Blacks in Pop Cultture...

This week I will be focusing on the critically acclaimed film "Precious"...is it a stab at the Black community or is it eye opening reality that needs to be confronted? I think it is racist and blatantly disrespectful. Blacks have always been "drug through the dirt" in film but out of the recent films, Precious takes the cake. Character Claireece Jones is an incest victim, mother of two, HIV positive, and a prisoner of emotional as well physical abuse brought on by her mother Mary. Claireece is illiterate in her studies but has the imagination to think of vivid images of herself as a white woman and lover of a light-skinned Latino. And just when you think the torture doesn't get any worse, the movie depicts racial stereotypes such as Claireece stealing a bucket of chicken. To me, the movie is pathetic it attacks the Black community and deliberetly leaves out imperative parts of the book that would've made the movie half decent. But it fails to deliver a glimmer of positivity for the Black community in fact, writer of the book Push in which Precious is based upon said it was too late in the day to worry that the film's themes and images were somehow stigmatizing or inauthentic. Are you serious?? Is she just concerned with the money she's raking in or what? And the executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry don't they have some say in what can be edited it or out of a movie. Did Precious have to have a poster of a white woman on her wall when in the book she had moguls like Malcolm X? What about her religious practices in the book that were never mentioned in the movie?...two themes that hold a lot of weight in the Black community. To me its very simple poor, illiterate Black people make for good entertainment and as long as its getting fed back to the Black community as its reality it will continue to be "critically acclaimed" and all types of successful.

My sources:
Movie: Precious
Book: Push
Article--> http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/41462368.html?page=2

We Need to Get it Together

In this time of catastrophe and uncertainty it is important that people of color reinforce ties and weld bonds. In popular culture there is much talk about the world's end; as well as, what is expected to become of the human population. There are rumors that the super rich have exclusive vessels under construction to transport them to an unforeseen location but the less fortunate are expected to just die. With this being said, I feel like the study of multiculturalism amongst African-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos will somehow facilitate a connectedness that will eventually redeem the unified history of our pasts. Furthermore, this past will be the foundation for our people to ban together and construct decisions that will too ensure us a safe future. Even if the rumors in the pop culture mill about life's untimely demise is fabricated, at least the minorities would have come together and realized that together they are much more powerful than apart. A step toward this notion was found in an effort to unite the African American and Afro Latino cultures of New York City. The "Points of Unity" conference was initiated by College's Global Afro Latino and Caribbean Initiative and by the Caribbean Cultural Center. The effort was sponsored by Hunter but the participants aimed to establish an ad commission on Afro descendants, which hopefully will work to better educate the public about African American and Afro Latino commonalities, which in turn may bring the two communities together. Although this may be a small effort, it is something that in time may expand and bring all of the Afro communities together.

My sources:
The movie 2012
High Beam Research--> the link: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-95988188.html