In light of the fiasco surrounding Nate Parker, and thus, his upcoming film, The Birth of A Nation in which Parker is the star, producer, director, and co-writer, I’ve been asked several times if I'm going to see the film. 

I've already seen it. And I typically don't go to the theatre to see movies I've already seen at a screening. So to announce, “I am not going to see it!” is sanctimonious and silly. It’s not like I’m sacrificing anything. But I would like to see it again. I want to sit with it and dissect it this time.

That's only part of the reason I haven't joined the unofficial boycott of The Birth of A Nation. The other part? Honestly? I’ve been waiting for Nate Parker to pull his sh—together and fix this mess. It’s been two weeks since the story of his 1999 rape charges surfaced in national publications, and he hasn’t done that yet. As such, I still have moral conflict about going to the theatre. Unless that's resolved, I'm sitting this one out. There are too many things worthy of a having a moral conflict over. A movie— I don’t care who it’s about or how good it is— isn’t one of them. 

I want to explain my decision. Nate Parker did a horrible thing many, many years ago. And after he was in the middle of a media storm resulting from the interviews he did with Variety and Deadline addressing his 1999 rape accusations, he said as much. 

“There are things more important than the law” Parker wrote in a Facebook statusupdate last week. “There is morality; no one who calls himself a man of faith should even be in that situation… I look back on that time as a teenager and can say without hesitation that I should have used more wisdom.”

My problem with Parker is less about his past that cannot be changed and more about his recent interviews with Variety and Deadline where he sounded like a man who had not properly reflected upon his moral shortcomings. Addressing his 1999 rape accusations, which most people didn’t know about, he came across so smug, so dismissive, so self-centered as if he’s learned nothing about rape, consent, accountability, the value of women he isn’t related to, or even how to make a decent apology. I read those interviews and I felt like that Tyra clip from ANTM where she was yelling at the girl, "I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! How dare you!"