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Ro is a freelance writer and book reviewer, and former culture columnist for San Diego CityBeat. Follow her on Twitter @bookblerd.
San Diego City Beat Column: Side-Eye of Sanity
I'm a bit of a cynic, but I earned my worldview the hard way. I grew up in a household shaped by Southern culture, Catholic sentiment, military sensibilities and that good ol' parental logic, "because I said so." As a result, I spent a lot of my years low-key anxious that I'd disappoint someone who mattered to me.
It infuriates me to hear politically powerful people such as Sen. Mitch McConnell speak pedantically about "America's original sin." (Original? White folks were raiding and pillaging people to death long before slavery became a cottage-industry in America.) Even more infuriating is their dismissiveness when it comes to the topic of reparations being a viable form of corrective action.
I like dark humor and horror movies. I also like campy movies. If it wasn't already obvious to regular readers of this column, I fully embraced my inner nut-bag long ago. So it's probably not-at-all surprising that I'm also partial to revenge thrillers. So when I first saw the trailer for Ma, I was excited.
When I'm not writing this column, I'm a film critic, so I've already seen a lot of films this year. In the last few, however, I've noticed something that's making the back of my eyeballs itch: passive women.
I don't know a single woman who doesn't have a "work face." No, I don't mean makeup beat by the gods (although kudos to the readers who have that kind of time in the morning). I mean the shield we raise when we work with people who assume they know "where you're coming from" rather than actually ask you.
After a month of incidents exposing (finally) just how frequently living-while-being-Black means dealing with white folks intent on depriving us of the right to breathe without permission, I'm past tired of white people acting a damn fool. Within this, I ran across something from writer Maria Popova while scrolling through the Brain Pickings Twitter timeline.
San Diego City Beat: Features
Rodney Anderson Jr. had a moment of realization watching Game of Thrones. "All I've seen us as is pirates and slaves." He wondered, "why isn't there a great house of people with a more ethnic point of origin?" Despite being a diehard fantasy fan, he admits, "it affected how much I could geek out on the show."
When people think about San Diego and comics, it's highly likely they'll immediately think about Comic-Con International (SDCC). Same goes for all things comic-related, including cosplay, Sci-fi, fantasy, or any other nerdy/geeky fantasticness. And sure, there's a good reason for this: SDCC is the largest annual gathering of its kind in the U.S.
The release of Black Panther has (hopefully) ushered in a new era of the Black superhero. But more importantly, the film's themes and diverse cast of Pan-Africans reinvigorated the debate about the net effect that positive Black images can have on society.
In a country with a 2.4 million-person prison population and where incidents like Charlottesville are the reality; it prompts the question: Do we need a television series with a dystopian America in which a Confederate nation legally practices slavery uninterrupted to modern day as its backdrop?
