Scars of racism

In 1939, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark began publishing papers based on experiments that had found young African American children to often perceive being white as preferable to being black. Their evidence was later used in the case of Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the US Supreme Court ruled against racial segregation in American public schools.

Kiri Davis' first documentary A Girl Like Me has won an award at the Media That Matters Film Festival, and in part of it she has attempted to replicate Clark and Clark's famous 'doll experiment' to try to gauge how much things may have changed regarding African American children's views of themselves.

I have no idea how faithful she was to the psychologists' original methodology, or how comparable the two sets of experiments really are. Despite this, the sight of young African Americans repeatedly identifying the white doll in front of them as 'good' and the black as 'bad' cannot be anything but disheartening.

Found via a Gay Persons of Colour post.

Lashes of Ramayanimation

A still from Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues

I came across this series of flash animations by Nina Paley today on Google Video and had to post a link to them.

The New York-based animator is producing a musical adaptation of the Ramayana from Sita's perspective, featuring the late 20s jazz songs of Annette Hanshaw and vivid, sharply-drawn figures.

Hanshaw's surviving-men soundtrack and the cartoon's Betty Boop-meets-Samurai Jack visual style is shockingly fitting for telling the ancient tale of princess-napping and monkey-god shenanigans. A revelation!

Ha Ha Ha America

Found this short film, from this year's Sundance Film Festival, rather funny in a slightly scary kind of way. It's written and directed by Jon Daniel Ligon and contains a very roughly translated Chinese rant against the US set against contemporary images and clips from the People's Republic.

China not laughing
with you;
China laughing
at you."

As read about on k3mist via EastSouthWestNorth.

Plan 9 from Outer Space

One of the most wonderfully awful films ever made is among those now in the public domain and available to view online via Google Video:



In the introductory words of the narrator:

Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?"

Does the eloquence and flawless logic sound familiar? Think presidents of the USA...

Brokeback Bollywood

An amusing Brokeback Mountain takeoff with a serious message can be downloaded here (~22Mb mpeg).

Animation is sweet

Too funny! From BBC News' South Park gets revenge on Chef:

South Park has exacted revenge on its former star Isaac Hayes by turning his character Chef into a paedophile and seemingly killing him off."

Perfect.