[lbo-talk] the black guy in the red tunic

[Andy F]

Whether by dint of deficiencies in my exposure to popular culture or
of where and when I was raised, I never consciously noticed on my own
the unusually low life expectancy of secondary black characters in
action movies and TV shows.  So after this plot convention gets
pointed out to me a couple of years ago, I start seeing it everywhere,
like that Far Side cartoon with all the people walking around on the
street carrying ducks under their arms.

Then I forget that not everybody notices the ducks.  In the new King
Kong, shortly after the crew is decimated in a dinosaur stampede and
the survivors find themselves on a precarious log perched over an
abyss, the experienced and loyal first mate (who happens to be black)
volunteers to explore that dark, thirty-foot diameter cave mouth over
there, armed with a pistol, leaving behind the armory of submachine
guns.   The shot turns to the perspective from inside the cave, with
the first mate framed against the entrance, warily scanning the
hopelessly pitch black interior, and the remaining crew clinging to
the tree trunk in the background.   So I think, "Ah hah!  Comic relief
coming up!  Those other crewmembers are going to get silently picked
off by Something Horrible!  Jackson is reading my mind and stealing my
ideas!  Then again, who could miss such an obv.... Oh.  Ugh.  Never
mind."

That's not a spoiler.

The other day there's this poster advertising Skechers shoes.  It's
done in an ironic combination of James Bond and early Old Navy
commercials, with evil geniuses, cunning vixens, square-jawed heroes
riding dangerous experimental vehicles, and a black man succumbing to
a vampire while the white one fends others off with a stake.

So, does anybody catalog this stuff?  Bonus for web sources.

Thanks,

--
Andy