This blog is a visual articulation of MY views of the world around me. I will present various sides of arguments, and always sum them up with my own personal take.
My more entertaining/diverse/ridiculous/lovable blog can be found at http://mrjdjude.tumblr.com/ and I'll do all of my following from that blog as well!
Thanks and enjoy!
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
I LOVE reading Alice Walker’s work. This is a brief section of her essay “In Search of our Mother’s Gardens”, the title essay of her 1983 collection of essays. Reading this essay, you really understand how her own ideologies kept her from being the loving mother her daughter needed her to be. I remember my heartache at reading her daughter’s article (I wrote about it a little here, on my other blog). This essay, combined with the more I read in this book, and the more I find out about the “real” Alice Walker, the more I realize that one can fall victim to their own genius and ideals. It’s the sad truth about being an artist but it’s a truth, nevertheless; your artistry can be both your savior and your executioner.
Creating art and self from the intersections
This is a post from RVCBard and her blog “Love’s Labors Lost”. I’ve been reading this sister’s blog for quite some time; I was initially turned out to it because of her post about theater and race. In this one she talks about the process of writing her most recent play and articulates her feelings about writing from the “intersections”. Check it out!
I Needed The Help
See what I did there? lol.
Anyway, I saw The Help over the weekend and it evoked a lot of thought out of me. It’s really hard to talk about it. I have a menagerie of feelings. I’m proud to know that we, as a people, have endured the life of the home servant. It makes me SO sad to know that after that, we still have so far to come. It pains me that the movie was more about the white women and their lives than it was of the Black women. I know that the movie didn’t focus on the Black men of the day but I wanted to hear from them. I am both happy and pissed the fuck off at some of the relationships the maids developed with the kids and women they were paid to take care of. I’m saddened that Hollywood will turn anything into a fucking love story! THE ACTING (by some) WAS FUCKING AMAZING! There weren’t that many moments that I realized that I was, in fact, watching a movie, so the production value was good. I don’t love the movie but would add it to my personal collection.
If you know me you know I don’t go to the movies. Before I give you more detailed reasons know that my NUMBER 1 reason is that it costs too much for me. I don’t get paid a lot and I’d rather spend my little bucks on other shit. My other reasons is that I’m just overall dissapointed in what the movies offer. I got so mad while watching the previews (I tweeted, twice! and three times about it and will talk more about that experience later on) that it carried over to the first 20 minutes of the movie. Granted, the first 20 minutes also pissed me off. Those images of Black women having to acquiesce to every whim of these white women irked the shit out of me. It made me uncomfortable, in a good way. I was forced to face my history and I wasn’t able to turn away.
At my new job, I’m working on this play Neighbors that does a similar thing, only with blackface. It makes audiences confront our own complicity and doesn’t let us just shrug it off but makes us sit in it, like a baby who has to stay in their soiled diaper for hours.
Theatre, and art in general, should challenge us, make us think, make us feel, make us talk, inspire us to make change (in ourselves and in the world around us) and entertain. While I disagree, in some sorts with a lot of the plot pieces in the movie, I overall felt like it satisfied my aforementioned criteria.
If you are on the fence on whether to go see this movie or not, please do. If not only to give Viola Davis, Cicely Tyson, Octavia Spencer, Aunjanue Ellis and others credit for their hard word, but to have the experience of confronting your understanding of self in relationship to others, in the context of the experience of Black women working in the domestic service.
I have to do more research on the origins of the movie and the book and will come back on how I feel like the movie did in comparison to the book. I’ll also give my review of the movie. Look out for my post about the previews before the movie and why that adds to the reasons I don’t go to the cinema. Busy week. I hope to write it all…(current history says I won’t…)
If you’ve seen the movie (or read the book) what do you think about the movie?
Article Share: "White Women Do It, Too: 8 Things Black Women Can’t Get Away With Doing"
Let me start off by saying I’m SICK AND TIRED of this conversation. It’s the same rhetoric over and over again. If it isn’t a story about why Black women are single, or why Black men don’t want Black women, it’s a story on how the “other” side has it so much easier in the dating world. Everyone is looking for someone to blame or someone to yell at for “making” them a victim.
In the most recent “I’m a victim of society” news, here is another post by LaShaun Williams. I railed against a previous article of hers (unfortunately/fortunately I can’t find it). Generally I think she misses that mark and fails to take in the whole story when she writes. She has her right to do that, I just hate it when she uses her opinion to speak for the whole…
This article is yet another example of her style of broad generalizations and making those generalizations examples for the whole.
In the article she states that Black women can’t get away with sex on the first date (or within the first three months). Speaking only for myself, (trying to refrain from falling into the same trap I’m mad at her about) sex too soon isn’t a turn-off. Sex too late can be. There are no separate rules for Black women as opposed to the other races of women I’ve dated.
I don’t think I agree with either her sex tape or nose job comments. I’m sure if [insert Black celeb here] “leaked” a sex tape, she wouldn’t get too much backlash (depending on who she was…). It’s not about what race the person is on the sextape fiascos, it is all about the personal persona. If they’re a socialite or someone that others want to see naked, it won’t have a negative affect. As far as the nose job piece, plenty of rhinoplasties go wrong, Black and white, and many go well, Black and white. Plastic surgery is a whole other conversation (body image, European standards of beauty, access to the best doctors, etc…).
Her commentary on loud talking and low-rise jeans are real weak. DON’T TALK LOUD ON THE PHONE. Nobody wants to hear that shit. Black, white, Asian, male, female. That shit is always unattractive. Regardless. DON’T WEAR CLOTHES THAT DON’T FIT YOU! Also, not all Black women look bad in them. How can she forget about the diversity in body structures of Black women?! Another example of her myopic view of the world.
Without even commenting on her “Black women and angry faces” I have to say I am really annoyed by her commentary. Most things are repetitive. They come from a complete victim mentality. They are broad claims but she leaves out a large section of the people whom she is supposedly defending. What is most upsetting is this antiquated view on sexuality.
I talk about sex, a lot. I like love it. It’s important to me. I would venture that it is important to others too. All of Williams’ comments about sex support sexual suppression. Sexual liberation is a good thing. Why should Black women keep themselves from that? Who is asking for that? No one that I know.
Again, I’m really tired of this type of story. It saddens me that this is still part of the current dialogue. Not sure what it takes to get past it, but I hope we figure it out soon. My sanity depends (slightly) on it.
