]]>As hipster racism has become more widespread, it’s also crept into more general society. Racist content appears in films and television shows, disguised as “satire,” it’s on the cover of major magazines, it’s in the pages of respectable newspapers. While explicit racism is viewed as socially unacceptable, racism disguised as irony or satire is evidently perfectly acceptable, especially if it comes from middle class white people with trust funds. Indeed, I recently read a New York Times article in which the author suggested that people feel “relieved” when they are no longer “harassed by prevailing cultural sensitivities,” because apparently the idea of treating people with dignity or confronting your own racism is a burden. ]]>
Now in yellowface!
News With Nezua | The White Professional Anti-Racist from nezua on Vimeo.
]]>IN THIS ERA of shifting cultural demographics and a shrinking white population, some heroes are gettin’ paid to be the Enlightened Whites. Unfortunately, too often this means repeating oppressive power structures but under the guise of altruism.
]]>You know how it is. You’re enjoying yourself, kicking back and relaxing at the pub or maybe at the library; or maybe you’re in class or just casually surfing the internet, indulging in a little conversation. The topic of the conversation is about a pertinent contemporary issue, probably something to do with a group of people who fall outside your realm of experience and identity. They’re also probably fairly heavily discriminated against – or so they claim.
The thing is, you’re having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues. This knowledge is incontrovertible – it’s been backed up in media representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also your own unassailable sense of being right.
Yet all of a sudden something happens to put a dampener on your sharing of your enviable intellect and incomparable capacity to fully perceive and understand All Things. It’s someone who belongs to the group of people you’re discussing and they’re Not Very Happy with you. Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about that. They might be a person of colour, or a queer person. Maybe they’re a woman, or a person with disability. They could even be a trans person or a sex worker. The point is they’re trying to tell you they know better than you about their issues and you know that’s just plain wrong. How could you be wrong?
Don’t worry though! There IS something you can do to nip this potentially awkward and embarrassing situation in the bud. By simply derailing the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down inside!
Merry Christmas & God bless us bastards all!
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Scarlett Johansson interviewed by Bono in Harper’s Bazaar’s January 2010 issue.
Will they be talking about something charitable and worldly?
Sure.
Incisive and worthwhile?
Probably not.
Self-aggrandizing and oblivious to celebrity activists’ overweening refusal to acknowledge themselves as harbingers of the most insidious new brand of socioeconomic imperialism?
Most certainly.
(Read: this post, “Dead Aid: African Economists versus Bono & Other Rich White Western Dudes.”)
…You see in the time leading up to this coming election for president, you are going to meet somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 white girls telling you that you should vote for Obama for president.These young people will not necessarily have been interested in politics before, but they will be utterly convinced of one thing: Barack Obama is the man to lead our country…
Did you know that Obama once saved 16 Venezuelan children. And he smokes cigarettes just like us!I think he’s kinda hot. Don’t you?
A Beginner’s Guide to Hating Scarlett Johannson
]]>This isn’t the first time I’ve crossed swords with film geeks over the issue of Scarlett Johansson. Two years ago I wrote a negative review of the movie “Lost in Translation” and was described as “crude and reactionary” — a description so perfect it should be my mission statement.
Everybody I knew described this as a great movie, but I just didn’t get it — Bill Murray and ScarJo bumming around a Japanese hotel for two hours — a world full of smug, disaffected yuppies, sneering at everything and whining about loveless marriage.
The backlash from my friends was so bad, I bought a DVD and watched it 12 times, convinced that this was a great movie that I just wasn’t smart enough to understand. I watched it so much I made myself like it, kind of like G. Gordon Liddy training himself to eat rats
By the end of the weekend I was so confused I couldn’t even tell the difference between love and hate anymore. I was rescued by my friend Cynthia Rockwell who rose above the debate and taught me the real truth about film geeks. First, if your review is smart enough, you’re allowed to love things and hate them at the same time. And second, being a geek means never having to say you’re sorry.
Cynthia has her own reasons for hating Scarlett Johansson, and the characters she represents:
1) Whitey in Japan thinks whitey’s ways are right, Japan’s ways are crayzeee… come on people, there are ways to register difference, even radical difference, with more respect. Buffooning the Japanese in their own country is ignorant and prissy rich-white-egomania. Watch Sans Soleil to see how it’s done right.
2) Opening shot of Scarlett Johansson’s ass in see-through panties. What the fuck?
3) Rich bored people who have so much but don’t know what to do with it. If you want me to feel for them you can’t have them walk around feeling superior all the time. “I’m a rich bored princess who doesn’t have anyone treating me like a magical enigma anymore, I’m so sad. I want daddy.” Women are not magic, not enigmas. Magic and mystery can’t be sustained in a human being, and the stereotype keeps men wanting the ephemeral, the thing that DOES NOT EXIST.
…The friend I saw the movie with didn’t like the choice of actress, she said she was too young, that she couldn’t nail the part, she didn’t have the complexity. That a 19-year-old playing a 25-year-old was a bad move. You usually go the other direction in casting. Get a 28-year-old to play a 25-year-old. But the point here is that this girl is in some way still stuck being a little girl. An older actress would bring maturity, but the role does not want maturity. Maturity would ruin it.
And this leads into the daddyism. Bill Murray is not just a charismatic guy, he’s a daddy figure. A guy who treats her like his little girl. Makes a big deal out of the boo-boo on her foot, takes her to the hospital. Grabs the menu and orders for her when she can’t figure out the sushi menu. Gives her life advice.
This is a movie written by a daddy’s girl. Not surprising that in an interview Sofia Coppola said that her father starred in a Santori whiskey ad in Japan.