Bond

I was flipping through the channels the other day and I came accross a program where a guy was fighting off crocodiles. I thought this looked interesting so I stopped there. This character escaped from the animals and approached a house, he peaked inside, I guess saw what he wanted to see and started setting fire to the place. As soon as the flames started to grow the place emptied, it was the "bad guy lair". Out streamed black person after black person. This was amazingly funny because apparently EVERY bad guy in this movie was black! I suppose all the bad guys had to be black, they were on the Bayou (sarcasm). "Black guy bad guy lair on the Bayou."

I ran from my room to find out what this was. I turned on the TV in the living room, found the channel, and it was a James Bond movie from 1973! How crazy. It most def is not a new movie, but it's actually also not that old. It reminds of how "black" always means "bad", while things that are "white" systematically mean "good". Using this mentality it makes sense that black people would be the bad guys, and how awful is that. Casting solely based on the color of your skin. And if you want to be an actor, you have to follow along with these crazy ideas or you won't get on the Silver Screen.

Perspectives

This semester I embarked on a unique experience which is the online class. I looked at the title, TV, Minorities and Cultural Diversity, and thought that this may be an interesting topic. This class is really making me look at the world in a whole new light, and I'm not sure I like it, honestly. This may be somewhere I need to be because I am a jaded young woman. I never felt like I had to deal with racism, I never felt like people looked at me for the color of my skin rather than the person I am. People have commented on my skin, my hair, my features, but I have never felt it in a negative manner, they always just seemed a little jealous. I have always said with pride, and a little humor, "I'm actually half Irish." Because, despite my darker skin, I am more Irish than most of the white people I know... I think this is funny. Unfortunatly, I don't really know what the other half of me is... "Some kind of black," I tend to say. White people think this is hilarious, some black people actually get offended by this. "You don't know!?" they question. Then I have to get into my life story... I don't really talk to my father and even if I did, he doesn't know either.

I don't identify with black people... I don't even know what it means to be black. Most of my friends are white, the family I spend most of my time with is white. Mostly everyone in my little 22-year-old world is white. After being in this class for about a month I have become more aware of my "blackness" and I don't know how to handle this. I am black, that 50% Irish thing means nothing because I don't have the white skin to back it up. When I was about 5, this little girl I went to camp with saw my mother and asked if I was adopted. I was mortified and offended, "NO!" I told her and walked away. I still vividly remember this day, to me, I am my mother's daughter and fuck anyone who can't believe that based on my skin color. I never really saw my family in color, until I got older.

Just living life I see more and more the horror of what it really means to be black. TV, movies, media... Not much of this helps. I never understood why there were so many angry black people out there. Since I know my father, and he's not the best of people, I have always just assumed that maybe it's because you're a douche bag and that's why you can't get ahead in life... not that you're black. Maybe we, as a race, "have a right to be hostile" (to quote Public Enemy).

I don't want to deny my blackness, I want to find a way to embrace it.

Weeds

I've been watching the seasons of Weeds the past few weeks and I think it's a great show. It's interesting how they have taken the stereotypical drug dealer and turned him into a white suburban mother (Nancy Botwin). It kind of shows one of the real reasons people start doing illegal things such as this, out of honest, desperate need for money. Her husband died suddenly and she found herself with a ton of bills, two kids, and no money to pay them off with, so she began dealing drugs.

The show does have some of the typical stereotypes. Nancy Botwin's partner is a black man (Conrad), and she works with his aunt (Haylia) and cousin (Vaneeta). Vaneeta is a young, single mother and Haylia is a big, loud, opinionated, black woman. Conrad is an honest and reliable man, but he has counterpart, UTurn. UTurn is a "Thug," ready to screw over or kill anyone who gets in the way of his drug business. There are also a few Hispanic drug gangs, and they are just as unsavory. There is also another group, I think they are Ukrainian. I'm not sure. But they are just as bad as the others. Race is very important in this show, and people of the same race stick together (even if they stick together within their different crews). Almost everyone makes it a point to make sure Nancy knows she is white. A gang member even brings Nancy along with him to a meeting because he says, "No one wants a dead white lady on their hands." He assumed that if he (being a black man) had a white lady with him he would be safe because no one would want to cause that kind of trouble. For one episode there is a group of white bikers who deal drugs, but no one will buy their weed because it sucks.

So far, one of my favorite scenes is when the group is forced to move their grow house to Majestic, part of the suburb that Nancy lives. Haylia and Vaneeta are walking down the sidewalk and all the white people who are out at the same time are SUPER nice, saying "Hi", and "How are you today!?" in big, cheery voices. Vaneeta comments how nice these white people are, but Haylia shuts her down immediately saying, "they say good morning. but what they're really saying is... I'm not racist." I love that, because in this small community, she was probably right.

Hot Pockets

This is totally random, but what's the use in living if you can't read too deeply into things?

There is this commercial for new pizza hot pockets. The premise is that you can eat these treats without utensils and without tables. All the people who see these table-less eaters discriminate against them. They do things like, deny them entrance to restaurants, deny them seating on a bus and yell things meanly out windows. I think it is so random and strange because it is so close to racism. These are things that real people have/had to deal with in real life, and this brand of foods has made light of a not so light situation to talk about food. And yet, I find myself wanting one... So I guess those writers did their jobs.

The New Black Family

Talk about stereotype. The new Cleveland Show premired this weekend and I was amazed! In the beginning of the show Cleveland leaves "Family Guy Land" and both Stewie and Joe say, one after the other basically, "Bye chocolate people." I know it's just comedy, and I thought it was kind of funny, but doesn't that kind of point towards an idea that these two characters weren't important other than to be the "token black family," which was probably the point.

Gotta love the black woman with the ghetto booty, two back-talking kids and a suckie baby-daddy. I can tell this show is going to be very heavy on the black jokes. I really like Family Guy, so maybe this new show will be able to play up the satire as well as Family Guy does. This show has the potential to be great, it also has the potential to go over the top. Family Guy goes over the top a lot, sometimes that's what makes the jokes funny, sometimes not... If The Cleveland Show goes over the top people may get angry.

Here it is on Hulu:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/97541/the-cleveland-show-pilot