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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6187
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 08, 2007 - 07:18 pm: | 
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Lives of the spoiled and the spoiling to make it.
By Jon Caramanica,
Special to The Times
July 8, 2007
"I have no problem with the Hills," 18-year-old Staci assures on this week's premiere of BET's reality series "Baldwin Hills." "They have a problem with me."
Like many outsiders — Staci is the lone female cast member who doesn't live in the titular neighborhood — she is a bit defensive and too proud to really admit it, instead passing judgment on the show's better-heeled girls by feigning disinterest. "Let them do what they do," she says. "Be bougie."
If she is meant to be the voice of reason on "Baldwin Hills" (BET, 10 p.m. Tuesdays), she has accepted a fool's task. Clearly inspired by MTV's "Laguna Beach," "Baldwin Hills" follows a handful of teens who live in and around the so-called black Beverly Hills. "Not all black people live in the ghetto," goes the show's intro. "This is our 'hood — big houses, manicured lawns, amazing vistas."
Or, put more succinctly by Ashley: "When we go shopping for a party, we do it big."
The Unusually Entitled Young Person has become a familiar TV trope in recent years, but save for reruns of "The Cosby Show" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," black teens in this income bracket are largely absent. (Another rare exception is MTV's routinely glorious "My Super Sweet 16," which is equal opportunity in its selection and presentation of spoiled young people.)
The innovations of "Baldwin Hills" stop there, though — these kids are, by and large, just as frivolous as their peers down the 405. They attend parties (thrown by Jordan, one of their own), shop at Christian Audigier (except for Staci, who, natch, shops at Rainbow) and inch tentatively toward romantic mismatches.
But these kids seem particularly conscious of the cameras — even though they are often placed at a distance, as in "Laguna Beach" — and their descriptive voice-overs sound stiff and scripted. They're not wholly at ease, as if they're still carrying some of the burden of representation of their parents' generation — a weight the white kids of "Laguna Hills" never needed to bother themselves with.
Auditioning with Diddy...
Full Article: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-monitor8jul08,1,5275489.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&track=crosspromo
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6189
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 09, 2007 - 12:46 am: |
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Network for Blacks Broadens Its Schedule
By FELICIA R. LEE
Published: July 9, 2007
Though no one would accuse BET of suddenly going highbrow, “Baldwin Hills,” which begins tomorrow night at 10, and “Exalted!,” a biography series starting in the fall that will focus on ministers, help answer the long criticism that BET fails to mirror the complexity of black life.
“This is the largest aggregation of black programming in television history,” said Mr. Hudlin, a 45-year-old Harvard graduate who came to BET in 2005, having made a name as a director. His films include “Boomerang” and “House Party,” and he directed the pilot for “Everybody Hates Chris,” the hit television series inspired by the life of the comedian Chris Rock.
“We’re developing a class of creators that will develop the next generation of stars who will transform the game,” Mr. Hudlin said, sitting in his sunny office decorated with superhero dolls and photographs of his young daughter. “Unless you make institutional changes, things aren’t going to be made.”
He continued: “Where’s the black David Kelley or Dick Wolf? That’s how we’re going to grow at BET. The model is Motown.”
The network, which says it reaches about 85 million homes, has an 18 percent nonblack audience, and its core viewers are 18 to 34 years old.
“They are working toward finding a balance,” Mark Anthony Neal, director of the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies at Duke University, said of BET’s new shows. Professor Neal, who teaches black popular culture, predicted that at a network geared toward mostly young people, in a television landscape that shuns complexity, “the analysis is never going to be in-depth, but at least they will begin touching on different subjects.”
The new shows come as television can no longer depend simply on demographics for audience loyalty, said R. Thomas Umstead, the programming editor for Multichannel News, a publication that provides cable-television news and analysis. “African-Americans are not monolithic. They are not going to sit and watch one channel all day long.”
Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/arts/television/09bet.html?ref=business |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6203
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 09:14 pm: |
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Advertisers pull out of Ghetto Mess
Amid criticism that BET's upcoming series Hot Ghetto Mess promotes racial stereotypes, State Farm Insurance and Home Depot have yanked ads from the premiere episode, which will air at 10:30 p.m. EST on July 25, as well as from a webpage on BET.com touting the program. Hot Ghetto Mess is a compilation of viewer-submitted home videos and BET-produced man-on-the-street segments showing black people said to be exhibiting excessive hip-hop and inner-city culture. Charlie Murphy hosts all six episodes of the series. The Hot Ghetto Mess website has been a lightning rod for criticism since it launched three years ago, featuring hundreds of unflattering photos of mostly black men and women. BET and Jam Donaldson, creator of the website and executive producer of the series, say the projects are presented in a way intended to encourage black America to question its community standards. Critics say Mess simply perpetuates negative black stereotypes. The advertiser pull-out follows a campaign launched by the blog/podcast What About Our Daughters encouraging people to boycott advertisers of the series, listing a number of companies with ads on BET's website promoting the show. ''This is all a desperate attempt to catch up with their network cousin, VH1, home of Flavor of Love, I Love New York, and Charm School,'' the WAOD site states. ''Faced with the frightening possibility that the top-rated shows for blacks were all on another network, BET has attempted to one-up VH1 by racing farther and faster to the bottom.'' State Farm and Home Depot released statements acknowledging that they withdrew ads as a result of the boycott threat. (Hollywood Reporter)
Full Roundup:
20045241%2C00.html,http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20045241,00.html
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Serenasailor
Veteran Poster
Username: Serenasailor
Post Number: 1699
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 03:36 am: |
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Interesting his brother makes a movie demeaning Black women now Charly Murphy makes a movie about demeaning Black ppl. It seems to run in that family. |
Nels
Veteran Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 863
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 01:04 am: |
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HGM? Nothin' but bluglies; black & ugly. |
Sabiana
Regular Poster
Username: Sabiana
Post Number: 146
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 07:05 am: |
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Again with the negativity. I'm beginning to think you're
a.) a troll
b.) suffering from depression
c.) just a plain ass
Pick one Nels. I'm going with a.) and c.) |
Brownbeauty123
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 2060
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 09:22 am: |
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I don't think that he is a black person at all. |
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