The Nappy Diatribe

Three 6 Mafia: Undoing the Civil Rights Movement, One Episode at a Time.

Posted 03/28/2007 at 4:28 PM  |  9 comment/s

Maybe I'm alone here - just like my last five sexual encounters - but I get the feeling that the relationship that black folks have with Hollywood is strikingly similar to the relationship that they have with the many police departments around the country. The same way that the police have a long and illustrious history of mistreating people who have a predisposition for hypertension and rhythm, you don't have to go to any great lengths to find smoking-gun evidence of how horrible the depictions of black folks have been throughout the history of Hollywood: Just turn on your television set or take a quick drive to Blockbuster. So yeah, I'm a bit wary based on historical record, but I also have to openly admit that my caution has caused me to overreact a bit in the past. For example, not every police officer who pulled me over for something that was clearly my fault was trying to intimately introduce his nightstick to my prostate, or illegally plant some illegal contraband in my automobile that would land me in jail for the better part of a decade - the man was just doing his job. Even though the visions of blackface performers and all the maid and servant roles we were given are enough to make anyone as paranoid as Barney Fife on an acid trip, the elder statesmen of the black community who called Dave Chappelle's Comedy Central program a "modern-day minstrel show" were clearly reaching - a sort of knee-jerk reaction to real-life black issues that they just felt uncomfortable laughing at. Then there are some of us that want to see the good in people so much that we become blinded with optimism and start handing out inappropriate praise, like giving a cop props for arresting that drug dealer in your neighborhood when it's his job to do so, or thinking that the movie Crash was as historically significant to African Americans like Brown v The Board of Education or the invention of the Doo Rag.

But as a writer who feels the need to mention his phallus every third sentence, and my constant desire to let the world know that a well-timed beating could indeed solve the world's problems, I sometimes feel that our past can sometime stifle good-natured creativity. For example, just imagine if My Name is Earl had an all-black cast. Every third-rate civil rights leader with an illegitimate child would spend their time (usually reserved for lining their pockets) bitching on all the cable networks, wondering why the lead character is a shiftless layabout who only does good things because he won the lottery. A black Jay and Silent Bob would particularly go over like a lead balloon as well, with every journalist and sub-par blogger desperately racking their brains in post form, trying to find the comedic value in a couple of black foul-mouthed drug dealers. Yeah, its a pretty slippery slope. That's why I tend to take my time to judge such media objectively before considering it a minstrel act, hoping that my decent sense of humor and my knowledge of history will equip me for the rough terrain so I won't end up like Sonny Bono. (figuratively)

But the other day, when I saw Three 6 Mafia in what seemed to be a spring break special, and the accompanying clips to their upcoming MTV series called "Adventures in Hollyhood," I literally felt the earth shake from all the deceased civil rights leaders that were spinning in their collective graves. Full disclosure here: I'm not a fan of these gentlemen's music - as an aficionado of intricate flows and well-placed similes, my arch enemies would only need to play their tunes to weaken my defenses if I ever decided to wear an effeminate spandex outfit, cape, and show off my gift of levitation. I'm also one of the black folks who secretly thought that their Oscar win was an inside joke amongst the people behind that gold statue - I'm sure the government used their performance that night as a tool to mentally cripple black militants that they feel are getting too powerful, playing the footage on a constant loop in the confines of some undisclosed location somewhere. But what I witnessed on MTV was the epitome of buffoonery, a new-age shucking and jiving, the wearing of ignorance like it was a badge of honor, and an intense bugging of the eyes that I haven't seen since watching 1930s-era movies with black performers. These guys actually make Flavor of Love seem like a concept show about the most famous hype-man in the world reciting old Malcolm X speeches. (I know - what should I expect from a network that had the audacity to have UGK as one of the top Hip Hop Groups of all Time?)

I'm sure that people will tune in. Watching black folks make asses of themselves has become a favorite American pasttime akin to Baseball and genocide. But maybe Three 6 Mafia's "Adventures in Hollyhood" will make people more accepting of that all-black version of "My Name is Earl" I plan on pitching.

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