THe odd thing is, black people who object to comedians like Martin Lawrence invariably compare his act to the old minstrel shows of the 1890s.
What they overlook is this: with rare exceptions, it isn’t WHITE audiences that eat this stuff up, it’s BLACK audiences!
It’s not as if Klansmen are watching Martin Lawrence to have their prejudices confirmed. Rather, there are just a lot of black moviegoers who find this stuff entertaining, and don’t really care about What It All Means, or what the political ramifications are.
Once I figure out why white people like Larry the Cable Guy I’ll tell you why black people like Martin Lawrence.
If you don’t find retarded humor funny, it is just retarded. What particularly upsets me about Lawrence is that he conforms to the stereotype of a retard black person. It is just painful to watch. Not all his performances are that bad, but the few that I’ve seen are.
Will Ferrell acts retarded, but some of his stuff is really clever. The funny stuff comes being clever and not just simply being retarded. He has an art to his absurdity.
Uh, yeah! That movie was a horrible throwback to the era of Jim Crow and blackface for the African American community. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket!
You got me. Actually what I meant to type was Friday which is a movie that I actually enjoyed.
Someone in another thread once argued that buffoonery was a staple of African American comedies. Though I suppose you could argue that it was a staple of comedy in general. The 3 Stooges weren’t exactly the sharpest bulbs in the bunch.
I thought you threw that in to see if we were paying attention. Didn’t know that there had been a movie called Friday.
Anyway, about the most recent movie coming out. Raven Simone is a classic ham that think she’s Lucille Ball. Maybe this movie will be fun, but I can’t imagine, with Lawrence and Simone in this movie, that there has been more ham on display than the last time I was at the Amish country buffet.
Embarassing to his people? Maybe. Worse than historical injustice is way over the top hyperbole. If it were Larry the Cable Guy making these movies we’d just ignore them, or make comments about how shrewd he is making himself wealthy pandering to people who like lowbrow comedy. I think the original comments are subliminally racist.
These three, as well as Lawrence, Cedric, Lopez and all other modern, upstanding role models of classic and contemporary comedy are all my personal heros.
I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning. :smack:
One of my work associates is strongly looking forward to this movie, as she does all the dumb, brain-cell rotting, black comedies (as opposed to the dumb, brain-cell rotting white comedies). Given that she is a heart attack waiting to happen, if she dies while laughing from this movie (and she will laugh, whereas anyone with more than a single operational brain cell, regardless of color, is trying to commit ritual suicide), will she count?
As for damage: Lawrence is an African American lead in a Disney film. And he’s probably getting in the high 7 to low 8 figures for his role. That’s not damage; that’s progress!
There are bad movies in every genre with every color actor. The good news is that Disney is trusting larger projects like The Haunted Mansion and lesser projects like whatever this movie is called with African American leads. Compared to A Song for the South, this is great progress.
I’ll be honest though. I thought Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins and this new Disney Martin flick were the same movie. They pretty much all look the same to me.
