Prometheus 6

I have no idea what this program is about and I have no intention of viewing it. I think the total amount of time I devote to watching BET programming is probably less than five MINUTES per week. I'm posting this message here rather than at Jack and Jill because I have completely given up on the subscription/sign-in process at Blogger.com.

Anyway, Rikyrah asked at Jack and Jill why best selling books such as the Emperor of Ocean Park have not been turned into movies while trash (my word, not Rikyrah's) such as Hot Ghetto Mess and Norbert, which probably cost Eddie Murphy an Oscar for Dreamgirls, get the green light. The answer is that the folks who say yea or nay do not believe there is a black audience for films adapted from books such as the Emperor of Ocean Park. There was no black audience, for example, for Devil In A Blue Dress that starred Denzel Washington or even Eve's Bayou with Samuel L. Jackson. How many black people, for example, have ever seen or rented Charles Burnett's wonderful little gem of a movie To Sleep With Anger that stars Danny Glover, Mary Alice and Richard Brooks?

There is no black audience for a film based on the Emperor of Ocean Park because too many of our folk are not interested in seeing movies with complex characters and plots. And mainstream white movie goers are not going to pay to see it because they don't want to see that many black people in a film in which they, i.e., white people do not play heroic and prominent roles. In other words, they too have no interest in seeing black actors in films with complex roles and characters even if the story has nothing to do with racism. 

and don't plan on seeing it - EVER. I loved Devil and Eve's Bayou and To Sleep With Anger.

There is no black audience for a film based on the Emperor of Ocean Park because too many of our folk are not interested in seeing movies with complex characters and plots.

I don't believe that. I believe there is a Black audience for, if not a movie, at least a mini-series.

 And mainstream white movie goers are not going to pay to see it because they don't want to see that many black people in a film in which they, i.e., white people do not play heroic and prominent roles. In other words, they too have no interest in seeing black actors in films with complex roles and characters even if the story has nothing to do with racism.

You are probably right about this, but a movie like Emperor wouldn't be done for them anyway.

I don't believe that. I believe there is a Black audience for, if not a movie, at least a mini-series.

Okay, maybe a mini-series would work if we could convince the BBC or HBO to do it but it would be a disaster if BET or one of the commercial networks including FOX produced the series. One of the reasons I don't think that a black audience would be that large is because of what I heard while viewing Devil In A Blue Dress at the multiplex located in Union Station in Washington, D.C. I observed several younger brothers asking the sisters they were with to explain to them what was going on in the movie. It took me a moment to realize that they could not follow the plot and not because they had not read the book.

It took me a minute or so to realize that their difficulties in following the story's plot line was directly related to the quality of education they had received in school. If they had never read books - even comic books - or plays then their ability to follow a story with multiple characters who had back stories was quite limited. If they derived the bulk of their understanding of storyteling from television, as I suspected, then keeping up with Easy Rawlins and Mouse was a task they could not easily accomplish. I think our young people, especially adolescent males and young men, have been made culturally illiterate as a result of failing schools and the ubiquitous presence of most commericial television programming.