#ma those folks are called terfs and they are not great people

[your-greatest-queen]

"I'm curious as to how you view this." - a text from my mother with this link attached

The question now is, how do I respond without raising any flags in her mind (because I am not out to her, nor do I want to be)

[smokeybrandreviews]

Somebody Else Save Me

I don't understand why This Is Us is so popular. It's just so goddamn obviously pandering and emotional manipulation. Like, it's designed to be overly saccharine and that's fine in small doses, but this sh*t is dumb heavy handed. Like, media is created to do that, i get it, just, you know, f*cking do it better. BE better at making your show. It doesn’t even pander to a broad audience, literally just focusing on white suburbia. This sh*t is The Blind Side or Green Book but for TV and it’s f*cking gross.

White Savior narratives disgust me in general. I don’t like the idea that white folks can just show up and make everything better, especially when, historically, the opposite is overwhelmingly true. And before you start trying to call me racist or whatever, I'm a giant black dude who lives in the US. At the very least, MY personal history, everything i base my world perception on, is rife with systemic racism built upon the transatlantic slave trade-driven foundations of this country. I mean, most people don’t know this but the Police literally started as posses to recapture runaway slaves. That’s the historical genesis of cops in the US; Not to protect and serve, but to corral human chattel who escaped and fled from forced bondage. I suppose protect and serve is apt when you ascribe that oath to rich white landowners, which literally proves my point about the history thing.

Pretending that white folks are the end all, be all, of edification or empowerment in melanated communities is the height of caucacity. That sh*t is objectively disingenuous. It’s a tired cinematic trope used to assuage white guilt for the sh*t they should totally be held accountable for, making the ridiculously f*cked up race relations more palatable for them to digest. Digest and dismiss. I’ve seen a handful of episodes and every one of them rings false to me. The one that stands out most is that early episode with the pool. The whole time I'm watching that, it was impossible to suspend my disbelief that the mother would even attempt to understand the black folks in their “separate but equal” facilities because, historically, that a wasn’t a thing. Aside from the fact that they basically adopted this black kid on a whim, the fact that the ma was so flabbergasted by the plight of black folks in this episode, showed be that, objectively, their little negro baby was basically just a pet to them. They adopted this black kid like they would adopt a puppy.

Now, i know that’s not what i was supposed to take away from that episode. It was suppose to be an uplifting tale of how this white woman, who adopted a black son as a replacement for her dead white one, would grow in understanding about the culture of this melanated child she so haphazardly took ownership of. That is a lovely sentiment if you’re white. If you’re black like me, it’s f*cking infuriating. I hated every second of that episode, man. Every second. Nothing about it rang true to the reality of the time. My mom grew up during that time. She lived through the racial strife that permeated our society back then. The way that sh*t is presented on this how is more than problematic for the people who had to suffer through it. Seeing it portrayed so glibly, so biased, so white, is honestly insulting. Hollywood patted themselves on the back for being so progressive and brave and inclusive but I'm just over here, aghast at the sheer audacity of this tired, broken, pandering, lie of a trope. Like, for real? This is your response to OscarsSoWhite? Word?

Now, i know this isn’t a problem isolated to just this show, Hollywood has had a love affair with this offensive bullsh*t since it’s inception. It’s not even limited to just the Black experience. White folks fancy themselves the saviors of the entire world. Just of the top of my head, films such as The Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves immediately come to mind. A lot of these films are products of their times like To Kill a Mockingbird, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Man Who Would be King. I get why those films are the way they are. Literally anything made after 1990 has no excuse to be this objectively bullsh*t, especially when there are white savior narratives executed with some semblance of aplomb and give much needed agency to the people being saved. Django Unchained, Glory, and A Time to Kill are a few favorites but even those portrayals are incredibly flawed. Like, of those three, A Time to Kill is my favorite and that’s only because Sam Jackson straight up typewritered an entire courthouse. That’s it. Every other scene he’s in, is effectively him sitting in jail, lamenting the brutality inflicted upon his family and THAT, to me, is a better representation of what would happen in reality, under those circumstances, than anything i saw in my brief time with This Is Us.

We live in an age where the demand for representation and identify politics permeates all of our entertainment media but we can’t even shake such archaic, toxic ass, tropes? Word? So all of this sh*t is just lip-service and gaslighting then, right? For every excellent presentation of LBGTQ like Adventure Time: Obsidian, i gotta deal with quietly coded nonsense like the retroactive queerness of Dumbledore because the TERF Queen herself, JK Rowling to virtue signal at her maturing fan base For every amazing representation of a strong, female lead, like Ahsoka Tano, i gotta deal with an underdeveloped, characterless, wish fulfillment, walking agenda like Rey Palpatine-Skywalker. I just watched an absolutely excellent thriller about a wheelchair bound lead called Run, also Hush is an brilliant thriller with a deaf lead, but how many roles like this go to actors who aren’t disabled? Who are literally whole ass people? One of my all time favorite films, Forrest Gump, is guilty of this sh*t. They literally used millions of dollars to remove Gary Sinise’s legs from shots in stead of just casting a paraplegic actor of equal ability. To his credit, Sinise delivered a very compelling and respectful performance but for real?

If you like This is Us, that’s fine. It might be an objectively great show. I don’t know, i don’t watch it. The entire genesis, the core establishing narrative, offends the f*ck out of me but I'm definitely in the minority. This Is Us is one of the most popular shows on television and i hear a lot of black folks praising it for it’s portrayal of the black experience. F*cking how? The main black character was raised in a family of white people. He didn’t even have a black experience. None of that matters. The way the industry fellates itself by rewarding shows and films like this with all the awards, while simultaneously passing over other projects that give their ethnics props far more presence and motivation, basically means sh*t ain’t for us. These shows are created by white folks, for whites folks so how the f*ck am i. as a black man, supposed to identify with this whitewash bullsh*t? How the f*ck is this sh*t supposed to be okay, today, in modern times? How the f*ck is This is Us so goddamn popular? How the f*ck are we still writing White Savior narratives in 2020?

[smokeybrand]

Somebody Else Save Me

I don't understand why This Is Us is so popular. It's just so goddamn obviously pandering and emotional manipulation. Like, it's designed to be overly saccharine and that's fine in small doses, but this sh*t is dumb heavy handed. Like, media is created to do that, i get it, just, you know, f*cking do it better. BE better at making your show. It doesn’t even pander to a broad audience, literally just focusing on white suburbia. This sh*t is The Blind Side or Green Book but for TV and it’s f*cking gross.

White Savior narratives disgust me in general. I don’t like the idea that white folks can just show up and make everything better, especially when, historically, the opposite is overwhelmingly true. And before you start trying to call me racist or whatever, I'm a giant black dude who lives in the US. At the very least, MY personal history, everything i base my world perception on, is rife with systemic racism built upon the transatlantic slave trade-driven foundations of this country. I mean, most people don’t know this but the Police literally started as posses to recapture runaway slaves. That’s the historical genesis of cops in the US; Not to protect and serve, but to corral human chattel who escaped and fled from forced bondage. I suppose protect and serve is apt when you ascribe that oath to rich white landowners, which literally proves my point about the history thing.

Pretending that white folks are the end all, be all, of edification or empowerment in melanated communities is the height of caucacity. That sh*t is objectively disingenuous. It’s a tired cinematic trope used to assuage white guilt for the sh*t they should totally be held accountable for, making the ridiculously f*cked up race relations more palatable for them to digest. Digest and dismiss. I’ve seen a handful of episodes and every one of them rings false to me. The one that stands out most is that early episode with the pool. The whole time I'm watching that, it was impossible to suspend my disbelief that the mother would even attempt to understand the black folks in their “separate but equal” facilities because, historically, that a wasn’t a thing. Aside from the fact that they basically adopted this black kid on a whim, the fact that the ma was so flabbergasted by the plight of black folks in this episode, showed be that, objectively, their little negro baby was basically just a pet to them. They adopted this black kid like they would adopt a puppy.

Now, i know that’s not what i was supposed to take away from that episode. It was suppose to be an uplifting tale of how this white woman, who adopted a black son as a replacement for her dead white one, would grow in understanding about the culture of this melanated child she so haphazardly took ownership of. That is a lovely sentiment if you’re white. If you’re black like me, it’s f*cking infuriating. I hated every second of that episode, man. Every second. Nothing about it rang true to the reality of the time. My mom grew up during that time. She lived through the racial strife that permeated our society back then. The way that sh*t is presented on this how is more than problematic for the people who had to suffer through it. Seeing it portrayed so glibly, so biased, so white, is honestly insulting. Hollywood patted themselves on the back for being so progressive and brave and inclusive but I'm just over here, aghast at the sheer audacity of this tired, broken, pandering, lie of a trope. Like, for real? This is your response to OscarsSoWhite? Word?

Now, i know this isn’t a problem isolated to just this show, Hollywood has had a love affair with this offensive bullsh*t since it’s inception. It’s not even limited to just the Black experience. White folks fancy themselves the saviors of the entire world. Just of the top of my head, films such as The Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves immediately come to mind. A lot of these films are products of their times like To Kill a Mockingbird, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Man Who Would be King. I get why those films are the way they are. Literally anything made after 1990 has no excuse to be this objectively bullsh*t, especially when there are white savior narratives executed with some semblance of aplomb and give much needed agency to the people being saved. Django Unchained, Glory, and A Time to Kill are a few favorites but even those portrayals are incredibly flawed. Like, of those three, A Time to Kill is my favorite and that’s only because Sam Jackson straight up typewritered an entire courthouse. That’s it. Every other scene he’s in, is effectively him sitting in jail, lamenting the brutality inflicted upon his family and THAT, to me, is a better representation of what would happen in reality, under those circumstances, than anything i saw in my brief time with This Is Us.

We live in an age where the demand for representation and identify politics permeates all of our entertainment media but we can’t even shake such archaic, toxic ass, tropes? Word? So all of this sh*t is just lip-service and gaslighting then, right? For every excellent presentation of LBGTQ like Adventure Time: Obsidian, i gotta deal with quietly coded nonsense like the retroactive queerness of Dumbledore because the TERF Queen herself, JK Rowling to virtue signal at her maturing fan base For every amazing representation of a strong, female lead, like Ahsoka Tano, i gotta deal with an underdeveloped, characterless, wish fulfillment, walking agenda like Rey Palpatine-Skywalker. I just watched an absolutely excellent thriller about a wheelchair bound lead called Run, also Hush is an brilliant thriller with a deaf lead, but how many roles like this go to actors who aren’t disabled? Who are literally whole ass people? One of my all time favorite films, Forrest Gump, is guilty of this sh*t. They literally used millions of dollars to remove Gary Sinise’s legs from shots in stead of just casting a paraplegic actor of equal ability. To his credit, Sinise delivered a very compelling and respectful performance but for real?

If you like This is Us, that’s fine. It might be an objectively great show. I don’t know, i don’t watch it. The entire genesis, the core establishing narrative, offends the f*ck out of me but I'm definitely in the minority. This Is Us is one of the most popular shows on television and i hear a lot of black folks praising it for it’s portrayal of the black experience. F*cking how? The main black character was raised in a family of white people. He didn’t even have a black experience. None of that matters. The way the industry fellates itself by rewarding shows and films like this with all the awards, while simultaneously passing over other projects that give their ethnics props far more presence and motivation, basically means sh*t ain’t for us. These shows are created by white folks, for whites folks so how the f*ck am i. as a black man, supposed to identify with this whitewash bullsh*t? How the f*ck is this sh*t supposed to be okay, today, in modern times? How the f*ck is This is Us so goddamn popular? How the f*ck are we still writing White Savior narratives in 2020?