Grexploitation
Much of the world is inundated with American mass "culture" from the ubiquitous Snickers(TM) and Doritos (TM) snacks adorning kiosks the world over, to the proliferation of African-Judaic ( respect yo! ) musical forms filling the background to every public space from London to Moscow to Tokyo to downtown Athens.
American cinema has contributed a great deal to racial and religious stereotypes . Some of my personal favorites are the blaxploitation series that began in the early 1970s . Films such as "Shank" and "Superfly" depict knife-wielding, gun-toting,drug-abusing /drug-dealing and pimping subsaharan-African-derived-Americans living their life in the racial ghettos of the multicultural American empire.
Recent years have seen the growth of a new sub-genre ,which I venture to label as , Grexploitation. Nia Vardalos can be credited with beginning this new trend. Her film, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" earned her accolades from the Queen of England, numerous commendations from "Greek-American" organizations, and over a hundred million dollars in ticket sales. Her and her Puerto Rican-Jew husband's bank account is, no doubt, "Big and Fat."
Vardalos's production portrayed us as brash,rude, hyper-emotional, uneducated, social retards who mistake a trademark American disinfectant as some sort of snake medicine cure-all. Greek-Orthodox rituals were haphazardly shown as bizarre to peals of laughter from millions of white irreligious English speakers. To further the stereotypes, the swarthy Greek Pocahontas marries the man of her dreams, what subsaharan-African-derived-Americans would call "a white honkey."
The genre of grexploitation has also reached the literal world. Jeffrey Eugenides, who describes himself as American as well as "1/4 Greek", has authored a book that has sold,literally, millions of copies. The theme: a Greek hermaphrodite who escaped Turkish massacre in Smyrna finds refuge in America and then happily dates/fucks followers of the "Nation of Islam" ( a religious cult that preaches African racial supremacy and recruits the majority of its followers from the American prison system)
The Greek network television station Antenna is now heralding the birth of a new sit-com called "Charlies Coming Home" According to one report this show plans to depict London's Greek-Cypriot diaspora, in the words of one critic, the show will be " Treating English Cypriots as drug dealers, thieves, intellectually challenged morons who speak an unknown tongue similar to Gringlish"
At least this latest Greek show from Greece is taking Grexploitation to a new realm, not only will we have the recent phenomenon of Greek rappers in Greece, now Greeks can look to the "bruthas" and learn how to get "respect'"
I'm actually dying to see an episode of this new show.
This issue of Cyprus Weekly covers "Charlies Coming Home": http://www.cyprusweekly.com.cy/default.aspx?articleID=8472&heading=Soapbox
American cinema has contributed a great deal to racial and religious stereotypes . Some of my personal favorites are the blaxploitation series that began in the early 1970s . Films such as "Shank" and "Superfly" depict knife-wielding, gun-toting,drug-abusing /drug-dealing and pimping subsaharan-African-derived-Americans living their life in the racial ghettos of the multicultural American empire.
Recent years have seen the growth of a new sub-genre ,which I venture to label as , Grexploitation. Nia Vardalos can be credited with beginning this new trend. Her film, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" earned her accolades from the Queen of England, numerous commendations from "Greek-American" organizations, and over a hundred million dollars in ticket sales. Her and her Puerto Rican-Jew husband's bank account is, no doubt, "Big and Fat."
Vardalos's production portrayed us as brash,rude, hyper-emotional, uneducated, social retards who mistake a trademark American disinfectant as some sort of snake medicine cure-all. Greek-Orthodox rituals were haphazardly shown as bizarre to peals of laughter from millions of white irreligious English speakers. To further the stereotypes, the swarthy Greek Pocahontas marries the man of her dreams, what subsaharan-African-derived-Americans would call "a white honkey."
The genre of grexploitation has also reached the literal world. Jeffrey Eugenides, who describes himself as American as well as "1/4 Greek", has authored a book that has sold,literally, millions of copies. The theme: a Greek hermaphrodite who escaped Turkish massacre in Smyrna finds refuge in America and then happily dates/fucks followers of the "Nation of Islam" ( a religious cult that preaches African racial supremacy and recruits the majority of its followers from the American prison system)
The Greek network television station Antenna is now heralding the birth of a new sit-com called "Charlies Coming Home" According to one report this show plans to depict London's Greek-Cypriot diaspora, in the words of one critic, the show will be " Treating English Cypriots as drug dealers, thieves, intellectually challenged morons who speak an unknown tongue similar to Gringlish"
At least this latest Greek show from Greece is taking Grexploitation to a new realm, not only will we have the recent phenomenon of Greek rappers in Greece, now Greeks can look to the "bruthas" and learn how to get "respect'"
I'm actually dying to see an episode of this new show.
This issue of Cyprus Weekly covers "Charlies Coming Home": http://www.cyprusweekly.com.cy/default.aspx?articleID=8472&heading=Soapbox
1 Comments:
I laughed my ass off when you wrote:
"Vardalos's production portrayed us as brash,rude, hyper-emotional, uneducated, social retards who mistake a trademark American disinfectant as some sort of snake medicine cure-all."
Brilliant, man!
As for that show in which the alarmist critic you quoted denounces it as depicting Cypriots as "drug dealers, thieves, intellectually challenged morons who speak an unknown tongue similar to Gringlish", I have to admit that this would very well be an ingenious concept for a reality-based show mocking everyday Cypriots. I don't see the harm if its fellow Greeks doing it.
Sadly, if the Greek station Antenna has anything to do with its production, it'll just be one of a plethora of moronic comedies that they are responsible for.
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