Two African American women begin to share disturbing experiences at a predominantly white college in New England.
As Master Bishop (Regina Hall) struggles to find her own place in the blatantly racist Ancaster college in Greater Boston, she realizes there is more going on than a few spooky Margaret Millett sightings and a tenured professor who appears to be out of touch with the black experience. As she navigates how to best use her position to right some wrongs, she gets caught up with trying to gain the respect of her peers while bending an ear to a struggling student who, unfortunately, becomes the next victim of the Margaret Millet curse.
From the opening scenes of this film, I was very confused as to which direction it was headed in and which audience was its goal to target. I could tell by the racist overtones that it would be uncomfortable to watch, yet I had no idea about whose comfort level would come into question. My selfish thoughts begged of me to feel slighted by the behaviors of a racist community, yet I couldn’t understand the ties between a fictional racist institution and its realistic institution of racism. I mean, what exactly were the parallels between the elite members of a racist institution and the privileged students who fawned over the idea of diversity and inclusion while a ghost from the past derailed all progress? Award-winning director Mariama Diallo states that most of the elements in the film stem from her undergraduate experiences at Yale, yet I wondered what the basis was for drifting between reality and fiction, good and evil, and winning and losing while a radical ghost made a mockery of what appeared to be institutionalized racism. While I agree that this whole “Master” mentality is pervasive in many institutions, I don’t understand the point of developing a fictional college in a real city about progressive people who were going backward in race relations because this is a reality that is still relevant.
At the end of the film, Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) is dead and no one but Master Bishop seems to be able to fully understand the impact of her life. While she never seems to fully wrap her head around the relationship between the Margaret Millet curse and the school’s inability to move forward in race relations, she does understand that she can no longer contribute to the dysfunction that comes with the title of being “Master” and she is fully able to understand the impact of institutional racism while not giving it the platform that it truly does not deserve.
Streaming on Prime Video and in select theaters Friday, March 18th
