posted
I've been reading about this monday night football promo for the last week. I downloaded the Desperate Wives' commercial, and it's exceedingly incredibly tame, especially considering the violence of the game. The commerical even commented that the behavior was inappropriate, though it did do so in a come hither way.
What's the deal? There is smut on television, but this wasn't it.
posted
99% of what is supposed to be 'smut' or 'obscene' is really tame and banal when you get right down to it.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
We were discussing this in one of my course here the other day. about 75% of the class is black, and about 75% of those students found the commercial racist for various reasons. Of the white students, only one saw anything wrong with it. Every single student felt that a big deal was being made of nothing and didn't understand all the hubbub.
::shrug::
Sometimes I think people are just looking for new reasons to be offended.
posted
Tony Dungy said it was racially offensive, and I just can't comprehend how anyone could come to that conclusion. Although, I was personally not offended by the bit, I did think it was innapropriate considering how many kids watch football.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote: In NFL skit, race once again blurs our vision
LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@herald.com
I wish I was offended.
So many other people are that it feels lonely not to be. So I've tried to channel the anger I've seen in Internet postings. Tried to agree with Tony Dungy, a black football coach who says he was racially insulted.
But all I see is a naked chick and a football player.
Meaning, of course, actress Nicollette Sheridan, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Terrell Owens and a Monday Night Football promotional skit that had folks gathering three deep at the water cooler last week. In it, Sheridan, a star of ABC's Desperate Housewives, shows up in the locker room wearing only a towel. The actress, who is white, seduces Owens, who is black, into skipping the game in order to, ahem, spend some time with her. She ends up dropping the towel and jumping into his arms.
The spot has produced a torrent of criticism, most of it coming from one of three directions.
Number one, some people say they were offended by the raciness of the skit -- which seems a stretch, given the raciness of your average football game beer commercial.
Number two, some African Americans say race -- not raciness -- is the reason many whites took offense. They think many good ol' boys simply could not deal with seeing a desirable blonde in a black man's arms. That's probably true, but it just makes me wish Owens and Sheridan had also lip-locked for a minute or two. Nothing's more fun than making bigots stroke out.
UGLY OLD STEREOTYPE
It's complaint number three, though, that moves me to offer a few words. You see, some African Americans say the promo promotes an ugly old stereotype: black men as sexual predators lusting after white women. That's a ghost that has long haunted the national consciousness, as a source of beatings during slavery, murder during Jim Crow, hysteria during the O.J. Simpson trial, and imprisonment for Marcus Dixon, a black kid in Georgia who drew a 15-year term -- since overturned -- after a sexual encounter with a white girl.
It's a torturous history one is morally bound to honor.
But the question is: does that history -- should that history -- automatically come into play every time there is a sexual encounter between black and white? Is there ever a point where you are not a racial symbol, but just a human being?
I have to admit that I didn't see the skit in question, though I have seen numerous excerpts. As near as I can tell, Owens did not bug his eyes out like Jimmie Walker at the sight of Sheridan's naked body. As far as I know, she did not say, ''Come plow these fields, stud.'' There was, in other words, nothing overtly racial about the encounter beyond the fact that her skin is light and his is dark.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY THERE?
So I have trouble seeing it as an example of racial insensitivity. It seems instead an example of the ability race has to warp our worldview, to make us see what isn't there.
Thing is, it can also make us fail to see what is there.
Consider black folks' continued support for singer R. Kelly as he fights charges growing out of a videotape that allegedly shows him having sex with and urinating on an underage black girl. Many of us are content to accord him the benefit of the doubt.
And I wonder: Would we be as calm if it were Tom Cruise who was alleged to have done those things to a black child? Would we be this quiet if white people continued to go see Cruise's movies and give him prizes? I don't think so.
Why, then, is it ''OK'' as long as Kelly and his alleged victim are both black?
The answer is that race is and always has been a producer of dichotomy and double standard. It changes what we see and how we see it.
That's what this latest contretemps proves yet again, and it would almost be funny if it didn't speak so tellingly to the hurt and irresolution that still attach to African-American life -- especially where the subject is black men and white women.
I wish it didn't matter, but I guess that's still too much to ask.
posted
It's inappropriate because it glorifies immoral and dangerous sexual attitudes, and the NFL should be above that, even if various TV programs are not.
I don't see the racism, though. I think that's just a sign of the way in which Americans have been taught to see racism in everything, even when it usually is not there.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
It's football. There is sex all over football, including the beer commercials and cheerleaders. These guys spill their blood on the field, but they aren't supposed to get lucky. If Owens were married, or if Sheridan's character on the show were married, or if there were children in play or anything, I could see the outrage. Sheridan's forty-two and Owens is a grown man, of all of the things to cause panic about football-- including the ritualized brutality-- why is this the most salient one?
On the range of sinful behavior, throwing yourself at Terrell Owens is that bad? It's bad, but the pass in itself, I'm just not convinced it is that bad.
Maybe the issue is glorifying the behavior, but is it so immoral to think that Sheridan can make make her own decisions. I think it's kind of healthy and empowering, but maybe that's my own depravity showing.
posted
It was glorifying something that a lot of people don't want to be glorified. You don't object because you glorify it yourelf. If you're asking why it's a big deal, it's because you're not looking at the situation with the same eyes.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
This again is my disconnect. I get nervous when I hear people talking casually about killing other people. I guess glorifying this particular instance makes other people nervous. I see two healthy people flirting; others see the corruption of society.
posted
It's true, we all look at it through different eyes.
If you think the commercial was inappropriate, I won't say your opinion is wrong. But I will say said opinion is trivial and not really worth fighting over. Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Yeah, I think that too, Irami. I don't get it. Would it be a reasonably accurate generalization that the same people who are angry over this commercial are the same people who think it's ok that 14 000 Iraqi civlians died over the last year?
posted
If you saw the bit, would your reaction have been different if she had merely been scantily dressed? In a borrowed cheerleader outfit, say, or a clubbing dress?
The only part that caught my eye was the immediate jump-to-sex aspect. Had she just flirted with him before they walked off together, leaving their plans uncertain, I don't think it would have gotten nearly the same outcry.
Well, not from the people bothered by the sexual aspects, anyway.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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