chitlin circuit holiday entertainment

So I finally did it. I watched a Tyler Perry film. The cultural critic in me had to know what it was about his brand of comedy that propelled him from the Chitlin Circuit to Hollywood.

It's the holiday season and I'm visiting my mom and relatives in smalltown east Tejas. The perfect opportunity to lounge in front of the gaudy big screen that takes up too much space in mom's living room and watch some down home entertainment. It won't take any convincing for mom and aunt to watch Diary of A Mad Black Woman with me as both of them have already seen and enjoyed the movie that thousands of other black folk have also seen and enjoyed.

Within 5 minutes I'm ready to bail. I think to myself, This is the stupidest s&#t I've ever seen in my life! Is this supposed to be funny? And yet I realize the appeal it has for some audiences. To be sure, most black people I know--myself included--have relatives that bare close resemblances to the characters in that film. Crackhead cousins, dirty uncles, foul-mouthed and boisterous "big mamas." Perry's filmic landscape is filled with caricatures of these folk and then topped off with a dose of Christian morality and proselytization.

For me, as I suspected, the film was neither funny nor entertaining (in part due to a little known pet peave of mine: black men dressing up and imitating their grandmas). But I'm sure Tyler Perry isn't losing any sleep in his high thread count sheets over what some cultural snob thinks about his movies. Afterall, I'm not his target audience. But the Perryization of black film does suggest to me that black actors and filmmakers are still caught up in a perpetual "hollywood shuffle" in which black folk--with very few exceptions-- must either shuck and jive or sing and dance in order to make it to the big screen.

one time for the godfather

''He was dramatic to the end -- dying on Christmas Day,'' said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. ''Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way.''

rape and regrets

Rape charges against the Duke lacrosse team have been dropped, but the prosecution is still moving forward with kidnapping and sexual assault charges. One thing for certain is that no one but the two exotic dancers and the players present at the party -- all of whom were reputedly drunk -- really knows what happened. But because the case raises so many race and class issues, it will continue to have symbolic meaning and far-reaching impact.

morning reading: gender testing

I'm not an avid sports fan so it's no surprise that I was totally ignorant about the gender testing Olympic athletes have to undergo. Granted, Olympic competitions are divided along gender lines so officials have to be as fair as possible. At the same time, the extent of these genital and chromosonal tests seem violating. Indian runner Santhi Soundararajan was recently declared "not a woman" because she has an SRY gene. As a result, she may lose the silver medal she won in the Asian games. As gender becomes increasingly indeterminate (afterall their are a number of intersex and trangender people, etc.), will we (Americans) be able to adjust our fixed ideas about gender and sexuality? We can't even manage to legalize same sex marriage in this country so it's clear we have a long way to go before we can conceptualize sex/gender in more evolved ways.

sunday morning reading

It's great to hear from Alice Walker. Her comments on the necessity to critique US imperialism and to speak out for peace are timely. The Guardian's tease about her relationship with Tracy Chapman will lure readers but hopefully won't overshadow the continued relevance of this writer and wise woman.

no justice, no shopping?

Prostesters in NY (led by Al Sharpton) decided to go public with their denouncement of Sean Bell's killing by marching down Fifth Avenue. That's a ... novel approach. I find it interesting that some tourists were complaining that their shopping was disrupted. Do they realize someone's son, fiancee and father was just shot to death? If they didn't know when they arrived in NY, perhaps the march will accomplish what it set out to do: shed more awareness about police brutality and undue force -- especially when the suspects are black and Latino men.

state of emergency

I always find it disturbing that the state of black men in the US is always approached as a "community" emergency while black girls and women battling harsh economic conditions fail to elicit similar concern and action. This piece by Earl Ofari Hutchinson might trouble those waters a bit.

wine and yoga retreats?

I love yoga. And I certainly love wine. But both at the same time? Color me just a tad bit skeptical.

and the knives come out

I've recently become a watcher of Top Chef. Sort of by happenstance. Project Runway announced their designer du jour and the new season of Top Chef took over Bravo's 10 o'clock Wednesday night time slot. So for the past few weeks I've been captivated by the most delectable amuse-bouche and by earnest attempts to fashion an avante-garde Thanksgiving meal.

Last night the final 8 chefs were challenged to cater an LA cocktail party for 200 and had to work in teams of 4. The Orange team did a remarkable job of laying out a plentiful spread of creative finger foods. The Black team got caught with empty trays and hungry guests. When someone from the Black team was at risk to be voted off, hard headed Cliff offered Mia up for the chopping block. And all hell broke loose as she read him in front of the judges for ignoring her suggestions and virtually ensuring that their team would fail. She called him on his patriarchal bullshit as well and told him to keep his "bleep" in his pants. Is it a coincidence that they're both black (Black team, black drama ... just thinking about it, not being a conspiracy theorist)?

So the judges never revealed who they had chosen to vote off because Mia volunteered herself as a sacrificial lamb for Elia, after disclosing some very personal struggles from her past as a homeless woman who hustled drugs to survive. And I can't help but feel a little ashamed for participating in what was an obvious exploitative reality tv moment for entertainment's sake. Am I reading too deeply into this episode? Maybe. Will I watch the next episode? Absolutely.

master cleanser

I was just telling a sistafriend this afternoon about my desire to do the master cleanser again and lo and behold, this article popped up on my NY Times homepage. I have long been an advocate of different kinds of fasting and tried the master cleanser years ago before it became "Hollywood" to do so. I've done it about three or four times, only once the entire 10 days. Though I lost weight (and regained some after), I wasn't using the cleanser as a starvation diet and believe it can be dangerous to do so. For me, fasting is more a way to detoxify but also a means of meditation, an opportunity to reassess my mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health. And I've had good results when coupling fasting with a lot of solitude and thoughtfulness (since everyone else is eating, this is not that difficult).

In addition to the master cleanse, I've done raw food fasts, juice fasts and various combinations an old health guru friend of mine Mwangi would contrive: "the garlic is to detoxify, while the raw collard greens will ..." Yeh, Mwangi would put together some doosies but they always did the work he promised they would do. I still seldom get winter colds and flus, perhaps in part due to the seasonal fasts my friend would recommend for me.

In the dissertation years (as I'm calling that dark period now), my will to go without food suffered a great deal (all my willpower was channelled into writing I guess). Consequently I haven't done a substantive fast in some time. Maybe my desire to fast presently is part of an overall shaking off the mental and physical consequences of that intense period in my life. I think it's a good plan to wait until after the holidays to begin, however (not because I intend to pig out--although I am looking forward to my mama's sweet potato pie). The master cleanse actually takes a few days preparation, the actual fast and a post-fast regimen. I doubt that the crash dieters are approaching it in this way, which is why I caution using it solely to lose a quick 10 or 20 pounds. It can present people who want to lose weight an opportunity for a fresh start I suppose, that is if they don't revert to their bad eating habits right after the fast.

While I don't tend to make New Year's resolutions, I think I'll put the master cleanser on my to-do list for Jan 2007. Any takers out there?

ode to my city

"Cities are archaeological digs, and the layers are made up not just of decaying objects but of memory."

I was taken in by that line from Gary Kamiya's "North Beach Forever" piece in Salon. Plus, he's writing about my city. While in many ways, I love New York more than any other city in the US, San Francisco is home. It will always have my heart. If you've ever captured just a glimpse of the landscape that Kamiya unwraps like a cherished memory, you'll understand why.

sistas overseas

So my latest bedtime book is Andrea Lee's Interesting Women. I have long been interested in Andrea Lee, a writer from Philly who crafts tales of sistas overseas involved in trysts and marriages with hot French or Italian men. That's putting it a bit lightly: she actually complicates our ideas of blackness via class and travel. (There, that's better) Lee herself lives in Italy with her husband so she has an intimate view into the lives of expats (black, white and other) and nationals.

I learned of Lee a few years ago after picking up her first novel Sarah Phillips. Besides being a travel bee myself, it's refreshing to read literature that advances the cosmopolitanism of some of our early pensmiths like Jessie Redmon Fauset and Nella Larsen. And Interesting Women has certainly whet my appetite for adventure. It's the perfect little bedtime collection that enables me to drift off to sleep thinking of Italy or some other fabulous place Lee's intriguing female characters happen to be in. (Big sigh) I'm feeling a little landlocked. Time to cook up a travel adventure of my own.

killing the "n-word"

The Michael Richards' tirade has stirred up renewed debate over the infamous "n-word." For some black activists and comedians, the rage with which "Kramer" spewed nigger over and over again has urged them to wage a campaign to eradicate the word (in all of its manifestations--i.e. "nigga" too). This week's section of the Sunday Times features a photo op of Richards and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Comedian Paul Mooney confessed to npr that after the Laugh Factory incident and a private conversation with Richards, he will ban the word from his vocabulary and his stand-up routine. And even prior to that incident, abolishthenword.com members had been spreading their message that black people need to remember the history of the dehumanizing word (I spoke to them at Ft. Greene's African street festival last summer). Dave Chappelle also recalled his discomfort at white people calling him nigger "in fun," taking this liberty because they'd heard Chappelle play with the term on his now defunct comedy skit show.

I'm certainly not against black public persons (activists, rappers, comedians, whoever) organizing themselves in an effort to lessen the use and circulation of the word. At the same time I wonder if encouraging black people not to use the term will disempower it. I'm also irritated at the way this Kramer debacle seems to be redirecting racist uses of the term back to black people, as if to say "you all use the term so why get mad when white people use it." So is Richards now a "victim" of his uncontrolled rage and anger? Or as blackademic points out, does he get to be touted as some inspirer of civil rights activism since his vitriole has inspired a few black folks to question our culpability in reinforcing the use of the n-word?

I'm not convinced that anyone can ban words of any kind, including racial, sexual and homophobic slurs. We can police them more rigidly and prohibit their circulation in media through fines and the like. We can put stickers on rap albums that use terms like "nigga" and "bitch" in every other line of every song. But what will be gained from these efforts? Eradicating dehumanizing language won't stop violence and hatred. Even without the use of violent language, Sakia Gunn and Matthew Shepard would have been killed and Abner Louima would have still been sexually violated and tortured by police officers.

And this is not to say that words don't matter. They absolutely do, especially in a global context. Richard Pryor had a wake-up call and stopped using the word nigger after a visit to Africa. Other black folks recall being stunned by being called "nigga" or "nigger" during their visits as well. I was called "nigga" three times when travelling in East Africa: once by someone who was a fan of rap music and thought nigga was a friendly term and twice by young African men who were intentionally trying to insult me. I didn't use the term before my trip, I don't use it now. There are so many more loving and affirming ways that black people can "name" ourselves and one another.

So I have no conclusions to make really. Just thinking about this issue and wondering what others have to say about it.