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#2.
AMERICAN HISTORY X
The Aim: To show the world that skinheads are big meanies. The Clueless White Guy(s) Who Fucked It Up: Tony Kaye and Edward Norton, the artiste who wrote and directed the movie, and the spoiled snot who jacked the movie in the editing room and cut the fuck out if it, respectively. How They Fucked It Up: This is a movie whose entire message of forgiveness and reconciliation hinges on the idea that a murderous skinhead can be redeemed because a black guy in prison can be funny while washing the underwear of rapists and child molesters. That's all it takes to wipe away an entire life of racism and make a hero out of Edward Norton. First he indoctrinates a bunch of idiot white kids into a neo-nazi group, then he symbolically asserts dominance over the black race via a playground game of basketball, and he does it with professional tub-o-guts Ethan Suplee on his team.
And then (slow music swells) he recognizes that black people are funny, and the movie says, "Well, that's good enough, I guess. You're a decent human being now, worthy of being rooted for! Go and save your shithead little brother, Captain Curbstomp! Save Eddie Furlong in the name of racial equality!"
Oh shit, I guess the transformative power of bad standup comedy isn't enough, is it. It wasn't even close to enough. It was close to simplistic bullshit that says the best way to combat racism is to carpet-bomb Idaho with Def Comedy Jam DVDs, when everyone knows just regular old carpet-bombing will do. #1.
DRIVING MISS DAISY
The Aim: To show that with time, even the most closed-minded human being will recognize that down deep, we're much more alike than we are different. The Clueless White Guy Who Fucked It Up: Bruce Beresford. How He Fucked It Up: Not that the Oscars are really worth a shit anyway, but fuck this movie for winning Best Picture over Do the Right Thing in 1989. I'm not saying that because I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. He willingly roots for the Knicks and he made Girl 6, two transgressions that put him just above "Freelance Babypuncher" in my book. But Do the Right Thing was an honest, evocative examination of why America just can't get over its own inherent racism, and it lost to Miss Daisy, a film rewarded for teaching audiences a Very Important Lesson: Nothing fosters understanding like decades long servitude to a pruny, rich bitch who talks so much shit her teeth are literally brown.
This film prepared Morgan Freeman for his role as God in Bruce Almighty, calling for a level of forgiveness that Jesus himself didn't have. I figure Jesus would have lasted five minutes before he snapped, shot Miss Daisy in her shitty mouth and then drove the car into a fucking volcano.
Insult to injury? Freeman's character is named "Hoke." You can't just give the guy a regular name? It can't be "Jack" or "Bill" or something? Hoke is the sound your throat makes when something is lodged there. Something like the saccharine, bilious vomit about to drown your mouth after enduring Driving Miss Daisy. Do you have something funny to say about a random topic? You could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow. Go here and find out how to create a Topic Page. For more from Fatboy, check out 5 Reasons It Sucks Being a Joss Whedon Fan and The Informant! Is Not As Bad As The Ads Want You to Believe. And stop by our Top Picks because it's the weekend, and you definitely should not be going outside. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get dick jokes sent straight to your news feed. |
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American History X f**king rules, man! f**k you!
Erm...American History X? What the f**k? Doesn't the fact that Eddie Norton's character gets *prison raped* by the other neo-nazi inmates make him turn away from the schtick, ya know, rather than simply a black dude telling jokes?
Did they really call a character "Master Bates"? Whoa. Talk about getting s**t past the radar.
Also, win for Wonder Showzen .gif.
dude, this is as funny as your other articles, which also suck. seriously, who hired you?
Further proof, if any were needed, that people do not understand what the word 'racism' actually means. It means believing one race is better than another. That's it. If someone tries to be anti-racist and fails, That Is Not Racism, because there is no racist intent. Intent really matters here, guys. Racism without intent is not, and should never be called, racism. At worst you can call it ignorance. Or, you could, I dunno, appreciate that they tried and not be such a whiner.
It's people like this article's writer who keep racism alive, by shouting down anyone who tries to talk about it if they make the smallest slip-up, so that eventually no one talks honestly about it at all.
Major massive kudos for calling out 'Crash' for its obvious BS. I've gotten into so many arguments with people who found it profound but couldn't give a solitary reason that I didn't blow full of holes, that I was starting to believe that it was just impossible for white people to realize how glaringly WRONG the damn film is. Thank you for proving me wrong on that count. Great insight and a brilliant article.
Yeah I was gonna talk a bunch of shit about this article. But everyone in the comments pretty much summed up what I was gonna say. This article is a massive fail.
Jesus fucking christ! This is the last article I read by this piece of shit. He has consistently shown that he is either incredibly stupid or willfully ignorant of the obvious. Either way it's not funny. I could sit here and rip this turdfest apart with numerous examples but instead I'll just throw a couple out for the sake of saving time. For one Matthew Broderick played a fucking JEW and not some white boy we're supposed to feel bad for. Jews are pretty fucking familiar with discrimination and slavery. My other point would be that Mr.Skinhead in AHX never knew any black people and when he goes to jail he meets some. One in particular uses humor to break through and create a friendship. I mean, fuck, is that that difficult to understand? It's not making the point that all blacks are joke-telling second bananas. If anything that dude is better than the skinhead because he helped transcend the ignorance of racism. Give up your job man. You're a failure.
I don't agree with his dissection of 'American History X', but everything else is spot on. I love Ed Zwick, but that man is responsible for more 'colonialist filmmaking' than should be tolerated, and 'Glory' falls squarely and sorely into that sorry camp. It's admittedly not as bad as 'Blood Diamond', which is a grating insult and lets a snotty annoying white smuggler hijack the Djimon Honsou character's story, but it's pretty bad nonetheless.
you are SO right. love ur articles :D
The above commenter hit it on the mark. Even if you think that Mr. Evil Skinhead transformed to Mr. Nice Guy a little too fast and conveniently in American History X, I don't see anything racist about it unless you consider it a horrible racist stereotype that black people can make good jokes.
Anyways, I wouldn't be too fast to judge the movie. A rather similar story played out a few years in Canada where a racist criminal in solitary confinement made friends with the guy in the next cell by talking through the toilet pipes, and was forced to reconsider his views when he met him and saw that he was black. No joke! So the movie isn't really THAT implausible.
Please tell me how american history x was unintentionally racist.
Seems like fatboy here was given an assignment by the Cracked staff and had to shit out the first 5 movies about racism he could think of. The fact that the black inmate was a goofball had little bearing on the plot of American History X. If anything it could be... I dunno.. getting raped by a fellow skinhead? Having his little brother killed by the same kind of hatred he spread as a white supremacist? Seeing the fruits of his efforts culminate in the blind aggression between people of all races? The point of the movie is that hatred is a cancer, no matter whether you're white, black, red or fucking purple. Yeah, that film had no depth whatsoever. Whatever you say, fatboy. I'm surprised he didn't toss Gran Torino in here just to A) piss me off completely, or B) seem more wrong for the sake of humorous irony.
the black man is also the only one who showed him real kidness. meeting a man similar to him forced him to evaluate his hatred
this article sucked cos u maligned 2 really good movies - crash and a'can history x - and was guilty of definite 'un-funniness'. anyone who hasn't seen these movies don't let this douchey article sstop u!
Because white people are good a spotting racial hits on black culture. Just live, if you're a racist prick, you'll find out eventually.
Glory is wonderful but you have a very good point. Dividing the screen time equally between Matthew Broderick (who was good but clearly putting on his "I am now a serious actor, watch me transition to Oscar bait like this" schtick) and the combined authoritative natural awesomeness of Morgan Freeman and Denzel was a bad idea.
Great, you managed to call two kids "fuckheads" in your article. Maybe you should lighten up (a little) on the passing issue of racism and concentrate a little on the growing issue of ADULTISM. Maybe you could start with yourself.
The problem with this article is that in an attempt to be humorous, it dumbs down the intended message of the films to make it's point. Edward Norton's character is redeemed because the one person who was there for him during his whole time in prison was a black guy and from this he learned to stop treating every black person like crap. Similarly,it was the white guys, the skinheads who raped and abused him, showing him that the world isn't as simple and divided along race-lines as he thought. As for the lifetime of racism, they make it explicit that he learned it as a teen, so the article basically muddies up the facts in an attempt to be humorous and fails to point out actual instances of racism. As for a comment someone else made, racism is not just hate and exclusion. Many good honest Christians genuinely felt that black people were an inferior species and they did so with love in their hearts. Racism isn't just hate. Even the nicest guy can be a racist. Racism is holding a prejudice about people, feeling they are inferior or of greater or lesser value because of their race. Hate is not a factor. So yes, unintended and underlying racism does exist, it is an actual problem, and it doesn't always come in the form of violence. Sometimes it's following a black person around a store because you think they'll steal something or not trusting a black employee to handle money.
this was horrible what a waste of time
johnnyever for prez. btw, johnny. did you notice that the word homogeneous was filtered out of your post? i wonder what they'll do with bunsen burner...
Racism is a realistic thing, so I think that these movies have to show racism in order to break the stereotypes. You can't have an anti-racist film without being racist somewhere in the movie. I loved Driving Miss Daisy, and I didn't think it was very racist at all. The old lady was a bigot, not some lynching white bitch.