For Every Virtue, an Opponent Finds a Vice
Al Jazeera Expands Reach With Purchase of Current TV
Is “White Knuckle” Like “Flesh” Colored Bandages?
Short Takes
For Every Virtue, an Opponent Finds a Vice
“Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ has become embroiled in the second major controversy of awards season,” Steve Pone wrote Wednesday for the Wrap. “The director’s liberal use of the N-word, and his temerity in tackling the issue of slavery, has drawn fire from some prominent African-Americans and impassioned defenses from others.
“Like the turmoil stirred up by the depiction of CIA-sponsored torture in Kathryn Bigelow‘s ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ the ‘Django’ fuss has been caused by a filmmaker tackling a hot-button issue — though Tarantino’s use of slavery as the backdrop for a joke-filled, Spaghetti-Western-style revenge fantasy is light years removed from Bigelow’s dead-serious depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
“Spike Lee bashed it sight unseen. Antoine Fuqua defended it, also before seeing it. Louis Farrakhan said it was designed to prepare America for a race war. Samuel L. Jackson wouldn’t be drawn into a discussion unless his (white) interviewer used the N-word.
“The movie has become both a flash point and a free-for-all, and the issue is particularly sensitive among African-American viewers — not a large audience for the film, but a key one for principals like Jamie Foxx, who plays the title role.
” ‘If this movie does what it does and black people hate it, that doesn’t do nothing for me,’ Foxx said on BET. ‘Because I feel like the reason I exist is the black audience.’ “
Black writers were of several minds. Every point raised in a given discussion — that “it’s only a movie,” that it’s really a love story, that it’s like a cartoon, that the use of the ‘n’ word is historically accurate — found someone taking an opposing position.
On Facebook Wednesday, Darren Sands, 29, a digital producer/reporter at Black Enterprise, garnered amens when he wrote, “Django commentary by most of the black intelligentsia cannot, for all of its brains and gifts of critical analysis, fathom a fantastical film with an artistic license … so the analysis comes off as drivel; baseless assumptions about what is lost on our conscience and about what is acceptable and accurate about a bygone era that we must hold dear lest we embarrass our ancestors. Please. At worst, it’s grandstanding for attention. At best, it’s not knowing how to have a good time at the movies.”
By contrast, in a piece posted Wednesday in the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb, 43, recalled teaching a course on American history at Moscow State University and being confronted by Russian students questioning Tarantino’s portrayal of World War II in “Inglourious Basterds.”
“.. . The movie’s lines between fantasy and the actual myopic perspectives on history were so hazy that the audience wasn’t asked to suspend disbelief, they were asked to suspend conscience,” wrote Cobb, director of the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Connecticut. “With ‘Django Unchained,’ Tarantino’s tale of vengeful ex-slave, what happened in Russia is happening here.
“. . .The film’s defenders are quick to point out that ‘Django’ is not about history. But that’s almost like arguing that fiction is not reality — it isn’t, but the entire appeal of the former is its capacity to shed light on how we understand the latter.
“. . . It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved. Tarantino’s attempt to craft a hero who stands apart from the other men — black and white — of his time is not a riff on history, it’s a riff on the mythology we’ve mistaken for history.”
- Saladin Ambar, HuffPost BlackVoices: Django’s Djumbles
- Rodney Barnes, HuffPost BlackVoices: Lincoln, Meet Django: Slavery’s Latest Films Are Controversial, But Not Why You Think
- Cecil Brown, CounterPunch: Hollywood’s Nigger Joke
- Anthea Butler, the Grio: Does ‘Django Unchained’ get the history of slavery right?
- Christopher Alan Chambers website: The Posthumous Journal of Dangerfield Newby (“The Real Django”)
- Jelani Cobb, New Yorker: Tarantino Unchained
- Javier David, the Grio: Does ‘Django Unchained’ make slavery safe for the masses?
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune: ‘Django’ expresses an anger not every filmmaker can show: Jarvis DeBerry
- Editorial, Washington Informer: Foxx’s Django Deserves High Honors
- Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Root: Tarantino ‘Unchained,’ Part 1: ‘Django’ Trilogy?
- Keli Goff, Huffington Post: The Racial Slurs in ‘Django’ Aren’t Racist But the Racial Violence May Be
- The Grio: Spike Lee calls ‘Django Unchained’ ‘disrespectful’, even though he hasn’t seen it
- Terri Gross, “Fresh Air,” NPR: Quentin Tarantino, ‘Unchained’ And Unruly
- Erin Aubry Kaplan, Los Angeles Times: Django’ an unsettling experience for many blacks
- Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Tarantino blows up the spaghetti western in ‘Django Unchained’
- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ‘Django’ tells tale missing real slave history
- Ishmael Reed, Wall Street Journal: Black Audiences, White Stars and ‘Django Unchained’
- Sergio, Shadow and Act: Boston Globe Film Critic Likens Samuel L. Jackson’s ‘Django’ Character To Black Republicans
- Tanya Steele, Shadow and Act: Tarantino’s Candy (Slavery In The White Male Imagination)
- Jeff Winbush blog: “Django” is Tarantino Unchained
- Jordan Zakarin, Hollywood Reporter: Samuel L. Jackson Insists Reporter Say N-Word in ‘Django Unchained’ Interview (Video)
Al Jazeera Expands Reach With Purchase of Current TV
“Current TV, the small cable news channel that was co-founded by former vice president Al Gore, has been sold to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based media company,” Joe Flint reported Wednesday for the Los Angeles Times.
“The acquisition gives Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatar government, the opportunity to establish a footprint in the United States, where it already has an English-language version of its Qatar service — called Al Jazeera English — but only limited reach.
“Just buying Current does not guarantee instant distribution, however. Time Warner Cable, which offered Current in roughly 10 million of its homes, is dropping the channel. Without Time Warner Cable, which is the largest distributor in New York City and Los Angeles, Current TV is in only about 50 million homes.”
Is “White Knuckle” Like “Flesh” Colored Bandages?
The front page of Saturday’s Washington Post carried a subtle reminder that the inventors of the English language — and today’s arbiters — have a certain skin tone as a frame of reference.
“Street racers put their terror on tape,” it said, followed by “White-knuckle stunts by D.C. area group ‘a tragedy waiting to happen.’
“What’s a “white knuckle”? Yahoo’s Answer site gives this as the “best answer”: “The act of clenching your hand shuts off the blood flow to your knuckles, so they turn white. You clench your hand on a steering wheel or roller coaster bar when you are scared. So, white knuckles = scared.“
But what if your skin isn’t the shade that turns white? It could put you in the same category as those who are “tickled pink,” but not really, become “red-faced,” or once were given “flesh” colored Band-Aids that didn’t match their particular flesh.
Last year during Black History Month, Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer of the Chicago Tribune compiled “10 things you might not know about skin color.”
“Crayola once had a color called ‘flesh,’ which was the color of Caucasian flesh,” they noted as their second point. “After complaints from civil rights activists, ‘flesh’ became ‘peach’ in 1962. A similar controversy involved ‘Indian red.’ Crayola said the color was based on a pigment found near India, but some thought it was a slur against native Americans, so the company solicited consumer suggestions for a new name. Among the ideas: ‘baseball-mitt brown’ and ‘crab claw red.’ But ‘chestnut’ was chosen in 1999.”
Journal-isms asked Liz Spayd, a managing editor at the Post, about the “white knuckle” headline. She replied by email, “..i think of ‘white knuckled’ as a common term for something that pumps up anxiety and fear. i’ve never heard the concern you raise about it.”
Crayola didn’t give up on crayons that mimicked skin tones; it adapted to a multicultural world. Its website now says, “Crayola Large Multicultural Crayons come in an assortment of skin hues that give a child a realistic palette for coloring their world. These thick crayons are easy to grip — perfect for little hands. The crayon colors are: black, sepia, peach, apricot, white, tan, mahogany and burnt sienna. Each crayon is 4″ long and 7?16″ in diameter.“
Short Takes
- “Former CNN anchor T.J. Holmes, who left the network a year ago to join BET was back on cable news today, on MSNBC,” Chris Ariens reported Saturday for TVNewser. “MSNBC tells us Holmes is doing some holiday fill-in work for them, today sitting in for Alex Witt.” Holmes was back on Sunday.
- NBC News Wednesday denied a widely distributed story by RadarOnline.com that said, “Former TODAY co-anchor Ann Curry has formally asked her NBC bosses to let her out of her contract http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/12/ann-curry-begs-nbc-release-contract-today-cnn-jeff-zucker with the Peacock network so she can formally accept a position at CNN, where her old boss, Jeff Zucker, will officially take over the fledgling news channel in February.” NBC spokeswoman Megan Kopf told Journal-isms, “There is no truth to this story.”
Jet magazine, whose cover more often than not seems to feature an entertainer, devotes its first cover story of 2013 to 17-year-old Jordan Davis http://blackamericaweb.com/85720/jet-magazine-wont-stand-down/ , the latest victim of Florida’s notorious “Stand Your Ground” law. “ ‘Standing Our Ground’ written by acclaimed journalist Denene Millner . . . exposes yet another murder of a young Black male just months after Trayvon Martin was also killed in Florida,” Tonya Pendleton wrote for BlackAmericaWeb.
“The Senate Tuesday approved the renomination of FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/491070-Senate_Confirms_Clyburn_to_Full_FCC_Term.php , this time for a full five-year term retroactive to July 1, 2012, when her current term expired,” John Eggerton reported Wednesday for Broadcasting & Cable.
“While the U.S. Congress has been kicking the can down the road and inching closer to the fiscal cliff, the word gurus at Lake Superior State University have doubled-down http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Banished-words-for-2013/-/1719418/17953270/-/q55f89z/-/index.html on their passion for the language and have released their 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness,” Detroit’s WDIV-TV reported on Monday.
“Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that the Gaza Strip’s Hamas-led government has banned Palestinian media and journalists from cooperating with the Israeli media http://en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=43847 because of the latter’s ‘hostility,’ ” the press freedom group said on Wednesday. ” ‘Offenders will be prosecuted,’ the Hamas government said in a 25 December press release announcing the prohibition.”
“Myanmar said Friday it will allow private daily newspapers starting in April http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iJ3pCnUXrHD9W-aO57M988HflkQQ?docId=9aa5f48640694ba2a5d453a108946be5 for the first time since 1964, in the latest step toward allowing freedom of expression in the long-repressed nation,” Aye Aye Win reported for the Associated Press.
“MundoFox, the new U.S. Spanish-language broadcast network launched in August by Fox International Channels and the RCN Television Group (RCN) of Colombia are have signed WGEN Miami http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/64494/mundofox-adds-wgen-miami-to-lineup?utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Mund oFox+Adds+WGEN+Miami+To+Lineup&utm_campaign=Out+Of+Ch.+11%2c+Tribune+To+Remake+With+TV ,” TVNewsCheck reported on Monday. “WGEN takes over the Miami MundoFox affiliation from the previously announced low-power WJAN-CD.”
Image: Alberto Arce “When I moved to Tegucigalpa last March several friends back home in Spain wanted to know why http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/aps-honduras-correspondent-navigates-violent-land-18094740?singlePage=true#.UOK 0caxCqdk ,” Alberto Arce reported from Honduras Sunday for the Associated Press. “The big story was in Egypt, Libya and Syria; what was I planning to do on the other side of the globe? ‘Bear witness,’ I said, ‘to the most violent place in the world, to a country in crisis.’ I am the only foreign correspondent here, with no press pack to consult on questions of security, or to rely on for safety in numbers. I fall back on instincts honed in war zones, but they are not always sufficient when you are covering a failing state.”
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