"Pride, Guilt, and Martha Stewart"

Lately in class we’ve been talking a lot about white privilege, a bit of a touchy subject for sure! We even talked about “white guilt”, which as a white male it’d never honestly crossed my mind. What does white guilt feel like? Some of you might ask that, and it’s a simple answer (for me anyways). I can pretty much break it down to two things guilt and pride.

Guilt is defined as a “cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes accurately or not that they have violated a moral standard, and bear sole responsibility for that violation” (according to dictionary.com). As long as I can remember I’ve been taught about the white man’s wrong doing; slavery, genocide to the Native-Americans, nuclear warfare, and just overall not being that fair. My whole life I’ve been taught to be extremely proud of my heritage, and now the whole thing kind of just tastes salty in my mouth. And I don’t mean my family’s Scottish and or Norwegian heritage, but just the general whiteness. Thoughts like “Do I deserve this skin?” crept into my head. Then guilt of a different kind crept up my spine like high tide at a beach. “Should I really doubt this skin god or whoever gave me?”. The answer is one nobody knows really, but it still clung to my mind just like Jerry Rice’s hands to a football. How does one feel guilty for something he had nothing to do with but benefits from? It’s easily felt, but not explained, like an awkward moment on your favorite sitcom, it’ll make you cringe but you’ll never be able to do anything about it. So why even panic? Because I see violence, poverty, and hatred all around me. I don’t have any grand solutions, but I got a lot of love in me so I hope with time I can see some peace as well as agreement.

Pride is defined as, “positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g., that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others. Some social psychologists identify it as linked to a signal of high social status” (according to dictionary.com). Quite the mouth full huh? Well in my book it means I’m American and I love it. I’m proud of our revolution, our cities, our people, WWI, WWII, Mustangs, the 4th of July, and yes our pop culture dominance from Michael Jackson all the way to Martha Stewart. Am I proud of my race? Yes, very much so we (white people), are squarely responsible (to blame in some people’s point of view) for this beautiful America we all belong to. Would I have our history repeated exactly the same if given a chance? No, not really, the fact that it took 44 presidents before one was a non white male really makes me sick to my stomach. I’m just saying without our (white people), contributions you’d be looking at a different world with different problems.

"Blindsided by more Disney crap"

Tragically the Hollywood video store two blocks from my house will be closing its doors for the last time tomorrow Friday night. Although it saddened me to see that (mostly because of all the times I tried to rent rated R movies as a young lad), it ignited another feeling in me, the sense of “JACKPOT!” because as anyone knows when a store closes everything most go! Me and my sister Piper swooped in raking the shelves, trying to feed our immense cinematic adventure hunger. And just that we did, my sister selected “The Blindside”, which I thought fitted this week’s topic of race in film quite nicely. “The Blindside” is the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American kid from a broken home (doesn’t know his father and his mother is a crack head), is taken in by the Touhys, a well off upper class white family who help him get going in school as well as on the football field. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle. The film is a Disney production and a true story so you know they had good intentions but to my eyes and ears the movie just reinforced dark themes of young African-Americans not only in cinema but also in real world everyday life.

Young African-Americans face a lot of hurdles here in modern day America. There’s racism everyday in there quest to happiness, and success. It’s in our streets, schools, and our movies! Yes I said it, why do I think this? Because lately films directed at America’s black youth have a repeated underlying message and I swear to god it’s either learn how to play ball, rap, or gang bang your way to success or get ready to spend your life in poverty. For example in just the title of Jim Sheridan’s 2005 film “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” (the story of Curtis Jackson’s life aka 50 Cent), you already know the young black main character will indeed be shooting and gang banging his way to anything he desires in life, instead of what it should be like say hard work in school. In “Boyz n The Hood”, the character Ricky gets a scholarship freeing him from his ghetto situation, meanwhile his brother Doughboy guzzles 40’s all day, to me this suggests that without Ricky’s athletic talent Doughboy is hopeless just another casualty of a poor neighborhood. And that Ricky is blessed (kind of messed up that only a sport could bless him that way), with one of the few (that they show in these kind of movies) gifts that could save him. Why do I bunch these next to “The Blindside”? Simple because “The Blindside”, also shows another rare form of escape from poverty for young blacks, that is an upper class (in this movie and most commonly in others as well they’re white) person or organization taking pity on them. Am I saying it’s wrong for upper class people to offer help, or for this help to be accepted? Of course not, I just hate that these films all make it seem like every black youth’s future is grim and out of their control. Have I escaped a poverty stricken situation? Am I saying it’s easy to? No and no, I’m just saying lets give these kids role models that are comparable to them (and their situations), who succeed with hard work, it couldn’t hurt and it might even help.

My biggest bone to pick is with how the movie portrayed Michael Oher. In the movie Michael is timid, scared, and doesn’t have a clue how to play football. Are you serious? I’m creating my own movie stereotypical character that is a cross between two classic African American stereotypes in American film, the coon, and the wild buck. The coonbuck hybrid redeems qualities like strength, and abnormal size (from the wild buck), but is also foolish (or scared to be foolish) thus taking no risks and not getting involved (like the coon).A character that that fits this mold perfectly is Lennie from John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men”, in other words my coonbuck must be a mountain of a man with limited mental abilities. Does this character have to be black? Not at all, perfect example is Chief from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Essentially a big dumb lovable oath, who doesn’t really know how to use his size to his advantage. I hated how they basically made Michael into a big teddy bear, which reminded me of our “animalization” discussion in class. Would audiences have been less into the movie, if they’d given Michael more intelligence? Sadly I think it would’ve, Disney your pissing me off, why would you make the main character so dim witted before his contact with white people?

Although the film bugged me, as you can clearly tell, I still suggest checking it out, because Disney has done very little on poverty and it’s interesting to see their message to kids on the topic. I’d also like to add that Tim McGraw has won me over with his performances in two football films, “The Blindside”, as well as “Friday Night Lights”. Also doing a great job was Sandra Bullock (who I normally can’t stand), won many awards for her role. Her role would’ve been a solid blog topic but I was focused on race. Do you like my coonbuck idea? Is there already a name for that character type?

race, ethnicity, and race in film

Womentology

The words I’d like to use to describe my commute to the community college of Shoreline would make the creators of South Park blush (so I’ll keep it clean). The Ballard Bridge is always up in air like hands at a rap concert; there’s construction in the path more commonly then it rains in Seattle, there’s a cornucopia of drivers that insist on chit-chatting while they drive, and most importantly no CD player in my joke of a car. To combat the agony I usually turn the radio on, my favorite station is 950 KJR am which is a local sports station. Recently they started advertising for their fourteenth annual “Bigger Dance” competition. The “Bigger Dance” is basically a bracket spinoff of NCAA’s March madness except for one big difference. When you fill out your bracket its gorgeous celebrity women you’re picking from instead of college basketball teams. This was the first time I’d heard of the “Bigger Dance”, and man was I intrigued. Naturally because as a big hoops fan I fill out countless brackets annually, as well as being a heterosexual male (obviously who this station is aiming at) I wanted to see what celebrity babes were in what matchup, so I went online to check it out. What I found was a mountain awesome, with some personal guilt sprinkled on top. The awesome was checking out the bracket and filling it out, the guilt came in the form of pictures of the contestants.

Each contestant had a little picture of her face next to her name, and when you clicked on that you ended up with a full size picture of that woman in a bathing suit (or almost naked in some shape or form). Which I thought was brilliant, but then it hit me square in the face like a Mike Tyson jab, was KJR belittling women? Was I being sexist by filling a bracket out? In class we talked about women being made into objects, was I simply moving objects around a bracket or human beings?

They sure seemed human, but as I clicked from one woman to the next I discovered something that seemed almost plucked from our class lectures, that their professions (although bringing them fame and fortune) appeared to be earned strictly by good genes instead of a strong work ethic, or brains. Most were actresses, athletes, or models born with superior looks, (or in the athletes cases athleticism as well) none of which was earned, just natural. Am I saying there are no males like this? No of course not, there are just as many males like that if not more, and furthermore if there was a male bracket it would be dominated by actors, models, and athletes as well. It just seems screwy to me that good genes in a girl are more likely to bring her success and fame if it comes in the form of big boobs over say the ability to do calculus. If you disagree I urge you to ask somebody to name the first fifty female celebrities that come to mind and I guarantee you the list will be dominated by actresses (the kind that are just eye candy on screen), models, and athletes. I’d like to point out that the most accomplished (in my mind anyways) of those in the bracket were news reporters, another profession very high on looks.

Am I letting KJR off the hook? Yes I think since most these women make their money by looking good, thus it’s okay to compare and contrast them. I got to hand it to them you put anything into a bracket and that'll get some attention. Am I letting Gunner Phillips off the hook? Hell yeah, its only natural for me to be interested, the day guys stop checking gals out is the day cows fly to Mars. By the way I got Jessica Biel winning the whole thing! Feel free to comment or argue with my blog!

Media, Femininty, Body Image, Masculinity