February 16, 2009

Chris Rock on the Black Experience

via Five Whys

posted by in race, video | * | 1 comment 

comments

  1. Lucy Foley on February 16th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    Reminds me of a mac ad, or those NYT video ‘interviews’ of stars joking around and being intimate with the camera. It seems like the tropes of American earnestness are only readable through that kind of staging these days.

    Interesting enough video, but I have to fundamentally disagree with the ‘acting for their race’ comment about pre-Eddie Murphy black acting. There were just different roles, and the innate gravitas of Sidney Poitier (let’s face it, there just weren’t so many black hollywood actors pre-Murphy AT ALL, so he’s clearly addressing Poitier here) doesn’t make him as hammy or as uptight as that suggests. Poitier was given roles that directly spoke to his blackness in the midst of peculiar white circumstances, those were generally the meat of the movies he was given.

    I think Poitier was actually way hipper than Murphy ever was.

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