Hotep Movie Moment -- Lean On Me
Y’all know one of the
Hotep-est movies ever made was based on a real-life event, right?
In the 1989 classic film Lean
On Me, Joe Clark (above right), portrayed by the voice of everyone’s
conscience Morgan Freeman (left) is tasked with the tall order of being the
cleaner of beleaguered East Side High in Paterson NJ.
Hollyweird norms would
serve it that he would fail MISERABLY in this task and eventually need to be
saved by someone whose skin is much paler than his own, but be-damned-lieve it
or not, he succeeded!
He went up in that school and he yelled at people, he bullied the crackheads, he threatened the dealers and risked his own freedom to keep those kids safe and get those damn test scores up!
He went up in that school and he yelled at people, he bullied the crackheads, he threatened the dealers and risked his own freedom to keep those kids safe and get those damn test scores up!
Hoo-fuckin’-ray Hollyweird!
One time in the then-76 years of motion pictures featuring sound, they
let a Black man come into a shit situation and make it a NOT shit situation
without first involving a White Savior™.
AND this shit was based on a real true story?
Something HAS to be awry, right?
RIGHT?
Something HAS to be awry, right?
RIGHT?
Maaaaaan… The whole damn thing
was made up. If we were to have been
told that a high school was saved from being taken over by the state (what in
the fuck even IS that?) and it was a Black man who stepped in and saved this from taking
place, then that man would get one of the 20 days of school we spend every February,
don’t you think?
Yes, there was a Joe Louis
Clark who was the principal of East Side High and yes he was a tough
disciplinarian with a bullhorn and ball bat.
Yes, he attempted to put some life into these kids by kicking like 300
of them out and yes the numbers did move slightly up – a fact WAY overplayed in
the movie.
*BUT*
His jettisoning of the bad
apples from the school also soured and shied away some of the good ones
too. Furthermore, he only created new
street level problems by putting the problem children out of the one
environment where they MIGHT be rehabilitated to thrive.
Fuck, the movie even goes
as far as to SUGGEST that the state was threatening to take over the school
when that was not even actually the case in real life.
… and this is why Hollywood hates
us.
One year after the real Joe
Clark resigned and went to do his shtick where it might be better received, in
the prison system, the state decided to take cues from the movie. Instead of letting Warner Brothers
Entertainment slander them with a big angry strong Black man, they took over the
fucking school anyway.
Hollyweird is undefeated in
its distaste for Black America. It
really really is. Sure, they gave us 124 minutes of a Black man doing wonderful things and turning other brown peoples' situations positive, but this was not without the real-life consequences of the exact opposite happening to the very people portrayed in that same film.
Fuck you Hollyweird, fuck you indeed.
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