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August 11, 2002
White girl gets a lightsaber upside the head
Michelle mentioning she picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto III reminded me of the Boondocks strips about the game. Haven't played it myself (no PS2, the PC version would laugh at my system), but know enough about it to get the jokes. And so should you. The second one is better than the first, but you need the set-up for it to work.
There are a number of people who just don't get the strip. Don't care for the font in (some) versions of it myself, and the one at Okayplayer (weekdays only, sorry) looks sharper than the one at Ucomics, with better-defined shading. Maybe they're doing touch-up work, and that's why it goes up later.
That ain't what I meant by not getting the strip, though. I mean the folks who glance at it grimly, then say, "That isn't funny."
I'd like to think that what they mean is, "I don't see the humor in this," but no. I've come to realize they mean, objectively, the strip isn't funny. It just has angry, racist black children talking in Ebonics. That's a paraphrase, but it is an actual complaint I've heard.
If you're bored, you can try explaining the cultural references to these people, you can point out that the characters rarely even use slang, let alone BVE, you can mention that Caesar (and pretty much the rest of the cast) constantly undercut Huey's wackier ideas.
If you're bored, and looking for some busywork which accomplishes nothing.
Then again, Cathy is still running. Or Guisewite is adding contemporary references to the old strips and re-running them; doubt anyone would notice.
That's really not a fair comparison, though. Cathy inspires apathy. People get pissed about Boondocks. Papers run it on the editorial page instead of with the majority of the comics. The strip gets pulled if the material is seen as too controversial. People write in and threaten to cancel their subscriptions.
No, really.
When The Boondocks first appeared in the Los Angeles Times in April 1999, the Times reader representative, Narda Zacchino, received about 200 complaints from readers who called the strip racist and offensive, and threatened to cancel their subscriptions if the strip continued to run.
Over a comic strip.
Insecure much, cracka ass cracka?
Want to know more? Read an account of cartoonist Aaron McGruder's speech, What's The Color of Funny? at Mossyrocks News. Two pull quotes:
Anyway, Aaron said if you're not the kind of white person he draws (actually, I see a lot of myself in Riley's teacher: she hasn't, I don't think, noticed his color, but won't put up with his mouth!) he's not offending you, and if you are, tough.
Er, that's him Aaron, not me Aaron. Not that I give a fuck about offending you either.
Oddly enough, while everyone is upset with him, he says the most upset group ("apart from Ward Connerly's people") is the Multiracial Activist Coalition Group. He says the leader of this group is a white lady and she's really vocal.
As has been pointed out several times, I'm multiracial. The majority of black people in this country (if not this continent) are multiracial. We ain't the ones the Multiracial Activist Coalition is talking about. They mean the ones slightly less diluted. The ones whose racial mixture is more recent. The. . . fuckit, it's a group for libertarian rainbow babies with a white parent, ok?
Fuck them and Ward Connerly.
That's me Aaron, not him Aaron. But he probably feels the same way.
Actually, Riley hits both Jazmine and Cindy, but a) Jazmine is still standing afterwards, while Cindy goes out of frame, and b) violence is always funnier when clueless white people are the victims.
However, see the Charlie Brown/Lucy/football homage for Cindy's Revenge.
Posted by Aaron at August 11, 2002 09:07 AM
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