Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
From Muslimah Media Watch: “Me, the Muslim Next Door” – What Muslim Reality Shows Should Be is a review of a Canadian reality show similar to TLC's All American Muslim. The main differences: "Me, the Muslim Next Door" is a web documentary (available here) so you can explore different scenarios and narratives as you wish while All American Muslim is obviously a sequential tv show. Secondly, Me, the Muslim Next Door is much much more diverse racially, ethnically, geographically, doctrinally while All American Muslim is focused on different families of Lebanese Shias in Dearborn. hat tip to Elenamary
For a show which started off as multi-racial/cultural/national as Lost, it is a bit disappointing to think about how it ended. (Spoilers abound if you haven't seen the end.) Just a few random thoughts, comments and questions:
-The African-American father and son: Michael Dawson and Walt Lloyd Even in a TV Guide interview, Harold Perineau (who plays Michael) had some critical comments to make about how this storyline got "resolved":
TV Guide: Were you disappointed Michael and Walt didn't reconnect before your character died?
Perrineau: Listen, if I'm being really candid, there are all these questions about how they respond to black people on the show. Sayid gets to meet Nadia again, and Desmond and Penny hook up again, but a little black boy and his father hooking up, that wasn't interesting? Instead, Walt just winds up being another fatherless child. It plays into a really big, weird stereotype and, being a black person myself, that wasn't so interesting.
-Speaking of Sayid and Nadia, it seemed unbelievable that in the "sideways" afterlife timeline, Sayid's "soulmate" was the blondShannon instead of his childhood sweetheart. We saw his love and devotion to Nadia drive him to incredible lengths both before and after the crash (shooting himself so that Nadia could escape prison, working for the CIA, working as a hit man for Ben, etc.) but he's going to spend the next level of eternity with Shannon?
-The African drug-dealer Mr. Eko's stay on the show was relatively short-lived and he didn't even come back for a cameo in the last season, but that seems to have more to do with behind-the-scenes constraints of the actor AdewaleAkinnuoye-Agbaje rather than the writers and producers of the show.
-Also a bit disappointing was the 6th-season episode "The Candidate" where the last few major brown and yellow characters (Sun, Jin and Sayid) were killed off all at one go.
-Given all the emphasis on Aaron, what happens to Sun and Jin's baby?
-What's the story behind the big statue of Taweret and the hieroglyphics everywhere? In my mind I imagine that some ancient African alchemist/numerologist/scientist/mystic was trying to find the elixir of life or a perpetual motion machine and inadvertently discovered/invented the Light at the heart of the island. A side-effect was that the land surrounding his laboratory/temple, including the statue, was transported out to the Pacific to the island. Of course, I'm not a writer for Lost so for all I know Allison Janney's crazy mother character built the statue single-handed.
I've mentioned the television show Angel and the fictional evil secret-society The Circle of the Black Thorn in a previous post. (see circle of the black thorn.) The only bit I wanted to talk about was how the last season started to get much more explicitly political. For example, from the season's very first episode there is a scene where the main characers are going through the files of Wolfram & Hart, an evil demon-owned LA legal firm:
ANGEL This is unbelievable. FRED I think I've lost my appetite, which is kind of a first. LORNE (reading a file) Hmm, well, this is interesting. Apparently old Joe Kennedy tried to get out of his deal with the firm. ANGEL That explains a lot. LORNE Yeah, but George, Senior - he read the fine print. There's no one these guys don't have a piece of.
Then towards the end of the season they introduced a Hillary Clinton stand-in, the character of Helen Brucker, a female Senator who is planning to win the presidency in 2008 with the help of Wolfram & Hart:
SENATOR It's nice to see you again so soon, Angel. ANGEL (upon finding out that Senator Brucker was a member of the Circle of the Black Thorn) Senator. I had no idea you were so well...connected. SENATOR Well, I'm not gonna take the White House in 2008 on just my sparkling wit and funding from hostile governments. (chuckles)
Angel being a supernatural drama, the Senator actually isn't really human, but instead is some kind of demonic hellspawn who has managed to occupy a human body. Another interesting bit about this (which really wasn't on my mind when thse episodes first aired in 2004) is the fact that, in the series finale, Senator Brucker is killed with an axe to the head by Charles Gunn, the main Black character of the show. This all aired well before Obama declared his intentions to run for President to run so it is unlikely that Gunn is meant to be an Obama stand-in.
This has all been on my mind because "Power Play", the episode which introduced the Senator's character aired this past Friday morning, and the series finale "Not Fade Away" just aired this Monday morning.
I've been listening to this song lately in my car and I thought I'd share. The song is "Television, the drug of the nation" by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy which lead vocals by Michael Franti. The song goes back at least to the early 90's but the lyrics are still pretty timely.
T.V. is the stomping ground for political candidates where bears in the woods are chased by grecian formula'd bald eagles ... where image takes precedence over wisdom where sound bite politics are served to the fastfood culture where straight teeth in your mouth are more important than the words that come out of it race baiting is the way to get elected Willie Horton or will he not get elected on...
