…but hate that it’s yet another sci-fi film shot in the bizarro Detroit that’s mysteriously devoid of all Black people. WtF, dudes!
Do you know how hard it is to find great Black actors for an SF movie in Detroit? ZERO HARD! It’s a huge city, there are several solid acting programs at the various colleges and universities there, plus an additional 700,000 people.[*]
Also, not for nothing, but imagine how much more tightly on-theme this movie would have been if you highlighted race and consumption, rather than white-washing Detroit—THE BLACKEST CITY IN AMERICA:
[*] Yes, I saw that there were a couple Black ladies in the background of one shot. But, c’mon, dude, please. Incidentally, they weren’t even credited; i.e., they were probably just a pair of ladies that happened to be wandering around. 🙄
I’m sure I’m missing something here, but this looks an awful lot like a troupe of little mixed-race American girls doing a dance—with ropes!—around a “hanging tree”, which ends with a flamboyant black man crowing “Whooo! That was fierce you guys; I wanna hang from that tree!”
😳
P.S. “Springtime for Hitler,” just in case none of us are sharing any overlapping portions of bubble.
CONTEXT: I grew up outside of Detroit, where we were taught to never, ever go out on ice (very few ponds froze solidly, because so many were spring fed, or had weird inflows of nice warm waste that kept the ice rotten). But one time I was walking on a gravel path around a pond, scuffing my feet, and the gravel went shooting out over the thin, glass-smooth, clear ice and made this most amazing space-phaser-time-portal-starship-battle-pew-pew-pew! sound that I love-love-loved! (My ongoing experiments in slinkiphonics have largely been about chasing this Good Noise™ and wielding).
(interesting note about the origin of the quote referenced in the title, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.”)
(Yeah, I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest childhood holiday memories.)
This is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag—which is saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch.
I hope your day is good and sweet. Gobblegobble!
(If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)
This video is mostly narrated by Dr. Robert Cialdini, who’s most famous for his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (where he first presented most of the ideas seen here). This is a text book—if not the Bible—on how to talk to people about things that you really care about, and get them to see your perspective.
Cialdini started out as a research psychologist, and my understanding (which fits the tone of the book) is that he began working on the book—which catalogues and examines several categories of sales/influence tricks and techniques—as a sort of warning to lay folks. After its first publication, it became enormously influential among marketers, copywriters, businessfolk, and all manner of modern propogandists. If you write for any purpose (e.g., speechs, op-ed, news, fiction, non-fiction, persuading folks on the fence to vote for this or that) or run any sort of business, you need to read this book. For that matter, even if you don’t seek to persuade anyone of anything, I still strongly recommend every adult in America read this book, in order to better understand how it is you’ve come to believe what you believe, embrace what you embrace, and reject what “just isn’t your thing.”
(While we’re on the topic, you really should also read Darrell Huff’s HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS; the black arts outlined in these two books cover the two major toolsets that the politically and economically motivated are using to manipulate you and your loved ones every single day. Get your hands on Master’s tools; consider their possible applications in tearing down Master’s house*.)
Caveat: Yes, some of the hard data and studies in the original Influence haven’t aged well, but the bold strokes—about how people behave and how our minds get changed without our realizing it—is still rock solid.
BONUS: Check out this analysis of Oprah, and compare it with what Cialdini describes above:
