6 April 06 in Roundup
Last week’s shitstorm blew in and blew over. This week brings the happy news that racism is no longer racist:
- Sam Sugar reverses his position on Joanna Angel. Tristan Taormino weighs in: “Some female performers’ choice not to work with black men may be fueled by racism, but not every woman who makes the choice is automatically racist.” [SugarBank]
- We should all watch more television, if only for the black hottie upskirts. [TVgasm]
- Hiromi waxes eloquent on one of the lesser-known films in the Kurosawa canon. [Hiromi]
More: Porn,
Joanna Angel,
Tristan Taormino,
Film,
Television,
Racism,
Controversy
9 March 06 in Media
There’s a great new show that courageously tackles the subject of race in America—a show that is smart, cynical, funny, and at times even heartwarming.
That show is called The Boondocks.
Then there’s this other show—a show that purports to confront racial stereotypes yet promotes the idea there’s such a thing as a “typical” white or black family; a show that lets us wallow in our cherished superstitions without really confronting them; a show that pretends a little spray-paint and makeup can stand in, even on a temporary basis, for something as complex as racial and cultural identity.
I’m talking of course about Black. White. The premise is simple enough: two families—one black, the other white—“switch” races via the miracle of cosmetics, then walk a figurative mile in each others’ shoes.
Continue reading “Black? White? WTF?”...
More: Television,
Black,
Stereotypes,
Racial Bias,
Controversy,
Black. White.,
The Boondocks
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19 February 06 in Media
If you get to bed at a reasonable hour you can be forgiven for missing the quiet revolution happening on late-night cable. Starting at 11pm and continuing well into the wee hours of the morning, the ordinarily kid-friendly Cartoon Network is stormed by the raunchy, potty-mouthed geniuses behind the Adult Swim programming block. Featuring a mashup of absurdist fare like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab, reruns of long-standing favorites like Futurama and Family Guy, as well as recent Anime hits like Ghost in the Shell, Adult Swim is aimed squarely at the post-South Park generation—a generation that accepts animated programming as a medium for decidedly adult entertainment.
The highlight of the most recent season has been the addition of The Boondocks, a small-screen adaptation of Aaron McGruder’s controversial comic strip. Not surprisingly, The Boondocks was considered too controversial even for Fox—McGruder’s biting commentary on racial politics in America and frequent use of the nigga-bomb ensured that no mainstream network would touch his project. Thankfully, the folks at Adult Swim are no strangers to pushing the envelope of Standards and Practices (something they frequently poke fun at in their own shows), and so we have a show that imagines George Dubya Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as white gangsta thugs (hearing Samuel L. Jackson, who voices the Rummi character, say “the absensce of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence” is alone worth the entire season), a show that awakens Martin Luther King, Jr. from a decades-long coma only to find himself alienated by nigga culture. The Boondocks manages to tip over all our sacred cows at once.
Hey, anything that pisses off Al Sharpton can’t be all bad, right?
Continue reading “The Boondocks”...
More: Television,
Black,
Anime,
Stereotypes,
The Boondocks,
Aaron McGruder
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