Why “Selah and The Spades” Still Isn’t The Black Coming-of-Age Film We Need
Although centered around teens, Selah and the Spades is a far cry from the traditional coming-of-age story Black Gen-Zers need. In fact, it’s a very dark drama.
Starring Greenleaf’s Lovie Simone Oppong, Emmy award-winner Jharrel Jerome, and familiar faces like Gina Torres & Jesse Williams, the film follows five factions at the prestigious Haldwell School for Boarding and Day Students: the Sea, the Skins, the Bobbies, the Prefects, and the almighty Spades. Driven by the one tacit social contract of “not being a snitch,” the upperclassmen, specifically Spades leader Selah Summers (Lovie Simone Oppong), must grapple for power as their high school careers approach a bitter end.
Photo credit.
Directed by Tayarisha Poe and originally released at the Sundance FIlm Festival in January 2019, the movie made its Amazon Prime debut on April 17, 2020, receiving a 3.6 out of 5 stars rating and a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. The highly anticipated R-rated film features a darker-skinned Black female character as the lead, for once, sitting atop the social strata in her high school — and many were looking forward to the prospect of a newfound Black coming-of-age teen movie.
The first scene opens with the faction leaders bickering, in a gothic style setting, over the senior prank of choice. Of course, at Selah’s request, a “water proposal” is chosen. Once the unspoken “topic of Teela” is brought up by nemesis and rival Bobby (Ana Mulvoy-Ten), Selah and Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) feel the need to find a successor to uphold the legacy of the Spades, who have a penchant for dealing “booze, pills, powder, and fun” at the Haldwell School.
Selah and the Spades tugs on the universal feeling of knowing your control is fleeting as the real world encroaches upon you and the pressures of perfection as a high-achieving teen, yet it leaves so much to be desired. Although devoid of police brutality and gang violence and riddled with underground parties, Selah and the Spades adopts a sinister, far-fetched dark take on adolescence rather than giving Black teens...well, the chance to just be carefree Black teens.
Waking up with near-perfect braids each morning and mastered smiles in the mirror, Selah simply does not struggle like the rest of us. Because of the gnawing desire to carve her own path separate from the expectations of her mother, she does not afford herself the opportunity to make mistakes, much like me when I was younger.
She’s never had an interest in love or sex because she sees “girls crying the bathroom and it’s like...why bother?” On the surface, Selah seems like the powerhouse every Black girl should aspire to emulate. Yet she is not only the author of her own twisted fate, but also that of others. Selah never indulges in the substances she sells, but at the drop of a dime, she will use them to sink her teeth into your skin, twisting admiration into fear.
Selah is drawn to Paloma Davis (Celeste O’Connor), a curious, camera-carrying fly-on-the-wall freshman scholarship student with a massive crush on Selah. Wielding her influence and taking advantage of Paloma’s attraction to her, viewers see a dark turn, where a young Black woman vying for power transforms into an agent of chaos. As the spring semester unfolds and Selah attempts to mold the mind of her successor, more secrets are revealed and more drama ensues.
As she becomes Selah’s protégé and inches closer to her, Paloma dreams of carving accomplice Maxxie out of the picture. Once the headmaster hears rumblings about suspicious extracurricular activities, he cancels junior-senior prom, but Paloma takes it upon herself to organize an off-campus function. Proud of her work, Paloma revels in all that can be accomplished as a Spade. This leads Selah to feel obsolete and threatened, as though Paloma has gotten too big for her britches. What Selah does next reveals that maybe, Little Ms. Perfect may not be so perfect after all.
Sans the serial sabotaging, there are some elements of my high school self that I see in Selah: a craving for competition, the desire to charter your own future, ensure your lasting mark on an institution, etc. However, she is a textbook Machiavellian villain.
Selah said it herself: “It’s better to put the fear of God in their souls...than to let them think their actions don’t have consequences.”
Ironically, in this film, we see a young Black girl run an underground prep school hierarchy, selling illicit drugs and alcohol without fear of shouldering the consequences. Because inevitably, someone else will clean up her mess, whether they like it or not. This in itself can be perceived as a sort of freeing escapism from our actual society, but it’s an unrealistic high school experience.
For the first time, we see Black students at the top of the pecking order, but their character development is borderline nonexistent, not centered around innocent things like first crushes, studying for the SATs, no. Haldwell is literally a backdrop for the blackmail, manipulation, and drug-pushing that takes place regularly, all of which can be traced back to Selah. What is most troubling about the film, to me, is that although it may be showing that “there’s not one way to live Black,” this way is one bereft of happiness and rooted in the central theme of struggle, whether it be for power or attention.
Selah and the Spades is not a warm, feel-good movie. Neither is the coming-of-age process, per se, but where are the regular, shmegular Black teenage experiences? I want to see Black teens enjoying themselves, exhibiting a range of emotions and lived experiences without the expense of putting themself or someone else on the chopping block.
