Race Choice and Transformation in Pop Culture
Fictional studies of race choice and transformation have often occurred in drama and literature and especially in works of science fiction. In Greg Bear's books Eon and Eternity, new human consciousness is created in a virtual realm and the parents choose the race of their children when it is time for them to be 'birthed' into the real physical world. In this work as well, many humans do not conform to the standard human shape and choose a variety of form and sizes in which to exist both in the physical world and in the virtually.
In an episode of the animated TV show South Park, Kyle tries out for the basketball team, but is not very good. Wanting to be better, he goes to a plastic surgeon and asks if there is a surgery to make him tall and black. The doctor recommends a "negroplasty" for Kyle. The surgery is done, but Kyle's knees break during the basketball game. The doctor decides to revert him back to his normal white self, for a "small fee".
In another example, the movie Soul Man from 1986 involved race transformation of a white applicant to Harvard Law School. Unable to pay for tuition, the main character received a scholarship under the pretense of being black.
The cast of the MTV reality TV show Jersey shore openly voice their preference for having darker skin/ tanning. They openly discuss their dislike of having light/ pale skin, so they tan themselves to a more ethnic skin color. They happen to be "Italian" or portraying the state's large Italian American community, although most of the staff are not of Italian descent.
Read more about this topic: Racial Transformation
Famous quotes containing the words pop culture, race, choice, pop and/or culture:
“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“We set this nation up ... to vindicate the rights of man. We did not name any differences between one race and another. We opened our gates to all the world and said: “Let all men who want to be free come to us and they will be welcome.””
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Utah is the only State that gives condemned men a choice between death by hanging or before a firing squad. Most prisoners prefer the firing squad, but one obstinate convict in 1912 elected to be hanged because “hanging is more expensive to the state.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Education must, then, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthener of the will to explore them.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)