The Talons of Weng-Chiang

There's a lot of good stuff in The Talons of Weng-Chiang but it's a hard serial to recommend because it's awfully racist. The bulk of the story centers around a Chinese stage magician, played by a white actor in yellowface, who's been kidnapping women off the streets of Victorian London for the benefit of his master, a war criminal from the future. The serial is steeped in Yellow Peril stereotypes and all of the white characters are comfortably racist towards the Chinese characters. The serial likely could have aged better if the Doctor had been shown to be more enlightened in his attitude towards the Chinese characters but the Doctor really isn't put out by any of the racism and he even playfully stokes the prejudice of some of the characters. The story is probably so well regarded by fans because some of the characters are incredibly well written and performed. The bloviating theatre owner, Henry Gordon Jago, is a particular highlight. And the scenes between Leela and Professor Litefoot, riffing on Pygmalion, are iconic.

Rating: Nothing complimentary%

Night Patrol

Imagine combining Mad Magazine with Benny Hill and the slapstick parody comedies of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker. Then imagine taking most of the comedic talent out of that mixture. The end result would be something like Night Patrol, the hilarious* police comedy from the director of Blood Diner. If you thought Police Academy was too highbrow, you'll love Night Patrol. It's dumb and dated and vulgar. As far as this movies goes, if I could just get up on my high horse for a second, it's not a case of "they don't make 'em like this anymore." And more of a case of, "they shouldn't have made 'em like this at the time."

Rating: 48%

(Image from IMDB)

* Not hilarious

The Mole People

It's almost a shame that they couldn't get the Dark Universe off the ground, because a movie like The Mole People is perfect for a modern reboot. It's a movie that, I'm guessing, not a lot of people have seen. It definitely doesn't have the cachet of your Draculas and Frankensteins but it's something that could easily be gussied up for our times. It even has some racial themes that could be explored, Jordan Peele-style. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a movie about some archaeologists discovering a subterranean city populated by albinos and their mole man slaves? Just put, I don't know, Ryan Gosling in it or something.

Rating: 61%

(Image from IMDB)

Get Out

A black guy (well, I mean a guy who just so happens to be black) goes with his girlfriend to meet her white family (well, I mean her family that just so happens to be white) and things end up getting a little creepy. You know, body snatchers style not to get too spoilery.

RATING: 91%

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Code of Honor"

Ugh, perhaps the most wildly racist episode of any Star Trek show ever made. F-.

RATING: 0%

Star Trek - "The Paradise Syndrome"

A kinda racist episode in which Kirk loses his memory and marries an American Indian woman he finds on a planet. The end is sad, but showing the American Indians as simpletons before Kirk comes along is v racist.

RATING: 53%

Saw 3D

A better title for this movie would be "Saw VII," but they wanted to cash in on the 3D craze of the late oughties (which totally doesn't already look dated four years later). Hey, filmmakers, if your part 3 isn't going to be in 3D then ya missed the boat! This movie is, of course, terrible, but there are two good things going for it: 1) a torture device scene that happens in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, which gives the film a different palate than the normal "warehouse green" it seems to love, and B) a kinda unique plot in which a nonfiction author rose to fame by faking that he was a survivor of Jigsaw and now Jigsaw catches him and puts him through some traps or whatever. Now that I'm done with these movies I don't think I can recommend them to anybody per se, but I'm sure academics will write/have already written papers on the trend of 2000s horror focusing extreme pain, suffering, etc, when America as a country was committing acts of torture so publicly. Finally, look at the poster there - a gigantic robot Jigsaw killer would have been so much better than anything that happens in this movie but oh well!

RATING: 41%

Martyrs

Hey, do you like feeling good about yourself and life? If not, then this movie is for you. It is about the same thing every French horror movie post 2000 is about - horrible suffering and pain with no relief (although this one is actually about that, physically and philosophically). France is an interesting country because people from there will always talk about what awful savages Americans are but then they ban mosques from the whole country or make violent garbage like this where non-white girls get tortured to death. In conclusion France has the Louvre but remember that liking Western art is admitting complicity with imperialism you dumb duck!

RATING: TOOMUCHGRADSCHOOL%

(Alternate ending here)

Chillerama

This is one a those horror anthology type movies, which are sometimes great (Creephsow) and sometimes awful (Creepshow 2). This one is awful. It's a "horror comedy" but it seems like the directors all think that the genre they are spoofing is stupid - they've got a couple characters who love movies but they only ever quote Star Wars or Indiana Jones, no horror movies - and the comedy is lower than brow (numerous jizz and shit jokes). Also if you like jokes at the expense of gay people or Jewish people then you might like this movie but also fuck you. Don't worry though there's not even any black people in the movie to have racist jokes about.

RATING: 7%

The Wolf Man

In this "classic" "monster" movie a guy gets bitten by a Wolf Man so then he every now and then turns into a different Wolf Man and acts a damn fool. It's fine I guess - it's the 40s so how can you criticize the makeup or acting or gender politics of when the main dude basically forces himself on an engaged lady because he's that sort of doughy leading man type of pre-1960? Well, it is 1941 so I do think you can criticize the reprehensible nature of implying this Wolf Man thing is the fault of movieland gypsies while the Nazis are rounding up real live gypsies and putting them in concentration camps. Uh, but, like, go Classic Universal Monsters???

RATING: 37%

Sons of Anarchy

If the writers could write and the actors could act, this might actually be a good show. They can't, and it isn't. The young, pretty actors have two acting styles—coy and stupidly perplexed—and the old, homely ones are character actors with no character: there's the rape guy, the needs-an-oxygen-mask-to-breathe guy, the Scottish guy, etc. It's basically The Sopranos-lite with white bikers, and once in a while a Wonder Years voiceover trots out a bunch of lame, pretentious hippy clichés. On a positive note, Ron "Sex Baboon" Perlman makes me gay for ugly.

RATING: 48%

(Image from editorial.sidereel.com.)

Tartar Sauce

The word tartar is derived from the Greek Τάρταρος, an abyss hemmed in by three layers of night. However, it made its way onto your plate via the French tartare, which refers to something "rough, savage or intractable," just like a Mongolian or Turkic barbarian. In conclusion, the next time you're mad that you got gypped on the tartar sauce, just remember it's probably because you're a racist.

RATING: Jan Sobieski%

(Image from www.roadfood.com.)

District 9

I haven't seen social commentary this subtle since Romero's Dawn of the Dead (sarcasm). This movie is about a huge flying saucer that shows up over Johannesburg one day filled with starving aliens, so they decide to take them all in but they separate them from regular people, get it? The aliens are portrayed as filthy criminals who eat garbage and cat food although there are a couple smart ones out of two million. I know that you're supposed to draw a parallel between the aliens and apartheid, but if that's the case then this movie comes across as pretty racist even though you side with the aliens. On the other hand, the action is terrific and the special effects are amazing, so if you can ignore all the social implications it's a pretty fun movie (not sarcasm).

RATING: 75%

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

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RATING: 8%

Ignorant Facebook Quizes

I know we all get sick of seeing our friends take a million quizzes and having to see that Susie took the "Which low-fat butter substitute are you?" quiz on our homepage and that her result was "Olivo," but I've been noticing that since regular people (aka "idiots") can design quizzes now and they're pretty unregulated, the results have been edging from dumb to plain wrong. Spelling and grammatical errors abound. I feel like I've read a few about different countries or whatever where the quiz-maker's ignorance shines through, but this is the brightest ray of stupid I've seen so far. That picture is a screenshot of my homepage, edited to remove my friend's name. I'm not retyping any of that, so if you can't read it, let me know and I'll repost it bigger. I know people can post whatever sort of shit they want in their notes, but there's no way to tell how racist/ridiculous a quiz is until you take it. Get a clue, Facebook, before you die a sad slow death a la Friendster.

RATING: WRONG%

Slavery

Slavery is what it is called when somebody is held against their will and forced to do things until they probably die. Some may call the record of slavery in the United States one of the worst atrocities in all of human history, the economic and social ghosts of which are still felt to this day. Others, with whom I work, may say that African-Americans actually sold themselves into slavery, and they got to sing and stuff while working so it was probably not that bad for them. Huh, who knew?

RATING: 0% all around.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment

All the other amendments thus far in the countdown have been super boring, but now we finally get to a good one. After the Civil War, it was decreed by America that black people should be allowed to vote. The South was like "AHHH WHAT" so then they decided they would try to sneak around this new law by saying everybody had to pay a "poll tax" to vote, and it just so happened that a lot of black people were too poor to pay the amount (coincidence). Also, the tax would usually only be enforced when black people tried to vote, and the amount would fluctuate suddenly etc. Anyway, in 1965, a scant century later, America decided to put an end to that and passed this amendment, but you can't please everybody and Wyoming, Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and *ahem*texas*ahem* decided they'd show their resistance/dickery by never ratifying it to this day (your bad, fellas).

RATING: 89%

Bookstore Sections

I was searching for a book in Borders. Specs: a new paperback memoir by a staff writer for The Atlantic. Should have been easy to find -- New Nonfiction, right? Or New in Paperback? Bestselling Nonfiction? New in Memoir? Any featured section, face-up, next to a biography of Andrew Jackson? I couldn't find it anywhere. A search of the useless Borders computer told me it was "likely in store," but not where it was "likely" to be. Thanks for nothing, Borders computer! My boyfriend used to work at Borders, so I finally called him, described the book I was looking for, and asked if there were other memoir or nonfiction sections that I hadn't come across yet. "I bet it's in the African American section," he guessed. I argued that it wouldn't be; it wasn't a historical book or some sort of sociological case study. "Doesn't matter," he said. "Go look."

And why I'll be! There is was, right in African American, right there hidden in the back of the store. First off, don't hide new books in the back of the store and then wonder why branches all over the country are closing. Second, maybe don't file books exclusively by the skin color of their author. What do you think the average readership of The Atlantic looks like? Beloved gets to go in the Literature section, but is Zane under romance, or shelved next to The Beautiful Struggle? I haven't read a ton of Zane, but something tells me she doesn't belong on a shelf next to Ta-Nehisi Coates.

RATING: 8%

THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE by Ta-Nehisi Coates: 87%

This Racist Cartoon

No, that's not from the Savannah Gazette or some southern newspaper, but rather from the number one newspaper out of New York City, the New York Post. Ha ha, just kidding, I know the Post has a history of racism and bigotry, it's just astonishing that something like this is published in the year 2009. Which is what I said when this cartoon appeared in the University of Houston's Daily Cougar in 2005 after Katrina, but whatever. People are dumb eternally I suppose. Let's grow up, ok?

RATING: 1% (after all, it's better than an MS Paint drawing)

Arabs

Arabs are from the land of Arabia, which is over the sea next to England or something. They're always doing despicable things like saving the classics of Western civilization from the Christian barbarians during the Dark Ages, or torturing American children by inventing algebra. Lots of racists think Muslim Arabs are terrorists, and I guess a few of them are, but so are Irish people and at least Muslims aren't stinking drunk all the time. If you get blown up by an Arab, it'll likely be because he has a neurological incident on the Houston freeway and crashes his Honda into a propane truck with you in the front seat.

RATING: 90%.

(Image from http://sabbah.biz.)