Selah and the Spades
“Selah and the Spades makes no assumptions about sexuality.”
Title: Selah and the Spades (2020)
Director: Tayarisha Poe 👩🏾🇺🇸
Writer: Tayarisha Poe 👩🏾🇺🇸
Review by Robert Daniels 👨🏾🇺🇸
Technical: 3.5/5
Set in a private boarding school just outside of Philadelphia, Tayarisha Poe’s Selah and the Spades recalls School Daze (1988) or Dear White People (2014). Here, a quintet of underground warring factions control The Haldwell School. As leader of the Spades (one of the cliques), Selah Summers (Lovie Simone) ruthlessly imposes her will, even when it means alienating her best friend Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome).
Compounding matters, Selah has a mole in her squads, needs to settle beefs with her enemies, and is in her senior year with no underclassman to bequeath her power to. That is, until the sophomore transfer Paloma (Celeste O’Connor) comes to her attention. Selah quickly makes the curious and gentle new girl her protege, and spends their time together tightening a draconian grip on the Spades and nurturing their blossoming friendship.
Although Poe’s narrative spins in circles—failing to translate the intrigue of teenage drama into meaningful subplots—the writer-director’s visual style carries the film. Teaming with cinematographer Jomo Fray, Selah and Spades relies on negative space and center framing to fashion Simone’s character as confident yet painfully vulnerable. Moreover, evocative sound design turns the echoes of shoes on a gym floor into tense compositions and allows for voiceovers to ripple between scenes. Selah and the Spades rarely treads new ground in its themes, especially with regards to female empowerment, Black Excellence, and sexual awakenings, but it does so with enough flair to enchant.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
Poe’s film affixes women as conduits of power. Three of the five cliques are headed by women: Selah, Bobby (Ana Mulvoy Ten), and Amber B (Francesca Noel), with the former two controlling much of the school. Moreover, Selah rules another domain as leader of the Spirit Squad. Her arresting monologue, directed to the camera, becomes one of the film’s more powerful moments.
She explains how 17-year-old girls are rarely given autonomy over their bodies, lacking the freedom to decide even the length of their own skirts as parents and teachers and men slut shame girls into avoiding lurid fascination, wrongfully laying the blame of any sexual attraction at the feet of girls. In contrast, Selah proudly flouts these restrictions and commands the Spirit Squad to act autonomously. With no oversight from adults, the girls control their own dance routines and dresses, and in turn, empower themselves.
Race: 5/5
While School Daze dissects the dynamics between dark and light-skinned students in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Dear White People wonders aloud what defines Blackness, Selah and the Spades feels content to set aside overt discussions about race. An oblique reference does arrive early in the film, however, and it sets a refreshing tone for how Black characters hold not just equal, but in fact more power at The Haldwell School than their white peers.
The moment takes place when the leaders of each faction meet to organize a senior prank on their befuddled Headmaster Banton (Jesse Williams). Bobby, a white blonde sporting a neatly perched beret upon her perfect hair, suggests popping water balloons. “Balloons are harmless,” she says, to which Tarit (Henry Hunter Hall) sharply retorts, “Balloons aren’t harmless. They'll start going off, it's all like, bang bang bang. Next thing you know, one of us gets slammed to the floor 'cause they think we've got a bomb." Maxxie firmly agrees while Selah murmurs “exactly,” signalling the death knell of the balloon idea. The entire exchange takes place in seconds, but effectively demonstrates a Black-centric base of power. The council of young leaders, four of six of them people of color, easily override Bobby’s white worldview.
Left to right: Maxxie, Selah, and Amber B
Left to right: Tarit and Bobby
Beyond the above nod to racial dynamics, which itself remains subtext, Blackness is never brought up again. But when Poe subtly examines the pressure her Black protagonist feels with regards to perfectionism, it invariably feeds into a broader discourse surrounding Black Excellence, a topic that 2019 films Luce and Waves similarly address. In this case, when Selah tells her mother she scored a 93 on her latest test, her mother asks what happened to the other seven points. If Selah strikes a defense, such as the weight of her other school activities—Spirit Squad and her heavy course load—her mother scolds her for relying on excuses, “just like her father.”
This expectation of excellence forces Selah into cold calculations. When her underlings or enemies step out of line, she resorts to violence and sends goons to beat them up. She’s capable of jettisoning even her closest friends. When Maxxie develops a relationship with another girl, Selah dissociates from him. Moreover, she uses friendship as a tool for manipulation.
One of the film’s prevailing mysteries involves a girl named Teela, who had been expelled from The Hardwell School their sophomore year. Mentioned furtively by faction leaders throughout the film, Selah routinely slaps back the memory as an accident that should remain in the past. The myth surrounding Teela, though she herself never makes an entrance, alludes to Selah’s cutthroat authority and culpability. Bobby expertly feeds Paloma rumors, which work like acid to erode the bedrock of Selah’s tender friendship with her increasingly suspicious protege. As viewers, not unlike Paloma, we experience the oppressive scope of what Selah will do to retain control with growing unease.
The only instances where Selah isn’t merciless occurs when she speaks with her mother. Here, she dissolves into a fearful 17-year-old, and reminds the viewer that she could be a better person if not for the unyielding specter of her mother’s inordinate expectations.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +1.00
Poe refrains from making assumptions about sexuality when parsing the way Selah and Paloma experience romantic love. But even without labels, a conversation provides strong clues: Selah shares with Paloma that she’s never felt the urge to kiss or have her heart broken. Conversely, Paloma stays vague when describing her past encounters. In Poe’s own words, “I think Selah is asexual, but she doesn’t have the words for it, which happens. For Paloma, she can fall in love with anybody.”
The two develop a close platonic relationship, with instances of Paloma searching for more, like when she caresses Selah or exchanges meaningful glances with her. Their relationship demonstrates how a teen’s sexual identity can exist undefined during high school, yet still get explored in subtle ways.
Mediaversity Grade: A 4.83/5
Selah and the Spades succeeds because of its visual extravagance, anchored by an understated narrative. Some avenues peter out, like a headmaster who students like to rebel against but who’s never remotely villainous enough to warrant the abuse, or the lack of detail in the school’s other factions. But Poe’s empowerment of women, dissection of Black Excellence, and modern sensibility toward adolescent sexuality makes for an edgy, albeit uneven, feature debut.
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