If you haven't seen it, Chris Rock (who I disagree with on stuff, but still like a lot!) has been writing and
talking a lot lately with a new movie coming out, Ferguson, etc.
This new essay is epic for several reasons, but I'd like to point out that he says something I have been saying for years (cue: confirmation bias). Our media is liberal but racist. Pretty white females as victims or perps get stories on 20/20 or Dateline while thousands upon thousands of black males get killed and it's not even noticed other than to scare white people from "going downtown" all across the county. The media (and they are all liberals, folks) portray black Americans in the context of crime almost exclusively.
The term "
drive-by media" popularized by Rush Limbaugh is so fricking accurate. This couples with my constant criticisms of sweeps month sensationalism and the ever popular "summer of" series, be it shark attacks, abductions, or West Nile Virus. Ask anyone who has had a reason to be on the news and they will tell you: they got important details completely wrong, or omitted details to create the narrative as they saw it, truth be damned.
Chris Rock isn't the first to make this observation, but he'll at least bring it to the forefront. The people who make our movies are led by scumbags (to allude to Charles Barkley!) molesting children, doing drugs, and excluding everyone that doesn't look or think like them.
We cut it out in Top Five, but there had been a scene where Kevin Hart, who plays my character’s agent, is in his office talking to me, and he finds out that “Zoolander” (Ben Stiller) is down the hall and he’s mad because none of the agents called him. He’s the only black agent at the agency, and there was a line in the movie like, “I’m the only black agent here. They never invite me to anything, and these people are liberals. This isn’t the Klan.
But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You’re in L.A, you’ve got to try not to hire Mexicans. It’s the most liberal town in the world, and there’s a part of it that’s kind of racist — not racist like “F— you, n——-” racist, but just an acceptance that there’s a slave state in L.A. There’s this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn’t exist anywhere else. I remember I was renting a house in Beverly Park while doing some movie, and you just see all of the Mexican people at 8 o’clock in the morning in a line driving into Beverly Park like it’s General Motors. It’s this weird town.
You’re telling me no Mexicans are qualified to do anything at a studio? Really? Nothing but mop up? What are the odds that that’s true? The odds are, because people are people, that there’s probably a Mexican David Geffen mopping up for somebody’s company right now. The odds are that there’s probably a Mexican who’s that smart who’s never going to be given a shot. And it’s not about being given a shot to greenlight a movie because nobody is going to give you that — you’ve got to take that. The shot is that a Mexican guy or a black guy is qualified to go and give his opinion about how loud the boings are inDodgeball or whether it’s the right s—- sound you hear when Jeff Daniels is on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber. It’s like, “We only let white people do that.” This is a system where only white people can chime in on that. There would be a little naivete to sitting around and going, “Oh, no black person has ever greenlighted a movie,” but those other jobs? You’re kidding me, right? They don’t even require education. When you’re on the lower levels, they’re just about taste, nothing else. And you don’t have to go to Harvard to have taste.
Also, this should sting:
But if we’re going to just be honest and count dollars and seats and not look at skin color, Kevin Hart is the biggest comedian in the world. If Kevin Hart is playing 40,000 seats in a night and Jon Stewart is playing 3,000, the fact that Jon Stewart’s 3,000 are white means Kevin has to cross over? That makes no sense. If anybody needs to cross over, it’s the guy who’s selling 3,000 seats.
Awesome. And remember, this country is 67% white and 12% black. Suck it Stewart, you aren't that popular.
More epic talk:
I couldn’t have made Top Five at a studio. First of all, no one’s going to make a movie with a premise so little and artsy: a star putting out a movie and getting interviewed by a woman from The New York Times. I would have had to have three two-hour meetings explaining that black people also read The New York Times. A studio would’ve made it like Malibu’s Most Wanted. And never in a million years would they have allowed a scene where the rich guy comes back to the projects and actually gets along with everybody. No way. In most black movies — and in most black TV shows and even in most black plays — anyone with money or an education is evil, even movies made by black directors. They have to be saved by the poor people. This goes back to Good Times andWhat’s Happening!!
Go read the whole thing, but here's my parting shot: I remember when Ellen's sitcom tanked and people blamed homophobia. I disagreed, I thought it was because the show went from being about the characters to being about the character being gay, and it wasn't funny anymore. People clearly love Ellen, it seems, and trust me, we knew she was gay anyway.
I'll also throw in that several conservative types I follow say that if we want to win the culture back, just go make good art and the conservative message that may or may not be a part of it will follow. the problem with most "conservative" art right now is that it's conservative first and it isn't good quality art! Anyway, here's Chris Rock:
But there’s been progress. When I was on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago, we did a sketch where I was Sasheer Zamata's dad and she had an Internet show. Twenty years ago when I was on Saturday Night Live, anything with black people on the show had to deal with race, and that sketch we did didn’t have anything to do with race. That was the beauty: The sketch is funny because it’s funny, and that’s the progress.
Yes, it is.
