Brain Food At The Movies – Episode 6

Hello everyone and welcome to Brain Food, At The Movies, wherein I review Vin Diesel’s latest masterpiece, RIDDICK.

Personally, I would have labelled it RIDDICK: ALPHA MALE McSTABBY ALOTS!

Does “Encanta” lie like “Miss Saigon”? Thoughts on writing and representation

“Miss Saigon Lies” posts from the Don’t Buy Miss Saigon campaign have been making the rounds on Tumblr lately, and this got me thinking about Encanta and whether I am telling lies in my play too.

Questions I Should Never Have To Ask

 

So the other night I had a lovely dinner and a movie date-night with a Beau I’ve been dating.

We wound up watching John Grisham’s the Rainmaker. Overall, the story was solid, had an impressive cast, however…..

So the story is set in Memphis, TN. I kept scratching my head in confusion because something was off. And then I realized what it was. After an hour into the film, I had enough and had turned to the Beau and asked a most important question:

I Know You Don’t Think A White Girl Made That Up

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Say what you will about the film Bring It On, its commentary on cultural appropriation, racism, white privilege, white supremacy, the exploitation of black culture seems to be more relevant now than when the film was released 13 years ago.

A few examples among countless others:

Robin Thicke ripping off one of Marvin Gaye’s music and then suing the late singer’s estate (file that under fucked up shit only white folks would pull); Macklemore ripping off rapper/producer Le1F to make (oh you really believed a white boy came up with that all on his own, that’s cute) Same Song; the mockery of the Harlem Shake; no black artist receiving a VMA at this year’s MTV Music Awards, and we’re talking in categories like R&B, rap, hip hop, etc; And speaking of MTV Awards, we musn’t forget Miley Cyrus’s parody of a Twerk fiasco.

Yes it was a fiasco. What’s with the shocked look? Yes I said parody. As in that dance predates Miley’s discovery of of it. I know you don’t think a white girl made that shit up.

The Walter White Sliding Scale of Sympathetic Villainy and the Tony Soprano Litmus Test for Morally Dubious Main Characters

Imagine two characters.

One of them is a white dude. The other is a woman who may also be of color and/or LGBTQ. Both of them are doing dirt that involves morally dubious activities such as murder, theft, lying, abuse of power, or just being a jerk.

Guess which one is called bitch, evil, crazy, whore and stupid. Guess which one is interpreted as a layered portrayal of the complexities of human nature.

Yeah, thought so.

Why do you think that is?