#tw brownface

[uncuentofriki]

Just to put the last nails in the coffin of this thing

Manitas

A photo of Karla Sofia under natural light.

Emilia Perez in the movie

BROWNFACE.

HOW DOES HOLLYWOOD NOT SAY A THING?

(Or is it something about the "spanish people aren't white so it's ok" white supremacist bs?)

[katie-the-bug]

Another book without a plot.

The Remnant, Left Behind #10, was a deeply frustrating book.

Characters:

The Tribulation Force: Rayford Steele, pilot; Buck Williams, journalist; Chloe Williams, organizer, wife, and mother; Kenny Williams, infant; Tsion Ben-Judah, the greatest evangelist evah; Chaim Rosenzweig, Israeli convert; Mac McCullum, backup pilot; Abdullah Smith, backup to the backup pilot; Albie, former black-marketer; Chang Wong, IT guy on the inside; Steve Plank, Christian in disguise.

The Global Community: Nicolae Carpathia, Antichrist, risen lord and deity of the GC; Leon Fortunato, Satan's little helper; Viv Ivins, role unclear.

The book's subtitle is "On the Brink of Armageddon." Now, the last book ended slightly more than halfway into the seven-year Tribulation and this book picks up immediately after. That means this book will try to take us through roughly three years' worth of catastrophes, persecution, and general drama. Surely we won't suffer from a loss of detail as we hear about rather than see these events.

On the first page the narration refers to "the robe and sandals of an Egyptian" as though that's what all Egyptians wear all the time. (Lest we forget, this describes Rayford's attempt to disguise himself as an Egyptian. Well, that an a generous dose of brownface.)

The bombing of Petra in the last book unsurprisingly has zero effect, and Nicolae decides to take out his frustration on Jewish people in general. Is it not enough that he's the Antichrist, that they have to make him Hitler too?

There's still a handful of refugees in Petra who haven't converted to Christianity, which Tsion finds confusing despite having himself preached that God would mind-control people into refusing to convert.

Mac goes to Greece to try and rescue a Christian who was captured there, and, after he's sprung the guy, they're stopped at a roadblock by a soldier who asks to see their Marks of the Beast. Mac was disguised as a GC officer by a guy whose appearance-altering talents are praised to the high heavens, but he didn't even bother to get a fake Mark. It's pointed out again and again how getting a real Mark would damn him irrevocably to Hell, but no consequences are mentioned for faking one, other than the GC killing you if they find out - and they'll kill you if you don't have one anyway. While the Mark includes a biochip, we never see any Marks getting scanned, leading me to believe the GC is going off visuals alone. The Mark is both a tattoo and a chip, so I figure if you only got the tattoo, you don't really have the Mark. So why not get one and make your disguise foolproof?

The adventure in Greece ends in a Christian safehouse compromised and slaughtered, but Mac and his team make it out because Archangel Michael intervenes on their behalf. I bet everyone involved would have preferred he help the larger number of people who got killed, but whatever.

At the beginning of a lengthy speech in Chapter 13, Tsion refers to the Bible as "the only truly accurate history ever written." You gotta love the little bits of comedy they slip into these books.

He says the Biblical Flood "still boggles the minds of scientists who find fish bones at altitudes as high as fifteen thousand feet." I could give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume they've never heard of plate tectonics, but these are grown, educated men I'm talking about. They know about plate tectonics, they just don't like it and thus decide to pretend it doesn't exist.

In a description of the coming paradise promised to believers, Tsion states that "the population will grow to greater than the number of all the people who have already lived and died up until now." That's over a hundred billion humans, and, while I've never gotten on overpopulation catastrophe train, I really don't think Earth can support that many people at a standard of living that could be described as "paradise." Tsion further claims that this number of people will be possible because there will be no war. Yes, war kills vast numbers of people, but you know what kills even more? Disease and starvation, especially on the scale that would occur if there were a hundred billion people on the planet.

"How could you not love the God the prophets describe?" God has been killing people with wild abandon since the beginning of this series and intends to condemn most people to eternal suffering for not saying some magic words. Next question please.

Tsion says God is "working in people to get them to make a decision." He never says God will work in people to make the right one, which is accurate given how many times he's said God will "harden people's hearts" and force them to condemn themselves.

"Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Unless you've taken the Mark of the Beast. Then you're outta luck.

Steve learns that he is expected to take the Mark, and Chang offers to change his file so that it looks like he's already taken it. Steve says that "would be like my choosing the Mark" and thus immoral. I will never understand these characters' aversion to faking the Mark.

Steve's friend Vasily, a GC guy who's taken the Mark but regrets it, offers to help Steve escape. Steve's refusal is irrelevant to the fact that Vasily is still willing to do good despite knowing God has rejected him. Perhaps we're supposed to see the Christians as paragons of selflessness for *checks notes* dying, but they know they've got a reward coming. Vasily doesn't, but he's willing to risk his position and his life. That's real selflessness.

Throughout the second half of the book we get randomly placed time skips of a few months each, some of which are in the middle of chapters. The "Great Tribulation" happening in this book is allegedly the worst period in human history - would it kill the authors to focus on it a little?

The GC is starting to fracture, but nobody tries to assassinate Nicolae because they think he'll resurrect. The people vying for power are supposed to be evil geniuses - wouldn't they try something like burying Nicolae under tons of concrete so that when he resurrects he can't get out of his coffin? Maybe stick his body in acid so that when he comes back he immediately starts dying again? You've got options, dammit!

We get a couple more plagues - freshwater turning to blood and a deadly heatwave. The heat is so intense that the ocean is literally boiling and buildings spontaneously combust. That combined with the fact that no living thing has anything to drink, and you have yet another scenario where realistically, everyone and everything should be dead. Of course, the authors could never be convicted of realism.

I'm glad the authors have dropped the angle that the judgements are God's way of getting people's attention. Now they're saying that the plagues are God's way of thinning out the evil population to make the final battle more even. Lemme run that by you again: God, allegedly omnipotent, needs to kill off his enemies before he fights them to make things more even. Can the authors just admit that God is killing people for fun?

During the deadly heatwave, Nicolae goes sunbathing. This has nothing to do with anything, but it is funny.

If you thought the ideas in this book were frustrating, wait until you see Armageddon.

[katie-the-bug]

Back by unpopular demand: my thoughts on Left Behind #9

Here we go again with Desecration, a book that's nothing if not frustrating.

The characters:

The Tribulation Force: Rayford Steele, pilot; Buck Williams, journalist; Chloe Williams, organizer; Kenny Williams, infant; Tsion Ben-Judah, internet evangelist and ex-rabbi; Chaim Rosenzweig, new Israeli convert; Mac McCullum, backup pilot; Abdullah Smith, backup to the backup pilot; Albie, former black-marketer, espionage expert; David Hassid, unemployed IT guy; Chang Wong, new IT guy on the inside; Leah Rose, nurse and spy; Hannah Palemoon, nurse; Hattie Durham, newly converted ex-girlfriend of the Beast.

The Global Community: Nicolae Carpathia, Antichrist, allegedly possessed by Satan; Leon Fortunato, Satan's little helper; Viv Ivins, role unclear.

At the beginning of the book, Hattie's off on a mission and has gone no-contact, and Buck, as has been the trend for every book to feature Hattie in any capacity, immediately assumes she's been compromised. I had thought the characters would trust her more now that she's converted, but I guess not.

Numerous believers have brought vehicles and supplies for "Operation Eagle," an effort to evacuate converted Jews from Jerusalem to Petra. Some have brought "directed energy weapons," which I understand to be laser guns. They're explicitly non-lethal, though, which is no fun.

In Chapter 2, Chang expresses his anxieties about having had the Mark of the Beast forced on him and the depression that naturally results from being unsure of his eternal fate. Mac berates him for seeking guidance instead of focusing on his mission for the Tribulation Force. While his help is important for things to go smoothly, I feel like it might also be important for Chang to be sure that God hasn't rejected him out of hand.

"I will learn some slurs about you and torment your ancestors." Abdullah would do numbers here.

In Chapter 2, Nicolae tells his security chief that dissenters are to be shot nine times - two in each limb and one in the head - before their corpses are beheaded. Overkill much?

Hattie gets a message from Michael the Archangel that she is to speak out against the Antichrist when he comes to Jerusalem, even though that will lead to her immediate death. I told y'all her days were numbered.

The GC's new anthem is called "Hail Carpathia." Buck, described as a "wordsmith," mentally changes it to "Fail Carpathia" and alters the lyrics to basic insults. Yeah, Buck, that'll show 'em.

Nicolae decides to play at being a fake Jesus, riding a pig for a triumphant entry into Jerusalem and visiting a number of holy sites. One of these sites is the Garden Tomb, which some Protestants, including the authors, believe to be where Jesus was buried, against archaeological evidence that the site is too old. Everyone else believes Jesus was buried in the Holy Sepulchre, and you'd think that Nicolae, having once allied himself with the Pope, would visit that instead. I can only assume Satan shares the authors' beliefs about where Jesus was buried.

While Nicolae is standing on Skull Hill (distinct from the probable Golgotha housed inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), Hattie verbally condemns him and gets fried by Leon's powers. I'm sure the authors meant for this to be triumphant, but it just feels pointless.

After a talking statue of Nicolae (long story) gives a speech about why people should take the Mark, Buck wonders if Chaim, who's watching with him, will give the other side of the story. Chaim replies that the people at the Temple "know their options." They literally don't, but okay.

Tsion warns any nonbelievers in his audience that God may have "hardened their hearts," making it impossible for them to be saved. First of all, why warn these people if there's nothing they can do? Second of all, I've said it once and I'll say it again, why would God mind-control someone into rejecting him? The characters harp on how God wants everyone to come to him and is not willing that any should perish, but that's clearly not the case if he'll pull stunts like that.

We see Nicolae negotiate with Chaim for the plague of sores affecting his followers to be lifted, and he even agrees to unfavorable terms that he actively resents. If he's supposed to be pure evil and a raging egotist, wouldn't he just accept his people's suffering as the price he has to pay to get his way?

Chaim preaches to a crowd that "The God who created you loves you." But not so much that he'll forgive you taking the Mark of the Beast in order to survive. The God of Left Behind is all take and no give - you deserve nothing from him, and that's exactly what you'll get, but if you do anything less than die for him he'll condemn you to an eternity of suffering.

Nicolae commits murder on holy ground and sacrifices a pig in the Jewish Temple, and, in a surprisingly realistic moment, this causes a riot. Eventually the mob has him cornered, but Chaim dissuades them from trying to kill him because prophecy says it's not his time yet. Frankly, I think someone should try. We've never seen an attempt to kill Nicolae that ends in proof of his invincibility, and in the absence of any textual evidence to the contrary I conclude that the only reason he survives is because the characters are so convinced that he will that they don't even try.

A bunch of people who already have the Mark are among those who rebel against Nicolae, and Buck can only think of how they're still doomed. Any claim by the authors that their God is merciful is a marketing ploy; in truth, their God rejects those who make a mistake and still want to come to him.

Meanwhile in Petra, David is abruptly killed by a pair of GC soldiers who were left behind in an attack a few chapters ago. Good thing someone with his exact skill set and resources just joined the Tribulation Force, otherwise they'd be in real trouble!

In Chapter 14, the oceans turn to blood, killing every sea creature and ending sea travel. Now, nobody could ever accuse LaHaye and Jenkins of doing any research, but it's grating how they seem to have no concept of how this would affect global ecosystems, trade, and the goddamn atmosphere. To the characters, it's a mere triviality.

Petra is attacked by GC forces that are promptly swallowed by the ground. That feels like an excellent stopping point, but the book goes on for another hundred pages.

Chang has to take a lie detector test to prove his loyalty to the GC, and he passes by mentally recontextualizing the questions so that they're about Jesus rather than Nicolae. This feels very wrong, but the way the testing technology is described sounds like magic anyway so I'll give it a pass.

In Chapter 19, we learn that Nicolae watches videos of Christians being beheaded to relax and unwind. You do you, I guess?

To disguise himself as an Egyptian, Rayford has his skin "chemically darkened." Now, I've learned to expect very little of these authors, but having your characters do brownface? Really?

Chang's parents, previously rabid Antichrist loyalists, have decided to refuse the Mark. I think it would have been interesting for them to take it and have the characters and audience wrestle with the damnation of people they care about, but I don't think the authors want us thinking about that.

The book ends with bombs being dropped on Petra just as Tsion arrives. Such cliffhanger, much wow.

[sugarvampiearts]

I feel like there is a specific genre of comedy movie that I call "Movies that only your Gen X parents will find funny".

Here is the pattern I notice with these kinds of movies.

1. The cast is mainly washed up male comedians. Bonus if one of them is Adam Sandler.

2. Most of the humor depending on the age range intended for the movie is either toilet humor/gross out, rampent sex jokes that only exist to remind the audience that its for adults, offensive for the sake of offensive, or they have that one joke that was actually funny but the entire rest of the movie is just obnoxious.

3. The movie came out either around the 2000s or 2010s.

This isn't to say that all of the comedies that fit this type are completely awful and I'm not the joke police. Comedy and art is subjective, after all.

Besides, I'm not one to talk about tastes when it comes to movies. I like me some terrible movies, but there are lines I have to draw.

The inspiration for this post is the movie The Master of Disguise. My mom likes this movie and quotes the turtle club scene a lot.

I had no idea the turtle club quote came from this movie until I watched some of it and much like Charlie from Smiling Friends, it was the most obnoxious thing I ever watched.

Like, aside from the turtle scene and the fart jokes actually managing to be funny, this movie was just plain awful and weirdly offensive/weirdly sexual for a movie aimed at stupid kids.

Like, there is a recurring gag of Dana Carvey (his character has a name but its a stupid ass name) having a thing for women with big asses (i mean, same, but dude! you're in a kids movie!)

(Also, this bit about Dana being into big butts being a joke really shows what time period this movie was in bc him being into massive dumptrucks was supposed to make him seem weird and analogous to being a chubby chaser, bc having a big butt was seen as unattractive/basically the same as being fat during the 90s-2000s. Like, if I could count the number of times a show made a "does my butt look big in this?" joke or implied that big butts were inherently unattractive, I'd quickly run out of fingers and toes to count on.)

There is also a scene where Dana Carvey disguises himself as an Indian Prince as a form of practice and instead of switching him out with an indian actor, they put Dana in BROWNFACE and had say a bunch of nonsense in an indian accent.

I'm more surprised they got away with it considering it was the 2000s when this movie came out. Like, it'd be one thing if this was the 60s because while it was unacceptable then, it was considered normal. But the 2000s!? I'm surprised Dana even has a career still. (Idk maybe people were offended by it and it just didn't hit Dana as hard as it would today.)

[shirleygetloose]

when your special interest is problematic: on eventually unfollowing Grace(-ist) Helbig

Disclaimer: I have a hard time condensing my thoughts (it’s the ADHD), so you can skip to the bolded text to look at the core of what I'm addressing 

[TW: blackface, brownface]

For years, I'd been a fan of YouTuber Grace Helbig. I found her- really MyDamnChannel's- channel DailyGrace in 2012 and got hooked right away. From unconventional food mashups to shoddy relationship advice, Grace had an approachability that captured the attention in my ADHD. The weekday lineup of thematic content (Miscellaneous Mondays, Comment Tuesdays, Review Wednesdays, etc.) also appealed to my affinity for patterns and repetition as an autistic. Her videos were what I now recognize as my hyperfixation. As Grace had been uploading 5 days a week since about 2010, there were hundreds of videos for me catch up on. My finals were coming up that year and some of my grades dipped- nothing drastic- but enough for me to realize that a special interest could effectively hypnotize me. My fixation would later pull me to Tumblr where I engaged with other fans. This was the first online community that I was a part of- we all connected over Grace's charming, awkward humor.

Her brand is all about doing what she wants even if she’s imperfect and might have some mishaps along the way; the current sign-off is literally, "I don't know." But there are certain imperfections that are hurtful and can't be glossed over. On what is now DailyYou (Grace had left MDC in to create her own channel It'sGrace), there are two videos of Grace being racist by way of black- and brownface. Annually, Grace would share costume ideas and makeup tutorials in the weeks leading up to Halloween. In a 2012 video, she uses bronze powder to make her skin darker and overdraws lipstick for her take on a "hickey Minaj" costume. When she’s finished she addresses her majority-white audience and says, "This might be offensive" followed by a cut to her saying "yup" with a scrunched up expression of supposed innocence. I recently scanned through the comments looking for acknowledgement and actually found several people calling her out. However at least one person counteracted, basically saying that Grace's makeup wasn't dark enough to "count" as blackface. While Nicki does have light skin, that doesn't change the fact that Grace used Blackness as a costume. Same goes for her chola makeup tutorial from the year prior; she made no changes to her foundation but was still appropriative in her use of other visual cues (hair pulled up in a bandana, dark lip liner, gang-like hand gestures). Aside from the handful of commenters who spoke up about the Nicki costume, the vast majority of Grace's audience was either ignorant of the way she was racist or simply chose to let it slide. I was the latter. Naively, I chose to believe that Grace's "This might be offensive" had sufficed as self-awareness, but it was really just an empty statement. If she'd actually reevaluated what she was doing she wouldn't have uploaded the video. I don’t know if she just assumed that she didn’t have any Black fans, thought that they were too few in number to create any real backlash, or that she simply didn’t care about how this would affect them. When I looked at the comments I hoped to see a pinned apology from Grace. There was nothing. 

Over the last few years I've been increasingly detached from Grace's content, so it took eventual disinterest to break my hyperfixation rather than Grace’s use of race as costumes. I bring up my neurodivergency specifically because I think that many other fans could also be autistic and/or have ADHD. I still follow a lot of people who were in the fandom and one day I noticed that several had been reblogging posts about ADHD in particular. Maybe someone could relate to not being fully critical of Grace or another special interest. Anyway, for the few years when I was most active in the fandom, Grace and the fans I’d interacted with filled a void of connection in my life. As an autistic, I’ve often felt like an outsider in my circles of friends, and I've had a tendency to latch onto those who engage my interest (both online and IRL). Watching Grace felt like a part of my identity. She was like an online friend, but I hold my actual friends to much higher standards.

While Grace hasn't done anything overtly racist since then, to my knowledge, she has yet to use her platform to acknowledge the wrong she did and be actively anti-racist. She's recorded quite a few videos with Shane Dawson, who time and time again has "apologized" for repeated racism among other egregious things. She also gave him a shout-out in her and Mamrie's podcast as recently as 2019 (I'm estimating- several months ago I'd decided to finally check out a couple of episodes at random). Grace is among a particular circle of white YouTubers who continued to prop up a serial racist. I will say that they may have just collaborated with him because of his huge following. But this is the problem these white ~influencers~ collaborating: it's an iteration of the same people uncritically boosting each other's channels. Each has a net worth in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Meanwhile, many vloggers of color who want to make YouTube their career have to rely on handfuls of donors to stay afloat. As viewers we have to consider if we’re disproportionately centering whiteness in the content we watch. White content-creators are more likely to have connections to further build their brand as well as access to higher levels of production than their of color counterparts. YouTube is just a new cog in the wheel that is racial capitalism. 

Grace has benefitted from this system and has coasted by without a real conversation about her cultural appropriation I'm not necessarily advocating for people to abandon her, but then again, why not? Even with dwindling views she seems to be doing pretty okay for herself; plus, she had a head start as a full-time YouTuber. There are other people to watch and support. If Grace is still feels like an online friend to you as she did to me, realize that you can find a new one. And if you don’t want to cut her off then at least implore her to do better. Grace probably doesn’t see herself as a racist, but in a place like the U.S., racism is programmed into all of us. So we have to actively combat the prejudices we’ve formed. I've been seeing Grace’s recent retweets in support of Black Lives Matter, but that's the bare minimum. She has to own up to and unlearn her own behavior, and continuously push back against racism as the default. 

[here-in-my-garden-of-shadows]

bro indian entertainment media is so fucked half the time u dont even know whether girl is wearing brownface or not @_@ jazakallah

[asktheshowmestate]

La Guignolee in Ste. Genevieve, MO - A 1957 (?) recording of Alfred Papin singing lead on the traditional French New Years Eve song, La Guignolee, with Paul Morice. Andrew Beyatte on violin.

La Guiannée or La Guignolée is a French medieval New Year's Eve tradition that is still practiced in a handful of towns in the United States. The tradition related to poor people being able to ask the more wealthy for food and drink at the celebrations of winter. Customarily a troupe of traveling male singers went from door to door to entertain and ring in the new year. Hosts were expected to give them food and drink. Other sources say the young men were seeking donations for Twelfth Night. Begun as a way for the poor to be given gratuities by the rich, it also became a community social event for young men to visit with the families of young women.

Over time, the practice became an occasion for visiting with relatives and friends, and was more or less, a traveling feast. At first it was carried on only by young men, often in costume; women joined the party in the 20th century. In many years, the people appeared in disguise, including what we know today to be racist caricatures of blacks and Native Americans, as part of the celebration was a kind of overturning of the common order.

This tradition has been practiced annually since 1722 in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois. It has been revived in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Both were former French colonial villages settled by French Canadians in the eighteenth century.

In the latter town, current celebrations feature singers and musicians, attired in colonial dress, who begin their night's journey at the local American Legion Hall. They make their way through all the restaurants, bars, nursing homes and high school gyms, ending at midnight at the Knights of Columbus Hall.

Translation of the words of the traditional song, La Guignolée:

Good evening master and mistress,

And all who live with you.

For the first day of the year,

You owe us La Guignolée.

If you have nothing to give,

A chine of meat or so will do.

A chine of meat is not a big thing,

Only ninety feet long.

Again, we don't ask for very much,

Only the oldest daughter of the house.

We will give her lots of good cheer,

And we will surely warm her feet.

Now, we greet you,

And beg you to forgive us please.

If we have acted a little crazy,

We meant it in good fun.

Another time we'll surely be careful

To know when we must come back here again.

Let us dance La Guenille,

-- La Guenille, La Guenille!

- source