Myths
A brief history of the "nappy headed ho", brought to us by BlackProf.com
Image found at Jim Crow Museum
of Racist Memoribilia :
Jezebel Stereotype
The power of slaveholders to exploit, expose, and control the sexuality of black women was overwhelming. Slaveholders could keep black women and their children in a state of near-nakedness while asserting that modesty and civility required full clothing. They could and did encourage frequent slave pregnancies through a variety of punishments and rewards. They then interpreted black women’s evident fertility as evidence of their uncontrolled sexuality.
The insatiable, sexual black woman did important work for Southern society. The myth of Jezebel created space for white moral superiority. Because she was a seductress, Jezebel justified the sexual brutality of Southern white men. Jezebel not only protected white men’s morality, so assured the purity of white women by offering a sexual alternative to white prostitution.
The point here is that Jezebel is more than a demeaning and false stereotype of black women [...] Jezebel is a deliberate characterization that does a specific service in the context American politics and society.
Blackness | Exploitation | Mysogyny | Myths | Prostitution | Racism | sexuality | slavery | Stereotypes
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007)
Kurt Vonnegut, the post-modern Mark Twain, died yesterday after suffering for two weeks of brain injuries related to an accident at his NYC residence.
I have to admit to being ignorant about his work --he's one of many American writers I overlooked during my college years to focus on his Latin American counterparts.
I got how funky he could be through his essays and interviews as well as his constant criticism of the Bush administration. Yet it's his becoming the subject of the Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen urban legend that made him take cool to a whole 'nother level.
The man was what myths are made off.
Here's the brilliant hoax and here is a parody featuring Yoda --yes, The Yoda from the Star Wars movies.
Hoaxes | Literature | Myths | obituary | Parody | Star Wars | Urban Legends | Kurt Vonnegut | Yoda
The good and the bad of Star Wars : Return of the Jedi
If you were close to my little piece of First Avenue around 9pm, you may well have heard me screaming and whooping it up. I'd just finished watching Return of the Jedi when I saw the man that makes the ending of that movie so right : Sebastian Shaw, the actor who played the older Anakin Skywalker in the 1983 original movie.
Nothing in pop culture has shocked me out of my wits so much like the ending of the 2004 digitally remastered version of this movie. Honestly, I was shaken by how confusing it was to see Christian Hayden's Anakin insted of Sebastian Shaw's. It was the arrogance of George Lucas that really upset me the most. How could he? How could George Lucas take this movie and mess with the ending? I mean, this is one of those seminal movies that changed the whole cultural narrative around son/father myths!
Entertainment | Movies | Myths | Sexism | Star Wars | War | Woman Warrior | Carrie Fisher | Christian Hayden | George Lucas | Sebastian Shaw
