, which they most certainly are not.
I’m not saying they should be dope-dealing, cap-busting gangbangers, but consider, for instance, Cuba Gooding Jr. in Boyz n the Hood. He was a good kid, but that didn’t protect him from the dangers inherent to the environment in which he grew up. He could complain about being discriminated against because he was.
I get that DTMtBD is an alleged comedy, but none of this out-of-touch, mindless, embarrassingly earnest race-card playing bullshit is the least bit funny. Moreover, the filmmakers themselves took it a little too seriously. Like I pointed out above, if they hadn’t, the babysitter would also have been black.
In the end, when their mother returns home and the children apprise her of the recent events — including disposing of the babysitter’s corpse by making it look like she got stinking drunk and drove her car into a lake —, she gives them a pat on the back: “Y’all did the right thing. They would have shot all y’all niggas.”
No, they wouldn’t have. But they might after the police find Mrs. Sturak’s car, as depicted during the closing credits. Now, if the cops had found the car earlier, and they weren’t satisfied that Mrs. Sturak’s death was an accident, and they started sniffing around, and the trail led them back to the protagonists, then the heroes’ apprehension would be plausible (although their ethnicity would still have nothing to do with it).
It’s not fucking rocket science; it’s basic storytelling that even I can figure out. The key is to establish stakes and consequences that align with the story’s context. It is essential for the tension and conflict to be grounded in reality to keep the audience invested.
Speaking of which, there is an all too brief scene in which the pothead bemoans the fact that his late father taught him to be an Oreo cookie, but now that he’s coming of age, he wants to reclaim the identity he felt he was never allowed to have: “Dad made me go all preppy because it was safer, aka. less scary to white folks. Look, I miss the hell out of my dad, but ever since dad died, I feel like I can be myself.”
That’s poignant, thought-provoking stuff right there, and the film would have been a damn sight more compelling if it’d been about that instead. Conversely, it wouldn’t have been a pseudo-racially sensitive rehash of a dumb, early 90s comedy (which, to my knowledge, wasn’t racially insensitive to begin with), complete with early 90s quote-unquote jokes such as “Black folks don’t have [nervous breakdowns]”. A win-win situation, all things considered.
90% of Everything is Crap 