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Snoop Dogg Not Down with “Roots”
Tha Doggfather.
If you ever watch A&E, you’ve seen the ubiquitous ads for the network’s reboot of the “Roots” miniseries that launched Memorial Day. As with most remakes, I saw the original and have little interest in watching the story over again. Like usual, my personal stand has aligned me with rapper, herb enthusiast, and occasional porn star Snoop Dogg.
The mastermind behind the albums Doggystyle, Tha Doggfather, and No Limit Top Dogg refuses to watch “Roots” and asked all African Americans to join him. He uploaded a expletive-laced video to Instagram to share his nuanced view.
“12 Years a Slave, ‘Roots,’ Underground, I can’t watch none of that [expletive],” Snoop Dogg said. “They just want to keep showing us the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But guess what — we’re taking the same abuse. Think about that part. Why don’t y’all go and make a [expletive] series about the success that black folks is having? Let’s create our own [expletive] based on today, how we living, and how we inspire people today. Black is what’s real. [Expletive] that old [expletive].”
[Expletive] that old [expletive] indeed, Mr. Dogg.
Granted, I’m an old white dude, so by current norms I’m not allowed to offer my thoughts on “Roots” and similar media presentations of antebellum slavery. But the original miniseries was a fresh, unflinching take on the horror of seizing slaves in Africa, forcing them across the Atlantic, and making them work in chains for generations. As a child, it opened my eyes to this stain on American history and helped me visualize the true costs of bondage.
However, it seems every year there’s another big-budget movie about “the peculiar institution” but precious few detailing the remarkable success of so many African Americans. Our popular culture continually reminds audiences of every race/gender/orientation of either their eternal victimhood or their collective guilt.
Perhaps it’s time to reboot a few Horatio Alger stories.
Published in Entertainment
Let’s be honest: no matter how good it is it will never equal the genius of Soul Plane.
How about a movie about Thomas Sowell?
If they can make movies about mathematicians, cryptographers, and physicists, surely they can make a movie about an economist.
I thought he was calling himself “Snoop Lion” these days.
Thomas Sowell?
After reading Mr Dogg’s view of the Roots remake I thought maybe some conservative descendants of Africans could do current real life stories about the Dem’s abuse of their fellows, keeping many of them poor, under educated and without fathers. Well, maybe D. D’Souza’s new film covers some of that.
That would go along with Snoop’s suggestion that movies should be made about success rather than failure.
Wait, they made a movie about me?
Haha, to his point, Snoop and other oppressed and vocal black people (essentially still slaves) like Oprah and Chris Rock and Obama… yeah, way worse than slavery. I can’t believe how horrible the US still is.
I’ve loved him since the first time Charles Schulz drew him in Peanuts.
Uh oh… looks like someone laid their hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
I’m stunned, impressed and envious at the level of knowledge a lot of you white people have regarding Snoop Dogg (Lion).
I knew joining this forum wasn’t a mistake.
As far as Snoop’s lamentations on the played out slavery stories, I agree, to an extent (although I might have worded it a bit differently and that’s a big MIGHT). They’re making a bunch of movies about slavery that are coming out this year (or next?), I can’t tell if they’re meant to be Oscar bait or blatant divisive propaganda.
Either way, they’re getting old real fast and I’m holding out hope this relentless torrent of crap will incite a backlash from black people against the liberal media that keeps hyping up this garbage. It’s getting a little too obvious now.
Random moments of eavesdropping on the train in addition to this post gives me reason to believe that my longshot hope may very well be possible.
As far as alternatives, is it too much to ask for a black hero who is not a former slave/sidekick/underwhelming Marvel character *cough*? Where’s the originality?
While I wouldn’t mind an action film with a strapped Thomas Sowell, if Hollywood is so determined to put blacks in hero roles it would be refreshing to the nth degree if the hero’s race wasn’t mentioned or talked about or given any attention whatsoever.
Why hasn’t this been done yet???
Hollywood makes slavery movies for the same reason it makes Holocaust movies. I’ll let Kate Winslet explain:
(And for those keeping track, she won an Oscar the next year for a Holocaust movie.)
Didja see The Equalizer? It was pretty good.
So was The Book of Eli.
(I still think Denzel shoulda played Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight.)
Straight Outta Compton killed at the box office. In defense of Snoop-dog-daddy-o, though, those movies are few and far between, and he’s right that there’s a marketing going on in these “we’re complete tools because of slavery” flicks. There’s money in white guilt, apparently, for movie studios.
He’s right. Let’s move on.
There’s no shortage of stories to tell with 6 billion people on the planet.
Nope. He goes by Slope Line. Soon he will go by the symbols y = a + bx.
Love it and agree with you
I think that Denzel Washington has had a few roles where the race of the character was unmentioned, but I can’t think of any others offhand – and that exception proves the rule and your point.
In terms of practical implications, the welfare state is by far the most racist institution in our society. Not to mention people like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton who have built lucrative businesses out of racial strife. “Racism” isn’t going anywhere any time soon – it’s far too profitable for the left.
yes you guys are right.
I forgot about Denzel’s films (and Wesley’s as well).
hehe
forgot about Denzel and Wesley.
I felt the Equalizer, while decent enough, was simply a lazy man’s Man on Fire.
I remember Billy Dee “Weeyans” was supposed to be Two Face in Burton’s Batman.
and lol Marlon Wayans was going to be Robin.
I’m with you.
In fact, I remember —way back when—asking why Hollywood is so unimaginative. For instance, “when E.T. lands on earth, why can’t he make friends with a little black girl?” I enquired of my friends. To which they —good liberals all—said: Oh, you mean like in the ghetto?
No! Not in the freaking ghetto! All black people don’t live in the ghetto!
Yeesh!
I mean that the movie could be exactly the same, word for word, frame for frame..except that the little white boy is a little black girl?
Interesting, why minds boggle at this idea.
The real problem with The Equalizer was that Taken was already a big screen remake of The Equalizer.
I have no idea whether the story is true but Pursuit of Happyness was great!(to John’s Horatio Alger question)
You mean, as in “the economist formerly known as SlopeLine”?
Dream on. If Hollywood is gonna put a non-white in a leading role in a movie they won’t let you forget it. Otherwise they couldn’t signal their virtue and overall moral superiority.
Kill me…..kill me now.
Yes I know.
Too bad.
All this virtue signaling is killing the industry and the magic (I remember how awesome I felt when I first saw MANTIS……until the storyline went completely bonkers) far from making me content, it’s serving only to piss me off.
I loved Frozone in The Incredibles. I don’t remember if there was any reference to his “race.” But he was a cartoon, so there you go.
I think the recasting of white male roles to women and minorities is exactly the wrong approach. It reminds me of a project of Harry Bellafonte on HBO a few years back, called Fairy Tales for Every Child. In that, they took classic fairy tales, and recast them in the same way. So you’ll get something like Hanselito and Gretalita to make them Hispanic. You get the exact same story, but they set it in Puerto Rico instead.
Wouldn’t it way better if they told the stories from all those cultures around the world? They could be introducing new stories that people here have never heard.
And then you aren’t leaning on the racial angle the whole time.
It is a given that the original “Roots” was a fiction and the latest another greivance mongering effort, not unlike the recent lamentations from the Forest Service on why Blacks do not frequent parks.
The pronouncement was ” The trees remind them of slave lynchings”.
Now speak to – How many straws does it take to make a house ? Even The Three Little Pigs learned that lesson. But who reads anymore –
Seems like there would be plenty of audience for a family drama with the parents (Americans of African Ancestry) who are academics / engineers / lawyers/ business owners/ fill in the well-paying profession and in which the drama comes from fighting the culture’s messages about what it means to be “black”, which, in the media, seems to equate with embracing and legitimising social pathologies. And, yeah, how about a superhero of African Ancestry who isn’t a supporting character or a mouthpiece for leftist “you are a victim because of your race” pandering?
On the OP: I agree with Snoop. The original Roots among other good things of significance it did gave us the career of Levar Burton. Let’s not remake it.
I’d point out that this conversation took place when ET actually came out, with the comforting implication that Things Have Changed… except that, if anything, the virtue signaling is probably worse.
I don’t know… that smacks of self-conscious multi-culti. I don’t mean that Spielberg should re-make E.T.—-I get tired of re-makes and think they’re lazy and unimaginative—but I’d ask film students (and the audience, for that matter) to mentally flip the races and sexes in this or any other fairy-tale as an exercise to flex the muscles of the imagination.
In E.T., Eliot isn’t a White Male—he’s an ordinary American kid. In fact, paradoxically that’s why he’s white and male—that’s the default “ordinary American kid.” But aren’t we hoping that we’re moving toward a place in which that isn’t necessarily the default? In real life, ordinary American kids come in all colors, and all of them are heirs to the culture that includes Hansel and Gretel, Shakespeare, Mozart, John Locke, Abraham Lincoln and the moon landing, as well as jazz, MLK, Taco Bell and Anansi the Spider.
It’s not so much that Eliot is/ought/ought not to be a white boy, but that the idea of Eliot being a black girl (or —let’s make this simpler—a black boy) automatically alters the imagined plot. And there’s no reason why that has to be. The Cosby Show wasn’t a fantasy—even in lily-white Maine, I know black Americans who live pretty much the way I do, with a few tweaks: no strings of Danish flags on the Christmas Tree, for example.
My black nephew has as much right to claim Western culture and American culture as I do, and I have as much right to claim MLK as he does—- because it’s culture. Not genes, not pigment, culture.
I have to agree with Snoop on this one. Blacks need more media on black successes. They need to see, how they became successful and gain confidence that they can do the same.