Links on the environment, Hollywood, and race
Posted by Sappho on October 8th, 2009 filed in Blogwatch, Race
The GP2 Project, that aims to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, now has a much improved web site, including video FAQs. Check it out.
A screenwriter writes an essay for the LA Times in defense of Hollywood on the Roman Polanski case.
… As a rule, when I read the news that a fugitive from justice has been caught, my standard response is to think, “How nice,” and turn the page. If it’s a particularly interesting story, I might tell my girlfriend about it, but until this moment it never occurred to me that I was supposed to alert the media as to my feelings on the subject. It’s hard enough keeping up with all the injustice in the world. Now we have to stand up and shout every time it goes the way it’s supposed to? No offense to Ms. Silverstein, but some of us have jobs….
Between the two petitions, there are approximately 650 signatures. Of those 650, I noted everyone who could conceivably be considered a member of the Hollywood community. My rule was, basically, if you’ve done substantive and recognizable work for a Hollywood studio in the last four decades, you get counted. I guarantee you, some of these people would not be thrilled to be labeled Hollywood players, but I’m trying to be accommodating to the opposition here.
You know what I was left with? You know how many of those 650 people I was able to fit into a box labeled Hollywood? Thirty-six names….
Via my husband on Facebook.
Ta-Nehisi Coates offers some thoughts that, despite his post title, I found rather more than vaguely coherent, on conservative/reformist vs. radical/revolutionary strains in black leadership.
Racialicious on Casting & Race Part 1: The Tension [Essay], both in the theater (where color blind casting is the rule, and it’s perfectly OK for a black person to play the part of a Dane) and movies (a more visual medium, where people are supposed to look the role they’re cast as). Interesting stuff about the actor’s craft, cinematic verisimilitude, and race.