rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

i can see that perspective, but to me the show feels sometimes like it's really hard on women as an epiphenomenon of tina fey being really hard on herself.

i think there's maybe a sense that she has to be tough enough, ruthless enough for comedy, especially as a woman, and that makes her extra harsh towards her own feminist/liberal pieties

threads started at 10 pm on a monday night est are the most-responded-to-threads iirc:

is comedy inherently conservative?

Tracy: Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets. That's a metaphor.

― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Monday, May 14, 2012 8:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i remember the moment i saw this line delivered thinking "this is gonna be an awesome fucking show"

ps if u accuse me of otming a tracy jordan line i will play basketball with your ribcage

I actually agree that 30 Rock is unfair in its treatment of Kenneth and possibly even Twofer. However, what attitude does anyone think the show should take towards a character like Jenna? I never thought that she is ridiculed for sleeping around per se. She is ridiculed for her extreme narcissism and gold-digging. I never even thought her relationship with Paul was portrayed completely unsympathetically.

sympathetic grotesquerie, a hard line to walk but they pull it off okay. mostly due to the shows very careful sympathy for paul. i don't know that the show ridicules jenna for sleeping around, exactly, but it does seem to view her sexual behavior (as well as her entire character) as gross and pathetic. makes sense, because she's narcissistic neediness incarnate. same could be said of tracy, though, and the show isn't anywhere near as outright repulsed by him.

^ contains errors, fuggit

Her sexual behaviour (as well as her entire character) are often gross and pathetic! But not because they're 'deviant'!

Tracy is more just childish and self-indulgent, not a sociopathic narcissist.

That seems kinda harsh to me: I don't watch 30 Rock enough to be able to speak authoritatively about it, but I feel the show is less about making Jenna the butt of a bunch of 'old w****' jokes and more about using her as a vehicle of satire against the unrepentant shallowness of showbiz

But, I mean, I barely watch the show, so...

using her as a vehicle of satire against the unrepentant shallowness of showbiz

Well, yeah, maybe I didn't emphasize that aspect enough.

Its probably goes-without-saying obvious for those who tune in regularly...

Jenna and paul have the only healthy relationship on the show, except for maybe liz's new thing depending on how that goes

Okay, you don't have to spell it out if it's really that offensive, but what the hell does 'old w****' mean?

Guessing that's 'old whore'

So...30 rock isn't racist, unless maybe there's some deep analysis that gets to the heart of some subtle but ingrained thread of racism, idk, but nobody's really made any kind of coherant thesis along these lines.

I guess at bottom, I'm willing to give 30 Rock of all shows a pass on any minor racism because all of the characters are original and complex enough to transcend it. The AA humor is what bothered me the most, because the implicit message seemed like "wink wink, you know there wouldn't be black people here otherwise."

OTOH I can think of some relatively progressive stuff the show has done with gender and sexual orientation, e.g. having a powerful, dominant gay male character (Will Arnett) and having a straight female impersonator. Even though they're played for comic effect, it's almost unheard of for network television to acknowledge the existence of such people.

Pretty much any time I see five asterisks together these days, I assume it either means "igger" or "ucker".

how do you figger?

i'm just a sucker.

Even though they're played for comic effect, it's almost unheard of for network television to acknowledge the existence of such people.

This kind of thing is surprising until you realize that we do live in a country where Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is considered racially progressive.

that's a really good movie

i don't know about "racially progressive" but it's definitely smart about race

I don't think I've seen that movie since it first came out but yeah I don't think I can hate that movie

I think it's progressive in the fact that it's A) not a kung-fu movie and B) stars an actor of Asian descent anyway, in a lead role.

you mean two actors, right?

i'm not sure comic movies can really be progressive in a positive sense but harold and kumar is good, like 30 rock is often good, at limning white racism. and also good at analyzing the differences between how antiblack racism is expressed and institutionalized versus sort of nativist anti-Asian American racism.

Well really just starring one such actor is kind of unusual. In general American movies don't star actors who aren't white or black unless they're in roles that couldn't be replaced by a white guy. In some cases they're even willing to forgo major plot points in order to fit white guys in (see the blackjack movie 21). Obviously guys like John Cho and Kal Penn will always be able to find work in minor roles but to actually like, be on the poster, is really something

thanks for explaining

so what did you think of the movie, frogs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Ebony_Shoe

The Belgian Ebony Shoe. Really.

http://www.rsca.be/photodbase/articles/lukaku20110509.jpg http://www.rsca.be/photodbase/articles/boussoufa20090511.jpg

i was reading this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kompany and i saw the link and i was like "oh please oh please oh please"

Even with the 30 Rock talk, I'm so glad this thread is finally back on track.

Soccer, possible racist patronizing…. if that shoe turns out to be edible, I think we're going to be in business.

Werner Herzog and his crazy series of bets with Romelu Lukaku

Do you think the ebony shoe thing is more bad because it's an "ebony shoe" or because it's patronizing to have a separate award for best african footballer?

Little bit from column a, little bit from column b.

Maybe there's an award for the best Dominican player in baseball. And I have to keep reminding myself that other countries aren't quite the melting pot/salad bowl/spice rack that is the United States of America, so cherry picking out people of one particular continent there might not be the show stopper it is here.

But the EBONY SHOE? Again, I'm sure there is some historical explanation that 50 years ago when the firsat afdoaidsh;aopplayer coame to tbelgiaum theao;dfhdklsjfa, but EBONY SHOE?

Would love to see an award for the best white player in basketball

- "You have many awards, Mr. Kompany. What's this small one here?"

- "Oh, yes. That is my Ebony Shoe Award. I've won it multiple times."

- "Well, it certainly is ebony. Quite unusual. Tell me, how did you come about winning it?"

- "I was the best player from Africa in Belgian football. For this, they gave me an Ebony Shoe Award."

Not the best white player, frogs. Best player from Asia or Europe.

Though the first thing I did do is scan the list for South Africans.

yeah i've seen that ebony shoe before, the name is quite....striking

the idea of a prize for best african footballer isn't necessarily wrong, since a lot of excellent african football players have begun their careers in belgium, legacy of colonialism and product of a lax player registration system iirc

there was an entire team of players from the cote d'ivoire at beveren a one time

however the award being given to both african football players and those of african ancestry is patronizing and stupid, kompany was born in belgium and plays for the belgian national team but because he is half congolese he is somehow categorically different from flemish and wallonian players

belgium probably shdn't exist anyway so there's that

http://i.imgur.com/J8Q0n.jpg

kevin mirallas, five time winner of the platonic shoe given to belgian players of hellenic extraction

residual guilt for the Congo and King Leopold?!?

i'm guessing americans think it's racist primarily for the 'ebony and ivory' imagery rather than for belgium's near-genocidal exploitation of its colonies rare woods, minerals etc

platonic shoe is the shoe from which all other shoes derive shoeness presumably

I did think of Ebony and Ivory first, but now that you mention it, I had forgotten about that "Belgians In the Congo" line from We Didn't Start the Fire.

lol

I always tend to wonder if the Ebony shoe could be won by say a white Namibian/South African.

Also, I think Mbark Boussouffa won it a couple of times, who was born and grew up up in Amsterdam (sure of Moroccan descent, but still...)

also, would Ryan Giggs be able to win it