Malibu's
Most Wanted, The Beat Goes On
By Junious Ricardo Stanton
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Hollywood
movies have always exhibited a sort of cultural politics
in their treatment of ethnicity, but their usages of
African- Americans have always seemed more resistant to
change, even under the pressure of social crisis. - Thomas
Cripps from Split Image African Americans in The
Mass Media, p.125 |
Just as whites co-opted
ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues (turning R&B into Rock and
Roll) Hip Hop is now being hijacked right before our very eyes
using a myriad of media, CDs, videos, and film. Contrary to
popular opinion, art is not neutral. Art can be and often is
very political in its message, intent, and purpose. Western art
promotes white supremacy and by extension the denigration of
"the other," meaning all nonwhites.
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The AOL-Time Warner movie
Malibu's
Most Wanted is a prime example of this phenomenon. Like
Bringing
Down The House which is still raking in mad money
at the box office,
Malibu's
Most Wanteddeals
with white family alienation but this time the
protagonist is an adolescent white boy named Brad (B-Rad)
Gluckman played by Jamie Kennedy who thinks he's a
gangsta rapper although he and his wanna be crew are
livin' large in Malibu California. His father Bill Gluckman
played by Ryan O'Neal is a candidate for governor of California
and B-Rad's trying-to-be hard core lifestyle prove to be an
embarrassment to him and his campaign. |
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Gluckman's handlers plot
to get B-Rad out of the picture and come up with the idea to
stage a kidnapping, take him to LA, show him simulated life in
the ghetto to scare the black out of him and bring him to his
senses.
Blair Underwood plays Tom
Gibbons who hires two nonghetto oreo- type black actors --Taye
Diggs and Anthony Anderson -- to pose as thugs carjack and
kidnap young Gluckman, take him to the hood for a taste of
simulated ghetto life.
The film which is rated
PG-13 is aimed at whites which makes it all the more insidious
because it plays to every negative stereotype imaginable, the
hoochie mommas, thugs-r-us ghetto dwellers and their poverty
gripped sociopathic lifestyles.
I went to check it out and
this film is a weapon of mass destruction in that it destroys
black people as fully developed human beings. Further it
emasculates all the black men in the movie and makes being a
goofy wanna-be-black white boy from a dysfunctional family seem
cool. For the black male characters nothing turns out right:
Underwood's character gets fired, Diggs and Anderson’s
characters are like fish out of water in the hood interacting
with the hard core gang bangers and they are depicted as real
punks.
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The gang leader eventually adopt B-Rad
into their gang (it's a long story) but in the end his
house gets destroyed. Except for Shondra played by
Regina Hall, all the sistahs are portrayed as skeezers.
Shondra who has dreams of being an entrepreneur (that's
how she gets roped into the kidnapping scheme by her
cousin Anderson) leaves the hood but incredibly ends up
with B-Rad who in the end helps her accomplish her dream
of opening the first of a string of beauty salons. Oh, by the way B-Rad reconciles with his
father who in the end is elected governor. |
The film is not high art
and doesn't pretend to be. It is white supremacy at its best,
using sly subtle yet in your face stereotypes to stigmatize not
only Hip Hop but black people. When things get out of hand and
tight, Ryan O'Neal fires Blair Underwood and takes off to save
his son who has inadvertently gotten caught up in the ghetto
thug life. Even B-Rad's well to do suburban fake-gangsta crew,
an East Indian, Arab, Afghani phenotype named Hadj, a punk rock
type looking white girl named Mocha and another fake looking
gangsta white boy named Monster summon up the courage to attempt
to save their friend while the black males in the movie who are
supposed to be "real gangstas" wimp out and back down
from not only B-Rad but his father and his crew.
So not only does the goofy
white boy get the fine head-on straight black girl, he
reconciles with his on-the-way-up daddy. He and his crew make
all the black men in the film look like punks and buffoons --
typical Hollywood. Like I said earlier this film is insidious.
It is characteristic of a white boy's idea of comedic cinema.
From an analytical and African consciousness perspective,
Malibu's
Most Wanted is not funny.
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The
Digital Underground hosted by Junious Ricardo
Stanton airs live on Sundays from 12 noon to 2 PM Eastern time
on www.NewBlackCity.com This week's guest
will be Gary Grant and Ridgley Muhammad President and Vice
President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association
who will speak about programs to support black farmers, co-ops
buying clubs etc. The second hour will feature Sheila
and Sharon Peters of the Memphis Tennessee based Peters
Group who will talk about juvenile female offenders,
parenting and intervention strategies and the disproportionate
incarceration of people of color. Log on and learn. Engage in
mental decolonization, free your mind the rest will follow.
POSITIVELY BLACK -- 4/26/03
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update 6 August
2008 |
