From Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop, my man Danny Hoch and the back story on "Seinfeld", Seinfeld, Kramer and race--with a diversion into Tarantinoland.
Danny Hoch recounts meeting with the Seinfeld cast and encountering the "everyday" sort of racism that pervades our culture. In this context, Michael Richard's recent meltdown is revealed as a hair's breadth away from a much bolder sort of racism. Anil notes that the incident was a perfect storm of racial tension and disconnected cultures0.
I saw the World Premier of Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop on my first weekend in living in New York. At the time, I was convinced the movie I saw was going to change the world. The movie I saw never made the light of day - Rawkus, originally a co-producer on the film, pulled the music rights which forced a major re-edit of the film and (in my opinion) softened it's impact. Hoch's career (see youtube1), still impressive, was never quite the same.
0: I want to call this a "miasma," but I can't quite get the sentence right.
1: Dembot - "YouTube fills the role of that place to get prerecorded video in the same way CNN fills the role of live news... Google2 knows the value of this entry point really well, proven again by their acquisition of YouTube."
2: Tricia Wang on how Google reveals stereotypes - "I performed the original google image search just on "Asian women," "American women," and "Asian American women" for a presentation on stereotypes and identities of Asian American Youth. I want to demonstrate the pervasive stereotypes of Asian women – just how hyper-hyper sexualized they are. And it’s interesting to show that when you Google image search – there is no hierarchies of approval that the images have to go through like for traditional media (newspapers, TV shows and etc, where images usually become racialized in the approval process."
Unrelated: Google Launches transit maps in Southern California.
If it were a miasma, then it would have been a Ghost Map of racial tension, not a perfect storm, no?
Danny Hock's recounting of his encounter with the creators of Seinfeld reveals the miasmatic pervasiveness of "otherness" as a mask for a more malign racism. Michael Richards' outburst might be enough to prompt for the pulling of the pump handle, but that's not going to be enough to stop the threat.
Eh? Also: "Miasmatic? Well, I use an inhaler sometimes."
Posted by: Anil Dash | November 27, 2006 at 06:22 PM