| Author |
Message |
    
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 2116
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 20, 2006 - 10:08 pm: | 
|
I think this guy is perhaps a tad too uptight... but I absolutely love this quote:
White confusion, of course, is easy to understand. When "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from Hustle & Flow, wins an Oscar for Original Song, it's hard for blacks to be perceived as anything but rapping, drug-dealing, uneducated, violent thugs.
LOL, Hallelujah, brotha!!
_______________________________________
Series shows 'blackness,' not race, is the issue
Published March 18, 2006
I'd said I wasn't going to watch Black.White., the race-swapping reality series on FX because most unscripted TV is just plain lurid.
Consider:
Temptation Island. Looking For Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. Cheating Husbands: French Kiss Your Au Pair. (Bet you barely blinked at the title of the last show, which I made up.)
I was intrigued by the premise of Black.White., which introduces the Sparkses, a black family from Atlanta, and the Wurgel-Marcotulli clan, a white trio from Santa Monica, Calif., who trade races with the aid of some cutting-edge cosmetics. I was curious to see what light documentarian R.J. Cutler and former gangsta rapper Ice Cube might shed on race relations.
Judging from this week's episode, very little, because Black.White. betrays reality TV's tragic flaw -- conjuring a reality with faint verisimilitude.
Often Black.White. more recalls a classic Saturday Night Live sketch (a powdered Eddie Murphy "discovers" that whites slip their skinmates freebies and uncollateralized loans) than Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin's seminal book about passing as black in the segregated South.
While often missing the mark, the show occasionally flushes another moving target: The confusion over what it means to be black in America.
One telling moment came when shopping for duds to wear to a black church service, Carmen Wurgel comes home with a dashiki. As if blacks go all Kunta Kinte off the clock.
Though drolly over-the-top, the wardrobe malfunction revealed an enduring estrangement. Absent real, intimate interaction, whites who encounter blacks often fumble for black totems as conversation starters, or like Wurgel, read from stereotypical black character sketches.
In chats with white strangers aware of my occupation, many often share: "I like that Bryant Gumbel." And silver-haired white guys have led me uncomfortably into a "soul shake" when a firm handclasp would do.
Now, I see it for what it is, usually a sincere, if awkward gambit at connection. The sad thing is that whites try so hard -- as if there is little common ground if one isn't a fan of MC Killem-All. White confusion, of course, is easy to understand. When "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from Hustle & Flow, wins an Oscar for Original Song, it's hard for blacks to be perceived as anything but rapping, drug-dealing, uneducated, violent thugs.
Even Matt Lauer believed the hype. In a Today show interview, Renee Sparks revealed while she wore whiteface a man admitted how he washes his hands immediately after shaking hands with blacks.
"And you didn't fly over the table and grab that person?" Lauer asked. "You had to restrain yourself, right?"
No, Sparks told him. She didn't snatch the man bald-headed.
As Wurgel told Lauer, explaining why the Sparkses required less coaching to trade races, blacks are already simpatico with whites, "because they have assimilated more in our culture than we have into the black culture."
This brings us back to that moving target. Watching Black.White. confirms that a little greasepaint won't make us soul brothers. By the same token, a little extra pigmentation doesn't render us wholly different. Maybe after Black.White., more will consider that unscripted reality.
Darryl E. Owens can be reached at dowens@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5095.
Copyright © 2006, Orlando Sentinel | Get home delivery - up to 50% off |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 740
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 07:03 am: |
|
--"Often Black.White. more recalls a classic Saturday Night Live sketch (a powdered Eddie Murphy "discovers" that whites slip their skinmates freebies and uncollateralized loans) than Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin's seminal book about passing as black in the segregated South."--
The make-up on those people on "Black/white" were more convincing than Eddie murphy's goofy whitface.
Plus, I always pictured John Howard Griffin to look as convincing as the white kid in "soul man". ^-^
"And you didn't fly over the table and grab that person?" Lauer asked. "You had to restrain yourself, right?" --
Only someone that's never experienced that kind of direspect on a frequent basis would even suggest that option.
I agree with what you said tonya.  |
|
Email This Page