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)
“All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The children [on TV] are too well behaved and are reasonable beyond their years. All the children pop in with exceptional insights. On many of the shows the children’s insights are apt to be unexpectedly philosophical. The lesson seems to be, “Listen to little children carefully and you will learn great truths.””
—G. Weinberg. originally quoted in “What Is Television’s World of the Single Parent Doing to Your Family?” TV Guide (August 1970)
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)