I believe you mean Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon.
“Who’s the Master!”
Incidentally, watching this movie right after Coming to America (and it’s “Soul Glow” hair conditioner commercial parodies) puts a whole different spin on the climax.
Have you seen Devil in a Blue Dress, or Out of Sight? He totally stole both movies, in relatively minor roles. Those roles put me firmly in his camp, and he’s never done anything to dislodge me. (If you haven’t seen those movies, come back when you have. I’d be curious for your reaction.)
By the way, I just watched another movie that I expect won’t get as big an audience as Norbert, and it was great, one of my favorite of the year so far: I Think I Love My Wife.
Can you elaborate please? I’m from the East Side of Cleveland, which has a large, integrated black population; I went to a high school that was over 60% black; the street I grew up on is at least half black families. I’m not speaking from lack of experience. If you think I’m wrong, I’d like to know why.
Your phrasing is wrong, though I expect what you mean to express is not. What your original post states is essentially that all black people are the same, and all white people are the same. You could express what I think you mean without stating such absolutes, which, as pointed out, are wrong.
[QUOTE=Omega Glory]
I think BET is playing second-season reruns. But the second season wasn’t really all that good IMHO.
You can also get it on Netflix, which is how I got hooked.
I don’t get this mentality. I wish you would explain it to me. Because the black people around me–in general–are not simply white people with brown skin. And the white people around me are not black people with white skin. They have never been this way and I can’t see that they ever will be. More importantly, I don’t see why they have to be, for us to all get along.
Care to expound?
The Wire is an HBO original series. Your best bet is Netflix.
Thanks for the info on the Wire. I’ll have to add the show to my queue. I can’t speak for pizzabrat, but **lissener ** touched on my feelings. It seems like a lot of people believe culture breaks down neatly by race without taking other things like SES, location and other things into account. There isn’t just one black culture or white culture, and there is a lot of overlap and mixing of cultures that take place. This is probably veering into GD. I’m no expert though, and would like to hear about some of the differences you’re speaking about. It could be an interesting thread.
Okay, so I started my own thread on the hijack: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8863486#post8863486
All that is true, there are no absolutes, not every black person does X and not every white person does Y, etc…but that shouldn’t keep us from speaking in generalizations when the situation calls for it.
Blacks–in general, as a group–are not into exactly the same things that whites–in general, as a group–are into. I know this. You know this. Everybody knows this! So there’s no reason why we should pretend that this isn’t the case. Sure, there are plenty of factors behind this observation, but that doesn’t change the validity of the observation. There’s nothing uncomfortable about it either, so I don’t know why it’s necessary to couch our language in disclaimers.
I have no problem stating that blacks and whites have cultural differences, because saying otherwise flies in the face of everything that my eyes and ears tell me. And no, I’m not saying there’s no overlap between the groups. Only a fool would believe that.
I don’t agree that we can say that “white people and black people in America have **very ** different cultures.” I don’t want to continue the hijack though, so I’ll let it drop.
You sound like a movie person.
I suspect that you are coming at this from the wrong direction. I would tend to agree that among movie fans, any well crafted product should probably get similar (not necessarily identical) responses from the white and black patrons.
However, I suspect that just as there are a limited number of Democrats and Republicans and the elections are decided by the shifting, uncommitted center, so movies need to attract audiences from the rather larger non-movie-going public. People like me who will not pay $8.75 apiece for my family of four to see ninety minutes of entertainment when I know that in eight months I can pick up the same movie for half that cost and watch it as often as I wish.
Then, among this larger body of people who do not choose to see twelve or more movies each year, you need to provide an incentive to get them into the theatre. At that point, it is not a matter of whites “refusing” to see a “black” movie or of blacks “refusing” to see a “white” movie; it is simply that such movies fail to provide the draw to get us out of the house and down to the overpriced seats and the overpriced, artery-plugging popcorn. I suspect that the number of people who “refuse” to see a movie based on the racial composition of its cast or the racial/cultural/ethnic themes of its plot are miniscule. However, the number of us who simply are not drawn to movies that we feel might be actually targeted to a different audience is probably substantial.
No, because *groups *aren’t “into” anything. You’re talking about personal taste, which is an individual trait. Your original post, as stated, is not so much a generalization as an absolute. Generalizations are not ipso facto bad things, if they’re accurate. (Rule of thumb: the more tautological a generalization, the more likely it’s accurate. [E.g., black people tend to have more melanin in their skin than white people.] The less relevant the grouping trait [e.g., skin color] is to the thing being generalized [e.g., taste in movies], the less likely it’s accurate.)
When you generalize about such an individual thing as personal taste, you are committing a bad generalization, not a helpful generalization; one that clouds the issue under discussion, rather than clarifying it.
White people see movies like this, but black people see movies like this.
So you disagree with the following statements?
- Americans, in general, like fast food and tennis shoes.
- Europeans, in general, ride bicycles more than Americans.
- Men in general like macho movies more than women in general do, who prefer chic flicks.
- Children in general are fans of Hatter Potter, while teens are fans of teen flicks.
If “Blacks and whites don’t necessarily watch the same movies, in general” is wrong, then so are the above generalizations. If we can’t say that black and white people do different things, when its obvious they do, then we can’t say anything about anyone else.
And I suppose we should then throw everything out that we’ve come to associate with black people–AAVE, soul food, African American naming conventions (how many white Temika’s do ya’ll know?), dancing styles, or anything else beyond skin color. Because to admit the existence of these things, you have to believe in “group” behavior. And that’s wrong wrong wrong.
I’ve never thought I’d say this, but this kind of thinking is PCness run amok.
Are you talking about when I said this?
That’s not a generalization. I see you’re still having a hard to seeing the “many” in that statement, if you think this is a generalization.
Even when I wrote this:
…I emphasized “as a group” because I’m well aware that there are plenty of whites who fall outside the pattern I’m talking about. It takes an unreasonable reading of my posts to infer that I’m speaking in absolutes when I’ve made a point to emphasis group-level observations as opposed to individual behavior.
[QUOTE=Omega Glory]
It comes on Thursday nights on BET. The second epi of the 3rd season is on tonight.
Be prepared for a hella lot of bleeping and commercial breaks.