Caseus Archivelox: Aaron McGruder speech

2002-01-22 - 9:44 a.m.
Anyway, last night, I went to see Aaron McGruder (writer of "Boondocks") talk at Page, and he was witty and intelligent. For one, he wants people to read Michael Moore's "Downsize This". But he also denounced things like "Ali" (problems with both Will Smith and Michael Mann, but also with the whole idea of the movie, which was derivative and could have been done better, and of course the fact that Mario Van Peebles is still working), "How High" (I didn't tell him that it played much better to the African-American audience than it did to the whites in the audience here at Duke), most of the really cheap "New Wave of Blaxspoitation" (my phrase) movies made for $6 million and that make $25 million, and most African-American actors currently working. He did say he liked Chris Rock (he had gone to see "Two Can Play That Game" with him) and Spike Lee, although he disliked "Bamboozled" as a deliberately false view of Hollywood, when the true version would have been just as skrewed up. He also said he liked "When We Were Kings", which is an excellent documentary, if you haven't already seen it. But he was most interesting on the war, as if you haven't been keeping up with his comic, he's one of the first people to have denounced the war as what it really is, an excuse to shut down the civil liberties of all Americans in the "defense" of a war that cannot be won, as any person with access to explosives can be a terrorist, and you cannot win a war against that. But of course, Bush can never declare the war over, because it just takes one person to blow up a building, and the FBI and CIA love being able to tap more phones and everything. Anyway, the speech was funny and fascinating, and it was great that some people in the audience were treating it as a sort of church meeting, screaming out "yes"'s and such (although no one said "Amen"), and it made the speech more interesting. The problem was that there was a video beforehand, with a white male in the Medical School who said after the MLK assassination (basically, I'm paraphrasing here) "I want someone to calm down the people and make sure they don't come for me". He was greeted with howls of derisive laughter, Bruce. The best guy (from a comedy standpoint, as both Major Dean and Dr. William Turner from the Divinity department were well-spoken about MLK and other issues) was Willie Burt who, at one point, said, "Since this is the only planet that has life on it, that I know of", which got more laughter. He seemed like he was trying a little too hard to sound intelligent.
After that, Alicia and I went to say hi to Aaron at the Mary Lou Williams Center. He was nice and intelligent in person as well.