>Do you *EVER* hear *ANYONE* talk about the poor movie tastes
>of *WHITE* people S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C-A-L-L-Y???

>Do you *EVER* hear *ANYONE* talk about the poor movie tastes
>of *WHITE* people S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C-A-L-L-Y???
>Of course you don't.

Does that include movies or tv shows coming out of the Blue Collar Comedy camp?

While those products are intended toward a specific segment of white audiences, they are pretty universally panned, both as products and as representations of a certain type of humor (that's usually cast as base and unsophisticated).

How does that relate to this discussion?

I think part of the problem is that whereas white folks have the freedom to have a diverse palette of strains and segments and the like within that broader umbrella of "white folks," black folks are still seen as being a monolithic culture in which every black person's taste is the same as the next black person's.

This is a problem and fucked up when it comes to how Hollywood regards black folks because it ends up subsidizing the kind of dreck that for whatever reason is considered lesser than (white films, "important" black films, merely good filmmaking, etc. - just take your pick) for the sake of trying to reach (and profit from) what they think is a monolithic black audience.

This is also a problem because it seems to push people to support films based primarily on involvement from black actors and producers, because A) it supports folks trying to make it in an already cutthroat industry before you even add the (often unfair) challenges unique to black filmmakers and B) the support is seen as crucial to getting future opportunities for black filmmmakers and their movies and projects.

While Hollywood often sees black folks as one monolithic mass of people, I think black folks, to a certain degree, tend to see black folks as monolithic as well. That seems to lead to folks establishing limits to what people can and can't enjoy as art and/or entertainment either because it's outside of what's considered enjoyable within black culture ("You like this? It's "too white" for me!") or because it might reflect poorly on the tastes of black folks ("You like that? It's an embarassment to our race!")

I don't know ... there are a billion issues wrapped up in this dicussion - art vs. commerce, art and entertainment, black business within white/mainstream industry & society, issues in black culture, etc. Luckily, namecalling, condescension, and grandstanding on an internet message board will give us the single, silver bullet answer we need!

Also for the record, when white people are enjoying "Malibu's Most Wanted," they say "hee hee" and slap their knees, while black people say "ha ha" and convulse back into their seats when they're enjoying "I Got the Hook Up!"

(Also, getting back to the original question quoted above - I'd say occasionally that happens but often is in looking back that that's done more so than in the moment and it's cast as the bad taste & stupidity of the mainstream, rather than that of only white people, and is even looked at in an oddly fond way. Just look at "I Love (Whichever decade it's cool to snarkily mock).")