You bunch of triffling, shiftless niggas! BET is the worse channel in history!
Martin Luther King as Bill Cosby. Who do you think will complain about this episode more, blacks or whites?
What would whites have to complain about?
(I’m sure I’ll hear, soon.)
Dunno, really. But they complain about the regular comic strip all the time, I figure they’d do it about this show just on GP.
People complain about comic strips?
The only comic I’ve ever heard a lot of complaints about is B.C., when the guy gets all religious.
Link?
The thread is about the animated Boondocks tv show on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”
Pbviously the entire thing was Huey’s version of a wet dream. So of course, Martin Luther King made the black power party, and all the black people immediately went off on a hyper-liberal bent.
Amusing, and very Huey. Come to think of it, I can never tell just how liberal McGruder is being. Huey is by turns both admirable and mildly disgusting, and he fits everything - everything - into his political views. He has nothing else.
About once a week, The Indianapolis Star prints irate letters to the editor about Boondocks. The only other strips I’ve seen complaints about are Opus (about Rent-A-Mom) and Doonesbury (about Bush-bashing.) They are not nearly as frequent as the ones about Boondocks.
The Boondocks TV show has more free rein than the strip, and they do things that could never go in the newspaper.
I hate to see a promising premise go astray. THAT was a promising premise (MLK didn’t die, he was in a 30 year coma, and awakens in our world) and the payoff just wasn’t as funny as it should have been. There were some scattered moments of brilliant lunacy – (The “Whatever, nigguh” quote at the top of the show. Cuba Gooding, Jr. in “KING” was one. Riley saying “Morgan Freeman King should wash dishes! Nigga got a free meal.”) but – alas – it fell a bit flat at the end. It should not have fallen flat at the end!
The MLK tirade was funny, but obvious. Aaron McGruder needs to stop recycling riffs from Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and when Bill Cosby is being unintentionally funny.
The funniest, most unexpected part of the show was the revelation that Grandpa Freeman had been prank calling Rosa Parks for decades for stealing his thunder on the Montgomery bus because he refused to give up his seat, too – and everyone, including the bus driver and cops ignored him the minute Rosa Parks spoke up. (The cop telling Grandpa to “Stay out of trouble” made my sides hurt)
I agree, that bit was very good!
I don’t think the payoff was supposed to be funny. McGruder really does want a revolution–at least to a certain extent (his stories on The Boondocks portray just enough compassion that I don’t think he’d really be into folks chucking Molotov cocktails at the problems). It was more a serious call to action–embedded in comedy, to be sure–than any intentional punch line. That’s how I saw it.
I did like learning that–apparently–MLK and Jack Osbourne would share a passion for the McRib, if the former had survived. Who knew?
I agree, and that was the most intriguing part of the show for me. The climax wasn’t funny [except for “I’m going to Canada”], but I thought it was very sincere. When I heard they were going to do an episode like this, I knew they were going to give MLK a speech like that, but I thought it worked. And another vote for how funny the Rosa Parks stuff was.
Complain about it? No. We just pretty much just ignore any aspect of black culture we don’t like enough to steal.
What exactly do they complain about?
Well, according to The Best Week Ever, their not complaining so much as wondering if it’s O.K. to laugh. The comic stip has raised more hackles. I think it’s because it’s been around much longer and many, many more people read the comics than watch Adult Swim.
Oooh, I forgot about all the complaints about “For Better or For Worse” when the gay kid came out.
Honestly, some people apparently have pretty empty lives that they write to the editor complaining about funny comic strips.
People also complained a lot about “The Far Side.” There are apparantly loads of people who complain that the “funny pages” should be a place only for soft gentle humor like Ziggy. I believe that had a distaste for “Dilbert” too as Scott Adams made fun of them in at least one strip I can recall.
I like the show but I think a lot of stuff I just don’t understand. Being born and raised in Hawaii this show makes you mainlanders seem very far away.
To me, any social satire that doesn’t leave you falling-down laughing laughing at the payoff – and then reflecting on the points made afterwards – has failed in its objective. But then, my standards are pretty high: Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Dick Gregory, Malcolm X, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Paul Moody, classic Langston Hughes and Moms Mabley.
It doesn’t help that I’ve read more than 90% of McGruder’s material since Boondocks first jumped in the newspapers and that – I’m sorry to say – he repeats himself all the time with allusions and jokes made by other comedians (a complaint made in that Boondocks thread about R. Kelly back in November last year that’s all-too true) and that the scripts are uneven because the characters – beyond Grandpa and mmmmmaybe Riley – aren’t that well developed yet. This episode started off great but ended EXACTLY the same way “The Trial Of R. Kelly” did: a voice of reason can no longer stand the madness and shouts some sense into ignorant acting people. But Huey did the same exact thing in the R. Kelly episode and made better points than Dr. King. (“You love R. Kelly? You want to help R. Kelly? Get some help for R. Kelly. Introduce him to some older women!”) All this episode did was have King shout about ignorant behavior.
Ahhhhh. I’m probably too familiar with the material.
Even apparently innocuous strips get complaints. The guy who writes “Hi and Lois” was interviewed on Fresh Air the other day, and he was talking about all the letters he got when the baby was taking a bath and the mom turned away for a moment to get a towel. [The baby could have drowned.]
Beetle Bailey has been accused of being sexist and racist. Sexist because of the way the general used to chase Miss Buxley around, and racist because…well, I’m not sure. Though I do remember there was a joke once about a black guy’s afro…
Malcolm X? I never heard anyone say Malcolm left them in stitches. Not that he wasn’t a witty guy, I’m sure.
I know that McGruder repeats himself a lot, but I think it comes in two forms. One is the obvious one, the running gag (à la Grandad’s neverending refusal to turn on the heat). The other is, I think, McGruder making his statement: this is what he sees in the world, this is his feeling about it, this is what’s important to him to say. Each comic or TV episode may follow a different path, but all paths lead to the same conclusion. It sounds like he’s repeating himself because he is, because how many ways are there to say, “This is wrong”? It’s kind of like saying the sky is blue; no matter how many ways you approach the matter, you’re still going to wind up at the end saying, “The sky is blue.” Because it is. And that’s Aaron’s focus (I mean, about folks being misdirected, not the sky being blue).
He’s going to keep hammering away at his theme, and I think he should. It’s important, certainly to him, and should be to all of us. People shouldn’t be so easily misdirected. And yeah, being the voice of reason in this world can make you repeatedly have “shouting at the world” episodes.
I’ll say this: I’d much rather watch The Boondocks and see McGruder repeat his message than to not have it on the air at all. I’ll keep watching, and I hope everyone else does too.