Comments on: Mo’ Harold & Kumar

By: Pravin

Pravin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:23:03 +0000

Black Panthers started out with good intentions. Can you blame them for organizing after the crimes of the Jim Crow era and before? Whites get organized into militias for lesser slights.

Sharpton is a demagogue but so are many politicians. Sharpton's blunder wsa the Tawana Brawley case and he never recovered in the mainstream with that controversy. But post Tawana, while he is no saint, I cannot say he is the worst of our politicians.

By: Harbeer

Harbeer — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 08:34:12 +0000

by defintion you cannot call the death penalty as 'lynching'.
to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction

Define a mob. Define legal sanction. I'm FROM Texas, holmes.

By: Manju

Manju — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:27:33 +0000

Cosby is subversive

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:41:26 +0000

I strongly object to describing Kal Penn’s work as “minstrel”. The role was a complete subversion of stereotypes, summed up in the “Thank you, come again” line as he was stealing the Extreme crew’s car. It’s a good contrast with the Simpsons, which didn’t show contrasting desi archetypes, just one accented brown guy who works at the kwiki-mart.

By: DQ

DQ — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:32:12 +0000

Rah, Yeah, Chappelle has said that his epiphany came when he looked up mid-show and caught a white crewperson laughing AT him – he said it was the first time he had ever felt laughed at, rather than with. He also said he had issues with them wanting him to wear a dress in one skit, because ‘every black male comedian has had to wear a dress at some point’. I only watched clips of the show, though I’ve watched a lot of his standup on the Net – and the difference is, so to speak, white and black. His whole function as a searingly astute social observer disappeared in the show, as far as I can tell. Mind you, I only saw these really buffoonish clips.

By: GujuDude

GujuDude — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:31:29 +0000

(That's if you don't count the death penalty, in which case Texas is set to lynch another man tonight.)

Just to note, by defintion you cannot call the death penalty as 'lynching'.

: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction

By: rah

rah — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:20:17 +0000

I'm not sure what Vinod was trying to say in his post, but I don't think that Al Sharpton or the BPP sought "social acceptance by the majority." I'm not sure what that means, but it reminded me of something the comedian Hari Kondabolu once said. I'm paraphrasing here, but he remarked how it seemed that his comedy had often been described as "militant" because it made white people uncomfortable. I think a lot of Kal Penn's stuff constitutes brown minstrelism and makes it okay for "the majority" to laugh at stereotypes. I think this same phenomenon had a lot to do with Chappelle ending his show because of its unintended effects. And for the record, I'm perfectly fine with making white people uncomfortable.

By: Zen

Zen — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:19:22 +0000

I loved H&K, but i'm not sure if I will like No. 2 from the preview. What was most appealing to me about No. 1 was it's overt non-seriousness (i.e. the quest for pot) which provided a frame in which they explored deeper issues (such as racism, etc). From the looks of this preview they are being a little more serious from the start, and i don't know how that will pan out.

You could be on to something there but the airport interrogation scene looks like it's definitely funnier than Ben Stiller's rant in Meet the Parents.

By: Harbeer

Harbeer — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:51:04 +0000

Methinks your snark cup overfloweth...Militant attitudes are nothing to celebrate.

Wrong. I was being sincere. And acquiescence in the face of oppression is deplorable--don't forget that people were being lynched as recently as...1998. (That's if you don't count the death penalty, in which case Texas is set to lynch another man tonight.) Dig this celebration. I don't think a few jokes on stage or the silver screen are/were ever going to stop that. Neither were sit-ins, alone. "Please stop killing us or we're not going to ride your buses." Give me a break!

I don't know much about the SL Tams or their struggle. History has shown us that violent revolutions--whether they come from the left OR the right, just replace the oppressors at the top of the hierarchy. I'm no fan of FARC or Hamas or Castro, either. That's why I love confrontational groups which are organized non-hierarchically, like ActUP and the EZLN. They have stood up for justice without themselves becoming oppressive and without being coopted (so far).

By: Lizzie (greeneyed fem)

Lizzie (greeneyed fem) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:08:34 +0000

@ Vikram: "In Harold & Kumar, NPH appears as himself, not as a fictional character. So one would expect he would stay true to himself."

Actually, even in the first H&K, NPH plays a fictional version of himself. He's interviewed on the DVD saying something like what drew him to the movie was getting to play a character named Neil Patrick Harris who was entirely unlike himself and so mess with the audience's expectations (atrocious grammar of that sentence aside, you get my point). Did you really leave the first H&K thinking NPH was a sex-crazed cokehead who just happened to get caught on film?

And I am STOKED for this movie - the trailer makes me deliriously happy.