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Conspiracy Theorist

Zakkiyyah Najeebah (left), Rebba Amaris (center), and Ama Chi (right) in Conspiracy Theorist

Conspiracy Theorist (2020)

Created and written by: Rebba Amaris

Directed by Kelechi Agwuncha 

Conspiracy Theorist defies form and genre. It must be watched–multiple times–to be understood. Even then, the film resists our desires to understand its central character, whose experience is so specific and singular, that most viewers can only relate to parts of the narrative. 

Creator Rebba Amaris wrote a story about a woman who becomes a PhD student that loses the reality of shared ground. Though the series is meant to portray a woman with an unspecified disorder, the therapist the woman meets in the short refers the protagonist for further assessment to rule out a diagnosis of schizophrenia.  The phenomenon of neurodivergence is longer than the history of film, yet the ambitious prologue opened a window beyond Hollywood’s demonic gaze on mental health. Generously scored by RP Boo, the opening sequence respects the texture of the quotidian. The pilot lives at the border of four axils of orientation to create a situation from the inner and outer worlds that form culture. Yet, in a testament to Rebba’s sharp writing, the film raises questions about who is really out of step with normative reality: our lead characters or the people in her environment. 

Black women are often treated as if they are exaggerating, lying, or misrepresenting the very real harm and pain they experience. They are often not taken seriously or believed, either as theorists of the world or their own experiences. Moya Bailey makes this case in Misogynoir Transformed, where she makes a connection between how Black women are often denied care by the medical system and how that mistreatment mirrors and is influenced by stereotypes in the media. 

Conspiracy Theorist opens with the lead character in class asking a question of a white male professor. The topic is politics, and the professor is citing a study that “corrects” for race. This is a common method in social science, where identity is treated as a variable that can be adjusted to determine the statistical significance of various effects on different populations. Our lead character questions whether one can do this, particularly given the complexities of a “postracial” post-Obama America where racism still exists. The professor basically pretends not to understand. At the same time, we also see two other Black women–one more vocal than our lead, one more tranquil–appearing beside her with sage and the second more boisterous, cheering her on with snaps. No other student in the room acknowledges these two women, letting the audience know they exist in our lead’s mind. We might be tempted to think that our lead is crazy, but, in fact, she sounds much smarter than her professor. Viewers have embraced these two women as poles of the compartmentalized self. Though classical Freudian allusions to a tyrannical id and internalized superego fail to map onto these visualized parts of a protagonist at the precipice of ego dissolution.

Elsewhere in the narrative, aggression is a projective mirror that mediates encounters with program faculty and white peers as she is met with anxious-aggression then perceived as aggravated. This is a common occurrence where Black people are often perceived as more hostile than their actions. Indeed, this is why Black Lives Matter activists called attention to the many Black people killed for doing completely innocent things, as their innocuous body movement was perceived as a threat to vigilantes and interlopers. 

In the middle of the film, she is meeting with a therapist. Her answers are flatly voiced, as if she’s been through this before, as if the affect has been squashed from her vocal cords. But one of the women in her has a speech to give, a part of the self that many other Black women might agree with (and, indeed, when we have screened this piece, the monologue receives vocal support from audiences):

“I am tired of being muted.

I am tired of white women pathologizing us.

I am tired of leading and being overlooked.

I am tired of being taxed by comparably brilliant idiots.

I am tired of being scaled and psychoanalyzed.

I am tired of being reprimanded and being awake to the bullshit!”

By ending with “awake to the bullshit,” Rebba deftly slips in the argument of the piece: that Black women and people may sometimes sound “crazy” like conspiracy theorists, inappropriate affects out of place, but there is, in fact, lots of evidence that they have been colluded against. This, to put it plainly, is bullshit.  

That monologue is never spoken aloud. Instead, the monologue is internally muted and our lead says: 

“I feel like I’m falling in and out of a lot of different universes, just governed by completely different logics. Like I’m somewhere on the border between mysticism and science and I’m just losing my balance.”

Indeed, we need not imagine–nor does Rebba literally visualize–our lead character moving in and out of different universes. By representing the many different ways other people treat her, we see how every person is a universe unto themselves, moving by very specific logics structured by broader systems of race, gender, class, and other sociocultural identities. It just so happens that Black women might have less agency in defining the rules of any one interaction, such that every moment can be a portal into another person’s warped perception of them. 

Conspiracy Theorist was initially intended to be a pilot for a series. I funded it directly from my research account after I had negotiated a retention from Northwestern University. It was the only project selected for funding higher than OTV’s average licensing fee. Seeing how completing a pilot concept was often necessary to secure more funding for a full series or film, I took a risk on funding Rebba because she had participated in OTV’s first writer's workshop and consistently sent new drafts of her script. It was clear she was motivated, and her complex scripts looked like they could really be innovative. Regrettably, she reported that the project would have been much easier to endure if she had removed herself from the visual frame of the conceptual pilot to distinguish between the self of the writer and the fictiveness of creative work. 

Cinematic representations of mental health patients typically monetize sensational narratives of psychological thrillers and horrific blockbusters  — painting people with a psychiatric history as pathological killers and hazardous figures wreaking havoc to suspend plots that end with massacre or chaotic degeneration. Meanwhile, local news stories monthly report on violent offenders with intimidating diagnoses who threaten the decency of American modernity. Few portrayals have openly depicted discharge from institutionalization to draw a subdued coming-of-age narrative to deconstruct the demonic portrayals of mental illness normality props itself against. “In my naïveté, I hoped filmmaking, or rather the act of creation, could open space outside of stigmatized genre classification and mass imagery proliferating as realism.” 

Today, it exists as a brilliant experimental short film, one of very few about Black women, mental health, and the complexities of their experiences in institutions like academia. 

With impressive direction and camera work, from roving drone shots to shaky close-ups, Conspiracy Theorist is peppered with sharp interludes and montages. We see our lead biking around the southside of Chicago, performing mundane tasks with melancholy, flair, intensity, and beauty. 

It is a portrait of a rich and complex life few Black women are given as characters in film and television. 

Reflection: Recording from the June 2019 Comfort Station Workshop

This reflection includes audio from a soft-screening at Comfort Station in June 2019 with featured discussants Rebecca Ladida and Amina Ross in conversation with Conspiracy Theorist director and creator Kelechi Agwuncha and Rebba Amaris. The panel was moderated by Mycall Akeem Riley. 

Watch Conspiracy Theorist on OTV! 

Much grace and mercy to the following collaborators who offered their gifts to this project. 

Created by: Rebba Amaris 

Co-Director & DP: Kelechi Agwuncha;

1st Editor: Marcus Aubin;

2nd Editor: Rebba Amaris;

1st Cam: Lowell Thomas;

2nd Cam & Gaffer: Luis Treviño;

3rd Cam: Nathan Mansakahn;

Music by RP Boo;

Co-Producer/Casting Coordinator: KB Woodson;

Script Supervisor: Terrence Thompson

FEATURED CAST IN PROLOGUE:

Alexy Ireys

Rebba Amaris

Ama Chi

Terri Hudson

Zakkiyyah Najeebah

Steven Wilikes

Chelsea Holmes

Cait Medearis

THOTless

Code-Switched

Code-Switched (2020)

Created, written, and directed by: Karan Sunil

Television loves an ensemble. Some of the most popular series feature casts of three or more characters who share the plot equally: from friendship based series like Friends, Living Single, Girlfriends, Seinfeld; workplace comedies and dramas from MASH to Abbott Elementary; and an innumerable number of family sitcoms that date back to the earliest histories of the medium.

Yet virtually none of these feature South Asian characters, which makes Karan Sunil’s Code-Switched all the more innovative, beyond its mastery of comedy writing, acting, and directing. 

“I personally don’t think America understands South Asians. They just look at brown and they’re scared. There’s so many different kinds, but at the same time, we are very fractured as well,” he says. 

As befits the genre, Code-Switched explores very different characters who have vastly different struggles. Some people are focused on finding love and navigating parental expectations, others are looking for work or trying to get promoted at work. For each person, national or religious identities have varying effects on their journeys, but at no point do they feel written generically.

This is because Karan, who was born and raised in India, did a lot of research and development to understand the diverse experiences in his community. 

“I spoke to focus groups of South Asian millennials between 18-25 in Chicago and Seattle about their experiences. I handpicked the cast, who are mostly comedians, stand-ups, and improvisers. I scouted comedy shows in Chicago for months, everything from paid tickets to open mics at Mexican restaurants and sports bars. I wanted to find five people that embody the character’s roles in some way.”

What stands out in Code-Switched is its comedic precision. The first episode–originally the third but Karan scrapped two episodes to present the strongest series possible–ends with a whipsmart poke at stereotypes. In it Mitra (Minita Gandhi), mother of Priya (Sonal Aggarwal), comes up to her to take about a potential suitor as Priya takes a bite of an hors d’oeuvres. Priya immediately starts choking–perhaps a subconscious refusal to engage–and her mother screams: “is anyone here a doctor?!” Nearly all the men in the rear raise their hands and the episode ends. The scene shows a self-awareness of the roles and narratives South Asian people find themselves in – arranged marriages and prestigious professions – while poking fun at how flattening these can be. 

In the series, these tropes are further subverted by the inclusion of characters who are single and decidedly unsuccessful. Few of the characters have the life they want in terms of work or relationships. Rahul (Saurabh Pande) is an aspiring actor who can’t catch a break because they don’t meet the stereotypes directors are looking for. Whereas Zara (Sabeen Sadiq) is up for a promotion at work, where she’s doing well, but questioning what her goals are after and the ways she has prioritized career and deprioritized dating. 

But Code-Switched doesn’t limit itself to South Asian characters. True to the diverse friendship groups that many millennial people of color living in cities, the show also reserves storylines for the likes of Kevin (Peter Kim) a gay Korean man who works with Zara and struggles to hold on to a relationship, date within his race, and come out to his mother. 

The series also discusses Black-Brown solidarity in a number of ways. After commiserating with his friends about being the only Black guy at work – which “has its perks…I’m an expert on kombucha now” – Nate (Nnamdi Ngwe) tries to rent an apartment on the north side to a Black couple who are concerned about racism and gentrification, who receives moral support from Krish (Vikram Pandya). In the previous episode, one of half of that couple, Max (Max Thomas), talks to some of his friends about hearing Indian folks using the n-word, which Karan noted to me, is a real thing that is common but never discussed in the media. “It’s just these Brown boys trying to be Black,” says Jordan (Jordan Stafford). The scene is bookended by several showing the love Black and Brown people both have for hip hop and the slipperiness of identity’s borders. The episode ends with all the friends talking about music, with Rahul mentioning that the rapper discussed in the previous scene, about whom the n-word was used, is actually Indian, to which Devin (Devin Middleton), the third Black actor in that scene, says: “Still my nigga tho!”

Code-Switched’s sensitivity to authenticity and its irreconcilable ironies made it a popular and resonant series with audiences in Chicago and online. Its pilot premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Chicago drew raucous laughter from a diverse audience, mostly not South Asian folks and including lots of Black and Latinx people. When it livestreamed the first season on YouTube one day after dropping on OTV, it racked up hundreds of thousands of views and hundreds of comments, many of which praised the culturally specific details Karan injected into each scene: 

“Oh God that glass container of dal in the microwave. So me everyday!”

“Dude, it looks like even AB-desis have similar struggles….all we can do is suck it up and overcome the great misery that is life.”

“I really want a lot more of this. Finally something us brown kids can relate to”

“Too real...cant stop laughing!  Hahahaha Love it!”

With its crackling writing, stunning cinematography, and confident direction, it’s no surprise that Karan instantly got interest from Hollywood, specifically Hulu, in developing what would be a landmark series. Ultimately a series order did not materialize, but that in no way diminishes its significance to television!

Watch Code-Switched on OTV!

Darling Shear