He gets a little outrage from his guests and he doubles down:
I'm just honest. They are. They don't want to see black people, generally, in their movies. And Hollywood executives are like, 'we're not racist, we just have to pretend we're racists because we're capitalists.' We want to sell our movie in China, so they don't like Kevin Hart.Later — skip ahead to 6:00 — Maher says changes the subject to politics with the assertion "Donald Trump is largely a result of a backlash to political correctness." His guest Seth MacFarlane paraphrases somebody — "Since humanity began, we've always hungered for a buffoon to lead us."
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109 comments:
Everyone knows only whites can be racist.
Maher is one of those guys who is presented as being smart with an interesting POV.
He is neither. He is a failed stand up comic and failed C-movie comic. Check him out sometime in 1989's Cannibal Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death .
The Chinese I've met are fascinated by American Blacks. They think Chris Rock is a God.
You know, in a society that wasn't racist, black actors in Hollywood movies would be roughly proportional to the percentage of black people in American society. I see a lot of black people on the screen. I actually think hispanic people are underrepresented. But his whole thesis, that our movies are too white, seems weird to me.
It's also idiotic to assume that racist people in Asia like white people. Why would you assume that, dummy? If Maher's thesis had any validity, Hollywood movies would have lots and lots of Asian-Americans in major roles. And yet, where are they?
(Studying to be a doctor, duh).
"Since humanity began, we've always hungered for a buffoon to lead us."
The 2008 & 2012 elections prove his point.
I like Maher's realty based point of view more than I hate it at other times. But for Hollywood liberals his reality based point of view must be a dangerous kryptonite. He better laugh when he says it. He walks a high wire act.
If you travel enough internationally, spend time overseas, it becomes pretty clear that the black part of our culture is what really defines it, gives it cachet, and marks it as different from other European cultures. That and Elvis. Maybe Elvis is not so big anymore overseas, I don't travel like I did much anymore. I never spent time in Asia either, so I can't speak to that. I just think that anybody who thinks that American culture as projected overseas is totally whitewashed doesn't get out much.
Terry, you are spot on. I have never, repeat never, understood the Maher attraction. A no talent individual who sneers for a living.
If you've ever worked in video or film, you know this...
It's far easier to do the lighting for a light skinned face. The darker the skin, the more problems in the lighting setup. Takes a lot more light, much more cleverly placed.
There's a reason for the preference for light skinned blonde haired women in the modeling biz.
Sometimes, these things are actually determined by the physical realities, not by ideology.
That said, there is a worldwide popular preference for lighter skin.
The reason Obama's mother sent him to live with the grandparents in Hawaii, was because if he had stayed in Indonesia, the best job he would of ever had, would be cleaning toilets.
Maher was funny before he became political. His act was mostly sexist and politically incorrect - hence the original title of his show.
At the very end, Maher claims we've never tried left-wing politics? So, we have to have that final election where we vote in a full marxist socialist agenda and then never vote again for years while the marxist socialists take control of everything? I can't wait.
ST, I have pictures of blacks that I was in the service with, and some times you cannot make out their facial features especially if the picture was taken indoors.
The lighting for anything has to be right. It's absurd to defend race discrimination on the ground that it's harder to light dark-skinned actors. It may require brighter light, but how much harder is brighter? Might as well defend race discrimination on the basis of keeping a smaller carbon footprint.
On sheer aesthetics of light and dark, you have to use different ideas when the subject is dark than when the subject is light. On a very dark subject (a person or an object to be painted or photographed), you see the shape of the light more than the shape of the shadow. If you've ever done drawings with white pencil/crayon on black paper, you know that you look at the subject a different way.
If the cinematographers are artists, they would have very good ideas in this area.
Homely, boring people are under-represented in the movies, especially in major,positive roles.
It's mundanophobia.
Asians are racists, just like most people. Japan, China, and South Korea don't really allow any immigration. Not even white folks. Globalism and multiculturalism is a Western Europe and American phenomenon.
The lighting for anything has to be right. It's absurd to defend race discrimination on the ground that it's harder to light dark-skinned actors.
Wasn't "defending" anything. I was stating reality, which you apparently don't like in this case. Takes a peculiar mindset to assume I was "defending" something.
You're also assuming cost based on contemporary tech that you are familiar with. The digital age has made additional lighting very cheap and easily portable. Not so in the past.
In any technology, people always start by doing what is cheapest and easiest to do. That's not discrimination.
Well, I take that back.
Starting with what is cheapest and easiest in the tech of any era is discrimination.
As in, discriminating what is the best thing to do in the given situation given cost and effort required.
Discriminating is, more often than not, a sign of intelligence.
I often have a similar conversation with people about tech and porn.
Porn has led the way in the development of every technology, CD-ROM, Internet and virtual reality, that I worked in.
People tell me that this is a morally bad thing quite often... But, what does that have to do with anything?
Back in beginning of the dot-com era, start-ups struggled to find "original content" that would pay back its development costs. We tried everything and blew 100s of millions of dollars. Porn was the only thing that worked. The content was cheap to produce and there was a ready and eager market.
So, yeah, on a moral level, that's not such a great thing. But the very tech that makes your weblog work was mostly pioneered by the porn industry. Because the porn developers had the money for the tech development.
I used to read The Economist in the 80s. I recall the magazine stating that the Chinese were so racist they didn't even know they were racist. But against all ethnic groups except Chinese. Still, they probably have a hierarchy of racial animosity, which was not explained by the magazine.
Quick! When was the last time an Hispanic won an Oscar for Best Actor?
A) 2010
B) 2000
C) 1990
D) 1950
E) Never
If you guessed D, you would be right. Of course the Hispanic population in the US continues to dwindle.
So, because I took pictures of black friends with a cheap camera and I didn't use the proper lighting makes me a racist because the darker faces aren't defined?
Shouting Thomas, you sound a lot like you're saying "I'm not racist, they really *are* like that", which is like Page One from the big book of racist apologia.
**********
Maher is right, though. Remember the Sony email release? One of the emails was a producer pointing out that The Equalizer tanked overseas because nobody outside the US wanted to see black people headlining a movie.
I thought the number of black actors winning awards in the top four acting categories since 1995 was proportional to the general population. Doesn't that make the whole issue rather moot? Not to mention more BS.
It's not a backlash to political correctness. It's that political correctness edits all public debates, and our problems can't be attacked unless that ends, which Trump is showing how to do.
Once PC is driven out of the news and back to soap opera where it belongs, we can start solving stuff.
Trump is a necessary first step. One hopes he'll learn on the job once that's arranged.
Richard Epstein hates Trump, apparently not seeing the first step, or the self-deprecation in Trump's larger than life persona.
Epstein is great on big picture causes but lacks skill in lit. crit.
hlojones-fan
You're mistaken in thinking I give a fuck, asshole.
In case you haven't noticed, the day of the low life stooge and denunciation artist (like you) is coming to an end. Trump is winning.
Lowlife pieces of shit like you might want to start getting the message.
Next up will be destroying you. We're all tired of assholes like you. Now that the denunciation tactic is failing, you might want to start planning on changing sides and disguising your past involvement as a stooge and informant.
We're in the early stages of a war that is turning against you. You are going to be the one ripped to shreds. Take a hint, shithead, while there's still time.
No, that's not the reason. Because they keep hiring Kevin Hart. If they didn't want blacks in Hollywood because Asians hate blacks there wouldn't be a Ride Along 1 or 2.
No, the reason there aren't a lot of blacks in Hollywood is simple. And its the same reason why most of these diversity arguments are complete bunk.
The reason is blacks only make up 12% of the population. And acting is a very specific craft/profession that very few people get into anyway. There are simply not that many blacks going to school to become actors.
But think of how many have made it. Hollywood does not appear to be denying blacks access.
If we were living in India, how many WHITES would be in the Bollywood system? Is that RACISM? No, there just aren't a lot of white people in in india. And if there are, they arent' going into acting.
Humperdinck wrote:
Quick! When was the last time an Hispanic won an Oscar for Best Actor?
Q: If the 2016 GOP convention nominates Ted Cruz for prez, and Marco Rubio for VP, how many Hispanics are on the GOP presidential ticket?
A: None, and you're a racist.
"[Seth MacFarlane] is the creator of the TV series Family Guy, co-creator of the TV series American Dad! and The Cleveland Show (2009–13), "
Those 'toons often came on following "King of the Hill" and we couldn't turn them off fast enough. Can't stand Maher, either.
"Porn was the only thing that worked. The content was cheap to produce and there was a ready and eager market."
That was certainly true of the entrepreneurs of the internet. The first model that actually produced a profit was porn. I remember some discussion of a couple of women who set up their own operation and made quite a bit of money. Since I don't keep up with it, I'm not up to date but it was the early model of making money on the internet.
It went from Hollywood is racist because blacks aren't winning Oscars, to Hollywood is racist because its deliberately not hiring blacks?
Since when was that proven? That's simply not the case.
Tyler Perry makes movies after movie with mostly only black people there was the WIB network that had nothing black shows. They were mostly shitty, but that doesn't change the fact that they were made.
I was watching Viola Davis when she made her obnoxious emmy winning speech. "You cannot win awards for roles that are simply not there"
and then I saw a Law and Order episode where Viola Davis played a lawyer. And I realized I've seen her in parts for decades. she's been working A LOT.
She won a tony in 2001 and a Tony in 2010 for best actress.
In 2008 she was nominated for a best supporting actress for the movie Doubt. She was nominated again for The Help in 2011.
Are blacks telling us that in 4 years Hollywood simply became the home of the klan?
Golden Globes - Viola Davis was nominated in 2016, 2015, 2012, and 2009.
Look at her IMDB page and check out how many acting credits she has to her name http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0205626/?ref_=nmawd_awd_nm.
Does that strike you as a lack of access to Hollywood?
And she's not even traditionally beautiful in the Hollywood mold. If you want to know why she isn't up for best actors its because generally Hollywood is very narcisstic, and makes movies with hot young stars. She doesn't fit that mold so ends up doing the character parts. And that has been really good for her, and paid really.
If you don't think Asians are racist, take a look at Japanese anime sometime. Start counting the number of characters with Caucasian features compared to stereotypical Japanese or black features.
Watch enough anime and you will become convinced that the Japanese basicially idolize America and the west. Also, they HATE Koreans. (There is an anime about the Go board game, the evil Koreans are drawn with pronounced Asian features while the good guy Japanese have lighter hair and more Caucasian features.)
The dirty little secret is that pretty much every culture except white westerners is openly racist, and see it as perfectly normal. What I've heard is that to the Japanese, Americans come second only to their own race, and are valued above Koreans and Chinese to them.
FP: On ghetto racism, can you tell us more about how Asians come in contact with it and how you yourself have experienced it?
"YM: It is quite common for Asians who are in America’s major urban centers to be at the receiving end of racism. For me growing up in Oakland, encountering racism from blacks, and to a lesser extent, Hispanics, was a regular phenomenon, and a daily occurrence in junior high and high school. Asian people—Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or Filipino—are frequently berated as “Chinamen” and threatened or attacked physically. While Asians certainly are not immune to racist attitudes themselves—one would be hard pressed to find an older Asian immigrant who would be thrilled if his daughter brought home a black man, Asians usually keep their attitudes private. This does not make the racist attitudes any less unfortunate (and these attitudes do improve over time, especially with younger Asians who grow up in this country), but they are clearly distinguishable from the very public and often physical humiliations that other racial minorities regularly inflict on Asians. For instance, rarely would you see Asians screaming racial epithets at black people in public places, or threatening to inflict, or actually inflicting, bodily harm against someone because he is black."
+
A Mexican girl had gotten right in my face, and I could see her spit flying as she threatened, “You stupid Chinese bitch, I’m going to kick your ass!”
Compare the posters for the new Star Wars movie that were printed in the US versus the ones printed in Japan.
Why don't we skip the discrimination bull shit and get down to genocide, nobody does it better than Africa.
Why doesn't anyone complain about the lack of non-homosexual male Oscar winners? I know that some male Hollywood actors self identify as heterosexual, but they were all rent boys at one time in their careers, weren't they?
Or do I have the wrong idea about how Hollywood works?
TCom wrote:
"to the Japanese, Americans come second only to their own race, valued above Koreans and Chinese to them."
Yeah -- for food stock!!
Was that racist?
the Japanese basicially idolize America and the west. Also, they HATE Koreans.
The Japanese/Korean thing is real, and is really ironic, since their are genetically virtually identical. It goes back to the Japanese conquest/occupation of Korea. It was pretty brutal.
The dirty little secret is that pretty much every culture except white westerners is openly racist, and see it as perfectly normal
This, though I would modify "racist" to "tribal". Witness the atrocity in Rwanda, in which people indistinguishable to everyone else, slaughtered each other wholesale because they belonged to separate tribes.
"the day of the low life stooge and denunciation artist (like you) is coming to an end. Trump is winning."
The king is dead. Long live the king.
OK, so Bill Maher - whoever that is - is the final arbiter of who is/not a racist. Good to know.
God! I am sick of all these people, on the left and on the right.
Stick to my HGTV shows and forget that these mfers exist.
I have yet to hear anyone other than Will Smith come forward and say "that Will Smith acting job was really first rate and deserves an Oscar so why is it being suppressed?" As it stands, the whole thing still sounds like whining by another "overlooked" actor.
Terry expounded:
"Q: If the 2016 GOP convention nominates Ted Cruz for prez, and Marco Rubio for VP, how many Hispanics are on the GOP presidential ticket?
A: None, and you're a racist."
I disagree. Cruz is a Canadian, whose father was Cuban, and his father was born in the Canary Islands. That would make him Canadian-Cuba-Canary. Has a nice ring to it.
@chickelit, Obama showed them all how to whine.. that is his gift and only gift to Black people in this country. Black lives matter is the worst of this trend. Affirmative action and legal protection are not enough. General protest and building awareness and winning acclamation through merit are not enough. They want quotas and guarantees.
" It goes back to the Japanese conquest/occupation of Korea. It was pretty brutal."
There is also a theory that Japan was originally settled by Koreans who displaced the aboriginals, the Ainu.
Mark J. Hudson, Professor of Anthropology at Nishikyushu University, Kanzaki, Saga, Japan, said Japan was settled by a "Proto-Mongoloid" population in the Pleistocene who became the Jōmon and their features can be seen in the Ainu and Okinawan people.[40]
In 1893, Anthropologist Arnold Henry Savage Landor described the Ainu as having deep-set eyes and an eye shape typical of Europeans, with a large and prominent browridge, large ears, hairy and prone to baldness, slightly flattened hook nose with large and broad nostrils, prominent cheek bones, large mouth and thick lips and a long region from nose to mouth and small chin region.[41]
Omoto has also shown that the Ainu are Mongoloid, and not Caucasoid, on the basis of fingerprints and dental morphology.[42]
Genetic testing has shown them to belong mainly to Y-haplogroup D-M55.[43] Y-DNA haplogroup D2 is found frequently throughout the Japanese Archipelago including Okinawa. The only places outside Japan in which Y-haplogroup D is common are Tibet and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.[44]
It's an interesting story, now augmented by genetics.
Maher is an idiot. That's all you need to know.
Movies and television need to have some aspects of reality and logic even though the enterprise of entertainment is fantasy and fiction. Sci fi exempted....anything goes there.
Forcing 'diversity' and having a forced quota of black or any other race or ethnicity of actor can often ruin the experience of the movie. The insistence of making a certain character be black or forcing the black experience a part of the plot can be jarring especially in an historically based movie.
You don't make Wuthering Heights and have one of the "main" characters be black. It just isn't historically accurate. Like it or not. You don't make Zaka Zulu and throw in a Chinese homosexual as a major character. That would be jarring, irrelevant and distracting to the story. Shakespeare didn't include many black characters because that is the historical reality of the times in which he was writing. It isn't racist to NOT include plot elements and characters that just do not belong in the story. James Bond is NOT a black man.
Other movies and shows, where it is a logical part of the plot development, it makes sense and is good writing to include black characters, gay characters or any other ethnic characters. There are many examples of movies where the main characters are black.....The Color Purple for example. Many contemporary cop shows, contemporary dramas also legitimately have diverse casts because this is the reality of our lives.
The main issue for me is that I want to be entertained not preached at or lectured at by the clumsy, inappropriate and out of place insertion of forced diversity in the middle of a movie or show. It is more than annoying and literally ruins the experience of the movie.
I am a blue-eyed American. During lunch with me in Singapore almost 30 years ago, an ethnic Chinese businessman said, "I hate black people."
"How can you hate black people?" I asked. "Bill Cosby's show is your favorite TV show."
"Bill Cosby isn't black," he said. "He's African."
"What color are Africans?" I asked.
"Brown," he answered.
"Where do black people live?" I asked.
"India," he said.
---
Remember when groups of African Americans held protests about Little Black Sambo years ago? Sambo wasn't African. He lived in South India. There are no wild tigers in Africa.
One of my favorite black people is Vijay Singh.
Vijay's a good man, but for pure skill in navigating the racial waters, Rachel Dolezal wins hands down. Or is "Hands Up"? I get confused easily.
Conversations about race are always insane. We're talking about skin color. Pigment! I'm not wholly immune to the race obsessions of my culture. I am in my culture. But part of my brain knows that it's like our society is going on and on and on about left-handed people and right-handed people. Shut up. All of us.
The reason we talk about race, by the way, is that we like fights and fighting. It excites us. It's sport. That's why we are having these stupid conversations. It's as stupid as that.
And our government divides us on the census for the purpose of creating racial divisions. I wish one of our Republicans would call for an end to the racist census. That would be awesome.
Humperdink
I believe the winner was jose ferrer for cyrano.
Puerto Rican.
Hispanic too, but mainly Puerto Rican. Please don't lump him with Mexicans cubans etc. Fine people all.
But not Puerto Rican.
John henry
even if there are a lot of racist Japanese, Hollywood sends its movies out to multiple markets. Ride along is a TERRIBLE movie. But it has black actors in the lead. I don't know how it did in Japan. It did pretty well elsewhere. necessitating Ride Along 2.
Which, I'd bet is even worse.
I'm sure then that Hollywood doesn't not hire blacks becasuse Japanese people don't like them.
and does any black person think Kevin James or Ice Cube should have been nominated for best actor for Ride Along?
Why aren't more blacks nominated for best actor? Because when they go out for parts, they take stuff like Ride Along instead of stuff like Selma. 90% of black actors are in crappy movies, every year. you then have a pool of 10% actors doing substantial work where the academy would even give them a glance come nomination time.
There is no racism going on here. But if Maher wants to present his liberal buddies in Hollywood as virulent racists, I'll happily go along. Affleck, what a racist.
How many blacks were in movies he directed, for example. Was any black a lead? Nope.
RACISM.
Basically, Hollywood has become totally racist in the Obama Years.
Wasn't like that during W's presidency:
2001: Halle "Monster's Ball" and Denzel "Training Day"
2004: Jamie "Ray"
2006: Forest "Last King of Scotland".
--
2009-2016: *crickets*.
The reason we talk about race, by the way, is that we like fights and fighting. It excites us. It's sport. That's why we are having these stupid conversations. It's as stupid as that.
And our government divides us on the census for the purpose of creating racial divisions. I wish one of our Republicans would call for an end to the racist census. That would be awesome.
------------
Hear! Hear!
On another note, I didn't know who Vijay Singh was. So I looked it up.. His wiki says he is Fijian and of course, by his name I recognize he is of Indian origin. These motherfucking Indians are everywhere!
@furious_a:
Brilliant! (and ouch)
No country in history has done a better job of integrating people into a common culture than America.No country ever has, or ever will. People from different cultures, races, religions have come to this country to become Americans.
They have in common a love of freedom, willingness to work insanely hard at their jobs, and the desire to be left alone to do so.
There is no country in the world like this one. You can come here and become an American. you cannot do that anywhere else. No other country does it the way we do it. not even close.
We are now watching many people in this country striving to divide us into the smallest possible component-based on income or race or religion or sexuality. It is a fools errand. Hollywood,Academia ,Democrats, and many republicans all support and encourage such nonsense.
Actively promoting tribal warfare, and then feigning surprise when it happens.
We started this country based on an idea, not an ideology. It has never been done like this before.
Freedom. If it dies here, it dies everywhere. It is that simple and that complicated.
Weird argument.
Still, its true re Asian preferences. Yes we are racist.
It's even more true re Hispanic and Asian representation, though arguable that there are very few Asians in the US film/entertainment industries anyway.
The Hispanic situation is curious though. Back in the 1930s-60s there were plenty of big time hispanic actors. Something changed I think. There was also a fashion for genuine Latin/Hispanic music that's gone now. Maybe it was the long-term consequence of the Cuban revolution.
From my Asian (Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Viet/Lao/Khmer) friends and acquaintances in the Bay Area, most prevalent among their parents and grandparents:
In the public schools, the Asian kids had the most trouble with black kids (getting jumped, robbed). That's why you see Asian kids traveling in groups of five-six or more, safety in numbers. They never complained about trouble with Hispanic or Samoan/Tongan kids. They embraced hip-hop fashion/music because it was cool but not the community behind it because those kids were beating them up in school.
The Asian social hierarchy sorts itself by skin color, the lighter-skinned (Chinese, Japanese) looking down on the darker-skinned (Korean, Filipinos, Viets, Mongols, Uighurs) as bumpkins, peasants, bandits/barbarians, household help, day labor, etc. The "down market" ethnicities return the favor by turning on their resident (and relatively more prosperous) ethnic Chinese minorities from time-to-time (Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia).
@Jim, you have it exactly right. In fact I am of Indian origin and I came here in the 80s looking for intellectual pursuits and found it. I didn't come here with the intention of immigrating but now that my career and work life is so intertwined that I can't go back. My husband and I lived in Europe for couple of years before coming here and there was absolutely no way that we would have settle down there. In fact we went back to India with the intention of settling down but were bored out of our minds and we came here and that was 1988. I have accomplished so much here and all on merit. But there is a fear that America is (no longer?) special. That sense is eroding. And to add to it, India has come a long way from the 80s and if we were there in our 20s now, we would never have left.
The division is mostly happening on the Democrat side and the liberal left which includes the media. The opposition and the right has been cowed down and they don't know how to react. Very disturbing.
Filipinos have also always disliked the Chinese, or there has always been the possibility of violence. When times get bad and law and order break down the Chinese often suffer. I recall an old saying that a Chinese could not sleep in Batangas (province), because he would not wake up again; this was from the 1930s. During the Revolution and "Philippine Insurrection", as well as in WWII, Chinese were often murdered by "patriots". There is still a folk prejudice against Chinese much like modern antisemitism.
Back in the parents/grandparents' day, it was Irish and (especially) Italian kids throwing rocks and garbage at them as they walked/ran to Galileo High School from Chinatown -- the Chinese kids had to pass through North Beach on their way.
Now there are Chinese establishments on the north side of Broadway@Columbus and encroaching from Stockton and Montgomery. And at St. Patrick's near Yerba Buena the white saints in the stained glass gaze down upon Filipino and Chinese parishioners.
So if Maher is right, where are all the Asian actors?
And while we're at it, what about some diversity in the Studio Execs. I'll believe in Hollywood's love of minorities when we have some black, asian, or even white conservative studio heads.
And of course, the idea that you can lump 3 billion people into one category is dumb.
But we're talking about bill maher. So that's expected.
Filipinos have also always disliked the Chinese
I'd read that Corazon Aquino's maiden name was "Cojuangco" which was changed from "Ko Hwan Ko" which enabled the family to fit in better.
buwaya puti noted...The Hispanic situation is curious though. Back in the 1930s-60s there were plenty of big time hispanic actors. Something changed I think. There was also a fashion for genuine Latin/Hispanic music that's gone now. Maybe it was the long-term consequence of the Cuban revolution.
Carlos Santana got the hippie's hips moving. But that too faded with time.
So if Maher is right, where are all the Asian actors?
Making movies for the Asian markets, where Bollywood and Hong Kong serve far larger viewing audiences.
"does any black person think Kevin James or Ice Cube should have been nominated for best actor for Ride Along?"
I don't know about "Ride Along" but the "Barbershop" movies were great and I liked Ice Cube a lot in them. Sort of a conservative take on the poor guy trying to run a small business. What is more conservative than that ?
The great Cuban actors were descendants of Spain's Catalonian Ruling class Assigned to Empire Headquarters in Havanna. Sonia's Puerto Rico is the same. The Caribbean natives there were eliminated400 years ago. These are sophisticated guys like Cruz and Rubio demonstrate.
But most of the Hispanic immigrants today are coming in from Mexico and Central America where a few Spanish Conquistador descendants still run things and stay home in luxory. The rest who flee from Mexico's peasant poverty are the descendants of the Aztecs and Mayas that survived 400 years of the Catholic Spanish slavery system used over them there.
Of course, I'm an old white guy who remembers when I used to shoot pool in an all black bar in Chicago in the 50s.
I wouldn't dare try that now.
On a related note, I hope Viola Davis crushes it as Amanda Waller. There are villains, there are heroes following a wrong cause, there are true believers. But cold, calculating pragmatism of Amanda Waller is one if the most evil things I've seen.
"does any black person think Kevin James or Ice Cube should have been nominated for best actor for Ride Along?"
Different year and Ice Cube movie and I'm not black, but...that Chris Tucker was not nominated for "Friday" was a crime against cinema. He was a scream.
@eddie willers
I had to look up Custer's last words.. and BTW, I am Indian, the other sort.
Jim @ 12:56:
Outstanding.
John Henry said:
"I believe the winner was jose ferrer for cyrano.
Puerto Rican.
Hispanic too, but mainly Puerto Rican. Please don't lump him with Mexicans cubans etc. Fine people all.
But not Puerto Rican."
Correct on Ferrer. It's funny how the MSM thinks they (Hispanics) are all lumped into a nice, tidy voting block.
Our evangelical church is 20% Puerto Rican. It is a growing demographic in our area of upstate NY. So much so, we have hired a PR associate pastor and live translate the message via headphones. I do not think they will vote with the perceived Hispanic block.
Where upstate, Humperdink?
I was born in ticonderoga
Cojuangco is an example of many mestizo-Chinese families and the Filipinized name is typical - Uytengsu, Lichauco, etc. There has been intense intermarriage between Chinese and Filipinos in spite of prejudice, and there is plenty of Chinese blood in the Filipino upper classes. She is not the first mestizo-Chinese President either, as the very first, Emilio Aguinaldo, was one also. Sergio Osmena, Quezons successor was another, on his mother's side a Suico - Sui Ko.
Interestingly the Chinese mixture came in waves, and the earlier assimilated waves often had the most prejudice against the current Chinese. One would see such people supporting Chinese exclusion legislation such as Republic Act 1180 which sought to ban Chinese nationals from retail trade.
The world is messy.
Thanks, buwaya.
Spain's ruling class was never Catalan.
There was and is a powerful Catalan bourgeoise due to the relatively advanced Catalan economy (which has fallen behind), but they were not alone, as the Basques were more influential yet, holding the bigger banks.
Going back further the Spanish aristocracy wasn't Catalan.
And in colonial times all colonial trade ran through Andalusia.
Cuban immigrants from Spain are disproportionately from the poorer parts like Galicia (Fidel Castro's father), Andalusia, Leon, etc. Cruz's grandfather is from the Canaries, yet another poor place that sent many immigrants.
I lost all respect for the Oscars the year that Val Kilmer failed to win for his portrayal of Doc Holiday.
Fair skin is commonly associated with a leisure or nobility class. The global hegemony by fair skinned people from different geographical regions reinforces this perception. It is logical that people will find traits correlated with a higher quality of life and social status appealing to their personal hopes and dreams.
I mean, I'll give you Martin Landau, Samuel Jackson and Gary Sinise were worth nominating....but Chazz Palmenteri and Paul Scofield? And Kilmer's performance was much better than Landau's.
And I'm not a Kilmer fanboy....this is really the only role I've enjoyed him in. They should have done a spin off movie.
I got to agree. Kilmer in Tombstone was just amazing. Without him in that role, the movie would have been so-so. I think its become a classic now, in no small part to his iconic portrayal of Doc Holiday. Fantastic quotes from that movie. "I'm your huckleberry" just one of many.
Remember the Sony email release? One of the emails was a producer pointing out that The Equalizer tanked overseas because nobody outside the US wanted to see black people headlining a movie
A lot easier to blame the audience than to blame the quality of the movie.
(Written as someone who sees few movies)
"Remember the Sony email release? One of the emails was a producer pointing out that The Equalizer tanked overseas because nobody outside the US wanted to see black people headlining a movie"
And yet more movies with African americans were put out since then. This suggests that Hollywood puts out said movies anyway.
I will note that the box office for Ride Along WAS much lower than the home box office. So, it may be true that in some cases movies with black actors don't do as well. But is it because they have black actors or because they suck? Like Ride along.
In any case Ride along did boffo box office in the States, so what do they care if they dont' make that much money overseas.
I liked Kilmer in Tombstone and in Top Gun. He has gotten weird since them.
Since humanity began, we've always hungered for a buffoon to lead us.
The Left are talking about Trump just like they used to talk about Reagan.
I smell fear, don't you?
@Quaestor: Screeds like Gil Scott-Heron's B-Movie write themselves, don't they?
@Quaestor: Man, I could imagine doing a "B-Movie" update parody as a chirbit. I'd need to get that backing music w/o the voice over.
Star Wars is going to make over $200M in China and Japan. Isn't one of the lead characters in Star Wars black?
If Asians were this RAAAAACIST!!!, then how is this possible?
Maybe Maher is trying to cram the Racism Round Peg into the Reality Square Hole.
Also, SW is the highest domestic grossing movie of all time. But it would make even more if it wasn't for all those racist honkys in Flyover Country.
You have to kind of feel badly for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Their extortion schtick is almost at an end. Hope they stashed away plenty of $$$ in their 401-Ks and IRAs.
@chickelit
Here's the music w/o the vocals. It's not perfect but extracted audio from YouTube is very muzzed.
B-Movie w/o vocals
Harry Reid said that it was difficult to find black actors who knew how to enunciate the words properly.........Shakespeare is its own place. It's not particularly jarring to see black actors in various roles. All of the female roles were written by Shakespeare for transgendered men so he was ahead of his time on that score.........They will whisper and say that the next black actor to win an Academy Award is an affirmative action hire, but in public everyone will over praise and say that it's the greatest performance since Olivier--and that will serve to give substance to the whispers.......It's a stupid debate. If you're extremely good looking, make lots of money and walk the red carpet in couture clothes, you've got far more blessings to count than the rest of us. I don't have vast reserves of pity for movie stars. Except for Jennifer Lawrence. I think it's a disgrace that she doesn't make as much money as her male costars. I hope Hillary speaks out on this national disgrace. You know what would be neat: If Hillary doused herself with gasoline and set herself afire on the Hollywood walk of fame. That would really draw attention to the salary imbalance in Hollywood
What needs to be understood is that there may be a bias, but not necessarily a prejudice, which is mitigated through casting, story, etc. It was clearer before the establishment, promotion, and exploitation of class-based systems (e.g. class diversity, congruences).
I'll tell you a little anecdote about China. A neighborhood private English language school in Shenzhen was looking for English teachers to teach grade school students. The school only wanted to hire "native English" speakers. My wife (who briefly taught at this school) suggested an American graduate student here - a black student who had come to China to study business. This grad student was a native American with flawless English. The school wouldn't even consider hiring her - it said the Chinese parents would never accept her as a native English speaker. Instead, the school hired one of the many Russian immigrants here who falsely claimed to be from the Russian community in Brighton Beach in NYC and whose English was quite accented. Draw your own conclusions.
I just noticed that William is giving Laslo a run for his money. I'm still wiping the coffee off my laptop.
chickelit's 10:46 nailed it.
I first heard about this last week, when Jada Pinkett-Smith came on and started in on the whole "EVERYONE IS RACIST" thing. I thought maybe it was a career move on her part, until I heard that Will Smith had been passed over for "Concussion".
The Brits have a saying: "The penny's dropped". That was the moment for me.
The press is trying to make this all about RAAAAACISM!!1!!!eleventy!!, but it's pretty clear this is about Will Smith trying to finish off his career with a gold statue on his mantle. He's done everything else: records, TV, movies. All he needs now is justification, and if he doesn't get it, then RAAAAACISM must be the reason.
lulz
I've been to Japan. Racist AND sexist.
William:
"All of the female roles were written by Shakespeare for transgendered men so he was ahead of his time on that score."
No they weren't. They were written for actors who dressed in women's clothes because women didn't participate in theater in England at that time. They were certainly NOT "transgendered".
Being a filmmaker, I can attest that on this Bill is sbsolutely on the money. I was once told by a foriegn sales rep that my intended black lead actor would never sell in Asia and this was over 20 years ago.
As a filmmaker, I can that for once Bill is dead on the money on this. I had a foriegn sales rep tell that my intended black lead actor would never sell to the Asian territories(Japan is a huge sale) and this was over 20 years ago. It is still the same today as it always has been.
Visiting student from South Korea that I went to Arizona State with told me that her Dad said, if you fall in love with a black man or a Japanese man, stay in America and never come back here. Since I was white, she said she could bring me home no problem. Maher is tight, like it or night.
Let me get this straight.
If I were to say "Not many black people are in movies because they are too lazy to work hard", then that would be racist. But if Bill Maher says it's because Orientals are racist, then it's proof of his moral superiority and virtue. Right?
So if I accuse a certain group of character flaws, I'm bad. If Maher does it, it shows how good he is. Kind of like how discriminating against Asians in college admissions is virtuous, and discriminating in favor of other groups is also virtuous.
This could get confusing. Good thing we have Bill Maher to explain it to us.
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