Writing in Slate today, Fort Worth Star Telegram film critic Christopher Kelley reports that rooms full of rich white people at the tony Sundance Film Festival in the resort town of Park City, Utah loved a new "indie blockbuster" film "Hustle and Flow." And imagine this: It's "..about a Memphis pimp named DJay..who dreams of becoming a hip-hop star." Kelley adds that it, "brought the crowd to its feet at the Park City Racquet Club." Co-producer John Singleton did so much better with "Boyz N' The Hood," but even without a bite on this one from the major studios, he's got sick distribution and marketing buy-in, sure to earn everyone hella hella bling, as Kelley details.

Pimp culture and "ghetto" branding are the coin of the realm. In developed and developing nations, it's an equal opportunity scam targeting the minds and especially the wallets of teens and young adults, or parents with really poor judgement. At blink.org, Shirley Brooks bemoans "The Identity Crisis Of The Ghetto Fabulous."

Experience has made me think about the importance of knowing your own identity and not being wholly shaped by the expectations or requirements of the society around you. The ghetto-fabulous image of commercial hip hop has become a dominant image of black people in the media.

....The global reach of US culture has helped to make such images and stereotypes a generic identity category. There is pressure upon young adolescents to shape their identity around the characteristics that the media guide them towards....What we identify ourselves as is of crucial importance. Once you know who you are you are that much more able to reject the identities external people or situations attempt to place on you.

The modern-day minstrel show of rap mogul Snoop Dogg is a case in point. Here's a Tacoma News Tribune review of a recent Snoop Dogg show in south suburban Seattle.

If they gave out gold bling for every time Snoop Dogg and The Game said a 12-letter word that suggests maternal congress, hip-hop audiences would be rich. That word was used as a noun, a verb, a gerund and possibly even a dangling participle Saturday night at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, where Snoop Dogg and The Game spewed potty-mouth patois to a...crowd that lapped it up with full suburban enthusiasm.

....As a purveyor and provocateur who dabbles in parody, porn and pot, Snoop Dogg doesn’t work too hard for his money....Once or twice, he busted a move as he ran through his often-profane tales of women, weed and Tupac tributes. But, mostly, Snoop Dogg was too cool to bust a sweat. And why should he? Big-screen video footage and an onstage posse more than willing to grab the microphone enabled Snoop Dogg to chill in the wings whenever he felt the calling.

Snoop Dogg opened the show with a soft-core porn short, “Corleone’s Revenge.” As the band pumped out a slow ballad, Snoop Dogg was an on-screen gangsta. Snoop Dogg’s character was betrayed. Bullets flew. On stage, curtains parted and the rapper formerly known as Calvin Broadus emerged, backed by his reunited band, Dogg Pound Gangstas.

....Sounds of bullets and balls of fire punctuated The Game’s verbal assaults on his current East Coast nemesis, 50 Cent.

Snoop Dogg is the black man who has probably registered most prominently on the consciousness of the suburban, white youth in attendance. And this stuff plays in the real ghetto, too. So, uh, no, sorry. Call me Church Lady, but I don't really see Snoop's schtik, and the whole cosmos of commercialized pimp and gangsta culture, as harmless dumb fun. Not at all. And I think those who shrug it off, whites especially, condone racist stereotypes.

There's a close connection between enshrinement of pimp and ghetto culture and its pervasiveness among too many youth today - blacks especially, but also Asians and whites. That makes necessary a closer examination of how the modern-day black male "ghetto-fied" behavioral template came to exist. In many of its key particulars, according to writer Thomas Sowell, it traces back to white rednecks. Perhaps - most certainly, some would argue - Sowell's "black rednecks" actually adopted the worst habits and dispositions of southern male white rednecks because their ancestors were robbed of their history and self-identity by slavery.

But I would think just the opposite. For starters, anyone who manages to be born, is, biologically, a winner. Moreover, had my ancestors been taken from their homeland and enslaved, and had my more recent ancestors subsequently won freedom, which I then enjoyed to an even greater degree in this modern age, I would be celebrating life's rich possibilities every day, not pissing about the past and making excuses for those conforming to society's lowest expectations.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 14, 2005 11:11 AM

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