rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

I would dance to that song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhkpR1NoEmY

I'm going to go with "not racist" for that one. Do you feel that the man is somehow demeaned by the video?

― rustic italian flatbread, Friday, October 28, 2011 1:10 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think the Tim&Eric/BlackKeys aesthetic of "tap dance for us, peculiar black man" is p fucking suspect, which is why i ask, "Is this racist?"

pretty much everything painted in the Tim & Eric aesthetic is suspect, which is why the stuff that works is so amazing and the stuff that doesn't is so unbearable

"tap dance for us, peculiar black man"

there is no tap dancing in that Black Keys video. if anything, the guy is doing the dance that every white guy in 80s teen sex comedies used to do

y'know, the "running in place" thing. overbite optional.

hey shakey let me introduce you to the concept of figurative speech,

is "peculiar" figurative too cuz I don't see anything peculiar about that guy

he does appear to be actually black

the thing that strikes me is that they've got a video of a black man dancing vaguely like Carlton Banks as a video for a song called "Lonely Boy"; that definitely registers as "sketchy"

is whiney racist for finding that black man to be peculiar?

his dancing is peculiar, white or black

now I'm gonna feel weird every time I lol @ Carlton dancing

that sort of 'droll' 'deadpan' 'mnml' video aesthetic, if it is of a sort, is really terrible regardless of whether the incongrously terpsichorean figure-of-fun is white, purple or even black

I don't see what the Lonely Boy title has to do with it...?

kinda more inclined to agree with nakhchivan

you know white people used to demean and degrade black men by always referring to them as "boy", right

it is not nearly as bad as if the song had been called "Lonely Jungle Bunny" but it's near that territory

i think the Tim&Eric/BlackKeys aesthetic of "tap dance for us, peculiar black man" is p fucking suspect, which is why i ask, "Is this racist?"

― Youth Ya Goon (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, October 28, 2011 1:50 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't know anything about their aesthetic. Do they do this often?

I'm totally seeing Dan's point about "boy" though.

"I was cast as an extra, and there were maybe six or seven other people who were supposedly going to be in the video. ... I was the first one to perform in the video. It was a motel shot where the guys from the Black Keys come and give me the keys to their motel room," he said. "The director just sort of noticed me dancing and asked me, 'Can you perform?' I said, 'I can dance, anybody can dance,' so I took some moves from everybody: John Travolta from 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Pulp Fiction,' the Carlton Banks dance from 'The Fresh Prince' and a little bit of Michael Jackson, so it was a smorgasbord of everybody in there.

"It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing," Tuggle added. "My acting teacher Mark McPherson, he has us do this thing before we start class called 'Song and Dance,' where he'll have us sing one of our favorite songs, and then while we're singing it, he'll have us do a crazy dance, or a sexy dance, and I guess it spawned from that."

I agree that this video is "suspect" but at the same time I also assume the "boy" thing is an unfortunate oversight rather than an intentional thing. a lot of young white folx don't know that connotation of "boy."

Are there racist aspects to this video too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXkM8PsPXs

Not even so much to the black performers or "Prince", but to the Latino get-ups some of the singers put on.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable about "Lonely Boy" is that it lingers for the entire video on that one dude. You start thinking about why he's doing this, how he knows the words, why is he in front of a motel lobby. His race is an aspect of that big picture too.

pplains, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw the black keys video.

I agree with crut

tap dance for me, peculiar John Goodman.

(a large reason why it reads as "sketchy" and not "wrong" is because it seems like an unfortunate juxtaposition rather than an intentional choice)

But the Black Keys are from Atlanta. I mean, you'd think that as southerners they would be pretty aware of the connotation.

They weren't even aware of Andrew Gold, apparently.

lol I am from Atlanta and I think I mostly learned about the "boy" thing from ILX

The 'boy' aspect is the only thing I find troublesome, really. But I do agree with crüt, it's almost certainly an oversight.

youtube page says that video was directed by Jesse Dylan.. as in son of Bob?

okay the "boy" thing didn't occur to me immediately but yeah fair point

But the Black Keys are from Atlanta.

By Atlanta do you mean Akron, OH?

Akranta

he was thinking of the Black Lips or the Black Crowes

Look, Ohio has so little going on for us right now. Don't take away our bands!

We need to put them all where we can keep track of them.

especially the boy bands.

http://i.imgur.com/6fCE1.jpg

That's dope as hell below the neck.

i see this tanning chain around in the suburbs, feels racist to me but maybe it's not?

http://media.merchantcircle.com/13506583/Logo%20Stacked%202005%20HR_full.jpeg

that's toeing some sort of line certainly

wd like to point out re: "latino get-ups" in the talking heads video that it is taken from true stories, which is set in small-town texas. most of the "latino" clothing in the video just looks like normal western wear to me (which obv has hispanic influence).

I heart that wacky "Chinese" font

here's a good article about "ethnic type" (as in fonts), including chop suey/"chinesey" fonts: http://www.printmag.com/Article/Stereo_Types

Awesome!

This week I went to a Chinese-themed bar with all Asian-ethnic employees, full of signs with that Chinesey font but with words in pinyin! So stuff like "NI HAO" and "XIE XIE", but written in chop suey. Clear did my head in.

id say the black keys thing is suspect since youre looking at a white band that plays to largely white audiences using a black man to sell their product to white people on his public dancing of which their is a long tradition of that sort of thing. the weird racial issue abt it feels obvious

i agree w/ crut about 'boy' likely not hitting them, but it does feel like his race is tied up in the 'interesting'-ness of the video i guess you could say

oh, Katie....

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/dont-worry-katie.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roiphe/2011/11/the_99_percent_takes_over_brooklyn.html

(tho not racism-related, I really like Glenn Kenny's concluding story about Carly Simon's sister)

http://gawker.com/5856541/texas-legislator-tells-insurance-companies-to-stop-jewing-his-constituents

yes, yes it is

I am totally reporting that guy to the Elders of Zion. He'll be out of a job within the week.