Do they only pull over Jews?

Blen, my little sister who goes by the fascinating nick name cursed_earth_pizza over by yahoo.com, believes I’m a little too obsessed with the “jew question”. A question, both she and I agree, I have no business meddling with. But ever since I found out most of my favorite actors, and almost all my favorite comedians (Billy Crystall, Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen i.e. “Borat”) were jews, I’ve been wondering if there isn’t a “jew–conspiracy” in Hollywood to promote only jew actors/directors/scripts with either Hollocust or “affirmative action” themes.

It’s not like academy award results won’t bear me out. Two of last three year’s Best Director Award winners (for: “The Departed” & “No Country for Old men”) were Jews. I know what the argument would be. That jews have an evolved intelligence due to their centuries of presecution, etc., in short that they are smarter than the rest of human kind! OR if anybody does something good, the immigrant does it better!

But I think the answer is probably very much what an angry black girl replied in answer to a bigot’s accusation that statistics show 6 out of 10 black man are involved in crime. This was on Queen Latifah show, and the subject under discussion was Racial Violence Statistics. So this girl argued that since cops are more likely to pull over black & mixed race guys instead of whites, blacks & mixed race men are more likely to be found in possesion of drugs/armaments/etc than whites. So I wonder if, in Hollywood, they don’t only pull over jews!

Maybe. Maybe not! I mean, what do i know? I live at the other end of the globe, and *my* statistics are taken from an anti-semetic hate site. And those guys won’t leave my behind alone if i were in america, celebrity or not. I’m well aware of that fact!

Still, next time a stinking movie gets a seemingly unfair publicity (like “Bee movie”, for example) or a mouse-faced actress like Scarlett Johansson appears to be in every movie coming out, go to wikipedia and check out the director/actor’s profile. He just might be a jew :-)!

Did we all came out of Gogol’s “Overcoat”?

There are few lines from books that have proved eternal, and we all know them. “To be or not to be” and “what a work of Art man is”, from Shakespear. “What a tangled web we weave”* by Sir Walter Scott. And “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat”, by either Turgeneve or Dostyovsky.

It was only yesterday that i realized the very un-eternal quality of the last line. After watching a movie: “The Namesake” (the story of an indian’s boys journey through life, and America, after his father named him “Gogol” – who was reading “The Overcoat” when he went through a train accident, and got spared because of it… I know.. very indian) I wanted to read more on the subject. And what a bummer it was to learn the word “we all came out of Gogol’s overcoat” was referring to neither life, nor anything aesthetic. It was referring to the effect “The Overcoat” had on russian literature, as being the first and foremost of what they are known to become, i.e. “Natualist”!

So next time you go about quoting lines from a movie, think twice. So you won’t end up like “The Namesake”, which just made it to my “$tupid movies” list :-).

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*For all of you able to read amharic, here is my attempt at translating “What a tangled web we weave”.

“Il Grillo parlante”

“Il Grillo parlante” – The Talking Cricket, is the name given to the cricket Pinocchio (the protagonist of “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi) kills after it tries to give him some advice. “The cricket comes back as a ghost to continue advising the marionette. In the 1940 Walt Disney adaptation of the book, this cricket is renamed “Jiminy”, and is appointed by the Blue Fairy to serve as the official conscience for Pinocchio.” (Wikipedia)

Reading that made me think “How Fitting”. I mean here is an annoying cricket, killed by a “wooden” Marionette he’s appointed to play the conscience of until the later can pull his shit together enough to “become a real boy”! Isn’t that awfully familiar? The fact that prophets have been killed, and will probably continue to be killed [not necessarily literally], by wooden headed men of power and the society they are/were trying to change?

By that, i’m not simply referring to the infamous “Dergue” regime (and the “Beaalu Girma”s of this world). No, this killing of prophets is as old as the world itself. There is even a legend about an ethiopian king that I love re-reading while waiting for my turn at Filwuha by Sebhat Gebregziabher. The story of a certain crow that spent the night screaming “he who ate my head would become a king”. It ofcourse took the cook no time to administer a knife to the Crow’s head. However….

But that’s beyond the interest of this post.

The authority on Literary Quality

Ever since the soap “Acapulco Bay” aired on ETV, and got an almost cult following for atleast a year to come, there has been one thing that pisses me off (and makes me wonder) about who should be the judge of a quality [of the] work when it comes to our movies and books.

The obvious answer is, ofcourse, “the market”! But how can the market put a “quality tag” on a product of the mind when it’s run by dim-witted folks whose sole purpose is “profit” and profit only (i ain’t pointing fingers here, i’d want profit and profit only had i been the maker of one, but not with things that are “ye Aymiro Sira witetoch”, surely, not that!). The Audience? Well.. I know this would be a shocking statement in a country where the mere mention of the word “hizbu” is expected to command all kinds of obedience and abuse; but neither can the audience. It is entitled to have a quality work presented to it, but won’t know a good quality if it bites it on the butt (no doubt curteousy of our “dihnet”)!. A visit to the nearby video shop and a quick look at what everybody seems to be asking for (Prison Break, Indian movies with amharic subtitles, Prison Break) would bear me out.  

So, who should be the authority in redeeming the Ethiopian Film/Book market from trash? Whose hand should rock the cradle?