Oscar's New Criteria For Consideration

Just recently, the Academy who gives away sizeable figurines of a naked man with a big............... sledgehammer to anyone who completes production of a movie before the submission deadline released a list of the new standards to be met for their approval.  They are as follows:

And, here is their mission statement:

  

Ok, I can understand the notion of giving people chances who had very little chances before.  Nobody should be denied work experience because of immutable characteristics of themselves.  We should all be encouraging every creative person follow their passions and reach their full potential. However, I'm not so sure that imposing this criteria is the best approach.  As a for instance, I present a tweet from one Justine Bateman.

Many of you might remember her as Mallory Keaton from Family Ties.  These days, she's got a nice career as a film director going for her.  Here's her response to the Academy:

Ok then.  It looks like this film director, who happens to fall under the approved criterium of being a woman, finds the Academy's initiative more insulting than empowering.  My guess is that she would prefer to have her films honoured for their quality and not simply because her identity helped her appear on some diversity checklist.  Are there other industry professionals who feel this way?  Let me know in the comment section below if you so desire. 

Anyone who has followed my blogs or social media feeds for any length of time knows full well that I HAAAAAAAAAATE these kinds of things being imposed on creative people. One of the biggest problems with the entertainment industry (especially mainstream establishments like Hollywood) is that there are more executives and lobby representatives making decisions than there are creative people, whether the production is for theatres, TV, streaming services or otherwise.  It's been like that for decades too long.  Currently in many creative industries, there is actually a position called a "Sensitivity Reader". It is apparently their job to look for anything that anybody anywhere would find offensive or disturbing and insist that the content be removed.  OOOOOOOOOH HO HO HO HOOOOOOOO would I love for one of these people to give a read to either one of the comic books I've published (still very much available on Amazon here and here by the by). They'd innocently start with, "Okay I can see right here where lots of people will be upset..." and my response will be "GOOD!! FUCK 'EM!!" 

"...but they could feel attacked by such dialogue..."

"GOOD!! FUCK 'EM!!"

"...but they could maybe..."

"GOOD!! FUCK 'EM!!"

And that's how it would go until that person quits in disgust and that job position itself is abolished forever.

In 1934, some horrible place called the Hays Office imposed a code on Hollywood movies dictating all the stuff they would NOT allow into movies. In the late 1960's, that code morphed into the rating system of G, PG, etc...  Any movies made before that imposition in 1934 are considered "pre code" movies.  I am looking forward to a "Post Code Hollywood". This will be a utopia where a creative person or a group of creative persons come up with an idea for a movie........ and then proceed to make that movie which is then shown to anyone who wants to see it.  There will be no obnoxious meddlers in the middle of that process inflicting all sorts of demands for censorship based merely on stifling agendas and insatiable egos.  It'll be an uncomplicated world where people tell stories and other people enjoy stories. My God! It'll be beautiful.

Oh but hey!!  This environment of certain anarchy would lead to all sorts of immoral debauchery such as the recent Netflix offering Cuties!!  

HEY HEY!! Whoa there, forthcoming backlash!  No it would not! If something is illegal to do for real in real life then it's illegal to do in a movie.  Yes, murder is illegal, but of course people you see "murdered" in movies aren't actually murdered.  It's all acting, forced perspective, possibly some amounts of red corn syrup (or chocolate syrup) in order to simulate someone being murdered.  The underage girls in Cuties were actually made to do some erotic dancing with the camera getting close ups of their bodies thus they were actually exploited.  

Thus, regular law enforcement would and should get involved in this case.  If police, FBI, or any other actual law enforcement organization need not be involved in the patrolling of a show's production, then no other body should be there either. NOBODY should have any authority over a production except the artists involved.  That's it.  Everyone else should just leave the set, the writing room, the editing room, etc.  If there are any "grass roots" vigilante-type groups that are upset at a show's existence, the proper response to such sentiment is of course "GOOD!! FUCK 'EM!!!" Are we clear on this? Alright!

Ok, now that I've expressed my displeasure about the Academy's new criteria, I'll now give my full assessment of it.  I think that it's................ not that big a deal.  There's no way they're going to retract this now so it looks like it's going to be a part of their organization for a long time.  So, there's no point in trying to do away with it.  What's done is done.  Besides that, I don't think it's nearly as insidious as some people have made it out to be.  I say this for a number of reasons:

1. Keep in mind that this is merely criteria for movies to be "selected for Oscar consideration" not for movies to be made.  Movies like Dude, Where's My Army Tank? or Pauley Shore Joins a Nunnery or any other movie that has absolutely no chance of being looked at by the Academy would need not bother trying to meet this criteria.  Only those that give a shit about winning that golden nudist would have to adhere to any of that.  Besides, I see a loophole that can be used by any all white cis able-bodied male creative group in Hollywood that can't afford to hire new staff or let go of any current staff.

There you go.  To meet the new criteria, just break one of your bro's legs and/or blow an airhorn right in his ear.  You'll fulfill the requirements without any changes in staff.

"Ok then. Our group's diversity has been achieved.  Let's get back to work, honkies!"

2. This is hardly the first time the Oscars have been affected by politics.  One such time was back around 1947.  That was the start of Senator Joe McCarthy seeing up his House Unamerican Activities Committee to blacklist any communist subversives in the USA.  Hollywood was of course one of the hardest hit institutions.  Whether there were communist subversives skulking around is moot.McCarthy's approach was a breach of human rights. Because of this, many professionals in Hollywood felt the icy grip of the HUAC and so were unable to participate in the Oscar ceremony.  The categories for every award was thereby tainted. Rather than for instance "Best Actor" it was more like "Best Actor who managed to avoid being blacklisted............ for now".  So you can see, they were awarded less on merit and more on politics which slanted the Oscars for that year and years to follow during that red scare.

3. This revelation is based on a snarky tweet I saw when this was announced.  I can't for the life of me find it and I'd rather not waste several man-hours trying.  It said something like, "Oh! So now only films from Korea will win Oscars since they certainly won't have too many white people on their creative teams".

I looked at that tweet and thought........ y'know what? I really LIKE this new development.  I would love it if the next winners of Best Picture did go to movies from countries where white people are a minority or virtually nonexistent. I'd love for countries like Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Mongolia, Jordan, or any other place with a similar population type to be dominating the Oscars for years to come.  For too long Hollywood has been too favoured.  For decades it's always been the same sacks full of hubris running the same bloated studios who compete in a creatively-inbred jamboree patting each other on the same backs they'll stab minutes later all the while bending over just to see if the sun does still shine out of their lipo-suctioned asses.  All too often, any film from outside of Hollywood are thrown the smallest bone with a "Best Foreign Picture" nomination and/or win.  Well, now it looks like they'll be getting all of the meaty bones while the fading Hollywood moguls will have to beg for table scraps.

This development is not just great for knocking big shots off their pedestals, it will also revive the joy of making movies again.  The entire world has felt intimidated by Hollywood's bombast making it look like they're the ONLY place to make movies in the world.  Every other filmmaker everywhere else had to just be content with making small unassuming little films that only managed to entertain their own country's population.  But now things are different.  These "little sprout" artists have been given a chance to grow into "jolly green giants" of the film industry while all the Hollywood dinosaurs can only sit back and watch it happen.

I guess I should end this blogpost with one all encompassing statement about this new list.  I'll just say that I personally am not entirely supportive of such a thing, since it's something way out of my control I can always find a bright side.  I leave you now with a short film that DOES indeed meet this list's criteria since a good 90% or more of the cast is hispanic AND it did even win an Oscar.  Enjoy!

Keep On Truckin' Black Pussy

I just got back from this venue.  The band known as Black Pussy quite thoroughly rocked the house tonight at Cloud 9.

I'm blogging about this because of the controversy surrounding this band.  I'll elaborate on that here for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know.  You see, they were originally supposed to perform at a bar called The Exchange.  However, the management there had second thoughts about and made the following statement about it:

Yep, they actually said that.  In a truly free society,  NOTHING supersedes anybody's artistic freedom ESPECIALLY someone or some group's objection to that artistry.  The Exchange really dropped the ball with their attempt at virtue signalling and their sudden puritanical attitude.  Thankfully, Cloud 9 has the open mind to pick up that fumbled ball and do the decent thing.
But they're not the only ones who have strong objections to the band's name.  Here's Black Pussy's lead singer Dustin Hill defending the band's name to a crowd of angry people.



Ok, no.  This is not appropriation.  Black women did not en masse go to the "Cultural Patent Office" and all chip in to pay for trademarking their genitals.  The band's members Dustin Hill, Adam Pike, Ryan Mcintire,  and Chief O'Dell have every right to call themselves Black Pussy.
According to legend, the band got their name from a Rolling Stones song.  The song Brown Sugar was originally going to be called "Black Pussy".  Then someone in a suit at the record company considered that to be too much, so Mick and the boys had to change it to the more mentally digestible Brown Sugar.  It looks as though naming their band Black Pussy was their way of both correcting that bit of unfortunate bit of censorship from the past and firmly establishing that they will not be censored either.  If anyone tells Black Pussy to change their name to "something less provocative that my grandchildren can enjoy" they will of course respond to that with a resounding NOOOOOOOOO followed by the displaying of 1 out of 5 fingers, the gluteal muscles, and several minutes of pantomiming the more intricate positions of the Kama Sutra.

For anyone who's coming here to say "oh well you're not black or a woman so of course you're not offended blah blah chu chu", none of that matters.  If, say, for equality's sake, there was a gangsta rap group that "appropriated" white culture by calling themselves "Droopy Little White Penises That Just Came Out Of The Pool", I would be more than fine with that.

It's dope, dog. For all the shizilz.

So to anyone who, after reading this, STILL has a conscientious objection to this band's name you are beneath contempt and should really just stop experiencing art in any form altogether because your brain is obviously not developed enough to handle it.

For those of you good people who are capable of appreciating art in any form (like music as an example) then I have embedded a Black Pussy performance below.  Enjoy them in all of their glory.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

June 30, 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of this movie. Of course, fans of South Park (of which I am one) find it hilarious. Some enjoy the movie simply because they enjoy the show, therefore this movie was an easy sell to them. Others enjoyed the story and many of the jokes on their own merits which is great. Sadly though, many of these people were too engrossed in the jokes to really pay attention to what the movie was trying to say. Even sadder still, many non-fans didn't see it even though most of them really should have seen it for their own good. The movie's message was clearly aimed at them. This movie deserves much more attention than it's gotten over the past decade.

The film's story starts when the 4 main characters, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflofski (with his little brother Ike tagging along), Eric Cartman, and Kenny McKorrmick manage to get in to see an R-rated film called Asses of Fire starring their favourite cartoon characters Terrance and Phillip. The relentless foul language in that movie inspires the young kids to swear just like them. Although little Ike mispronounces "donkey-raping shit eater" as "dopey baby shee deeder". The kids then do all this swearing at school which gets the teachers and the parents

involved immediately. Kyle's mother Sheila is so upset by this that she is ready to form a committee to get rid of foul language forever. She doesn't just merely want to ban Terrance and Phillip, she decides to get to the "source" and ban everything from their home and native land: Canada. This eventually leads to WWIII and in-turn causes a pussy-whipped Satan and his abuser Sadam Hussein to rise up from Hell and conquer the Earth. Of course, the ironic twist at the end is that Cartman's excessive swearing combined with the electrically charged V-chip inside his brain end up saving the day which then leads to Satan reversing the damage that was caused by Sheila Broflofski's committee.

I personally enjoy this movie mostly because it hits the nail on the head as far as modern-day censorship goes. Kudos aplenty are due to Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and especially to the subversively creative mind of Pam Brady. (I'm certain South Park would be nowhere without her). All types of Soccer Moms, Thought Police, and any other Paranoid Prudes have come up with all sorts of bullshit excuses for censorship. They make all sorts of ridiculous claims that all this racy content inspires real world destruction. While poking around the internet one day, I found this little crackpot blurb as to why Apu from The Simpsons is such a "dangerous character":

If a gunman holds up a 7-

Eleven store and sees a South Asian man behind the counter,

and thinks of him as “just an Apu” instead of an actual human being

with friends and family and hopes and dreams and feelings, it makes it that much easier to pull the trigger, doesn’t it?

Um............... yeah. Well, you see, GUN MEN WILL SHOOT ANYBODY BEHIND THE COUNTER OF A CONVENIENCE STORE BECAUSE THEY'RE HOMICIDAL MANIACS!!! Has there ever been a report of a robbery where the gun man said "hey, there's Apu behind the counter, let's kill him". The Sheila Broflofski's of the world only offer paranoid hypotheses backed up with 0 proof knowing damn well that other paranoid soccer moms will fall for it. That's why this movie and the real-life Sheila's inspired me to create something I hope further puts these people in their places: Censor Monkeys!! (That's a link to the Facebook group).

The movie even demonstrates that even though the racy movie did introduce swear words to the boys, it was indeed NOT the movie alone. One of the lyrics in the opening song says "...off to the movies we shall go where we learn everything that we know, because the movies tell us what our parents don't have time to say." Neglectful parents lead more directly to bad behaviour than even 1000 Porky's sequels combined. That point is hammered home much more succinctly when Kyle's mom Sheila starts her committee and sends her and all the parents to Washington in order to persuade them to take action against Canada, leaving all the kids at home unsupervised. Later, in the middle of WWIII, Kyle makes a heart-felt plea to "deal with me" when it comes to profanity. In other words, don't force the media to do your parenting job.

Sadly (or should I say "depressingly"), not enough people got that message. Roger Ebert and some of the other movie critics of the time who did like seemed to have gotten the message. One even brilliantly stated, "this movie will offend people that need to be offended once in a while". I love how he indicates that offensiveness is a societal need rather than just a guilty-pleasure type of want. And really, he's right. A good offensive show (be it a movie, tv show, song, etc.) keeps one on their toes and helps them to not be too comfortable in their one little sanitized world. That's what good artwork is for. It stirs emotions and makes you think. However, it seems that less people understand that these days. Around the time this South Park movie came out, the FCC received about 111 calls from people complaining about content. That's the "extreme" number the movie was trying to make look ridiculous. After good ol' Mr. "Dubya" is elected president, by 2004, the FCC was bombarded by over 1,000,000 calls. I'm sure most of those had to do with Janet Jackson's Superbowl performance. But even since then

there's been crazy people in the Middle East going crazy over Muhammad cartoons, crazy militant black people and equally crazed and militant white-guilt whitey going crazy over two print cartoons within a span of a few months, the New Yorker cover last August and the New York Post last February. The most recent as of this posting is from the ultimate Soccer Mom Sarah Palin coming down on David Letterman. Yeesh!! I think this movie needs to be revisited again. How did so many people miss such an obvious point?

Actually, I think I might know that answer. The racy content of South Park itself is both its strength and its weakness. The content pretty much guarantees the show an R-rating or sometimes even an NC-17 rating, therefore the writing staff have really achieved carte-blanche it terms of what they can do. There's no such thing as "too far" for South Park. They can do anything they want without too much of a struggle. That's the kind of environment most artists and/or writers hope to achieve. (Of course, Woody Allen managed to accomplish this WITHOUT much profanity but that's another post). However, it's that very same as-racy-as-possible content that causes people to not pay as close attention to it. Like I said, no matter how far they go, fans just shrug it off and say "that's South Park for you". Non-fans (most of them real-life Sheila Broflofskis) just can't get passed the swearing and any other blood violent

or explicitly sexual content. Therefore, any message contained within any text or subtext of any episode falls mostly on deaf ears. I personally can indeed withstand any and all swearing that South Park can dish out. Hell, as a good Canadian boy, I watched as much Kids in the Hall as I could long before South Park raised its poorly animated head. I suggest that more people should do the same.

So, to commemorate this movie's "Aluminum Anniversary", I suggest gathering as many of your friends as you can to watch it (rent it if you have to). But don't just invite the people who enjoyed it. Make sure people who missed the point about censorship see it and give them the education they never had. Hey, maybe even schedule one of those outdoor theatre screenings of the movie. That way, every passerby will be exposed to it. Just make sure that the movie's message reaches the public at large. And, if any Broflofskis or any other Censor Monkey types do come around screaming bloody murder about the movie's content (or the content of pretty much anything), just sing the following lyrics in their collective faces as loud as you can:

Shut your fucking face, uncle fucka.

You're a cock-sucking, ass-licking, uncle fucka.

You're an uncle fucka. Yess it's true.

Nobody fucks uncles quite like you.

Shut YOUR fucking face, uncle fucka.

You're the one that fucked your uncle, uncle fucka.

You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn

you just fuck your uncle all day long.

(Fart solo)

Shut your fucking face, uncle fucka.

You're a boner biting bastard, uncle fucka.

You're an uncle fucka I must say.

You fucked your uncle yesterday.

Uncle Fucka, that's U-N-C-L-E FUCK YOU!!

UNCLE FUCKAAAAAAAAAA!!!

suck my balls

If you need help with the music, here's the full song:

Happy 10th birthday, South Park movie. I hope you do eventually change the world for the better, because goddammit we need it now more than ever.