Black-ish Starts the New Season with the N-Word

Posted on September 24, 2015 at 12:56 pm

I loved the first season of “Black-ish” and am delighted that the first episode of its sophomore season is, if anything, even better. The youngest son in the family, Jack Johnson (Miles Brown), gets in trouble for using the n-word in a school talent show when he performs the Kanye West song “Gold Digger.” (Note that when “Glee” did the song they wisely left that word out.) As the entire auditorium gasps, Jack’s twin sister (Marsai Martin) says she begged him to do the radio edited version. Jack is expelled, due to the “zero tolerance” policy urged on the school by his mother, Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross). And this gives everyone on the show, white and black and biracial, senior citizen and teenager, to talk about the word and who should or should not use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5jzerG092E

New York Magazine has a great behind the scenes article about what went into the making of this episode.

The day before the show aired, Barris admitted to Vulture that he was “terrified” about releasing the episode, but he thinks it’s the right time for our country to have this discussion.

Why did you decide to do an entire show about this word but we never hear it? In every instance, you bleeped it.

It was an easier entry point. Hearing it is a little bit hard. The bleep in a weird way makes you hear it even louder. But it still allows you to get into the drama and the comedy of the scene without making you feel ostracized. You’re still hearing it as loud, if not louder, than ever before. That was the biggest thing — not to have a barrier to the comedic entry point.

It was impressive how you packed in all these points of view and how conflicted people are and how charged the issue is, depending on who you are. How hard was it to balance all of that since you’re doing a sitcom and don’t have a lot of time?

We really wanted to make it like a documentary — a moment in a family’s life that would just start a conversation. That’s what we try to do for the show in general — just start a conversation. In a Norman Lear–esque kind of way, we try to show the different points of views on different topics because that’s what a family is. I have five kids, and people can say nature versus nurture. But it is nature! Nurture has so little to do with it. I have five kids and there are five totally different people in my house. Whenever you put a family together they may share some points of views and morals, but there are going to be differences. The other thing you get from your family is how you deal with other people’s point of view. That’s the learned behavior — how you allow yourself to exit a conversation differently from when you enter it.

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Soledad O’Brien Tour for “I am Latino in America” Conversations

Soledad O’Brien Tour for “I am Latino in America” Conversations

Posted on September 15, 2015 at 3:54 pm

Award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien today will go on a national “I am Latino in America” tour to create conversations that amplify the Latino voices on critical community issues. O’Brien is the author of Latino in America

The tour kicks off September 28 at Florida International University, with plans to roll out in five more cities including Edinburg, TX and Los Angeles, CA. Additional tours are planned for the spring and summer of 2016, with more than 15 cities expected to host the live event.

O’Brien is a former CNN and NBC anchor and the CEO of multimedia production and distribution company, Starfish Media Group. She previously hosted two “Black in America” tours that highlighted issues like police brutality and civil rights. The “I am Latino in America” tour will address voting, the economy, and education issues.

Influential celebrities, national and local advocates, business leaders, students and academics will join O’Brien along the tour. “Latinos are 54 million strong, make up a quarter of the children in this country, and include 25 million voters with $1.5 trillion in buying power,” said O’Brien. “Our tour will empower the U.S. Hispanic community’s collective voice in a crucial election year.”

More than 4,000 college students as well as local and national Latino leaders are expected to attend the first three events hosted by the following colleges and universities.

Sept. 28: Miami, FL – Florida International University
Oct. 5: Edinburg, TX – University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley
Oct. 15: Los Angeles, CA – Occidental College

Making the tour possible is presenting sponsor Northwestern Mutual and sponsors Macy’s and Southwest Airlines and co-producer INGEÑUITY, a content and experiential event firm.

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Race and Diversity

Rosenwald

Posted on August 27, 2015 at 12:10 pm

Aviva Kempner, the director of the acclaimed documentaries about baseball star Hank Greenberg and television pioneer Gertrude Berg, has a new film about early 20th century Chicago businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. Like the prior films, this one is filled with meticulously curated archival footage, illuminating historical insights, and thoughtful comments from experts and family members. And as in the earlier films, Kempner has found a fascinating story. Julius Rosenwald is little discussed now, in part because at his direction his charitable foundation was closed down after his death and in part because some of his initiatives to build schools for black children in the South were wrongly considered a perpetuation of the despicable “separate but equal” policy. This film shows what a significant, even definitive impact Rosenwald had in the era leading up to the Civil Rights movement. And an understated final revelation shows how far ahead of his time he really was.

When Jewish immigrants came to the United States from Eastern Europe — think of Tevye and his family at the end of “Fiddler on the Roof” — many of them became peddlers, or traveling salesmen. They didn’t even have to know English. They just had to be willing to trudge from farm to farm and town to town with a suitcase of goods. One of the highlights of the film is the compilation of depictions of these salesmen in popular culture, including an episode of “Rawhide” with Clint Eastwood trying to use Yiddish(!).

Rosenwald’s father was a traveling salesman who settled in Springfield, Illinois, where he knew Senator and then President Abraham Lincoln. Rosenwald and his brother followed their father into retail and later teamed up with Sears and Roebuck. Sears was a great salesman but a poor businessman, but Rosenwald developed the business practices, efficiencies, reliability, and use of new technologies to make the company into the biggest retailer and one of the biggest companies in the United States. His idea was that the then-new Sears catalog was a way to “drop a peddler in the mailbox” of Americans who were too far from the cities to shop in the stores. The catalog was aspirational — you could see what was possible. Congressman John Lewis appears in the film, explaining that he first knew he wanted an education when he saw in the Sears catalogue what educated people with jobs could buy.

When they needed more capital, Sears had one of the country’s first public offerings of stock. Rosenwald became very wealthy.

He was very influenced by his rabbi, Emil Hirsch, who taught him of the importance of tikkun olem — that it is the obligation of each of us to “heal the world.” And Rosenwald drew a direct parallel between the pogroms that Jews were experiencing in Europe and the racist assaults on blacks in the American South. In Hebrew the word for “charity” also means “justice.” And he was influenced by Booker T. Washington’s passion for education and empowerment. Washington brought Rosenwald to the Tuskegee Institute, where he was deeply moved by the self-reliance of the student body and the spirituals sung by the school choir.

With the same vision and focus on efficiency and responsibility he brought to his company, Rosenwald developed an ambitious program to build schools for black children in the South. The communities themselves had to raise part of the money and they had to build the schools themselves, similar to the approach of Habitat for Humanity in building homes. This meant that the communities were vitally involved and committed to the schools. With over 5300 schools giving black children the best educational opportunity they had ever had, the schools taught a generation who would grow up and provide the foundation for the Civil Rights movement. He also made grants to artists and scientists, including Marian Anderson, who used hers to study singing, and Dr. Charles Drew, whose innovation in blood transfusions has saved innumerable lives. He even gave a few grants to white southerners — Kempner shows us an application filled out by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, better known as Woody.

And, as a title card informs us at the end, he contributed a third of the costs for the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that made his schools near-obsolete. That is vision.

Kempner’s film shows the difference one person can make by telling Rosenwald’s story, a critical history lesson and a welcome reminder of our own tikkun olem obligations.

Parents should know that this film includes discussion and depiction of bigotry, including lynching.

Family discussion: Who is most like Rosenwald today? What can you do to heal the world?

If you like this, try: Kempner’s other documentaries

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Documentary Race and Diversity
Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton

Posted on August 13, 2015 at 5:38 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language throughout, strong sexuality/nudity, violence, and drug use
Profanity: Constant very strong and crude language, racist and homophobic terms
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, drugs, drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness: Violence including guns, fights, riots, sad deaths
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: August 14, 2015
Date Released to DVD: January 18, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN: B013P0X16Q

Copyright 2015 Universal
Copyright 2015 Universal
“What does NWA stand for?” asks Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), who is offering to become the manager of a new rap group from the Compton area of Los Angeles. “No Whites Allowed?”

“No,” Eric “Eazy-E” Wright answers: “N**** Wit Attitude.”

NWA liked to think of itself as speaking truth to power, a CNN of oppressed minorities. When the Detroit police force told them that they would be arrested for obscenity and inciting violence if they performed their notorious “F*** the Police” in concert, they performed it. And they were arrested. When they were accused of glamorizing drugs and violence, they said they were journalists, reporting what they saw. They had a lot of attitude, a lot of anger, and a lot of ambition. They were savvy about what we might call branding. When their song “F*** the Police” got them a warning letter from the FBI, Eazy understood that it was the best possible publicity to present them as rebels being attacked by the Man, marketing money could not buy.

Much of the story is familiar from every other musical biopic you’ve ever seen plus every single episode of “VH1: Behind the Music.” 1. Talented young people from a marginalized community are told that their music is neither good nor commercial. “If you find the next Bon Jovi, call me,” says one label executive as he walks out of their performance. 2. And then they find their audience. They become successful beyond their wildest dreams. 3. And then they discover that fame and money present their own challenges, including fights over money and the direction of the business. But this biopic, produced by the original members of NWA is unexpectedly sweet, even tender, presented with affection and perspective. (Perhaps this is the reason the film omits the genre’s most frequent cliche, the scenes of family members complaining that the musical superstars are not spending enough time at home.)

The script is sharp, often funny, and compelling. When a kid on a school bus taunts a thug in a nearby car, the thug boards the bus at gunpoint to tell the kids to treat him with respect — and stay in school. “We just got a motivational speech from an OG ,” says O’Shea Jackson, soon to be Ice Cube.

It has one of the best ensemble casts of the year and all of the performances are superb. But a considerable percentage of the movie’s power comes from its timing. While the events it depicts occurred three decades ago, it could easily be referring to the current headlines about police abuse and the virulent persistence of racism throughout American society. The footage of Rodney King being brutally attacked is chilling because it shows us where NWA’s anger came from and reminds us of how little progress we have made. More chilling than the attitude from NWA is the way that the constant trauma from the community and the society around it have created a particular kind of ambition. This first generation born after the heyday of the Civil Rights movement does not want promises or the traditional idea of progress. They are not about passive resistance and sit-ins. They are not looking for a seat at a segregated lunch counter. They want to tell their stories. And their contempt for the system is so deep that they show no interest in activism or putting their money back into the community.

Jason Mitchell gives a star-making performance as Eazy-E, the fearless and canny co-founder of NWA who started Ruthless Records with money he made dealing drugs. O’Shea Jackson, Jr. plays his real-life father, better known as Ice Cube, who created the lyrics for many of the group’s biggest and most influential pieces. And Corey Hawkins is Dr. Dre, master of the turntable. The movie is well over two hours and never seems long, but with that running time there should have been space for more about the creative drive. We see the guys writing in notebooks and there is a funny scene with Eazy as a last-minute substitute Dre has to show how to get on beat for their first recording. But we never get a sense of what it feels like to create these songs or to perform them before thousands of fans or how they felt about the complaints that their lyrics were misogynistic. Later we glimpse Ice Cube working on the screenplay for “Friday,” the first film from this movie’s director, F. Gary Gray. But we do not learn that it would be even more influential in Hollywood than NWA was in music. Instead, we get an admittedly very funny call-out to that film (“Bye, Felicia“). And we get fan service scenes re-creating Eazy’s pool parties and spouse service scenes like Cube meeting Nicole. There are two other members of the group we learn very little about.

There is still room for a more objective NWA story as cultural and political history. At middle age, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy’s widow are not as clear-eyed about their own history as NWA was in calling themselves citizen journalists, matching the harshness and brutality around them with the force of their rap. But this is a compelling story with a message as vitally important now as it was during NWA’s brief recording career, with plenty of attitude and then some.

Parents should know that the film includes very strong and crude language, drug dealing, smoking, drinking, wild parties, nudity, sexual references and situations, sad deaths, peril and violence, and archival footage of police brutality and riots.

Family discussion: Was NWA right to perform their song in Detroit? Do you agree that they are journalists? Should there be limits on song lyrics that are profane or bigoted?

If you like this, try: the documentaries about A Tribe Called Quest and Tupac Shakur and the music of NWA

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Native Americans Refuse to Work on Adam Sandler’s New Film

Posted on May 3, 2015 at 3:35 pm

Adam Sandler is currently filming “The Ridiculous Six,” reportedly a comic version of the classic Western “The Magnificent Seven.” According to Indian Country Today Media, a group of Native American actors walked off the set because they were offended by racist and sexist material in the script, including character names like Beaver Breath and No-Bra and crude humor.

“There were about a dozen of us who walked off the set,” said Anthony, who told ICTMN he had initially refused to do the movie. He then agreed to take the job when producers informed him they had hired a cultural consultant and efforts would be made for tasteful representation of Natives.

Five Thirty-Eight has an incisive look at the Sandler films, putting them in three categories: paydays, pineapples (a reference to a particularly gross joke in “Little Nicky”), and “he’s trying.” I wish he would try harder.

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