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15 films that hurt black America

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The Faceless Master said:
the reasoning for Scarface being on the list makes no sense in the context of the other movies on the list.

i can sort of understand why some of the other movies are on there, even if i disagree.

Tyler Perry? really? what did this man do to get so much hate!?

Besides portray black people as superstitious imbeciles incapable of solving their problems without the glorious grace of God? Or popularize loud, crass, oafish characters who would never ever be taken seriously...ever. Nothing at all.
 
Nameless said:
Besides portray black people as superstitious imbeciles incapable of solving their problems without the glorious grace of God? Or popularize loud, crass, oafish characters who would never ever be taken seriously...ever. Nothing at all.
Also the way he paints these black & white characters. "Jimmy is a drug dealer! He's baaaad. He wants to take Julia's kids away. Oh nooooo. Will the preacher take time away from his congregation to help one person, who will provide leadership to the lost black community in his absence? *raise curtain*"

UGH

That being said, some of his stuff is tolerable. The vast majority of it makes me queasy though.
 
I actually liked one the plays that Tyler did. I think it was "Diary of a Mad Black Women" and "Medea's Family Reunion". The plays were entertaining enough and I thought Medea a funny character though I never cared for their Christian/Gospel slant. However, I thought Diary's movie adaptation was meh; I don't remember a thing except when the druggy popped into the church singin'.


Wait... it got an award for 'outstanding achievement in screen writing'? (Looking at Tyler's Wiki article)
 
GitarooMan said:
Blind Side should be on the list.

It's a decent movie but it's basically a film for soccer moms to make themselves feel better, not the Michael Oher story they advertised it as. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when Sandra Bullock's character
walks into a Memphis project and tells off a gang banger
, come the fuck on :lol
 
harSon said:
It's a decent movie but it's basically a film for soccer moms to make themselves feel better, not the Michael Oher story they advertised it as. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when Sandra Bullock's character
walks into a Memphis project and tells off a gang banger
, come the fuck on :lol
:lol :lol :lol
 
Himuro said:
I love Scarface to death. It's just a really entertaining movie.

Agreed.

It's unfair to single Scarface out when the Hip-hop culture has embraced any and everything having to do with the gangster lifestlye. From Goodfellas, to the Godfather, to real life mobsters like Capone, Gotti, and Luciano it's all been celebrated and referenced in hip-hop.
 
To Kill a Mockingbird is fucking awful. The black characters have the personalities of stale bread, while even Atticus' kids have more star power.
 
Nameless said:
Agreed.

It's unfair to single Scarface out when the Hip-hop culture has embraced any and everything having to do with the gangster lifestlye. From Goodfellas, to the Godfather, to real life mobsters like Capone, Gotti, and Luciano it's all been celebrated and referenced in hip-hop.

Eh.

Just do a quick poll of how many Scarface t-shirts, homage CD covers, and Scarface posters you see in the average rappers "creeeeeb" and then get back to me on that.
 
iapetus said:
Black Jesus says WTF?

BlackJesusMontage%28c%29BarzoniARTCOM10055775.jpg
flg8ld.jpg
 
Jean-Claude Picard said:
So what would be the anti list of this?

I'd say that Drumline (yes, the Nick Cannon movie) does a pretty good job of portraying normal black people in normal situations, without glorifying crime or turning into a Friday-esque hood comedy.

Ditto for The Wood, Inkwell, Waiting to Exhale, and Love & Basketball. They are very much black movies, but the characters come from all walks of life, with flaws a bit more complex than "I'm poor so I steal/sell drugs."

Sadly, movies like Scarface, New Jack City, Belly, Menace 2 Society, Juice, and Boys in the Hood aren't meant to glorify crime. But you get one popular rapper to mention a character by name in the song, and everyone is trying to emulate them, even if that character ended up bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere. In these cases, it is not the creator's fault that these movies have been detrimental to the black community, it would be the fault of exploitative members of the rap community.
 
DY_nasty said:
Also the way he paints these black & white characters. "Jimmy is a drug dealer! He's baaaad. He wants to take Julia's kids away. Oh nooooo. Will the preacher take time away from his congregation to help one person, who will provide leadership to the lost black community in his absence? *raise curtain*"

UGH

That being said, some of his stuff is tolerable. The vast majority of it makes me queasy though.

Exactly.

I know chicks who swear by his stuff. Books, films, plays(which are especially insulting) to of course his TV shows. I don't want to hate the guy but I can't help it. The man built a state of the art film studio which could go along way in progressing black film, but all it will do is continue to churn out shit like "The Family that preys" and "Madea goes to jail".
 
Himuro said:
Seriously? :lol

No joke.

Spoiler:

Sandra Bullock roles up to a Memphis project in a luxury car, walks up to a bunch of hard looking mother fuckers playing cards , and asks them if they've seen her son. One of the dudes said:

"He rolled up in here last night and had the nerve to strike me, you tell him to sleep with one eye open."

Sandra Bullock walks away and the guy yells "YOU HEAR ME BITCH?!"

Sandra Bullock walks back towards them and says: "No, you hear me BITCH? You threaten my son, you threaten me. You so much as cross into downtown, you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the DA, I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing!" and then walks away.

Keep in mind that this dude is a high ranking drug dealer, is packing, and almost shot Michael Oher the night before.
 
harSon said:
No joke.

Spoiler:

Sandra Bullock roles up to a Memphis project in a luxury car, walks up to a bunch of hard looking mother fuckers playing cards , and asks them if they've seen her son. One of the dudes said:

"He rolled up in here last night and had the nerve to strike me, you tell him to sleep with one eye open."

Sandra Bullock walks away and the guy yells "YOU HEAR ME BITCH?!"

Sandra Bullock walks back towards them and says: "No, you hear me BITCH? You threaten my son, you threaten me. You so much as cross into downtown, you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the DA, I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing!" and then walks away.

Keep in mind that this dude is a high ranking drug dealer, is packing, and almost shot Michael Oher the night before.
:lol :lol :lol
 
Himuro said:
Drumline is fucking fantastic.

Yeah, I loved it too.

Sort of off-topic but it sucks that you can't depend on IMDB scores for predominantly black films, people literally go out of their way to vote down every single "black" film. ~13% of reviewers rated Drumline a 1 for example.
 
Himuro said:
I loved that movie. Haven't seen it since it came out, but the defining scene for me was when one of the dudes gets a boner in class and tries to hide it, I think?
Naw, the scenes with Alicia's brother were priceless.

"Sit your punk ass in the back or get your ass beat! Or walk home! ...Mike, get in the front seat"
 
onemic said:
wat

Not all his movies are amazing, but even the bad ones aren't as bad as any of the movies in that's list. Well except for maybe bebe's kids

What about bamboozled? Granted im aware that its intended to be satirical, but its still enfuriating nontheless
 
Himuro said:
If Bebe's Kids and the Green Mile and Driving Miss Daisy are on this list, Bamboozled should be too.

Damon Wayan's "white voice" in that movie was physically painful to listen to. How many crew members on that movie killed themselves mid-shooting?
 
Tristam said:
More like people who misremembered or embellished the events it described. For most white Southerners, Reconstruction was nowhere near as terrible as the book or film make it out to be.

EDIT: BTW, Asian Jesus is awesome.
I absolutely agree. Their story still needs to be told.
 
Hitokage said:
While their story may need to be told, we don't need the whitewashing and romanticization.
How exactly do you whitewash Gone With The Wind? :P

I know what you're getting at, but it is what it is. I can accept Romeo and Juliet for what it is even though I'm not a fan of glorifiying suicide.
 
PantherLotus said:
For a second my selective dyslexia kicked in and I read:

"15 black people that hurt America"


I actually tried. :(

number 1 would have to be Rob Johnson... not only for BET but for the eye killing colors that his baketball team has...
 
Dead said:
reginald hudlin. lol.

What a hack.
Like, Black Panther writer Reginald Hudlin?

Mind blown.

P.S. the first doomwar issue was really good you should read it
 
PantherLotus said:
For a second my selective dyslexia kicked in and I read:

"15 black people that hurt America"


I actually tried. :(

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/black-folks-wed-remove-black-history

Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History

As happy as we are for the nation to get its yearly reminder that black people do exist in the context of American history, there’s a growing list of characters that has us harking back to Zora Neale Hurston’s famous words: “All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.” Indeed, while we love our own, we sure do dream of erasing a few of them from the history books. Some are politicos, others are pop culture figures, but they all share one common attribute: They’re embarrassing.

Here you go. Nothing says stupid like lumping in Idi Amin along with Soulja Boy.
 
The worst thing about Bebe's Kids is that will be the only exposure many people will have to Robin Harris. The man was hilarious. He was the proto-Bernie Mac.

Also as someone who's seen Song of the South, I have to say it nowhere near as bad as many people make it out to be. The movie isn't racist so much as it's dated, and Uncle Remus is pretty much the wisest person in the movie.
 
Pudding Tame said:
The worst thing about Bebe's Kids is that will be the only exposure many people will have to Robin Harris. The man was hilarious. He was the proto-Bernie Mac.

While i do like bebe's kids. I do agree with this. The man was comedy gold. But to be honest, if you've ever seen house party, then you catch him im action
 
I actually showed 'The Toy' to a friend of mine who is a few years younger than me and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was the first time I had watched it since I was a kid as well. I don't think I'll be watching it again :lol


The Green Mile was a good movie (never read the book) but Spike Lee was right on with the 'Magic Negro' comment. What the hell was up with that trend?
 
But The Toy is a remake of a french movie... There was no racist overtones in it. The original character was a regular joe who worked for a newspaper after being jobless for a long time. From what I recall, Pryor saw the movie and loved it, and thats how it ended up being made.
 
I think the more disturbing trend is when a film has no racial diversity at all, especially when it's in a setting that does.
 
SapientWolf said:
I think the more disturbing trend is when a film has no racial diversity at all, especially when it's in a setting that does.
This kind of weirded me out too. Like some movie I saw recently where some black family was at a shopping mall, and every single person who was also there was black. In the entire shopping mall. In the city.

I then realized that there is not a single black family in my entire neighborhood, and I can't really say I have a single black friend (currently). It's kind of depressing.
 
I would throw Bamboozled on that list if only because when viewing it in college (for a black history month event that I set up) it spawned "intellectual" talks (just pretentious spouting) between my schools black student group and the other non black students in attendance. As a person of mixed heritage, it made me want to vomit and strip Lee of his entitled position as a great director.

That was my first time seeing it and I saw it one more time after that. I still think its heavy handedness and even its supposed "satire within a satire" schtick is too over the top. No merit to it at all. Just him jerking himself off. God its awful.
 
Patrick Bateman said:
Also:

Legend_of_bagger_vance_ver2.jpg



Filmmaker Spike Lee said after seeing Bagger Vance, that the idea was now the "Super-Duper Magical Negro."[1] He said that it was just a reincarnation of "the same old" stereotype or caricature of African Americans as the "noble savage" or the "happy slave"[2][3] Time called it one of the most "embarrassing" films of recent years for its treatment of African Americans and the use of the Magical African-American Friend (MAAF)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Bagger_Vance#Reaction_.26_controversies
Yeah I cringed simply seeing the trailers for that movie back when it came out. They took the magical negro thing a bit too literally in this flick.
 
icarus-daedelus said:
Realistically speaking, wouldn't Jesus end up somewhere between black and [eastern] Asian, i.e. brown-skinned western Asian Jesus? Given the whole Palestine setting and all.
Naw dawg, he's white because Jesus represents all that is pure and good in this world.
 
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