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Media Consumption Update
(Blog Layout Note: I figured that since I'm getting so many hits, I could update the layout, which hasn't been changed in over a year. LJ People, I'm talking about my blog, which is actually my default online journal.)
After finishing out the semester, my brain seems to be craving YA fiction and graphic novels.
Books I've Finished in the Last Week:
Yuu Watase's Absolute Boyfriend, volumes 2 and 3
Lloyd Alexander's The Beggar Queen (last of the Westmark trilogy, which I loved)
Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant
CLAMP's Chobits, volumes 1-4
Holly Black's Spiderwick Chronicles, volume 1 (I loved both the story and the artwork for this. I think it's much better than A Series of Unfortunate Events.)
Books I've Picked Up From the Library:
Marimo Ragawa's Baby & Me, volumes 1-3 (Discussed at the Shoujo Bodies panel at Wiscon)
Tamora Pierce's Terrier
Bill Willingham's Fables, volume 1 (I've heard that there are some skeevy race issues, but I'm going to try it out.)
Holly Black's Tithe (I'm liking this a lot so far.)
Chie Shinohara's Red River, volumes 3-5
Han SeungHee and Jeon JinSeok's One Thousand and One Nights, volumes 1 and 2
Movies
Enchanted was pretty awesome. I fell asleep for about 15 minutes of it because I was so tired yesterday, but I still loved everything I saw. Amy Adams was amazing.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was great fun, as Indiana Jones often is. I went to see it with my parents, sister, bro-in-law, and their three kids. The two youngest kids were pretty freaked out by the ant-scene, but other than that, I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Of course, the franchise is still as racist as ever. Okay, so in the end? It's revealed that the Mayans were "taught" their advanced technology by INTER-DIMENSIONAL ALIENS. I am not making this shit up. Other than that, though, the 1950s stuff was great, as was the action stuff. The only thing I didn't like (aside from skeevy race issues) was the over-use of CGI.
I have not seen the Sex & the City movie (I never watched the series), but Ann Althouse has, and has notes on how race is used in the movie.
Media-Related Story
Over a month ago, my friends Kristy and Chad wrote an entry in their wedding blog about auditioning to be extras in a movie that's currently in production in Illinois and Wisconsin: Public Enemies. Last night, while Kristy was picking up Enchanted at the video store, she received a call on her cell phone. The woman on the phone wanted to know if Kristy would like to film a scene on Monday. Kristy declined, stating that she had to babysit, and also that she was schedule for her first ever facial on Monday. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Facials can be rescheduled; Other babysitters can be found.
Here is a photo of Christian Bale from the recent shoot at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Note his dejection, stemming from Kristy's refusal to BE IN A MOVIE WITH CHRISTIAN BALE AND JOHNNY DEPP.
After finishing out the semester, my brain seems to be craving YA fiction and graphic novels.
Books I've Finished in the Last Week:
Yuu Watase's Absolute Boyfriend, volumes 2 and 3
Lloyd Alexander's The Beggar Queen (last of the Westmark trilogy, which I loved)
Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant
CLAMP's Chobits, volumes 1-4
Holly Black's Spiderwick Chronicles, volume 1 (I loved both the story and the artwork for this. I think it's much better than A Series of Unfortunate Events.)
Books I've Picked Up From the Library:
Marimo Ragawa's Baby & Me, volumes 1-3 (Discussed at the Shoujo Bodies panel at Wiscon)
Tamora Pierce's Terrier
Bill Willingham's Fables, volume 1 (I've heard that there are some skeevy race issues, but I'm going to try it out.)
Holly Black's Tithe (I'm liking this a lot so far.)
Chie Shinohara's Red River, volumes 3-5
Han SeungHee and Jeon JinSeok's One Thousand and One Nights, volumes 1 and 2
Movies
Enchanted was pretty awesome. I fell asleep for about 15 minutes of it because I was so tired yesterday, but I still loved everything I saw. Amy Adams was amazing.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was great fun, as Indiana Jones often is. I went to see it with my parents, sister, bro-in-law, and their three kids. The two youngest kids were pretty freaked out by the ant-scene, but other than that, I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Of course, the franchise is still as racist as ever. Okay, so in the end? It's revealed that the Mayans were "taught" their advanced technology by INTER-DIMENSIONAL ALIENS. I am not making this shit up. Other than that, though, the 1950s stuff was great, as was the action stuff. The only thing I didn't like (aside from skeevy race issues) was the over-use of CGI.
I have not seen the Sex & the City movie (I never watched the series), but Ann Althouse has, and has notes on how race is used in the movie.
Media-Related Story
Over a month ago, my friends Kristy and Chad wrote an entry in their wedding blog about auditioning to be extras in a movie that's currently in production in Illinois and Wisconsin: Public Enemies. Last night, while Kristy was picking up Enchanted at the video store, she received a call on her cell phone. The woman on the phone wanted to know if Kristy would like to film a scene on Monday. Kristy declined, stating that she had to babysit, and also that she was schedule for her first ever facial on Monday. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Facials can be rescheduled; Other babysitters can be found.
Here is a photo of Christian Bale from the recent shoot at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Note his dejection, stemming from Kristy's refusal to BE IN A MOVIE WITH CHRISTIAN BALE AND JOHNNY DEPP.
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Someone else has already pointed out the sins of the movie in terms of race, so I'll just direct you to their comment on another journal (http://seaya.livejournal.com/223234.html?thread=878594#t878594):
The extent of the racism is so caricaturish, though, that it goes beyond actual races and makes the Other actually non-human. They play so fast and loose with different peoples that they're all homogenised into one fantastically exaggerated ur-category without any distinction between Incas, Mayans, Amazonians and the frickin' undead. There's no clear distinction in this film between spear-chucking natives and flying kung-fu child zombies. It drags indigenous South American people into the realm of total fantasy. I don't know why I'm phrasing this like a rebuttal, because I agree with you, but somehow this is beyond racism. It's like it went through racism and came out the other side.
That's interesting about ancient cultures of white people being explained away in the same way (I hadn't known that), but it's worth pointing out that those cultures were not mentioned in this movie. Only the South American culture (which seemed to be a strange hybrid of Incan and Mayan cultures) was.
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Eh, I just think a vastly-overbroad standard of "what is racism?" is being applied here. For me, it fits in the same category as claims that Jar Jar Binks was racist (as opposed to an abomination that should die in a fire), or that the casting of Jango Fett was racist and meant to invoke America's immigration debate (I especially get a kick out of the fact that a few people started shrieking "OMG you cast a Hispanic guy as the template for a massive clone army and are thus feeding into white America's fears of southern immigration!" when, in fact, the actor was a Maori from New Zealand).
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You don't have to be 100% accurate to avoid racism (and here I should point out that a person doesn't have to have malicious intent to be racist - I myself have said racist things). But when the people of color are undead mish-mash of South American cultures, then yeah, I call "racist." While Russians and Nazis have been painted in an unflattering light in the Jones movies, at least they are given a voice and an attempt at a representation of their color.
I'm not familiar with the debates of Jango Fett, but Jar Jar Binks can easily be seen as a racist caricature of stereotypes not seen in movies for about 50 years. His mannerisms mirror those used by actors who used to put on blackface and act in highly racist minstrel shows, and I don't think it takes much of a stretch of the imagination at all to call him a racist character.
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