Remind Me to Moida You Later - The Three Stooges: A 13-Year Longitudinal Perspective, 2002-2015 (en Inglés)
Reseña del libro "Remind Me to Moida You Later - The Three Stooges: A 13-Year Longitudinal Perspective, 2002-2015 (en Inglés)"
In April of 2003, CBS aired a program celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Three Stooges. The program was very informative and was aired after prime time because even now, the decisionmakers - Jews themselves - knew that what these men was doing was incredibly violent and dangerous. Personally, I enjoyed watching their antics and any other program that shows white people dogging out other whites - the same way they got gut laughs off of Amos n' Andy, Stepin Fetchit, Mantan Moreland, "Good Times," "The Jeffersons" and other coons and the movies and TV shows they starred in. Their foolishness, in my view, serves as a kind of therapeutic catharsis; as people laugh and get lost in the gooniness of the Stooges, this buys our race more time. At any rate, the accolades, kudos and praise showered upon Moe, Larry, Curly Joe, Shemp and Joe should be counter-balanced - and in some cases augmented - with a black perspective. For the most part, the Stooges were talented, though racist; they were pioneers in comedy, but still sexist (some would say outright misogynistic). In other words, their skits were a reflection and reinforcement of the times. Much of the snippets about each Stooges episode and information outlining each segment was found on line, as a few people took the time to document the TV "shorts" and a few even bothered to provide a short overview of them. Some of this information was gleaned through research on-line, including a document called The Three Stooges Scrapbook. As an African-American youth, my analysis is different than those of other people, although I found the Stooges to be comic geniuses. The topics they tackled, the fact that they were a reflection of their times (rampant sexism, racism and class issues permeate their work), are all important to me and as a result, this is more than just a puff piece; it is an anthropological and critical race theory look at these funny men, addressing issues and concerns that the reader may not find all that "funny." They had sibling issues just like the rest of us. Shemp was Curly's big brother and Curly replaced him for a while. But in 1946 Curly suffered a stroke and Shemp returned to the team. Some might say this is a waste of time. But any time spend studying something and analyzing it from a perspective that can help black and other minority kids learn how to "critically think," is never time wasted. The fact is, someone has to document or provide a black view of what these five Jews (Moe, Joe, Shemp, Larry and Curly) did in the name of "laughs" so that future generations won't be naively believing that it was all "innocent fun." They were, to put it mildly, a reflection of the times. Furthermore, there were 190 episodes, all told. That is a track record of almost two full decades of slaps, kicks, pokes and so on. They are to be commended for their stick-to-it-tiveness. In my brief reviews I highlight the jokes and laughs, but also point to issues of racism and gender bias when and wherever necessary. And we can't overlook the sadism masked in slapstick and silliness. This content analysis is the product of a great deal of television viewing. The inspiration to undertake this project started in 2002 when a cable television channel, A&E, aired an hour of Stooges movies and shorts. I watched nearly every Stooge movie made during the year or so, and documented the dates of each viewing. Malcolm X taught us that, "Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research." Black people have to learn how white folks felt about us and the images they developed to define us to the world. The fact is, "what is often said in jest is meant in earnest."
