Who's Laughing Now

I haven't been to the movies in a minute.

My wife loves going to the show, but I've never been a big fan. Lately, few movies capture my attention, and even when I am intrigued by a movie's premise, I typically get disappointed when I sit in the theater. The plots are too simplistic, or they do a horrible job of discussing or representing what I believe are the racial dynamics of the world.

Consquently, it should suprise no one that I haven't bothered to catch the latest Tyler Perry movie.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Perry recently released the latest movie in his "Madea" saga. This one involves Madea, who is really Perry in drag, going to jail. Of course, when the pistol-packing, foul-mouthed granny invades the big house, hijinks ensue. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, not to Courtland Milloy. Milloy, a columnist for the Washington Post, takes Perry and his latest movie to task in this piece.

I've never been a fan of Perry's work. His movies, while they may have potential, seem to slapped together with a minimum amount of work. (Kind of like some of my blogs.) And his televisions shows, well I would rather punch myself in the head for an hour than watch House of Payne or Meet The Browns... While wearing brass knuckles.

Yet, Perry is undeniably popular. His movies dominate the box office and, because of the small production costs, they are hugely profitable. It seems like his smiling face is on my television every five minutes extolling the benefits of his two TBS shows which he promises are "very funny." The man is a success, but according to Courtland Milloy, his success is built on explotation.

On one hand, I have to agree with Milloy. Perry traffics in every stereotype about black people, and black men in particular get a pretty raw deal from him. It's like he has a rule that only one man can be a "good man" in any of his movies, and that pretty much sucks. Plus, his portrayals of women, particularly his role as Madea, seem designed to make black women as two-dimensional as possible. Yet, despite all these problems, people love Perry.

Milloy tried to ask some movie viewers how they could enjoy movies that are so stupid and he got an interesting response. Several of the folks just said "Hey, it's entertainement, you're thinking too much."

You're thinking too much.

Sadly, that response did not surprise me. I've run across it many times myself. It seems many, MANY people spend a lot of their lives trying to entertain themselves with activities that don't require them to think. Who knew?

See, I like thinking. I've told y'all about my internal debates and arguments. But, I also like thinking in other stuff. When I'm playing video games (Anybody want to catch my on NBA 2K9 or GTAIV? My user name is Bub75 and I will kill you with a jumpshot or assault rifle.) I like think. When I'm playing basketball in real life, I'm always thinking. When I played football, I was constantly scheming for an advantage. In every aspect of my life, I'm constantly thinking about my next move, about my last move and about my present move.

I'm not overly ambitious and I'm not a schemer, but I do think I'm a thinker.

Consequently, it's hard for me to relate to people who turn off their brains to watch movies. After all, movies are supposed to entertain you. How can something entertain you if it constantly insults your intelligence? More importantly, how can something entertain you if it can't capture your interest? No matter what a movie is about, it needs to interest some part of my psyche and stupid movies just don't get that done.

But, I guess for some folks movies are an escape and that's it. I can understand that to a degree. I read a lot of science fiction and I know that books about magical worlds are mainly an escape for me. But, that doesn't mean I enjoy bad science fiction. Just the other day I stopped reading several books because they were poorly written drivel, even if they did meet my quota for dragons and spells.

Yet, some folks can take the smallest nuggests of goodness from movies, and that's enough for them. They might not call the movie a work of art, but they won't silently seethe and wish they could get their money back.

In addition, as a friend of mine pointed out, many black folks are starved for movies featuring black people in decent roles and will inhale anything. Perry has seen that need, and he's obliging their requests. While his movies are lacking, they still feature black people in a wider range of roles than anything the mainstream Hollywood machine cares to produce. So, in a way, you could blame white people for the problem of Tyler Perry. (Y'all knew I had to find a way to blame "whitey." I wouldn't be a Raving Black Lunatic if I didn't, now would I?"

However, the real question is what to do about the Perry phenomenon? There is clearly a demand for his product and as long as he is profiting from meeting that demand, what is his motivation to change? So what if some black folks are upset about his stereotypes, those folks aren't the ones making him money. Should we hold black artists like Tyler Perry to stiffer standards than their white counterparts, or should be let them slide and be content that somebody is saying something good about us?

What say you Lunatics?

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My Bar is Low

I read this story that had me chuckling the other day.

It was about President Obama attending a Wizards game and getting into a friendly trash talking match with one of the fans sitting near courtside. The heckler, although he said he wasn't really "heckling" the president, was actually wearing one of those bootleg Obama t-shirts that are so popular among black folks. Anyway, the Wizards eventually smashed Obama's team the Bulls, and the guy says that going back and forth with the president was easily one of the most important moments of his life.

That's so cool. (Y'all can check out the full story here.)

I told that anecdote because it made me think about way Obama affects folks, particularly black folks. I've written about it many times, but every once in a while I get reminded of how proud black people are of Obama, and how invested they are in his success. You can almost feel the emotional connection people have to this man they have never met in their lives, the way they feel empowered by his accomplishments. In addition, it's impossible to ignore how many black folks want him to do well.

Which brings me to my point.

I would like to see Obama succeed, mainly because he's the first black president, but also because I live in America and if he fails, my life is going to get a lot more difficult. Yet, I realized recently that my criteria for his success have changed recently.

See, during the election, I kind of wanted him to right all the wrongs of the last eight years and make America into the country I know it has the potential to be. But, that's changed.

Now I just want him to prevent the collapse of civilization.

I'm not saying that's going to be easy, considering all the problems we have in this country, but y'all do have to admit that's definitely not setting the bar too high. I mean, I'm not worried about universal healthcare, or prison reforms, or the black family structure. I just don't want the world to turn into what Octavia Butler described in the Parable of the Sower.

Some folks may claim that I'm moving the goalposts, that I'm giving Obama a pass on his campaign promises and that I'n not being fair or smart. Those people may be right. But, I'm not worried about what they think.

The world is rapidly spinning out of control and I'm not really interested in testing my mettle in a post-Apocalyptic America. I don't want to find out if I can scrounge for food, or hunt game or protect my family from marauding bands of crazies. I don't want to find my inner Mad Max.

I just want to go to work, get a pay check and live what I consider a normal life. Increasingly, that's beginning to look a lot like paradise.

Y'all think I want too much?

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Shhhhh...They Listening

Awww, damn, they know.

What do they know? Well they know this.

Somebody took "start snitching" to heart.

Who told this sister it was ok to start decoding racial messages for white people? And I know that author of that article is a sister because her fist name is "Nia." Ain't no white people naming their children "Nia." That's a black name like Tyrone and Keisha.

Why she had to let the white folks in on the secret?

Us black folks were enjoying ourselves watching Obama sneak his swagger into the White House. It was like a private message he only gave us. We knew what his "bop" signified, just like we knew that he could drop his verbs if he needed too. Whether he was brushing his shoulders off or bumping fists with his wife, Big Homie had his little ways of reassuring all of us he wasn't the Oreo cookie the ghetto poet Ice Cube once warned us about.

Black people been code-switching since white folks wrote the code. Ain't no way we could have survived in America if we didn't know how to put on masks, our double consciousness and get through the day. All of the black people who read this blog have a "work voice" and a "home voice" and we know how to use those bitches effortlessly. We weren't surprised that a Harvard-educated black man knew the proper way to give dap, or speak to the fellas. Shit, he would be have been a corny brotha if he didn't, and anybody who has looked at Michelle Obama knows that homegirl would not have dropped the panties for a cornball.

But, now it could all be ruined.

This article apparently is immensely popular with white folks. Y'all know that some of them love to stay on top of the current black culture so they can know exactly which aspects to rape and plunder to make millions. (I'm not talking about you my white readers. Keep reading.) They are posting it on Facebook, sending it on Twitter and will probably be discussing it around their antique dinner tables tonight.

There is no way Obama can keep sending black folks our messages with all the white people watching. You know they get mad jealous about stuff like that. It doesn't matter that he uses his white voice the majority of the time. The fact that he has a white voice and black voice is suspicious to many white people because most of them only have one voice. Sure, we as black folks know that Obama developed these two voices out of necessity, but to some white folks this will only confirm that he's a shifty Negro who needs to be monitored.

I'm going to miss those messages. I'm going to miss my President walking across the White House front lawn in a bop that would have fit right in on the yard at Howard University. Those little moments reminded me of my own journey, my own attempts to find a balance in life. Now they are history because Nia. I hope Nia is proud of herself, she has robbed me of one of the simple joys in my life.

Nia if by chance you read this, I hope you enjoy the accolades and pats on the back for having exposed another of black people's secret joys to the white world. You're like the person who first taught white people how to cabbage patch, and explained to them the best way to cornrow. You have betrayed something sacred and holy. You and your racial explanations. I hope you're proud of yourself, Nia.

Because I'm just sad.


(In case this does make it back to Nia, girl I'm just playing. Great article idea. You took something that was obvious to many black folks and put it together to make a good story. That's good work. Good luck to you. You race traitor!)


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Nutty Nostalgia

Hollywood legend CLINT EASTWOOD laments the loss of old-fashioned humour in today’s society - insisting he should be able to tell jokes about nationality without fear of people branding him a “racist”. The Dirty Harry star, 79, is adamant that modern culture has become humourless, and accuses younger generations of spending too much time trying to avoid being offensive. He says, “People have lost their sense of humour. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth or you will be insulted as a racist.” “I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a ‘Sam the Jew’ or ‘Jose the Mexican’ - but we didn’t think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was just normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don’t want to be politically correct. We’re all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything.”

Remember when a nigger knew he was nigger and didn't argue about it?

How about when wetbacks picked your fruit, kept their mouths shut and didn't try to vote? Let's not even discuss how the Jews embraced their innate ability to earn money and Asian women didn't mind being submissive.

Remember those good ol' days?

Apparently Clint Eastwood misses the good old days. The days when Dirty Harry could tell a joke about niggers and watermelons and nobody busted his chops about racism. When Pale Riders kept the coloreds in line with nighttime jaunts. Eastwood longs for a simpler time when everybody laughed at jokes about what you say to black men in suits.

Will the defendants please rise.

I don't blame Eastwood. Honestly, if you were an old white millionaire, wouldn't you long for the good ol' days? Before this whole "equality" thing, the world must have seemed like a veritable Utopia for rich white men. You could fuck who you wanted, cheat who you wanted and say anything you damn well pleased. Nobody had the power to make you feel bad about yourself because nobody besides like-minded rich white men had any true power.

Those were the days.

Now, you're stuck in a pansy-ass world where everybody wants you to respect their feelings and treat them as equals. They don't want you to make racist jokes because they don't find them funny. They complain if you make a movie about World War II and conspicuously leave out all the black people.

Wah, wah, wah, all people do is bitch and moan these days.

In the good old days, you could say what you wanted and if people didn't like it they shut their mouths and took it anyway. The coloreds, all of them not just the niggers, knew what side their bread was buttered on, and didn't want to mess up their meal tickets by complaining. If they could only get roles as dope dealers or hoes, they were just happy to work. If they had to shine shoes while you called them "boy", well they shined those shoes with a smile on their faces.

What is the world coming to when a rich white man has to worry about whether other people find his jokes funny? If rich white men have to worry about what other people think, what's the point in being rich and white?

Where are the benefits?

If you can't make a joke about money-hungry Jews or funny-talking Asians, well why make jokes? If you can't make fun of somebody based on gross stereotypes about their race or nationality, what else do you have to work with? Where is the motivation?

Where has yesterday gone?







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