[TV] Dear White People: Season 1 Review

Honesty Time: I can't claim to have been all that great with "black culture" given my lack of exposure to it. For those of us outside of America, one usually learns more through music (which I'm not that big on either) or popular culture. And it's not like I'm the sort of person who gets into Tyler Perry movies (nor do these movies represent even a fair portion of what black culture is. So it's not that I don't like these sorts of shows and movies but more it's not my natural inclination to watch them.

But there was a lot of good press for Dear White People that helped bring the show to my attention plus you you know how Netflix repeatedly promotes a show when its season starts and tries to get your attention. And I definitely don't regret getting into this show.

This series feels quite fresh and in tune with the times by trying to combine the sort of "woke" online conversations with an actual story about college life, as strange as this college may be.

[Comics] Captain America: Secret Empire

I've never claimed to be a big Captain America fan in my life. I just can't quite place it, but then there's never been much about him that I've particularly enjoyed. Sure, he started out as a weakling and perhaps the nerd in me could somehow relate to that. However once he became super-strong, put on the colors and started flinging around that shield of his, I just couldn't really relate to it.

So initially I was on the fence about even bothering to read this particular story arc. However since it came with the download, I figured I might as well give it a chance and read it at least once for good measure. After all, I didn't think much of Batman until I gave his books a chance and really got to know the character.

This was probably a really bad example of a Captain America story.

Captain America: Secret Empire was written back in 1973, so that may explain a lot of the stupidity involved and the strong Cold War themes. Here, Captain America and the token African-American hero the Falcon somehow managed to get themselves involved with a secret organization that is eventually revealed to be called...the Secret Empire. Riiight. In the course of the story, Captain American tries to get to the bottom of this secret organization's plans (which involve a flying saucer of all things) while trying to fend off public attacks against his reputation (of course also orchestrated by the Secret Empire).

If I start talking about how stupid the story is, I'll end up wasting everyone's time. As much as we want to give consideration to the prevailing climate at the time and the quality of story-writing in general at the time, this was just pitiful. I mean come on, their big plan was to use energy harnessed from mutants to power a fake UFO, which the would use to convince the world to support them (as assisted by the threat of nuclear warheads around the world).

Image by TCM Hitchhiker via Flickr And don't even get me started on the Falcon. While I know the 70's still had the African-American community still fully coming into its own in terms of the respect it deserved, the Falcon was a horrible stereotype of a character who could do little more than shout odd quips and had no real superpower of his own until they have him the ability to fly. Okay, okay, so he also had that pseudo-telepathy thing going on at the time but all he could do was talk to his pet bird.

If you want to waste your time on a horribly cheesy story that a child could have written (and probably did) and endure the painful experience of watching the Falcon play the role of the token African-American superhero in a manner more embarrassing than perhaps how Black Lighting was on the Super Friends, then be my guest. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

[Philippines] Desperate Housewives: The Aftermath?

Given that ABC has issued a formal apology for Sunday night;s racial slur on Desperate Housewives, I get this feeling the issue isn't about to die down right away. It's still echoing across Filipino communities around the world and the reactions are generally similar, with some exceptions of course. Even today I'm still getting the protest statements in my email inbox and some folks are just now writing about it on their blogs and websites. The writers certainly struck a strong chord with audiences around the world, perhaps just not the right way.

So what now? Isn't a formal apology enough? ABC is smart enough to roll with the punches and I'm sure reruns of the episode will have the witty line struck from the records but of course it'll still take time before everyone gets wind of the details of this story. Believe me, the story is still going around and many people are just finding out about this issue as you read these very words on your screen.

Ironically enough, the news mainly spread because of the web in two ways - (1) through messages directly from Filipino-Americans in the US spreading the word and (2) from other emails sent out by Filipinos who watched the season premier via pirated video download from the web.

Piracy - is there nothing you can't do?

Personally, I too feel bad that the writers chose to go that far. Funny or not, it was certainly in bad taste, especially in a country where everyone seems to be hypersensitive about racial / sexual slurs of any kind, let alone something as clearly stated as a line on a highly popular TV show.

And it also helps show just how strong an online presence Filipinos have - as if the back-to-back years of Filipino candidates winning Miss Photogenic at the Miss Universe awards just through the power of internet voting along, haha. Let the buyer beware indeed.

I just wish we'd let this issue pass and move on. People are still signing the online petition. Others are recommending that local networks here stop airing the show and to refuse to renew their rights to air it if only to help damage their numbers somehow. Others yet feel that the apology is hardly enough and that the show needs to apologize again on-air as part of the next episode, which does seem pretty extreme to me.

And then there are those who just found the line genuinely funny and are willing to take this as tongue-in-cheek humor at is best with a hefty amount of salt at the ready. It's a free country after all, right?

[Philippines] About the Desperate Housewives Debacle

Just when we had a positive citation of Filipinos in the international media scene, this nasty issue popped up:


#20 - Teri Hatcher insults Filipinos

So now of course the country is up in arms and an online petition has been started against both ABC and the producers of Desperate Housewives for the racial slur. The local blogosphere is pretty miffed about it as well - just check out some of the Filipino blogs you might already read and you can expect this to be mentioned within the week.

Why do we always get into these things? Before it was about being a country known for our maids - now they're claiming we have hack doctors too? Geez.

[Entertainment] Everyone's a Little Bit Racist?

The popular Broadway musical Avenue Q features a highly humorous song entitled Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, and this now seems be especially true for Hollywood.

As if what is now being called the Mel Gibson Moment wasn't enough to forever record celebrity racism into pop culture memory, another celebrity has gotten himself into a fine mess.

Now Michael Richards, better known to the world as "Kramer" from the hit comedy series Seinfeld, has triggered his own "Mel Gibson Moment"

Based on the news reports, it appears he got into a bit of an argument at a stand-up comedy performance at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club in Hollywood with an African American man who had apparently been heckling him during the show. Richards eventually lost his temper and had the man removed from the premises, but not before releasing a very harsh tirade of racist slurs an insults. A video of the performance eventually made its way to the internet, as they always seem to do these days, thus Richards felt obligated to issue a public apology on the David Letterman Show.

Based on the club's website, Richards has now been banned from the premises and will not be allowed back, at least for the immediate future.

What is it with Americans? We also recently discussed the issue of racism previously and now we're just given more and more examples of the cultural epidemic that seems evident in the "Land of the Free."

Personally, we want to understand this issue a lot more - what makes people, regardless of nationality, think that such thinking can become justified and statements against other races and ethnicities can ever be justified? How does one determine any sense of ranking or "superiority" in this world of near infinite possibilities?

What will it take to stop the hatred? How many more "Mel Gibson Moments" are out there waiting to happen? Not all of them are so publicly noticed - most happen day after day in school hallways, on busy city streets and even places of worship. What kind of a warped world is this for all these things to possibly happen?

[US] Racism Starts Early

While browsing my Google start page, I came across this CNN story about the sentencing of David Henry Tuck(18), who was found guilty of attacking a Hispanic boy.

David had been described as being a 'White Supremacist' (for a definition, try searching [define white supremacist]) given the attack clearly had racist tones. What made this attack so brutal was the fact that he not only beat up the boy but brutally sodomized him while shouting statements like, "white power!" while sodomizing the boy with the plastic pole of a patio umbrella. It took the Hispanic boy more than 3 months to recover including 20-30 operations.

He was sentenced to life in prison given it was charged that he was beyond rehabilitation. I definitely have to agree - a young man capable of such violence and brutality is definitely damaged in more ways than one. Sure, there were various drugs involved, but the drugs merely brought out what was already there.

This begs the question of how such individuals are created. Seriously, what kind of upbringing triggers this kind of behavior? Given I life outside of the US, racism of this scale is mostly unheard of here. There have never been thoughts about racial supremacy in terms of one being clearly better than the other. We've never had attacks against other "colors" and such. So why is it that this seems to be so prevalent in the US?

There has to be something that is consistently being done to further the White Supremacy agenda, to continue to create more and more people who believe in this doctrine and desire to charge against the rest of the world to proclaim their message, and enforce it.

It's times like these that I realize I'm glad I don't live in places like the US, that I've been able to live a life outside of most of the negative effects of racism. I'm not saying there is none here - I'm just saying it's not as bad as kids nearly killing other kids about it.