Saturday, December 19, 2009

a little christmas music

6 comments:

andrew said...

Tim, you seriously see this as an ethnic gag?

w1ndst0rm said...

Andy, you seriously missed the two bits of ethnic humor?

Half way through a WASP Christmas carol medley one guy breaks out into The Dreidel Song - at which the crowd erupts with laughter to the canned chagrin of the tolken Hebrew.

Then a fist-pumping, grinning, also tolken, African-American has Christmas down in Africa to the applause and cheers of the same crowd during the finale.

This was well sung, well performed and as funny as it was meant to be.

avk said...

...and there's an element of homophobia now that I'm saying that it's the gayest thing I've seen all week.

andrew said...

no, I don't see the Dreidal Song as an ethnic gag. I see it as a nod to the realization that there are other religions, the presentation being right in line with the humor and seriousness of the rest of the piece.

Generally an ethnic gag by it's very nature is offensive, I guess because the majority fall into the 'mean-funny' or 'blatant-stereotype-funny' (and the non-funny). I don't think a person of the jewish faith would find that inclusion offensive. It doesn't seem mean or stereotypically driven to me.

As far as the black guy fist pumping, what's he supposed to do? Say "I'm black, I better be careful not to do anything that may be construed as ethnic."?

Maybe add to that 'make sure to hire two black guys for the choir, because if you just have one he will be seen as the token black guy'

I guess I am just a closet optimist, as I figured this group is from some ivy league college (sy least initially) who took the 10 best singers at the try-outs. I no more noticed 'hey there is only one black guy' than I noticed 'hey there is only one tall guy' until I went back and looked per your comment are token black.

In conclusion: I wonder if it would have been better to have the black guy sing the dreidel song.

w1ndst0rm said...

Andy, what in this world are you talking about? Really, I'm lost here ... and no, not lost and blinded in and by a stormy sea of my own particular flavor of racism. Which I think is your closeted, optimistic implication. [not really but that sounded good didn't it]

I picked up on your rejection of my choice of the word 'gag' and changed it to 'humor' so you wouldn't have to share your, in this case, unnecesary and possibly hair-triggerd - um - stream of consciousness.

Your conclusion only makes sense in the context of your assumption filled rambling. (because that didn't make contextual sense either)


I love ya' man even though sometimes I feel like we are in different worlds yelling at each other across space and time and losing information and meaning in the process. I love ya' especially so because, to our credit, we always stick it out throught the hard part of (re)explaining what we mean(t).

So to try again: I appreciated your original posting of the video because "This was well sung, well performed and as funny as it was meant to be." [notice how the word offensive, or even the concept of it, is not in there]


Having vomited all that emotion all over the group, if I am out of line, I submit myself to the mercy of said group.

*Dock and I think I am a jerk.
*AVK is resisting his desire to hog pile on Andy.

What say the rest of ye?

. . .

On second thought, don't answer that.

Unknown said...

Can we all agree that A Capella groups are uniformly atrocious. They're to music what Anne Geddes is to photography.

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