Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 23rd, 2009
Racism seems to be one of those words that people like to throw around without a care to meaning or the concept of right and wrong. Many groups of people like to throw around this word for a variety of reasons but mostly to benefit themselves and not help the greater good. Spinning into Butter takes on the task of a white Dean of Students named Sarah Daniels who must examine her own beliefs when a black student named Simon finds racist notes that read “Little Black Sambo” and the aftermath that soon follows. It sounds like the premise for a rather simplistic race relations movie. However, what really comes next is something far different and has a couple of twists to boot.
Sarah Daniels (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) is the Dean of Students at a small college in Belmont, Vermont. When the movie opens, she is trying to convince Patrick Chibas (played by Victor Rasuk) to change his ethnic choice in a scholarship application from Nuyorican (of Puerto Rican descent who is born and raised in New York) to Hispanic. Finally they agree on Puerto Rican because it is determined that the board will not understand what a Nuyorican is.
