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Sterlin Harjo says ‘Reservation Dogs’ gives audiences permission to laugh : NPR

September 29, 2022 by humorouz Leave a Comment

Series co-creator Sterlin Harjo attends the series premiere of Reservation Dogs in Hollywood, Calif., Aug. 5, 2021.

Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images


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Series co-creator Sterlin Harjo attends the series premiere of Reservation Dogs in Hollywood, Calif., Aug. 5, 2021.

Reservations Dogs co-creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo says he grew up surrounded by the “best storytellers in the world.”

Harjo remembers sitting in his grandmother’s kitchen as a kid, listening to tales of amazing characters — either real or imagined — often doing mundane or ordinary things. The magic was in the telling; a story about someone making a simple run to the store could be infused with sadness and regret, coincidence and magic.

“That’s how I learned to tell stories. … You can’t say that cinema is a Native American art form, but storytelling is, ” Harjo says. “I try to capture just a small amount of that in [Reservation Dogs].”

Reservation Dogs is the first and only TV series where every writer, director and series regular is Indigenous. Part comedy and part drama, the FX series streaming on Hulu follows four teenagers who long to escape the dead ends they face living on a reservation. They’re frustrated and alienated, caught between what’s left of traditional Native culture on the reservation and the broader pop culture. The show highlights the importance of Native traditions — while also mocking how tradition can be turned into sanctimonious pop culture clichés.

Harjo belongs to the Seminole and Muscogee Nations, and he says the positive feedback from his community — including his parents — is what keeps him going: “My dad, one day, said to me, ‘This show has given people, Native people, a reason to hold their heads up a little higher.'”

Last Halloween, Harjo noticed something he hadn’t seen before: “Every year at Halloween, there’s people that dress up in these fake, dime-store Indian clothing. And they are ‘Indian’ for Halloween. And we’ve all seen that growing up. We’ve all seen it. And my kids are going to have to see it. But all of a sudden, after Season 1, people, kids started dressing up as the Reservation Dogs. So many pictures flooded in on social media of them dressed as the Reservation Dogs.”

Interview highlights

On why he prefers the term “Indian” to “Native American”

My grandma said “Indian,” so I’m not here to change what my grandma said. And it’s what I know. I’m sorry that Christopher Columbus got it wrong, but that’s what we call ourselves, you know? That’s what we call ourselves. I also say “Native” and I say “Indigenous.” Just depending on where I’m at and who I’m talking to, those are all interchangeable to me. “Native American” is just a mouthful.

On the show’s name Reservation Dogs title paying homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs

It came out when I was in college, and it was right as I discovered that I could be a filmmaker. … My father had a friend who worked for the cable company, and that’s the only way that we got cable. So I was able to watch movies for free because his friend did some backdoor stuff and hooked us up with a cable box that allowed us to watch HBO and Showtime. I just became immersed in movies and pop culture. MTV was out at the time. I think that when you’re from a rural community, that’s kind of how you live your life. You almost live your life through movies and through pop culture. … First of all, it’s a catchy title, not a lie, Taika [Waititi] and I came up with it. And then it was, well, if we’re going to have this show where these kids are living through and constantly referencing pop culture, like we have to tip our hat to the master of that.

On playing with the stereotypical “Indian warrior” imagery in the pilot

Most of the time people are very precious with Native people, like, “This is no laughing matter.” This is very serious and stoic, and that’s kind of how the world is trained to view us. We realize we need to bake into the show permission to laugh with us.

Paulina Alexis, Devery Jacobs, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and Lane Factor play the title characters in Reservations Dogs, a series about teenagers living on a reservation in Oklahoma.

Shane Brown/ FX on Hulu


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Paulina Alexis, Devery Jacobs, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and Lane Factor play the title characters in Reservations Dogs, a series about teenagers living on a reservation in Oklahoma.

And I think that that spirit character, he comes in at this moment in the pilot. … If I asked most people in the world to draw a Native American, that’s what they would draw. They would draw an Indian that was dressed in buckskins from the 1800s. They wouldn’t draw me. They wouldn’t draw any of the characters on the show. So it was almost like giving people some familiar territory and then turning it on its head.

On growing up on the Muscogee Reservation in Oklahoma

Right now I live on the Muscogee Reservation, which is part of Tulsa. Through a lot of complicated government policy and interactions with tribal governments that I can’t go into because it’d be another show, it was not identified as a reservation before, but it is now. But if you look at Oklahoma, it used to be Indian Territory, which was essentially one big reservation. Then, of course, oil and the land and other things disrupted that.

But this is where Trail of Tears ended. This is where all of the tribes that were forcibly removed by the U.S. government were brought to Indian Territory, which is Oklahoma now. So essentially it was one giant reservation. And you go an hour in any direction in Oklahoma or 30 minutes in any direction, in Oklahoma, you’re going to be in a new tribal territory, with different tribal languages on the stop signs and on signage in the town. Different cultures, different customs. And so it’s … a melting pot of Indigenous Native people from America. And I think there’s something like 38 tribes here.

So you grow up different when you’re in Oklahoma as a Native kid. … People know Native culture, people know who Native people are. And it’s a very diverse state. I think that not a lot of people know about Oklahoma and the diversity here, but in rural Oklahoma, it’s very diverse. And I don’t know, it was something that I wanted to celebrate in the show, growing up in Indian Territory, Oklahoma.

On why Native teens connected to rap music when he was coming of age

Rap was reaching the height of popularity … and being a Native kid, we gravitated towards it because it was the sort of punk rock that we were growing up with. It gave Native kids a culture and identity that they could grab a hold of at a time where our own identity was a bit lost and our own identity was less celebrated, we could grab a hold of hip-hop, and that became something that we could identify with that was taking it to the man that was exposing problems within our culture. I think that it became something that, as a term, as a means of endearment to us, that it helped us in our own identity and in our own struggle.

On the importance of ghosts and spirits in his culture – and in his work

I think that part of growing up and with Muscogee and Seminole culture is death is such a part of our experience. It’s very community-driven. Your cousins are like your brothers and sisters. Your aunts are your extended parents, and you’re close to your elders and everyone’s a part of this tight community.

I was constantly at funerals. I’ve been a pallbearer, like, 12 to 15 times, I think, give or take. And our songs, the songs that we sing, there’s these spiritual songs that we sing that mostly get sung and you hear them at funerals, and it’s all about facing death and mortality head on. There’s something really beautiful about a funeral in our community, where everyone comes together and it’s really funny. And you’re getting to see people that you haven’t seen in a long time and you say, “I love you,” to people that you wouldn’t normally say, “I love you” to. It’s just a part of being in a community.

Someone was always passing away. … In the culture you’re taught that they’re not gone and that you can still speak to them and talk to them and there’s ghost stories and things like that. But I just grew up with this sense of magic, and there’s a sense of like we can communicate, we can reach people in other places, and there’s ceremonies for it and there’s different things. It’s something that I’m fascinated with … and I explore it as much as I can through my work.

On the casting process for Reservation Dogs

You can’t go to Hollywood to cast a show like this. … [Native actors usually] get to play, like, a dead Indian outside of a teepee every five to 10 years, you know? So there’s not a big pool of Native actors in L.A. So we went to the communities, and shout out to Angelique Midthunder, who was our casting director. She went in and we went to different communities and we also had tapes sent to us from communities, but it was important that they were from an Indigenous community. … It wasn’t unnecessarily unorthodox for me, because I’ve been making these films for so long, and I know that there’s talent out there. There’s just not opportunities for Native actors to even know that there’s an opportunity to be in a movie.

On seeing Indian stereotypes in pop culture as a kid

My dad watched Westerns. … There was a way to sort of separate what was happening in the Western for me, because I didn’t recognize the Indians in the Western. They weren’t my experience. When you grow up and your grandma and your mom and your dad and everyone’s Native around you, and then you see this version of Native people in these Westerns that are just the bad guys that are faceless and sort of like the zombies. … They’re in the way and the white man has to exterminate them for Western expansion purposes and to tame the West or whatever, I don’t recognize that as my people. So it wasn’t painful to watch for me. I could separate it. I do see the issues in that now I have to explain to my kids why they can’t watch Peter Pan, and if there was a Western on, I would have to explain to them, like everything all of a sudden becomes a lecture, where I’m having to talk about film analysis with my children. It has an effect.

On absolving himself of the guilt that he can’t speak Muscogee

For a long time, I felt really guilty about that. … But at a certain point, I just came to the realization that government policy, genocide, colonization, … the forced removal by Andrew Jackson. So many things caused that. And I let go of that sense of guilt, because it’s all been about survival and there’s things that were taken away and there’s things that perish because of that. And all I can do is try to learn and realize that it’s not my fault, it came before me. The darkness that can take a language away, came before me. And you look at boarding schools … and how they actively took away our language. My parents and grandparents went to these boarding schools, so the fact that we have any of it left is a miracle. So I try to really focus on that: the miracle of it, the magic of the fact that we still have our culture and it is about survival. I try to focus on that instead of the guilt that I think you grow up with when you can’t speak the language.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

Filed Under: Articles - World

Tekashi 69 Posts Bad Joke, Lil Nas X Shares Instagram DMs

September 28, 2022 by humorouz Leave a Comment

Let him move his bang so he can read that again.
Photo: Amy Sussman/BBMA2020/Getty Images for dcp

How could anyone forget Lil Nas X’s very clear warning: “Can’t nobody tell me nothing” from “Old Town Road”? Well, Tekashi 6ix9ine tried it. The 24-year-old rapper, a known snitch who famously looks like a toddler’s attempt at a coloring page, shared a homophobic, since-deleted social-media post earlier this week and got deservedly ethered for it by Lil Nas X. 6ix9ine reposted a screenshot of an article headline reading “China Makes COVID-19 Anal Swabs Mandatory for Foreigners” on Instagram and added the caption “Lil Nas X has entered the chat.” Where was the joke? Mmhmm, that’s what Lil Nas X thought, too. So, on Thursday, the internet-savvy Gen-Z former Barb (just a few more reasons why Tekashi shouldn’t have tried it) went to TikTok to expose how goofy the man is. With his own unreleased single “Call Me By Your Name” (yup!) as the background music for free promo, Lil Nas X pulls up a screenshot of unanswered DMs from 6ix9ine. “Gonna be in your city soon, what ya doing lol?” he allegedly wrote with an upside-down smiley face emoji and a red heart emoji.

this you ? pic.twitter.com/GBvc5Rxf8h

— nope (@LilNasX)

“This you?” Nas X captioned it, ending 6ix9ine with those two powerful words. The internet piled on because a celebrity this problematic can take a little cyberbullying. Some interpreted the DM as flirting, others just loved seeing the snitch get caught up. 6ix9ine responded with a video where he shows there are no messages between the two of them, but since you can unsend DMs, most aren’t buying it. Cackle like Raven-Symoné at what Twitter had to say below.

lil nas x and 6ix9ine are the two opposite ends of the gay barb spectrum

— shawty lynn ミ☆ (@HereComesShawty)

Lil Nas X exposing 6ix9ine tryna slide into his DMs after he joked about him on insta is proof that the gays will always win

— Conor GROVESY (f*ck ian connor) (@YungGrovesy)

Not Tekashi lookin’ for 6-9 inches 😂

— Jackée Harry (@JackeeHarry)

seeing Lil Nas X expose 6ix9ine sliding into his dms means i have to post this video pic.twitter.com/mONDQDXYxE

— . (@thechuuzus)

Filed Under: Articles - World

2022 Oscars: Will Smith punches Chris Rock, confrontation erupts over Jada Pinkett Smith haircut joke – 6abc Philadelphia

September 28, 2022 by humorouz Leave a Comment

Did Will Smith punch Chris Rock? ‘King Richard’ actor appeared to confront the comedian onstage after a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.

Filed Under: Articles - World

Vanessa Bryant’s attorney argues photos of Kobe Bryant’s remains shared ‘for a laugh’

September 28, 2022 by humorouz Leave a Comment

10:09 PM ET

  • Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — An institutional “culture of callousness” led Los Angeles County deputies and firefighters to shoot and share photos of the remains of Kobe Bryant and other victims of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Lakers star, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others, a lawyer for Bryant’s widow told a jury on Wednesday.

Vanessa Bryant’s attorney Luis Li told jurors in his opening statement in U.S. District Court in her invasion of privacy trial against the county that the cell phone photos shot at the crash scene by a deputy and a fire captain were “visual gossip” viewed “for a laugh” and had no official purpose.

“They were shared by deputies playing video games,” Li said. “They were shared repeatedly with people who had absolutely no reason to receive them.”

An attorney for the county defended the taking of the photos as an essential tool for first responders seeking to share information when they thought they might still save lives at the chaotic, dangerous and hard-to-reach crash scene in the Calabasas hills west of Los Angeles.

“Site photography is essential,” county lawyer J. Mira Hashmall said.

Vanessa Bryant cried frequently during her lawyer’s presentation. She was still wiping tears from her eyes minutes afterward during a break.

Li told jurors that learning a month after the crash about the photos’ circulation not from the county but the Los Angeles Times compounded her still-raw suffering.

“Jan. 26, 2020, was the worst day of Vanessa Bryant’s life. The county made it much worse,” Li said. “They poured salt in an open wound and rubbed it in.”

Li played jurors security video of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy drinking at a bar showing the photos to the bartender, who shakes his head in dismay. The lawyer then showed an image of the men laughing together later. Li described firefighters looking at the phone photos two weeks later at an awards banquet and showed the jury an animated chart documenting their spread to nearly 30 people.

Li said the county failed to conduct a thorough investigation to make sure every copy of the photos was accounted for and that because of the fear the photos will someday surface — and her surviving children might see them online — Vanessa Bryant “will be haunted by what they did forever.”

During the defense’s opening statement, Hashmall told jurors the fact that the pictures have not appeared in more than two years showed that leaders in the sheriff’s and fire department did their jobs.

“They’re not online. They’re not in the media. They’ve never even been seen by the plaintiffs themselves,” Hashmall said.

“That is not an accident. That is a function of how diligent they were.”

Sheriff Alex Villanueva and department officials immediately brought in all those involved and ordered them to delete the photos, rather than conduct a long official investigation that might harm the families further, she said.

“He picked what he viewed as the only option: decisive action,” Hashmall said. “He felt like every second mattered.”

Hashmall told the jury that the reason Li even had the video of the bartender to exhibit, which she suggested was deceptively edited to show the men laughing together, was because the Sheriff’s Department had gotten it the same day they received a complaint from another bar patron who witnessed the photo sharing.

She said the deputy was struggling emotionally from the difficulty of dealing with the crash scene and that the bartender was a longtime friend in whom he was confiding.

“He pulled out his phone, and that should not have happened,” she said. “In a lapse, in a moment of weakness, he showed those photos, and he has regretted it every day of his life.”

The defense attorney urged jurors to look past the grief of those who brought the lawsuit and focus on the matter before them.

“There is no doubt these families have suffered,” she said. “It’s unspeakable. But this case is not about the loss from the crash. It’s about the pictures.”

Chris Chester, whose wife, Sarah, and daughter, Payton, also were killed in the crash, is another plaintiff in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified millions.

The county already agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a similar case brought by two families whose relatives died in the crash. Bryant and Chester declined to settle.

Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and other parents and players were flying to a girls basketball tournament when their chartered helicopter crashed in the fog. Federal safety officials blamed pilot error for the wreck.

Filed Under: Articles - World

Patrice Evra makes title prediction amid “crazy” Premier League season – Mirror Online

September 27, 2022 by humorouz Leave a Comment

Former Premier League champion Patrice Evra believes his former club Manchester United can “surprise people” but still considers Manchester City and Liverpool as favourites for the title.

Evra won five Premier League titles with United, the first in 2006-07 and the last in 2012-13. The club haven’t won another since 2013, though, with Manchester City claiming top spot in four of the last five seasons.

Pep Guardiola’s champions currently sit second in the table, with Arsenal clinging onto top spot thanks to their victory at Brentford on Sunday, However, Evra still sees two clear favourites in the race for the prize.

“It’s a crazy Premier League, there have been a lot of surprises,” Evra told Betfair. The favourites were Liverpool and City, but anything can happen. More games are coming and I always say you know more around December, but now we’ve got the World Cup. So, everything is weird.

“I think City and Liverpool are still the favourites, but you have so many others too including Tottenham, Arsenal, and Chelsea. Although, it’s really weird with Chelsea at the moment.

“United can surprise people now if they keep fighting like the way they have been doing, they can be there,” he added. After losing their first two games, Evra’s former club have won four in a row to climb back into the upper reaches of the table.

Who will win the Premier League this season? Have your say in the comments section

Image:

PA Images Contributor/Press Association Images)

Last season’s title race went right down to the wire, with Manchester City pipping Liverpool to the title by a single point. The gap between last season’s top two is considerably wider this season, though, in part due to Jurgen Klopp’s side dropping points against unfancied opponents, and the gap at the very top remains small..

“Every team is tough, playing against Crystal Palace you’re going to struggle, playing against Newcastle you’re going to struggle, every game is going to be tough,” Evra continued. “I don’t think we will see a massive points difference, like the winner of the league won’t be 20 points or 10 points in front, like in previous years.

“It’s going to be tough and it’s difficult to say who’s going to win the league. I keep saying what I said at the start of the season, Liverpool and City are the favourites.”

Both of last season’s top two face tough tests upon returning from the international break, with City taking on United in the Manchester derby and Liverpool hosting high-flying Brighton & Hove Albion in the Seagulls’ first game under new manager Roberto De Zerbi. However, others – perhaps including Evra – will have an eye on October 16, when City and Liverpool are due to meet at Anfield.

Read more

Filed Under: Articles - World

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