Ken Burns Hates Mexicans

Same At It Ever Was #765

They keep NOT letting me post in the comment section of Huffington Post. I try putting 'em up, their censor moderator keeps deleting 'em. Just trying to politely point out the fact that their list lacks Raza. I'm starting to get annoyed.

I'm giving my fellow progressives the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it's my typos that's preventing me from participating in the grand discourse. We'll see. If they don't watch it someone's in line for a Wet Burrito Award.

Will keep trying...

Same As It Ever Was

I know Obama's school speech is old news, especially in light of last night's address to Congress, and especially in the context of our 24/7 news cycle, but this was too good to pass up. From The New York Times...

Some kids don’t get to see the speech in Texas, because their parents kept them home, or their schools caved to a couple of loud guys in the parking lot. For them, the lesson is: play hooky whenever you feel like it, don’t respect authority, even your commander in chief, and if you say stupid things over and over you can get reasonable people to give in.

Whining works, especially in Texas, which ranked 46th in overall S.A.T. scores last year, falling further behind the national average.

“There are few moments in my life when I’m embarrassed to say I’m from Texas,” says Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor and current U.S. trade representative, who watched the speech with high school kids not far from your elementary school. “This is one of them.”

The Medium is the Message

So this band from Canada gets on a United plane to make their gig. As they wait for takeoff they look out the window, and, to their horror, witness bag handlers tossing around their guitar cases.

Of course the instruments are broken. The band wants money for the damages. And thus begins a one year struggle to get the airline to pay for the broken guitar. No one takes responsibility. Calls are put on hold or unreturned. The classic runaround.

Cut to now, and the frustrated band records a song narrating their plight and United's callous indifference. The group's YouTube video goes viral. CNN replays the story. David is beating Goliath. United calls, hat in hand, eager to work something out.

Great story. Crooks and Liars has it here. Not a bad song. But why did the band have to go the offensive stereotype route and portray themselves in large Mexican sombreros and big, black bigotes? WFT? It makes no sense in the context of the video's narrative. And, as one comment put it, "sure the song's nice, and congrats for it and the attention, but could this whitebread musician be any more tone-deaf if not racist? Sure, the sombreros and mustaches are cute - if you live in the 1950s or earlier and are NOT Mexican or Hispanic...it seems someone aggrieved of being treated poorly, like this musician, might think twice before dumping on another race to get cheap weak laughs."

Same At It Ever Was #49

Some people just don't get it. Or if they do, they just don't care. Seems another group of ignorant white students -- in this case, law students at Tulane University -- not only planned a party around the theme of "The Border" -- showing up for the fiesta in large, floppy sombreros and pasted-on black mustaches -- but stupidly photographed their gringo selves in the offending costumes.

And then they posted the images on Facebook. Pendejos.

Remind me not to retain any lawyers graduating from Tulane. They sound like idiots. Guanabee, broke the story and has the details here, plus they thoughtfully posted more of the festive party pics at which to gawk at with disbelieving, open mouth. Someone please forward the pics to the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh types who are now arguing that Obama's election (which they all opposed, by the way) proves America is no longer racist and for all the brown people to now please shut up and stop complaining.

For some odd reason a few of the gringos sported aviator sunglasses as a signifier of "Mexicaness." The sombreros I get, but aviator sunglasses? I'm guessing that's because Benicio del Toro wore them in Traffic? Or is that giving their semiotic skills too much credit? In any case the beer of choice appeared to be Corona. Typical. One of the students, a Peter Skarsgard looking chubby guy, deviated from the sombrero look and was dressed like a cholo. I immeditatley knew homeboy was inauthentic because he was not leaning like one. Plus vato's whiteboy's fake Pendelton shirt was buton-down. Dork. Be sure and read the comments over at the Guanabee post. Some people actually defend the use of racist stereotypes as appropriate Law School party wear. Our future best and brightest indeed.

Radio Is Dead

While this bit of sad news is actually a week old, it's important nonetheless, if for no other reason than a lament for things gone...

The very badass Los Angeles radio station Indie 103.1 went off the air last Friday. The station's eclectic mix of alt rock, old school punk, listener faves by Morrissey and L.A.'s own hometown band X, the always entertaining blatherings of Steve Jones and his afternoon show Jonesy's Jukebox (where the ex-Sex Pistol once spent a day playing showtunes and another with an insightful two hour interview with Tony Bennett), a station where you could listen to Dave Navarro hitting on girls who called into his late night music show, and, of course, hear the Modern Lover's sublime single Roadrunner played at least once a day...all of this contributed to a true L.A. sound: modern, nostalgic, absurd, unpretentious, vaguely Chicano, knowledgeable, pretty and vacant.

One of the best shows on the station was Joe Escalante's morning show, "The Last of the Famous International Morning Shows," (a very funny title if you're a Morrissey fan). Escalante was a lawyer, record label owner, amateur matador, and bassist for the So Cal punk band the Vandals and member of the best Smith's tribute band in the world, the Sweet and Tender Hooligans (YouTube here and here). Escalante's smart and funny morning show featured great music as well as daily weather reports by David Lynch, sports reports by Deadwood TV actor Timothy Olyphant, and a tone of ironic DJ detachment that never annoyed. (Call me a reverse racist, but irony from the mouths of Brown people somehow doesn't grate on my nerves as it does when I hear it spouted by white hipsters.) Escalante's show abruptly ended last November. Should have read the writing on the wall.

Indie 103 was one of the last unique and independent voices in a corporate-dominated American sound scape. DJs picked the songs they wanted to play, not from a list of over-produced, soulless, Top 40 so-called hits by Britney, Coldplay, Rascal Flatts and their ilk. I mean, who do you know who actually buys a Nickelback CD? And who wants to hear it?

Rolling Stone has the sad story on Indie 103's demise here, and a link to an earlier story calling the station "the best radio station" in the U.S. is here. The station was a favorite of recent settled L.A. resident Prince, who debuted four of his new songs on Indie 103 last December. There is an informative interview with the station's now ex-musical director Mark Sovel here. Recommended.

What's not so well known is that the owners of the hippest, coolest, independent alt radio station in the entire United States was Spanish language broadcasting chain Entravision Communication, owners of many Univision TV stations nationwide. The fact that a parent company making their money broadcasting Spanish language telenovelas subsidizing a radio station that gave valuable air time two hours a day, five times a week to a guy who played guitar for Sid Vicious used to delight me to no end.

Well, the party's over. Latest word is that Indie 103.1 is now going to be known as El Gato 103.1, and will be playing "contemporary Mexican regional music." Corporate radio sucks no matter what language it's speaking.

Same At It Ever Was

Before everyone gets all giddy in the wake of Obama's winning performance in last night's debate and starts booking trips to the multi-culti inaugural, it might be useful to read this recent report on how race may affect the voting:

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can't win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

These are white Democrats we're talking about. Democrats. Can you imagine the numbers if they polled Republicans? According to the study, conducted with Stanford University, if the election is as close as it was in 2004, the racist vote will be large enough to give the election to John "That Guy" McCain.

I hope the study is wrong, but it looks as if their data is correct. Typically, high polling numbers for a Black candidate, like Obama now has, have always been viewed with some skepticism. A white voter, it was assumed, wouldn't want to reveal to a pollster any opposition to a black candidate, afraid it would make the voter appear racist. This s0-called Bradley effect explains the difference between a black candidates high poll numbers and a much narrower edge -- or outright loss -- on election day. Supposedly, this latest Obama poll took that phenomenon into consideration. Again, I hope they're wrong:

The AP-Yahoo News poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.

Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful," 29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.

Among white Democrats, one third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.

The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites."

Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn't.

The best appeal to address this issue is direct confrontation. Check out this very badass speech by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to union members telling them to get over their prejudice against blacks  and vote for the guy who will best help their interests:

Same As It Ever Was #103

Sex in the City beat out Indiana Jones for biggest movie in America this past weekend. $55 million, 85% of the ticket buyers female. Apparently the big numbers took Hollywood execs by surprise. Interesting post over at Vulture, which not only analyzes the industry's reluctance to acknowledge women as a valued market, but pronounces Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte as Superheroes (because they protect each other from bad men.) Clever...

Hollywood's mystified response to Sex and the City's $55 million opening weekend — who knew women liked to see movies with their friends? — proves once again that despite being more than half the population, women are still a niche market in the movie business. After helpfully identifying which moviegoers contributed to SATC's success ("women"), bewildered Hollywood number-counter Paul Dergarabedian added, "This was to women what Indiana Jones and Star Wars, let's say, are to men." The only people who aren't surprised at SATC's summer-blockbuster numbers are women.

Still -- Superheros they may be -- but Carrie & Company's Marvel Universe of New York City has always been pretty much white, devoid of brown people, in no way even a meek reflection of the city's actual cultural and ethnic diversity. Apparently (I have yet to see the movie -- and, yes, I'm gonna -- I'm a big fan of the so-called, much maligned chick flick) the film version of SATC attempts to rectify the retro gringo TV fantasy with the best way Hollywood knows how: the sassy black girlfriend. As posted in the Root...

After six seasons, a couple of power lesbians, a naked Blair Underwood, contract negotiations, false starts and four years of abstinence, the city will finally get some color in the full-figured form of Jennifer Hudson.

The 26-year-old Oscar winner will play a new character—little Louise from St. Louis, Carrie's "young and inexperienced, but still label-savvy assistant." Booooo!

All Sex and the City evangelists know there is one fatal flaw with the show that launched the sale of a thousand Manolos; The New York City that HBO gave us was monochromatic, lily white. Unless you count bright spots with Miranda's former lovah Dr. Robert Leeds (Blair Underwood) and a few lipstick lesbians who showed Charlotte a good time in season two, SATC has never been the place to seek affirmative action in bed.

The black best friend, of course, nothing new. And, as always, serving a particular servile function, with no agency all their own, not to mention an individual storyline. As The Root continues in their blog...

Still, Hudson's character, though fresh-faced, unexpected and significant, appears to be fairly predictable. Louise, with her curly black 'do and dizzy plaid boots, has a specific function in the film—helping Carrie get her crap together after a bad break up. Basically she is the perfect pocket life coach.

Again, nothing new. Referenced in the Root post is this must-read LA Times article from last year by Gregg Braxton, which delves deeper into the Black Best Friend. Braxton describes the phenom as a second banana character "played by an African American actress whose character’s principal function is to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life." This would be comical if it wasn't so sad. Again, from Braxton's piece...

But on a more serious note, the trend of BBFs underscores the limitations that African American actresses still face more than five years after Halle Berry's Oscar-winning performance as best actress in a leading role for “Monster’s Ball.” Despite impressive r�sum�s, solid credentials and successful achievements, many of the black actresses who have played BBFs are rarely offered the heroine role in mainstream projects. Not one black actress will star in a prime-time series on the four major networks this fall season.

And, as has been long lamented, lead roles in films are few and far between.

Over on the Latina front, all things representational aren't any better. Actually, they're worse. At least black actresses get parts in movies. Brown people can't even get them made.

Writer Alicia Valdes-Rodriguez, for example, has been trying to get her book The Dirty Girl's Social Club made into a Hollywood movie. Her script of her novel was sent by her producers to all the major studios. All of them passed on the project. And she has a few opinions of why it happened. In the latest of her series of video posts updating her fans on the project's development, Valdes-Rodriguez blames ignorance by "the studio execs" (read "rich white guys") on their lack of interest in the project. Seems the myopic bastards were put off with what Valdes-Rodriguez claims are her complex Latina characters (read "latinas who are not maids.") The execs, apparently, could not read them as "real latinas." Whatever that means.

It's a seven minute semi-rant, not without its salient points. See video here. And I was with V-R on more than a few of her arguments until homegirl touted Greg Nava's recent straight-to-video mess movie Borderland as "great." An example of a model Hollywood Latino project? A movie brown filmmakers should aspire to emulate? Hm. I rented Borderland. And it was bad. Nothing more than the corny Nava cinematic aesthetic coupled with a self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, exploitive J Lo star vehicle draped over the real horrors of the murders of the young women of Juarez. Not to mention its meandering and confusing plot and bad "noble" acting. If this is the epitome of Brown Film give me Cheech and Chong any day.

Perhaps -- and this doesn't necessarily apply to Dirty Girls Social Club (I haven't read it, nor have I read the screenplay) -- but perhaps Hollywood is turning down Latino scripts because they are just not good. Granted, a legitimate complaint on a double standard can be made given Hollywood's daily greenlighting of bad white movies, but I'd like to think our standards should be higher than, say, the latest Adam Sandler movie. I'm just sayin'.

Apologies for the long post. But if you've read this far I'm sure you won't mind a last couple of paragraphs, especially if its an example of some good writing, a welcome palate-cleansing change of pace after the Greg Nava bad moviemaking detour. Again, from the Vulture post, about the the Sex in the City girls as Superheroes, and the double standard applied to chick flicks...

Superheroes exist outside the laws and boundaries the rest of us have to abide by; while men want to see themselves flying and fighting, women are more interested in pushing other limits. How old can you be and still be hot? How many times can you break up and still be in love with someone? How many hours of the day can four working women conceivably spend together?

Pointing out that Carrie could never afford her apartment, let alone her wardrobe, is about as useful as questioning Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to create cold fusion in a cave in Afghanistan — it misses the point of the movie entirely. Why is it okay for Iron Man to collect expensive cars but materialistic for Carrie to collect shoes? Surely her carbon footprint is the smaller of the two. Politely, we don't ask what the Hulk says about American men and their relationship to rage, so why should we tolerate attacks on Samantha's legendary libido? Sam Jones is no more a real cougar than Dr. Jones is a real archaeologist, but they're both good summer fun. So wise up, Hollywood, and start giving us some more female superheroes. And please, take a hint from Sex and the City, and dress them in Vivienne Westwood, not vinyl.

As Stan "the Man" Lee would put it, "'Nuff said."

Same As It Ever Was...

Of interest for that small subset of "Those Latinos Who Care About Such Things" (meaning that subset of raza who also care about box office numbers...perhaps all five of us) the numbers for the new immigrant movie La Misma Luna ("Under the Same Moon") has broken a record. Apparently someone's been keeping track of "three day opening weekend grosses for Spanish language films" and La Misma Luna's $2.8 million shattered the previous benchmark.

This category of "three day opening weekend grosses of Spanish language films" is, of course, not to be confused with "films that feature evil one-dimensional gringo characters" or even "films which feature assimilated Chicano characters who don't speak Spanish and act like idiots." Both categories of movies which La Misma Luna would certainly qualify. Not to say I didn't like the movie -- I did -- let's just say the film never met a convenient and coincidental plot point it didn't like.

Two weeks ago I attended the conference of the National Association of Independent Latino Filmmakers. A membership group of U.S. Latino filmmakers from across the country. Highlights of this year's annual event featured a special screening of La Misma Luna on Friday night; an opening plenary session with a lone U.S. Latino among four Mexicans discussing "Creating a Pan-Latino Cinema With Global Appeal," and two special luncheon conversations sponsored by HBO with the makers of the joint Mexico/Spain co-production Pan's Labyrinth on Saturday, and on Sunday Carlos Cuaron discussing his upcoming soccer movie starring the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck of the Latino world, Diego Luna and Gail Garcia Bernal.

If you're detecting a non-U.S. Latino theme in these signature events in a conference dedicated to the efforts of U.S. Latino filmmakers striving for cultural self-expression you're not the only one to notice. And while this isn't so much a critique of the organizers of the NALIP conference -- after all, you can only reflect what's out there in the marketplace -- what's happening is that more and more the notion of what defines a "Latino" film, especially to studios and/or white producers, is that a Latino movie has to be about immigrants and has to be in Spanish. Absent from this narrow view of contemporary Brown life is anything deviating from the stories of humble maids and busboys, intrepid border crossings, the dreaded migra, and "lessons to be learned from it all."

From a must read post on writer Alisa Valdez-Rodriguez's blog:

In 2007, Touchstone Pictures pulls the plug on "Deep in the Heart of Texas," a feature film starring Eva Longoria, about a fully assimilated Mexican American woman, saying there is nothing particularly "Latina" about an educated, professional shopaholic from Texas; meaning, the character is "too American" for audiences to believe as "Latina". (Meanwhile, Texas is no longer a majority-white state, and most Latinos there speak English…)

While Eva Longoria wouldn't be my first choice to articulate the complexity of raza life circa 2008, you get the picture. Hollywood's probably the only place in America where an illegal immigration status is beneficial for career advancement. As my friend filmmaker Alex Rivera (The Sleep Dealer -- see NYT mention here) says, we're in a crisis here. By my admittedly off the top of my head reckoning there has only been one indie and/or major studio release by a U.S. Latino filmmaker in the last five years -- and that's only if you're generous and count Kenny Ortega's High School Muscial 2. (Which I actually did, in this earlier post.)

In any case here's the La Misma Luna trailer. I saw the film at the $14 a seat Arclight Theater in Hollywood. Never saw so many Latinos in the hoity toity place. There's no question a market exists. And judging by the positive audience reaction the movie succeeds on an emotional  level, despite the clumsy and on the nose storytelling. And the acting's not bad. Especially Mexican comic actor Eugenio Derbez. Even the kid was ok -- at intervals. Like with most child actors, you alternate between wanting to throttle the cloying brat or chuckle at his precociousness. Me, it was hard getting past the kid's neatly combed hair. Kept reminded me of a midget Mitt Romney. Anyway, judge for yourself. And go buy a ticket. Who knows? Maybe some enlightened studio exec will be motivated by the box office numbers and greenlight something more interesting. If so, I got a couple of scripts to show him or her. Until then...

Same As It Ever Was

Will be posting on an off this week. Flew into San Antonio yesterday to begin prepping for Dollyrots video shoot this Sunday. In between trips to a post house in Austin, location scouts, taking my nephew to Krispy Kreme, and many breakfast tacos to consume at Taco Haven, won't have a lot of time for post-Chicano observations. Will leave you, then, with this most excellent post by Roberto Lovato over on Huffington, about the lack of Latino pundits on CNN et al as white people solemnly discuss the Latino vote. Idiots. Here's the first couple of paragraphs...

The most interesting development out of this weekend's Nevada caucus votes had little to do with Hillary Clinton winning a large percentage of the Latino vote -- that was predictable. More fascinating was the sudden and exponential surge in the number of experts in Latino politics.

It was tragicomic to watch non-Spanish speaking pundits explain the 'reality' of the Nevada vote while standing in the artificial light of the casinos during one of the first caucus meetings held entirely in Spanish. Reporters had to wait for translators to tell them what campaign workers were saying before they could report it to us. Understanding the electoral needs of casino, hotel, restaurant and other workers who labor in a new economy -- and require new hours for voting -- proved very difficult for many in the media to understand.

It was no less difficult having to watch the white, and some African-American, political commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other networks tell us that the Latino vote for Clinton reflected "black-Latino tensions." The New York Times newspaper had earlier echoed these observations in a story that caused frustration in the Latino blogosphere. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a publication that has no Latino editorial staff and publishes very few stories a year about the country's 46 million Latinos, the magazine showed off its newfound expertise in a story which detailed how Latinos are Clinton's electoral "firewall," thanks to the "lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities." It's hard to know how they know this when only one serious polling organization in the country conducts polls in a language other than English.

Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.

Check out the rest of the must read post here. And will be checking in from time to time the next few days. Stay tuned...

Same As It Ever Was Part 6

Back in my X-Men, Daredevil, Love and Rockets days, during the many hours of misspent youth hanging out in comic book stores, I once stumbled across an obscure indie title called Barefoot Gen, by Japanese Manga artist Keiji Nakazawa. In his four-part comic book series I never experienced a more powerful anti-war work of art, before or since. Partly based on the artist's own WWII experiences, the graphic novel told the story of a young boy surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Rendered in an almost cutesy cartoony style, the visuals contrasted powerfully with the masterful storytelling and harrowing images: a city in rubble, human skin seared off the wandering near-dead, bodies turned to ash.

Today is the anniversary of our country's obliteration of Nagasaki. Here's a clip from the anime version of Barefoot Gen which depicts the moment of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 men women and children. It's in Japanese but the message remains clear.

This second clip is a scene from one of my favorite movies, the 1964 Sidney Lumet film Fail-Safe, speculating about an accidental atomic bombing during the Cold War. While the names, dates, enemies, and geopolitical details may be different circa 2007, the gist of the arguments in the forty-year old clip sound eerily familiar to the drivel you hear spouted from the neocons when it comes to Iraq, global terrorism, and the erosion of civil liberties. Listening to the cavalier attitude of these assholes who debate theory and act tough with no thought given to the human consequence makes you want to seek out Bill Kristol and throttle the blathering chickenhawk. Netfilix this one...

And for those of you with HBO, check out Steven Okazaki's documentary, White Light/Black Rain, which revisits the Japanese bombings and talks to the survivors as well as some of the U.S. servicemen participating in the dropping of the two atomic bombs. Gripping and necessary TV.