Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label race. Show all posts


  • Today Alexander Wang unveils his inaugural collection for Balenciaga.  The fashion world nearly burst into flames last December when the California-raised, 29 year old designer was announced as Creative Director for the European design house.   The choice was unexpected (yet totally expected) as an American designer had not assumed a European brand since Marc Jacobs took creative control at Louis Vuitton in the 1990’s.  A couple of weeks ago, PPR the company that owns Balenciaga, said that Wang’s appointment was part of a plan to make the brand more “approachable, with a certain youthful sportiness”.   

    In short, Balenciaga wants to be hot and sexy among Millennials again (like they were in 2006) and believe Alexander Wang is the man to do it.  But by hiring a creative director that instinctually connects with and represents a global fashion consciousness, Balenciaga may unintentionally be is poised to change the fashion status quo.   

    In under a decade, Wang has clawed his way to the peak of fashion notoriety and the top of every sixteen to thirty-something’s covet list by generating organic, effortlessly chic street clothing that mirrors and embodies what is captured in fashion blogs from around the world.  

    Balenciaga is already pretty sporty and somewhat youthful, but where they fall short is the approachable part.  However it’s important to note that Wang won’t ignite widespread desire for Balenciaga simply by taking the design house in new stylistic directions or even by giving it a complete makeover. Wang’s creative contributions will be in the way the brand interfaces with consumers.  

    Wang is the motherfucking man when it comes to engaging Millennials.  His eponymous label has kept its allure by artfully finding a balance between being attainable and unattainable by using social media and more traditional PR.  

    Rumi Neely is the star and subject of the most visited fashion blogs, Fashion Toast, with nearly three hundred thousand followers between her Instagram and Twitter accounts, with another fifty thousand friends on Facebook, and is one of Wang’s conduits to the masses.  Every season she flaunts his most sold out it items, whetting the appetite of millions of shoppers.  Alexander Wang understands that fashion bloggers are the social media-based evolution of “word-of-mouth”.

    Wang’s label also remains painfully unattainable by appearing on the top celebrities like Rihanna and Azealia Banks.  The Fashion Bomb Daily is just one of countless sites dedicated to dissecting the outfits of these young women as they dodge the paparazzi or pose on the red carpet.  Who needs ads and editorials in Vogue when you can get the publicity in real life, in real time, distributed widely, on the most watched icons of your time. You can see why PPR gave him the job.


    Rumi with Alexander Wang                    Wang with Azealia Banks

    Balenciaga hopes to engage the Millennial consumer market.  The Millennial generation was born post 1980 and are between 18 and 30 years old. They outnumber aging baby boomers and are three times larger than the generation that follows.  They don’t watch TV and default to social media and pop culture to influence lifestyle decisions.  Millennial’s are also the most racially and ethnically diverse generation the US has ever known. For Millennials to want to adopt a brand, it must embody them and reflect their essence.  If Balenciaga truly wants to connect with them they are going to have to reflect the global Millennial consumer not only in the brand, but in its advertising and runway shows as well.

    This could shake up the fashion industry status quo when it comes to racial inclusivity.  Currently the fashion industry is very white and is getting whiter by the moment.  Sure, it embraces ethnicity and diversity in inspiration and pattern, but there is virtually no ethnic diversity in models cast to represent brands in ad campaigns and on the runways.  Jezebel conducted its fifth annual scan of New York Fashion Week Fall Season 2013 models and found that only 17% of the 4479 models were people of color.

    I don’t think this shift will happen simply because Wang is the first designer of Asian descent to enter the ranks of Parisian high fashion - I’m making such an assertion because Balenciaga may not have a choice.  Wang’s PR relationships are already firmly established in urban demographics and those relationships drive sales.

    If Balenciaga is smart and wants to yield the desired results, they’ll just sit back and let Wang do what he does so well to capture the hearts and disposable income of young people around the world. 

    Its no doubt Wang has some serious work to do.  In a year, one of the definitive fashion houses could start a trend of embracing and depicting the global fashion consciousness that would reshape how the fashion industry integrates race.  Or Wang could do what every professional ball player from the hood does after they reach success; dump the black girl who was with them from the start and “trade up” for a white girl.

    I do see one barrier to Balenciaga becoming “approachable, with a certain youthful sportiness,” and that’s with price.  Millennial’s have a different perception of luxury than previous generations and define it by functionality and what they can’t live without.  They know most luxury brands will eventually produce a diffusion line with lower priced collections as every major designer has created a partnership with Target or H&M.  Or they can wait until items go on sale or turn up at outlets.  

    To illustrate this point, Alexander Wang’s namesake labels most coveted Liya heels sell for $495 (when they’re not completely sold out), compared to Balenciaga’s Harness Platform Boot that had bitches salivating from 2006 to 2009.  They were about $1,100.  When a majority of Millennials are either unemployed, underpaid, or weighed down with student loans, $1,100 shoes aren’t all that sporty or approachable at all.

    Check out the Balenciaga Autumn Fall 2013 collection and let me know what you think.
  • Sucker Free City (2004)
    Crime/Drama; USA
    113 minutes


    One of the lesser known Spike Lee joints, "Sucker Free City" was conceived as an original series for Showtime, but for whatever reason they sat on it for awhile and never bothered to greenlight the series. Eventually, it became clear that the show had no hope and so the 2-hour pilot was released as a standalone film.

    Set in my home turf of San Francisco, California, "Sucker Free City" is the story of 3 men from different backgrounds, living in completely different worlds that coexist just miles apart from each other in relative seclusion. A black kid growing up in the crime-ridden ghetto of Hunter's Point, a Chinese kid raised in the gang-ruled Chinatown neighborhood and the son of 2 former white hippies being forced out of their home in the newly gentrified Mission district are our windows into the vastly disparate micro-climates of modern San Francisco. Each character has his own troubles and faces his own obstacles, but in the end they are all simply trying to make something of themselves in a world that cares little about them and even less about those aforementioned obstacles. The real focus of the story, however, is not how different these characters are, but how closely their actions resemble one another and how easily someone without the feeling of hope or purpose can wind up treading a path that only acts to continue the cycles of economic and social oppression.

    For those used to seeing the shiny-happy, Rice-A-Roni depictions of "the city by the bay", Spike Lee's portrayal is a much needed reality check. The truth of the matter is San Francisco is one of the most culturally, racially and economically complex cities in the world and "SFC" is probably the first piece of popular media I've encountered that attempts to accurately show that diversity, warts and all. It's an incredibly rich tapestry of possibilities that ultimately will never have the chance to be explored because Showtime not only did this show dirty, they also did themselves dirty by passing on what could have possibly been their only answer to HBOs complete and utter domination of pay-cable programming.

    Judging "SFC" as a standalone movie is nearly impossible because watching makes it abundantly clear that we're only seeing a tiny fraction of something much, much bigger and in the end most of what is presented is never resolved. But if you watch it keeping in mind that it was meant to be so much more, you can at least appreciate the attempt to capture something on film that had never really been tackled before and is much too complex to cover in a mere 2 hours. Sorry "Sucker Free City"...if you hadn't been done so dirty, you could have been a real classic.

    *Pours some out for the homie that never even had the chance to be here.


    Give this some time if you're into: The Wire, Spike Lee's other joints, San Francisco, cultural ghettos of all shapes and sizes, racial politics...you know, standard Spike Lee shit.



  • Michael Jackson

    Did the "King of Pop" spawn an entire generation of sci-fi fans?




    I’m sure many of you are getting a little sick of all the Michael Jackson coverage – frankly I am too. But the sheer amount of press the King of Pop’s death has attracted is an inevitable byproduct of the loss of someone who has had so much influence over the lives of so many people. Michael Jackson was more than a man, more than a singer – he was a cultural institution.

    As sci-fi fans, the loss of MJ also means the loss of quite possibly the geekiest pop star that’s ever walked the Earth. Fantasy, horror, magic and futurism were ever-present throughout Jackson’s career in his videos, his stage performances and his fashion sense. Michael always looked like he just stepped off a space ship from the future, even until the end of his life (though I’d categorize that look more as Galactic Emperor than his usual Han Solo).

    The guy single handedly invented the concept of the mega-star pop idol – a concept that has since taken root in many a sci-fi story. He introduced a whole generation to zombies and techno-futurist fashions. He got everybody thinking about walking backwards on the moon. He insured the brilliant John Landis an eternal spot in the collective consciousness. He slept in a pressurized oxygen chamber. He made an epic 3-D space adventure movie that (though cheesy) still looks pretty cool to this day (and inspired Star Trek: TNG’s Borg). In short, the mofo did more than enough for sci-fi to ensure a place in the geek hall of fame…quite possibly a lifetime achievement award, even.

    Of course, you can’t talk about Michael Jackson without mentioning the plethora of controversy surrounding him. From the skin thing, to the chimpanzees, to Peter Pan, to little children…there was no shortage of weirdness from the man. But you know what, people? That’s what it’s like when you come from the future – people just don’t get what you’re all about and they eat you alive because of it. I mean, look what happened to David Bowe in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”.

    The most important thing to remember about the gossip and controversy is that 99% of it is unfounded and unproven and the other 1% is just a result of him being so damn weird. The oxygen chamber? Whatever, that’s not even that weird – it was cool when it was in “Alien”, but somehow it’s creepy when MJ does it. Bullshit. Bubbles the chimp? That’s not weird, that’s awesome! I would totally have a chimp if I could. I wouldn’t name him Bubbles, by any means, but we’ll chalk that up to taste. Speed Racer had a fuckin’ chimp and people loved that guy. The sexual abuse allegations? If they were true, they’d surely be unforgivable crimes, but come on…the circumstances surrounding both of the cases were more than fishy in terms of the true motivation behind the lawsuits and that’s before we even consider the fact that Jackson doesn’t fit the profile of your typical child rapist whatsoever (acting more like a regressed child himself at times) and that he was never found guilty of any of the accusations.

    A lot of people also suggest that Michael Jackson was ashamed of being black and therefore bleached his skin and got plastic surgery to make himself look white. I just don’t buy it. This is the guy who portrayed Egyptian kings as blacks in his “Remember The Time” video (which isn’t exactly the norm), called Tommy Mottola a white devil, almost always cast himself opposite ethnic females in his videos, spearheaded the “We Are The World” campaign for Africa, talked about the white man needing to make a change, sang African chants in his music and donated countless millions to the United Negro College Fund, but somehow he also had such a deep seeded self-hatred that he would counteract all that racial pride he displayed by bleaching his skin in such a drastic and obvious fashion and then blame it on a skin disease in order to cover it up. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

    Just leave the poor guy alone and stop doggin’ him around, for fuck’s sake. Yea, he was a goddamn weirdo, but so was Salvador Dali, so was DaVinci…every great artist is a weirdo. How else do you come up with weird shit, if not from your fucking weird-ass brain? You know what else is true of most great artists? They’re overly sensitive individuals with traumatic, troubled pasts who usually end up becoming reclusive drug addicts in order to cope with the fact that they can’t seem to make sense of the blatant contradictions and cruelties of our world. Sound familiar?

    My only hope from all of this is that the resurgence of interest in his career will put the spark back in people’s eyes and get them celebrating the uniqueness and forward thinking vision that made Michael Jackson such a massive success in the first place. Michael was never a trend follower – he made his own path. Our culture has become so stagnant these past decades, relying too heavily on nostalgia and reinventing old ideas, that what we need more than ever is a visionary to lead us through and show us the wonder in new ideas. We need someone to blow our minds and show us that anything is possible. If Michael can’t be that guiding light, then hopefully his legacy will inspire others to step up and take his place, blazing their own trails instead of blindly following the ones already trodden.

    Much respect to the man who personally opened up my imagination and inspired many of the lofty goals I’ve set for myself in life. R.I.P.
  • Predator 2

    Now with more Jamaicans!





    With the country's first African-American president taking office last week, it's easy for most Americans to start getting the idea that racism is dead in this country.

    But though our nation is finally ready to let a black man run the country, America still has a hard time with the idea of ethnic heroes being portrayed in our movies, comics, magazines and television shows.

    My friends and I have a game, it's called "The Name 10 Black Actors Game." It's fairly simple. There are no rules. You just ask a friend, a co-worker, a random person in a bar, etc. to name 10 working black actors off the top of their head.

    I guarantee the first answer will be Denzel Washington, the second answer will be Will Smith and the third answer will maybe be Samuel L. Jackson if they've really got their thinking cap on. The fourth answer may take awhile ... it may not ever come, depending on who you're talking to.

    There just aren't that many prominent black actors out there, sure, but more importantly, there aren't that many mainstream movies that want to acknowledge that black people are anything more than sidekicks.

    That's why, whenever I get the chance, I pull out my trusty old copy of "Predator 2" and slip it in the DVD player. It's one of the only movies I can think of where the hero of the story, the real hero, is a normal guy that just happens to be black. He doesn't have a snappy retort to everything, he doesn't talk jive, he isn't a caricature of what white people think black men are like - he's just a dude with a shit job in a really fucked up city with some seriously messed up stuff going on around him.

    It's refreshing to see in a world where black characters in movies have to basically walk around with a shirt that says "Hey, I'm the Black Guy!" in huge day-glo letters, or where roles have to be re-written for Will Smith by his own private writing team because he couldn't just play any old character - he has to be sassy-talking and street-wise or the world just wouldn't know what to think of him.

    Danny Glover got a lot of attention for doing the Lethal Weapon movies because, well, Mel Gibson was standing right there next to him the whole time and people were bound to notice him sooner or later. But that audience didn't follow him over to "Predator 2," which really is a shame because he's great in it. Glover's role obviously wasn't written for a black guy. The filmmakers could have just as easily cast James Caan - his character's name is Mike Harrigan for chrissake - but that's part of what makes this movie such a one of a kind achievement.

    The role was written for a white guy, it could have easily been played by a white guy, the movie it was a sequel of starred a white guy and it still went to Danny Glover! Against all odds. When the hell does that happen? Almost never, folks. Almost never. Hollywood Rule No. 5: Never cast a black actor unless absolutely necessary.

    But our cultural stereotypes don't stop with race - a lot of people will ignorantly argue that sequels are never as good as the original movies that spawned them. But you know what? A lot of people think Britney Spears is a good singer. A lot of people think George W. Bush was a good president. A lot of people say a lot of shit, but it doesn't make it true.

    The reason most sequels fail is because the people involved are just trying to recreate the magic that succeeded for them the first time around. It's an easy pitfall.

    Unfortunately, what the filmmakers fail to realize more often than not is that it was probably the uniqueness of the original that was appealing to the fans in the first place. This is just another area where "Predator 2" defies all odds.

    "Predator 2" is nothing like "Predator." Sure, the alien is the same, and sure, they're basically both about lone badasses outclassing said alien with nothing but their own bootstraps, but that's pretty much where the similarities die.

    First difference: "Predator 2" abandons the jungle for a dystopic future Los Angeles. Second difference: it's basically a sci-fi noir flick, which as a film geek, I love. Third difference: the original "Predator" contains absolutely no Jamaicans, while the sequel - chock full of those rudeboys.

    The point is, it would have been super easy to just hire another five or six roided-out beefhead b-list actors, give them some big guns, fly them to the part of L.A. that looks most like a jungle and had a "Predator" sequel knocked out in like ... two weeks, max. But they didn't do that, and I, for one, commend them for not taking the easy route. Instead, they created a whole new setting, a whole new backstory and a whole new set of characters.

    They didn't have to, but they did. They broke Hollywood Rule No. 4: Never do more work than is absolutely necessary.

    That's not to say this movie is completely, painstakingly original - it does follow a lot of the action movie formulas and lone cop cliches, but I don't have a problem with that. Point me to a movie that isn't cliche in some way and I'll gladly illuminate you as to something you overlooked. But what matters most to me when watching a movie is not whether I've heard someone express a similar sentiment in another movie, but that I can buy what's taking place on screen as being organic to the story being presented.

    In this case, yeah, I totally buy it. If I was Lt. Mike Harrigan and this was happening to me, I can't say I'd react any differently than Danny Glover does. I'd be cussing my boss out, going off on my own and trying to get to the bottom of it.

    Call me cliche, but that just seems like the logical thing to do. And, you know what? It worked! He caught the bad guy, solved the mystery and put an end to the problem. Can't argue with results.

    "Predator 2" will always hold a special place in my heart because even with its cliches, even though it's a sequel, it's still more original than 99 percent of movies being churned out today. It reminds me that you don't always have to go the obvious route to make a great movie. You don't always have to cast the obvious guy that you think audiences will want to see, you don't always have to put forth the bare minimum of effort and you don't always have to beat a dead horse.

    The film industry has a lot of crazy, self-imposed notions of what will bring them success. They don't like taking risks, they don't like standing on shaky ground when their money is on the line.

    I can certainly understand where they're coming from in that approach, but the problem with that mentality is that it leads us to situations like what we're experiencing today where the same five stars appear in variations of the same five movies over and over again, year after year.

    Nobody is creating anything, they're just trying to appropriate something that's already proven successful. Nothing changes.

    But look around you. Things are changing in the real world and it's time that our media reflects those changes.

    So now that Barack Obama is in the Oval Office, can we please get some color up there on the silver screen? Can we see somebody at least attempt not to follow the beaten path? Please?













  • big trouble in little china

    its all in the reflexes.

    ______________________________________________________________

    it's a dark and stormy night here in san francisco (well, technically it's the middle of the afternoon, but that's just semantics at this point). it's been raining heavily over the last week, streets flooding, power dying, cars crashing left and right. to put it plainly, it's a madhouse out there and it got me thinking - what would ol' jack burton do at a time like this? when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of heaven shake...what would he say?

    john carpenter has unleashed many brilliant creations on the world, from his masterful reinvisioning of the thing to the gritty, futuristic dystopian escape from new york to the ever-so-slept on, but amazingly strange prince of darkness. few, however, can hold a candle to the profoundly hilarious and ingeniously zany big trouble in little china. let's just establish this right now before we go any further - kurt russell is a fuckin' genius. no ifs, ands or buts about it - just. plain. genius. if you don't agree, you're either a total poser that's never seen any of his movies or some stupid whore that's probably obsessed with matthew mcconaughey or something. regardless, your opinion means nothing.

    i often find myself watching movies and thinking "this would have worked so much better if kurt russell was playing that guy". for instance, we all remember that flaming heap transformers, right? now, there really wasn't anything short of a global outbreak of alzheimer's that was going to save that rag, but just imagine if the part played so awkwardly by john turturro was instead played by kurt russell. eeeeehhhh? see what i'm sayin'? not good, but still much better, right? i don't know what it is about him, but his mere presence can elevate a movie above mediocrity. i don't know where he learned those acting chops, but my hunch is that it must have been from jesus himself. i know i'm hamming it up a bit, but i'm not being sarcastic. watch 'big trouble' again and try to imagine anyone else being able to pull that role off. imagine if dolf lundgren played jack burton. or bruce willis. sly stallone. arnold. these hot shots think they're holywood royalty, but are they worthy to even lick the ground kurt russell walks on? imagine tom cruise's sissy ass saying "son of a bitch must pay". you can't because it's just totally wrong. he'd say it all ratty-like, as if someone had just befouled the holy name of xenu. not only that, he probably would have looked like an idiot in those acid washed jeans.

    anyway, i'm getting a little off track here. i'm supposed to be talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, so i should get to it. a lot of people just don't quite get 'big trouble in little china'. i can't blame them - it's weird and goofy and you're never quite sure if what you're watching is real or if you fell asleep halfway through the movie and your imagination concocted some outrageous, totally implausable dream world where every word out of every character's lips endlessly tickles your funny bone for no clear reason and the alleys of chinatown are magically big enough to drive semi trucks through. it's a damn weird movie and i get the feeling that the average joe just has no idea how he's supposed to process it. "wait a second...is this for real?", "is this movie really racist?", "why is he talking like that?", "did they really wear boots like that in the 80s?".

    not me though, i get it. i get every single line, every single subtle detail to the point where i probably laugh at things that aren't even jokes just because i get this damn movie so much. it's one of those films that gets it right in every way possible. the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the gags work, but not so much that it becomes a spoof. obviously it's a parody of those old charlie chan type movies, but carpenter handles it in such an interesting and comical way that it's not offensive or racially insensitive. jack burton is the perfect clueless action movie oaf that simultaneously thinks the world of himself and is delightfully surprised whenever he's actually able to back up all his big talk. not to mention kim cattrall's criminally overlooked performance as gracie law, a young, conscientious civil rights lawyer that has a serious problem with her face.

    the thing i love most about 'big trouble in little china' is the way it comments on how american society is still incredibly racist, ignorant and biased toward other cultures, whether they know it or not. anything more than a passing glance at the film reveals that while kurt russell's name is first and foremost on the credits, jack burton is far from the hero of the story. in fact, the film flips the tables in a really interesting way. wang chi, played to hilarious effect by dennis dun is the true hero in 'big trouble' and jack is his witless sidekick who is just tagging along to cash in on a bet. jack, who is a big man in his own little pool of truck-drivin' CV radio personalities, is of little or no consequence to the inhabitants of san francisco's chinatown. the "weirdness" of their culture persists and amplifies only because of his ignorance toward it. carpenter derives comedy from the sheer ridiculousness of the film's portrayal of chinese-american life and how little the average american actually knows about the culture. but, in pointing out this dilemma, 'big trouble' is also bittersweet, for it calls into focus the bias' of hollywood as a whole. dennis dun, donald li and victor wong all gave great performances in this film as well as carpenter's 'prince of darkness' and should by all accounts have gone on to at least have decent careers on the c-list, but what became of them? not a whole lot. it's painful to me to see the great things that can happen when hollywood isn't culturally backwards, only to be pulled violently back to the reality of the situation - these great actors are going to forever be relegated to playing nameless henchmen in the background of movies that have something vaguely to do with asians. the world may yet remember the immortal advice of jack burton on matters of importance such as how to conduct yourself when accosted by a grabby thug or how to respond when your old lady is on your case about driving too fast, but will they remember even a line of what egg shen said?
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