Writing a good divorce comedy is tougher.

So the fact that Rashida Jones nailed both her performance and her part of the screenplay entire movie is something very special.

Celeste and Jesse Forever follows a long-term couple in the midst of a breakup. Having been best friends for the past twenty years, Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) find themselves divorcing–in spite of their continued chemistry. Celeste, a trends analyst and pop-culture commentator, is the epitome of a responsible business woman. Jesse is an unemployed artist, who spends more time scheming on surfing than actively planning out his life. They bond through some strange shared loves (like masturbating lip glosses, baby corn, and other things that look like tiny penises) but Celeste initiates the divorce since Jesse has failed to grow up.

However, as the proceedings continue, and they actually start experiencing life outside of their bond, both Celeste and Jesse begin to question their initial perceptions of their marriage. The conversations between Jesse and Celeste flow easily, in that goofy style of intimate speech that’s really hard to capture on film. The film shines when it uses Celeste’s job as an endless source of pop culture commentary, from her book Shitgeist to working with manufactured pop princess Riley Banks. There’s even a cameo from internet darling Sarah Haskins. The film is smart and funny – unfortunately, like most comedies with a relationship at the core, it fails the Bechdel Test.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Jones about the writing process:

THR: How much is the film autobiographical for the two of you?

Jones: It’s definitely a pastiche for both of us. We talk all the time about relationships and love and what it means and how it changes — what it means to grow up and how that affects the way you love people. We’re kind of obsessed with it! The film is for sure emblematic of a couple relationships I’ve had; some of them romantic and some of them friendships. It definitely reflects my relationship with Will and other guy friends I’ve had from the time I was 15. Definitely a mashup all around.

THR: Relationships that don’t work out offer up a lot of great material to work with as a writer, don’t they?

Jones: Definitely! There’s no better way to process pain than to write. I’ve not had that experience with acting. I mean, you can momentarily get these glimpses of real pain, but it’s nice to really, really process it and get into it and figure out why it hurts so bad; be really honest about it without having it be you talking to the person you want to talk to.

Honesty is a hallmark of the film–while lots of scenes (and Elijah Wood’s entire character) are pushed over the top for comedic effect, the characters get emotionally naked as the divorce proceedings continue. Samberg does a wonderful job in exploring the vulnerability involved with divorce, but Jones manages to capture the essence of a woman without forcing her into stereotype. Celeste isn’t a bitchy, perpetually single career woman–she has her moments, but they don’t define her. The movie never undermines her character to teach her a lesson, and it doesn’t rely on the Hollywood idea of a happy ending to drive the plot home. It isn’t a coming-of-age film–it’s more about surviving adulthood.

From a Racialicious standpoint, I went into the film with no racial expectations. From the trailer, Jones’ character Celeste is in a majority white world, and that’s basically what you get. However, there are racial references that were puzzling. Celeste attends a Halloween party with a white hefty bag secured around her midsection. When people ask, she explains she’s going as “white trash.” But later, after her date plays something like “Zuleisha” in scrabble, she crows “That’s not a word, that’s like my hootchie cousin’s name!” Make of that what you will, readers.

Ultimately, the movie is enjoyable. It isn’t quite first-date fodder due to the subject explored, but would be fun in most other scenarios. And if you want to see it, you’re in luck–the movie is being distributed by Sony, and will hit theaters in summer 2012.

When I looked at “Soul Train” host Don Cornelius back in the ‘70s, I didn’t see a pro-black entrepreneur who would become the “African American” Dick Clark.

I saw my dad. And his entire generation.
- Eric Deggans, Tampa Bay Times

“‘Soul Train’ created an outlet for black artists that never would have been if it hadn’t been for Cornelius,” said Kenny Gamble, who with his partner, Leon Huff, created the Philly soul sound and wrote the theme song for the show. “It was a tremendous export from America to the world, that showed African-American life and the joy of music and dance, and it brought people together.”

News of Mr. Cornelius’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes from civil rights leaders, musicians, entrepreneurs, academics and writers. “He was able to provide the country a window into black youth culture and black music,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. “For young black teenagers like myself, it gave a sense of pride and a sense that the culture we loved could be shared and appreciated nationally.”
- James C. McKinley Jr. New York Times

The genius of it all was THIS was the first time that black people were proud to be called AFRICAN.

Psssh. Before 1971? — I mean on the real – ’til like the early 80s on some schoolyard insult game ish? If someone called you “african” that was the most insulting degrading lower than low, “I’m finna f**k you up” type of insult.

I know right? Why?

To control our mentality during the slave period we were taught we were the lowest of low.

To control us AFTER slavery during the Jim Crow era we were taught we were the lowest of low.

The first introduction to entertainment (of which we were allowed to participate) was minstrel entertainment an over exaggerated buffoon display of shame and ugliness that we STILL CARRY TO THIS DAY (minus the makeup) (hello hip-hop….but that is another piece altogether).

To say with a straight, dignified face that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL was the RISKIEST radical life-changing move that america has seen. and amazingly enough for one hour for one saturday out the week, if you were watching soul train….it became contagious. next thing you know you are actually believing you have some sort of worth.
- Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, from The Roots, on OKPlayer

The ’70s and ’80s were just the period during which the best soul music was created and the best records were done. Whenever I walk into a store or any kind of environment, these kinds of songs from that period still play and I wonder if it’s a “Soul Train” tape. Because during those two decades, we were on top of them all in one way or another, either presenting the guests or playing the records. We were just flat out in love with the music.
- Don Cornelius, as quoted in The Los Angeles Times

Cornelius’ reported suicide, alas, tells us something about the nature of American success. All the man’s equity, affluence and well-deserved public acclaim were not, in the end, of enough comfort to salve his private pain — a struggle with illness, a nasty divorce.

To the people who make up the community that Cornelius created, the man is nearly a saint. We can see it now: the double line of dancers forming just beyond the pearly gates, awaiting the ingress of soul’s earthly impresario.
- Dan Charnas, NPR

By Arturo R. García

He was both the host and the ambassador for generations of artists, dancers, and music lovers. He was a journalist and an activist. And he was the conductor of “the hippest trip in America.”

Wednesday, everyone who ever listened to him wish viewers “love, peace, and soul” mourned the death of Don Cornelius, who was found in his home by police after apparently committing suicide.

Cornelius developed and hosted Soul Train, the kind of show that makes words like “influential” seem small. Soul Train ran for 35 years, making it the longest first-run syndicated show in history. But the show almost didn’t grow out of being a successful local program on WCIU-TV in Chicago.

As Christopher P. Lehman wrote in his book A Critical History of Soul Train On Television, however, Cornelius set out to show broadcasters the best the show had to offer:

When Cornelius decided to take “Soul Train” into nationwide syndication in 1971, he made a very savvy choice of which Chicago episode to pitch to broadcasters. he took to California the episode that featured the Dells, the Staple Singers, Tyrone Davis, and the Chi-Lites. At the time all four acts were very popular on urban radio. Moreover, three of them had crossover hits in the 1970-71 season. The Chi-Lites’ “(For Gods Sake) Give More Power To The People” was among the top thirty songs for at least one week. The Staples Singers scored with “Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom).” Davis had the biggest hit with “Turn Back The Hands Of Time.” Cornelius contacted all the group leaders to inform them of his decision to use their appearances in order to try to sell the show on the West Coast.

Cornelius’ canniness paid off: production on the national version of Soul Train, based out of Los Angeles, began that summer. However, for the next two years, he continued to host the local version of the show alongside the national one. But as the syndicated version of the show grew, so did its importance–not just to an audience that Cornelius correctly predicted was looking for what he called “a black American Bandstand,” but for the performers; as Lehman noted, in the days before Black Entertainment Television, black acts had to choose between playing to the all-white audiences on Bandstand or rely strictly on radio exposure.

The show’s platform went beyond the artistic: early acts brought with them feminist and anti-Vietnam War messages that wouldn’t have flown on other shows. And as The Roots’ Questlove wrote on OkPlayer, the presentation that Cornelius introduced to American television made him, “The MOST crucial non political figure to emerge from the Civil Rights era post [19]68″:

To say with a straight, dignified face that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL was the RISKIEST radical life-changing move that America has seen. And amazingly enough for one hour for one Saturday out the week, if you were watching soul train….it became contagious. Next thing you know you are actually believing you have some sort of worth.

The whole idea of Afrocentrism in my opinion manifested and spread with “Soul Train” in its first 6 years.

Besides the performers, fans also found a new platform on Soul Train: young people of color got the chance–the first chance, for many–to see their peers on-screen, showcasing their own moves. As Lehman writes, the show’s exposure also yielded benefits for the Chicago-area dancers on the WCIU version of the show, where Clinton Ghent took over as host after Cornelius moved west. For one dancer, Crescendo Ward, his turn in the spotlight literally saved his life:

He once had to take home a girlfriend who lived in the Cabrini Green projects, which the Vice Lords gang claimed as their territory. After he had parted from her, some of the gang members approached him and demanded, “Represent!”

He responded, “No love,” which meant that he did not belong to a gang.

They proceeded to pat him down and take his money until one of them yelled, “Yo, wait a minute – that’s that “Soul Train” motherf-cker!” As the others recognized him, they stopped the mugging and began taking a collection for his bus fare home.

By contrast, interactions between fans and performers on the L.A. version of the show were tamer, but in at least one instance, more pivotal: an oft-told story mentions that, after one appearance on the show, Michael Jackson–by that point already a longtime friend of Cornelius’–spent time with several of the show’s better dancers, so that he could learn some of their moves.

In his book, Lehman points out that Train outlasted many of the shows it influenced, like Club MTV, Yo! MTV Raps, BET’s Video Soul and Fox’s In Living Color. But the changing musical landscape wrought by his successors led him to step down from his signature role in 1993. The show carried on with rotating guest hosts thru 2006, with MadVision Entertainment buying the property two years later.

“I took myself off because I just felt that 22 years was enough,” he told The New York Times two years after switching to an off-camera role. “The audience was changing and I wasn’t.”

The audience might have changed, but it never forgot him: last July, the show’s set and memorabilia was enshrined in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

By Fashion Correspondent Joseph Lamour

Thanks to the Obamas are in order, fellow African Americans! Black people–like me!–can look in a closet and not immediately reach for the saggy jeans and other “street wear codes.”

At least, according to Elle France.

For the first time, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged [only] to its street wear codes…

-Nathalie Dolivo, in French Elle
Tendance [Trend] – Black Fashion Power

Nathalie Dolivo, a writer for the magazine’s blog, seems to think that since the Obamas are so fashion-forward, they serve as a public forum to inspire African Americans to dress more fashionably in 2012. First of all, lady, this is the fourth year of Barack’s term. You’re a little late with this intensely racist idea, aren’t you?

That’s not even the worst of it. Dolivo goes so far as to coin the term, and this hurts me to type it, “black-geoisie”.  Now, we really should institute a “Sh-t Fashion Magazines Say” to add to the hundreds of others on YouTube. We have a wealth of material to work from. First we had Slave Earrings. Then we had the whole Rihanna, N*ggabitch debacle. To which Rihanna herself replied with a heartfelt “F*CK YOU”. And now this. It seems like American magazines are on their best behavior! Good work.

Dolivo uses a picture of Janelle Monae in the post to show how far we’ve come from over-sized pants, but Monae is a musician who’s particular style existed since her music was first released in 2003, well before this “black fashion renaissance” (Dolivo’s words, not mine) was to have taken place. And of course, much before public consumption as well.

The post has since been removed from Elle France’s website. Without an apology, I believe the magazine is hoping they can deny the post was published–or published in error, at least , if caught (too late for that!). Elle, you can’t un-ring a bell.

By Arturo R. García

With apologies to fans of Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, et al., by far the most pleasant surprise of this week’s Academy Awards nominee announcements was seeing Demián Bichir get nominated for Best Actor–alongside “conventional” choices like George Clooney and Brad Pitt–for his role as an undocumented single father in A Better Life. 

As Colorlines noted, Bichir’s nomination was one of several nods for Latinos in this year’s Oscar race: cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, also from Mexico, was nominated for Best Cinematography for Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life; Bérénice Bejo, a native of Argentina, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her turn in the The Artist; Brazilian Sérgio Mendes was nominated for Best Song for “Real in Rio,” his collaboration with Siedah Garrett, of “Man In The Mirror” fame, from the animated film Rio.

But a look at some relevant figures further illustrates how painfully rare Bichir’s accomplishment is.

2: The number of Mexican-born nominees for Best Actor, with Bichir joining Anthony Quinn, who was nominated on two separate occasions, for Wild Is The Wind (1957) and Zorba The Greek (1964).

2: The number of white actors nominated for this category for playing Latino characters (Marlon Brando, 1952, Viva Zapata! and Spencer Tracy, 1958, The Old Man and the Sea).

47: The number of years between Quinn’s nomination for Zorba and Bichir’s nomination.

61: The number of years since a Latino actor born outside of Mexico and the United States was nominated for Best Actor; José Ferrer (born in Puerto Rico in 1912, before it became a U.S. territory) earned the honor in 1950 for Cyrano De Bergerac.

1: The number of:

• Latino actors (going into this year’s ceremony) to win Best Actor, with Ferrer taking the Oscar home.
• Latino actors born in the U.S. to be nominated for the category (Edward James Olmos, 1988, Stand and Deliver.)
• Latinas in Oscars history to win the Best Actress award (Rita Moreno, 1961, West Side Story.)
• Mexican-born actresses ever nominated in that category (Salma Hayek, 2002, Frida.)

0: The number of Latina actresses born in the U.S. to be nominated for Best Actress.

$1,759,252: Total domestic gross for A Better Life, per Box Office Mojo.

$75,524,658: Total domestic gross (as of Jan. 24) for Moneyball, starring Bichir’s fellow nominee Brad Pitt.

11,000,000: The total number of undocumented workers in the United States, as quoted by Bichir in a statement to US Weekly, as he dedicated his nomination to them.

6,650,000: Estimated number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. as of 2009, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).

25-to-1:  Current odds of Bechir winning the Oscar, according to Vegas Insider.

By Guest Contributor Kendra James

[Note: The version of the film I saw was a screener in NYC about two weeks ago, and I'm writing this having not seen the final Jan 20th release. If anything has drastically changed (like –I hope-- the horrid opening credits sequence in bold, unevenly placed red text) I invite notes about that via comments!]

Based on this weekend’s box-office totals, a fair number of you might already have seen Red Tails, but for those who want to proceed without major spoilers, the basics:

• The summary, as provided by IMDB: “A crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program, having faced segregation while kept mostly on the ground during World War II, are called into duty under the guidance of Col. A.J. Bullard,” is fairly accurate.
• There hasn’t been a movie screaming, “GEORGE LUCAS MADE ME!” this loudly since Attack of the Clones. Sometimes, it isn’t a bad thing. (And since Lucas, the film’s executive producer, recently claimed this is as close to Episode VII as we’ll ever get, maybe that’s what he was aiming for.)
• Red Tails features a wonderful young cast of black actors who should be on all our radars. You’ll feel better for having a little Nate Parker in your life– and don’t be ashamed if you have flashbacks to the first time you saw Will Smith in Air Force gear in Independence Day. It’s okay, you’re not alone.

For all the red tape and controversy surrounding its release, Red Tails doesn’t explicitly touch upon race as much as it could. Yes, there are the requisite scenes where older, white members of the army tell Bullard (Terrance Howard) that negro pilots can’t ever be expected to fly proper cover for his white bomber pilots; a scene where one of the Tuskegee crew, Joe “Lightning” (David Oyelowo) Little, gets into a fight with white airmen inside their Whites Only soldiers’ bar; and be sure to listen for any and all references of “Black Jesus.” Race is certainly mentioned, and important part of the film. But given the time period, are there other racial issues they could have given a platform? And should the film be chastised for silencing the experience of all African-Americans of the era – specifically women?

More detailed SPOILERS are under the cut.

There’s a scene where Bullard is giving another one of his airmen, Easy (Parker) a lecture on self-pity and how easy could have it in life, after a mission gone wrong. Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) stands behind him as the lecture continues, and when all three are framed together in the shot you begin to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, the movie is about to touch on not only black/White racism, but the dynamics of colorism within the black community and the advantages/disadvantages of having lighter skin. The shot frames it perfectly. You have two light skinned men lecturing a dark skinned man about the advantages he has and should take in life, yet it’s never mentioned that perhaps Stance and Bullard’s perceptions on life have been shaped by the lighter color of their skin.

The scene isn’t totally contrived – the actual commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen, Benjamin O. Davis, was similar in complexion to both Gooding and Howard, who seem to play dual stand-ins for him. But it represents a missed opportunity to touch on colorism, a topic that isn’t addressed enough in a public forum (until a magazine lightens Beyonce’s image, or Brian Stokes Mitchell is cast as -Gasp! – a black man on Glee, that is …). It wouldn’t have been expected for Easy to backtalk his commanding officers, but it would have been nice to see him bring it up later, perhaps with one of the other pilots. It’s not a nuance one might expect Lucas to grasp (does he even know the definition of the word?), but one would think the film’s co-writers, Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder and novelist/ media critic John Ridley, might have. Roger Ebert makes another suggestion in his review of the film, noting, “[Red Tails] could have done more than that, by more firmly establishing the atmosphere of the Jim Crow South that surrounded most of the airmen in their childhoods.” Had this background been established, perhaps the door would have been open for a discussion on what it meant to be a light-skinned African-American in 1944.

The movie’s one romantic subplot, an interracial relationship between Lightning and a white Italian, Sofia (Portuguese-American Daniela Ruah), also blows a chance to do something different. It would have been nice to see a young Black actress snag a role in this movie. A large group of men get a great platform here, why not a woman? (Easy scenario: one of the pilots is injured and is nursed back to health by a beautiful woman at an army hospital and they fall in love.) But, fine, the writers have other ideas, and as Lucas said during his Daily Show appearance, he was already having a hard enough time selling this film staring a bunch of Black actors, so he’s hesitant to also include a Black love story as well. So they decide that Lightning will woo Sofia, yet say nothing about the implications or realities (negative or positive) of an interracial relationship in this time. It shouldn’t not be in the film, and similarly shouldn’t be disregarded as a thing that would simply never happen in the time period . However, omitting any mention of it at all seems disingenuous for a film that is about the African-American experience.

Clutch Magazine recently asked if black women should boycott the film because of the lack of a black female love interest, in response to this post from What About Our Daughters? The African-American woman’s experience is often whitewashed and written out television and films. More often than not we’re sidelined to best friends and supportive sidekicks who don’t have backgrounds of our own that aren’t directly connected to the white star’s. Cinematically, we’ve been fairly silenced, and that makes the choice to eliminate the female voice from a movie centering around an African-American struggle to be all the more troubling. Some would say in its defense that this is a “war movie” and not a “chick flick,” and as such it didn’t need another love story (or any love story) in the script. Of course when this is said they’re conveniently forgetting films like Pearl Harbor, war films with predominantly white casts where a romantic subplot is common place and even expected.

The film could have benefited from a tighter script, and perhaps that would have involved cutting any and all romance from the plot. However, that they chose an interracial romance – no matter how poorly examined it is – is no reason to boycott the film. Red Tails is still a movie starring our own. While Howard and Gooding Jr. are already established in Hollywood, they’re still not offered the array of roles that their contemporaries are (let’s consider the widely diverging career paths of Gooding and fellow Jerry Maguire star Tom Cruise, shall we?). And Parker, Tristan Wilds, Elijah Kelly, Michael B. Jordan, and Marcus T. Paulk aren’t going to be given the same big-screen exposure as the heartthrob white actors their own ages. Personally, I left the theatre wondering when I’ll get to see Parker, Jordan, and Anthony Mackie (of The Adjustment Bureau and Man On A Ledge) all starring in a movie where they just get to be dapper as hell – you know, the same thing actors like Brad Pitt and George Clooney get to do in every other movie they’re in (that’s the point of the Ocean’s Eleven series, right?).

Having once worked in talent management, allow me to speak from professional experience: When you represent a black actor who isn’t a Denzel Washington or a Will Smith, you spend a lot of time scouring casting breakdowns looking for roles in television and film that fit. Normally an age and body type description is given and if a race isn’t specified it reads “Open Ethnicity.” But here’s the thing: a lot of times that means “anything but Black,” which you find out quickly when you call the casting office before submitting your client and ask if the role could go African-American. There’s almost always a pause and hesitation before the assistant on the other end of the line finally says, “… not exactly what we’re looking for, but you can submit anyway.” The reality is that dapper, good looking black folks are not something Hollywood assumes the American public wants, and if we boycott the one mainstream film out this year with an almost entirely black cast we’re doing a disservice and making it harder for any black actor/ress to find starring work.

When it comes down to it, Red Tails is a film with a story that deserved to be told back in1988 when Lucas first had the idea (though time only helped when it came to the superb special effects). It needed some editing, maybe a third or forth pass at the script, and a little polish, but it was an enjoyable film no better or worse than the equivalent white staring action movies that come out during the industry’s dead winter months. The only difference between this and other winter action films like Gina Carano’s Haywire or Denzel’s Safehouse is a predominantly black cast and 20 years of being kicked around Hollywood because no one wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole. And that’s the rub, isn’t it?

The film has its problems when it comes to race, and Lucas has put a potentially hurtful spin on its press while doing his best to promote it (talking more about the negatives of how difficult it was to make the film, rather than the things his already loyal fans would want to hear: He’s not making any more Star Wars films and this is the closest thing they’re going to get). It’s also in an interesting place in the general release market, in that it’s a film with an all-black cast that’s not a Tyler Perry film (or the like). It doesn’t get that built in Perry/Black film audience because it’s not your “typical” black movie, but it also doesn’t necessarily get the white male audience that makes up the majority of a war movie box office. Red Tails is something of a novelty in the mainstream box office, but the more of us who go out to support it, the less of a novelty all black casts become. That’s why I say this: Read this review and any others you want, but definitely go out and see the film.

Compiled by Arturo R. García

The live performance is brutal, a storm of laidback blues and thunderous notes, and as raw as if the song’s betrayal had happened just earlier that evening. James punishes that microphone until you pity it. At one point she begins to pounce on the word “baby,’’ booming its syllables like they’re meant to sound like gunfire.

Dr. John eventually saunters over from his piano, looking like a dog that’s just peed on the rug. He’s supposed to appease James for stepping out on her – “It wasn’t nothin’ serious / I guess I was just a little delirious’’ – but even he knows it’s in vain. Hell hath no fury like this particular woman scorned.

At the end of the performance, James embraces Dr. John, her head resting on his shoulder, and I like to imagine James is thinking what I’m thinking: Where the hell did that just come from?

In just six minutes, that, to me, is the essence of Etta James. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
- James Reed, The Boston Globe

She was an accident, born to a fourteen-year-old black girl in Depression-era Los Angeles. She never knew her father, but thought that he might have been the famous white pool player, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom she met in the nineteen-eighties. Like Marilyn Monroe, that other famous blonde Los Angeleno, James was more or less an orphan, spiritually anyway, abandoned by her mother who ran off to chase men (as a child James called her “the Mystery Lady”) and handed over to a number of caretakers in the meantime. And, again like Monroe, by the time James was a teen-ager, she was filled with ambition and confusion. One played off the other. A foster father would beat her until the girl with the powerful voice sang for his friends. Afterwards, she’d return to her cold, wet bed; James was a bed wetter.

By the time she was a teen-ager, James was reunited, if that is the word, with her mother, who took her to San Francisco, where James’s love of R.&B. saved her, to some extent—but is talent enough if one has been continually unloved by those unreliable specimens, other people? That was what her big sound was about—a deafening cry in the wilderness of her unconquerable loneliness. She was fat: with drugs, food, incredible technical skill. But nothing could fill her up. All she could do was try to expel—shake off—some of the evening’s exertions (looking for dope on a more or less daily basis amounts to a job in itself) in the recording studio, where she sang a kind of speeded up blues, which I do not associate with R.&B. so much as it being just James’s singing, a variation of a sound I’ve heard all my life: black mothers calling down from various tenement windows for their children to come on in and eat their supper, or take some kind of nourishment, emotional and otherwise.
- Hilton Als, The New Yorker

I used to go to Baltimore at least two or three times a year, at the Royal Theatre. Remember that theater? Now that was a bum theater. Everybody that ever went there would be terrified to go. ‘Where are you working?’ ‘Oh, I’m working at the Royal Theatre in Baltimore. And then I’d go to the Howard Theatre in Washington.’ There was one more — we called them the funky three.

They were the funkiest theaters because people would come in there with pickles, with olives, with boiled eggs and get ready to throw all kinds of stuff at you. And the thing is, they used to throw the stuff. It wasn’t heartbreaking to people like me or Sam Cooke. It was the older entertainers that didn’t understand. ‘Why are they going to be throwing popcorn at me?’

Everybody knew, ‘Oh boy, here’s Baltimore.’ When I pulled up, I knew the vegetable stores were going to make a little money that week. Tomatoes — it didn’t matter. If they’d get you really good, like, get you in the face, or on your body, I would just laugh about it.

Baltimore was always a really raunchy city, compared to Washington D.C. But in Baltimore, I would just be waiting for ‘em. I’d say, ‘Well my hair’s blonde but tonight it’s going to be tomato red when we leave here.’
- Etta James, interview with The Baltimore Sun, published 2012

I had a real nice figure and I was tall. And I remember this singer Joyce Bryant … She wore fishtail gowns, sequined fishtail gowns, and she was black, and she had the nerve to wear platinum hair. And then I also loved Jayne Mansfield, because Jayne Mansfield had the blond hair and had like the poochie lips and the mole and all this. So I think what I did, it was kind of combine [them]. … I wanted to look grown, you know; I wanted to wear tall high-heeled shoes, and fishtail gowns, and big, long rhinestone earrings.
- Etta James, interview with NPR, 1994

James has a Grammy, a string of classic hits and a 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under her ever-shrinking belt (James recently lost 100 pounds; her doctor wants her to shed 50 more). But she’s also had her share of broken hearts, broken men, and thankfully, a broken two-decade addiction to heroin. This is one woman who has seen it all.

Her eyes cloud over, and her voice softens. “I can only go there, go there again, be there, do that again – some things I just won’t do again,” she says. “But the other things, I will.”

Maybe that’s why she sings what she sings in that unmistakable manner. Maybe that’s why she dances. James herself doesn’t even know for sure. But this she knows: She’ll always be happiest singing the blues.

“I can’t be talking about the moon and the stars. It has to be something heavy. Something heavy that I can say, ‘That’s right,’ “she says, touching her hand to her head. “That is right!”
- Denise Quan, CNN, 2002

Is “overweight underachiever with an endless arsenal of clever one-liners” a euphemism for sassy fat black girl? Why yes it is. Enter Sidibe, or Andrea, a student who cuts class, uses foul language, and proudly does not exercise. She is all attitude and doesn’t give a flying expletive what you think of it. When she was first introduced, I audibly expelled air – seriously? This again? Don’t we already have series’ with a largely white-cast flanked by sassy black tropes? Hiya, Mercedes from Glee, Donna from Parks & Recreation, Ava on Up All Night, Raineesha on the now defunct Reno 911!, Miranda on Grey’s Anatomy!

And please don’t say “quit hating”, I am a loyal fan of all of these shows, The Big C included. It is beautiful in its poignant portrayal of a woman living with cancer, yet deeply flawed in its characterization of a young black woman. To critique is to love, it comes from setting a higher standard of expectation, from a desire to push boundaries or at the very least, allow flexibility within tightly constrained norms. Alas, the overweight black, testy, unhealthy, irritated black woman archetype is far too normalized to even be given a second thought. Of course, the fact that actresses like Sidibe are given supporting roles in shows about confident, capable women is vital, but it too often comes at a cost: The show’s writers bestow upon Andrea qualities that have potential to give her depth, but ultimately she is more trope than fully realized.

Andrea’s tepid story arc in season 1 is almost unbearable to watch at times: she has to attend Cathy’s summer school class because she’s failed it already, she’s hopelessly overweight, and she’s openly defiant to the one person who shows her kindness. Andrea is a supporting role, but there are three major tenets of the Sassy Fat Black woman trope that she personifies: her issues with weight, her hyper-awareness of race and “playing the race card”, and her rather antagonistic attitude toward everyone.

Andrea is fat: The underscoring of Andrea’s obesity is a central theme of her personhood in season 1. From the viewer’s perspective, her unhappiness with her body leaves her wrought with melancholy. In the pilot it’s established that Andrea is overweight, hates it, and Cathy wants to help her slim down; Cathy even offers to pay her $100 for each pound that she loses when she catches Andrea smoking to curb her appetite. “I’d rather be skinny and die young than be fat forever,” she declares. I wonder what it was like for Sidibe to recite this line even though she has openly declared her body-positive self image.
- From “‘The Big C’s’ Big Black Problem,” in Clutch Magazine

By Guest Contributors Kendra James and Jordan St. John

Never seen The Vampire Diaries? Here’s a synopsis (with spoilers). There’s Elena (Nina Dobrev) the “average” popular orphan girl in Mystic Falls, VA. Caroline ( Candice Accola) her blond haired, blue eyed cheerleading frenemy and Bonnie (Kat Graham) her requisite black best friend and side kick. Elena also happens to be the spitting image of a vampire, Katherine, who loved Damon and Stefan Salvatore (brothers played by Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley) in the same town during the Civil War. Come 2009 the brothers return to Mystic Falls, only to both fall in love with Elena – a plot that makes just as much sense now as it did when TVD actually debuted as a book series in the early 1990s. But hey, let’s go with it.

Elena fell in love with Stefan during the show’s first season, but now things are heating up between her and Damon. It’s a crazy ride of a show but one of the most fascinating things is its strange dance with race. Set in the current south but with self-professed ties to the Civil War era and more recently precolonial America, as Dr. Sayantani DasGupta wrote for Racialicious last year, the show sometimes doesn’t know what to do with pesky issues like racism and slavery. As the show’s third season resumes this week, let’s look back at the racial implications and issues of the residents of Mystic Falls since the Season 2 finale.

Why We Love It

Kendra: In a media world saturated with vampires, werewolves, witches, and other secret societies, the show, now a mainstay on The CW network, has gone on to easily become my favorite hub of angsty supernatural teenage adventures. The cheesy premise disguises a surprisingly smart show that, once it found its’ stride during the first season, keeps me hooked with its nearly weekly cliffhangers and lead female characters who usually go out of their ways to be the anti-Bella Swan.

Jordan: I second that. TVD moves faster than any other show on television. Some subplots most series would spend half a season developing, unfold in the course of one episode (such as last season’s finale, where Elena’s Aunt/Guardian, father and brother all died in about a 15-minute span). And in a teen pop-culture landscape that is sometimes obsessed with female frailty and chastity, Elena isn’t even asked to apologize for simultaneously dating two brothers, and neither is Katherine. Yes, the women sometimes require saving but with a powerful female witch and vampire in the mix, they do the saving as well.

Why It’s Still A CW Show

Kendra: Like we said earlier, the show anchors itself in the American past and deals with it in some curious – and problematic – ways, often featuring flashbacks to the Civil War and present-day town events influenced by it. I wish I could understand why everyone’s decided vampires are all Southern these days, but that’s where we are, and TVD will always, to me, be a younger and better version of True Blood. But it’s not perfect. The show’s writers could have easily acknowledged the racial and social issues that come with placing yourself within the context of war and tackled the issues head on, instead of dancing around as True Blood tends to do.

Jordan: Alas, TVD goes a couple steps forward – adding Bonnie as a main character (and a whole line of black witches) and including a Civil War era Asian vampire, Pearl, and then stumbles back by shying away from addressing the legacy of slavery in the American south and falling into stereotypes. I usually applaud color blind casting in fantasy or supernatural (the only reason I watch Merlin is because they made the future Queen Guinevere multiracial. If you are in a fictional place where dragon’s talk, I applaud it when producers do not carryover our preconceptions of race) but that only works when the setting is another world – not the current American south.

The Mystic Falls Civil War Fetish

Kendra: Moving the Salvatore brothers’ history into the Civil War had to be an extremely conscious decision on the part of series creator and producer Kevin Williamson and his team, because none of that is actually a part of author L.J. Smith’s original books, in which the Salvatores were both supposedly turned during the Italian Renaissance.

Now, I can understand why he did it: True Blood was already popular by the time TVD premiered, and the public showed it loved them some southern vampires. And a war on American soil is something the main TVD audience (Americans in the 18-35 demographic) is going to know more about and possibly find more relatable than something going on in Italy. But it never fails to amaze me how a well documented period in American history can be glossed over so thoroughly, and I always wonder why it’s a period chosen so frequently as a media plot device when no writing staff is actually brave enough to use it for what it really was.

A friend of mine jokingly said to me that the show must take place in some sort of alternate America where the War somehow didn’t end as badly, no one in the south is resentful about it, and it wasn’t a complete disadvantage to be a person of color in the south during and before the 1860s. Mystic Falls is presented as an idyllic town where attractive men dress in Rebel Greys and the women dress in Southern Belle gowns for various town occasions, where Black servants during the war were referred to as ‘handmaidens’, and where a fully multicultural town (including Asians!) was perfectly normal for Virginia in 1865.

So why obsess over the conflict if you’re not going to acknowledge it for what it was?

Jordan: TVD seems to be pulling a Bagger Vance – and if you ever want to see a movie with a black main character in the south completely gloss over race, it is a truly striking example; I literally wrote a paper on it. In most of the flashbacks, we have Bonnie’s ancestor, Emily Bennett serving Katherine: She provides her with a ring to walk around in the daylight and also provides daywalking ring for the newly turned Salvatore brothers. While I understand the need for Emily to assist with a number of plot points, I am disappointed that they never take the time to look at Emily as a dynamic character. What is her backstory? Why is a black witch who has the power to control humans and vampires, staying with an evil, murderous vampire in the Civil War era south? Why is she helping her? Emily does always put her own family first whenever her or any of her descendants are threatened, but the lack of time spent looking into her motivations is a glaring omission.

All I need is a nod to slavery – an acknowledgement that there is another facet to the plantation era American south that was not about bonnets, balls and “servants” who all happened to share a skin tone. True Blood has its own faults, but the scene when Tara asked if Bill ever had slaves will always have a place in my heart.

TVD has rare instances of this kind of honesty that I appreciate. I love that earlier in the series, when a southern matriarch is asked by her son about a dungeon on their old plantation property (which actually was used to chain up werewolves) she assumed it had been used to hold slaves and told him in terse terms that it wasn’t something the family liked to discuss before quickly moving on to other things. There are ways to incorporate the darker parts of southern history into the plot but they take a little effort and creativity. All too often, the show shirks from the challenge and opts to gloss over the realities of the Civil Was era. For example, the Salvatores were people of stature in a southern, plantation town, meaning they would have certainly owned slaves. I would love for at least one person to acknowledge that – preferably Bonnie.

Kendra: While watching the mid-season premiere, I was asked, “Why is Emily Bennett still holding that grudge against the Salvatores? It’s been over a century!” a question that pinpoints the problem with dodging the town’s history of slavery. To me, even peeling away the vampiric elements of the story, I have absolutely no problem imagining why Emily, a powerful Black woman would continue to hold a grudge against two rich (potentially slave holding), southern white men from she’d known in 1865. I wish there was someone in that writer’s room willing to take a non-white perspective into account. Not only do I find it problematic that my own view isn’t acknowledged, it’s concerning to me that this idyllic view of the Confederate South is presented without question or discourse to a large swath of young, white CW-watching America.

Romanticizing and whitewashing the African-American experience isn’t a new occurrence (see: Gone With The Wind or Douglas Sirk’s remake of Imitation of Life, to name a few), and it’s troubling to see the trend surface again in 2012. To be fair, this show isn’t the only pop culture phenom guilty of peddling a “safer” version of Southern America and Confederate history to the American youth. It’s simply the most recent. Acts like Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum, and programs like its’ CW compatriot Hart of Dixie all conjure up images of the “Safe South” in their descriptions (lyrically) and depictions (visually) of the region.

Now, I’m not recommending that today’s youth get their history lessons from the CW and Taylor Swift, but the fact remains that even I, as a young Black kid, was drawn into the romanticism of the Old South. A visceral book description (visceral for an 8-10 year old, at least) of my American Girl Doll, Addy, being forced to eat grubs off a tobacco leaf by her overseer fixed that up right quick, and I suppose I worry that others –white and Black– aren’t going to receive the same historical wake up call if Lady Antebellum, Taylor Swift, and TVD are the only influences to shape their impressions of the South. Paying attention in history class plays a part, yes, but a visual and a pretty face go a long way.

Elena Gilbert as Scarlett O’Hara

Kendra: Elena is clearly supposed to be the Scarlett O’Hara of the Civil War-obsessed Mystic Falls. They’re positioned next to each other in the season two finale: two dark haired, strong, southern women of different periods. As the season two finale progresses into chaos, so does Scarlett’s world on the screen in the town center. At one point Elena is literally shown as Scarlett, with the crumbling Mystic Falls taking the place of Scarlett’s burning Atlanta.

The writers had to know what they were doing. I understand that they were trying to highlight the idea of Elena being a strong female character, but was that really the message conveyed through Scarlett? A woman who (forgetting her numerous other flaws), is in the end left crying over a man on a staircase? It seems to go against the character Elena’s been built to be so far, and drags her back into Bella territory.

Jordan: The Gone with the Wind picnic viewing party in the season 2 finale left me deeply conflicted. As usual, there was a lot going on: Elena was fresh off of her resurrection, Damon was dying, his brother Stefan was bargaining for Damon’s life, Katherine was prowling about causing mischief, and there was a murderous ancient vampire/werewolf hybrid on the loose. Also, I know many black people like Gone with the Wind. It’s romantic, dramatic and an epic in every sense of the word. Clark Gable looks dashing as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh is a breathtaking Scarlett. Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy even earned her an Academy Award, making her the first African American woman to get one (another conversation for another day, especially with all attention The Help is getting this awards season.) I will also confess to having some baggage with the film that probably stems from first being exposed to it in a fourth grade social studies class when my teacher tried to pass it off as a “supplement” to our chapter on the Civil War (my mother flipped out).

That said, even the staunchest GWTW fan has to admit that its portrayal of African Americans and African American women is flawed to say the least. Mammy and Prissy are one dimensional and stereotypical. They exist only to be Scarlett’s support system and comic relief. Rather than an oppressive, brutal institution where one set of people owned another, slavery comes across as a mutually beneficial, codependent relationship infused with friendship and loyalty and lacking any trace of violence and negativity.

Sure, the people of Mystical Falls might want to gloss over all of that and get caught up in the fabulous costumes, but Bonnie should know better. I can’t buy that she had not a moment of discomfort seeing women who look like her ancestors lampooning themselves on the screen. Even in this crazy town, she’s a teen and she wants to fit in, but for the souls of her dead ancestors, I needed her to say something. Not a whole rant – just a comment and side eye.

Kendra: And that’s what, once again, proves that there’s no one with our eye writing this show. You’re right– it didn’t need to be much. We didn’t need a speech, or a neck roll, or anything else obvious or elaborate. If Bonnie had just raised an eyebrow as she sat down at that picnic and said, “really though?” that would have been enough for me. It would have showed that yes, she’s grown up here, and she’s used to their foolishness, but she knows what’s up and she has a voice. Color blind casting is wonderful, but if you’re going to turn a character who was a white Irish-American Druid in the books into an African-American descendant of slaves in the American South, don’t half-ass it.

White Settlers, Native Werewolves, and one Black Witch: Is Anyone Parenting Bonnie Bennett? And Other Pertinent Questions

Jordan: I find it interesting that all of the main characters are given some backstory on their parents, home life and support system. While Bonnie is connected to her witch ancestors, after her grandmother’s passing there has been little to no talk of Bonnie’s home life. We never see a sibling, mother or father. Where she lives and who is looking after her seems to be a non issue. While other characters are given plenty to rely on, Bonnie is given no one and her strength is taken for granted. She asks for help when she needs it but leans on no shoulders and looks after herself. Why is it assumed that in a cast of characters including ancient and immortal beings, the lone black character can go it alone? Another insidious example of the strong black woman archetype playing out or a plot point they have been a little lazy about?

One of the most fascinating things about the series is that just about every black character who emerges from the background is a witch or warlock. In flashbacks showing us the ancestors of the current vampires in the TVD-verse, Ayanna, a witch of African descent warns them not to cast the spell that turns them into vampires but even before doing so, she appears to be helping them while they’re human, for reasons unknown. Likewise, one of the series’ key plot points – where there are vampires, there are witches – is never explained. Why are the witches, like Emily and Bonnie, placed in this position? They’re described as “servants of nature,” but they aid and work for creatures that are seen as abominations, with no explanation as to what is in it for them. Why are they situated as servants, and who exactly are they serving?

Kendra: You mentioned Mammy and Prissy from GWTW before, and I would argue that Bonnie, while not a slave, is essentially fulfilling that role as a support system. Bonnie is the one that every white character, even Stefan, runs to when they need help. This isn’t unique to her, since, as you’ve said, every vampire who appears on the show seems to have their very own Black witch or warlock in their back pockets, but very rarely do we find out anything else out about these characters. Bonnie’s father’s family is usually mentioned towards the beginning of the new season (she apparently spends her summers with them) but we’ve never met them, or her mother. Among the younger characters, Elena and Caroline both found parental figures, as did minor characters like Jeremy Gilbert  and Tyler Lockwood still has his mother. Yet Bonnie gets nothing, aside from my dreams where Stacy Dash and Shemar Moore are cast as her parents.

Aside from a father and son unit we saw last season, these witches and warlocks often have no families, no support, and no motivation aside from serving the vampires they’re called to. All the vampires have allies. Bonnie, on the other hand, consistently acts as an ally while having none of her own. Regardless of race, I have to imagine that this would be hard on any teenager, and it’s a strange choice to not address the toll it takes on her.

I do think that the show has tried to explain this relationship off with the introduction of one of the original vampires, Klaus and his family into the new world and his mother’s friendship with Ayanna (who, by the way, seemed to be a very unfortunate knock-off of Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Tia Dalma). Ideally, the show would give us further explanation rooted in the fact that the witch was there when the first vampires were created. Granted, now that they’ve introduced the Fell doctor (rumored to be a witch, which begs another question: where do White witches come from in this universe?) I worry that they’ll completely ignore giving us an explanation now that they have shiny new white toys to play with. But for it to not become just another analogy about Blacks serving whites in the South, they really do need to fill in the holes in the show’s mythology.

My last point of interest involving the mid-season flashback was the implication that Tyler’s family comes from a long line of werewolves that were there before Klaus’ family showed up, as hinted by the cave drawings below Tyler’s family’s property. The show is obviously not committed to staying within a proper historical context, but does that mean that the Lockwoods are of Native descent? Are we talking skin-walkers instead of werewolves (forgetting the fact that Virginia would be the wrong area for the prevalence of that belief; I assume they just wouldn’t care)? And if we are going to learn anything about the Lockwood family history, is the writing team’s handling of it going to make me want to shoot my television?

Jordan: Yeah, the jury is still out on that one. I am not holding my breath for a thorough exploration of Native American skin-walker mythology. That episode is probably as likely as one explaining why most of TVD’s African American witches have distinctly light coloring. The writers might feel that takes too much time away from their picturesque plantation flashbacks. Snark aside, I was pleased to see that we’re finally supposed to see Bonnie’s mother soon. I am looking forward to meeting that witch – it’s a start, right?

By Arturo R. García

Nobody said Sofía Vergara was sleeping with producers after Modern Family won a Golden Globe Sunday. Not with producers, anyway.

As you can see in the vid above, the joke starts around the 20-second mark, when Vergara, speaking Spanish, is mock-pulled by castmate Julie Bowen. At that point she announces that, because the Globes are an international award, her group’s acceptance speech for the Best Comedy/Musical Television Series would be done in Spanish and English. Which got laughs because, you know, Spanish. Or something.

Then the bit truly kicks off, with executive producer Steven Levitan “translating.” After they both thank the Hollywood Foreign Press, and Vergara thanks ABC Entertainment head Paul Lee and Disney CEO Bob Iger – was she thanking them for canceling Work It? One can only hope. But I digress – Levitan tells the audience she’s thanking the show’s writers, “who are so funny and so sexy.”

Then, Vergara thanks 20th Century Fox chairmen Dana Walden and Gary Newman, while Levitan continues, “Film actresses, please do them a favor at the parties tonight and give them your numbers.” Vergara thanks the whole production team, Levitan says, “They may look pasty and nervous and out of shape, but they’re the greatest lovers I’ve ever had.” With a rather sour look on her face, Vergara thanks the audience and presenters Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, and wishes everyone goodnight. Levitan, ever classy in front of his younger cast members, closes with, “Seriously.”

So there. Doesn’t that sound so much better in context?

As if that wasn’t enough, this remark by Vergara’s castmate Jesse Tyler Ferguson made E!’s list of “Great Quotes From The Red Carpet”:

Sofia’s always a lot of fun because she is really like her character, I mean she messes up English all the time. She has no idea. Like, she calls stewardesses on the plane “plane waiters.”

While it’s admirable for the cast and producers to publicly defending its gay characters, directing this kind of humor at Vergara – not at her character – in such a public setting undercuts that good will. Vergara’s television career started, let’s not forget, as a presenter on the Univisión travel show Fuera De Serie, years before that network became a power player in U.S. television circles. She’s played Mama Morton in a Broadway production of Chicago. And this year she will become the new face of CoverGirl cosmetics. By any measure, her professional journey deserves some respect on what’s supposed to be one of her industry’s biggest stages. Or would that be too Modern for this “family” to consider? It’s telling that Bowen was spared Levitan’s “jokes.” And it’s becoming more apparent – Vergara can do better than this. Let’s hope she does sometime soon.

By Arturo R. García

It’s not hard to imagine that, on some level, actor Amaury Nolasco knew his new show, Work It, would catch flack after his character, Angel, told his friend and fellow job-seeker Lee , “But I’m Puerto Rican. I’ll be great at selling drugs.”

If that was the case – and in the wake of the show’s disastrous premiere, Nolasco isn’t saying – then those instincts were right, and then some. Nolasco’s “drug dealers” joke is only the latest problem series creators Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich have brought upon themselves, and now their actors.

As Latino Rebels’ Jose Martí reported, the show, which follows Angel and Lee (Ben Koldyke) as they seek employment by dressing as women, has inspired a protest in Chicago by the Puerto Rican Alliance for Awareness, founded in part by actress Darlene Vazquetelles, who posted:

Right now I am in Chicago filming a movie. The director of the movie is also Puerto Rican and after discussing what happened [this week on ABC] we decided to do something about it.

This weekend we have off from filming so we have decided to do a mini-documentary in protest of what happened. The way we are doing it is by putting every Puerto Rican we know and come across here in Chicago in front of the camera stating their names, occupation and stating that they do not sell drugs.

This will be airing on You Tube. We already have the support of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee of Chicago. We are also receiving videos from all over the USA and Puerto Rico through email which will be included in the video.

Vazquetelles also reached out directly to Nolasco on Twitter:

In her tweet, Vazquetelles asks Nolasco to contact her – if he can – to take part in the PRAA’s project, calling it “sweet and positive.” And the truth is, such a move would be the first positive thing associated with Work It. Before the show even aired, its’ premise – an updated take on Bosom Buddies, with Nolasco’s character, Angel, and another man dressing as women – had set off warning flags for both the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Coalition, who collaborated on a full-page ad in Variety asking ABC to not air the show:

At the very least, “Work It” is offensive and insulting. At worst, the show is downright dangerous and sends a message that transgender people are to be laughed at, or are somehow less-than. This show would be a setback for transgender Americans, and for everyone who believes that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

The ad ended up gaining traction with media outlets, creating the kind of backlash that could only be counteracted with a premiere that wowed critics.

That, to put it mildly, did not happen; the show was vilified for being “poorly written, broadly acted and apparently produced without any shame,” and “an early front-runner for the worst show of 2012.” And one of the stars of Work It’s obvious inspiration, Bosom Buddies‘ Peter Scolari, while calling Nolasco’s performance  “wholesome and funny” in Entertainment Weekly, observed that “nuance and subtlety are locked in the trunk of the head writer’s car, some of the bits predate the written word.”

Even sportswriters are getting into the fray: Latino Sports’ Cesar Díaz posted a column Sunday saying point-blank he “could care less if ABC issues an apology or not”:

I just want to inform the Creators of ABC’s Show “Work It” that I wouldn’t be good at selling drugs. And neither would the people I associate myself with and the communities we’ve volunteered our time serving over the years. And when I say people, I mean the diverse pool of friends and family who are Latinos and non-Latinos.

Hey, I cover soccer and it’s definitely the one of the most diverse sports in the world today. Of course, I’m realistic enough to know that negative portrayals of our culture will continue to happen but I don’t have to stay silent about it.

One thing we can agree on is that we’re sick of tired of seeing how our culture is time after time distorted by these shows. From the over-exaggerated accents to the menial roles created because our characters appear unintelligent is simply absurd.

Martí also noted that, after tweeting steadily going into the show’s premiere, has kept quiet while the anger surrounding Angel’s problematic remark has grown, a strategy Martí suggests he discard:

A social media blitz is as devastating as any bad reviews, and “Work It” has gotten its sizeable share of such negativity. It is perplexing to us that Amaury won’t even respond to all this. It is a mistake, and we hope he reconsiders, because if there is anything that is true about social media, no one person or profile or brand is better than any other person, profile or brand. Celebrity is no longer elevated. Amaury is now one of us and we want to know.

At this point, Work It‘s days appear to be numbered, and rightly so. The least ABC can do is take note of the anger the show has brought on and cancel it – if nothing else, it would allow Nolasco the chance to take on projects that won’t infuriate multiple communities, and get himself out of the social media morass Cohen and Reich have instigated.

By Arturo R. García

It sounds like a weird complaint, but if anything threatens to be the undoing of Don Cheadle’s new show, House of Lies, it’s the fact that he’s not enough of a villain.

Though Lies officially premieres Sunday on Showtime, you can already watch it online – albeit with blurred-out profanity and people-bits. The (NSWF) episode, as well as SPOILERS, are under the cut.

Again, spoilers ahead if you haven’t watched the episode.

Based on a book by marketing mogul Martin Kihn, Lies positions Cheadle’s character, Martin Kaan, on top of his game as a particularly cutting management consultant. The job, he tells his three sidekicks, “is like dissing a really pretty girl so that she’ll want you more.”

What Martin isn’t is a Black Management Consultant, as Cheadle explained to The Wall Street Journal:

It clearly wasn’t written for an African American. I don’t know that I ever want to play those “first-black-man-to” fill-in-the-blank parts, unless it’s very interesting. They always seem to be written out of guilt. We call them “what did your daddy do [wrong]” projects. Wow, all these white people are buying this production. Their families must have owned slaves.

How did you know the character wasn’t intended to be black?

Just from what his name is and the dude it’s based off [author Martin Kihn]. When you read scripts and it describes the character, say, “John Franklin, a 25 year-old business manager,” you say, “Oh, that’s a white guy.” If it’s written for a black guy, it’ll say, “John Franklin, black, 25″. So if it’s not defined, that’s a white guy. Got it. He’s just regular. Like a flesh colored Band-Aid.

Indeed, race isn’t an issue in Kaan’s world so far; he’s less concerned with his ex-wife Monica’s (Dawn Oliveri) whiteness than with her being “a sociopath and an addict,” and better at his job than he is. What is worrying Martin is that his son Roscoe (Donis Leonard Jr.) is now cross-dressing and auditioning for the role of Sandra Dee in Grease.

What’s most worrying about the show, though, is how little we’re given to differentiate Lies and Martin from other TV men behaving badly. Like Burn Notice‘s Michael Westen, Martin clues us in on his professional lingo, adding a dash of Zack Morris by doing so while the action freezes behind him. Like Californication‘s Hank Moody, Martin has no trouble hooking up with women – or, in the case of Jeannie (Kristen Bell), at least inciting an intrigued gaze while wrapping up a game-saving pitch.

But through it all, Cheadle’s portrayal is inherently sympathetic – and for this kind of show, that’s probably a liability. For Lies to truly become a “subversive comedy,” we need less Don Draper out of Martin, and more (NSFW) Malcolm Tucker. Hopefully the premiere’s final scene, with Martin seemingly confronting his own demons, leads us somewhere near rock bottom quickly and convincingly.

By Guest Contributor Tami Winfrey Harris, cross-posted from What Tami Said

This post is not about Christopher Hitchens. It is just that eulogizing of the writer has me pondering the adulation we give people and ideas believed to be outside the bounds of “political correctness.”

Hitch was a polarizing figure: He could be a louche wit and raconteur, an exceptional writer, a tireless advocate for the Godless, a moving chronicler of the end of life and also a pompous sexist, racist warmonger and Islamophobe, drunk on privilege (and whatever else). I’ll remind that Hitchens was the guy who argued that women are inherently not funny, who attempted to paint Michelle Obama as a black militant on the strength of a college thesis about the alienation black students often feel on majority white campuses, and who said of the war in Iraq: “The death toll is not nearly high enough… too many [jihadists] have escaped.”

Now, despite all that, many folks were fond of Hitchens–at least that is the impression I get from comments on Gawker, Salon, Slate and the like. How does one square abhorrent pronouncements by a man whose work can also be admirably challenging and engrossing? Apparently, it is by evoking the rather vague and puzzling commendation: Well, even if I didn’t agree with him, he had the courage to say unpopular things. I keep hearing this in relation to Christopher Hitchens and I wonder: Is the will to say detested things praise-worthy, in and of itself?

At the root of the discussion is the myth of “political correctness,” which I wrote about a few years ago in this space:

Disdain for “political correctness” is often positioned as a concern that some important truth is not being spoken for fear of offending someone. But that concern is nothing but smoke and mirrors. To invoke “political correctness” is really to be concerned about loss of power and privilege. It is about disappointment that some “ism” that was ingrained in our society, so much that citizens of privilege could express the bias through word and deed without fear of reprisal, has been shaken loose. Charging “political correctness” generally means this: “I am comfortable with my privilege. I don’t want to have to question it. I don’t want to have to think before I speak or act. I certainly don’t wish to inconvenience myself for the comfort of lesser people (whoever those people may be–women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.)” Read more…

Since the (conservative-driven) idea that some “Stalinist orthodoxy” prevents good Americans from speaking freely has taken hold, I notice more amorphous applause for people who say controversial things no matter what those controversial things are. Content matters. It is indeed commendable to speak truth to power, or to stand up for right in the face of wrong. But just to say unpopular shit? Why should anyone get cookies for that? Most people would not charge half the human race with a chronic lack of funny, because the statement lacks nuance (As Echidne capably points out here.) and because they have heard of Lucille Ball and Fanny Brice and Moms Mabley and Tina Fey, not because they are cowards in fear of the PC police.

It is not a virtue simply to say controversial things. You know who else says controversial things? Michelle Bachmann. Are we to laud the good Senator for her courage to speak against death panels, despite the fact that, you know, none exist, have existed or were planned to exist? The very idea is silly.

Every unaccepted pronouncement isn’t hidden wisdom. And every speaker of provocative things isn’t a genius. Saying someone has the courage to say the unsayable is meaningless without analysis of what exactly is said.

Image courtesy of Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

In keeping with their moves toward global domination, 2NE1 is performing in Times Square today along with the other three MTV Iggy Best New Band finalists.

If this part of their launch is successful, they will be better positioned to make a dent in the US pop music market where many other popular Asian artists have failed before. Despite having huge fan bases overseas, artists that make their debuts in the US have generally been faced with lukewarm receptions. BoA’s self-titled English language release dropped in 2009 and barely dented the charts. Hikaru Utada (who to be fair, spent as much time in NYC as Japan coming up) attempted to make a genre-crossing album with 2004′s Exodus, which spawned a #1 single on the dance charts, but absolutely no impression elsewhere despite her work with hip-hop heavy weights like Darkchild and Foxy Brown. Utada’s 2009 English release This Is The One was designated a heat seeker with almost no radio airplay – but still only sold around 15,000 copies stateside. The Wonder Girls are still struggling to stay in the limelight after entering the charts with “Nobody” in 2009 but still trends fairly low. Se7en and Rain’s attempts never really got off the ground.

After watching good artists try and fail to make it in the US market, I began trying to find a pattern. Why was this happening? The reasons vary – particularly because artists often use their entry to the US as a kind of reinvention, which can be risky – but a big component is that American marketers/listeners had no idea what to do with them.

But, luckily for 2NE1, they have a secret weapon: Nicki Minaj.

It may seem strange to look at Nicki Minaj as the the person who put a crack in the Billboard ceiling big enough for 2NE1 to break through to the top spot, but it is her inherent strangeness and genrelessness that is opening the door for other women artists to bend the rules.

Both Minaj and 2NE1 are barrier breakers, crossing into pop music but bringing the swagger of rock and hip hop. For Minaj, she’s dominated the pop charts with rap ballads like “Super Bass,” and lent honeyed vocals and verses on Lil’ Wayne’s “Knockout”. 2NE1 is far, far more aggressive in appearance than more traditional pop groups like The Wonder Girls, which could have been a liability. But here too, Minaj’s eclectic fashion sense wins the day, as she’s appeared in everything from fetish gear to rococo swag:

Both Minaj and 2NE1 are also combatting societal scripts about what women of color can be. While Minaj occupies a space defined by feminist contradictions, she still actively defies the proper “place” for a black woman in the broader pop music space. Considering the limited spaces where black women are allowed to appear, it’s remarkable how Minaj has carved out a space for herself in both urban markets and the fashion industry. 2NE1 is facing off against stereotypes around Asian American women – particularly the submissive stereotypes that would push them out of the more aggressive sides of the pop and hip-hop scenes. Think about it – it was hard enough for Jin, an Asian American rapper that proved himself time and time again freestyling on 106 and Park, to get taken seriously in the US market even when signed to the Rough Ryders label. And despite putting in tons of work on the West Coast underground scene, there was no place on the airwaves for Far East Movement – until they completely overhauled their sound and image, sailing up the the charts with more simplistic rhymes and dance-oriented beats. Asian women have an even harder climb – the roles are even more constrained by race and gender expectations. Since I don’t follow folk and indie rock, I can’t comment on Thao Ngyuen’s presentation. But here’s 2NE1 – and they don’t fit anything that’s currently a path to radio airplay. And they for DAMN sure don’t fit the existing Asian stereotypes – I don’t see them getting a show on Cartoon Network anytime soon. Especially not with lyrics like this:

Ridin’ down Seoul city
Black on black Lamborghini
Haters can’t never see me
Come and get me, too slow
I’m bout that paper chasing
Body, fly face amazing
Burn burn keeps it blazin
Too hot to handle, can’t touch this
You think you with it with it
But you can’t hit it hit it
U know I got it got it

Cuz I’m so bout it bout it
I let them hoes know
I run this show show
We get it poppin
And we stick you for your dough dough
Cuz I’m so bad bad
But I’m so good good
Yeah I’m so bad bad
And I’m so hood hood!

Hell, they might even make it on hip-hop airwaves. On a recent trip to the airport, one of my local hip hop stations started playing “Party Rock” – and since everything’s got a dance beat on it nowadays, anything could happen!

What is also fascinating to me is their simultaneous acceptance and rejection of beauty. While Minaj and the 2NE1 crew are considered attractive by conventional standards, they each grapple with culturally influenced ideas of beauty. Early on in her career,I read an interview with Minaj where she responded to someone criticizing one of her more out there looks by saying something like “maybe I don’t feel like being pretty to you today.” In our culture, where women are marketed heavily based on their sex appeal, it was interesting to see Minaj reject that framework, even as she courts it. (She has also advised girls that sex appeal isn’t enough to get ahead.)

I thought of Minaj’s comments while listening to 2NE1′s “Ugly,” a track where four beautiful women identify with unattractiveness.

2NE1 and Minaj’s embrace of unattractiveness/ugliness seems strange on its face, but it makes a lot of sense. For Minaj, rebelling against the tyranny of forced attractiveness (kind of like when men shout at you on the street to smile, when they have no idea who you are or what you are dealing with) is a way of maintaining the true self. It’s strange that not wanting to be pretty all the time is almost a revolutionary notion, but here we are. Along those same lines, 2NE1′s lyrics on “Ugly” refer less to a physical reality and more to an emotional state:

I think I’m ugly
And nobody wants to love me
Just like her I wanna be pretty
I wanna be pretty
Don’t lie to my face
cuz I know I’m ugly

[DARA] All alone
I’m all alone x 2

The idea that beauty is tied in with feelings of self-worth should be familiar to most folks, regardless of their awareness of feminist theory. But it is fascinating how many similarities emerge, whether we are talking about the tyranny of “thickness” or Korean women marching through the alphabet trying to find the perfect body line.

While both artists approach this from a different perspective, they are complicating the conversation around beauty in ways that generally haven’t happened in a long time. To build in a point of reference, it’s been eleven years since TLC dropped “Unpretty” and eleven years since Joydrop released “Beautiful.” Occasionally, a singer will vocalize feelings of insecurity around their looks – but since this isn’t popular, it isn’t often done. (Interestingly, 2NE1 balances “Ugly” with “I Am the Best” on their album – a song for all moods, I suppose.)

So, the chances are looking for for 2NE1 to gain a toehold in the American market – marketers and audiences only have to look at Minaj’s star to allow 2NE1 to shine.

By Guest Contributor Marissa Lee, cross-posted from Racebending

Warner Bros has finally glommed onto a lead actor for its adaptation of the Japanese science fiction novel All You Need is Kill.

Set in a post apocalyptic future, All You Need is Kill is about a young Japanese soldier, Keiji Kiriya, who serves on an international fighting force fighting an alien invasion. Keiji gets stuck in a “Groundhog’s Day” scenario where he keeps reliving the day he died.

Set to play the main character in the film adaptation? On December 1st, 2011, Variety reported: Tom Cruise.

Is Warner Bros on a racebending roll?

Throughout November, Warner Bros kicked around names for its adaptation of another property with Japanese origins: Akira.

After considering Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves, WB nabbed Garrett Hedlund (Tron Legacy) for Kaneda, continues to evaluate a shortlist of unknown Caucasian actors for Tetsuo, and has offered Kristen Stewart (Twilight) the role of Kaneda’s love interest.

Gary Oldman and Helena Bonaham Carter were also propositioned for supporting roles. After Gary Oldman turned down his offer to play the antagonist in the adapted story, the Colonel, Japanese stage actor Ken Watanabe was reportedly offered the role. A casting call has also gone out for a “Japanese American” for the role of Yamagata, a side character from the manga.

Warner Bros is also jump starting an adaptation of the Japanese anime Death Note.

One of these films will have an Asian American lead, right? Or at least an actor of color in the lead role?

Why the All You Need is Kill casting isn’t subtle at all

In Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel, the lead character, Keiji Kiriya, is a Japanese soldier who is part of an international military unit. For the purposes of the American adaptation, director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity)has said that the actors will be “totally American.”

And somehow, “totally American” ended up meaning “white,” even though characters need not be white in order to be American.

In the script, Keiji Kiriya’s name was changed to “Billy Cage,” even though named Keiji have been fighting in the American military for generations.

Sound familiar? That’s because history is repeating itself. Starship Troopers, another science fiction novel about an international army fighting aliens, featured a Filipino protagonist named Juan Rico. In the 1997 film adaptation, his name was changed to “Johnny” and he was cast with a white actor. An opportunity for an Asian American actor in the genre of science fiction was completely lost.

Science Fiction/Fantasy is a genre that has characters with names like Kal-El, T’challa, Worf, Neytiri, Teal’c, Cthulhu, Meriadoc Brandybuck, Leeloo, and Slartibartfast. Why was it necessary to change Keiji Kiriya to Billy Cage?

To add insult to injury, unlike Akira (a story that only contained Japanese characters), the original All You Need is Kill already featured characters who were white!

The other lead characters in the book are Rita Vrataski and Ferrell Bartolome, both from the U.S. Armed Forces. Even with an Asian American actor in the lead role, white actors would have had ample opportunities to play important roles in the film!

Instead, the production went out of its way to retool the script, erase Keiji’s name and ethnicity, and essentially, lock Asian American actors out of one of their only chances to star in an action movie this decade.

Impact on Performers and Communities of Color

Our concern is that Warner Bros casting practices employ racebending to reinforce the systemic racism that is already present in Hollywood. Setting Akira in neo-Manhattan could have been a great opportunity to reflect the diversity in modern day New York City, opening up lead role opportunities for not only Asian Americans but also other performers of color. There was ample opportunity for Warner Bros to demonstrate a commitment to diversity by finally casting a young lead actor of color.

Likewise, casting an Asian American in All You Need is Kill would not have locked out white actors from other lead roles in the movie, especially since nearly all Warner Bros movies feature white lead actors.

Harold and Kumar (from back in 2004) aside, it doesn’t seem like Warner Bros is interested in developing unknown Asian American talent–even though they are more than ready to whitewash several lead characters that were Asian to accomodate white actors.

Not to mention, Warner Bros will also be presenting a yellowface joke in it’s Christmas release, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

(Awkward coincidence given the whitewashing of roles in Akira and AYNIKis a modern evolution of yellowface..)

Not confidence inspiring.

Maybe Asian American actors are like poor Keiji Kiriya: doomed to constantly relive missed opportunities. When the rare Asian lead character comes along…

By Arturo R. García

When last we left the American Akira, the racebending had barely started: Garrett Hedlund was only being courted to play the lead character, Kaneda.

This week, thanks to Geek Tyrant and other sites, we got some more disturbing pieces of the puzzle, when this casting call for extras and stand-ins listed Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart stepping in as “Ky” – possibly because the character’s original name, Kei, was just too long for somebody’s tastes – and Helena Bonham-Carter playing Lady Miyako.

The casting call also shed some light on how the new version’s vision of “Neo-Manhattan” might play out. As “adaptations” go, it sounds like this Akira could hew as closely to this Akira as Jesus Christ Superstar did to the Gospels. Spoilers are under the cut.

Here’s a transcript of the plot summary:

Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel.

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers.

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

Depending on how many “liberties” are taken with the source material, this incarnation of The Colonel could be more of an antagonist to Kaneda and company than the original. If the latest rumors turn out to be true, and Ken Watanabe actually does play the character, the only POC in a principal role could be playing the bad guy. As our friends at Racebending said on Facebook, “This doesn’t sound like a terrible rehash of Airbender at all.”

Besides that, this summary – again, if it is indeed the plot of the new version – points not only to a whitewashing, but to a PG-13 dumbing-down of the original: Kaneda and Tetsuo are brothers? An adult Kaneda with a job? Akira as a villainous force? This isn’t even reprehensible anymore, it’s almost laughable. Unless this unnerving theory by Cracked Magazine’s Robert Brockway turns out to be right:

With all of these factors considered — the change in race, age, and location — there’s only one thing this live action version of Akira can be about. The same thing every other “meaningful” Hollywood movie has been about since the day it happened: 9/11.

Think about it: There’s a city, emblematic of its nation, that undergoes a great hardship, but after many years of struggle, they finally rebuild. Then a group of friends, their gang analogous to a controversial real life group, ostracized and hunted by the government, somehow causes the destruction of said city. It was an important moment in our history, and of course it deserves coverage. But why choose Akira to talk about it? Well, because Hollywood believes that the only disaster Americans can relate to is 9/11, but sometimes work is hard and it takes a lot of time, and that sucks. So instead of setting to work on an original script, they’re just going to up and steal a movie that perfectly captured what it was to be Japanese in a tumultuous period of history, and make it all about white people problems instead.

And if that’s indeed the case, I hope this film makes Airbender’s box-office take look like Avatar’s by comparison.

By Guest Contributor Tami Winfrey Harris, cross-posted from What Tami Said

For the past few weeks, as part of my project exploring black women, relationships and marriage, I’ve been immersing myself in books, films, blog posts and other media on the subject. Last week I read Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man and am still trying to wash off the film and stink of patriarchy. I told my husband over the weekend that I am unbelievably proud of black women. As a group we are able to hold our heads high in the face of the relentless narrative that there is something wrong with us that needs to be fixed; that, for us, admirable qualities like independence, only make us more unlovable–a narrative not only championed by the mainstream, but, too often, by members of our own communities.

So, singer, actor and (God help us) author Tyrese decided to drop a little wisdom on the black lady folk during a recent interview with NecoleBitchie.com. (above) He warns us about being “too independent.”

Huh.

There is nothing about the descriptor “independent” that is negative on its face, at least not based on Merriam-Webster’s definition above. My parents taught me to be independent. When I became old enough to drive, my father taught me how to check my tire pressure and oil and how to change a tire. I keep my AAA membership payed up, but I know if roadside service can’t get to me, I can take care of myself. To be independent is to be free. Because I can handle an auto emergency, I’ve felt free to crisscross the country on road journeys points southwest to northeast.

What could be wrong with being free? Nothing, unless, of course, you believe that it is not advantageous for women to be “not subject to control by others” or “not requiring or relying on others (as for care or livelihood).”  Would Tyrese caution men this way? Would he warn them against not needing women.

Sexism lies at the root of the actor’s monologue. In the regressive language of modern black relationship advice, it is not enough for a black woman to want a man deeply, with all her heart and soul. Male egos must always be fed with the idea that women are unfulfilled and incapable of living without a man. We must avoid being uneducated free-loaders, sayeth Tyrese, while being sure to remain needy and helpless enough to be attractive to men like him.

Tyrese’s “helpful” advice carries the condescension and arrogance typical of mansplaining, plus a dash of amorphous homophobia. What was that weird sidebar about homosexuality? No doubt, some ill-spoken repetition of the idea that gay black men harm black women’s marriage chances with their gayness. Silly.

But here’s another thing Tyrese’s advice is: racist. It is specifically black women who are singled out for some of the most dehumanizing and denigrating messages about their lovability and marriageability. Indeed, Tyrese directs his comment “especially” to black women. Our culture remains in a place where it is acceptable to assume black women, apart from other women, are intrinsically wrong and in need of correction. It is not just mainstream sources like ABC News that serve up “What’s wrong with black women?” programming. Black men like Steve Harvey, Tyrese and Jimi Izrael are getting in on the action. And no one blinks an eye.

Can you imagine comedian Jeff Foxworthy holding on to his largely white audience after penning a book and taking to the airwaves telling white women how their faults are keeping them single? Would Josh Duhamel, who appeared with Tyrese in Transformers, be getting many calls in Hollywood after, apropos of nothing, derailing an interview to to talk about how white women are too damned self-sufficient for their own good? Could Ira Glass say: “[White] women’s unrealistic standards are probably born of bedtime stories about handsome, rich men on majestic horses delivering damsels in distress. Girlfriends often tell similar apocryphal tales about the friend of a friend who nabbed a rich, hung sugar-daddy who saved them from a life of dishpan hands and lower-middle-class drudgery. Through the influence of popular media and the misguided advice they give each other, sisters combine these images and presumptions to draw a composite of a perfect [white] man.” and keep his job at NPR? His coworker Jimi Izrael wrote that and more about black women and is not only featured on National Public Radio, but was excerpted on The Root, where he once penned a column.

Sexism is real for all women. But the combination of femaleness and blackness is particularly devalued, sadly, too often among even black men. Tyrese reveals his expectation that women must bend to meet male needs. I don’t see in the above video a man who values black women and loves them. I see a man concerned that black women might be too capable, too free. Independent women have options and demands, as men do. Independent women are choosy, as men are. A strong man has no problem meeting partners on an equal playing field, but a weak man needs a weaker partner to feel strong. Any man preaching against independence for women unwittingly lays himself bare.

By Guest Contributor Caroline Heldman, cross-posted from The Society Pages

Tower Heist (2011), the new movie starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, is the latest installment in blatantly racist movie-making. Stiller plays a high-end condo manager in Manhattan who bails out a local criminal (Murphy) to steal a stash of cash that one of the wealthy condo residents swindled from the condo staff. It’s been nearly thirty years since Murphy played nearly the same character in his breakout role in 48 Hours, and the fact that he is still cast as a jive-talking criminal speaks to how little has changed when it comes to the portrayal of black Americans in popular culture.

Hyperbolic racial stereotypes are still sooooo amusing for some.  As LA Times film critic Betsy Sharkey writes, ”Murphy and Stiller are a good pair, with Murphy once again mainlining his ghetto-comedy crazy and Stiller suited up for another straight-man gig. These are the kinds of roles they both do best, and their face-off in the front seat of an out-of-control car is worth the price of admission.” (Now reverse the names in this quote to see how racialized and racially offensive it is.)

Perhaps more disturbing is the way in which film critics are talking about this movie as a comback for Eddie Murphy  (“Eddie Murphy’s Road to Reddemption,” “Tower Heist: Murphy is Back on Top,” “‘Tower’ Heist Features Eddie Murphy Back in ‘Classic ’80s Form“). What does it mean when playing an insultingly stereotypical black criminal is deemed “redemption” for a black actor whose movies have grossed nearly $7 billion worldwide? And where, exactly, did Eddie Murphy go? The Shrek series grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide, while his Nutty Professor and Doctor Dolittle franshises grossed $428 million and $470 million, respectively. Murphy has appeared in a steady stream of successful movies in the past decade, including Dreamgirls for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Closer examination of media critics’ analysis reveals a nostalgia for Eddie Murphy’s breakthrough role as a criminal in 48 Hours. Jon Niccum writes that inTower Heist “Murphy shows flashes of the aggressive, non-family-friendly persona that made him a superstar following 48 Hours. Aggressive?  Non-family friendly?

To summarize, Eddie Murphy grossing oodles of money as a successful director, producer, writer, and actor in films featuring him as a doctor, a veterinarian, a dedicated father, and the voice of a beloved donkey in the second highest-grossing animated film of all time is considered some sort of failure, but playing a jive talking felon is redemption. Huh?

There are many ways to interpret this — that Hollywood and movie critics (and many in society) are more comfortable with black actors playing damaging, stereotypical roles involving criminality, violence, and deviance (remember back in 2002 when Denzel Washington finally won the Oscar for playing a crooked cop?); that male actors are failures if they appear in family-friendly movies, regardless of how economically successful these movies may be; that to be considered successful, male actors have to appear in movies geared towards male audiences.

Whatever the reason(s), it is embarassing for Hollywood and its “critics” to continue to be so ignorant. Eddie Murphy called out the movie industry’s racism at the 1988 Academy Awards during his presentation of the Best Picture award: “I’m going to give this award, but black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear anymore. I want you to recognize that.” Two decades later, Murphy finds himself riding the caboose, furnished by the creators of Tower Heist.

I really, really wanted to like CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley (which premiered last night) as well as Miss Representation, a documentary currently airing on OWN. Both, however, left me feeling the same way, which looks something like this:

A couple of synopses before I state why I felt this way:

Black in America 4 explores the rarely discussed facts and stories of Black people in digital technology, especially those who are inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Host Soledad O’Brien frames this through the stories of eight African American entrepreneurs who move into together as part of digital business owners Angela Benton’s and Wayne Sutton’s NewME Accelerator program, which provides Black entrepreneurs time and (relative) quiet space—and possible connections with venture capitalists—for their business ideas.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation connects some of the dots between the stats, the personal stories, and media images about women and how those images affect not only those in the media— Margaret Cho recounts the fatphobia and other drama around her 1994 comedy All American Girl — but also those consuming the media, meaning the rest of us.

Now, I know that both shows are, respectively, very much Black Studies and Women’s Studies 101, presented as and for those who may know very little to nothing about either Black tech innovators and owners or media literacy and feminism. So, I can see both try to provide a “hook” for their audiences with that in mind. However, the way their respective creative teams frame their stories does both topics a disservice.

When I asked O’Brien about the aim of this installment at a preview screening, she said, “First of all, [Blacks] are clearly using the technology, but we’re not innovating the technology. And Silicon Valley keeps saying how colorblind it is. So, this part of the series examines that statement.”

Watching BiA4, I felt like I was watching O’Brien trying to mash a news report with a reality show. (“Watch what happens when tech-y Black folks get real…with Soledad O’Brien!”) I can understand that the NewME Accelerator was a good (and, from a seeing-news-as-a-business standpoint, a fiscally feasible way) for CNN to gather a group of Black tech business owners (and the non-Black people who attempt to help and/or comment on them) to tell a relatable narrative about the dearth of Black people in the field.  (BiA4 states early on that less than 1% of digital entrepreneurs are Black. The majority, it says, are white, young, Ivy League and first-tier university drop-outs, which, as pointed out in the post-screening Q&A screening I attended, is a privilege unto itself as far as starting businesses.) But I actually think a better way to tell both stories is to decouple them. If I could reconstruct the story, I would have had O’Brien, say, follow one or two Black digital entrepreneurs in depth as they attempted to get investors and utilized Benton and Sutton as pundits— along with angel investor/philanthropist Mitch Kapor, who directly refutes Michael Arrington’s claim of the digital ownership as “meritorious.” Or I would have followed the NewME Accelerator crew as the main subjects of a full-length documentary to air on CNN.

Also, another questionable point is how Asians and Asian Americans are considered in this report. The show starts off by saying that the tech-innovation worlds are “white and Asian.” Though the presence of Asians and Asian Americans should not lead to Arrington’s erroneous conclusion that the tech world is, therefore, “colorblind,” the presence of Asian and Asian Americans shouldn’t be discounted as failing to bring racial diversity to tech communities. The more subtle equation BiA4 makes, however, is “Black=racial diversity.”

At least BiA4 addresses, albeit imperfectly, race and racism in the tech field, Miss Representation — for all of the visually racial diversity (you see Cho, former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, Dreamworlds director Sut Jhally, media-literacy advocate Malkia Cyril, and Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, among others) — fails to talk about the issue of race and racism. When I asked why at a post-screening Q&A, the response was “We only had 90 minutes, though we’re planning a second movie to deal with race.” (Refer to image at top of this post.)

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I timed it: the quote took all of 15 seconds to read out loud. (I’ll be generous and give it about 30 seconds to account for dramatic voiceover.) Or even acknowledge that the majority of media images—both in the film and in entertainment itself, from news to shows to porn—are mostly of white women as both idealized and in variety of roles…and these are, quite a bit of the time, functioning in tandem. Again, all of a thirty-second voiceover or a statistic that could be one of many the film uses to further its argument on how the media hurts women and other people. The silence about race (actress Rosario Dawson is the only person who explicitly mentions “people of color”) — as well as class, gender identity, sexual identity, and  and physical ability, though the film does give a nod at how the media, especially television, fails to acknowledge women above the age of 35 as an audience or as characters — flattens the documentary’s discussion about women to the category of “woman,” as if female-presenting people all suffer from media images the same way. Of course, we don’t.

And I just quite can’t with Black in America 4 and Miss Representation.

Image credit: Bossip

By Arturo R. García

It was almost enough to make you say, F-ck The Muppets.

No sooner did Eddie Murphy give up his shot at hosting the Academy Awards in a heart-warming display of solidarity with Bro – I mean, Brett – Ratner than an online campaign recommending Kermit The Frog and friends get the job pick up some steam.

The Muppets hosting The Oscars? The most interesting part of that pairing would be figuring out which half should feel more insulted.

But at least Muppets fans are coming at this from a place of honest – if at times overbearing (wokka wokka!) – enthusiasm. It’s been more disappointing to scan around other sites and see the same basic wishlist of prospective replacements:

• Stephen Colbert/Tina Fey
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Somebody associated with Glee
• Nobody at all
• Not to be outdone, the Huffington Post also nominated a muppet, albeit one with his own talk show.
• And one black person

With such a lack of creativity from normally creative people (Tracy Morgan? Oprah? Chris Rock?) you’d think Ratner was still doing the show! O-HOHOHOHO!

But seriously, folks. We here at The R can do better than that – especially since Rick Perry’s botched his audition last night. And our nominees are …

Samuel L. Jackson & Denzel Washington
Pros: The POC Pacino and DeNiro. Who in the hell would pick Tracy Morgan over a) the world’s highest-grossing actor and b) Denzel F’ing Washington? They can do classy, they can do funny – really, so can anybody on our list – and both have the critical and popular chops to command respect in this kind of setting.
Cons: No, really, go ahead and find one.

Will & Jada Pinkett Smith
Pros: If we’re looking for a husband-wife duo to anchor the proceedings, how about a guy who’s not far behind SLJ in the bankability chart and a star in her own right? If nothing else, you’d think they would have better chemistry than Hathaway and Franco, right?
Cons: Who would be more awkward for the Smiths to bring out – their kids or their basketball team?

George Takei
Pros: To the hipster demographic, he’s America’s Other Funny Gay Guy. But more importantly, he’s gone from part of an old sci-fi show to become one of Hollywood’s more strident advocates, and with his years of service to the business, it’s hard to imagine many people who would cherish this job more.
Cons: “Too” tied in to the bygone days of the Star Trek franchise.

Rosario Dawson, Zoe Saldana, Gabourey Sidibe & Rashida Jones
Pros: You want a young, multi-talented female ensemble? We got you – with an Oscar-winner in the group, to boot.
Cons: One word – RENT.

Danny Pudi & Donald Glover
Pros: The saving graces of a TV show that’s a critical darling – and one that simultaneously lampoons and sends love letters to cinema almost every week. Bring the Community writing team aboard with them and the comedic potential is tantalizing.
Cons: They’re two supporting players on a low-rated TV show, and neither has a hit film to his credit. And for heaven’s sakes, don’t let Glover rap.

John Cho & Kal Penn
Pros: They’re like Glover and Pudi, but with big-screen bonafides. Philip at You Offend Me, You Offend My Family says they’d make great co-hosts for Saturday Night Live, but why limit our ambition? (Another bong-dream: Cho/Penn + Glover/Pudi + NPH = a comedy Voltron to carry the next 2-3 years’ worth of shows.)
Cons: Made their name playing arch-stoners. This would be like Cheech & Chong awarding The Deer Hunter the Best Picture award in ’79.

Idris Elba
Pros: What better way to confirm Elba’s arrival as a power player for Hollywood’s future?
Cons: Most notable roles up to this point have been a comic-book character and a drug dealer. Stuffy ol’ Oscar would rather deal with talk-show hosts.

Angela Bassett
Pros: Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, class for decades.
Cons: Hasn’t had a hit in years. But hey, that didn’t stop Ratner and Murphy, did it?

Edward James Olmos
Pros: Emmy and Golden Globe winner, and the first U.S.-born Latino Oscar nominee for his work in Stand & Deliver. And hey, how frakking cool would it be to see him get the whole arena to yell, “SO SAY WE ALL!”?
Cons: Like Takei, his sci-fi ties would work against him.

Olivia Munn
Pros: If geek is indeed chic in Hollywood now, there’s not many other people you could hire to validate that fact. And hey, isn’t karma a funny thing, Mr. Ratner?
Cons: She’s still better-known for her work at G4′s Attack Of The Show than anything she’s done on the big screen. And unfortunately, karma might be funnier than Munn, too.