Word: fetchit
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...adventures are organized as a sequence of sketches, or "beats," as Play wright Harrison calls them, with many of the 17 cast members playing a variety of roles - a deacon, a shuffling Stepin Fetchit, crapshooters, addicts...
...children's minds with the filth, violence, and cultural lies that are all-pervasive in current productions of so-called black movies," explained Junius Griffin former president of the Hollywood branch of the NAACP and a founder of the new coalition. "The transformation from the stereotyped Stepin Fetchit to Super Nigger on the screen is just another form of cultural genocide...
Scene 2: Hollywood, 1935. A sleek phaeton town car whooshes onto the 20th Century-Fox lot. Emblazoned in neon lights along each side is the name "Stepin Fetchit." Under the klieg lights, Fetchit is anything but a phaeton owner. "Dey is ghostes roun' here!" he exclaims, wailing and rolling his eyes horribly. "I gots to get outer here...
...that is the whole point of the play. Race relations in this country have still not advanced past the point where most whites can conceive of blacks as anything other than types, whether they be "good types" or "bad" ones. Blacks are placed in a "Stepin Fetchit" box or a "Stokely Carmichael" box or a "white" box or a "Sidney Poitier" box. The thing is that no black- or no human being, for that matter- ever fits into any box. As Morning's family changes its voice from an Amos'n' Andy inflection to a John Lindsay or Wilson Pickett...
What makes animals cute is their confused subhumanity. I enjoy my cats most when they seem stupid and ridiculous. When one of them crawls into a bag and can't get out, I use the same laugh that white people probably had when they watched Stepin Fetchit being "spooked" in the old movies. The point is that people have preconceived ideas of what's nice about animals and other people, and are happy when they can find images that conform...