Sasheer Zamata New Featured Player on SNL

So SNL has finally hired a black female player--Sasheer Zamata. Hmm. On the one hand, it's about time. There couldn't really have been a dearth of talented black female comedians for this long. On the other, she's gonna have a lot of scrutiny on her. Every laugh she gains or fails to gain will be under a microscope.

I wouldn't want that kind of pressure. It wouldn't be very conducive to the creative atmosphere of making people laugh.

So who is Sasheer Zamata? I'm not sure. Apparently, she does a Beyonce impression. I've watched a little of her stand-up, but I guess we'll all see how she does once she's with the cast. I expect to see a lot of 'bout time jokes. I hope they let her find her own naturally.

Comments

The Kevin Hart Train

For the moment it seems that Mr. Hart is very hot. He has proven that he can carry a movie. More importantly, he can sell a movie outside the 'urban' community (how does urban translate to blacks? Do rural blacks not count somehow?). Yes, Mr. Hart is on the rise. He's taken advantage of that momentum and positioned himself most favorably and profitably in upcoming high-profile comedies. He's even doing a movie next year with Josh Gad that sounds much like Hitch -- a Will Smith vehicle. Hart's strategy is clearly to be as broad and commercial as possible, which I think will work...if he paces himself. I'm just seeing a lot of him these days. On top of that, in every movie he's playing the same kind of character. That brash, screechy tomfoolery cowardly sort. When he plays a more subtle character, I notice that those movies don't do so well. That's a not so good thing in Hart's favor. Slowing down and choosing roles more carefully--ones that ...

Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four Movie

Sometimes I don't want to have topics to write about for this blog. I want it to be irrelevant. Anyways... Mr. Michael B. has been cast as The Human Torch in the upcoming reboot of The Fantastic Four movie. Do I think he will be good in the role? Well, if the script doesn't hamstring him, he should do fine. Of course, I wonder how they will handle his canonically biologically Caucasian sister. Yet the director seemed to always wanted Michael B. for the part...but they cast his sister, Sue Storm, as white. The interwebz, as usual, went crazy. It's no wonder: they had problems with Jessica Alba being too 'ethnic' and tan for the part of Sue Storm in the 2005 movie so I'm sure a black man for a part that has always been white in the comic books and previous movies has left people positively slathering about the mouth. 'Oh, this will ruin everything because...' Yes, the color of his skin will somehow ruin everything. Thanks for that. At least that...

Sacramento Comic Con Talk: The Battle for Multicultural Heroes

I went to another small talk today at Comic Con about diversity in pop culture. It was okay. The only problem was one of the speakers were late and then talked over. I should have left early. The questions they asked the audience were deliberately too specific (Okay...people of Caucasian descent, what do you think?--oh...because other ethnicities have spoken enough and Caucasians have never gotten their say--right...More whites from the audience spoke than blacks. Hmm). I do agree that the reason that more diversity doesn't exist in the comic book world is because its audience doesn't accept it. I find 'nerds' very intolerant and insular. They hate change and don't take very well to encroachment upon their worlds, nor are they very sympathetic to other people's worldviews. All that together is just a big ole pile of apathetic indifference to diversity. They like their medium the way it is. If it's not diverse, so what? They're not going to go out of th...

The Viewing Culture

Search This Blog