everything is just fine

"Rap and Hip-Hop isn't meaningful or complex!"

• 2Pac: And since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman and our game from a woman, I wonder why we take from our women. Why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it's time to kill for our women, time to heal our women, be real to our women. And if we don't we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies. And since a man can't make one, he has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one.
• Jay-Z: Silly rappers, because we got a couple Porsches, MTV stopped by to film our fortresses. We forget the unfortunate. Sure I ponied up a mill, but I didn't give my time. So in reality I didn't give a dime, or a damn. I just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded. Nothin' but a bandit, left them folks abandoned. Damn, that money that we gave was just a band-aid, can't say we better off than we was before.
• Kanye West: Is it genocide? 'Cause I can still hear his momma cry, know the family traumatized. Shots left holes in his face, 'bout piranha-size. The old pastor closed the cold casket, and said the church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs. It’s a war going on outside we ain’t safe from, I feel the pain in my city wherever I go. 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago.
• Mos Def: When the average minimum wage is $5.15, you best believe you gotta find a new grind to get cream. The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black so frontliners got they gun in your back. Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty and end up in the global jail economy. Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence. Budget cutbacks but increased police presence. And even if you get out of prison still livin join the other five million under state supervision. This is business, no faces just lines and statistics from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits. The system break man child and women into figures. Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggaz. Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings but you push too hard, even numbers got limits. Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret: the million other straws underneath it - it's all mathematics
• Lupe Fiasco: I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit. Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets. How much money does it take to really make a full clip. 9/11 building 7 did they really pull it. And a bunch of other cover ups. Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts. If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut. The school was garbage in the first place, thats on the up and up. Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust. You get it then they move you so you never keeping up enough. If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the fucks”. Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such. And that aint Jersey Shore, homie thats the news. And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth. Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist. Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit. Thats why I aint vote for him, next one either. I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful. And I believe in the people.

beewhyareowewhen asked: Explicate your cynicism towards Hollywood's 'perception' of gender roles. Further, how does box office revenue relate to feminist thought from the late 20th century until now?

It’s just Hollywood’s failure in just general casting/screenwriting, race/gender including. Most major films tend to get whitewashed (Avatar: TLA, 21, Hunger Games) and the top movies are almost ALWAYS starring men. 

http://friendlyangryfeminist.tumblr.com/post/22228984865/infected-your-brain (This link is focused mainly on the lack of POC in movies, but its obvious that women are not represented in these movies as well)

and there are things like the manic pixie dream girl trope, general binary gender stereotypes, etc, etc. think like a man is a good example of hollywood making yet another movie with horrible gender dynamics.

no idea on how it relates to feminist thought, but it has contributed to the movies hollywood makes—there’s the perception that if a movie stars a woman, its not going to make as much money. which is why bridesmaids is so fantastic—it completely proved that wrong. and of course i’m sure the typical stereotypes that are portrayed in movies definitely harm our cultural ideas, but I don’t know any specific academic examples that discuss this.

thankfully, there are awesome things like The Legend of Korra that star an kickass female lead without a stereotypical, overly sexualized body type (most comics that feature female superheros tend to draw them in horrible, physics defying bodies -_- reference http://boobsdontworkthatway.tumblr.com/ for examples). creators of ATLA, you guys are actually the best. sadly, this thing is pretty rare.

beewhyareowewhen asked: I read Hannibal and I stopped to ponder the disparity of the character Clarice between the book and the cinematic adaption. In the novel, Hannibal and Clarice maintain an affection, despite the former's gruesome history. They later escape to South America together. The movie Clarice resists Hannibal's advances, who severs his hand to be free after Clarice cuffs herself to him. She remains a principled female character. Is this an example of cinema addressing shifting gender roles, if so how?

Hmm, well, I don’t know too much about the Hannibal series besides watching silence of the lambs, I guess it would really depend on how the book series treated the relationship between the two of them! (judging from a quick read of the wikipedia article, if he really did try to brainwash her with drugs, then yeah, it sounds like a horrible relationship). I’m not sure if its as much cinema addressing gender roles as it is execs avoiding a controversial ending that they assumed most people wouldn’t like….plus, most people who read the novel saw it being completely out of character for Clarice, so I’m assuming it was pretty unpopular to begin with. (but I’m just rather cynical about Hollywood and their perception of gender roles -_-) But I am glad for the change. What a horrible ending.

then again, I didn’t read the book/watch the movie.  so my opinion is useless. it really depends on if the original ending was rather disliked universally/viewed as too controversial for a movie.