Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Jesse Ventura, Good or bad?
Jesse Ventura has been in the world of controversial news for ages. From wrestling to becoming the Governor, he has seen and heard it all. Jesse has been in the system and now he is risking his life to expose the system for what it is.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
A Robotic Era is upon us...
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The Movie 2012
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tyler Perry's hidden antics
During an interview, Spike Lee made a comment about Tyler Perry's work. He called Tyler's work "coonery buffoonery". Lee had a point with his accusation. A lot of Tyler's work does revolve around the subject matter. For example, Tyler dresses up as a grandma who is foul mouthed with a pistol in her purse. From the outside looking in, this implies that elderly African American women carry pistols. Tyler would argue that he didn't mean harm, but why portray this image in the first place?
Another case to consider, Tyler has two network shows. Both of them exploit the African American culture. For example, his show Meet the Browns has a dim-witted character named Mr. Brown. He is dressed like a clown without the makeup. Most of Mr. Brown’s mispronunciation comes when he is dealt with big words. Every single big word is always mispronounced as if he is stupid. His other show House of Payne has a character with buck yellow teeth. The image of buck teeth and big lips were used to discriminate black people.
It’s interesting that Lee speaks on this because one of his films discussed the topic before. In his movie “Bamboozled” a character named Pierre Delacroix created a network show that humiliated the black culture. Since Pierre was black, that’s how his executives fought off the racial boycotts. They would say how the show wasn’t racist because it was created by a black man.
Tyler has been shoved into a seat of questions since Lee’s remarks. He has a wide fan base who support his films. Tyler went from living in his car to owning his personal jet. Is he a pawn in hollywood? Is he getting paid to destroy the image of african americans? Or is everything harmless fun? “This is food for thought, you do the dishes.”--Jay z.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Is Racism in visual media making a comeback? Pt.1
As we all know, racism is a boiling topic to discuss. Men like Dr. king and Malcolm X fought to keep it down. They ended up dying because of this plague. After both assassinations, the subject matter should had dropped. But it appears that the bigots out there are still rolling strong. It’s okay for a bigot to think racist thoughts and not act on them. As human beings, we are entitled to think whatever we want. But when you express your racy thoughts through visual media, it raises eye browns.
For example, in the movie “Transformers 2: Revenge of the fallen” Michael Bay portrays two robots with African American voices. These robots are the only ones with monkey facial features. Every other robot has somewhat human facial features. The term “porch monkey” is a racial slur intended for black people. This implies that black people look like monkeys. So for these black voiced robots to look like monkeys raises the question. What is the director trying to say? One could argue this, but they would lose.These monkey robots have on gold earrings and one of them has a gold tooth. These characters are clumsy and dim witted. All the other robots seem to be on the ball every time. Is this Bay’s perception of African Americans?
Seth Macfarlane, the creator of Family Guy, shows his other side too. The stereotypes and dialogue makes me ponder about his intentions with the cartoon. The jokes weren’t over the top, but one of his characters that is African American was taken off the show. He has given the character his own separate sitcom now. I think this move was done due to complaints about the jokes. When the character Cleveland was on the show, he didn't stand out to a point where he would get his own show. He was just a normal character. This raises questions for Seth. Unless, Cleveland was voted for the most popular character, I don't why Seth would make this move. So now he has a white family show, and a black family show. When you look at it from this perspective, everybody is satisfied with the outcome.