It took me a minute to figure out that this wasn’t an actual documentary but in fact a "mockumentary". The film reminded me much of the format of the Colbert Report, so dry that someone who doesn’t understand sarcasm might miss the point of this movie.

Some parts were very offensive and I found myself feeling some sort of secondary embarrassment for the people that were laughing in the audience. I remembered the quote that flashed in the beginning of the film. "If you’re going to tell people the truth you better make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you." But I still couldn’t help hypothetically putting myself in the shoes of an African American watching this movie and wondering about their reactions; if they would find the sarcasm as humorous as the Caucasian audience.

The commercials were especially harsh, especially "The Gold Dust Twins" and "Fast Track". To find out some of the commercials were actually real, and were actually advertised on television was painful. There is an artist named, Betye Saar whose work is based on racism and whose piece "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima" reminded me so much of the "Coon Chicken Inn" logo. View it here: http://www.netropolitan.org/saar/auntjemima.html .
I though of her immediately when I saw this commercial.

I fount it interesting that the movie drew parallels to communism and the holocaust and I thought the bit about "draptomania" (what causes slaves to run away) was clever. I must give the film props for taking it there. It really did make an impact on me and left me disgusted which I think is what its intent was. The movie was about more than just racism and slavery, it was about white supremacy. After all, "what is terrorism to one is patriotism to another". I hope that movies like this do create awareness to the horrors of our history and their agonizing consequences and allow us to learn from our mistakes.

The lecture by Professor Claycomb was very interesting on many accounts. One of the first things that sparked my attention was the fix for hypermediatized images after WWII. Claycomb quoted, "The map has replaced the landscape" which means images replace what we take as real and I think this is true. Even I, as a cynical, pseudo-nonconformist young adult, am guilty of it. I find myself expecting my life to turn out like what happens to characters in movies…always a happy ending. This must be why celebrities and Hollywood are such a big industry. We try to live our lives vicariously through movies and emulate celebrities.

It scares me that Claycomb mentioned identity as "constructable"…that identity is all an act. How we have one personality around our friends and another around our parents. It intrigues me that who we are is provided for us by gender, and that women used to be regarded as less developed men. It’s sad that we weren’t treated equally or given universal suffrage until the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.

Claycomb said, "we think of freaks as ‘freaks’ and not as people suffering some kind of trauma". Which leads right into what he said about disability equaling de-masculation. This made me think of how much I struggle with perfection. Maybe this is why.

One last thought I had about this lecture was regarding the gender response. Do we do everything we do because we’re socially, culturally, and historically brought up to do it that way? Could be.