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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
OBSERVATIONS
Saluting And Cheerleading MacFarlane's
America
Preemptive strikes of
comedic self-inoculation, and the U.S. we live in
Charlize Theron, perhaps not exactly
in on the "joke" during that infamous opening number Sunday night at the Oscars.
Instagram via ©A.M.P.A.S.
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Wednesday,
February 27,
2013
Despite the title above, none of this began with Seth MacFarlane. He's
just the easiest target at the moment. None of this is really about The
Academy, which, once again, in recruiting someone niche and risqué to host its
biggest night, has succeeded, even now, 72 hours after Sunday's awards, in
getting people (like yours truly) to complain, on this occasion about Mr.
MacFarlane's misogyny. (Ratings for Sunday's show, by the way, were up
from last year's telecast, which had Billy Crystal as host.)
That "boobs" number went over about as well as Liza Minnelli's hideous
song-and-dance in that nightmare known as
"Sex And The
City 2". Both were offensive. And offensive is exactly
what The Academy wanted. Oscars producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan
replied "no" in a telephone interview with The New York Times when asked if they
regretted including the infamous "boobs" routine, which was pre-recorded.
Would the routine would have received boos if it were live? Does it
matter? Ratings are all that The Academy cares about.
The late Laura
Ziskin may have turned in her grave at some of the garbage on display
on Sunday. Ms. Ziskin produced the Oscars on two occasions, the only woman
to do so by herself. The Academy knows how to manufacture ratings
bonanzas, employing a "Producers" or
"Bamboozled"
strategy: orchestrate an offensive show, become a ratings hit. Get people
talking, ranting, raving . . . until next year.
The telecast on Sunday mirrored the way America is right now. We know
"salacious" sells and stays in our hearts most. It's what we care for or
are curious about deep down. You know, the copious amounts of K-Y used by
Jodi Arias as revealed during her murder trial (for which she faces the death
penalty); what took place on the "Argentine" Appalachian trail in true Sonnets
of Sanford style; what Eliot Spitzer did while his wife wasn't watching.
Or the Anthony Weiner-izing of his Twitter photo in 2011, with his "Eddie Murphy
Raw" response: "it wasn't me", or, more precisely, "it wasn't mine."
Mr. Weiner
later did an
about face.
Mr. Murphy, who once talked about black people riding the caboose at the Oscars,
was tapped to host the telecast last year. Would-be Oscars producer Brett
Ratner's anti-gay comments snuffed out that chance, as Mr. Murphy, an
actor-comedian known earlier in his career for bashing gays on stage, exited
stage left in 2012 after Mr. Ratner was canned by the Academy.
Mr. MacFarlane's sexist statements, border-line racist remarks about Don Cheadle
as a slave to be freed by Daniel Day-Lewis as
Lincoln
, and the ugly comment about President Lincoln's assassination -- all, surprise,
surprise, fall squarely within today's America. An America in which many so-called respected politicians disrespect the current president. Where women
are concerned just last year Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock respectively
exhibited their own hatred of women with their comments about "legitimate rape"
and pregnancy from rape as something "God intended to happen". (Did I
mention Mitt Romney's "binders full of women" moment and opining on women
rushing home from work to cook dinner, during an October 2012 debate?)
Only last week, some 148 years after the end of
enslavement of blacks in America, Mississippi became the last state in America
to ratify the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery but only because of
Steven Spielberg's
film, not out of a sense of moral
conscience. On Sunday, the same Academy which expressed shock at Mr.
MacFarlane's Mel
Gibson voicemail jokes didn't blink an eye as they saluted
Quentin
Tarantino for his
"Django Unchained" screenplay, even as he
frequently uttered that offensive word in press conferences promoting his film.
Mr. Cheadle semi-joked about it himself as he had to follow the director in a
press gaggle after an awards show earlier this year.
Samuel L. Jackson
even dared a white reporter to say the word.
Another thing: has anybody noted President Obama's lack of women in prominent
second-term cabinet positions lately? John Kerry, a nonetheless
well-deserving candidate, was ushered in quickly for Secretary of State, while
Susan Rice, also highly-qualified, was pilloried even before Mr. Obama
officially named his pick. Ms. Rice, it turns out, was never in the equation.
Do you know who Virginia Messick is?
The New York Times
Hillary Clinton was shredded by men on the right wing aisle who thought she was
sidestepping the Benghazi matter when she took ill in January -- and, as it
turned out, had a blood clot in her brain. There were few, perhaps no
discernable apologies after news of Ms. Clinton's plight. The future
president (if she wants to be) would fight back however, in a hearing last month
on Capitol Hill. As for gun violence there weren't any apologies from the
boisterous Ted Nugent or NRA gasoline artist Wayne LaPierre, whose insensitive
rhetoric days after Sandy Hook in December was designed to keep the focus off
gun manufacturers and the heat on him. Mr. LaPierre's strategy largely
worked. Now pizza owners in some places in America are granting discounts
to customers
who come to their pizzeria armed with a gun.
Welcome to America, MacFarlane's America.
The saltiness of Mr. MacFarlane's "Family Guy" -- an animated TV series on Fox
that continues to get solid ratings every week as protests of it continue -- can
still be found in the halls of the U.S. Congress. It wasn't long ago that
Dick Cheney told Senator Pat Leahy to "go fuck yourself", this true-to-form from
the man who once shot his shooting partner in the face and cowardly concocted a
needless, phony war that killed hundreds of thousands of people who should be
alive today. These days House speaker John Boehner exhorts the Senate to
"get off their ass" and do something about the imminent sequester, using
language you can hear on "Family Guy". Mr. Boehner is probably too busy
playing golf to watch Mr. MacFarlane's show.
On Sunday Mr. MacFarlane tried to preempt any likely outrage about his Oscar
antics with a self-inoculating skit featuring William Shatner that was supposed
to be funny. The skit mostly fell flatter than a pancake at IHOP.
The line between humor and hatred was far wider than Mr. MacFarlane may have
believed. The intended security blanket is that something offensive is
"just a joke" is meant to somehow pacify those who have been historically
aggrieved parties in America. Typically those claiming no intent to offend
are of the historically favored parties and beneficiaries of America.
Some of the same rationales were used by some when defending The Onion, which
posted a disgusting, misogynist tweet about nine-year-old best actress Oscar
nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, for which the CEO of Onion
apologized. Some reacted to the apology
favorably, others with outrage.
For decades in Hollywood movie culture films, including the recent
"Safe Haven"
and this Friday's "21 & Over" have perpetuated in either a "benign" or extremely
hostile way the wholesale debasing of women -- especially the latter film.
In one scene in "21 & Over", a comedy written and directed by
"Hangover"
scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, a drunk, unconscious male character is naked
except for wearing a woman's bra, among other things, and has the words "RESPECT
ME" written on his torso.
The scene described above from "21 & Over" is more disturbing than even Mr.
MacFarlane's offenses. For a film making light of the very real attacks on
and violence against women isn't a joke. Trivializing a woman's call for
respect as a human being, all in the name of "humor". At a recent
screening of "21 & Over" many young women as well as men were howling with
laughter at the scene and many others.
It's worth remembering that on the night of Mr. MacFarlane's Oscar offenses
"The
Invisible War" was up for best documentary feature.
One of the best,
most incisive and powerful films I saw last year, "The Invisible War" details
the epidemic of rape of women in the U.S. military by their male counterparts.
"Searching For Sugarman" won the Oscar, but one thing that cannot be ignored are
the continuing horrors of rape.
This week House Republicans
are expected to finally pass the Violence
Against Women Act, which will offer a great many resources for women who are at
the mercy of violent men. Yet some of those Republicans
are objecting to provisions in the Act that
would protect Native American women raped on "reservations", which, last time I
checked were part of America. And while you were watching "Family Guy",
the sex -- or rather, rape -- scandal at Lackland Air Force Base has, as one
observer has described it, become
one of the largest rape scandals in U.S. military history,
with at least 62 (mostly female) Air Force members raped or assaulted by 31 male
training instructors in a four-year span from 2009 to 2012.
"It's really not as bad as it gets," Mr. MacFarlane said of his routine during
his Oscar stand-up on Sunday.
The show, as they say, must go on.
COPYRIGHT 2013. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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