FX has had some pretty kickass TV recently. First, if you haven't caught it, run out and get the first season of 30 Days on DVD. The second season just ended and isn't available, yet, but the first season will get you started. If you don't know, 30 Days was created by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame. Like Super Size Me, Morgan gets people to move out of their comfort zones for 30 days. Episodes have included 30 days in jail (Morgan himself); an evangelical Christian living with an Islamic family in Dearborn, Michigan; an American whose job was outsourced living in India to do that job; a Texas border Minuteman living with a family of illegal Mexican immigrants; you get the idea. The beauty of this show is that the results are as surprising to the viewer as they obviously are to the participants. In each episode, both parties really do seem to grow a little and understand a part of humanity that they were willing to villify before things got started. The Minuteman living with the Mexicans was a particularly touching episode.
The other great series is Black. White., a six episode series produced by Ice Cube in which a black family and a white family live with each other for six weeks. Cool, huh? But wait, there's more! Each member of each family spends a certain amount of time in professionally done makeup as the other race! Cultures clash, ideologies are shattered. My favorite part of this show was, as we should probably expect, most of the participants were unable to look too far beyond their own, unique outlook. As a matter of fact, it was the kids who provided the real hope. The white girl, Rose, spent time in a slam poetry class with black kids. Her arc is amazing. She struggles to fit in while not revealing that she's actually a white poser. The other kid, Nick, is black and, according to his parents, listless. His mother and father, Renee and Brian, can't stand the fact that race is not a major issue for him. They want him to have an appreciation for the struggle the black man has faced over the past 300 years. Although I understand this desire, I have to wonder if it's the best thing. I mean, the kid literally didn't give a shit about race! At some level isn't that a good thing? Isn't that the ultimate aim? Well, perhaps not. At any rate, I learned a lot from the series. Most optimistically, I learned that younger people, if the two sampled on the show are any indication, are closer to bridging the gap than their parents could ever be (the mother of the white girl, Carmen, had her heart in the right place, but she approached everything with such startling ignorance that it cancelled out any good that may have come from it).
Anyway, check 'em out. This is the form of reality television that really shines. I guess I'm a sucker for social experiments.
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4 comments:
Yeah, I go back and forth with my opinion of the Nick - enlightening phase of the project.
It was great that he literally didn't care about race, but he didn't care about ANYTHING. He was only comfortable in his usual surroundings, like his parents. With Nick, his comfort zone was when he was alone, instead of when he was with his own race. While Nick didn't have issues with race, his father's passion finally seeped in. Consciously or not, his father found something that Nick could believe in. Something to keep him going. I'm not sure anything but a long history of oppression, failure, and triumph could have done that for him.
Regardless, two great shows. I completely agree.
Ad to that list "Over Here"... the only show so far about the military experience in Iraq... really well done.
And I dig The Shield.
Digital Memory sure is becoming cheaper these days. I wonder when we will finally reach the rate of 1c to 1 Gig.
I'm quietly waiting for the day when I will finally be able to afford a 20 TB hard drive, haha. But for now I guess I will be content with having a 16 gig Micro SD Card in my R4i.
(Submitted on R4Net for R4i Nintendo DS.)
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