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By Order of the Princess of En[chat]ments
Posts
There are these wonderful inventions called "Digital Versatile Disks", sometimes called "DVDs" for short.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
That's it.
Have any of you actually seen it? I wonder how bad it really is.
That was such an awesome film. I hope I can find it for Maddie.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I'm sure you're thinking of Song of the South, which was actually a pretty good movie version of all those Brer Rabbit / Uncle Remus stories. The last time I watched that movie I was probably ten years old.
That's the one, and I guess I can see why Song of the South wouldn't really stand up to modern attitudes, even though it was probably pretty progressive for its time. When I was a kid, my dad used to read me Uncle Remus Stories in dialect. I couldn't understand a goddamned word. But I do know now that "brer" = "brother".
It's not really that bad, though Uncle Remus is pretty much the archetypical Uncle Tom/ Happy Slave/ Magical Negro. It's pretty generous in terms of portraying him as a sympathetic and admirable character, but the whole Happy Slave thing is I guess problematic.
As best I can recall, the horrible racism consisted of the following:
- One of the stories involves Brer Rabbit and a tar baby - ie, a baby actually made of tar. If you're not already conditioned to know that it could be construed as offensive, it's not bad at all. It's just a black blob with a hat and shirt and a cork for a nose.
- Uncle Remus is a slave on a plantation who is friendly towards the white children. This is apparently bad because any portrait of a slave that does not focus exclusively on his being whipped by evil white folks is racist.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
ITT Jeff retcons the word "Video"
Foiled! D:
"Digital Video Disk" was its unofficial name during production, but the official name was always meant to be "Digital Versatile Disk," since it wasn't meant to be solely a video storage medium.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
It still sounds stupid. "Versatile Digital Disk" makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, I'll agree with that.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
But there is a problem with the "happy slave" character.
This is what people never get about Uncle Tom's Cabin -- he's not the hero of the book! He's supposed to be a reprehensible character, becuase he is the manifestation of white fantay, and an illustration of the cruelty and madness of what that white fantasy was (to perpetrate such unforgivable crimes on people who would forgive the unforgivable, who would tolerate the intolerable).
Basically, it's a denial of reality, a twisted fantasy.
It's really not OK.
So, there's this barmaid at the pub where I go for lunch. She's cute, so naturally I asked her out, and naturally she turned me down (the old "I'm too busy" and "I'm already seeing somebody" excuses). That was a few months ago. I still eat there and she still works there, so we do run into each other from time to time, but it's always during the lunchtime rush so we never have time to really talk, just smalltalk a little.
So today, after the lunch rush, I was going over my notes before my afternoon class, when she came over and she asked me out for a beer.
So... yeah. Maybe I should start an H/A thread to brag about it... I mean ask for advice.
"Oh I'm so happy I got this VD!"
Wow. I guess when she said "I'm too busy" and "I'm already seeing someone else" she was being truthful.
Way to go! Validation is awesome.
?
Also, seriously, I'm getting some lunch.
be back soon.
Edit: Seven, Richy. It's the magic number.