Monday, December 29, 2003
More Best of 2003 action, hip hop continues to go global and is The Return of the King racist?
Image courtesy: MTV News
The Year In Review - 2003 according to Canada's Exclaim! magazine. (Exclaim!)
Eric from StinkZone's Hip Hop Charts 2003.
Jon Pareles's Albums and Songs of the Year (New York Times).
David from Sleep Not Work's Best Albums of 2003.
And as he did last year, Skillz sums up the whole year in a single track on his "03 Rap Up" (Via HiphopSite.com)
I'm a little behind on this as I just saw the movie last night, but other hip-hop bloggers have been talking about the possibly racist or racial subtext to LOTR3 (here and on Dec 24th here).
While I still stand by my initial comments below that the movie is fantastic (save the unecessary multiple endings), I did notice that the dress and imaging of Sauron's enemy army of Orcs suggested Arabic references or influence. Is that a wishful interpretation on my part fueled by orange alert, holiday attack hysteria or was this a deliberate creative choice made by Peter Jackson and his art direction team? And, if it was the latter, why?
Here's a related commentary from one of the only five negative reviews ("Full circle: 'Return of the King' partly entertains") for LOTR3 I could find via Rottentomatoes.com by Stephen Witty:
For audiences coming right from a replay of "The Two Towers" DVD this may be just fine, but other moviegoers can expect to be a little perplexed... Why exactly is everyone fighting so hard to preserve a land of hereditary rulers and cranky old guys in dresses?Moving on from LOTR but sticking with movies, does nothing remain underground? Coming soon: Mixtape, Inc.: The Movie (MTV News).
If the answer isn't immediately clear, it may be because you don't share Tolkien's reverence for the ruling class and implicit belief in the superiority of Northern Europe. Always lurking on the page, it becomes more explicit in this installment, where you can't help but notice the abundance of blue-eyed, fair-skinned heroes fighting off hordes of swarthy brutes.
That's not necessarily an offensive choice in and of itself, or even inappropriate. Tolkien's Middle Earth was always a stand-in for an ancient, homogeneous, pre-Norman England; its whiteness can be a little startling but it's still preferable to those Hollywood movies that, trying to make the Middle Ages relevant, would drag in Sidney Poitier or Morgan Freeman as "the Moor."
But Jackson's movie doesn't ignore other races, or patronize them. It casts them as villains. Why is it, otherwise, that our heroes' latest enemies are said, ominously, to come "from the South," and enter riding elephants and wearing burnooses? Why, then, would Aragorn gives a rousing speech before the climactic battle, telling his troops that they fight for "the West" and all they hold dear? (The Star-Ledger)
Certainly not hip hop according to the article "Yo, advertisers, listen up." Hip-hop puts the beat into today's ads. Urban sound even promotes diapers. (Toronto Star)
Hip Hop music and culture continue to go global:
Japan grows its own hip-hop (BBC News)
Israeli hip-hop singer touches nationalist chord (AP via The News & Observer)
Another quality blog worth peeping: Kitty Power: blog.
And finally, Ta-Nehisi Coates on the story behind the demise of Black magazine empire Vanguarde Media in "They Had a Dream." (Village Voice)
