Matt Walsh Film ‘Am I Racist?’ Is Biggest Documentary of 2024
The film ”Am I Racist?” by Matt Walsh has emerged as a surprising success at the box office, grossing an estimated $4.8 million in its debut, potentially setting a record for the best documentary opening of 2024. The documentary, produced by The Daily Wire, presents a satirical exploration of anti-racist activism, featuring Walsh posing as a diversity expert. He interviews prominent figures in the anti-racist community, including authors Saira Rao and Robin DiAngelo, exposing controversial and provocative views.
Despite being screened in just 1,517 theaters, the film’s audience reception has been exceptionally positive, boasting a 99 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics like DiAngelo have denounced the documentary for its portrayal of anti-racist educators, calling it designed to belittle them, while Walsh embraced this characterization. The film’s success indicates a demand for content that challenges prevailing narratives in Hollywood regarding race and anti-racism, as it utilizes the words of its subjects for humor and critique rather than traditional comedic methods.
Beleaguered moviegoers have long craved an alternative to Hollywood’s woke messaging.
Ironically, many have found that alternative in a film that showcases the world’s most notorious wokesters in their own words.
In what The Hollywood Reporter called “the biggest surprise of the weekend,” Matt Walsh’s satirical “Am I Racist?” posted a fourth-place box office finish by taking in an estimated $4.8 million, which hits the milestone as 2024’s best documentary debut to-date and perhaps the best debut at least since Disney’s nature documentary “Bears” premiered in 2014.
According to the movie business database The Numbers, “Bears” opened with a weekend gross of $4,776,267.
Thus, if early estimates require upward revisions, “Am I Racist?” almost certainly will eclipse Disney’s popular 2014 nature documentary.
Remarkably, “Am I Racist?” posted those box-office numbers despite appearing on only 1,517 screens, according to the Reporter.
For comparison’s sake, the new Lionsgate action film “The Killer’s Game” ranked sixth place for the weekend with only $2.6 million in box-office earnings despite appearing on 2,623 screens.
Produced by The Daily Wire, “Am I Racist?” features Walsh as a certified diversity, equity and inclusion expert.
Before embarking upon what he repeatedly calls his anti-racist “journey,” Walsh dons a wig to conceal his identity.
Thus disguised, he then poses as an anti-racist activist and gains access to high-profile race-grifters.
For instance, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao, authors of “White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better,” appear in one scene where Rao refers to Republicans as “Nazis.”
Saturday on the social media platform X, conservative Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson indicated that he once followed Rao on Twitter. He called her “the worst person I found on the entire platform.”
I followed Saira Rao for a good while on Twitter
She was the worst person I found on the entire platform
That’s a hard contest to win
What @MattWalshBlog dealt out to her
She so richly deservedhttps://t.co/nT7G2ikZqn
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) September 14, 2024
Walsh also scored an interview with Robin D’Angelo, author of “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.”
In one of the film’s most uncomfortable and thus hilarious moments, Walsh actually tricks D’Angelo into paying $30 in reparations to the film’s black producer.
Periodically, Walsh even indicates the exorbitant amount of the fees that grifters like D’Angelo charged.
According to the New York Post, D’Angelo has since decried “Am I Racist?” as “designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists.”
“She couldn’t be more correct in that assessment. Thank you, Robin!” Walsh posted on Thursday.
Robin DiAngelo has issued a statement denouncing our film. She claims that the movie is “designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists.” She couldn’t be more correct in that assessment. Thank you, Robin!https://t.co/xOvMUFnuTk
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 12, 2024
Meanwhile, as of Monday afternoon, “Am I Racist?” had a 99 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
In short, audiences have flocked to “Am I Racist?” because Walsh exposed the anti-racists’ own anti-white racism from the inside.
Still, there is something remarkable about the film’s early success.
After all, “Am I Racist?” moviegoers did not exactly treat themselves to a Mel Brooks-style comedy. In “The Producers,” for instance, Brooks used actors and a screenplay to mock Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
By contrast, “Am I Racist?” mocks the insufferable anti-racists simply by showcasing their own words.
The fact that audiences would pay to see that suggests that they crave something more than mere mockery.
It suggests, in fact, that they wanted to laugh while knowing that Walsh had not let the race-grifters in on the joke.
At least for this particular moviegoer, that knowledge made the experience even more viscerally satisfying.
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