Sunday, July 27, 2014

And now we have..."Black Jesus"


I'm going to address this from 3 perspectives (as an entertainment geek, as an African American and as a Christian) and the reason why I'm doing this article that way is so I can counteract much of the criticism of my criticism right away. I'm going to preamble this by saying that I am a fan of "The Boondocks" and I find the many caricatures of African American culture within the series to be in equal parts hilarious and unfortunately accurate from the self-hating African American (ie, Uncle Ruckus), self-aggrandizing Afrocentric (ie, Huey) and the uneducated thug (ie, Riley). "The Boondocks" portrays real African American idiosyncratic personalities and enhance them to absurdity for comedic purposes in the same fashion any sit-com in the past has done from "Martin" to "Frasier". I understand that "The Boondocks" is profane in many aspects (specifically language) but if I didn't watch anything that had profane language in it, I wouldn't watch or listen to anything...that includes the news. While you'll get no argument from me of the profanity found in any TV show, film or any form of entertainment causes you to disregard it, please understand that I am not advocating their use of it, but am simply recognizing that avoiding it would be improbable. That being said, moving right along.