Back in the days of The Dissolve, the critics there came under fire for having a largely straight white and male-dominated staff. This was especially apparent before Rachel Handler took over as the news editor and made a point of making Female Stuff a very anticipated voice in the world. Her presence began to balance the male/female domination, but it hardly alleviated the straight or white demographics. This becomes frustrating when critics would have to deal with cinema designed to talk to specific audiences, none of whom were represented in the critical staff. One of my key memories of this is in the Blackbird discussion where I thought Mike D’Angelo, a heterosexual white guy, dismissed the movie without have the necessary frame of reference to watch of a movie made for a black homosexual audience with a christian background. This doesn’t make D’Angelo a bad person, but it addressed the movie from a different perspective than it was intended to be received.

I’ve had a similar experience with some forms of world cinema. 2013’s Half of a Yellow Sun was a Nigerian adaptation of Nigerian novel about Nigerian history (specifically the Biafran War). The movie puts a Gone With The Wind-esque love story against the backdrop of a Civil War tearing families apart. Throughout the film, various characters travel around a country just a bit larger than Texas as politically important events happen in the background informing the time and situation. I had no frame of reference for the historical elements of the movie, and was lost very quickly. I concluded the movie was not made for me, learned a bit more of the history after the movie was over, but never revisited the movie itself.

Even though both Hollywood and the American indie scene have a glut of movies made for straight white men, they both manage to create movies made for niche audience. There are movies made for older people (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), African-Americans (Chi-Raq), women (Fifty Shades of Grey), toddlers (Ponyo), and teen girls (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), gay men (Other People), and a variety of other specific audiences. These movies tend to assume the demographic of its intended viewer and caters to that audience by using cultural shorthand to color the edges.

Just because the movie isn’t made for you, please don’t take that to mean you automatically shouldn’t see it. Many good movies have been lost without finding a larger audience because people stayed away for fear they couldn’t process it. Please, see movies that aren’t in your cultural wheelhouse. Even if you don’t have the knowledge to process that film, take that as a challenge to broaden your horizons and expand your knowledge, perhaps by talking to a member of the intended audience or reading a review by that audience.

How do you process movies that aren’t about your experience? Do you take it and fill in gaps with your own? Do you delve deeper into the specifics? Do you shun the movie? Run away screaming? Crimp your tongue to prevent yourself from saying something stupid?