CultureCow: A federal holiday, a revived game show, and more …
Commentary by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Happy Friday. And a very happy Juneteenth this Saturday.
If you’re in Wellington tomorrow, please make your way to Madison Park for a community party. There will be food trucks, a basketball tournament, cornhole, and much more so I encourage everyone to enjoy themselves and have a great holiday.
As I wrote last year, Juneteenth isn’t a brand-new holiday even if you only started hearing about it last year (and if that’s the case, congratulations on being white). What’s changed from last year, however, is that Congress voted overwhelmingly to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
This means a couple of different things: Everyone will get a much-deserved extra day off every year. We’ll see more public demonstrations and celebrations. And unfortunately, it will halt any productive action towards mitigating our country’s long-awaited reckoning with slavery.
If there’s one thing Congress loves to do is make a very public and very useless demonstration. Look no further than a year ago when prominent Democrats took a knee while donning Kente-cloth scarves. Sure, it was a “powerful” image, but it accompanied police-reform legislation that 1. Didn’t go far enough and 2. Had no chance of ever becoming law.
I really do commend Congress for finally making Juneteenth a federal holiday. It’s long overdue and I hope it doesn’t become merely a theatrical performance. But I’m not too optimistic.
If the government really wanted to honor Juneteenth, there’s plenty else they could do. They could pass meaningful policing legislation. They could commission independent committees to redraw congressional districts so Black and Brown people aren’t gerrymandered out of the voting process. And, most of all, they could finally pay some reparations.
Again, I’m glad it’s a federal holiday, but until our government actually starts to deal with America’s shameful race problem of white supremacy, they won’t truly honor the spirit of Juneteenth.
Speaking of some inexplicable theatre, ABC premiered a remake of the Celebrity Dating Game on Monday and it was wild.
The original version of the show aired between the 1960s and the 1980s and ABC decided it was time to try it again. This isn’t a new phenomenon with Disney’s favorite subsidiary. They’ve plagued the airwaves in the last few years with remakes of all the classic gameshows like:
- $100,000 Pyramid
- Card Sharks
- Press Your Luck
- To Tell the Truth
- Match Game
That doesn’t even include the burden on society that is Family Feud. While all those shows are visibly terrible, the Celebrity Dating Game stands a head above them.
Look no further than the hosts. The network paired the charisma-deficient mannequin, Zooey Deschanel with the living fossil Michael Bolton to form the celebrity odd couple no one asked for. They lack chemistry as well as hosting ability as they tell wooden jokes seemingly at gunpoint.
The first victim of the program was none other than former Bachelorette and Dancing with the Stars champion, Hannah Brown. ABC loves Hannah B and will take every opportunity possible to wheel her out in front of the cameras. Hannah did her part and smiled as best she could through the torture of Zooey Deschanel’s “jokes” as America was re-introduced to the wild concept of this show.
Apparently, it was exciting to watch a minor celebrity awkwardly flirt with three men that are neither charming nor witty. I don’t doubt that several of the contestants are good people, but sticking them on stage and forcing them to hit on someone they can’t see or touch is boring to say the least.
Tune in next week to watch this slow-motion train wreck, because I don’t think you’ll have many more chances before ABC pulls the plug.
It’s not all performance art and bad hosting this week, however. Netflix dropped a second season to its original show Girl from Nowhere.
Girl from Nowhere is a Thai show starring the electric Chicha Amatayakul. If you’ve never seen a Thai show, you aren’t alone because while there’s no shortage of Korean and Japanese shows on streaming services, there’s only a handful from the South-Asian hub.
The show is an anthology that follows a mysterious girl named Nanno who enrolls in a new school every episode to expose the hypocrisy of the staff and students. Nanno is by no means the hero of these stories, she’s more a villain who only targets bad people.
In the first season, she exposed a predatory teacher, but only after she exposed his horrific actions to his wife and daughter and made him beg her for forgiveness before sending him to the police. And while that was one of her more outwardly evil targets, she wreaked havoc on children as well.
In another episode, she drove a high schooler to extreme lengths simply for being a bad boyfriend to another student. I won’t spoil it for you, but you absolutely need to see it for yourself.
Girl from Nowhere has an English dub, but subtitles really aren’t that hard to read and save you the irritation of watching lips move independently of the words you’re hearing. If the second season is anything like the first, Nanno is about to terrorize South-Asia, and we’re lucky enough to watch.
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