Thread by @NonHumanMedia1

Pearl Jam is one the highest selling bands of the 90's and made a massive hit (Jeremy) about a school shooter

https://twitter.com/status_culture/status/1578416136101601280

And before yall say "that was different, they weren't glorifying it", the Rolling Stones, one of the biggest rock bands ever, made music that glorified slavery, rape, torture and pedophilia all in one song twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Eminem, the best selling rapper of all time, has countless songs talking about killing his mother, killing the mother of his child, and violence against women and society more generally
Eminem - Kill You

Johnny Cash is one of the most celebrated artists in country music history and Folsom Prison Blues contains this well known line:

"I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"

System of a Down's breakout hit Chop Suey, which has over 1.2 billion views on YouTube and has been featured in the video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is a song about drug addiction and suicide

Is this "depicting the underbelly" of their culture? 🤔

Outside of music, Italian Americans like Martin Scorsese and others have a long history of depicting Italian gangsters on film as violent and ruthless criminals who kill and murder their own family at the drop of a hat

Goodfellas (1990)

Uncut Gems (2019) is a film starring Adam Sandler that was written and directed by the Safdie Brothers (all Jewish Americans)

The movie depicts the violence and corruption that is associated with New York Diamond District

There is a deeper conversation to be had about how America and white owned media perpetuates negative stereotypes about Black Americans but it is more than just music/entertainment but other institutions like the education system, the banking/finance system, white churches etc..

Black Americans have continually tried to fight these stereotypes and change their image but "The problem of African Americans is their placement in the bottom
racial category, for there they are the foundation to the entire racial paradigm"

Put more simply

Black American culture is the most commodified because Black Americans used to be commodities
#Reparations