Personal Article Entry For Entertainment Journal and Media Database at Kennesaw State University - 2020

The Negative Stereotypes of Eastern Medicine in American Culture

Patrick Newkirk

April 27, 2020

Initially, in my final project, I wanted to use comedy as the basis for what I would be recreating my scene from, but after some recollection on my topic and having a serious conversation with my mother about what’s going on in the world as of April of 2020, I wanted to include the scope of Eastern Medicine and the negative stigma that it has within American Pop Culture. Even though my revised topic is still along the grounds of the original movie I chose, instead of drawing comedy from the scene at hand, I wanted to shed light on why municipal practices such as: herbs, veganism and even certain forms of meditations and behaviorism practices, are consistently viewed upon as dark, evil or out of the ordinary in our culture today. Even though Friday was a movie surrounded by comedy, great laughter, and thriller, the movie also had a lot of underlying stigmas and messages about municipal practices, especially evolving around how those things positively effected the characters that loathed in those behaviors while making the audience viewing the film laugh but feel a sense of lack of comfortability on such topics. Which makes this film a perfect candidate for my topic at hand. My perspective of what Western and Eastern medicine is, may certainly be different from the average person, but I believe there should be a common ground that represents me within the world of entertainment and culture in America without it being undermining as we see in countless scenes of Friday and hundreds of other classic pieces of American Culture. Herbs, crystals, meditations etc, are all things that most films look upon as comedy; in a not so pleasant way and my final project paper will shed light on why and pose questions about such theories while shedding light on how we can change this environment and playing field to equally accustom all ways of life for everyday Americans whether it be through entertainment and media or education and abroad.?

My mom has been dealing with seasonal allergies for years and here in Savannah we have an ancient recipe that my family has been using for years that includes certain ingredients ranging from: red pepper to lemon and lime and after watching my film, I expect the audience to be able to recreate this potion, as I called it, to better help with whatever ailment they may be dealing with or simply for their pleasure, as it can be consumed as a kombucha.Theres one scene from the movie that inspired me to go this route and it includes when Craig and Smokey were on their front porch having a personable conversation about their lives and the reasons they do what they did. Being that these characters were middle aged African American men in the 90s, certain stereotypes and stigmas that they dealt with were either as direct result of their environment or involuntary from the world outside of their own that they had to deal with, for instance: jobs, schools and churches. Craig asked Smokey why did he indulge himself so much in marijuana, so much so to the point where it consumed his life and Smokey said to him that it helped with his anxiety. Of course not in this way, there were comedy and jokes behind his stance, but essentially his answer included this fact surrounding his life. For many years I overlooked the power of this scene but as I grew older it made perfect sense to me as to what he was saying.?

Even going back to the lessons from class, specifically the left and right side ideologies, in my opinion, majority films and things of American Pop Culture seem to completely hate the idea of being conservative while being conservative within their own beliefs. I wouldn’t say that that the audience may be aware that their closed minds could be a form of conservative nature but it creates dialogue as to what else could it possibly be. The technical side of this film and how it connects to my final project are simple, it doesn’t recreate the scene but shows how Eastern Medicine positively effects my life whether it be me or a loved one and that this way of life can be taken serious with or without warranted comedy, laughter etc. In class we talked about semiotics and how a film or any type of filmography can be strategically created whether it be through the filming process, or even steps before; during the creating of the script to have certain effects on the audience and Friday was no exception. There were countless scenes that pointed to my theories of negative stigmas of Eastern behaviors, medicines and beliefs within this film that influenced me to want to switch my scope. There’s a scene where Smokey’s room is shown, in which he still lived with his mother in his late twenties, which was designed to fit the lifestyle that he lived and rather than it being a perfect room with the bed made up and clothing in a basket, as a historian of American Culture I could accurately say that during these times that was the seen in this scene which??portrayed a few crystals, a lizard, marijuana plants and the bubbly lamps that most people of the 70-90s acquired that represented Hippy or unruly nature. This scene in itself climbed easily been portrayed as, regular and normal but In Friday it was presented through semiotics as weird, off and funny. From the very beginning of the scene from the music to the writing and acting thus scene was meant to be funny and demeaning to Smokey’s current lifestyle which obviously didn’t fit the climate of American Pop Culture during those times.??Another scene that stood out to me that ke tied to stereotypes and how they did really shape this film and my decision to go a different route included the main characters Craig and Smokey who were enjoying their Friday when suddenly the community pastor came to their house looking for their mother and when he smelled the marijuana he begin to call them lowlifes and trash. Just to go cheat on his wife. This scene was brilliant because though there was a stung comedy, so much so, that I believe through semiotics and diverse and film film features, this part of Friday may have the funniest most educative scene from an early black comedy movie ever, it sheds light on how men of God condemn while sinning as well, sometimes worse. He didn’t know that Smokey was not only using the marijuana on this particular day for his anxiety but also to help with his sleeping schedule being that he was fired from his job.?

However, diverging from the technical side to the educational side of my analysis, many scholars back up my claims of Eastern Medicine and the negative stereotypes that exits within our American Culture while also digging deep into her conservative ways and their role in playing a part on these stigmas continuing to span generations. “Electronic media create a Global Village in which information can be shared simultaneously by everyone-where all walls between people, art, religions, and philosophies come tumbling down” (Fishwick, 2014 p. 186). According to some scholars movies like “Friday,” “Scary Movie,” and “How High,”??all play huge factors in??normalizing Eastern Medicine and though there are great underlying objectives that exists within these bodies of work there is still a glue that keeps the projects from being pure comedy to, informative, and etc. Even down to the inspiration which out of all of the semiotics, lessons from class, scholarly articles and etc bothered me the most because I could only imagine what wave of creative geniuses from future generations that would become readily available to the ever growing industry if all walks of life in American Pop Culture were accepted and freely used within filmography. “Destruction in the name of preservation can be found in numerous cultural endeavors throughout history, not the least of which is documented in the act of documentation, in the representation of the cultural and technological regime that is replacing that which it preserves in representation” (Bishop, 2013 p. 8). A question??to you would be: do you consider our conservative ways??as destructively or preservative and do movies like Friday with scenes such as the one that I designed my final project around pose benefits or risks to the set in some systems that has been??sitting wii I thin??our culture for centuries???Friday not only represented to me the perfect opportunity to create dialogue about what is deemed funny, what is everyday life and what is actually comedy, it also helped me to showcase my cooking skills to the world. Certain systems have controlled even me for years. I firmly believe that if you see only a certain type of people eating healthy, learning certain things, speaking different languages you become accustomed to accepting whatever you have and not wishing for more. Though this film is seen as a comedy I take this level of inspiration from it in which I have hope to trying new things and being transparent about activities that many of my own people may view as funny or weird, like cooking; I know you’d be surprised. My analysis of the film and Eastern Medicine may not go hand and hand but I felt this conversation was needed, because ask yourself, when gave you ever watched a movie in American cutler, especially during recent times that showcases Eastern medicine and other belief systems rather it be through comedy thriller action etc, that was readily accepted without some form of degradation, demeaning or comedic belittling, I feel the that the only way we can change this playing field is by doing three things: asking questions and creating papers such as this that create dialogue, breaking down the semiotics, the technical sides of media that have effects on huge masses of people, and limiting the amount or conservative behaviors from both spectrums if people, young and old that are alive and thriving within our culture. If we control these three aspects In an effective way, seeing videos such as my film project about making an ancient tea on VH1or ABC during a commercial break during or a mainstream wouldn’t be weird or so funny after all but accepted by the audience and sought after by the people.?

????????????????????????????????????????????????????Bibliography?

Bishop, R. (2013). Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film. Edinburgh University Press.

Fishwick, M. W. (2014). Popular Culture in a New Age. Routledge.

Leventman, S. (2006). American Popular Culture : Historical and Pedagogical Perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.