Welcome to 2007! The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT gets a lot of mail, but I keep it down to only responding to someone who has something new to say, and I never respond to people who write to spout invective. What's the point? I enjoy them though. I especially enjoy the emails I get from people who can offer no evidence to support their dissenting opinion - OR (and I really like these) those who OFFER no dissenting opinion, but write in to insult me all the same.

Such is not the case with this next guy, who I will respond to here.

February 6, 2007

Dear paranoid brother,

As a 40 year old black man hopelessly into sci-fi I just had to stay up late and send you a piece of mail about your very weird website about how a movie is racist if no blacks survive until the end of the movie.

Hey Robert,

Thanks for writing.

To quickly cover a few points. Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you found my website to be very weird. I put a lot of effort into this site, so it's nice to see it appreciated. However there is a lot more to this website than just the URCA. Check out the SCIENCE MOMENT for example.

- Or the TOP TEN SCARY MOVIES.

About the "Paranoid" thing. How can the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT possibly be my paranoia? I'm not saying that anyone is out to get me. And the URCA isn't about "no blacks survive until the end of the movie.", but that no blacks or any other minorities survive at all. It's a big distinction.

Let me go over your points one by one.

Below are a few of my favorite movies that I have a few bone-picking sentences for you to read.

ALIEN - Yaffet Koto got special billing (and credits) He was white Bretts boss and the only crewmember (after Dallas was killed) to keep a clear head and lead people. Yes, Ripley did have to step in eventually.

What does that mean? A movie can only be racist if the minority actors don't get credit or billing? And what was so special about his billing? He worked in the bowels of the ship. He and Brett were the lowest paid members of the crew, and the only non-officers on the crew.

And no, after the death of Dallas, Ripley stepped in immediately.

She kept a clear head and ordered everyone about. There wasn't a single moment where Parker led anyone besides Brett, and Brett was the second to die, so after that, he wasn't leading anyone. Watch the movie again. What you are saying just isn't there. But more to the point, what you're saying has nothing to do with the URCA as I've described it.

Here is the page of info again: THE UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT.

ALIENS - if it was truly racist, Bishop the "always helpful and friendly" android would have been black ("Mo' cornbread for ya, mister Burke?" --- "Yessir boss, ill get that coffe fo' you") Come on give us all a small break.

So in your world racism only exists if a minority is portrayed as a 1950s Rochester caricature?* Really? You truly believe that blatant and cartoonish acting delivered with a sledgehammer is the only way to properly identify racism? I'd be curious to hear from you who, if anyone today in the public eye, is racist. According to your statement, that seems to mean that no one - not even former KKK Grand Wizard and current White Supremacist, David Duke, is racist. Wow.

TERMINATOR 2 - Joe Mortons character is the father of the future

A future that destroyed humanity. It took a white man to save it. And a white woman and a white child to make the black man see the error of his ways.

and the only man smart enough to back-engineer the terminator parts (sounds like a white dude to me)

??? The only man smart enough to back-engineer (aka reverse-engineer) the Terminator parts sounds like a white dude to you? WTF?

Hmmm, although he did say that "All his work was based on it" You might be on to something here.

Uh, okay. None of what you are saying still has anything to do with the URCA.

JURASSIC PARK - I guess you didnt see the part where the white lawyer got eaten while cowering in a toilet stall, the first death scene in the franchise.

Not the first death scene, and I saw it, but what does it have to do with the URCA?

OH yea, the bull they lowered in the raptor cage was black too (fuel to your fire)

WTF?!? again. Fuel to my fire? You think that, as a black man, you are no better than a bovine?

I think what you are NOT saying is that the times - they ARE a-changin'. I remember as a kid watching TV sci-fi and almost every movie (Yaffet in Alien is the first I remember) I went to see . . . no brothers. I even asked my Grandmother about it once, she told me that people of color have their place in the movies and our place just aint out in outer space. We laughed, but I never fell out of love with comics and sci-fi.

My point here is that there are plenty of brothers and sisters in the movies nowadays and I dont see it as being a good thing or a bad thing. It is simply a reflection of screenwriters and studios doing what they think they have to - to not be accused of racism.

Are you saying that screenwriters and studios are only putting "brothers and sisters" in movies so they won't be accused of racism?

Your implication is, if they didn't fear being accused of racism, then they wouldn't have "brothers and sisters" (I'm inferring that you mean black people) in their movies. If they made movies where they purposefully left out black people, that wouldn't be racism? And if - according to you - that screenwriters and studios are "doing what they think they have to - to not be accused of racism", isn't THAT racism? Your logic gets more convoluted with every paragraph.

This is not a good thing because (in my opinion) the story MUST be good and as the old saying goes, just like cooking "If you try to make it so that EVERYONE likes it - then NO ONE will.

And please explain how having various races in your movie puts the story second or not as good? You know, a screenwriter doesn't even have to write the races of their characters into their story, unless the race of that person serves the story: Unless there is a reason for the race of the character. And please explain also why always killling off all of the minorities makes for a good story?

The URCA isn't about making a movie so everyone likes it, its about not treating an entire race of people as expendable and unable to survive the odds based entirely on the color of their skin. Why is that a lot to ask?

Heres something for you to consider - there is ALOT more racism in the recent glut of Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy movies. Whenever I watch one with the white guys from work I cringe at some of the blatant reverse racism. I guarantee if the roles were reversed in these movies - our people would bemarching in the streets in protest.

Okay, Martin Lawrence makes only comedies and action pictures. So that has nothing to do with this website. It may be a point you would want to make at any one of the many Comedy based websites out there.

Eddie Murphy has been in two Horror movies (A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN and THE HAUNTED MANSION), neither of which are part of the "recent glut" of Eddie Murphy movies and neither of which earn a reverse URCA as neither killed off everyone except the black people. What's more, I've already made note elsewhere in the URCA that Wes Craven (Director of A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN) is one of the very few directors who never follows the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT. The fact that Eddie Murphy also co-wrote the story and produced the movie may have something to do with it as well.

In any case, the URCA has nothing to do with how various people behave to each other in a movie, it's all about body count. That's the point that I've made repeatedly throughout the URCA and one which you are choosing to ignore to make your point.

The only time I ever even came close to a racial discussion about sci-fi was when I asked a very close white friend and fellow trekkie what his opinion was about "Black" Avery Brooks getting the role of Captain Sisko on Star Trek Deep Space 9 was. He told me - and I will never forget "I just hope the guy can act". Maybe thats what we all need to keep in mind here.

Have you ever seen John Carpenters The Thing - 1982? A brother and Kurt Russel survive till the end.

You clearly have not read the URCA, or else you would have seen this page. You also would be aware of our review of John Carpenter's THE THING.

You would also know that I said long ago that John Carpenter is one of the few directors out there who doesn't adhere to the URCA (despite his long career in film, he is still considered a Hollywood outsider). Actually reading just this one small section of the site would have saved you a lot of trouble, and perhaps made your email more thought provoking.

Also, this isn't a SciFi website. Most Science Fiction movies and books aren't covered here because they don't have an over-riding theme of Horror or Thriller (although there are three Star Trek movies that do - STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT and STAR TREK: NEMESIS).

By the way, the "brother" you refer to in THE THING is actor Keith David (THEY LIVE, PITCH BLACK).

Look, anybody can have a website - yours is not bad, but I just feel that it is a bit irresponsible to bring up completely obscure coincidences and pin a RacialCliche tag on them.

You may be right, but so far there are 61 completely obscure coincidences and growing. And most of those coincidences occurred in the 1990s and 2000s. And I'm not saying that the people who made these movies are racist. In Hollywood it takes a huge team of people to make a movie, so it would be vile of me to tar these people as racist. But they are using a Racial Cliché. And as such, a racial cliché is far worse than a "hand on the shoulder" cliché, or a "cat jumping spitting" cliché, because neither the hand or cat cliché denigrates a race of people.

I'm also not saying that any minority actors who played in these movies are contributing to racism, as their part in a single movie doesn't reflect their body of work. For example, Ken Foree was the first black man in a Horror Thriller movie to survive to the end of DAWN OF THE DEAD. But he has died in other Horror Thriller movies (FROM BEYOND, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) as well as survived (THE DENTIST, DAWN OF THE DEAD [2004]).

We got rid of the "Fat person always dies" in Horror Thriller movies back in the early 1990s. It was considered offensive to fat people. Why is it so hard to get rid of this?

Thats all I have to say - obviously you worked me up enough to send you a long e-mail about it so you must be doing something right.

Possibly. We'll see. I don't think my theory will be disproved any time soon, although I would like to see if it has a lifetime, as in, "From the 1960s until 200X, there existed in Hollywood film making..." That will happen when the URCA becomes a rarity in Hollywood, instead of a constant.

Stay well,

Robert

Thanks for writing! I hope you continue to enjoy the site!

Eddie

*
Which in itself is odd because the Rochester character on The Jack Benny Show, broke so many racial stereotypes of the day and was never made to appear inferior to his boss, Benny, and often got the better of him.

March 4, 2007

You gotta add Gremlins, 1984. The science teacher is the first person to bite it. I am actually searching right now for a scholarly treatment of this topic, and have not been able to find a dissertation. Seems like a slam dunk for some lucky grad student.

Renee Ordeneaux

March 31, 2007

I figured I'd go ahead and put this out there for ya. Figured you'd enjoy it.

Nightmare On Elm Street 1: No minorities. Everyone dies except the main character.
Nightmare On Elm Street 2: No minorities, although there is lots of gay bashing and multiple gay guys or presumed gay guys die. Besides that everyone dies and the twist ending kills the main character.
Nightmare On Elm Street 3: The one black person, Kincaid, lives, along with a few others.
Nightmare On Elm Street 4: Not only is Kincaid from 3 the first to die, the only other minority in the film (a black girl named Shelia) dies. The only ones to live are the master race perfect blonde hair blue eyed stereotypical high school couple, including a jock.
Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The one black person, Yvonne, lives. Barely. Everyone else except the main character dies.
Freddy's Dead: One black person, Doc, lives, along with two white girls. One mexican, Carlos, dies.
New Nightmare: No black people die although a few are featured in the film. Lots of people live out of this one. The only ones to die are white.
Freddy Vs Jason: One black person, the chick from Destiny's Child whose character name escapes me, dies. But that's beside the point since this is more of a Jason movie anyhow. But anyway, everyone dies except the hero.

I think Nightmare 4 deserves to be added to the list and possibly Nightmare 2 although it won an award for best gay horror film of the year. (Really!)

-Skunkrocker aka Kyle

Your Host E.C.McMullen Jr.

Hi Skunk,

One of the points of the URCA is that the cliché is not only racist, but it's a worthless, non-entertaining story trope. It adds nothing of value to a story and actually harms it. Harming the story harms sales.

In the A NIGHTMARE series of movies, sometimes minorities survived and sometimes they didn't - just like real life. Since the movies are in a series they do not cross the URCA as the movies amply demonstrate that the audience will have no idea who will survive to the end - if anyone.

There are other sequels or series that repeatedly use the URCA. All of the TERMINATOR movies and the ALIEN movies. AvP doesn't count since it is neither a sequel or part of the series, but a spin-off. It doesn't take place in the environment, time line, or anything else regarding the ALIEN movies. What's more, by combining the PREDATOR into the series, it starts a whole new timeline that has nothing to do with the original Sigourney Weaver four. In fact, with the upcoming AvPR, this new series starts a whole new arc wholly independent of the original ALIEN. The same can be said for the FREDDY vs JASON. It doesn't follow the last movies of either series, but starts a whole new series independent of the previous films.

In the space of just one week, I get three different emails about the URCA that are actually worth posting (some emails are of the "F*ck you" category and others are so off the wall I wouldn't know where to begin).

But there are still those that add to my body of knowledge and knowledge is always good.

And for those who say that the URCA is only looking at mere coincidence, the tally is currently up to 62 coincidences and counting.

April 13, 2007

I'm just back from watching "The Reaping," in which, as you may know, the only black character dies. As I sat in the theatre, I thought of Richard Pryor's immortal words, "How long must this bullshit go on?" Then I thought, I bet somewhere on the internet, somebody has collected all the movies in which the only black character dies. Thus, I found your website, which I am reading now, nodding my head all the while. Thanks for collecting these films, and discussing them, all in one place.

Robert L. Jackson III, Esq.
Executive Recruiter, Legal Search

April 14, 2007

Great job. I have noticed the same thing. I also have small children and notice the Blue eyed obsession in kid movies. Notice the part in the original How the Grinch stole Christmas when he turns good, his eyes turn from brown/red to blue. Also notice how many animals that naturally have brown eyes are given blue eyes in Disney movies. It happen way too much to be a coincidence. It is sick. Keep up the good work. You are a very bright guy. You destroy your opponents that come with weak arguments.

JMStovall

I'm embarrassed to say, I never noticed the Grinch (voiced by the late great Boris Karloff and sung by the Voice of the Haunted Mansion, Thurl Ravenscroft) with his blue eyes thing, but you are right. When the Grinch becomes good, his eyes don't simply get all cute and big, they turn blue. Before that, they were yellow and red.

Goodhearted folks, like Cindy Lou Who, have blue eyes in HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS.

I went through my huge catalog of Disney animation and can't find any blue-eyed people or animals that I'd consider out of the norm (there are wolves with blue eyes, but then again, in nature there are wolves with blue eyes.) At any rate, while Dr. Suess' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS can be included in this discussion (it's scary for children), Disney animation, with the exception of MONSTERS, INC. and THE INCREDIBLES, wouldn't be part of the URCA.

Thanks for writing!

April 20, 2007

Hiya!

I came across your site in the usual convoluted trail that websurfing takes. I was looking up info on the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project (Ron Howard just announced he's making a remake) and came across your racial cliche pages. What great fun! As an African-American I've obviously seen the cliche in action time and again not only in horror, but in sci-fi and adventure genres. It's nice to see someone write a well researched article about it. In your email response page you get a little testy about criticism but what the hell, it's all good. I don't think moviemakers do this cliche consciously but tend to repeat what they've grown up seeing. "The black person's the second banana and he's supposed to die." Making this trend more noticable will help it to go away. Keep up the good work.

On a side note, on your commentary about the original 1933 King Kong you state that the Carl Denham character was probably styled after Robert Ripley or P.T. Barnum. Actually he was based on the movie's producer Merian C. Cooper. He was a documentary filmmaker and shot nature and native peoples in foreign lands sometimes standing right in the way of charging animals in order to get a good shot, just like the Denham character. I only know this from a documentary the ran on cable when the Peter Jackson remake came out (Cooper led an adventurous life worthy of his own movie).

Tom Dent

Hey Tom,

I didn't know that about Merian C. Cooper, but good for him and his legacy! Now I like him even more.

66 coincidences and counting. Four readers have mentioned the new TRANSFORMERS movie here. I reviewed it even while I acknowledge that it really doesn't quite belong here (But hey, a movie about giant alien robots from outer space attacking the earth? I just HAVE to review such a flick, you know?).

No matter how you look at it though, TRANSFORMERS just doesn't get the URCA, the way my theory describes it. That's not to say that the story line gets a pass for it's racial weirdness.

July 3, 2007

Hi there E.C.

Just quickly, love your work. On to more serious matters though, I saw Transformers last night. I know it isn't a horror movie, but it's worth noting that 'Jazz' the black transformer, is the only one of the 'good guys' who dies.

Cheers

James Golin

July 5, 2007

Hey-

Love your site! Good to know I haven't been paranoid all these years. Don't know if you're still updating, but here's a nugget for you: Hollywood just upped the ante on killing the Black characters.

SPOILER ALERT

In the movie TRANSFORMERS only one Autobot dies: Jazz! Yes, they actually killed the BLACK ROBOT. Can you believe it? We’ve officially reached a new age. Hollywood isn’t content just killing off the Black humans. Black automatons are fair game as well. Some would argue that robots are raceless, however in the animated series Jazz spoke with funky inflections and was voice by Scatman Crothers. In the movie Jazz is also voiced by a black actor (Darius McCrary), so I guess that made Jazz the closest to a minority they had so he was treated to your typical “noble black character death”. So now, actually being Black isn’t the only thing that will guarantee your death. Having the affectations of being Black marks you for termination as well.

Welcome to the new millennium!

Ren Hayes
Webmaster
GenXorcist.com

July 6, 2007

Do you think Transformers 2007 makes the list or is worth a mention?

I'm getting a lot of flak when I suggest that Jazz, the only "good" "black" autobot gets canned. He's the only Autobot that dies. He's also the first (and only) Autobot to die. He also was voice acted by a black man (but was originally voice acted by Scatman John in the original movie).

There is only one serious black character in this movie, and he has a relatively small part as a soldier in this film. So there is one surviving black serious character, but hes a part of a subplot and not a lead role. The "captain" of the military team is still a white guy, though the others in his group are minorities (the hispanic character becomes the comic relief). However, the first gruesome death within this group of characters is the sort of nerdy white guy, as Scorponok stabs him through the chest.

The other black people in this movie are placed in comedic roles. The cars salesman, his mom, are characters who are meant to make people laugh (granted I thought there were funny, and it was fine with me until..). The other two black people in the film that were introduced were nerdy and cowardly and fat. The scene where the black guy who deciphers part of the code (a scene which didnt even make sense to me, perhaps SCIENCE ALERT? or maybe just technology alert) totally turns into a little coward kind of grated on my nerves.

When they seemingly arbitrarily killed off Jazz (he didn't really even do anything, other than get randomly ripped in half), it was kind of the last straw.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Elena Simon

July 22, 2007

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

sorry, just came from your site. i'm glad someone else caught that "jazz" death thing. which might not have been so offensive if michael bay movies didn't make such a point of using black characters for comic relief.

- Maurice Broaddus -

71 movies and counting. This is the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT aka URCA, and not everyone is angered that I brought this up!

That said, I have to call my fans to account. If you make a statement, I expect you to back it up.

August 12,

Finally!

A place that seems to voice my frustrations as a black man as to why Sci-fi and horror films exclude- or minimizes the role of blacks. The Sci-Fi channel has a few tokens but most of the movies premiering on that channel have mostly white casts.

In the entire universe there just seems to be about 5 blacks, but countless endless varieties of white humanoids. I remember how the critics panned the Matrix movies because of all things; it had too many people of color in it. Even though a white man saved the world, white critics revealed their prejudice by finding it hard to accept that many black folk in one picture.

Hi Michael, I'm glad you like the presence of the URCA here.

While I know that there are a large body of movie critics on the Internet, I can't recall any major ones having a problem with too many people of color being in the MATRIX movies. Can you give me a few names? Links to those reviews?

I'm hoping you will touch upon the White damsel phenomenon in Science fiction/Horror movies as well. We see it in the media as Missing white woman syndrome, but its mirrored in movies as well. This goes back to D.W. Griffith's, Birth of a Nation, and almost every cowboy movie I have ever seen. The heroine will almost always be rail-thin and blond; even though the aim of the movie is for her to represent every woman.

She is not only the love interest of the white male protagonist, but she also gets to save the world on occasion. If a black male is paired with her; she is usually in charge and he will risk his life to save hers. There may even be some sexual tension between the two, but he will not be allowed to touch her in that manner. She as well as the white hero will of course have a sexual relation of some type with a white significant other (as in The Reaping.) The black man is just too busy to think of such things. For instance in the movie, The Core - the black scientist is smart enough to create a machine to burrow to the earth's core, but he dies first? Ha!

In Hollywood movies, blondes are helpless and often stupid. If someone else isn't there to take care of them (NEAR DARK, CUJO, THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL [1999], FINAL DESTINATION), they'll die (THE HOWLING, DEADLY BLESSINGS, THE ASTRONAUT'S WIFE). In Hollywood Horror Thrillers, the only smart blondes are evil ones like in TOTAL RECALL (Sharon Stone). Brunettes and redheads are often smart and take charge of their own lives - at least by the end (HALLOWEEN, ALIEN, ALTERED STATES, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS).

And it isn't just the black man who will risk his life for the woman. The male hero will always risk his life or the woman regardless of anyone's race.

It also isn't just the white woman who gets to be the hero. As long as all of the other male minorities are killed off, the minority woman can be the hero, as seen in movies like CONAN THE DESTROYER (Grace Jones), PREDATOR (Elpidia Carillo), THE RUNNING MAN (Maria Conchita Alonso), ALIEN vs PREDATOR (Sanaa Lathan). (28 DAYS LATER wasn't made by Hollywood so that doesn't count and IDLE HANDS is a comedy and the Racial Cliche is apparently lifted for comedies - I don't know why)

And that's my touch on the subject of the "White Damsel In Distress".

The problem for one is demographics, not just race. For we blacks make up so little of the population. If you grown up in an all white neighborhood, and if most of your heroes and people in authority are all white; then you will be conditioned unconsciously to think in those terms. So every reference for anything good and positive will have a white face attached to it. Think of all of the children’s fantasy movies that account for every conceivable formula. Nothing wonderful and magical happens to black children. If it does they almost have to act white to garner such attention.

Disney has just gotten around to making a feature film with a black character; amazing in this day and age. The list is endless: A boy and his dog- a boy and his monkey, a boy and his Fairy God Mother- Father Cousin, Space ship and so on. You have a boy and his alien, a boy and his Negro (Huckleberry Finn) and so on. You may have one black child included as a supporting character, but the bulk of the movie will deal with the white children.

Hollywood as well as the news media tells us black folk we really don't matter. Whites just think in terms of other whites. It doesn't even occur to them that the decisions to hire or fire - to cast or not to cast, might appear racist. Just like in the sitcom, Friends - their world just doesn't include blacks. Keep up the good work!

Love your page!!
Michael Gibson

I hope you're getting the message that the Unfair Racial Cliche Alert that I write about isn't just about black people, but the way Hollywood treats all non-whites in Horror Thriller movies. Otherwise, everything you say is true. But this is also true: Like Robert Rodriguez, Spike Lee, Guillermo Del Toro, John Singleton, The Hughes Bros., Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson and far more, nothing "racial" stops any minority in the U.S. from getting some equipment together and making their own movie.

"That's why we gotta make movies, and we be in the future. But we gotta make some really hip movies. We done made enough movies about pimps, because white folks already know about pimpin'. 'Cause we the biggest hos they got."
- Richard Pryor

Thanks for reading feoamante.com, Michael! I hope you continue to enjoy it!

71 movies and counting. This is the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT aka URCA, and the mere fact that I call attention to it really freaks some people out!

I can't understand why you are so up in arms about this stupid shit! Why aren't you worried about how Hollywood is pushing the limits of the things they can show us in movies? Things like infants being held at gunpoint while their mothers are molested by mutants? (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) Or 6 year old girls turning into vampires and being decapitated on screen? (30 DAYS OF NIGHT) Get the hell over yourself and start worrying about something important.

Keixell

Hi Keixell,

Thanks for reading the Unfair Racial Cliche Alert!

I'll address your concerns in order.

"I can't understand why you are so up in arms about this stupid shit!"

Because I think it's important.

"Why aren't you worried about how Hollywood is pushing the limits of the things they can show us in movies?"

I am. I call it The Unfair Racial Cliché Alert.

"Things like infants being held at gunpoint while their mothers are molested by mutants?"

It's a Horror Thriller movie. That's a horrifying thing, isn't it? Like the little kid who gets burned to death in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Or like the kid who gets eaten by the shark in JAWS? Or the kid who gets possessed in THE EXORCIST? Or the children who are killed by birds in THE BIRDS?

"Or 6 year old girls turning into vampires and being decapitated on screen?"

It's a Horror Thriller movie. That's a ... you really aren't clear on the concept of Horror, are you?

"Get the hell over yourself and start worrying about something important."

So you are all upset because I'm "up in arms" over what I think is important, when I SHOULD start worrying about what YOU think is important?

And I'M the one who needs to get over MYSELF?

You're kidding, right?

72 movies and counting. This is the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT aka URCA, and some people are glad to know that this place exists and that they're not just paranoid.

Hi,

I just had to write and tell you that for years my wife and I used to chuckle about this err, coincidence/phenomena in the movies but thought it was us. Maybe it still is <grin> but the odds of such a recurring theme happening 70 or more times seems to be a bit high to be random. I can't wait to show her your pages on this tomorrow. I'm echoing something you said in an earlier response: I don't get the idea that people think characters "just die" in a movie. It's not like this stuff is actually happening and a filming crew had the good fortune of being at the right place and time to capture it. I suspect that making movies is a very controlled process and nothing slips by unless you have a bad continuity or editing team.

These "death decisions" aren’t organic, real-time events.

Rodney Smith

Thanks for writing, Rodney.

In 2007 alone, we went from 61 mere coincidences to 72 coincidences.

Tomorrow - January 1, 2008 - we will be seven years into the 21st Century and this Hollywood racist stupidity shows no sign of stopping.