Scream, Blacula, scream
I have occasionally watched a few movies shown on the BET network.
It is always interesting and educational to learn about how people in
other cultures live and think. And not just in the movies, but in
commercials shown between them. However, it seems to me that the genres
of these movies are very limited and seem to go on a single track. In
the mainstream Hollywood moviemaking, there are action movies, romantic
comedies, teen comedies, urban relationship dramas and family films
that feature many kinds of lead and supporting characters, but the
movies shown on BET seem to feature mostly gangsters, drug dealers and
pimps. And unfortunately not in some ironic blaxploitation sense, with
the characters sporting big afros and fighting back against "the man"
while funky music plays on the background.
Since all these movies tend to look and feel the same, perhaps there is some low-budget outfit that produces these movies on an assembly line. But at least there is some attempt for realism (it's hard to be unrealistic when your budget is low), making these movies more enjoyable to watch than, say, that ridiculous big-budget turkey "XXX: State of the Union". I also don't know if it's because of the low production values or because there are some problems in reception in this area, but very frequently the sound in these movies totally disappears for a second or so for a few random bursts. This is annoying, since it typically happens when some character is talking, and I hate to think that I missed something important. I wonder if this is some problem with our digital terminal.
Here in Toronto, with all the recent gun and crime that for some reason is not as exciting and glamorous as it is on the screen, the black community and the city are trying to solve these problems with more police presence and giving harsher sentences to gun criminals. I sincerely applaud this approach, since I am happy about such common sense guiding the local politics.
However, the whole thing reminds me of a couple of times I have read American leftists and American black leaders opine that there should be less policing in similar black areas in America, and that too many black criminals overall are put in jail, depriving the black community of a large number of its young men. I might have misunderstood something here, but I just can't bring myself to understand such ass-backwards thinking. It's like these people believe that police and courts cause the crime by putting away criminals, so decreasing the police presence would also decrease crime. Or something. If such thinking really is so common in USA that somebody can suggest it without becoming an instant laughingstock, I am starting to see why certain "inner cities" in America are such hellholes.
Maybe it's just me, but if I lived in an area that had lots of criminals living in it, I would want the police and courts to find and lock up as many of these criminals as possible. Some people are just net negatives to their environment, so not having them around is not a loss but a gain. And I guess that the decent black people have pretty much the same feeling about this, since they don't want to live in constant fear of crime in their own neighbourhoods. The fewer criminals there are in some area, the less crime there will be, since most criminals, lazy, superstitious and cowardly lot that they are, tend to exercise their criminal tendencies close to home. Since at least outside Hollywood most criminals are quite stupid, so their crimes tend to be by necessity messy and violent, which then further brings down the quality of life in the area where they live. But apparently the do-gooders think that it would be better to have more black people as victims of crime than to put black criminals away.
As for the man shortage that comes from locking up black criminals in prisons, I kind of doubt that these men would generally have been model husbands and providers in the mold of Ward Cleaver. The very best predictor of future criminality is past criminality, as everyone instinctively understands when they are choosing their friends and associates. And besides, haven't the leftists been telling us for several decades that women don't really need men to support them and their children? And that fathers are useless anyways because single mothers do just as good a job in raising their kids than two parents? In this light, it's hard for me to even understand what the problem is.
Since all these movies tend to look and feel the same, perhaps there is some low-budget outfit that produces these movies on an assembly line. But at least there is some attempt for realism (it's hard to be unrealistic when your budget is low), making these movies more enjoyable to watch than, say, that ridiculous big-budget turkey "XXX: State of the Union". I also don't know if it's because of the low production values or because there are some problems in reception in this area, but very frequently the sound in these movies totally disappears for a second or so for a few random bursts. This is annoying, since it typically happens when some character is talking, and I hate to think that I missed something important. I wonder if this is some problem with our digital terminal.
Here in Toronto, with all the recent gun and crime that for some reason is not as exciting and glamorous as it is on the screen, the black community and the city are trying to solve these problems with more police presence and giving harsher sentences to gun criminals. I sincerely applaud this approach, since I am happy about such common sense guiding the local politics.
However, the whole thing reminds me of a couple of times I have read American leftists and American black leaders opine that there should be less policing in similar black areas in America, and that too many black criminals overall are put in jail, depriving the black community of a large number of its young men. I might have misunderstood something here, but I just can't bring myself to understand such ass-backwards thinking. It's like these people believe that police and courts cause the crime by putting away criminals, so decreasing the police presence would also decrease crime. Or something. If such thinking really is so common in USA that somebody can suggest it without becoming an instant laughingstock, I am starting to see why certain "inner cities" in America are such hellholes.
Maybe it's just me, but if I lived in an area that had lots of criminals living in it, I would want the police and courts to find and lock up as many of these criminals as possible. Some people are just net negatives to their environment, so not having them around is not a loss but a gain. And I guess that the decent black people have pretty much the same feeling about this, since they don't want to live in constant fear of crime in their own neighbourhoods. The fewer criminals there are in some area, the less crime there will be, since most criminals, lazy, superstitious and cowardly lot that they are, tend to exercise their criminal tendencies close to home. Since at least outside Hollywood most criminals are quite stupid, so their crimes tend to be by necessity messy and violent, which then further brings down the quality of life in the area where they live. But apparently the do-gooders think that it would be better to have more black people as victims of crime than to put black criminals away.
As for the man shortage that comes from locking up black criminals in prisons, I kind of doubt that these men would generally have been model husbands and providers in the mold of Ward Cleaver. The very best predictor of future criminality is past criminality, as everyone instinctively understands when they are choosing their friends and associates. And besides, haven't the leftists been telling us for several decades that women don't really need men to support them and their children? And that fathers are useless anyways because single mothers do just as good a job in raising their kids than two parents? In this light, it's hard for me to even understand what the problem is.
Comments