During the 90s an explosion of Black art took place landing novelists and filmmakers in bookstores and film complexes in what many considered a second Black Art Renaissance. As “sistergirl” lit came into prominence, led by Terry McMillan’s “How Stella Got Her Groove Back“, the book became a film featuring Angela Basset and Whitney Houston, Black male writers were equally as successful, but with films like The Best Man, The Wood, and Brown Sugar, Black male writers never transitioned to the big screen. As a matter of fact, outside of Terry McMillan, the momentum of Black writers taking part in the massive number of romantic comedies and romantic films, was very minimal. I guess the explosion wasn’t quite an explosion. It was a black art moment that felt massive to twentysomething Black men and women encountering love for the first time and dealing with the repercussions of decisions at a time when the internet was coming to life and message boards and websites like Black Planet added to the expanding opportunity to date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_pHCqZkXvY
Eric Jerome Dickey and Omar Tyree had a stranglehold on the bookshelves, for male writers. In an equally progressive moment unseen since James’s Baldwin, another Black male writer, E. Lynn Harris, advanced the discussion of gay relationships at the time. In film and television there is something known as an option for a book to be turned into a film. In the 90s, and throughout the history of television, Black literature has been relegated to more serious texts garnering film options. Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” is a Black book turned into a film, but the romantic aspect of Black literature which appeared to gain momentum all but fizzled as none of the best-selling books by Black male writers did what a book like High Fidelity did for Nick Hornby. Hornby’s love story has been remade over and over showing up most recently as a 2020 streaming series. Black Love stories have landed in the lap of Tyler Perry and none of the books from that era have stood the test of time and reappeared as film or content used for television and film.
Netflix’s Entergalactic feels like an homage to Omar Tyree and Eric Jerome Dickey. Rather than spend an excessive amount of time on the who behind Kenya Barris and Scott Mescudi’s amazing love story, I think it’s important to acknowledge the moment in time which makes Entergalactic a cross-generational masterpiece of art and storytelling. After spending time reading other articles about the film and seeing interviews with the writers, Ian Edelman and Maurice Williams, I realized that neither Omar Tyree or Eric Jerome Dickey were mentioned. This is understandable as the two writers and Cudi were barely children when these writers sat at the intersection of literature and Black relationship storytelling.
But what makes Entergalactic work as a film is how connected it is to a moment for two generations. The story feels familiar. There is a consistent theme for every guy reaching the moment before they settle down. In that moment they revert and waffle to bachelor behavior because somewhere inside they realize this is the end of the games involved with relationships. It’s the time before making a decision to become corporate or remain independent in professional life. This is what Dickey and Tyree created in their worlds and for forty and fifty-somethings there is a connection to Entergalactic that combines with the moment of twenty and thirty-somethings attempting to find love in a similar moment in time. The 90s and today are closely related because of the internet boom and the rise of social media and DMs. Entergalactic works so well artistically, musically and mentally because it beautifully captures real life and relationships in a complex moment for those dating in the 90s and early 2000s where chat rooms and message boards are the equivalent of messaging apps. Where a character in an Omar Tyree novel might get caught e-mailing or chatting on a message board, the main character Jabari, played by Kid Cudi, is caught via text messaging in the paradox of holding on to “friendship” while attempting to nurture something new.
The visuals here land between the Spiderman multiverse and the digital art of someone relatively unknown in Mink Couteax. The sports marketing artist is an immediate reference for me and watching this film is like entering an extended gallery showing for how magical digital art can be. Adult animation may have its roots in films like Heavy Metal, but the digital aspect feels less like a cartoon, although the film does shift to anime influences at times. On the sneaker and fashion side of things, Cudi’s character Jabari wears the Yeezy Quantum and his own adidas Torsion Artillery throughout the film and the styling is one of the last works of art created by the late Virgil Abloh. The homage there will resonate with the demographic familiar with Abloh’s work as Off-White clothing is prominent throughout the film. Entergalactic is beautiful and while there are elements of youth culture throughout, it hits the mark for anyone who has fallen in love.
The album/soundtrack is good: