Xixax Film Forum

I was watching a film about the Civil Rights Movement in My US history class, and everyone was so solemn and quiet, My teacher kept reminding us to take it so very seriously, and then came a clip of the police Firehosing a huge crowd of Black protesters, In a single shot a man was trying to run away and got caught with his foot halfway off the curb and was sent FLYING INTO THE AIR looking like the Bag in AMERICAN BEAUTY. All the black people in class started laughing. I'm sure my teacher was thinking " How could they laugh? Don't they know why this man was hosed? DISCRIMINATION THATS WHY! " And I sort of thought the same.

But later I started pondering the fact that that is just a funny image, And for that moment there is was a slight break in tension on the otherwise sad and gloomy state of the picture.

So now I'm thinking about what Breaks of tension are to me. Because sometimes I'm watching a movie and an actor will pull a funny little move that will just crack me up, most of them are showing insecurity, like like when Nic Cage is Avoiding the publicist at the Restaurant in ADAPTATION or when Adam Sandler trips over the kids toy at the Party in PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. ( I'm laughing just thinking about it ) Because I see those moments and I know that I've directly experienced those things.

I'm wondering if you can break tension universally, like if a guy in a porno was getting a BJ and then he just Farts MAD LOUD. Would that be funny to almost anybody or just a hell of a lot of people?

I Dunno, Discuss

I remember The Breakfast Club doing this pretty well.

comedy=tragedy + time

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

when was it made?  it might be one of those things how when it was originally shown it had more impact.  but now, with the new form of cinema, the action can be articulated with much more complex rhetoric.  thus it lost it's intensity over the years.

so much comes into play when your teacher questions your classmates.  she should, instead, question the person who made the film.  like for instance, it is a general rule of thumb that the further you keep the camera away from the subject your shooting, the less attached the audience is to the person.  comedy doesn't have many CU for that very reason, it's harder to laugh at something you care about.  so being an older film, with older techniques, that distance may be exactly why the people in your class were able to laugh at it.

if one person had laughed, then maybe he/she is a jackass.  as soon as a bunch of people laugh, it's the fault of the film (if comedy wasn't the intention).

-sl-

Reminds me of the time I was in junior high and we were watching "Schindler's List" and the part where the SS Officer walks up to the Jewish woman and shoots her in the head.  All the guys in the class start laughing.  Not because the situation in itself was funny, but because of the way the woman when she got shot.

Boys will be boys, I guess? :yabbse-undecided:

It's possible that they were laughing at how spontaneous it was, and it was more of a nervous laugh because of how it surprised them.

But I'll side with the fact that they thought it was funny.

Socketlevel has many good points. I never considered that the farther away someone is in the frame the more detached the audience becomes, its so obvious.


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.

those crazy blacks.

Jarubie where do you go to school? What city, state?

jarjarnewbie you keep on asking these questions of "universality" in your post as if you were really interested for an answer, but how can you find universality in the mankind when you can't even label people beyond their skin colors?

Quote from: petejarjarnewbie you keep on asking these questions of "universality" in your post as if you were really interested for an answer, but how can you find universality in the mankind when you can't even label people beyond their skin colors?

lololol

[OOPS SORRY YEAH SPOILERS for Donnie Darko and American History X]












a few points of shock, even though it isn't exactly 'breaking tension', I think it's close enough to fit this thread because it can shatter the peace.

American History X, when Danny gets shot
Donnie Darko, when Gretchen gets run over

these supporting characters that have been built up in our minds are quickly killed without anything indicating it beforehand, and I think those 2 hit me hard enough to remember them.

AHHHH SPOILERS!!!!

I'm gonna throw my two cents in now...  Pete, I am totally with you on this thread...

I just want to say that this whole "what black people laugh at" tangent is completely uncalled for.

You know, I admitted on here once that I felt like I was a racist...  and threads like this are what I'm talking about.

For two seconds I wish that us "privileged" white people could imagine what it would be like to be identified by skin color FIRST.  I mean, imagine what it would be like, to not just be you but to be COLORED you, or TERRORIST you, or CHEAP you, or THUG you... see my point?  It's not about you anymore, it's about the label.  

Jaerubi: I doubt you've seen every black person on the planet, and I don't think you know what they laugh at.

blah

Quote from: StefenAHHHH SPOILERS!!!!

fuck, sorry. didn't even realize it.

Quote from: ThrindleI'm gonna throw my two cents in now...  Pete, I am totally with you on this thread...

I just want to say that this whole "what black people laugh at" tangent is completely uncalled for.

You know, I admitted on here once that I felt like I was a racist...  and threads like this are what I'm talking about.

For two seconds I wish that us "privileged" white people could imagine what it would be like to be identified by skin color FIRST.  I mean, imagine what it would be like, to not just be you but to be COLORED you, or TERRORIST you, or CHEAP you, or THUG you... see my point?  It's not about you anymore, it's about the label.  

Jaerubi: I doubt you've seen every black person on the planet, and I don't think you know what they laugh at.

blah

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.

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.

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...

Quote from: Jaruebi
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-

All it really does is show the original posters ignorance.

Ignorance to what?

Well written, socket...

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

Quote from: JaruebiIgnorance to what?

To anything relating to race issues.

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.

:kiss: can't we all just be friends  :kiss:

Quote from: Brazoliange
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.

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-

Quote from: socketlevel
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.

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.

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

Quote from: socketleveli 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.

yeah I thought the exact same thing about his assumption.

CAPTURE THE SHIT

I think not being able to discuss these things ties into what cronnenberg was saying at cannes (another thread), once we censor ourselves it leads to mediocrity and lack of progression.

these are just thoughts, and we are a group of people that on some level gravitate toward this cyberpace to talk.  so lets fuckin' do it.  PC or anti-PC lets just drop it at the door.  because then we'll have nothing interesting to talk about if we don't.

for instance one thought could be that everyone in the classroom that laughed or giggled (regardless of being white or black) are just assholes.  so then Mac or I or Pete could redirect to:

http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=6852&highlight=

that's just an inside joke, but a valid claim as any.  looking at his last post i don't see any racism, why don't we actually talk about what he's asking about.  I've got my stance on it, i've written it above.  what's your point of view?  why to you think only blacks laughed at it?  that's far more interesting then bringing out historical refferences (which i admit i do as well) and say why he shouldn't even talk about it.

-sl-

Quote from: mI'm late in this discussion, but sl, your initial post really struck me.

Quote from: socketleveli 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.

come on, there is still rhetoric in editing and how you present it, or maybe the choice of presenting it at all.  i used a hypothetical approach, and that's in my delivery, hence the "I guess..." you quoted.  it was a thought.

so what do you think?  please expand my mind with your outside the "brainwashed" point of view.

-sl-

Quote from: mMaybe 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."

I don't know when the footage was shot but nowadays it's possible to edit your material. Shoot something, anything and you can make a laugh riot out of it as well as something serious and profound.

If this was something obviously funny, Chaplin funny, he had the choice to cut away from it...

What I'm arguing here is that CAPTURE THE SHIT isn't enough...

Quote from: kotte

Quote from: mMaybe 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."

I don't know when the footage was shot but it is possible to edit your material. Shoot something, anything and you can make a laugh riot out of it as well as something serious and profound.

If this was something obviously funny, Chaplin funny, he had the choice to cut away from it...

What I'm arguing here is that CAPTURE THE SHIT isn't enough...

Wasn't this a news camera? Or was this an individual filmmaker? I'm assuming it was a news camera, in which the image is captured and... hopefully... not tampered with.

Here in Los Angeles, a news camera just captured a man being run over by a car. He tries to dodge out of the way, but the car runs over his legs with both the front wheels and back wheels as if he were a rag doll. It's painful to watch, but at the same time a little funny. I'm glad they showed the footage untouched, and I never once thought about distance of the subject or editing choices to make it less funny or less painful.

Quote from: m

Quote from: kotte

Quote from: mMaybe 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."

I don't know when the footage was shot but it is possible to edit your material. Shoot something, anything and you can make a laugh riot out of it as well as something serious and profound.

If this was something obviously funny, Chaplin funny, he had the choice to cut away from it...

What I'm arguing here is that CAPTURE THE SHIT isn't enough...

Wasn't this a news camera? Or was this an individual filmmaker? I'm assuming it was a news camera, in which the image is captured and... hopefully... not tampered with.

Here in Los Angeles, a news camera just captured a man being run over by a car. He tries to dodge out of the way, but the car runs over his legs with both the front wheels and back wheels as if he were a rag doll. It's painful to watch, but at the same time a little funny. I'm glad they showed the footage untouched, and I never once thought about distance of the subject or editing choices to make it less funny.

but it does, i doubt they tried to make it look funny.  they just stumbled upon the techniques that makes something look funny.  an accident or coincidence but the form for humor is there.

there is something to be said for subjectivity of humor as well.

-sl-

See, in all relativity to the thread, when Meatball says that the back wheels ran over the guys legs, all I can think of are the way 'crazy legs' legs looked in 'Don't Be a Menace' and its just hilarious. I think its easier to choose to laugh than to pity someone, even if it is inconsiderate. IT DIDNT HAPPEN TO YOU!

About "enlightening" you with my "un-brainwashed" mind, I just have a thought about film school, having recently vacated one.

I guess... I see it as a breeding ground for bad habits and thinking in a "brainwashed" way that is encouraged by the faculty and peers. As if adhering to the school's teachings guarantees good storytelling or good cinema. Why? Because we're all paying good money for this school to teach us how to do what we want to be doing, filmmaking. I don't know. It's just a thought.

Quote from: mI guess... I see it as a breeding ground for bad habits and thinking in a "brainwashed" way that is encouraged by the faculty and peers. As if adhering to the school's teachings guarantees good storytelling or good cinema. Why? Because we're all paying good money for this school to teach us how to do what we want to be doing, filmmaking. I don't know. It's just a thought.

You unlucky bastard...what school did you go to??

Quote from: kotteYou unlucky bastard...what school did you go to??

Xixax.

Quote from: mAbout "enlightening" you with my "un-brainwashed" mind, I just have a thought about film school, having recently vacated one.

I guess... I see it as a breeding ground for bad habits and thinking in a "brainwashed" way that is encouraged by the faculty and peers. As if adhering to the school's teachings guarantees good storytelling or good cinema. Why? Because we're all paying good money for this school to teach us how to do what we want to be doing, filmmaking. I don't know. It's just a thought.

true, it doesn't garuntee shit, besides i'm done now.  it gave me the opportunity to make a bunch of films until i made one that i'm somewhat proud of.  there are diamonds in the teachings though.  i take what i want and leave the rest.  i have had two teachers to mention, lily alexander (who's at NYU now) and Michael Conford that inspired me, humbled me and most important when i was on to something great pushed me forward.  both stellar and i learned a lot from them.  the majority of teachers are a waste of your money, but those two were worth the whole thing.

i have a love hate relationship with it.  and the stuff i brought up on this thread comes from my own observations.  See that's something i look down on film school for.  i, supposedly, was at the best film school in canada, yet they never told you important techniques, like the conventions of certain genres (ie. comedy and the wide shot).  so i brought it upon myself to look at these films and come up with the answers.  some stuff i got from books, that proved me wrong or right and others from experimenting.

now if i had spent four years experimenting my parents would not have financialy help me.  so i'm glad i did it in the end.

to each his own.  just don't presume my experience's shaped by any third party factors, i might surprise you.  i'll  give you the same respect.

-sl-

Who can come up with a tally of the xixaxers films you've seen and how good they are?

see now you're on to something.  that should be a thread.  i'd love to see all the xixax posters' films.

fuck that would be great if there was a way.

i guess the only way would be to host it yourself or show stills from the film.

-sl-

Quote from: pete

Quote from: Brazoliange
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.

jesus christ....

I'm not saying me personally, I'm saying that a large number that I've seen around my school (only about 10% of my current high-school isn't black) have gotten in mine or my friends' faces, or tried to pick a fight with us or someone we've known.

I was saying that he was probably looking at them as a clique in his class (wrong word, but you get the fucking idea). We all have these groups today (or maybe it's just my school), the 'jocks', the 'band group', the troublemakers. I can't even find names for them all, but when you hit lunch don't you sit with your 'friends' or the group you feel comfortable with? and hang out with them?

again this is coming from a high-school perspective, so bear with me.

let me put it this way (feel free to attack my blatant idiocy [but not racism, I was just brought up badly]): when I go to hang out in the computer lab while I wait for my ride for 3 hours every day after school, a group of 3-8 black guys comes down with speakers and starts streaming hip-hop music videos from the internet. loudly. Do I see any of my white, asian, or other classmates running down to throw on hip-hop? no.


sorry that I haven't experienced every black person alive, I'm dealing with a sample space here.

-end civilized response-

fuck you, so high and mighty ruler of the races. You're insulting my parents and the way I've been raised and raised myself? You know nothing about me, and you judge me because I try to interpret what someone else said. Sorry I tried to think for myself instead of believing everything I read directly.

Did I ever say every black person is the same? I just said a lot of black people tend to have the same habits. Why? Culture? Their raising? Their friends being near eachothers' families while they grew up? I don't fucking know! *insert big gasp here*

but you're a fucking idiot if you think that people in Africa have different habits and tastes than people in America than people in Japan than people in Russia.

Bits I especially love:
"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."

"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."

"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." - aside from the fact that you misinterpreted this and decided to turn on attack mode

stop trying to pick fights, you're not better than any of the rest of us.


your post sickens me and makes me want to leave Xixax.

[edit] and I don't think I'm unjustly classifying my peers when I look at my student forums and see 50% of the population of my school talking about how Miracle is one of the best movies ever made and "lol how pimp Kicking and Screaming looks".. oh, and "it's gotta be better than whatever that Casablanca movie is anyways"..

aside from which, this thread was supposed to be about breaking tension and not equality

Black People + Xixax = Touchy Subject

Quote from: Brazoliange

Quote from: pete

Quote from: Brazoliange
I'm dumb.

yep you're young and dumb.

jesus christ....not only am I dumb, I've also missed points entirely.

which is ironic, since you were trying so hard to get this thread back on point again.

WANGO MANGO!

Quote from: JaruebiWANGO MANGO!

Xixax at it's finest. Saying nothing, blurting out nonsense just to have a word in. Jaruebi has potential.

i think you guys should change the programming of this site so that once you create a new profile there is only one topic thread called INITIATION

in that thread you have to battle it out with Pete on pure wit, and if you can last 12 rounds you get access to the rest of the site.

it'll be like the xixax running man compitition.

-sl-

Quote from: socketleveli think you guys should change the programming of this site so that once you create a new profile there is only one topic thread called INITIATION

in that thread you have to battle it out with Pete on pure wit, and if you can last 12 rounds you get access to the rest of the site.

it'll be like the xixax running man compitition.

They shoot horses, don't they?

Quote from: JaruebiBlack People + Xixax = Touchy Subject

u + life = one of god's mistakes.

you + life = one of mom's mistakes?

hahahahahahah@these two responses. Gotdamn, im dying here, hahahahahhahahahahahahhahaha.

I'm watching this old movie, ( The Country Preacher and Something or other? ---insert name later ) on TBN. There was just a funeral scene where everyone was visiting the open grave and paying their respects, a bunch of gang members came up and  gathered around,

Cut to : Casket

A bushel of white flowers is thrown on the casket

A cane is thrown on the casket

A Gang Member falls on top of the casket

Cut to:

A fight breaking out in the cemetary.

HAHAHA.

That scene turned from somber to hilarious pretty damn quick.  :yabbse-thumbup:

FRAILTY SPOILERS




Two scenes made me chuckle.  When Bill Paxton unwrapped the pipe as a new weapon and the 70s flashback with Powers Boothe in 70s clothes and hair.

Yeah , SPOILERS!





Whens He kills his mom his face is hilarious.

IN WAYNE'S WORLD

When Wayne and Garth are lip synching " nothing Really matters " And it cuts to garth, and his lips are shut and barely moving, its one of my favorite movie moments

Quote from: JaruebiIN WAYNE'S WORLD

When Wayne and Garth are lip synching " nothing Really matters " And it cuts to garth, and his lips are shut and barely moving, its one of my favorite movie moments

that's not breaking tension.

u don't even know what ur own thread is about.

This thread is in shambles.

Pessimists.

Quote from: JaruebiPessimists.

dude, why don't cha give your thread starting a break. try to observe what the other players are saying. and that will probably inspire you to start a thread worth discussing over.

you're right, lock this

Well mogwai you're right. but i don't think this thread should be locked.

I still can't figure out what Pubrick's voice should sound like. on one hand his only job is to point out everyones mistakes, on the other, its just his sense of humor. And i'm never quite sure the tone in which he expresses his words, so all I can hear is a droll, depressed monotone. I can't help it. But I'm trying.   :(