I feel like I'm going mad. Why is Perfidia the be-all-end-all when it comes to how black women are depicted in OBAA? Why does Van think that her character is the sole avatar, the sole grand thesis statement for how that film views black women?
There's a bunch of other black women in the film too. There's an entire commune of black nuns! No one in their right mind would think that Lockjaw is the films grand statement on all white men so why is Perfidia burdened with the same thing?
Christ, it really frustrates me sometimes how we (black people) view black characters. The stakes are way too high, we have to be absolutely perfect, our existence on the screen has the reflect the entirety of our people. It's unsustainable and it really clouds how we watch movies. I don't think Van is that interested in discourse (which is fine, this whole thing is called "fuck you if you disagree" which doesn't scream someone who's actually interested in dialogue) but it's exhausting watching people justify the fact that a film made the uncomfortable by making a grand moral judgement on the film as a whole.
Marty Supreme was cynical and made you feel bad? That's totally cool, it doesn't mean there's a conspiracy out there where film bros are grading the movie on a curve just to fuck with you or prove a point about what a "real movie" is. The Perfidia and Lockjaw storyline made you feel gross and uncomfortable? That might be the point!
And to speak more to the white men, every single one of them is either odious or a dope/buffoon. Pat is PTA, and he can’t even save his own daughter—hell, he never gets a win, and he’s who we assume will be the hero going in.
Love this, I agree wholeheartedly! Black women can be flawed characters and I wish our people could stop watching movies with this perfectionist mentality
10 years later & I still haven't seen La La Land... on the other hand, it's been a little over 6 months since I watched OBAA and I still don't understand the WHY behind Perfidia's character
Lockjaw had to kill Willa to erase any evidence of his past “wrongdoing” to advance in the Christmas Adventurers Club. Perfidia’s choices, and ultimately her race, are critical to the plot. If she were white then the movie doesn’t function. Lockjaw would have no reason to pursue Willa and Bob.
This movie, particularly the first third with Perfidia, is imperfect narratively and complicated sexually but becomes worth it after the time jump.
Van all these words and not one mention of Perfidia dealing with post partum depression? I actually thought that was the most poignant part of the character and how it affected her and what that says about a very dark unspoken truth about motherhood. Also. She does communicate her motivations via her monologues on the pay phone. Free borders, free bodies, free choices and free from fear ....that's her quote. Finally i have heard you criticize her quote in the note "this P don't pop for you"
...just want to remind her plan was called "snap crack pop" so the use of pop in the note is thematically tied to her motivations, might it also mean "pop" as in dad?
I saw these parallels as well. However, this piece was about something different and as such the use of her blackness over shadows those specific details.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that postpartum depression isn’t a Black experience, it obviously is.
Van’s point (as I read it) is that once you race-swap the character, the film inherits meaning it can’t opt out of.
You can read interiority, trauma, and motivation into Perfidia, but Van’s unease is about whether the film sufficiently accounts for the representational weight of those choices.
Thank you for this! I was unconvinced by most of the characters in this film. The father daughter relationship has heart but I truly thought the rest of the revolutionaries were caricatures from a Republican fever dream about Antifa. I thought I was watching parody until I walked out of the theater and realized the people I saw it with were authentically like, “hell yeah good guys win!”
Analysis is tough on this one. Does Teyana bear the weight of Black culture for us all? If a white woman was cast, would we care about her actions as much? Isn’t this what we wanted, the opportunity to play any role? I know we get recognition whenever the character is in our opinion, flawed, and debased. Monster’s Ball I’m looking at you here, with Halle’s Oscar Training Day and Denzel, same. WE know we’re not what is portrayed on screen, and for me, that’s enough. Just my take.
It could be easier to accept/ digest Perfidia if we knew Tejana Taylor would have more and better roles. Black actors have very narrow paths in Hollywood and much too few opportunities to stretch.
The vast majority of viewers are not into the hypersexualization in film, as evidenced by the terrible box office numbers over many years now. It’s not an uncommon opinion or a charge that’s levied just against Teyana or other black actresses in overtly sexual roles.
I could certainly live without it. I did read that the character was originally written as a white woman. Not sure of the casting process and how Teyana won the role.
I’ve loathed OBAA with a passion since seeing it opening weekend in theaters PURELY because the first 30 minutes was so uncomfortably weird/lame/dumb with what PTA portrayed with Perfidia’s character arc. And the rest of the movie was maybe a 5/10 after that.
The biggest takeaway I’ve had since OBAA released, and since we’ve been having discussions around all of this, is that PTA is cult leader because I’ve been quite literally confused by the things people “see” from this movie from a storytelling, character development, plot, etc. standpoint to make these film bros get on their knees when they start talking about this movie 😭😂
I don’t have high expectations for white people writing Black characters. I go into films just knowing that. Jungle Pussy’s monologue in the bank pissed me the fuck off. But Perfida didn’t bother me as much. Do I wish she had been fleshed out more, absolutely. Do I think she was oversexualized, yes. But I also felt like her character was meant to be a woman that wasn’t particularly “maternal,” a hot head and selfish, which I saw on film.
I have critiques on the Black characters for sure, but overall I honestly enjoyed the film and the cinematography was fantastic. I don’t ever think a white writer or director is going to capture who we are, fully. Sometimes I just try to enjoy things for what they are, otherwise I’m never going to enjoy anything.
Isn’t there an argument that Perfidia using her sexuality IS a weapon? She views it as a power move? She has Lockjaw get hard while she held him up because she wanted the power. When they bang, she’s literally dominating the man, using his gun, etc. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every time Leo’s character is trying to explain how to use a weapon, her immediate reaction is let’s fuck, because she’s using hers. And sexuality is an expression of freedom. In the 60s counter culture, which was about fighting people in power, sexuality was a big part of it.
So when she got pregnant, isn’t it possible she viewed that as oppression? Because when you have a baby, suddenly they become your life. And that’s why she walked out on them? She was immediately reckless and went to rob a bank, then left alone with no responsibilities other than herself?
And why is there all this outrage for Taylor’s character, but everyone who criticizes her also leaves out Chase Infiniti and Regina Hall’s characters? Very different from Taylor’s, and they are both very distinct black women characters- even though Leo is the lead, those two arguably do more than him. I don’t think Leo won a fight or even killed one person in the movie. Regina Hall was the reason Chase Infiniti was able to escape the school dance, Chase Infiniti kind of escaped and took out the white supremest dude by herself. I thought their characters were both great and they didn’t fit into the black female caricature that you were trying to paint Perfidia into.
And is there not an ounce of media literacy? It’s obvious PTA race swapped because of current events. Everything in this movie felt more real, raw, poignant, etc. because of the ICE Raids, Trumps entire platform of “building the wall, deporting people”, the rise of white nationalism over the last few years, etc. If both were white, it’s just 90s action movie with a bunch of white people fighting for… equality? That would’ve been what you claim the film is now. But because they changed it, there’s this new underlying meaning that makes this story hit harder and now it’s a direct mirror to our society.
I don’t know man I like your stuff and obviously racism in this country is a massive issues, some portrayals in the media aren’t helping- but I feel between the Marty Supreme review and this, you’re just making everything about race, but in doing so ignore anything that doesn’t back your point (like Chase Infinite and Regina Hall’s characters)
Really appreciated this piece—it names the problem with total clarity. I don’t want to derail a conversation that’s rightly centered on Black representation, but I noticed a parallel dynamic with his Latino characters. In OBAA, Benicio del Toro was deeply involved in reshaping the Sensei character (fully changing parts of the script), and you can definitely feel that work. Even so, the character remains under-realized, because the film ultimately treats revolution as a practice and aesthetic rather than offering substantive social commentary. As a Latina, I don’t have much interest in whatever that original version of him would’ve been.
I would say that PTA revealed his inner Bill Maher -- he thought he could write black and Latino characters with complexity and humor, but instead he wrote caricatures. Verdict - he clearly knows not of what he speaks. His minstrel-type treatment of people of color in this film took me out of the film and left me feeling I'd been insulted. That said, I felt Keyana and Benicio did heroic work to imbue dignity into underwritten shell characters. They made lemonade -- and should be acknowledged for it.
“You’d rather write us off than write us right” is such a fucking bar. As far as directors who don’t typically center Black characters go, I think Bong Joon ho did a better job than PTA, with Nasha in Mickey17
First sentence made me think I was going to hate this essay but then you weaved your thinking so intently I found myself nodding by the end. I can't help feeling that Perfidia Beverly Hills is a crysalis moment for the cultural zeitgeist, a fascinating culmination of years of fixation with on-screen Black representation colliding with off-screen white-business-as-usual to create this character that nobody can agree on.
In my own essay back in November, I wrote "She is jezebelesque but her adrenaline kink offers plausible deniability. Abandoning her white lover(s) and daughter ensures she is certainly not a mammy. Perfidia’s cocktail of contradictions insulate her from the accusation of being a traditional racist trope but you can never shake the feeling that her character is occupying the same figurative locale of a stereotype, as if she’s only getting off on a technicality."
I think Perfidia marks an attempt to progress beyond tropes and what is being discussed is whether this is successful movement or just an evolution. Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly aware of the traditional tropes and he creates Perfidia anyway; with her hypersexuality, post-partum depression and other complexities.
Her existence invites us to witness those complexities and say, "who imagined you?" because something about her feels off. The offness is felt by Black women. It was felt by you, and me. But the further out from Black-womanness you get, the more the offness just feels like regular-degular theatric complexity, indistinguishable to the white gyal who played Anora.
As this discourse has been raging the last couple of days, I've seen so many ideas about this character that have made me question my own experience of the film and by extension, my own perspective of art. I have asked myself, many times, whether I'm tripping about this character. Whether I'm projecting my own anti-Blackness onto a set of characteristics that I've grown to recognise as markers of being anti-Black. I’ve wondered if I'm overthinking it. The only reprieve I really get from this inside-back-and-forth is when I step away from the rigid expectation of having a "correct take", when I do that, I just see the whole thing as intriguing and then I begin to see Perfidia Beverly Hills is a character of whetstone, welcoming me to sharpen my own critical ways of seeing and making art.
I felt similarly about perfidia’s character the first time I saw it, but when I saw it again I noticed more nuance in her character and performance. I think plenty of valid points have been made from both points of view on her character and I do think this might be less of a convo if Deandra had ended up with a bigger role. I believe she originally had more scenes that were cut.
I think the thing about this movie that really moves me is that this movie is about Willa and about being a POC in a white world controlled by white men and the core protection you have as a child is… yet again another white man even if it is leftist stoner Bob Ferguson (or worse as the plot reveals)
My mom is Sri Lankan and my dad is whiiite white, so while definitely not the black experience, i found a lot of relation centering the movie around Willa’s character and i think this whole movie gets summarized by PTA when Bob admits he can’t do his own daughter’s hair.
Like you mentioned, there are way way way more qualified black women who can speak about the characterization of Perfidia. but i think we never are given a “real” depiction of her cause we only see her through Bob and Lockjaw’s “dick-colored glasses” and we see really only what Willa knows about her mom, which has deformed to a caricature and reductive portrait of Perfidia, and how Bob has done an F- job at raising his black daughter, letting his own emotions cloud Willa’s understanding of who Perfidia was (which is the healing moment with the letter at the end).
You bring up Moonlight, but you mention nothing about the lead woman in that film. Chiron’s mother.
Who is drug addicted, emotionally abusive, neglectful, and full of so many negative characteristics. But somehow that representation isn’t worth bringing up…why exactly?
Obviously, different movie, different director. But I think that representation deserves equal criticism.
But i don’t see you speak on that element of that movie…why?
Ultimately, Moonlight does explore Paula (Chiron’s mother) more than OBAA does with Perfidia, but I’d say that OBAA shows a fuller picture of black women than Moonlight does with just Paula and Teresa. Different movies with different goals.
All of the “fleshed out” or “more nuance” people want in perfidia, to me, is found in how Teyana plays her. How she looks at her child when she leaves her and Bob. All of the subtleties are there in her performance.
I Love that Van is relentless in his perspective, and every time he speaks on this, I learn so much.
If it truly boils down to PTA writing a black character that makes you feel uncomfortable, then just leave it at that. All of the other flowery language is just that.
Just to follow up, I LOVE OBAA and Moonlight. While I think the discourse is good to be had, I feel like another commenter said in this thread, it just isnt sustainable
I feel like I'm going mad. Why is Perfidia the be-all-end-all when it comes to how black women are depicted in OBAA? Why does Van think that her character is the sole avatar, the sole grand thesis statement for how that film views black women?
There's a bunch of other black women in the film too. There's an entire commune of black nuns! No one in their right mind would think that Lockjaw is the films grand statement on all white men so why is Perfidia burdened with the same thing?
Christ, it really frustrates me sometimes how we (black people) view black characters. The stakes are way too high, we have to be absolutely perfect, our existence on the screen has the reflect the entirety of our people. It's unsustainable and it really clouds how we watch movies. I don't think Van is that interested in discourse (which is fine, this whole thing is called "fuck you if you disagree" which doesn't scream someone who's actually interested in dialogue) but it's exhausting watching people justify the fact that a film made the uncomfortable by making a grand moral judgement on the film as a whole.
Marty Supreme was cynical and made you feel bad? That's totally cool, it doesn't mean there's a conspiracy out there where film bros are grading the movie on a curve just to fuck with you or prove a point about what a "real movie" is. The Perfidia and Lockjaw storyline made you feel gross and uncomfortable? That might be the point!
And to speak more to the white men, every single one of them is either odious or a dope/buffoon. Pat is PTA, and he can’t even save his own daughter—hell, he never gets a win, and he’s who we assume will be the hero going in.
Love this, I agree wholeheartedly! Black women can be flawed characters and I wish our people could stop watching movies with this perfectionist mentality
10 years later & I still haven't seen La La Land... on the other hand, it's been a little over 6 months since I watched OBAA and I still don't understand the WHY behind Perfidia's character
I am with you on both! Never saw the former and dont understand the chat of the other. It felt..uncalled for and unexamined.
DJ
just now
Lockjaw had to kill Willa to erase any evidence of his past “wrongdoing” to advance in the Christmas Adventurers Club. Perfidia’s choices, and ultimately her race, are critical to the plot. If she were white then the movie doesn’t function. Lockjaw would have no reason to pursue Willa and Bob.
This movie, particularly the first third with Perfidia, is imperfect narratively and complicated sexually but becomes worth it after the time jump.
Van all these words and not one mention of Perfidia dealing with post partum depression? I actually thought that was the most poignant part of the character and how it affected her and what that says about a very dark unspoken truth about motherhood. Also. She does communicate her motivations via her monologues on the pay phone. Free borders, free bodies, free choices and free from fear ....that's her quote. Finally i have heard you criticize her quote in the note "this P don't pop for you"
...just want to remind her plan was called "snap crack pop" so the use of pop in the note is thematically tied to her motivations, might it also mean "pop" as in dad?
I saw these parallels as well. However, this piece was about something different and as such the use of her blackness over shadows those specific details.
Not that they aren’t important, just not here.
I'm not sure I understand - is postpartum depression somehow not a black experience?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that postpartum depression isn’t a Black experience, it obviously is.
Van’s point (as I read it) is that once you race-swap the character, the film inherits meaning it can’t opt out of.
You can read interiority, trauma, and motivation into Perfidia, but Van’s unease is about whether the film sufficiently accounts for the representational weight of those choices.
Thank you for this! I was unconvinced by most of the characters in this film. The father daughter relationship has heart but I truly thought the rest of the revolutionaries were caricatures from a Republican fever dream about Antifa. I thought I was watching parody until I walked out of the theater and realized the people I saw it with were authentically like, “hell yeah good guys win!”
Perfidia felt half written, then Teyana got casted , and PTA just 🤷🏾♂️
just a little reminder, it’s cast :)
Analysis is tough on this one. Does Teyana bear the weight of Black culture for us all? If a white woman was cast, would we care about her actions as much? Isn’t this what we wanted, the opportunity to play any role? I know we get recognition whenever the character is in our opinion, flawed, and debased. Monster’s Ball I’m looking at you here, with Halle’s Oscar Training Day and Denzel, same. WE know we’re not what is portrayed on screen, and for me, that’s enough. Just my take.
It could be easier to accept/ digest Perfidia if we knew Tejana Taylor would have more and better roles. Black actors have very narrow paths in Hollywood and much too few opportunities to stretch.
The vast majority of viewers are not into the hypersexualization in film, as evidenced by the terrible box office numbers over many years now. It’s not an uncommon opinion or a charge that’s levied just against Teyana or other black actresses in overtly sexual roles.
I could certainly live without it. I did read that the character was originally written as a white woman. Not sure of the casting process and how Teyana won the role.
I’ve loathed OBAA with a passion since seeing it opening weekend in theaters PURELY because the first 30 minutes was so uncomfortably weird/lame/dumb with what PTA portrayed with Perfidia’s character arc. And the rest of the movie was maybe a 5/10 after that.
The biggest takeaway I’ve had since OBAA released, and since we’ve been having discussions around all of this, is that PTA is cult leader because I’ve been quite literally confused by the things people “see” from this movie from a storytelling, character development, plot, etc. standpoint to make these film bros get on their knees when they start talking about this movie 😭😂
They are fanboy-ing into madness. I wonder if there is an identity component that's underlying this weird love.
the identity component is white liberalism lmao
I don’t have high expectations for white people writing Black characters. I go into films just knowing that. Jungle Pussy’s monologue in the bank pissed me the fuck off. But Perfida didn’t bother me as much. Do I wish she had been fleshed out more, absolutely. Do I think she was oversexualized, yes. But I also felt like her character was meant to be a woman that wasn’t particularly “maternal,” a hot head and selfish, which I saw on film.
I have critiques on the Black characters for sure, but overall I honestly enjoyed the film and the cinematography was fantastic. I don’t ever think a white writer or director is going to capture who we are, fully. Sometimes I just try to enjoy things for what they are, otherwise I’m never going to enjoy anything.
Isn’t there an argument that Perfidia using her sexuality IS a weapon? She views it as a power move? She has Lockjaw get hard while she held him up because she wanted the power. When they bang, she’s literally dominating the man, using his gun, etc. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every time Leo’s character is trying to explain how to use a weapon, her immediate reaction is let’s fuck, because she’s using hers. And sexuality is an expression of freedom. In the 60s counter culture, which was about fighting people in power, sexuality was a big part of it.
So when she got pregnant, isn’t it possible she viewed that as oppression? Because when you have a baby, suddenly they become your life. And that’s why she walked out on them? She was immediately reckless and went to rob a bank, then left alone with no responsibilities other than herself?
And why is there all this outrage for Taylor’s character, but everyone who criticizes her also leaves out Chase Infiniti and Regina Hall’s characters? Very different from Taylor’s, and they are both very distinct black women characters- even though Leo is the lead, those two arguably do more than him. I don’t think Leo won a fight or even killed one person in the movie. Regina Hall was the reason Chase Infiniti was able to escape the school dance, Chase Infiniti kind of escaped and took out the white supremest dude by herself. I thought their characters were both great and they didn’t fit into the black female caricature that you were trying to paint Perfidia into.
And is there not an ounce of media literacy? It’s obvious PTA race swapped because of current events. Everything in this movie felt more real, raw, poignant, etc. because of the ICE Raids, Trumps entire platform of “building the wall, deporting people”, the rise of white nationalism over the last few years, etc. If both were white, it’s just 90s action movie with a bunch of white people fighting for… equality? That would’ve been what you claim the film is now. But because they changed it, there’s this new underlying meaning that makes this story hit harder and now it’s a direct mirror to our society.
I don’t know man I like your stuff and obviously racism in this country is a massive issues, some portrayals in the media aren’t helping- but I feel between the Marty Supreme review and this, you’re just making everything about race, but in doing so ignore anything that doesn’t back your point (like Chase Infinite and Regina Hall’s characters)
It is very white male to view sex as power.
Really appreciated this piece—it names the problem with total clarity. I don’t want to derail a conversation that’s rightly centered on Black representation, but I noticed a parallel dynamic with his Latino characters. In OBAA, Benicio del Toro was deeply involved in reshaping the Sensei character (fully changing parts of the script), and you can definitely feel that work. Even so, the character remains under-realized, because the film ultimately treats revolution as a practice and aesthetic rather than offering substantive social commentary. As a Latina, I don’t have much interest in whatever that original version of him would’ve been.
I would say that PTA revealed his inner Bill Maher -- he thought he could write black and Latino characters with complexity and humor, but instead he wrote caricatures. Verdict - he clearly knows not of what he speaks. His minstrel-type treatment of people of color in this film took me out of the film and left me feeling I'd been insulted. That said, I felt Keyana and Benicio did heroic work to imbue dignity into underwritten shell characters. They made lemonade -- and should be acknowledged for it.
“You’d rather write us off than write us right” is such a fucking bar. As far as directors who don’t typically center Black characters go, I think Bong Joon ho did a better job than PTA, with Nasha in Mickey17
First sentence made me think I was going to hate this essay but then you weaved your thinking so intently I found myself nodding by the end. I can't help feeling that Perfidia Beverly Hills is a crysalis moment for the cultural zeitgeist, a fascinating culmination of years of fixation with on-screen Black representation colliding with off-screen white-business-as-usual to create this character that nobody can agree on.
In my own essay back in November, I wrote "She is jezebelesque but her adrenaline kink offers plausible deniability. Abandoning her white lover(s) and daughter ensures she is certainly not a mammy. Perfidia’s cocktail of contradictions insulate her from the accusation of being a traditional racist trope but you can never shake the feeling that her character is occupying the same figurative locale of a stereotype, as if she’s only getting off on a technicality."
I think Perfidia marks an attempt to progress beyond tropes and what is being discussed is whether this is successful movement or just an evolution. Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly aware of the traditional tropes and he creates Perfidia anyway; with her hypersexuality, post-partum depression and other complexities.
Her existence invites us to witness those complexities and say, "who imagined you?" because something about her feels off. The offness is felt by Black women. It was felt by you, and me. But the further out from Black-womanness you get, the more the offness just feels like regular-degular theatric complexity, indistinguishable to the white gyal who played Anora.
As this discourse has been raging the last couple of days, I've seen so many ideas about this character that have made me question my own experience of the film and by extension, my own perspective of art. I have asked myself, many times, whether I'm tripping about this character. Whether I'm projecting my own anti-Blackness onto a set of characteristics that I've grown to recognise as markers of being anti-Black. I’ve wondered if I'm overthinking it. The only reprieve I really get from this inside-back-and-forth is when I step away from the rigid expectation of having a "correct take", when I do that, I just see the whole thing as intriguing and then I begin to see Perfidia Beverly Hills is a character of whetstone, welcoming me to sharpen my own critical ways of seeing and making art.
I felt similarly about perfidia’s character the first time I saw it, but when I saw it again I noticed more nuance in her character and performance. I think plenty of valid points have been made from both points of view on her character and I do think this might be less of a convo if Deandra had ended up with a bigger role. I believe she originally had more scenes that were cut.
Love your writing Van!
I think the thing about this movie that really moves me is that this movie is about Willa and about being a POC in a white world controlled by white men and the core protection you have as a child is… yet again another white man even if it is leftist stoner Bob Ferguson (or worse as the plot reveals)
My mom is Sri Lankan and my dad is whiiite white, so while definitely not the black experience, i found a lot of relation centering the movie around Willa’s character and i think this whole movie gets summarized by PTA when Bob admits he can’t do his own daughter’s hair.
Like you mentioned, there are way way way more qualified black women who can speak about the characterization of Perfidia. but i think we never are given a “real” depiction of her cause we only see her through Bob and Lockjaw’s “dick-colored glasses” and we see really only what Willa knows about her mom, which has deformed to a caricature and reductive portrait of Perfidia, and how Bob has done an F- job at raising his black daughter, letting his own emotions cloud Willa’s understanding of who Perfidia was (which is the healing moment with the letter at the end).
One spectacle after another - cultural death by capitalist cinema.
You bring up Moonlight, but you mention nothing about the lead woman in that film. Chiron’s mother.
Who is drug addicted, emotionally abusive, neglectful, and full of so many negative characteristics. But somehow that representation isn’t worth bringing up…why exactly?
Obviously, different movie, different director. But I think that representation deserves equal criticism.
But i don’t see you speak on that element of that movie…why?
Ultimately, Moonlight does explore Paula (Chiron’s mother) more than OBAA does with Perfidia, but I’d say that OBAA shows a fuller picture of black women than Moonlight does with just Paula and Teresa. Different movies with different goals.
All of the “fleshed out” or “more nuance” people want in perfidia, to me, is found in how Teyana plays her. How she looks at her child when she leaves her and Bob. All of the subtleties are there in her performance.
I Love that Van is relentless in his perspective, and every time he speaks on this, I learn so much.
If it truly boils down to PTA writing a black character that makes you feel uncomfortable, then just leave it at that. All of the other flowery language is just that.
Just to follow up, I LOVE OBAA and Moonlight. While I think the discourse is good to be had, I feel like another commenter said in this thread, it just isnt sustainable