Source: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/92302_nw_barbershop.html
I deliberately placed this in GD as opposed to Questions or Cafe Society because I think the answer(s) are not cut and dried, nor an “entertainment” post in the usual sense. MODS may move if they see otherwise.
I’m wondering of the historical accuracy of the Rosa Parks anectdote in the movie. Is Jackson’s demand justified? Appropriate? Are the producers that insensitive about the subject that they’re going for cheap laughs? What about the actors? If you were to star in a movie about your culture/ethnic group are you going to question the historical accuracy of part of it, especially when that anectdote was/is so pivotal in the larger scheme of things? Is your paycheck/ego from that movie more important?
Jackson has always been controversial, and the latest unauthorized bio of him does not paint a picture favorable to him – in some ways closer an Enron or Adelephia CEO.
In the larger picture, how is Jackson viewed in the larger Black community? Notwithstanding the apparent good he and his organization have done, why is there no larger expose of him by the mainstream media, in light of his controversial approach to issues and his unauthorized bio?
Yeah, more questions than attempting to take a stand on the issues for a debate because I don’t have enough of the background to drop anchor and start from there.
Also, for what it’s worth (no cite so not much, I’d imagine), I remember a visiting speaker in high school discussing the case of a unmarried pregnant girl being arresting for this crime and the NAACP supposedly deciding that the girl’s circumstances would cause too many problems.
Given the facts, I don’t think that Jackson’s demands are justifiable or appropriate, especially since the barber character is apparently immediately condemned by the others.
Jesse is trying to get his extortion machine fired up again. It has been quite a while since he has had a big score. The pocketbook has to be getting low.
I haven’t seen the movie, but IF I understand correctly, “Barbershop” isn’t supposed to be a history lesson. It’s supposed to show the social importance of an old-fashioned barber shop in a black neighborhood. The local barber shop is where black men get together to argue, to josh around, to tell jokes, to shoot the bull with their friends. And the things the men SAY at such a barbershop ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
Roddy Doyle is one of my favoreite writers (like me, he’s Irish!). He writes mostly about blue-collar Irishmen, and regularly shows such men hanging out in a pub, where they act just like the black men in “Barbershop.” They tell silly jokes, they have inane arguments about sports and politics and they often talk a lot of nonsense!
IF (this is totally hypothetical) Doyle showed Jimmy Rabbitt Sr. or his pal Bimbo making outrageous remarks about Daniel O’Connell (or some other revered figure from Irish history), I wouldn’t get angry at Doyle, or demand that he apologize. I’d understand that Doyle was creating a scene, that he was trying to show how blue collar Irishmen act when they get together over a few pints. You’d EXPECT to hear such men spout off a little baloney.
From what I’ve read, the Rosa Parks scene is similar in tone. The point was not to insult Mrs. Parks, simply to show black men arguing politics, just as real-life black men would do at their local barber shop. And, correct me if I’m wrong, don’t some of the other guys in the barbershop express anger when Mrs. Parks is attacked? If so, then Mrs. Parks ISN’T really insulted by the scene.
I for one have been disgusted with what’s happened to the history of the civil rights movement and its icons when recalled by modern pop culture. Gone are the complexities. Gone are the internal controversies, between protest showboating and thoughful legal manuvering, between quiet vs. in-your-face strategies.
Martin Luther King especially is lionized far beyond his actual relative contribution to the movement: almost everyone else important is forgotten in his wake (T. Marshall is almost totally forgotten as being a key central NAACP hero, despite achieving influential victories through a brilliant court strategy that are at the least comparable to anything King ever won via legislation)
All we are left with are halmark card heroes, stripped even of their own particular views whenever they don’t happen to fit the national script.
Martin Luther King Jr., for instance was denounced by papers all over the nation as a traitor and a communist when we opposed the Vietnam War and planned to organize a racially united march on Washington on behalf of the poor (he considered the race fight largely over in terms of laws: he felt that the real issue that now needed attention was how a cycle of poverty was keeping both blacks and poor whites down).
These same papers now pretend like their own vicious attacks never happened, and they have always been progressive King worshipers. The story goes: King wins the Civil RightsAct victory… unaccounted for, usually totally unmentioned years pass without any recorded event… then universally beloved hero King is gunned down in cold blood. Whitewashed away from history is any of the controversy or the attacks upon his character by mainstream sources.
Gone is any criticism for his decision to put children at the front of his marches, KNOWING that they would be the primary targets of canine attacks (thus making for the best pictures). Gone is any thoughtful attempt to treat King as an intellectual who’s ideas bear both examination and criticism: instead his ideas are just infantilized platitudes niceness, devoid of any complexity or character, or indeed any sort of savvy thinking about how to best change the face of a nation.
And to top all this off, now we have people like Jackson and Sharpton, who represent some of the worst elements of the Civil Rights movement, attempting to further commoditize Civil Rights history in order to better sell whatever they are selling these days. To them, anything but the silliest, simplest picture of righteousness hurts the ease with which they can hawk their undeserved influence and petty causes.
Having heard a discussion on NPR about this movie and its contreversial passage about Rosa Parks last night on my way to class, I was especially struck by the irony of Sharpton’s demands that blacks and the civil rights movement be treated with “respect,” and how the movie failed in that regard.
As a white, middle-class, southern suburbanite, I took great offense when I had heard that some of the lionized figures of that same movement labeled the Founding Fathers of the United States of America as “nothing but a bunch of dead white guys.”
Well, Mr. Sharpton, I say this to you and your demand:
You want respect? Then show some respect.
Basic respect from one human being to another should be automatic, and I think that the civil rights movement has largely succeeded in that regard, some small minority of white folks notwithstanding.
Fanatics are fanatics. It’s crap like that that has made Jesse Jackson irrelevant and will do the same with Sharpton if he continues.
In my not-so-humble opinion, nothing and nobody is beyond being made the subject of humor.
I suppose those objecting to Barbershop would also object to a movie about a KKK big shot during the 1930’s arousing a mob in a speech filled with racial slurs and Jew-baiting.
The Toronto Star reports that there won’t be any changes. (If that long url won’t work, try Toronto Star)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Despite the threat of a boycott by Rev. Al Sharpton, MGM says it will not remove a scene from the hit comedy Barbershop that mocks civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. . . . “We have no intention of altering the film in any way,” MGM said in a statement Wednesday. “The filmmakers obviously struck a winning chord with critics and audiences alike, and we are already at work on the sequel.”
I think you’re being too hard on Reverend Jackson. It could well be that he’s not politically grandstanding but is sincere and genuine in not wanting the insensitive and inappropriate remarks to offend the ears of the impressionable in urban areas like, say for example, Hymietown.
