As a Generation Xer who grew up on '80s teen movies, I
looked forward to watching the John Cusack movie "Say Anything" for
the first time when I recently came across it in the library. I don't know why
I'd never before seen "Say Anything," since I saw most of the John
Hughes movies like "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast
Club" numerous times.
I found "Say Anything"
mildly entertaining until a scene early on in the
movie when Cusack's character and his little nephew mock "Hey
Love" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEC-SbF7g5A), a
popular commercial from the '80s in which two black men discuss
a greatest-hits soul music collection. One of the men is played
by John Canada Terrell, later seen in Spike Lee's seminal flick "She's
Gotta Have It."
In the scene from "Say Anything," Cusack mimicks Terrell's "black" speech. In the commercial, when Terrell's buddy asks to borrow his "Hey Love" greatest-hits record, Terrell replies, "No, my brother, you got to buy your own" - which Cusack imitates in an exaggerated, "black" accent.
It's obvious this scene is meant to be cutesy and inoffensive - a teen boy joking around with his nephew.
And I doubt if either Cusack or Cameron Crowe, who wrote and directed the movie, are raging racists. My guess would be that they're both dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood liberals.
So that raises the question, if you're a liberal white person who otherwise supports minorities and champions the underprivileged - someone who's proved you're one of the "good guys" - is it okay to mock black speech?
In a brilliant podcast titled "Pop Culture Expiration Dates: Why Music and Movies Go Bad" (http://www.cracked.com/podcast/pop-culture-expiration-dates-why-music-movies-go-bad/), Jack O'Brien, editor-in-chief of the humor website Cracked.com, also imitates black speech. But for an entirely different reason.
O'Brien mocks the voice of Best Buy's "Beat Pill" Character, which appears to represent black urban males. In the podcast, O'Brien describes a Best Buy commercial (http://www.marketmenot.com/best-buy-make-my-party-pop-off-commercial/) in which a white guy asks the Beat Pill about what he needs to "make my party pop off." O'Brien imitates the Beat Pill's "black," urban accent for the purpose of pointing out how much of a racist stereotype the character is.
From my perspective as an African-American male, Cusack's character's imitation of black speech in "Say Anything" was politically incorrect and insensitive, while O'Brien doing the same thing was not because he did it to prove a point.
But another African American may feel entirely different. It's all in how you look at it.
In the scene from "Say Anything," Cusack mimicks Terrell's "black" speech. In the commercial, when Terrell's buddy asks to borrow his "Hey Love" greatest-hits record, Terrell replies, "No, my brother, you got to buy your own" - which Cusack imitates in an exaggerated, "black" accent.
It's obvious this scene is meant to be cutesy and inoffensive - a teen boy joking around with his nephew.
And I doubt if either Cusack or Cameron Crowe, who wrote and directed the movie, are raging racists. My guess would be that they're both dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood liberals.
So that raises the question, if you're a liberal white person who otherwise supports minorities and champions the underprivileged - someone who's proved you're one of the "good guys" - is it okay to mock black speech?
In a brilliant podcast titled "Pop Culture Expiration Dates: Why Music and Movies Go Bad" (http://www.cracked.com/podcast/pop-culture-expiration-dates-why-music-movies-go-bad/), Jack O'Brien, editor-in-chief of the humor website Cracked.com, also imitates black speech. But for an entirely different reason.
O'Brien mocks the voice of Best Buy's "Beat Pill" Character, which appears to represent black urban males. In the podcast, O'Brien describes a Best Buy commercial (http://www.marketmenot.com/best-buy-make-my-party-pop-off-commercial/) in which a white guy asks the Beat Pill about what he needs to "make my party pop off." O'Brien imitates the Beat Pill's "black," urban accent for the purpose of pointing out how much of a racist stereotype the character is.
From my perspective as an African-American male, Cusack's character's imitation of black speech in "Say Anything" was politically incorrect and insensitive, while O'Brien doing the same thing was not because he did it to prove a point.
But another African American may feel entirely different. It's all in how you look at it.
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