A Warm Ghetto Mess

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Author Message   Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 10691 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Sunday, November 18, 2007 - 05:50 pm:        Interesting article from GOOD Magazine that was reprinted in the "Controvery" section of The Chicago Sun-Times' Sunday edition. It's a retread but spot-on commentary about a familiar and controversial subject. The author is Benjamin Nugent, a writer whose book, "American Nerd, The Story Of My People", is to be published by Scribner this spring. BET's new show "We Got to Do Better" airs candid footage of poor people doing stupid things. The majority of the poor people are black. In the pilot episode, a girl in leather shorts freak-dances until she falls off a stage, backward, and keeps on freaking upon landing until, in a moment of inspiration, she climbs a decorative column of palm fronds and humps it until a frond snaps beneath her weight, and she goes to the ground a second time, still frond-humping. A dealer sucker punches an addict. Girls pull on each other's hair and clothing while a spectator modestly reminds them they're fighting over a guy who is in prison. Then there are the Street Walkin segments, in which people on the street are asked who Barack Obama is, and wonder aloud if he is the president of the NAACP. Between clips, the host, Charlie Murphy, enjoins the audience to better itself with literature rather than just watching television. He also explains the reason to watch: "We want you to think of this show as a little tough love for America." The creator of "We Got to Do Better" is Jam Donaldson, a black woman. In 2004, while still a law student at Georgetown, she launched a website called Hot Ghetto Mess that collected images of dubious behavior among the urban poor. It eventually came to draw millions of hits. This year BET brought it to television, changing the name to We Got to Do Better when Home Depot and State Farm pulled ads, and gave Donaldson the sole writing credit. Her job is to write monologues that ennoble the enterprise. Within the first two minutes, it's evident that Donaldson's calling is the law; after a sequence of freak-dancers sustaining injuries, Murphy is obliged to speak the line "Have those folks ever heard of Alvin Ailey?" American entertainment has long trafficked in negative images of black people. But because the show is so obvious in the way it tries to win over its audience and defuse controversy, We Got to Do Better is instructive. It lays bare the mechanics of a formula followed more gracefully by many of the shows, movies, and songs we call "urban." The formula is: 1. Minstrelsy. 2. An assertion that what is shown is of documentary authenticity: realer than real, the black man's CNN, all about reality, etc. 3. A reminder that the reason we have brought you this programming is so that you might learn by negative example, and be inspired to do better, not, as it might initially appear, so that you might feel better about yourself in comparison to others. This is pure speculation, but could it be that one reason the public finds, say, Diddy compelling is that he's so good at following the Formula? When he produced an MTV "documentary" about his own preparations for running the New York City Marathon, the final cut emphasized both the amount of money he raised for charity and his own (clearly staged but presented as authentic) inability to cut fried chicken out of his diet during training. What a one-two punch of self-aggrandizement and self-degradation. The idea in Get Rich or Die Tryin, the movie starring 50 Cent (written by Terence Winter, an extremely able Sopranos veteran), is that 50 is honest about the daily routine on the street, and inspires us to rise above our circumstances. One wonders: having been given this official reason to like 50 Cent, do people feel more free than usual to smile at how many times he has been shot and how he says he's going to kill his competitors? In both of these cases, the ruse is so effective because the perpetrators seem to halfway believe it themselves. American entertainment has long trafficked in negative images of black people. But plain old negative images of black people aren't as much fun as the Formula. There's nothing quite like the traditional pleasures of minstrelsy mixed with the euphoria of making a virtuous consumer choice. That's what makes the Formula so dangerous. Donaldson is well educated enough to grasp this, I suspect, and that may be one of the reasons her monologues are so awkward. Her writing reeks of a guilty conscience. It would be nice if more urban entertainment suffered the same affliction.   Sabiana Veteran Poster Username: Sabiana Post Number: 209 Registered: 08-2006 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Sunday, November 18, 2007 - 07:15 pm:        I don’t understand how “we” have to do better when the point of the show is to make people feel better because they’re not like “them”. Why every time there’s discussion about African American-ness, there’s “community” and “we” involved? I realise there are class structures within this “community”, then is there really a “we”? Class structures are to separate - us vs. them - and this (as mentioned above) is a class issue. I understand the call for unity (sometimes), but really, what’s the creator’s point? I’m very lost here…The show comes off as a steamy, preachy, (Now see, this is what we black folks need to do....) spill once again. But if you consider it, BET is owned by (guess who!) Viacom, who also owns VH1(Flavor Flav), and MTV (both guilty of oh so wonder multidimensional represenations of blackness). Smell something fishy Cynique?   Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 10694 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Sunday, November 18, 2007 - 11:02 pm:        Well, I guess this series is the ultimate example of "show and tell", and "if the shoe fits, wear it". It is also about choices. If viewers who watch it can relate to the message, then maybe they can see the "folly" of their behavior and change for the better, or - they can decide they're comfortable with how they act. I think the show is really about getting certain people to see themselves as others see them. Whether people get inspired to "reform" after watching "We Got To Do Better" remains to be seen, but a feeble effort is being made to encourage certain folks to conduct themselves in a way that will best benefit them in the world at large. And "feeble" is the operative word. I also don't think Viacom is actually part of a conspiracy to keep Black folks down; they are just in the business of giving people what they want. It's up to Black people, themselves, to encourage each other to do what they need to do, instead of what they want to do.