Tuesday 17 June 2008

Is Racism "Happening"?

This piece at the Orlando Sentinel is amusing - apparently, the Guardian review of M. Night Shyamalan's new film The Happening plays the race card. At the end of the review it asks: "Can it be a kind of racism that the Indian-born, Philadelphia-raised auteur is hammered for his apparent character (or funny name) rather more than, say, Quentin Tarantino or Spike Lee?" The very first comment in response to the article says simply: "No."

It seems to me that the reason the film is getting slammed is because it's an awful film. My sister went to see it a few days ago and said it was laughably bad. Shyamalan hasn't made a good film since Signs, which I liked. In fact, apart from that The Sixth Sense was his only other good one. Let's cut the "racism" silliness, please.

Also, it is worth noting that the Guardian columnist who played the racism card is Kim Newman, whose absolutely terrible short stories I have had the unpleasant experience of reading on several occasions. Maybe his opinion doesn't (or shouldn't) count for an awful lot after all.

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