Comm 300: My Name is Earl

My Name is Earl is my favorite show that is out. One of my favorite characters is Darnell. Darnell is a black man who has been placed in the Witness protection program, we haven't quite learned what he did to deserve this. But anyway, Darnell is an interesting character because he has to pretend to be stupid. He is married to Joy, who is the quintessential white trash woman. And, in order to fit in, he has to play dumb. However, he is wickedly smart as he admitted a couple of seasons ago he graduated high school at fourteen and was through with college by 20. Every so often the writers give him lines which show that he is in fact a very educated black man. For Example, on "Sweet Johnny" Joy buys a gun, and Darnell is very offended. When he trades the gun in for a honey glazed ham, he tells Joy that perhaps the 'boys brought it to school because they mentioned being downtrodden and depressed." Great line.
Of course, the other minority on the show, Catalina, is an illegal immigrant working as a maid in the motel where Earl is living, and of course she works at Club Chubby as a 'bouncer'...
This show is awesome, and it really is the characters that make it great.

Comm 229: New Scary Movie

Everyone knows that in every story ever there is the evil step mother. Interestingly enough, Hollywood has decided to go a different route. I just watched a commercial for a new scary movie entitled 'Stepfather'. In this movie, the new father is the bad guy who goes around murdering people. This is a great new twist, because a lot of the 'family' scary movies that have been released focus upon the mother or step mother who goes around terrorizing the kiddies. I'm thinking that I'll have to see this movie, see just how horrible a step father can be..
Oh, also. Where the Wild Things Are. Gonna see it. I am super excited to see this movie, this was my most favorite book when I was little. It makes me want to go out and buy it... just to remember.

Comm 300: The Cleveland Show

Sunday night was the pilot for the Cleveland show. I rather liked it, though it will take some getting used to having Cleveland as the main character, because I absolutely loooove Family Guy. I don't quite understand why the next door neighbor is a russian bear who hides his smoking from his wife, but I suppose we will find that out in later episodes. It was actually quite interesting that this pilot mentioned something that we had read about in Gray's book.
The daughter, Roberta, is talking to Cleveland about television shows and mentions that white people never make television shows that black people want to watch. And then, as if to prove the point a clip a show comes on entitled "That's what I was saying before." I don't get the reference but perhaps that's a line from an older black comedy??

Comm 229: Re-Representation

I rather liked the idea that the book proposes that the media is a re-representation of real life. In a way it makes the media seem that much better. They really aren't showing what real life is, I mean we all know that but it's hard to get over the fact that they aren't. It's relieving to know that really, truly real life looks nothing like what we see on the television, and that includes the good, the bad and the ugly. Though in a way, it's almost that much worse. The media is a re-representation, and they are striving for a perfection that will never exist. So we are all caught up in this perfection that will never, ever exist. Though, I suppose if the media only showed how the real world actually is no one would watch it. I would guess that that is what the news is for... let you know what's actually going on. Though, if we take OutFoxed into account the news isn't all that reliable either.

Comm 229: My Name is Earl

Allright, I'll admit it. I am in love with this show. Well, I am in love with seasons 1-3 of this show. I just watched one of the new season four episodes, and I must admit I am a bit disappointed. They must have gotten a new writer or something, because something is off.
I believe it's because this show hasn't started the same as all the other shows. They've tried to switch things up a bit, and I must say that I don't like it. Of course, I'm going to give it a try, it is one of my favorite shows. But, it's a bit disappointing to know that shows can just be changed due to a small change in the way the show starts and what is depicted in it. And of course, this season got off to a shaky start because Earl was in the hospital...

Comm 300: The King and I

Watching the music video of Burn Hollywood Burn, and seeing the black characters from early movies got me thinking about the time not so long ago when white actors painted their faces to become black. Then of course, the ball got rolling and I started thinking about other movies and shows that have taken a white actor and passed them for a minority. The first one that came to mind was The King and I.
The king is supposed to be the king of Siam, which is an Asian country, I believe it's Taiwan or Vietnam. One of those two, but anyway. The actor who was chosen to play this role is a white man. A more recent movie in which a white woman played a woman of color is Changeling, and the actress was Angelina Jolie.

Comm 229: Visual Cues

I just saw a trailer for Couples Retreat, which is a new Vince Vaughn movie. It looks great, but what really caught my eye was because it had great audio visual cues to help you figure out what kind of movie you are going to see. There are all sorts of scenes where Vince Vaughn's character is in a situation that some one would usually rather not be in. Mostly this has to do with a super ripped yoga instructor who seems to insist on being touchy feely. The greatest audio cue that lets you know that this is a comedic movie about reatreats is the fact that they decided to use Green Day's Welcome To Paradise song as the background music.

Comm 300: Comcast

Today I have the day off, and have decided to pretty much do nothing. So, like the couch potato that I am, I have decided that I am going to watch television today. I was watching the Disney Channel Remember the Titans when they aired a commercial about some of the features that Comcast offers on it's On Demand Screen.
Interestingly enough, Comcast now offers a service which allows you to look at Wanted photos so that the average citizen can now help track down the criminals. The problem I have with this commercial is that they show some of the wanted photos and every single on of them was either a person of color or a minority of some sort. Not a single one of them in this commercial was white. Absolutely terrible.