Screening in The Forest Theater, a historic South Dallas venue, It’s a Wonderful Plight is a hip-hop musical explaining racism in a quirky way. Think A Christmas Carol meets Hamilton, said Dallas-based filmmaker Justin Rhodes.
“What if a Black person, the ghost of ‘woke’ past, present and future, took a white man through [forms of racism] but explained it in music?”
The trailer shows Josef the Hotep, played by Rhodes, guiding Scott, played by Brian Shorkey, through racism from slavery to the modern murder of unarmed Black Americans by white people and police officers, including the 2018 murder of Botham Jean in Dallas.
Rhodes hopes viewers understand the sacrifices white Americans must make to eradicate racism because they have the greatest privilege to combat it.
“It’s going to be a mirror, [and] with facing that mirror you have to clean yourself up even when you look at the ugly truth,” said Rhodes. “But once you know the truth, it helps you do something about it.”
The film will kick off the Forest Theater’s two-part South Dallas Summer Drive-In series Sept. 18, which is free to the public. The Forest Theater is located at 1920 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
