A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Suni is nothing short of a masterpiece ; but before we discuss that let's spend some time on the circuitous path it took to reach this review.
The ocean bathing the Western shores of Costa Rica is a beast, mellifluous, belovable, utterly beastly beast of a beast. It steals things, too, like any great cat would do, thousand miles long or no. It stole Hannah's glasses, it stole my hat once, it tries to steal the car keys and everything, always. Besides, it is scary at times, and threatening (in a loving way) throughout, so I proposed mayhap offerings be made to appease it ? Hannah chose a raisin for the purpose, and when I asked why exactly she said that in being so dry it'd probably be its favourite treat -- everything we could offer anyway diminutive comparatively to its size, but the negative zest, the anti-ocean-ness manifest in the raisin's dessication perhaps apt to satisfy its appetites in quite a satisfying way!
This is why Iii double clicked on the item called "A Raisin in the Sun", this and no other reason caused its screening. Then I kept it going because... I don't know how to put this, but it is the only film with black people. At least the only one I know of, but in any case : yes I'm aware human beings coincidentally pigmented occasionally do ok as supporting cast in white people films. Occasionally they can almost pass for leading, with a lot of very careful construction, like that guy in Men in Black, or like Chris Rock in whatever that thing was called where he's a Central Park hustler that Whitey (I don't recall, was it "teh FBI" ?) decides he's absolutely and imprescindibly needed for whatever nonsensical purpose any of five thousand white boys'd have done just as good (in fact better) at. So yes, I understand white people setting themselves to making black people appear like actors can in general manage (just as they similarily manage to handpuppet females into seeming leadership, political craft, intellectual ability and whatnot).
The reason you're reading this review, however, and the reason what you're reading leads with "nothing short of a masterpiece" is that indeed A Raisin in the Sun transcends that kind of interest. Yes, it's nice to see blacks for once and of themselves being good actorsiii as opposed to being Dolemiteiv, and that'll keep the eye going ; but then the scene of the loss unfurls, and the mind, shocked, realises that this is indeed artistic expression of fundamental human experience in form so excellent as to require indexing!v
There's no possibility of escaping A Raisin in the Sun now, because every time I want to tell some objectionable nigger why exactly he's objectionable I can readily reference this great production of the human spirit!vi Much like, Exactly like a discussion of some certain and specifically particular edge furl an' corner of human experience will require a reference to, say, The Pawnbroker, irrespective of how you feel about Jews, just so a different, another just as certain an' specifically particular instance of the self-same human experience will require a reference right here! There's no running away from this, moreover (as that old joke goesvii) there's no particular relation with race, meaning that one sufficiently dedicated to the arts and crafts of blindermaking could perhaps avoid "specifically Jewish" problems by, oh, I dunno, never ever handling real money, but one definitely can't similarly avoid all possible aspects of any conceivable discussion of poverty, try as they might.
Not seeing this film means missing out, and not because it's a film with blacks, but because it's a film with people. Some of them just happen to be acting (or screenwriting, or directing) very well, that's all.
———- 1961, by Daniel Petrie, with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Ann Wallace (Dee), Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon. [↩]
- Not technically accurate, I order slave labour about while laying down, but to keep the jists simple let's call my extensive empire "I". [↩]
- And they're good, God damned they're smoking good! I have no objections, they read right, they block right, Cum Laude graduates of any acting class I'd ever hold. [↩]
- Has anyone yet figured out why exactly the evil archnemesis black guy sitting in the back is sitting in the back of a car without back doors ?! Is this some new level of cool in "the black community", stepping over seats like kiddos ? [↩]
- It also managed to sidestep blocking itself, in the exquisite treatment of "white neighbourhood protection leagues" or whatever that was. I had a feeling quite explicitly ringing in my skull "oh, now I see, up to here it's all been bait, now we're about to switch to the '''activism''' side of the scam", but no. Not at all! [↩]
- Ruby Dee personally lived a somewhat similar story of loss, backing The Fight Never Ends, a 1947(48) short (1h4) thing actually released (Alexander Releasing Corp / Lenox) but nevertheless commercially unsuccessful enough I doubt anyone has ever seen it (certainly no box office data is available, perhaps owing to simple database collation -- movies grossing $0 were not recorded). It's hard to be rich being poor, what can I tell you.
PS. She's a terrible poet, too. [↩]
- "It's easy to forget just how much poverty there is in America, because poor people look just like black people." [↩]
Thursday, 26 November 2020
I believe I learned, with relatively compelling testimonies, that Bill Cosby had wanted to buy NBC and that someone or somemany weren't cool with that and to send a message to that effect, they murdered his 27 year old son Ennis.
When Mr. Cosby nevertheless continued to be "uppity" they brought him down by locking the old man in prison wielding the manufactured hysteria of the "me too" movement (though I have no doubt that aspiring artists in Hollywood are sexually abused on a rather regular basis, this coordinated revolt was used, of course, to further other agendas).
As I understand it, the man wanted to buy NBC in order to devote an entire network to portraying blacks as human beings, rather than as black human beings rendered by white human beings; in short, annihilating the reinforced and instrumentalized stereotypes.
Of course, I can't guarantee any of this is true, but having had the opportunity to spend time with the highly educated and cultivated Cosby family when Ennis was still but a post-toddler, when I was friends with Cosby's daughter Erin at age...10? 11? when I was admiring his wife's incredible hat collection...,
I tend to believe in the man's innocence regarding the "me too" charges against him.
And it would seem like irrefutable evidence that, despite what The Cosby Show might have represented, there is a concerted campaign to prevent 'I don't know how to put this, but' black people making movies and TV series about the human spirit and black people.
Thursday, 26 November 2020
On one hand the only ever purpose of socialist state-supported moral panics and assorted hysterics is usage quite in the vein proposed. On the other hand I've no idea about the particulars of Bill Cosby, but I can say with certainty buying NBC or something like'd be a terrible waste of money.
Finally, that "everyone" has heard of the Black Panthers but ~nobody ever heard of Black Arts isn't, perhaps, coincidental.
Thursday, 26 November 2020
Ok. I'll bite; I'll state the obvious. Your second and third points seem contradictory. Couldn't Mr. Cosby, had he been able to purchase his media outlet, have increased the renown of the Black Arts and thus, subjectively speaking, whatever the outcome, have received a satisfactory return on investment? I don't see in your references why that would've been impossible, except through variations of what the mafiesque sub-establishment had actually accomplished through murder, slander, libel and imprisonment, in that order.
Aside from that, I've long been attempting to direct the attention of certain very articulate pundits to the existence of the Warburg-funded Institute for Policy Studies, a so-called DC-based think tank, (at least partially responsible for the formation of the black panthers) that has also helped empower the likes of Noam Chomsky, a DOD/MIT sponsored weapon of mass destruction of the sentient left and the Palestinian people.
Friday, 27 November 2020
He could've, in a purely theoretical sense, much like say Trump "could have" "drained the swamp" or whatever. NBC is a construction of graft and welfare. It doesn't exist in the capitalist sense of turning a product on some sort of cost basis. It exists in the socialist sense of distributing (mostly imaginary) largesse to a clientele. "Buying" something like that is illusory at best, much like the US "conquering" Afghanistan worked out in practice.
Friday, 27 November 2020
Interesting analogy.
Both the MSM and Afghanistan crank out stupifying soma to the masses.
Last I checked, it seemed that the US was turning a pretty penny absconding with one of the Afghan's most precious ruby red resource and very successfully maintaining chaos in that potentially powerful nation until the time is ripe to better exploit its geostrategic location.
But I haven't been keeping an eye on all that.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-is-good-for-business-and-organized-crime-afghanistans-multibillion-dollar-opium-trade-rising-heroin-addiction-in-the-us/5664319
Perhaps, indeed, considering the fundamental nature of the MSM, Cosby would've been forced to crank out hopium.
Friday, 27 November 2020
Your analogy is all the more apt in that, according to Chossudovsky, and as most everyone knows, "the CIA which is behind allowing the entrance of the narcotic drugs to the US is using drugs as a tool to marginalize the black people community of the country."
I really must see this Raisin in the Sun.
Friday, 27 November 2020
Okay, so then aren't you glad you bited ? Bate ? Bought ? How do you even say this in English :D
But yes, the CIA's mostly been financing itself from the heroin trade ; the "war on drugs" little more than an old drugpeddler's cartel rivalry. The irony being that girl is actually a lot preferable to H, at least from a "societal" perspective. Much like the tobacco industry winning over the hemp industry a century ago is regrettable from the perspective of preferring linen suits to happy bureaucrats.
Friday, 27 November 2020
Girl and Hemp seem to be having a decided comeback these days in this Brave New World, so we should all be "happy bureaucrats" soon, UBI tethered and tucked snugly into the globalist's pocket, partaking liberally of the organic delights of both TLC and THC. Praise Huxley!
Saturday, 28 November 2020
"...There's always somethin' left to love...".
Thanks for the heads up.
Sunday, 29 November 2020
Win-win.
Saturday, 5 December 2020
Hey kateg, why don't you have a blog? I'd read it.
Sunday, 6 December 2020
Pletzalcoatl
Though genuinely flattered by your suggestion, impressionable as I am, I'm also a terrible housekeeper and incapable of upkeeping domains. I prefer to wander aimlessly into other people's and leave some sort of ephemeral and gratuitous inscription to the effect that "kateg was here". Perhaps if someday, I have something of any interest or import to impart, I'll reconsider and hire a butler and a gardener.
Thanking you again for the suggestion.