Ok, What Gives?

I spent a lot of time in college watching cartoons and playing video games.

I did not spend a lot of time getting laid.

Maybe they were connected.

I bring up my cartoon watching because this weekend I saw a commercial that took me back to those mindless college days. One of the cartoons I watched in my friends' dormroom, was something called "Dragonball Z." This was a Japanese anime cartoon that focused on the adventures of several alien martial arts experts who had running battles between themselves and other aliens.

Like I said, I wasn't getting laid, although my friends were.

Anyway, the protagonists in the cartoons look sorta like Japanese men despite their alien origins and they all have Japanese sounding names. I always assumed that that the characters were Asians. Turns out, I was wrong.

Well, let me be clear, I may not have been wrong. I'm basing my new assumption on the fact that I watched a commercial this weekend for the new Dragonball Z movie, that featured a run-of-the-mill white guy in the role of "Goku," the cartoon's main character. Since there is no way Hollywood would cast a white guy in an Asian guy's role, Goku must have been white all these years.

Right?

For the sarcasm-challenged, I know for a fact this isn't right. I know that Hollywood has a long and tortured history of "fixing" stories so that main characters who are people of color, suddenly become pale. Just recently, there was a movie made about a group of MIT students who used a complicated system to break casinos in Las Vegas, that featured a patented "whitewash." In real life, the masterminds behind the scheme were Asians, but in the movie version, the white guy was the genius, and the Asians were just his geeky sidekicks.

Over the years, yellowface, redface, blackface and brownface have been a pretty good cottage industry for white actors. It seems that studios often don't want to go through the trouble of locating talented minority actors, so they just hire white people and add makeup. Presto, chango, and we're ready to rock.

Obviously, I'm not a fan of that practice, but I find it even more bothersome when studio executives change massive, plot points in movies just to write in white people, and write out minorities. It happens so often despite the complaints of minority groups across the country, that it forces me to ask one question.

What gives?

Why is it that minorities are viewed as such bad earners at the box office that studio execs would basically rewrite the entire Dragonball Z story? No longer is the movie about bands of warring ninja aliens, now it appears to be about a white dude who learns the power of martial arts from a random old Asian guy, falls in love with an Asian woman, and then saves the world. All while going through some weird transformation that makes him look kinda, sorta Asian, a little.

What type of world do we live in where it makes more sense financially to alienate your core audience, with the aim of maybe attracting families who prefer their superheroes white?

I just don't get it. If anything, recent history has taught us that making quality "niche" movies is a good way to make money. Every movie does not have to appeal to everybody, and by everybody, I mean the stereotypical random white family. Tyler Perry makes moves about black people for black people and he's a freaking millionaire. And his movies aren't even good!

Why is it that Hollywood execs can't seem to grasp the idea that making movies that insult the intelligence of your viewers, and also dabble in racism, just isn't smart? The loyalists who might normally see your movie three or four times will now stay away in droves, and since the movie is a piece of redundant crap, even the families you're trying to attract won't come out.

Who is on the master committee in Hollywood that decides when movies will be "whitewashed" and what focus groups are they talking to? Who is telling these people that digitally scrubbing colored folks out of movies is the way to go? Better yet, who is telling them that sticking to the same trite stereotypes is the best way to make their movies relevant.

I really want to know who is on that committee because I need to meet them.

And shove my foot up their asses.


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Stay 'Til The End

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Part Two, For You

You ever have an argument with your significant other and it seems like y'all are speaking two different languages?

You're laying out a point-by-point breakdown of the problems you have with your lover's behavior, and your main squeeze is complaining about your tone of voice. Or, your spouse tells you that she doesn't feel loved, you explain all the things you do that show your love, and she says those things don't count. It's both baffling and infuriating.

Welcome to the logic and emotion divide.

This topic is a dangerous one, mainly because many of my beliefs about relationships are tinged with chauvinism. See, how easily I admitted that? Do I get brownie points for admitting up front that I have a totally "male" view on the world, and believe many stereotypes and generalizations about women because my personal history has borne them out? Or, does that just make me an idiot.

Oh well.

I issued that disclaimer because my honest assessment is that men tend to use more logic in relationships, and women tend to follow their emotions. I know this isn't 100 percent true in every relationship, so those of y'all firing up that angry and obvious response can fall back. There are far too many variables in relationships for anything to be 100 percent, but I feel confident in making the argument that men like things to make sense, while women like things to make them happy.

And that creates conflict.

Look, I know men also want to be happy in relationships. That's why we dominate the remote control and why many of us fall asleep shortly after putting in our time in the bedroom. These things make us happy. But, it seems like we understand better that our happiness does not have the power to change facts, while women seem immune to this reality of life.

For example, ladies, if you cook a nice meal and your man eats it and compliments you on it, then just move on. Don't ask him how it compares to the meal y'all had at his momma's last weekend. Because you might not like the response. Your man is probably going to respond honestly that your meatballs were nice, but his momma's made him do a happy dance. He's going to tell you he appreciated your effort, but that his momma also makes garlic bread topped with Parmesan cheese when she cooks pasta. And, ultimately, you're going to be pissed. See, logically and factually, your meal wasn't as good as his momma's meal and he let you know. But, emotionally, he should have known that telling you the absolute truth was a pretty stupid decision, and he could have protected your feelings.

That's how men and women differ. Unfortunately, men don't tend to filter reality through our emotions as often as women do. Something either happened, or it didn't happen. That's it. But, for a lot of women, whether or not something happened is not as important as how they felt when that thing happened. Men figure that buying flowers for a women that likes flowers is a good look no matter what. But, women believe that the flowers only count if you thought of them yourself, and they were the right color and type. If a man only bought flowers because his women kept asking for them, and he got roses instead of tulips, well he might as well have saved his money.

It's not that men don't have emotions, and it's not that women don't use logic. Like I said, dealing in absolutes is idiotic whenever you're talking about human beings. Men have lots of emotions, but most of us have been taught since youth to suppress those emotions and focus on the realities of life if we want to be successful. On the other hand, women have been encouraged to express their feelings and they've been told those feelings are important since they were children. Consequently, the two genders have vastly different worldviews.

Brief Tangent
Some of this is due to what I call the Daddy Complex. My friends and I have discovered that many women have been thoroughly misguided about the realities of marriage and relationships because of the well-meaning love showered on them by their daddies. (That's not even accounting for the women that have a host of issues because their daddies weren't around.) Anyway, Daddy's Little Girl typically has been treated like a princess by her father since birth, and in many ways she's been able to avoid facing the hard realities of adulthood.

When she encounters a nice young man, she's taken aback at all the expectations this young man has regarding her behavior. See, she has lots of expectations about what a man should bring to a relationship, but she hasn't spent much time thinking about what her "duties" might be. This leads to many fights when her man confronts her with the realities of life, and she talks about the depths of her feelings.

Damn those Daddys.

Tangent Finished

It's imperative for us to understand the difference in how men and women view the world if we want to have successful and enduring relationships. For men, that means understanding that just because you prove your case logically, sometimes logic isn't as important as the way your partner feels about your actions. As many relationship experts have noted, if you "win" every argument with your spouse, you will eventually lose the war. For women, this means understanding that men like things to make sense, outside of what you "feel." That means that when you have a beef with your man, you should distill your disagreement into easily digestible points that are not tied to subjective feelings. Your feelings are important, but so are the facts.

What say you Lunatics?







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She Ain't God

I've been off the news grid for a while now, but it seems like every time I check back in, some bullshit is brewing.

Latest news is Michelle Obama putting her hand on the small of the back of the Queen of England. Turns out, her majesty touched Michelle when they met, so being naturally cordial, Mrs. Obama returned the favor later on in the conversation, and the folks across the Pond are going ballistic.

Apparently, there is a rule that you don't touch the Queen. Well, you can shake her hand if she offers it to you, but you have to give her one of those finger handshakes that my daddy warned me about when I was a kid. (Any man who gives me a finger handshake gets the side eye, it's a rule. The finger handshake and the dead fish handshake are unacceptable on any self-respecting man. Teach your sons people.)

So, folks are adding this to the ever growing list of "gaffes" the Obamas have made since they moved their black asses to the White House. That figures.... I'm not even going to discuss how asinine it is that people focus so much attention on stupid mistakes like this when we still haven't released a cure for AIDS because I trust y'all already know. I want to discuss the rule about touching the queen.

Simply put, who the eff is she supposed to be?

Last time I checked, the Queen of England was an old white lady. That's it. She came from a vagina, and when she dies, she'll get turn into ash like everybody else. To borrow from a famous rap line "She breathe the same air as me..."

Yes, I know that the folks in England believe their royal line contains either the blood of deities, or has been blessed by deities, but that's a little stupid. Ain't nothing special about those folks, and they damn sure don't have some special hotline to the man upstairs. They are just regular rich folks.

I find it hard to believe that people in England could be this stupid. Didn't Prince Harry have some recent problems with drunkenness and racism? Shouldn't that have been a sign that he and his family aren't THAT different from everybody else? The idea that touching another human being is taboo simply because of the circumstances of their birth is so archaic and idiotic that it boggles the mind.

Logically, if English monarchs can't deal with human contact from lesser beings, maybe the Queen should have kept her hands to herself. If she doesn't want folks touching her, she should avoid touching everybody else. That seems to be a good rule of thumb if England is going to continue this tradition. Michelle just reciprocated the touch of an old lady, that's probably all she felt about it. But, instead of moving on, folks are upset because Obama's hands don't belong on the Queen.

She Ain't God...





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