Indiegogo-Funded Satire Dear White People Heads to Theaters
- Thread starter MovieBob
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not to mention it looks utterly predictable. this trailer just had me cringing the whole time thinking to myself "so when is this supposed to get funny?" it's like national security with martin lawerence, cringe movie with absolutely no payoffjpz719 said:
It's not particularly important in the age of global capitalism, since the real "enemy" are the poor, not the poor of a particular race, but historically it's very important, especially since history has constructed the modern makeup of just WHO is poor today.Jandau said:
The Native Americans weren't exterminated because of their race, but because they weren't a part and didn't want to be a part of European civilization. So they were killed so that European settlers could live life the way they wanted.
For chattel slavery it's convenient that slaves were black - it makes them easily distinguishable from "white" people, but their primary value was their powerlessness - they were taken from poor African communities that lacked the military might necessary to put up much of a fight against the European and American imperialists and needless to say they didn't become more powerful on an entirely different continent with an established chattel slave system that they lacked all familiarity with.
If all people in the world had the same skin color there would still be exploitation, slavery, and genocide. These things aren't about race but the powerful increasing their wealth and control.
Racism is a system that private power used to structure itself, largely as a matter of convenience. As black people have discovered subsequent to the civil rights movement, the world hasn't gotten any better now that they've been allowed to exploit and dominate the world the same way Europeans have been doing for centuries. Whether a white guy like George W. Bush or a black guy like Barack Obama murders poor Middle Eastern people for increased political and economic control doesn't matter to the victims - they are dead either way. Trayvon Martin wouldn't prefer to be killed by a black guy than a white guy, he would prefer to still be alive.
The most serious conflict with a potential world-annihilating result in the history of the world was the Cold War, between mostly white people on both sides. Just like with "racism", "ideology" wasn't the source of the conflict. The Soviet Union was a mostly closed economy, not open to US and Western European capitalists. This was the problem. Because the economy was closed western capitalists couldn't make much money from the Soviet people.
It's the precise same conflict that two rival drug dealers have, fighting over the same turf. The Soviet and Eastern european population were immensely important economically - it's not the equivalent of some native tribe in the Amazon rainforest that only matters if the forest is profitable to logging companies. To Western capitalists, opening the Eastern European markets to their products was worth putting the existence of human life on earth at catastrophic perpetual risk. Worth it not just for them, but for a complicit American population willing to annihilate all human life for the sake of a 2nd television set for their living room. And Americans wonder why the world doesn't like them so much.
When the Cold War ended, the precise first thing that happened was the flooding of new Russia by Western capitalists - the time they had waited for for so long was finally here, causing such massive hard-ons that Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History" in celebration.
I'm not big on movies in general. people get mad at me because I don't "watch" movies, I listen to them while doing other things. I tend to re-watch them several times because of that.Fenrox Jackson said:
And no, I'm fairly certain my girlfriend would get mad at me if I suddenly became gay after nearly 5 years together lol.
Captcha: She loves him
Yes she does.
if a white people laughs at a joke about white people they "might" feel uncomforatable because its a joke at the "expense" of their "race" (I say might because in say OITNB there were jokes about white women and they were funny as hell and I didn't feel bad/defensive about it at all)Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
what I'm saying is...it makes us uncomforable to be Adressed as "dear white people", to be put under the microscpe like that, BUT my point is I think people get overly defensive and make lame claims to their own "opression" which doesn't help anyone
I think the point of this movie is to make some white people a little uncomfortable (again not everyone will get defensive) because mabye some of them get too "comfortable" in thier "progressivness" they think because they aren't going to Klan meetings and not usuing he N-word that nothing they do could remotly be considered..."somewhat racist" again thats just an interpretation on my part
nope, I'm not blackLightknight said:
anyway this isn't a "white people are evil racists" movie, the fact that you imedietly jumped on the defensive like that is part of the problem
[quote/]Saying that black people can't be racist is hilariously racist. I'll have to see the movie to see if that's actually a tenet it abides by or is a joke.[/quote]
oh come on give the film makers a little credit here....it was clearly framed as a rediculous statement on her part, I get the impression the girl is a little too rightous even though she has some points....do I disagree with her methods? I'm not sure
I can actually see this. People do tend to get complacent and complacency is indeed a bad thing in the general sense. Especially so for race.Vault101 said:
Still, I can't help but feel like the title will do more harm than good. It sets a certain tone that will make a lot of people not even consider the movie and instead draw in only those that already agree with the message for one big racial circlejerk. Hell, I was one of them. Instead of feeling uncomfortable when seeing the title, I only had the urge to dismiss it as Tumblr produced drivel. The type of movie where the idea that Gremlins is racist is actually used in a serious light rather than as a way to show two sides of the issue and illustrate the idea that sometimes people can get caught up in trivial shit that's clearly wrong.
The trailer shows otherwise and seems to be a pretty intelligent and complex movie with some decent points to make.
So overall, using "Dear White People" as a title just paints the wrong picture of the movie with relatively little gained in return.
I'm split here....Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
because I think that is also the same as (what I think) the movie is saying
is the "in your face" method harmful or effective? I don't know because on the one hand people turn away if they feel "threatand" on the OTHER hand I roll my eyes at the call to be "nicer" to "pander" to certain peoples sensibilities, and even then if youre constantly trying to appeal to certain veiwpoints (some of which arent worth the time of day) then your not going to encourage them to actually look at themsevles, somtimes they wont eather way
No, they don't. To the point that even if you drop OOC for a moment to introduce the thing as being satire before you go into it, it'll still suddenly not be satire if the reader/viewer is specifically against eating babies and looking to declare you genuinely pro Irish infant pot roast.Nuxxy said:
Ok, wouldn't have made a difference if you were. I just didn't want to assume without that qualification.Vault101 said:
Oh? Me being offended by the topic is part of the problem? How? Tell me, what person is my taking offense harming? As long as I'm not personally being a racist dick the how is that part of it? I prefaced several times that if this movie is hammering in that white people are still racist then it's an unethical movie, but if it's just that racism still exists in general and not that being white automatically makes a person a member of the KKK then it could be a truly enjoyable movie.
But what a smarmy phrase of bullshit that people keep repeating. "You're offended?! Well you're part of the problem". That's ridiculous. If a person is offended because they get called out on doing something racist then they're part of the problem. If a person gets offended because they feel like people are being racist against them then seriously, screw people calling them part of the problem.
Was it framed as a ridiculous statement? Sounded like the writers had her reading a definition that they construed as accurate. Again, as I prefaced in my statement I'll need to see the movie to know for sure. The thing is, I've had what she said presented as a real argument. That the black guy mocking me for being white isn't being racist because he's black. That's a totally erroneous and racist belief.
The thing is, the movie has a potential to go either way and I don't know enough about the makers to know. It could be a hilarious must-see or horribly offensive "all people are clan members" propaganda. Maybe both. But why should my default position be that this movie will absolutely be fine? People are going to have to accept that our generation (30 years old or younger) just didn't grow up with that shit. Our classmates were veritable rainbows of the human species and we don't deserve to be thrown into the same box our grandparents made by belonging to the time and culture they did. Are members of our generation racist? Sure. But that's not a commentary on our generation's culture so much as a commentary on those individuals at this point. Next few generations will see that all but die out hopefully.