URL of your Blog?

[freedomtrain]

I heard you on the interview you did with a Star Wars site. You mentioned a blog you have. What is the address for that?

I'm really feeling everything your talkin about.

[Steven Barnes]

journals.aol.com/sebarnes/STEVESBLOG/

[SunnyDerek]

Thanks Steve! I'm a big fan and enjoy reading your thoughts on various subjects. I especially liked your insightful "Race, Sex and Cinema".

A couple of random points about it:

1. The phenomenon you point out is real and indisputable, but is it really a *human* issue? Let me suggest the possibility that it may be a cultural issue.

Consider the French. Racially similar to White Americans but quite different culturally. Thus "The Lover" can be a blockbuster there but not here. Thus the strong French flavoring of Jet Li's "Danny the Dog". Perhaps the American White male discomfort has more to do with the legacy of British snobbishness than human nature?

2. "Save the Last Dance" may be the shape of things to come. We are in a megatrend where White females, rather than any non-White males, have become the predominant competitors of White males. Managerial and senior executive positions are no longer the exclusive domain of White men, and the group taking the biggest slice of the pie away from them is White women.

As White women gain power in society, it turns out they want the same things that White men want - increased freedom to choose, more options, more possibilities for mating and romance. Thus we see more and more high profile women taking on younger or poorer men, crossing the age barrier (Demi Moore, Cameron Diaz, etc.) and class barrier (Britney Spears) just as men always have when it suits them.

It may be exactly the same with racial barrier. Why not? When White women have the power to choose, they may well decide to not limit themselves by race. They may well decide to give themselves the freedom that White American men have always thought of as their birthright.

Thus the success of "Save the Last Dance" may be but the tip of a very large iceberg moving slowly toward us. If I'm right, in a few years we should see the first blockbuster romantic comedy featuring a Black or Asian male lead... a sort of "Sleepless in Inglewood" (or Monterey Park) where dancing or Kung Fu are not part of the picture, but still makes tons of money playing to, again, a mostly White female audience.

[Steven Barnes]

Frankly, I find "Save the Last Dance" to be an excellent example. the audience was 80% women, and it made a good profit. White guys avoided it like the plague. I'm willing to suggest the "human" problem rather than an American problem despite the fact that I haven't done extensive research into other cultures and how they deal with it. I know there is more interracial material in Sweden, for instance, but then there is probably no real-world competition for mates (blacks are probably less than 1% of the population) and no history of oppression (the idea of the oppressed getting "pay-back" is fairly universal). I'd bet that post British Colonial occupation of India, the idea of an Englishwoman having a relationship with a dark-skinned Indian was anathama. These things take time to break down...I agree though, that increasing female power will change this. Females of all groups are attracted to males of all groups, and vice versa. All else is cultural conditioning and legal BS.

Steve