Continuing Blackface Coverage Part Three: Tokyo Drift

There's a video making the internet rounds of some sort of asian game show where a Japanese dude puts on blackface and does a pretty decent impression of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World". This video has already been blogged about extensively, so many of you have probably already seen it (in case you haven't, go watch it on Youtube here and then come back).

If you're too lazy to go watch the youtube video, here's a still from it so we can at least be on the same page:

As those of you who are longtime YYII patrons know, I am an amateur chronicler of contemporary blackface usage. In my own humble opinion, when a non-black person wears blackface, it's pretty much always racist. Everyone in America generally agreed with this position until last year when Paramount decided to spend $150 million making an intensely mediocre comedy in which one of its principal actors was a white person who spends almost the entire movie in blackface; acting and talking like a black person. When shooting on Tropic Thunder finished, Paramount realized that this movie was kind of funny, but nowhere near $150 million funny, so they had to figure out some way to convince everyone that Robert Downey Jr.'s performance was not only not racist, but an example of pure acting brilliance. I'm not sure how they did this, but it's very similar to how Republicans convinced everyone in America that John Kerry was an un-American wimp and George W. Bush was the paragon of patriotism with all of that swift boat nonsense during the 2004 election even though John Kerry literally fought in Vietnam and George W. Bush was a  draft dodger during that very same war. Again, I can't tell you how these tricks are accomplished, but I suspect it involves Satan, The Secret, a LOT of money, or some combination of the three.

But I digress. Because of the overwhelming validation and adoration* that Robert Downey Jr. has received for his glorified minstrel act**, it is now kind of tough to tell when wearing blackface is racist. Accordingly, as a service to you my dear reader, I try to monitor the commentary associated with each highly publicized usage of blackface in order to determine when it is racist to wear blackface and when it is just plain hilarious to wear blackface.

Japanese Louis Armstrong is walking a very fine line here. If he were an American doing this, it would unquestionably be racist, but since he's Japanese and this is a Japanese television show that was never meant to actually be shown on American TV, I think that in itself makes it a little less racist. Plus, when I saw it, I kind of thought it was just as racist toward Japanese people as it is to black people. I'm half laughing because of the blackface and half laughing because he can't pronoune l's**** ("And I say to myself, what a wonderful word!"). On the other hand, when they showed this clip on The Soup, Joel McHale said that it was racist and I generally trust Joel McHale's judgement on all matters.

I'm going to go ahead and say that by America's new post-Obama, post-racial standards on what is and isn't racist, Japanese Louis Armstrong is more racist than Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, but less racist than the blackface crossdressing mayor.

* * *

*He just got nominated for an Oscar for this movie. Unbelievable. Just totally f***ing unbelievable. If he wins, the Oscars are over. That's it. Let's just cancel the whole thing and forget that they ever existed just like we did with the Grammys when U2 won Album of the Year for 2005's unrelenting crapfest, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb over Kanye West's masterful Late Registration. Here are some actual lyrics from one of the songs on that U2 album: "Hello, hello! (hola!) / I'm at a place called called vertigo! (donde esta?!?) / It's everything I wish I didn't know / Except you give me something I can feel! / Feel! / Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!" I am about to be incredibly generous here and say that U2 stopped making good music after 1997. Most people will say that 1991's Achtung Baby was their last good album, but I liked Pop, so I'm going to say that they've only been musically irrelevant for the past twelve years, instead of the past eighteen (not that the Grammys care anything about the quality of your music). Also, I like Bono. He can be a little insufferable at times, but he's a good guy.

**I just want to clarify why I think Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Tropic Thunder is racist. I understand that he's playing a meta-character in the movie and that he's lampooning self-serious method actors. I get that. And some of the laughs in the movie come from this meta-satire. But most of them don't. Many of the laughs in the movie come from watching Robert Downey Jr. talk and act like a black person and that's racist. When you're laughing at a white actor getting selected to play a black role and then getting skin pigmentation surgery to prepare for the role, you are laughing at a well-crafted send-up of Hollywood ridiculousness. When you are laughing at Robert Downey Jr. delivering lines like "Yo asshole! This motha' fucka's dead. Ain't no Criss Angel Mindfreak, David Blane trapdoor horseshit jumpin' off here!" in his best black guy inflection while wearing blackface, you are laughing at a racist minstrel act. Let's call a spade a spade here.***

***Just so you know, the expression "let's call a spade a spade" was intentionally included here to highlight the fact that that expression is not racist at all. Please see this well-referenced blog entry for proof.

****Hey, I'm not saying that I'm not racist here. I think Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Tropic Thunder is pretty damn funny. Not Oscar funny, but pretty solid. It's like the Avenue Q song, "Everybody is a Little Racist." I'm not saying you're wrong for laughing at Kirk Lazarus, I just want you to be upfront about why you're laughing.

Inauguration

It is 3:30 in the morning on January 20th, 2009 and I'm standing in the basement of a townhouse in Washington, DC trying to figure out how I'm going to get down my fifth shot of vodka. I have been awake for approximately one hour. According to my phone, it is 18 degrees outside. Also according to my phone, it "feels" like it is 9 degrees outside. I don't know what either of these temperatures actually feels like because everytime my phone tells me the temperature it immediately follows that up by telling me that I should feel like its another temperature. This in turn causes the whole idea of describing temperature through numbers to become muddled in my head. For a second I think maybe that's the point. I know it's the point of the vodka.

If we were to walk outside right now, I suspect that Shawn would be much warmer than me because he is much better than me at drinking large quantities of vodka. I suspect Andrea will be as warm as me; I'm a little bit better at drinking vodka than her, but her coat looks like it weighs more than she does. I suspect Blake would be somewhat warmer than me, not necessarily because of his superior drinking prowess, but because being cold just doesn't seem to bother him as much. That's Blake for you. I am wearing four shirts, three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, and a hat. I take my fifth shot of vodka. It's not so bad.

I am so concerned with finding ways to manage my perception of my own temperature because in fifteen minutes I will leave this townhouse, walk 2 miles to the National Mall and then stand shivering for the next eight hours. I will do this because today Barack Obama is going to be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States and I suspect that this moment will be an extremely important one to history generally and to me personally and that this feeling of importance will only be heightened by the fact that I was there in person. At noon, all of my suspicions will prove to be correct, but noon is still eight hours away and there's a lot of time to fill between then and now.

The clock finally reaches 3:45 and the four of us make sure we have everything that we need. Blankets, Nutri-Grain bars, beef jerky, excedrine, five hour energy drinks, magazines, water, and phones. It's all there and we're ready. We pour whatever vodka we have left into two dixie cups, grab our bags, and head out the door. It's not too cold.

What happens over the next few hours is a blur. We walk toward our destination, the 7th street entrance to the mall. When we get there, the line to get in already stretches two blocks away. We wait. We meet people. We talk to them about the weather. We dance with them and sing with them. An hour of waiting passes and we finally reach the gate. It is closed due to overcrowding.We find a way in anyway.

It is six in the morning and dark and the mall is crowded but not overcrowded. We walk east and find an open spot near the Air and Space Museum. We spread out a blanket and sit down on it, claiming our territory. We have two more blankets to use among four people, so we all huddle together underneath them. It's cold, but it's not so bad.

People start to fill in around us and one of them is a tall black guy in a red jumpsuit selling handwarmers. We buy several. I put one in each glove and then put one in my hat. It feels good. The handwarmer salesman decides to hover around our little makeshift camp. As more and more standing people fill in tight around us, we remain lying down. This creates a clearing that allows the handwarmer guy to get people to notice him and to conduct his transactions easier and cleaner. Some people get upset because we are taking up too much space, but the handwarmer guy quiets them. Every minute or so he shouts out "Handwarmers, five dollars!"; a mantra for the four of us that lulls us in and out of sleep. It's not so cold.

We remain lying, huddled together in this way until the sun comes up and we rise to find ourselves beset on all sides by a million, maybe more. We eat Nutri-Grain bars and drink water and take Excedrine in hopes of ameliorating a hangover that never comes. We have a good view of the capital building and the dais in front of it, but we are much too far away to make out any of the actual people standing on it. This is OK. We have just about the best spot you can hope for without actually having tickets.

Volunteers start handing out little American flags as Sunday's concert from the Lincoln Memorial plays on the jumbotrons. It is clear that some people think this concert is live and they start cheering and clapping and singing and dancing. Most people know that the concert isn't live, but many of them start cheering and dancing anyway, just to stay warm. This seems like a good idea to Shawn and I, so we join in. I look over at Andrea. She looks small and cold, but she smiles and never once complains. Blake is still sitting on the ground, eating Nutri-Grain bars like he thinks they might run away from him. He doesn't look all that cold either.

As the sun shines, everyone begins to talk to each other more and warm up a little. A black elementary school teacher from Atlanta comes up to our group and asks us to write down what this day means to us in a notebook. She sees the University of Georgia hat that I'm wearing and tells me that her daughter is a freshman there. I tell her that I bet her daughter is having the time of her life and the teacher replies to me in the affirmative. These are how the conversations will go throughout the day. A seventy-two year old black woman comes up to Shawn and Andrea and asks how tall Shawn is. He tells her that he is six foot-four and the woman tells Shawn that her son is six foot six and plays basketball. Shawn says that he is too uncoordinated to play basketball and the woman laughs. As she leaves to walk closer to the capital building, Shawn turns to me and says that he likes talking to the older black people the best because you can immediately tell that this moment means so much to them and because they are so very joyful. I agree with him.

When you are a white person at the inauguration of the first black President, sometimes you feel a little out of place. You feel like maybe this is someone else's moment and you're here to co-opt it for yourself. Your happiness at the moment feels less authentic and less valid and maybe it starts to make you feel a little bit guilty for moving in and reveling in it so much. But you need only talk to people like that seventy-two year old woman to know that people like her are just as eager to transmit their joy to you as you are to ingest it from them and vice versa. It is clear that the moment is for everyone; it just means different things to different people. The school teacher from before knew this and she knew that we knew it too. She asked us to write in her notebook because, more than anything, she wanted to make sure that her students back home would know this. And they will.

Ten o'clock finally comes and a choir assembles on the dais and begins singing. Audience members start filling in the seats below the podium. As famous people walk in, their images are shown on the jumbotrons. Huge cheers for Jay and Beyonce and Oprah. Shawn and I clap for John Cusack. Political figures begin to fill in the seats behind the podium. The crowd erupts for Colin Powell. Big cheers for John Kerry, John Lewis, Barney Frank, and Al Gore. The Supreme Court Justices begin to file in and they are followed by the ex-Presidents. Thunder meets the Carters and Clintons. Everyone is seated and the formal proceedings begin. Dick Cheney is brought out in a wheelchair. He is quiet and his eyes look downward. Nobody boos him. George W. Bush follows and is met with some boos, but not nearly what I expected.

You've all seen what happened next, so I won't rehash it for you here. Joe and Barack are sworn in and the 44th President gives his speech. It is of course a wonderful speech, at times moving, but not overly so. More than anything, it is appropriate. There will be times in the months and years ahead for words that will be carved into monuments, but not today. Now is the time for sober recognition and respect for the work that lies ahead.

About halfway through the speech, I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall black guy in a red jumpsuit, the handwarmer salesman from earlier. All the handwarmers had pretty much died out by now, but he didn't look very cold and I wasn't either. He turned and saw me and we smiled at each other for a second before turning back to watch the rest of the speech. As our President closed with the story of Valley Forge, it was especially poignant for those of us who had spent the past eight hours waiting in the cold for him. We felt like he was talking directly to us, and he was, but he was talking directly to everyone else in the world too because that's what he does.

The speech ended and we listened to the poem and the benediction and then we all started making our way out of the mall. We left together not necessarily fundamentally changed, but secure in the knowledge that even in our coldest times, we can warm each other up. Whether it's drinking together, laying next to each other, talking to each other, singing and dancing with each other, listening to a speech together, or just exchanging a knowing smile, we can warm each other up if we decide that we want to. And if I learned one thing from the whole experience, it's that if you need to know the temperature, don't ask your phone, ask the guy next to you. The former will give you numbers, but only the latter can tell you how it feels.

America's Funniest Home Videos Poetry

In our first installment, we will take a look at descriptions of the show America's Funniest Home Videos. This will be easy because the show comes on at least twice a day across four different channels (ABC, Peachtree TV, WGN, and Family) on Comcast in Atlanta. The descriptions of AFV on Comcast's guide are oftentimes funny and cryptic, like this one from January 8th, 2009 on WGN:

Screaming amusement park riders; funny dogs; babies and kids doing funny things.

What can you do with these delightfully random descriptions? Turn them into beautiful poetry, of course! All of the poems below are composed entirely of actual descriptions from the guide that have not been edited in any way except for the addition of a few line breaks and some new punctuation:

ABC on January 11th, 2009

Basketball bloopers

and amazing shots;

a smiling dog;

crying quadruplets

soothed by the voice of Johnny Cash

and a man's cosmetic attention

to his eyebrows.

WGN on January 12th, 2009

A monkey rips off a woman's wig.

A man tries to eat a huge clam

and spits it up.

Family Channel on January 13th, 2009

A rat

attacks a doll;

A dog

retrieves a ball;

A new father

faints in the delivery room;

A toddler

resembles his goateed uncle.

Also:

mouse-catching shenanigans.

WGN on January 13th, 2009

A squirrel gets caught on a spinning bird feeder;

a toddler falls into a basket of easter eggs.

Family Channel on January 13th, 2009

A man is caught

with more

than his guard down

in an out of control flying harness.

A beat cop literally hits the streets.

A woman struggles to remove

a facial mask.

Family Channel on January 16th, 2009

A child gets emotional

when others sing;

another youth's joy over a gift

is short lived.

A 3 year old belts out a tune.

WGN on January 19th, 2008

A little girl tries to box up

her brother for mailing.

A kid can't wait

until cookies are done.

A man gives his baby a pacifier

that looks like a rat.

Also: A wayward limo driver.

Family Channel on January 20th, 2009

A wild amusement park ride!

An ostrich that swallows a wedding ring!

A woman who burns a shirt while ironing!

And a close encounter

with a donkey.

WGN on January 9th, 2009

People react

to fake winning lottery tickets.

A woman loses her dentures

while trying to blow out

candles on a birthday cake.

A dad falls off a playground merry go round.

(Comedy)

I think the WGN descriptions have a zen-like quality to them while the Family Channel offerings seem to speak more to the modern human condition.