Jeremy's Weblog

I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. This is my weblog. It tries to be funny. E-mail me if you like it. For an index of what's lurking in the archives, sorted by category, click here.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Christopher Hitchens has a piece on Slate critiquing Farenheit 9/11. It's worth a read. Hidden in Slate's underbelly is Hitchens' first draft of a similar critique of "White Chicks." Here's an excerpt:

"To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. White Chicks is a sinister exercise in the distortion of reality, unfairly disguised as a light comedy. It is a call to race-based rioting masking itself as a frivolous exercise in frivolity.

White Chicks makes the following points about caucasian females growing up saddled, through no fault of their own, with wealth beyond reasonable means, and makes them in this order:

1) Caucasian females enjoy terrible pop songs sung by other caucasian females.

2) Many caucasian females enjoy trading witty repartee with other caucasian females.

3) Caucasian females frequent country clubs filled exclusively with other caucasians.

4) Fashion shows are silly and deserve to be mocked (this, of course, ignores the valuable good that fashion shows at country clubs have provided to the country over the years in terms of scientific breakthroughs and accomplishments in great literature).

5) Caucasian females have difficulty dancing, due to innate characteristics of Caucasians, which also enable them to process lactose in a way that at least one of the Wayans Brothers cannot.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted.

Disregarding the errant sixth point, it must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Wayans's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere into one compelling story. Either caucasian females are non-dancing, non-lactose-intolerating, bad-pop-song-enjoying figures to be deeply mocked, or they are innocent victims' of their parents' massive wealth, and undeserving of the broadside hits taken at them by this disgraceful film. The Wayans Brothers simply cannot have it both ways."