DGS49
Diamond Member
Last week, while looking for something to watch on television, I clicked on a "link" to "The Sound of Music Live," which has been promoted rather heavily on the cable system. How can you go wrong with the Sound of Music?
As I watched the opening scene - a convent in Austria around 1938 - the first face shown in the center of the screen had a rather odd "hue." I wondered if my TV was out of adjustment. Within a few seconds as the other nuns came fully on the screen I saw that my television was not out of adjustment, but there was a bizarre casting anomaly. Dumbfounding, actually. The Mother Superior of this convent in Austria was an African American.
Oddly enough, I have been to Salzburg, Austria, and I think I can say with absolute certainty that the probability of any nun in any Catholic convent in this city being of African origin is approximately equal to the probability that I will win the MVP award in the NBA this season.
Gimmeafuckingbreak.
Then a few days later I tuned into a nice "holiday" movie called, "A Snow Globe Christmas." The description in the guide said that the story was about a hard-edged woman who, while cynically preparing for a Christmas pageant, was bonked on the head by a Snow Globe, and found herself in the "idealized world" of the Snow Globe, with her own self ensconsed in a "perfect snow globe life," which she struggled to understand and deal with.
OK.
So I start to watch the story (really, a lame takeoff on Scrooged and other such holiday nonsense). After the snow globe knockout, we come to see that the main character - in the idealized world of the snow globe - is married to a Black guy and has two bi-racial kids.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This is the "ideal"? The imaginary perfect world? In whose mind, exactly?
I see a commercial with nauseating frequency - I believe it's from the S. C. Johnson company - of a fairly large group of young people singing a stylized Christmas carol. Not one of the kids is caucasian. There are a few Asians, but basically it is the Harlem Kids Choir - or some variation of it. This is inclusion? This is diversity? I don't think so.
Invariably, in television dramas, sit-coms, and even reality shows, black people are portrayed as more intelligent, insightful, compassionate, reasonable, talented, and patient. With few exceptions, the "Black" people who are cast in these programs have light skin, caucasian features (blue or green eyes, etc), and perfect bone structure. The wide noses and negroid lips that characterize the vast majority of "Black" Americans are rare or non-existent.
Television advertising is amazingly inclusive of mulattos of various shades. A martian viewing nothing but American television would conclude that the American population is 20% gay and 50% bi-racial.
How many people recognize this is a giant propaganda campaign, similar to the ongoing campaign to portray all homosexuals as wholesome and wonderful? I find it quite tiresome.
As I watched the opening scene - a convent in Austria around 1938 - the first face shown in the center of the screen had a rather odd "hue." I wondered if my TV was out of adjustment. Within a few seconds as the other nuns came fully on the screen I saw that my television was not out of adjustment, but there was a bizarre casting anomaly. Dumbfounding, actually. The Mother Superior of this convent in Austria was an African American.
Oddly enough, I have been to Salzburg, Austria, and I think I can say with absolute certainty that the probability of any nun in any Catholic convent in this city being of African origin is approximately equal to the probability that I will win the MVP award in the NBA this season.
Gimmeafuckingbreak.
Then a few days later I tuned into a nice "holiday" movie called, "A Snow Globe Christmas." The description in the guide said that the story was about a hard-edged woman who, while cynically preparing for a Christmas pageant, was bonked on the head by a Snow Globe, and found herself in the "idealized world" of the Snow Globe, with her own self ensconsed in a "perfect snow globe life," which she struggled to understand and deal with.
OK.
So I start to watch the story (really, a lame takeoff on Scrooged and other such holiday nonsense). After the snow globe knockout, we come to see that the main character - in the idealized world of the snow globe - is married to a Black guy and has two bi-racial kids.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This is the "ideal"? The imaginary perfect world? In whose mind, exactly?
I see a commercial with nauseating frequency - I believe it's from the S. C. Johnson company - of a fairly large group of young people singing a stylized Christmas carol. Not one of the kids is caucasian. There are a few Asians, but basically it is the Harlem Kids Choir - or some variation of it. This is inclusion? This is diversity? I don't think so.
Invariably, in television dramas, sit-coms, and even reality shows, black people are portrayed as more intelligent, insightful, compassionate, reasonable, talented, and patient. With few exceptions, the "Black" people who are cast in these programs have light skin, caucasian features (blue or green eyes, etc), and perfect bone structure. The wide noses and negroid lips that characterize the vast majority of "Black" Americans are rare or non-existent.
Television advertising is amazingly inclusive of mulattos of various shades. A martian viewing nothing but American television would conclude that the American population is 20% gay and 50% bi-racial.
How many people recognize this is a giant propaganda campaign, similar to the ongoing campaign to portray all homosexuals as wholesome and wonderful? I find it quite tiresome.