My plan worked. Ruin businesses. Destroy the arts. Kill over half a million people, and make everyone paranoid.
My dividends? $3200 dollars over the course of a year that I technically already paid for anyways.
Big daddy gub-mint says I don't have to pay it back. Well, I'm figuring I already did. I'm going to invest all of my not earned nothing into stocks. Then maybe I'll do what the rich people do.
Oh, that works?
So I shouldn't do it?
Got it, my bad.
I wonder, why does my neighbor got so much air to breath? Not if my 2nd mother fuckin amendment has anything to say about it. Yeah murica!
There's a point to the freeform prose. Hidden somewhere. I'll get to it eventually. Or I wont.
And to the point (five years late)
 |
| Yay, we're saved! |
La La Land propagates white supremacy thinly veiled as trying to revive a dying art form, with your typical white savior trope, being portrayed innocently enough, ala typical hardships and enduring relationships
"you cannot be proud of being white & not be a racist. it's a tautology. you can be proud of your irish heritage. you can be proud of your german heritage. you can be proud of your lutheran heritage or your appalachian roots or your large italian family's sunday gravy tradition. you cannot be proud of your *white* heritage b/c there is no such thing. whiteness only exists as a power relationship. a system of domination is not a culture to take pride in unless you are an asshole." - k.m.
One of the ways in which whiteness maintains its dominance is by defining itself as the standard by which other things are judged. The conceptual output of most marketers, advertisers, and Hollywood executives based their output toward is on standards developed ideally for white people. Because culture of dominance, it subsumes other races and cultures into it; literally everyone within a white supremacist society interacts with and experiences whiteness. Only some are able to benefit from it; many (most?) suffer from its exclusion of, exploitation of, oppression of, repression of their existence.
Jazz was born in New Orleans, without European based roots. As renowned Caucasian crusader Ryan Gosling states, the people didn't even speak the same language. He doesn't mention they weren't white. He doesn't mention that most of their ancestors were stolen from their homes and shipped across the Atlantic to be enslaved. He doesn't mention that jazz, as most things, was appropriated by white musicians, and white record executives and white club owners and white listeners joined this trend. When actually confronted (yes, confronted) with the blandness of Kenny G, he blathers about passion and emotion and what have you, but he doesn't bring up (avoids) appropriation, history or how race played the biggest part in it all.
If a scenario, a scene, or whatever, requires a particular perspective, that is fine and dandy. However, some people will dismiss something as "too white." That is not always a fair assessment. Though I do not digress to say; this film is too white. This is not a landmark achievement in cinema in any way; this is a blatant showing of no awareness of its cultural appropriation. This is a clear sidelining of every person of color. This is an obvious presentation of two main characters who are adorable instead of impactful, whose entire stories are obvious, and predictable. Bland faces on bland plots on bland concepts, yet lauded and loved and celebrated and awarded for n artform otherwise and frequently downplayed or dismissed (I wonder why). This film steals mythologies from black musicians and sets a white guy as your typical righter of wrongs then only a non-ahem-colored could do. Not to mention the chastisement of a black character for his fuckery of trying to make a poppier version of the sound...irony at its worst.
The film draws brilliantly from classical musicals. While the dance numbers and voices might not hold up, the spirit of old is certainly there in that sense. Despite the picking and choose and, dare I say it once more, the appropriation of oppressed people and histories like they're taffy flavors from a candy store, the effort definitely was there. The shots were masterful, and there were many beautiful views.
But to see this as anything other than a product of whiteness to crowd please, is ignorant. .
So if all you could take from this is some "well what about" point you're just dying to get out, instead of the point its making, then maybe the written word is not for you. Perhaps stick to...movies.
