Colin Kaepernick’s Netflix debut gave the former quarterback a chance to showcase his storytelling abilities by giving him the opportunity to tell the story of himself to a broad audience. “Colin in Black and White” received rave reviews by top critics on social media while being underwater with the preestablished racist and misogynistic audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. With a storytelling approach that is teeters from being drama, satire, or a 2000s HR training video, Colin Kaepernick has made it clear that he is ready for the big leagues: Christian filmmaking. And yes he would be our first choice for this endeavor.
The biggest qualification for Colin Kaepernick is clearly the ham-fisted messaging approach. Colin teaches his audience that being Black is about sprinting towards every racial stereotype that comes with it, feeling a belonging in cornrows and sweet potato pie, which his character confused for that White people pumpkin pie. On several occasions, Kaepernick uses contrived situations to point out the racism around him. He goes against the natural narrative of his life that shows that his adoptive parents bent over backwards to help him achieve his football dreams to relegate them to good-natured racists. They could not stand in the way of the message.
Additionally, Colin Kaepernick’s knack for romance writing is at peak Hallmark level cheese factor, where he explored his youthful heartbreak with a Black girl which is a well-choreographed stunt to convince viewers to overlook his pigmently challenged dating portfolio as an adult.
Despite the fact that Colin Kaepernick’s father is an unknown figure, we must look beyond his Middle Eastern appearance and accept his Blackness unchallenged, even when his character is the Whitest character in a show with Nick Offerman, best known for playing the libertarian LARPer, Ron Swanson.
Christian films deserve a man who spends hours everyday devoted to an afro that makes him ready for the Thanksgiving dog show. They deserve someone who can craft stories that tackle topics that are real to the viewers in ways that feel out of touch, constrained, and unnatural. They deserve a storyteller that demands mediocre performances with even worse dialog. But most of all, they deserve a storyteller that recognizes that the 80 to 130 minutes of runtime are meant to be a sermon and not a movie.
