Michon Benson

This film is disturbing, not because it is a thriller, but because it reifies virtually EVERY negative and anxiety-inducing stereotype that Europeans imagine about Africana people. In a recent interview, screenwriter Nat Martello-White mentioned that his writing "The Strays" was inspired by an actual event wherein a mother eloped and did not disclose her background to her husband. In that woman's account, Martello-White saw an opportunity to address complex themes around "shame, generational trauma, and . . . internalized racism." Martello-White, himself, is a writer for the Royal Court Theatre, an organization, which to its credit in April 2021, acknowledged its own history as institutionally racist and that they must take responsibility for the people who have experienced racism it has perpetuated. Perhaps indicating his successful colonization, the up-and-coming writer/director characterizes Neve as "Darwinian" rather than what she really is -- a woman with avoidant and narcissistic personality disorder. Cheryl's twice-abandoned children, Carl and Dione, have evidently endured trauma and are justifiably angry. That said, why in the holy hell must their interactions with their newfound siblings focus on drinking to excess, drugging, hair braiding (the friggin' hot pink afro pick?), playing basketball, and acting violently? To reinforce what the movie casts as racialized propensities, early scenes feature Cheryl trying desperately to fit into her white, suburban neighborhood. Supporting that white behaviors are the opposite of Black ones, she changes her dialect, takes a job as a theology teacher at a wealthy private school, and admonishes her and Ian’s children to act "properly,” you know, the way all white people do. (Sigh) Equally problematic as the title, the filmic events reveal that as a self-identified "proud Black woman," Cheryl determines to do "what [Black] fathers do all the time" -- leave their families and start their lives anew. She marries Ian, a white man who is so benevolent that he does not even mind that Cheryl is Black. He reassures her that he likes the way her hair looks without her wig. Nevertheless, after all hell breaks out and Cheryl asks Ian if he would have married her had he known about her past, his response is implicit yet clear -- HELL-to-the-naw! The favored of the litter, Mary and Sebastian, are just as victimized as are Carl and Dione. Their delinquent inclinations to perform "Black" behaviors prevent them from being the sympathetic characters that should have been. In fact, by the end of the tale, only Ian occupies that position, and even the most undiscriminating viewers can't help but wonder why he ever got mixed up with that Black wife of his. Viewers are left to wonder what exactly causes the first two of the stray litter to misbehave. Was it that their mother left them to be raised by a Black father whom she characterizes as a "bad man." Was it, as Dione suggests, that their paternal (?) aunt did not want them and gave them away? Could it have been that Cheryl did not try to communicate with them at any point during her 18-year absence? Lamentably, only one answer lingers --- mother and children all misbehave for no reason other than that they are Black, and the sociopathy of Black heredity tethers all Black folks together, regardless of their respective complexions.