#607 White Man’s Burden (1995) w/Aaron Thorpe (preview)
“In an alternate universe, successful African-Americans live in gated communities, while impoverished Caucasians populate crime-ridden inner-city ghettos. When African-American mogul Thaddeus Thomas (Harry Belafonte) wrongly accuses Caucasian Louis Pinnock (John Travolta) of being a Peeping Tom, Pinnock loses his job and watches as his family falls apart. In a desperate attempt to repair his life, Pinnock takes Thomas hostage and demands reinstatement at the factory where he once worked.” Sign up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for $5/month and get 2 bonus episodes a week Subscribe to our youtube channel at http://youtube.com/miniondeathcult
So, on his vibes-based hangout trip with his hostage, John Travolta takes his hostage billionaire boss to go birthday shopping with his son, Andrew Lawrence, or Matthew Lawrence, one of those guys.
It's Andrew.
He gives his son the money to go in and buy the toy himself.
As he's going in the door, he gets hit up by a dude in a do-rag.
Both a do-rag and a bandana.
Bandana over the do-rag.
No shirt.
You're laughing, but the best way to get really good waves is you have the do-rag and then you have compression over the do-rag.
This is actually very accurate.
All right, fair enough.
And so the kid goes in and he wants to get the superhero who is black.
He wants to get the superhero toy whose name is Chromoman, which for any of our literary, our prefix heads, means color man.
Yep.
Oh, wow.
OK.
So I was like, I must be mishearing this.
They have to try a little bit harder.
Yeah, I don't know why I didn't think of that, but for some reason I thought, like, chrome, like chromium, you know what I mean?
Like metallic?
But like, no, it was like, okay, colored man, but it's just colored man.
Black man!
One of the other black superheroes is called Sun Man, but he was cool.
I did see that, I did see that.
And John Travolta's like, uh, do you really want that one?
Why don't you get that one?
And he points at a white action figure that's just a white guy in a trench coat holding a knife.
He's like, you like the rapist, right?
You like Jack the Ripper, right?
And his son's like, no, I want the superhero dad.
And John Travolta, I have the line written here, where does he say, man, this is fucked up.
When John Travolta sees his son get a black superhero, he goes, man, this is fucked up.
No, but the best... but go ahead, Tony, go ahead.
No, see, the thing I like about it is, like, Harry Ball with Fanta, he's loving it.
He's like, no, let him get the black one!
Let him go ahead and get the black one!
He's like, he's a little smirk the whole time, he's stoked.
He's like, okay, go ahead, go ahead.
And that's the fucked up part.
I think that's the part that's really fucked up that JonTron was talking about.
It's not only that, not only is he, like, choosing the black superhero, but he's choosing the black superhero in front of the black guy.
Yeah.
You know, so it's like double.
He's like, man, I'm getting like I'm getting I'm getting cucked in front of my by my son right now.
And it sucks.
It's funny because you're seeing like the the sort of like hard racism into the liberal soft racism transformation of Thaddeus's character because he's watching the boy get the black.
Superhero, the white kid get the black superhero doll and he's like, you can tell like his character's had a sort of a transformation.
He's become more sympathetic to John Travolta by this time.
You can tell he's like, wow, the innocence of a child.
You know, you can tell like, that's why he's into it.
He's like, he's colorblind.
Don't teach him about hatred, John Travolta, just cause you're aggrieved against the world.
Like that's, that's, that's what his role is in that situation.
Uh, which I, I, I loved.
Um, And also, this is a thing that actually is happening in this real world, not in the fake universe, where there's white parents who are like, oh my god, why do you love these black people so much?
Please stop, please.
You know we've got Post Malone, right?
You don't need...
You don't need to be in the Quavo.
You can be in the Post Malone.
Can you please not do this or wear this when we go to, like, your grandparents' house?
Dude, I was watching the Rolling Stones doc about Brian Jones, and it's just showing, like, how in the 60s they were going to, like, jazz clubs and blues clubs and, like, worshiping, like, all the blues artists and shit, and, like, it's just about how Brian Jones got kicked out of his house for playing jazz music.
Like his parents were like so racist they're like how dare you play that kind of music?
How dare you play that colored music?
And it's also just so funny I mean I know this everybody's seen it at this point but just like the concerts they're showing of like people losing their mind going insane at the Rolling Stones and it's just them playing like CFG blues It's it's it's one of the fun like women are like literally like trying trying to choke uh trying to trying to choke them on stage for it that's how that's how wild that music was back then.
Well you know one thing you don't think I was thinking about too you make me think about Alex is like I guess uh uh like like black culture is cool right like that's the whole thing right and in this movie I don't know, man.
It's like, okay, the black people were still hella cool, you know what I mean?
Even though they were rich dicks.
Well, they were kind of corny, though.
They were also kind of corny.
Right, you're right.
They were kind of the crusty, you're right, they were kind of the HBCU types that I actually fucking, that live in my neighborhood, actually, who I kind of fucking hate.
But they were, though, even that fashion show, kind of, I was like, okay, that's kind of lit, right?
But nothing about, nothing, it was like, damn, yo, y'all really did, I guess you're doing black people dirty.
Which I don't I don't know again I'm confused because nothing about like like they're listening to like thrash metal which is supposed to be really loud and really angry and really like oh that's not appealing or culturally aesthetically pleasing you know so it's like none of it was like I guess redeeming at all, you know what I mean?
That was kind of an interesting thing, because, like, you know, we have John Travolta speaking in, like, with an AAV accent throughout the entire thing.
But then, like, the gang, like, the gangs are still, like, punkers.
They're still, like, punks.
Yeah, exactly.
Listening to, like, thrash metal.
They're still, like, doing, like, alternative white things, I think.
But also, we've got to remember, this is still 1996.
So although, you know, hip-hop is very much part of the culture, It's still, like, subversive.
So I think they're trying to be like, oh, the subversive thing is what is cool and what you're hearing on the streets.
I guess.
But I thought that was funny.
It's just the angriest white music.
In their head, when they hear rap, guys blasting rap or whatever, that's just angry.
It's scary, angry music, you know?
Yeah, that makes sense.
Thank you for first reminding us of what rap can sound like through the white lens.
I guess I was just so confused.
I was just like, I don't get it.
But yeah, I guess like, okay, I'm not gonna rewatch this again.
But if I was, I would think about, okay, angry white man.
