| poeTV | Submit | Login   |

Reddit Digg Stumble Facebook

Help keep poeTV running


And please consider not blocking ads here. They help pay for the server. Pennies at a time. Literally.

Comment count is 10
mountain dew insimination - 2008-12-29

Rappers like Three Six Mafia and Cash Money started their own independent record labels and were able to cut out the white middle men and profit off of each CD they sold rather than get a flat check and see zero royalties...so in some ways rap music (even the most intellectually devoid) has been a great equalizer. This goes from "legitimate expose" to "veiled white & nerdy racist gripes" pretty quick. High handed white people who consider themselves more enlightened than black people because they listen to KRS One and Tribe annoy me way more than any willfully ignorant "minstrel".


mountain dew insimination - 2008-12-29

Also this "dissection" barely breaks the skin. Echoing the gripes about the "Titanic Party" video, this could have been done way way better. They make manage to make a decent point about Flav, but then it just gets random.


pastorofmuppets - 2008-12-29

It's not like you have to proud of Flav if you're black.

Like everyone else I fail to see a place in the video where they actually make a point. They are just showing pictures of blackface minstrels over the music. So? You could do that with string quartet, it doesn't mean there's a goddamn link.


charmlessman - 2008-12-29

There may be valid points in this video, but they are poorly and clumsily made. Showing alternating images of rappers and minstrels without any kind of direct comparisons drawn is tenuous at best.
But the case the video seems to be making is that a portion of modern black entertainment culture is derived from the minstrel shows of the past. But it implies that this derivation is a bad thing. Just because the history of a modern phenomenon is shameful doesn't mean the modern incarnation is as well. Country music has roots in slavery and massacres of native people, but that's not it's sole characteristic, nor does it mean modern country music holds those qualities.
The video also laments an unchangeable fact. Minstrel shows are part of the history of African American culture, shameful or not. As such, when the minstrel show faded away, what replaced is was a derivation of it. What other option was there? Reinvent an entire culture?


Cleaner82 - 2008-12-29

Five stars for implying a black guy can't make funny faces to the camera or be 'musical', or else HE is the one being racist.


TheOtherCapnS - 2008-12-29

The good version of this is here:

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=49875


voodoo_pork - 2008-12-29

The problem with stuff like this is it simplifies and generalizes a large genre of music and culture into one particular negative stereotype: the ghetto clown. The wide variety of types of musicians, politics, and social purposes can't be dumbed down like this.

Guys like Soulja Boy, Ying Yang Twins, Lil' John, and other rappers who benefit from a negative portrayal of young black people act as a sort of fetish for those 70% of white kids who buy rap records. They are in fact reinforcing current stereotypes, and do not represent the entirety of rap, hip-hop, DJ music. This video does a poor job of specifying who it is targeting, even if its thesis is partly genuine. These types of rappers are, in fact, a new minstrel show, demeaning themselves and their heritage for other's entertainment.

BTW, I'd like my Blackness PhD, please.


exy - 2008-12-29

Interesting but no replacement for depressing yourself with a viewing of "Bamboozled" (probably the best Spike Lee movie I've seen, though I'm no veteran).


mountain dew insimination - 2008-12-30

Oh Jesus God clearly not...I mean sorry, but that movie is good for 35 minutes and then becomes ABRASIVELY heavy-handed to the point where by the end you feel like you've been flogged to death with something really heavy and spiky over the course of an hour and a half.


voodoo_pork - 2008-12-30

You feel hoodwinked?


Register or login To Post a Comment







Video content copyright the respective clip/station owners please see hosting site for more information.
Privacy Statement