i think this movie is racist

[deleted]

I think you can't deal with not being the center of the world, and movies like this pose a threat to your sense of entitlement.

Jim, I see I'm a bit late in the game in joining this thread. I've just posted something similar in movie general and only then decided to take a look on this board. How unsurprising to find a thread about racism.

Let me first agree with you by coping my post to this debate and then I'll go fishing for some interesting feedback to the 'saga' you've started:

Now I appreciate that Boomerang (1992 Eddie Murphy rom-com movie), isn’t exactly current, but I started watching this last night and was simply ‘flabbergasted’ by the extreme reverse racism.

To set the scene (based on as far as I got), you have a successful PR/Advertising firm controlled by all black employees – all very successful as you would imagine – and as this movie would seem to portray, the white race have all but become extinct! I can probably count on one hand the number of white people I’ve seen…all of which seem to appear at curious times. The first example is a lady leaving the office crying following a company merger (tears to represent that she has been made redundant…only happy faces available from the black cast who don’t seem to have lost their jobs). The second are four white guys in slave attire pulling a coach carrying Grace Jones as she whips them! Anyone else spot a ‘subtle’ message in this one?!

Now let’s get one thing straight from the start so there is no confusion. I don’t have a racist bone in my body. In this day and age I find it ridicules that people continue to play race cards (on any side of the equation) and that you consistently encounter such debates in so many mediums. Surely this should now be resigned to history where it belongs.

However, movies such as this do raise fascinating questions. I find it especially interesting that this (and so many others like it), were released in the 90’s when there was such a heavy focus on equality. I suppose there would have been far more interesting debates to be had if Tom Cruise would have starred in Boomerang and it was Michelle Phiepher whipping four black men on her chariot…

Abashed the Devil stood and felt how awful goodness is.

To everyone who thinks this movie is racist:

There are many movies out there concerning minorities, not even just out of Hollywood, where there's always the token Clueless White Person™ stereotype in almost every single one. The Namesake had it. The Joy Luck Club had it. Bend It Like Beckham had it. Ae Fond Kiss has it. Every Tyler Perry movie that bothers to have white people at all in any one of them has it. Malcolm X's modus operandi was opposed to White Cluelessness. Whole sitcoms like the Jeffersons and the Hughleys have had it. If you want to get angry at a trend that's been going on since at least as far back as Shaft in 1973, you go right ahead, even though it's over 35 years... If anything, you'd be fulfilling the stereotype. These characters exist for the writer to vent and to allow its viewers to let off some steam.

Boomerang is about a black executive of a black company modeled after a real-life black company getting his comeuppance by Robin Givens, while Halle Berry sits by, waiting for him to come to his senses, and fall in love with her. If you really think this movie has some secret agenda about bashing white people, then do yourself a favor, and avoid any of the movies I've mentioned, Coming to America, Harlem Nights...

...You should pretty much avoid any American, British, or Australian live-action film with more than 5 non-white people in it, because it's going to be about being non-white, and how much it can suck to grow up non-white in a white-majority country...

That, and any and all anime featuring white people on a show about Japanese people.

I don't like the stereotyping, either, because it comes off as if, yes, white people don't exist in the world of the writer who created it, but you know what? If you know you're not the kind of person depicted, then it's not about you, and you have no proof that the writer in question has it in for white people like too many white people in this world have been taught to have it in for everyone else. I'm going to sound like an anti-intellectual jerk, but I find this line of argument so incredibly unconvincing and sad, I don't care: quit grumbling and enjoy the movie.

This is the Happy House
We're happy here, in the Happy House...

It's a movie about mostly successful African Americans, and I have no problem with that. It's like complaining that Sex and the City is too female-oriented or Schindlers List is too Jew-centric. At least it's not a major eye-roll black stereotype movie like Norbit or Barbershop.

Ultimately "Boomerang" is all about Eddie Murphy's ego, I mean the person not the character. He wrote many of his own roles wherein he comes out the ultimate perfect black male, and white chicks need not apply.

Agreed

I had a dream! But I completely forgot what it was about...

You know I read IMDB posts on a regular basis and I've come across some really inane comments. But this has to be one the stupidest posts I've ever read.

It really kills me how some whites like you have the audacity to say you have been "victimized by racism" when you don't even have the slightest clue of what it's about, at least from the victim's end.

I put the question to you sir--At what point in history were your people ever enslaved, segregated against, or victims of hate crimes, such as lynchings and firebombings? At what point has Hollywood producers made degrading stereotypes and depictions of your people, as it historically has of blacks and other minorities?

The three instances of "white racism" you cite are not such, and the last one is beyond ridiculous:

1. waitress in the beginning, (M. Lawrence said she was racist, made her look like a jackass).

-This woman WAS NOT portrayed in a racist manner. The point of the scene was to depict the paranoia that some blacks have about racism, as Martin depicted here. If anything it was in defense of whites.


2. salesman at clothing store, (again made him a racist and made him look like a complete *beep*

- Yes, this salesman was portrayed as racist, but it is realistic for some white salesman in retail stores to act this way toward black male patrons.

3. 4 brute guys carrying grace jones in her premier. these guys were chained and treated like reindeer.

- So absurd that I won't even touch this. You really need to refrain from whatever it is you're smoking.

This movie was made in the early 90's... Set in New York City...I grew up there and in the 90's...that's how it was. It was what it was;)