Setanta:
Quote:Well, i was glad to see this thread--it's a topic about which i had always wondered, which is to say a black man's perception of the media.
Well, that's good. As long as you can stay curious about things, you'll remain trainable.
Quote:I'd be interested to know what your reaction was to the "black-sploitation" genre of motion pictures in the 70's. You know, like Shaft, Uptown Saturday Night.
Shaft was one thing,
Uptown was another.
Shaft was the beginning of a long, ugly line of movies cut from the same idea... "black-guy-beats-whitey-at-his-own-game-and-sticks-it-to-the-man". At the time I saw
Shaft, Richard Roundtree seemed to me to be the coolest thing I'd seen on TV since Kato on the
Green Hornet. But soon after that, there was
Shaft in Africa, Shaft's Big Score,
Slaughter (Jim Brown),
Hit Man (Bernie Casey)
Trouble Man (Robert Hooks),
Superfly (Ron O'Neil), etc., etc., etc... and I became aware of what blaxploitation meant.
On the other hand, Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby (and in a bit role, Richard Pryor) actually did something fairly radical with
Uptown Saturday Night (and, later on to a lesser degree because of the presence of Jimmy Walker -
Let's Do it Again) They did comedy with black people that wasn't demeaning to black people, and was suitable for the whole family.
Quote: I'd also be interested to know what films you thought were good, either for presenting blacks without either undue emphasis, nor invisibilty--or, films which centered around blacks, and which you thought were good representations of the lives black people lead.
See Setanta - the whole problem with "representing the lives black people lead" is that we lead all kinds of lives - ALL KINDS. Would you think of
The Bourne Conspiracy or
The Bridges of Madison County as movies that represent the lives white people lead? Of course not - they're just movies. The thing is, even though we mix in the necessary ways (work, public events, schools), white people and black people by and large still don't eat at each others houses, worship in each others churches and get into each others lives, so we don't know each other. So the portrayals of blacks come off mostly one and two dimensional, you see? (One day I'll tell you about why I think blacks know whites better than whites know blacks)
BUT, in answer to the question about what movies I like, there have been a few I thought were decent, and as I write this I'm having trouble bringing them to mind. Funny thing, I think they had black people involved in their production. I liked
Antwone Fisher, because (among many other things) it was the first time I had ever seen sexual vulnerability portrayed by a black man on screen. I liked most of Spike's Stuff -
Do the Right Thing and
Malcolm X especially. If I think of more, I'll tell you.
Quote:I'd find your stuff a lot more easy to read if it weren't for the long paragraph breaks . . .
...just can't please some folks...
