Dare you to defend White Chicks (the movie)

If this isn't an instant cultural touchstone, i don't know what is!!!

or if you have fines to pay join your local nazi group, they
also provide free viewings

By the way, how come the feminists haven't gotten up in arms about the use of the word "chicks?"

xpost

Like I said on a previous thread those masks they're wearing terrify me. they look like serial killers.

i'm actually looking forward to their tv show.

Please stop telling black people what they should approve of and what they should be offended by, ok thx.

i watched this tonight! they brought the whole neighborhood fruitcakes! it was so stepford wives!

Say, VeganDan, are you black? I'm offended by the movie as a white person - is that OK?

Besides, forget race - coming at this from a critical perspective, White Chicks is more offensive in it's lameness than for any other reason. Didn't the Simpsons satirize this kind of "Dude Where's My Pepsi" humor into oblivion yet? Oh, while we're at it, let's have an old lady 'rap' - wouldn't that just be hilarious? And put her in sunglasses. And have a dog take a hit fromn the bong! Yeah, that's hysterical! Whoa, uptight white people - as if there were any other kind - that's comedy gold!! Right?

Why do you hate yourself so much?

Okay, fuck you you gigantic condescending asshole.

Why, are you a rich wasp chick?

Do you think the scene in stir crazy where gene wilder does blackface is racist?

I already wrote in my last post why it's offensive. Not that I really give a fuck either way. It's not like I'm boycotting the thing.

I just thought the minstrel days were over. And good riddance.

While I don't think this movie will measure up to the quality of any of those part of the humor lies in making fun of ourselves for our racial uptightness and buried (but not too deep) prejudices.

It's not insulting - it's cheap and boring. The otherwise talented Chapelle included.

(wow I feel like that kid in the Onion article who used all the Simpsons references in his suicide note)

Eisbar OTM. America has a lot to learn from the Dark Bros. and their utopian visions of racial harmony (and ass fucking).

Then why the name? In interviews the stars have made 'amusing' refences to things like having to "learn to dance off beat". The whiteness of the girls seems to be very much what's being mocked.

Truly, people, how many white people do you know how speak with that nasally, cornball voice that's become the universal comedic white accent (replacing the perennial Southern-accent-as-evidence-of-ignorance)? You know - like the lawyer on The Simpsons who isn't Lionel Hutz?

And he compares movies using these stereotypes to triumph of the will/blackface.

As for the male part: "By the way, how come the feminists haven't gotten up in arms about the use of the word "chicks?""

Roger what’s your problem with Soul Plane? It irritates me when concerned white folks suddenly decide that it’s unconscionable for black people to act stupid in comedies, like it should always be fucking SOUL PLANE OF DIGNITY starring Sidney Poitier. White people act stupid in like every fucking comedy ever, and nobody watches them and thinks “holy shit this is a disgrace to the image of white people everywhere.” You laugh because some white dude is acting stupid and funny in some way you maybe recognize from your day-to-day existence. Same goes for black people watching black comedies: get over it.

what about when black folks decide it's unconsionable?

June 13, 2004
Can Black People Fly? Don't Ask 'Soul Plane'
By A. O. SCOTT

"SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG" ends, famously, with a warning to the Man. The hero, a canny amalgam of Old West outlaw and third-world revolutionary, may have fled across the border into Mexico, but this is merely a tactical retreat. Before long, the words on the screen promise, Sweetback, the embodiment of and answer to centuries of insult and brutality inflicted on black Americans by their white oppressors, will return "to collect some dues."

Like many prophecies, this one, issued in 1971, has come true, though perhaps not quite in the way its author, Melvin Van Peebles, who wrote, directed and starred in "Sweetback," may have intended. In "Baadasssss," his stylish and thoughtful reconstruction of the making of "Sweetback," Mr. Van Peebles's son, Mario, portrays his father as a canny showman with a stubborn sense of political mission. Having directed an ethnic comedy called "Watermelon Man," the elder Van Peebles walks away from a three-picture deal with Columbia to make an independent film that he hopes will reflect, in raw, uncompromised and accessible form, the experiences and aspirations of African-Americans at a time of social upheaval and political confrontation.

"Baadasssss," which ends with the Detroit premiere of "Sweetback" before an ecstatic audience recruited by local Black Panthers, makes the case that he succeeded. The financial success of "Sweetback" — one of the highest-grossing independent pictures released here — brought 1970's Hollywood a belated news flash that has, unfortunately, needed periodic updating ever since: black people buy movie tickets.

To say that Sweetback collected his dues in the form of box office receipts is not to trivialize Mr. Van Peebles's accomplishment. The blaxploitation movies that "Sweetback" inspired may have been controversial at the time (and, like everything else in 70's pop culture, vulnerable to parody and condescension later on), but in appropriating the conventions of the western and the gangster film they nonetheless advanced the radical notion that black men on screen could be something other than buffoons, servants or model citizens. They could be action heroes — armed, dangerous, sexy and righteous leading men. It took a while, but that radical idea is at last beginning to look like conventional wisdom.

Which is not to suggest that Mario Van Peebles's history lesson should be taken as an invitation to complacency. According to "Sweetback," one of his father's grudges against the film industry in the late 60's was that, with a few exceptions, it shunted African-American artists into a low-comedy ghetto. The range of black pop-culture archetypes has expanded enormously in recent years, but the uncomfortable, double-edged legacy of minstrelsy nonetheless persists.

There is perhaps no more egregious recent example than "Soul Plane," a ragged, silly comedy that opened nationwide on the same day as "Baadasssss" made its art house debut. "Baadasssss" explores the obstacles facing a determined black man trying to make a film; "Soul Plane" (with Snoop Dogg as a stoned, ex-convict pilot) suggests that the idea that black people could run an airline, let alone fly a plane, is downright laughable.

Now, I don't want to sound like a scold. Without broad ethnic humor, American comedy would consist of one or two Ernst Lubitsch pictures and the collected monologues of Johnny Carson. And I won't deny that there are some funny jokes in "Soul Plane," including many that no anxious, well-meaning white person would ever admit to laughing at. But for all its boisterous sexual humor, the movie carefully avoids any real provocation, let alone insight. The airline's first-class passengers sip Champagne, while those in "low class" fight over fried chicken, but just about everyone is loud, crude, oversexed and liable to start dancing at the slightest provocation.

Except for the white people, who are represented by Tom Arnold, playing a guy named Elvis Hunkee. The Man, it seems, is no longer a scheming, cruel oppressor, but rather a hapless, sexless loser — not much of a man at all, really. And not much of a racist, either. He looks a little uncomfortable at first, but Mr. Hunkee is quickly swept up in the big, happy "Soul Plane" party.

Maybe this, like the easygoing acceptance of interracial romance at the movie's end, is a sign of progress. Perhaps the political passion that impelled Melvin Van Peebles to make "Sweetback," and that energized a later generation of black filmmakers (including Mario Van Peebles, who made "New Jack City" and "Panther"), is obsolete, and we can all sit back and laugh at each other. This is a seductive idea, but in the case of "Soul Plane" it is also a regressive one. Apparently we've come so far that we can now make jokes about lazy, incompetent and promiscuous black people, as long as some of them are also rich and good-looking, as long as the soundtrack has strong sales potential and as long as the movie is marketed primarily to African-American audiences.

"Soul Plane" almost seems to exist in a parallel movie universe, in which neither "Baadasssss" nor "Sweetback" ever existed because Melvin Van Peebles, on further reflection, decided to go ahead with a sequel to "Watermelon Man." Wherever he is, Sweetback still has some work to do, and some dues to collect.

The Real World: Williamsburg

Take this quote: "Apparently we've come so far that we can now make jokes about lazy, incompetent and promiscuous black people."

Now remove the word "black" -- what else have cheap comedies ever done? Cheap comedies are all about watching people act stupid, vain, hapless, incompetent, or slutty. When it's a white audience laughing at white people acting like idiots, it never once crosses anyone's mind that these characters are in any way intended to reflect the overall behavior of white people -- the behavior's meant to resemble or exaggerate the behavior of specific white jackasses you may know or even identify with.

Now why shouldn't black people have the opportunity to laugh, in exactly the same way, at the same kinds of ridiculous, comedic behavior? Why should some stupid shit DL Hughley does in Soul Plane reflect on The Entire Black Community any more than some stupid shit Newman on Seinfeld does reflects on All White People Ever? To squelch that kind of thing might improve the dramatic quality of "black" films, sure, but the only good reason for it would be a really repressive "we have to look in front of the white folks" impulse.

I mean, I certainly take Scott's point that comedy of this sort is completely overrepresented in terms of "black" films, and I'm overjoyed to see even semi-dramatic black middle-class comedies getting made; there's certainly no reason black people should be actively limited to a stupid-comedy ghetto. But that limitation has very little to do with whether or not Soul Plane is "offensive." That ghetto exists because (a) white audiences are more likely to spend money to watching black people act funny/stupid than they are to go see a mostly-black drama or romantic comedy, and (b) the movie industry, in turn, doesn't seem to make a lot of room for the latter sort of thing to get made or decently marketed. Whoever wrote Soul Plane didn't create that situation.

I agree with you that whomever wrote/made Soul Plane didn't creat the situation directly, but more and more movies of its ilk by definition squeezes stuff like Baadasssss outta the marketplace (not that I wanna defend Mario per se, just that's how it is - black films are economies of scale just like McDonald's burgers or something).

I remember reading about the early controversy over the sitcom All in the Family, where Archie Bunker, his wife Edith, airhead blonde daughter and draft dodging longhair son played a steretypical white working class family. Archie Bunker was very vocal in his ignorance and racism.

This caused a controversy, and ratings were high for the show. But why were people watching? Like "White Chicks", researchers wanted to know if white people were laughing WITH Archie or laughing AT Archie because he was so ridiculous. They did a study.

What they found was that the answer depended on the viewers' own political beliefs. If viewers held racist beliefs, they watched the show to hear Archie rant and thought it was funny and "right on". They were laughing WITH Archie at commies, blacks, hippies, liberals etc.

If the viewer had more critical political views, they watched for comedy value, to laugh AT Archie's portrayal of stereotypically racist, conservative culture, and saw the show as brilliant parody.

I think these shows work because they simultaneously appeal to different audiences for different reasons.

Please no cries of "Pedantry" I have a license to perform pedantry at will by inclination and training.

And I agree with you to a certain extent regarding the marketplace, but I'm uncomfortable with labeling the dumb black comedy somehow offensive or disgraceful; in most cases it's just another crappy product, created in the same spirit as any other crappy comedy, regardless of the race of the participants and the flavor (or flava) of the humor. I'm as uncomfortable as anyone with the idea that there are broad swathes of white kids whose only experience of black people is through shit comedies and hip-hop videos (surely the biggest white audience for these things is like 12 year old boys), but everyone has the right to make a dumb film, right?

I'm trying to think of the last majority-black drama or even romantic comedy that large numbers of white people bothered seeing: Waiting to Exhale?

Orbit's Archie Bunker example is completely OTM, too. Even the most simple black comedies aren't so simple as to be only enjoyed one way by one audience, at least not usually.

"Airhead"?? Gloria might sometimes seem a bit naive, but "airhead" is a huge overstatement, she actually outsmarts both Archie and Michael in a lot of episodes.

That poll you quoted baffles me. I mean, Archie wasn't just portrayed as a racist or right-wing extremist, he was also frequently shown to be a coward, a thief, a liar and an all-around bad guy. Plus he basically "lost" in every episode, and it usually ends w/ some joke featuring him as the target...ok, Michael and Gloria are never shown as being perfect either, but I always thought the show was pretty explicitly liberal in tone.

(not questioning your facts or anything, just very surprised by how ppl can interpret stuff, it's like nazis watching "Hogan's Heroes" or something...)

My prediction: this movie will be neither offensive nor funny.

However, the idea that all black comedies have to be insightful and groundbreaking for the good of the race as a whole as implied in the above review seems pretty racist itself to me, like black people have to prove themselves.

hahahaha yeah I don't know any white postmen (or postwomen).

Now, I don't want to sound like a scold. Without broad ethnic humor, American comedy would consist of one or two Ernst Lubitsch pictures and the collected monologues of Johnny Carson. And I won't deny that there are some funny jokes in "Soul Plane," including many that no anxious, well-meaning white person would ever admit to laughing at. But for all its boisterous sexual humor, the movie carefully avoids any real provocation, let alone insight. The airline's first-class passengers sip Champagne, while those in "low class" fight over fried chicken, but just about everyone is loud, crude, oversexed and liable to start dancing at the slightest provocation.

http://www.xoxmag.com/images/metem/dr_awkward_front.gif

http://www.xoxmag.com/images/metem/dr_awkward_front.gif

http://www.xoxmag.com/images/metem/dr_awkward_front.gif

It's really not that difficult.

I'm sorry, Ive been having a terrible week, and I really don't appreciate that on every thread you manage to jump down my throat for reasons I cant even discern.

TS: eating crow vs. drinking crow

http://users.rcn.com/rschrade/crow.jpg

"Surf's up, dudes!"

http://www.xoxmag.com/images/metem/dr_awkward_front.gif

As for the fried chicken, this is one of those things where I think people totally overreact from the stereotypes, and wind up being way way overoffended. There's a difference between nasty black people / fried chicken stereotypes and the actual reality that plenty of black people do indeed enjoy fried chicken. Black people are also by and large probably more into collard greens than their white counterparts; you'd have to have a whole other agenda to try and put some sort of negative value judgment on that.

This film is fucking awful.

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lol

i watched about 10 minutes of it on tv tonight. I turned it off before i saw either of the wayans in white chick mode. i made the right decision i think, i need to be able to sleep tonight.

Why isn't "Nuns on the Run" on the similar movies list??

C.H.U.D.?

i really wanna see this

When Florida tries to stop Caucasian Ladies from voting, then maybe we can talk about this movie's social whatever. Until then, those girls are hot. But why are their voices so scratchy?

-- Huk-L, Thursday, June 17, 2004 7:26 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

it made me dislike the Book Group chick :/

Little Man (2006)

haw