In this movie

[blp]

there is no corporate evil just
happy families, a little sorrow, some
pain, a lot of laughs and understanding and
these, not
sweatshops in Asia,
roadside Improvised Explosive Devices,
brackish water,
or carcinogenic factory emissions,
are the stuff of life and
the only people in the world who matter
are white people in cheerful sweaters
in clapboard homes with polished floorboards
white fireplaces,
set in safe, wooded suburbs
where no adolescent is ever
inexplicably suicidal or on drugs
money comes from honest hard work
and expensive stuff
is just stuff you have
and never yearn for
undignifiedly
and the problems of life
are illness, divorce and growing pains
that everyone understands and can always be palliated
by miming to a soul song

(black people
((and gays))
are only here for your entertainment).

[dibyendra]

there is no corporate evil just
happy families, a little sorrow, some
pain, a lot of laughs and understanding and
these, not
sweatshops in Asia,
roadside Improvised Explosive Devices,
brackish water,
or carcinogenic factory emissions,
are the stuff of life and
the only people in the world who matter
are white people in cheerful sweaters
in clapboard homes with polished floorboards
white fireplaces,
set in safe, wooded suburbs
where no adolescent is ever
inexplicably suicidal or on drugs
money comes from honest hard work
and expensive stuff
is just stuff you have
and never yearn for
undignifiedly
and the problems of life
are illness, divorce and growing pains
that everyone understands and can always be palliated
by miming to a soul song

(black people
((and gays))
are only here for your entertainment).

Quite interesting one blp but I couldn't understand what you meant by these lines


by miming to a soul song

(black people
((and gays))
are only here for your entertainment).

Best,
Dibyendra

[white camellia]

White people...Asian...(Sweatshops)...Black people...Gays...

This poem reads uneasy, sort of. It's not racist, but it has unfriendly color in a way. It must carry a meaning of significance.

[white camellia]

But I like it.

[white camellia]

It's very realistic (artistically).

[ampoule]

I am wondering if you are viewing this movie or acting or directing or producing or writing or critiquing. It is interesting to think what part of the movie each of us plays each day.

[Pendragon]

Unfortunately, the ugly truth rears its head. I'll give you laurels for having the brass to write this. What people don't realize is you aren't being racist or judgemental at all, you are saying that is how the majority of the world is. As I said, this is unfortunately true, you just left out the ranks of the religious, also seen by many as enertainment or folly. Great poem, BLP. Truth hurts, having to swallow the drink we pour tastes terrible, but facts are facts.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Four/DaMan.gif

[blp]

Urgh. White Camellia, it's definitely not racist. Oh the vagaries of communication.

This is such a simple, even trite commentary that it didn't occur to me that it might be misunderstood, but you've got to allow for the culture and language barrier. I burbled it out watching the end of the Steve Martin film Cheaper by the Dozen and was also thinking of the Julia Roberts/Susan Sarandon movie Stepmom. It's about the implication in these movies that the lifestyles they depict (white people - almost exclusively - in very neat houses with very neat relationships to nature and problems that never veer into the peculiar territory of the unconscious) is normality and is ethically unproblematic - when in fact, it's built on networks of resource destruction and mainly non-white people whose lives aren't nearly so pleasant (e.g. the workers in Asian sweatshops who make most of the white people's clothes).

In Stepmom, Susan Sarandon, who is dying of cancer, has an uplifting moment with her kids miming to a classic soul song. Dibyendra, I'm not sure how much of this you don't understand, so I'll give you a potted history and hope I'm not patronising you: Black people in America were originally slaves and a high proportion of the black population in America is still extremely poor. Until the sixties, much of American life was institutionally racist. This means, black people were excluded from many things white people could do. One of the only ways a black person could be accepted in mainstream white society was as an entertainer. The black American musical tradition is extremely strong. In fact, mainstream popular music as we know it in America and Europe simply wouldn't exist without it.

I'm not suggesting Stepmom is a deliberately racist movie. I just think it unconsciously repeats an old pattern in American culture of depicting white people in exclusively white, prosperous surroundings as normal and only acknowledging black people's existence as providers of entertainment. As minstrels, one might say.

Depictions of gay people in these movies, when you get them at all, tend to be used similarly. They're mainly only there for comic effect or to help the women out with their problems.

By the way, I think a lot of Hollywood movies are actually not like this at all. In fact, I get the impression there are a lot of fairly leftish people there, using movies to promote a highly critical agenda.

[blp]

Hey Pen. Thanks. We posted simultaneously.

[TheFifthElement]

there is no corporate evil just
happy families, a little sorrow, some
pain, a lot of laughs and understanding and
these, not
sweatshops in Asia,
roadside Improvised Explosive Devices,
brackish water,
or carcinogenic factory emissions,
are the stuff of life and
the only people in the world who matter
are white people in cheerful sweaters
in clapboard homes with polished floorboards
white fireplaces,
set in safe, wooded suburbs
where no adolescent is ever
inexplicably suicidal or on drugs
money comes from honest hard work
and expensive stuff
is just stuff you have
and never yearn for
undignifiedly
and the problems of life
are illness, divorce and growing pains
that everyone understands and can always be palliated
by miming to a soul song

(black people
((and gays))
are only here for your entertainment).

Yes! How we are so easily distracted. Well written poem blp, with a message we should all pay more attention to.

I did trip over 'undignifiedly', but perhaps that's because it's an uncommon word.

[blp]

Thanks 5th! You tripped over 'undignifiedly'? So does the firefox spellchecker. But then it trips over 'Firefox' without a capital too. And the word 'spellchecker'. It was a late addition and I knew it was a bit awkward, but I liked the sense of it.