A Jar-Jarring Assault on the Senses

See, everybody pretty much hated Jar Jar Binks. And a friend and I couldnt for the life of us understand why. Maybe it was us, maybe we just had a low threshold. Maybe we were too easily pleased, laughing at crude comedies and being awed by any CGI laden feature that came our way!!! OMIGOD!!! Had we turned Bhopali??????? And then we read comments that people had on Jar Jar. Comments that resurfaced when there was debate regarding the steriotypical voice acting of some "black sounding voices" in the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Jar Jar was hated for propagating racial steriotypes. His meesa going bumbling.......reminded people of the Yo Maan!!! Carribean. And not in the Johnny Depp swashbuckling pirate way.

And I ask you this. Is everyone black from gangsta rappers to typical wayans brothers nonsensical sitcoms any less guilty of propagating those stereotypes? With the honorable exception of Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and of course Will Smith in the movie business, isnt everyone black including Samuel L Jackson guilty of propagating that? And i do believe that the Jar Jar similarities may have been unintentional. And in entertainment, only the old jazz artists, Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong and coincidentally the late Michael Jackson (may he rest in peace) fall into this category. Who is more guilty then, the people who in all honesty and innocence came up with a buffonlike comical relief or the people who read too much into every piece of harmless fun. Isnt the person who goes "Oh that guy is of so and so religion/race and he is in a negative character......SACRILEGE SACRILEGE!!" guiltier than the filmmaker who was just portraying it in an incidental and unintentional way. Whatever happened to freedom of expression. Artists of all people should be granted that. With limitations of course because their arts can border from the absurd to the scandalously outrageous.

And speaking of stereotypes, what about the Disney stereotype with the mandatory girl lead and the token black goofy friend. A white goof if the central character is black, the vampy bitchy characters who are intentionally less hot than the cental one but everyone pretends otherwise. There is always a pesky annoying brother. And three friends. One guy and two girls. Isnt this nonsensical stereotype even more dangerous considering that its being administered to naive young minds tantamount to shiny new blank slates with nary a smudge on them????

Apparently appearances matter more. That is why superman when bruised, which isnt often, he isnt shown healing rapidly, cuz thats wolverines domain apparently and then it would seem too cliched. Though reality dictates that what with his super high metabolism he should have equally rapid healing if not more. Oh and the time when Gambit was exempted from the earlier x men movies because his powers were thought to be too similar to Cyclops. Well they proved that wrong with X-Men Origins: Wolverine didn't they? ...oh well, before I start sounding like too much of a geek (tho some might say its too late for that already) ill sign off...bye.