#Nope I'm not talking about American political race | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zoobus · 11 months

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This is not me talking myself down but I can't really understand a lot of things you say because you have a bigger vocabulary and idk, you seems like write really well and I don't know if I don't understand some things properly bc English isn't my first language or... for some other reason, like a deficit or something... But what I understand though, I tend to agree with you and even when I don't agree I still like to think about it. Well, with all of this unnecessary and unasked information, I'll like to ask what you meant by your post about Nope (2022)? What was your interpretation? Tbh, to this day, I don't think it's a commentary about minorities. The only thing I think it could be seem like that is that thing with their father. Like, black people invented a lot of things and they were the first to do a lot of things, but they didn't get the recognition or the money they deserved most of the time so there's that. Often than that, I just think that the cast is black and there's the other dude who's not white... I don't remember much but I remember commenting with my brother that I thought it was cool that they were just, a diverse cast, with two black protagonists but they were just living their life and something fucked-up (presented itself as an opportunity) happened, that I thought it was cool that Jordan Peele didn't want to make the movie about racism. He does that greatly, but I believe black people want movies in which they are the ones acting/writing/producing/directing to be as diverse and full of possibilities as it always has been for white people, like, they want to have the opportunity to be in every possible story. True to be told, I'm not black... Or technically I am,,, second to some governmental organizations... Well, I'm pardo (kind of like mulatto), mother is black and father is white. I'm just saying this bc in Brazil, if you're pardo, chances are that you live like black people just with some more passability and has it easier than black people (pessoas retintas) but if you have any racial/class consciousness you understand some things that I'm afraid other mixed countries don't understand as well. But we're still racists as fuck so... I just rambled, idk. So what about Nope?

For me, part of the fun of movies and books is reading what other people took got from it. I love reading takes I would never imagine on my own, I love disagreeing with the consensus, and generally I think I’m able to consider, sympathize, and engage with opinions that differ from mine without losing confidence in my own interpretation.

So when I turned to Nope essays and the vast majority of them took it as a reflection of racial politics… I’m not exaggerating when I say I had a minor spiral. Was I stupid? Was I actually stupid? I didn't get any of that. I’m black. I’m privileged as hell, but I am African-American. I loved Get Out. Am I genuinely just a fucking moron who missed the obvious? Picking up media subtext is MY thing. That’s the one thing I’m good at. I had to rewatch Nope to prove I’m not an idiot. I must have been tired that day.

And maybe I am an idiot who missed all the subtext, but I’m more confident this time around saying I agree with you. I think a lot of people (including black people) are misconstruing unchangeable truths (the main characters are black) as social commentary. I think there is some amount of projection, that inclusion is inherently a political statement. Dare I say race is possibly clouding everyone’s perception. Take this popular essay excerpt:

Now look at this gif of OJ:

What about this suggests his character would have been at ease and unanxious if the crowd staring at him was black? What about him talking softly with his eyes glued to the floor suggests his discomfort stems from his marginalization as a black man? What did Peele add to his film that indicated OJ as racially-motivated-socially awkward rather than naturally awkward other than the fact that he’s black? It's plausible that racism could have made him like that but does the movie itself give us anything to make that assumption? I don’t think it does. I’ve seen some annoyed posts regarding autistic headcanons because they think these are just normal black man traits and um. No, shrinking violet who prefers animals to humans really aren't. I do know black dudes like OJ. I would not call them the Black Male Experience.

I find this viewpoint super frustrating – to plagiarize Margaret Atwood – White racism, white racism, is every fucking thing run by white racism? Pretending you have a personality of your own, that you can be an adorable, beloved Asian child star, Shy and awkward or boisterous and arrogant, it’s all motivated by white racism.

then the pa guy is confused as to where the “older one” is, clearly giving the message that he doesn’t trust oj to be a competent person. the pa sees him as an untrained boy,

reach. Ignoring the fact that people hate changes and learning your go-to expert died is a pretty significant change – oh yeah, the PA who was letting people walk directly behind a fucking horse just screamed “respectful of his subordinates/contractors if they’re white.”

The whites on the movie set were disrespectful, but imo I didn't see a compelling reason to read it as a commentary on how black men specifically are treated since the type of disrespect shown in that scene doesn’t come up for the rest of the film.

people talk about the horse, but they don’t know anything about the man riding it

None of those people knew anything about the horse. They don’t even mention the horse’s name. Like I get what you mean (jk no I don’t) but the people very much did not know or care about the horse. Here’s the script:

Emerald: Now did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion picture was a two second clip of a Black man on a horse...? Yes it was, yes it was! Now some of y’all know Eadweard Muybridge, the grandfather of motion pictures who took the pictures that made that clip... but does anybody know the name of that Black jockey that rode the horse...? Holst: No Emerald: Nope. The first ever stunt man, animal wrangler and movie star rolled up in one and there’s almost no record of em… That man was a Bahamian jockey that went by the name of Alistair E. Haywood. My great great-grandfather.

I’m not even certain what to make of there being almost no record of him in the greater context of the movie’s themes about viewers feeling they’re entitled to consume/perceive another.

I find the assertion that the Peele made *any* parallels between the way animals are treated and the way poc are treated ungrounded. As I said in my original post, if your takeaway from Jupe’s generic sitcom and movie posters was that he’s EXACTLY as absurd as a chimp in a birthday hat, that the white family adopting an asian kid was commentary on token racism, you are literally just racist. There is nothing in this movie that suggests an insidious reason for his popularity.

The humans watch, the animals are watched until they do something drastic to make it stop. But none of the animals get characterization beyond that and none of the humans act in similar enough ways for me to derive anything from it. I don't recall anyone coercing OJ into unwanted eye contact. The glimpses we see of Jupe's childhood are of a cute kid on a corny sitcom set. The exploitation comes after the random monkey event, when SNL makes a parody skit and the world gradually forgets the gut-wrenching terror of being a little boy hearing your crush's flesh squished.

I am not saying race is irrelevant or that Peele had absolutely no intention of including subtext about black bodies or race exploitation in the film industry, but I am saying that I rewatched Nope specifically for that reading and I don’t find that reading compelling.

Unfortunately, I spent most of this complaining about what other people thought rather than my own. My interpretation was pretty surface-level. I think it was mostly about

respecting nature as it is and not what you imagine it is

somewhat about the nature of perception and how easily it’s distorted/how easy it is to believe you have a full understanding when you’ve only seen about an inch of it, and

something about feeling entitled to perceive things, idk I accept that I probably didn’t pick up on this theme as often as the director wanted me too. I’ll admit that.

#long post #niche effortposts #recommendations #because I do recommend it it was fun #nope (2022)#can you tell i have an urgent deadline ahead of me

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propshophannah · 7 years

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I'm from Puerto Rico, and I'm "white". I was always taught that I was a latina. And to treat every person, human, individual with respect! And I hate, physically hate when someone, anyone, asks me where I'm from, and when I tell them, the majority asks me that how can that be? You're "white"? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know I had look a certain way to be from PR!!! I was even asked once if we had cars in PR. People need to get their shit together!

Yeah. This is racism at it’s least talked about level. It’s so hard to see past, or around, the colonial view of racism, which is: “if you’re not white, you’re black,” and “if you’re not black, you’re white.”

It’s so, so, so hard. And racism has developed so differently all around the world that you can’t examine it the same way twice. Everything is ruled by the nuance. And this is an example that MANY people would use as a case for why “hispanic” or “latino” should be an ethnicity and not a race. But if you ask those people, the ones who feel they fit into that category, a big chunk of them will say that they need to be considered a race. And that they don’t understand how the definition of “people of color” came to no longer include them. Why a definition/a phrase that was intended (when it was defined politically and academically) to define and represent everyone who was not white and to move past the colonial narrative of racism in America… left them behind.

I had a TA in college who’s name was Paolo and he was from Italy. He taught a class on race, culture and identity. And on the first day of that class, he told us that in American people see him as a white American man (and he is white, this is an allegory for my main point). He said people will come up to him and ask for directions and as soon as he opens his mouth to answer (heavy Italian accent), he sees the moment they have to renegotiate where they place him/what they think of him. He says it happens every single time. He said something to the effect of, “I see very clearly the moment I get placed under the ‘immigrant’ category, or the ‘other’ category.”

And how do we quantify race? We can measure the effects of it, but not the thing itself because it doesn’t exist in a scientifically measurable thing.

I had a friend in high school named Phylicia. She had thin silky-straight brown hair, skin so pale and lightly freckled that it only burned and never tanned, and she spoke with a slight British accent (from her mom). Come to find out, her dad is black. Her two younger brothers, the perfect blending of their white mom, and black dad. Phylicia? Nope. She has facial features in common with her dad (you can physically see that they’re related), they both have brown hair (mom is blonde), but she got nothing else. Nothing. So how do we quantify her experience?

She is a perfect example of why this thing called race and PoC is so nuanced and exists on a spectrum. It is as much a lived experience as it is a shade of skin.

#mixed race #How do we quantify race?#race v ethnicity #latin america #tan and brown people exist #colonialized views of racism #POC

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