Ick and and a rec.

[jmc_bks]

Tell me again why Reese's/Hershey thought that creating a banana peanut butter cup was a good idea. Was there market research that showed a huge demand for this product? Ick.

Are you interested in reading a contemporary romance set in LA? One that is on the fringes of the movie business but isn't all about actors and models? Want to read a book with a smart, real heroine and interesting but not overpowering secondary characters? Go check out Sandra Kitt's Celluloid Memories. If I get myself organized, I'll post a review. (If I don't get around to it, lemme just say that I really, really liked this book. B/B+)

The reason I'm posting a rec and blabbing about the book in a non-review-ish kind of way is that it's got me thinking about non-romance things. After reading CM, I read the article in this week's Economist about Latino-Black race relations in LA and elsewhere in the US. That dynamic isn't mentioned at all in the book, but other race/culture dynamics are, particularly the tension between black people who can (and choose to) "pass". There's a fascinating parallel in the story between actresses (secondary characters) of different generations: one chose to pass in order to have a career and the other cannot be cast in traditional black female roles and thus is forced into passing by casting agents. It was a fascinating (and disturbing) glimpse into the realities of the entertainment business.

Comments

[davidgallaher1.livejournal.com]

Tell me again why Reese's/Hershey thought that creating a banana peanut butter cup was a good idea. Was there market research that showed a huge demand for this product? Ick.

The reason is *Elvis*

But apart from that - people like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and chocolate and peanute butter are made for each other - so it seems natural to me. Far more than Diet Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper, for instance.

Need I remind you how many Elvis fans there are - especially down south?

And, I, for one, happen to love them.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Eww to the Diet Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper also. That sounds sickly sweet.

Chocolate and bananas I can understand, though it isn't to my taste; chocolate and PB, too; it's the combination of the three that doesn't appeal. I split one cup w/ a friend yesterday, and then we disposed of the remaining cup in the circular file. Want the rest of them?

[jperceval.livejournal.com]

You're alone in the wilderness on this one, babe. See? Other people agree with me. :-P

From Carrie http://lovelysalome.blogspot.com

[(Anonymous)]

Ew ew ew! I bought those banana monstrosities by mistake, thinking they were just big big peanut butter cups. Gave them to my kids. *shudder*

Re: From Carrie http://lovelysalome.blogspot.com

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Did the kids like them?

Yum!

[nm-eviled.livejournal.com]

I LOVE those peanut butter cups. Yum, yum, yum. So I guess they thought of them for people like me ;)

[(Anonymous)]

That Economist article is right about the racial tensions between Latinos and African Americans, and also correct that African Americans suffer in terms of their demographic representation in the state. I also don't doubt that they suffer as victims of violence in frightening proportion to their population representation. There is also a long, long history of tension between African Americans and Jews (See Cornel West and Michael Learner's book Jews and Blacks for more on that). Then you have to figure in the Asian issues, not only in tensions between Asian groups, but also between the category "Asian" and other non-white groups who feel that Asians are the new whites. Speaking of hate crimes, for example, in Orange County, just to the South of Los Angeles, the only group that experienced a rise in hate crimes following 9/11 was Arab muslims. I don't know how that compares to Los Angeles, but now I'm curious to find out. The complexities of race relations in CA are IMO quite different than those in the Southern US, and it's not fair to make sweeping, simultaneous generalizations about the two areas.

Also, I was struck by what seems a kind of anti-Latino bias in the article, in this, for example:

"The Latino struggle is quite different. Its goal is often the selective or non-enforcement of the law, particularly on immigration. A common demand, for example, is for local police not to co-operate with federal immigration agents. And, whereas blacks in the 1960s demanded power in proportion to their numbers as adult citizens, Hispanics want rather more."

I'm not sure there's *one* Latino issue or struggle, but in CA, it was Latinos who cast the decisive votes to deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants, and Latinos also voted in significant numbers for Proposition 209, the state constitutional amendment prohibiting affirmative action in the state. Some of the more established immigrants are actually much more conservative in their attitudes to newer immigrants. Also, the rates at which Latinos join the military is incredibly high. Almost three quarters of a million Latinos fought, for example, in WWII; they are often among the most patriotic of immigrants. To assert that the Latino agenda is all about thwarting law enforcement is a really prejudiced pov, I'm afraid, and it makes me wonder about the entire agenda of that piece.

Robin

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

The pigeon-holing of the Latino struggle as being primarily about immigration bothered me, as well. I wonder sometimes if, despite the fact that it is a transatlantic newsmagazine striving for a single tone/voice, it doesn't miss on some of the American social dynamics.

I have a very hard time evaluating The Economist in terms of its political and social stance: it seems quite liberal in some areas and conservative in others. I've written to the editor recently because of a few comments in articles that seemed very condescending toward women (for example, dismissing as frivolous middle class Turkish women who were concerned about increasing Islamic fundamentalism in government prior to their elections, and denigrating -I thought- women's choices not to have large families in an article on shrinking populations).

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Meant also to say that in Baltimore City**, historically the tension *was* between blacks and Jews. In the 60s-70s-80s, white flight occured and the city became predominantly (maybe 60-65%) black, with very sharply divided neighborhoods. In the past 10-15 years, though, there has been a significant influx of Latinos, so much so that one neighborhood is informally known as Spanishtown (to go along with Little Italy and Greektown) and some formerly blue collar white neighborhoods are now Latino. So the shift has occured here, too. It's just less noticable because there is still a significant black majority within city limits.

**Baltimore City is a strange municipality, in that it's size and growth are strictly limited by the Maryland state constitution. The city cannot grow beyond the boundaries set in the constitution, unlike most other cities, so it cannot expand its tax base by annexing new neighborhoods as new housing/commercial neighborhoods are built on the edges of the city. The populations can only grow or change by people affirmatively moving within city limits. This causes a tension between the poor residents (mostly, except some high dollar and/or gentrifying neighborhoods) of the city and the more affluent counties surrounding the city, especially since a lot of those more affluent residents work in the city and go home to the suburbs.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and I hope you do review the Kitt book. Thanks for putting that on my radar; it sounds really really interesting.