BREAKING TENSION IN CINEMA

[Stefen]

The fact that there is generalizing going on in the first place in this thread is the biggest problem. Homeboy wants to attribute the black kids in his class laughing at that image as all black people laughing at inopportune times. Fact of the matter is, you can't generalize like that cause it's worthless and all it will do is cause controversy. The only constant in generalizing people is that rednecks are awful and the worst, but aside from that, there isn't much more.

[kotte]

The difference isn't in the color of the skin, it's sociological.

Saying something else would be unintelligent and racist.

Tension breakers...at the top of my head, just one:

Phone Booth - a very emotional scene and Colin tries to say view but says vu. A tiny unintentional breaker but kinda funny...

[socketlevel]

But in terms of that movie another thing I've noticed is that black people usually laugh a lot when someone slips on ice, falls, gets hit in the head with a kickball, etc. . .Of course it makes people of other races laugh just the same, but just as an observation ( not a criticism ) I've noticed it mostly in black people. And I don't know why. I find it interesting.
     Its part of the reason I made this thread, what creates that little spark? Is it the fact that your just sitting there, expecting a man to walk across the street in a typical story arc, from one side, to the middle, to the other side. But instead, while he's in the middle, he gets hit in the face with a snowball. Is it our expectations being disturbed that makes it funny? Walrus's avatar is another example, that guy picking his nose is completely unnecessary in terms of showing Homer eating a burger, but in its absurdity, its hilarious, and my favorite part of the entire clip. Please post more examples of these 'breaks' I'm interested in how things can become funny depending on the viewer watching them.

wait a second, the guy's not being racist, it's just a taboo topic.  more importantly he's not looking down on it he's just making an observation, he doesn't state that one type of humor is better than another.  

it might be a cultural thing: i took a world music class and we looked at this one study where they took a man from a certain region of india, where most of the music made was improvisational.  he had never lived anywhere else world and wasn't exposed to any other form of music.  they took him to a classical symphony and once it was over they ask him how he liked it.  he said that he really loved the beginning but then the rest was boring.  so they asked him what part of the beginning, like the intro?  he said that he like the part before the intro, that's when they realized he was talking about when the musicians were tuning their instruments.  the random element is what he grew up liking so it worked its way into anything he heard.

if you listen to black stand up comics compared to their white counter parts you easily see the style of humor is different.  and this goes beyond race, british humor and american humor and canadian humor even have their differences.  it's based on the region and cultural upbringing.

it's an interesting thought, but more importantly Jaruebi i think that since it's a taboo topic the white people in your class are less likely to laugh based on the subject matter.  Black people can laugh at it because they don't have to worry about how they look, because they know the injustice was being done to them.  whereas the white people have guilt to deal with, and by laughing they'd look horrible and insensitive.  it's all based on the white kid's insecurity that they're not laughing.  and maybe the black kid's are laughing becuase they themselves are nervous watching such brutal imagry with white kids.

-sl-

[Stefen]

All it really does is show the original posters ignorance.

[Gabe]

Ignorance to what?

[kotte]

Well written, socket...

I found Jaruebi's post inconsiderate, that's all.

[Stefen]

Ignorance to what?

To anything relating to race issues.

[Thrindle]

Well, now this thread has steared into the scapegoat of cultural relativism.  That's crap.  My point was... that dude was basing people's personal comedy preferences on skin color.  Jaerubi was trying to be diplomatic in his post (it is true), but his "observations" just seemed so smug (and they insinuated a level of stupidity in black people... am I the only one who saw this????)


This isn't a personal attack on Jaerubi, it's just that I see this all the time.  White people being all "PC" and tip toeing around saying "I'm not racist", but all they really see is skin color.  It's a farce.

[Brazoliange]

can't we all just be friends  

[pete]

Thrindle, I can see what you're saying and largely agree, but a lot of the time behaviors are general. I go to school and half of the black people that go there listen to hip-hop and try to start shit with other people. I'm not trying to say this in an "all-are-the-same" way, but a lot are similar to the point where it becomes habit to think of certain patterns when we see certain people.

I think what Jarubei initially said wasn't so much racist as much as looking at a group of people in his class. Just like I'd look at most teenage girls and think they probably like romantic comedies. Or most high-school guys and think they like really shitty mainstream comedies and action movies.

Not sure about anyone's follow-ups though.

some of the dumbest things I've read in a while.
first of all, you say that "half the black people" in your school listen to hip hop--as if that's some kind of stereotype that they're fulfilling.  like the type of music has nothing to do with the culture you were brought up in or the demographic/ niche you belong to as a consumer.  no, you lumped it roughly in the same category as "trying to start some shit".  which on the outset looks like HOT DAMN, TWO things them black folks are liable to do that you've caught them doing red-handed!
so lets break down this claim "trying to start some shit".  first of all, it's vague.  what shit are they trying to start, that 50% of the black population in your high school are guilty of?  are they talking "hard"?  are they threatening your presence?  has 50% of the black population, in fact, challenged you on a series of 1-on-1s that you and your civil white class mates have to politely turn down?  Call me Nostradumbass, the prophet of all things dumbass related, but I assume that no, when you say "trying to start some shit" you're probably referring to how you feel threatened by their demeanors.  and OBVIOUSLY this has everything to do with their skin color.  you, brazilmonkey of omaha, cannot help how you generalize an entire race of people based on the 50% of them that go to your high school.  No.  You're just a victim of racism.  MLK fought so hard for your right to not ever have to descriminate again, but those 50% just have to ruin it for everyone.

intermission, now to your second point aka a dumbass defense for jaruebi's categorization of black people in the first place.

you saw his labelling of an entire group of people in his class as naive, because YOU (aka not him) think teenagers like shitty movies.  that's a really dumb defense isn't it?  no?  want me to break it down?  okay: you're claiming that he's not racist by saying that sometimes you categorize teenagers unjustly.  does that make any sense?

also, I'm not calling jarubei racist.  nor am I calling you.  you're both still young and sheltered and just have really fucked-up notions of race relations and sociological interactions between the classes in this country.  your parents/ school/ church/ internet forums have failed to reach you early on in life that generalization and categorization and stereotyping all stem from ignorance and laziness and human's stubborn unwillingness to recognize ALL human beings as conscious capable human beings, beautiful creations of God or descendents of the monkeys from 2001.  AND then you thought yourself savvy and got entangled in all these raging debates of PC and anti-PC and post-PC movements, in which everyone is arguing with everyone else the merits of "how far is too far" and "what does so and so really mean when he says such and such outrageous statements about race" to which you, my Nebraskan friend, have no part of.  Why?  Because you can't even see people beyond their skin colors.

[socketlevel]

i thought there was a general curiosity and innocence to jarubei's questions.  maybe he is like that i don't know, i can only take what he's saying at face value because i don't know his personality like i've gotten to know some of the others here over the last couple years.

give him the benefit of the doubt, once his comments get subversively dogmatic trust me i'll be one of the first whistle-blowers on his fuckin' case bringing him down.  but until that happens i think his thoughts are interesting and i'm interested in what he has to say, along with everyone else.

-sl-

[pete]

wait a second, the guy's not being racist, it's just a taboo topic.  more importantly he's not looking down on it he's just making an observation, he doesn't state that one type of humor is better than another.  

it might be a cultural thing: i took a world music class and we looked at this one study where they took a man from a certain region of india, where most of the music made was improvisational.  he had never lived anywhere else world and wasn't exposed to any other form of music.  they took him to a classical symphony and once it was over they ask him how he liked it.  he said that he really loved the beginning but then the rest was boring.  so they asked him what part of the beginning, like the intro?  he said that he like the part before the intro, that's when they realized he was talking about when the musicians were tuning their instruments.  the random element is what he grew up liking so it worked its way into anything he heard.

if you listen to black stand up comics compared to their white counter parts you easily see the style of humor is different.  and this goes beyond race, british humor and american humor and canadian humor even have their differences.  it's based on the region and cultural upbringing.

it's an interesting thought, but more importantly Jaruebi i think that since it's a taboo topic the white people in your class are less likely to laugh based on the subject matter.  Black people can laugh at it because they don't have to worry about how they look, because they know the injustice was being done to them.  whereas the white people have guilt to deal with, and by laughing they'd look horrible and insensitive.  it's all based on the white kid's insecurity that they're not laughing.  and maybe the black kid's are laughing becuase they themselves are nervous watching such brutal imagry with white kids.

-sl-

I think this is that post-PC mess that we are all part of right now.

"white straight dudes" (using it carefully in quotes here ie. not you) used to be able to make any type of outrageous statement they want and get away with it because they were the dogs in chage, then

the civil rights movement came about which made people more sensitive to their words and made everyone accept that the minorities in this country, be them racial, sexual preference, or physical appereance, had their voices too and they didn't like being shitted on, which led to

the PC movement! easily the most unpopular well-intentioned movement in which it the white straight dudes attempted to eradicate victimization by changing the symptoms but not the roots of ignorance, but it obviously failed because of all the backlashes that I'd like to call

the anti-PC movement started surfacing in which everyone is labelling everyone else who does not view the world as s/he does of being "PC", which pretty much led to the election of a hardliner toughtalking president and his staff in the white house, which stirred up no small backlash to what we now know as the

mess that we're currently in.  where everyone who says anything can and will be defended.  this is obviously good and bad.  good because now we're finally recuperating from the damages of the PC movement, also good because discourses are always cool.  Bad because we're back to square one again pretty much, where 30 years of "de-ignoranfication" can go down the drain with a dismissive "I don't think so and so is being racist" because of this mess we've gotten in.  everyone in this part of the world (north America) is 600 million times more savvy and informed than 30 years ago, but somehow everyone can remain just as ignorant as 30 years ago.

so bottomline, socketlevel, I think you made some great points over there and they may be true in another instance, but given the shape the US is currently in, I'm afraid what you said was not the case.  it really was just your run-of-the-mill racial profiling, with PC words.

[Gabe]

Well, whether or not black people even exist is only inside our heads. On the outiside, there are no black people. There are people whose skin is a bit fare, some in the middle, some a little darker, but all relatively of the same paint chart.

BUT the truth is,  we don't see things as they are, we see it from our own conclusions in our head. A white person might see a black person and think of RAP. And a Black person might see a black person and think of what he's gonna do when he gets home. Its how you relate, whether you live next door to the guy, or if the only other race of the guy you've ever seen is on BET.

I have seen enough segregation by choice in my school, and heard enough ' you wouldn't understand, its a BLACK PEOPLE thing " in my life to understand that different races are conditioned differently. So in the case of my US history class, I knew that the black people were of slightly different ideals than the white people. I mean, we were segregated into two different sections of the class.

Truth is, I felt like we were all at a certain level of understanding this racial dilemna whille watching that movie. And part of me felt like everyone in the class had the same standpoint on the whole matter. But once that guy flew off the curb, and MORE BLACK PEOPLE LAUGHED THAN WHITE I knew that there was different outlook on it. And it made me giggle. It was a little slap in the face and I remembered that people are different.
And then later when I thought of how they might've saw that guy fly in the air, compared to how I saw him, I laughed. And thats when I realized that its how you look at it that makes it funny. And I asked you guys what Break in Tension you thought were funny, to see how you guys looked at things.

[meatball]

I'm late in this discussion, but sl, your initial post really struck me.

i guess it was a poor choice by the filmmaker that made the video you saw in class.

Maybe I'm assuming the wrong thing here, but I think what was shown in his class was documentary footage of civil rights protestors being hosed. I doubt the filmmaker was making deliberate, cinematic choices besides "capture this shit."

You might be a little too brainwashed by film school. Think outside of it for a moment.

[Gabe]

yeah I thought the exact same thing about his assumption.

CAPTURE THE SHIT