https://www.yahoo.com/music/snoop-dogg-wont-watching-roots-181917825.html The Rapper said he was sick of movies that depict historical racial abuse against African Americans. "How the f*** they gonna put Roots on Memorial Day? They gonna just keep beating that s in our heads of how they did us, huh? I don't understand America. They just want to keep showing the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But, guess what? We taking the same abuse [now]. Think about that part." A video posted by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on May 30, 2016 at 8:55am PDT The singer also ... Mr.Snoop_Lion is correct, enough playing the victim card, enough looking at the past as an excuse. Time to look in the mirror accept responsibility for the Present, and become something more then a macro charity case.
Everyone should watch Roots including White people. You need to know the origins of racism in America to understand modern race-relations.
I agree with the second sentence, but I actually have seen a lot of African-Americans express irritation at the reboot too. Not only does it show a creative drought on the industry's part, but I get the sense that Black people in general are sick of being constantly presented as slaves and victims in historical media. I don't blame them one bit. I wouldn't mind seeing more African history movies like this being made in Hollywood for instance (unfortunately I don't think there is an English version available for American viewing): [video=youtube;siCT-3I_GDE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siCT-3I_GDE[/video] The African continent does have a richer history than people give it credit for, and there could also be more fantasy movies with African-based settings and characters in my opinion.
I just watched the second episode and while I agree with Jabrosky that Africa has stories worth telling Roots is the story of African-American people and how they survived slavery and brutality at the hands of White slave masters. It isn't all about the victimization of Black people but their survival in the face of tremendous injustice.
Haven't seen it yet, but while I get Snoop's point about being seen as bottom of the barrel, that's still part of our history and American history, whether we like it or not.
two things: 1) Roots is horrible. The blacks were painted as having the intellectual capacity somewhere between a caveman and Down's Syndrome patient. and 2) A friend of mine hung out with Snoop for about a half hour once when Snoop was being paid to make a quick appearance in something and they were behind schedule so there were a bunch of people standing around waiting, including Snoop. Said he was funny as hell.
I haven't watched all of the original Roots but after seeing the last episode it seems that your prediction is wrong. Anna Paquin's character was a courageous White woman.
I haven't seen this new version of Roots, and I doubt I will watch it. I liked the book by Alex Haley and the movie made from the book. I doubt they can improve on it.
I've heard that book is not very historically accurate and much of it was plagiarized. White people did not roam around Africa enslaving blacks. They stayed near the coast and bought the slaves that black slave traders brought to them. Africa was not really a safe place for white people to be roaming around back then because of all the dangers and tropical diseases such as malaria that white people had no natural immunity to.