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A carregar... Juice!por Ishmael Reed
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The real point of the novel, though, has nothing to do with whether or not O.J. murdered his wife. Indeed, the narrator's views on the subject change, though not as dramatically as some of his friends. The point is the social use of the trial. Reed's new novel, "Juice!," dives back into the fray, but in typically unconventional fashion it focuses not on Obama but on an event that for many Americans already feels many eras removed: the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The book's main point is that the racial tensions that underlie so many discussions about the "trial of the century" 16 years ago are still with us. This surreal tale about a controversial black cartoonist named Paul Blessings (a.k.a. "Bear," a thinly disguised Reed) who obsesses about the daily developments of the trial in 1995 and the guilt/innocence of O.J. is meant not simply to remind us how obsessed we all were back then but also that our obsession with divining the real motives of a high-profile black man never goes away, it just lies dormant until the next actor mounts the stage. (Is President Obama a patriot or a socialist? Cool or volatile? African or American? In other words, is he innocent or guilty?)
In 2010, the Newseum in Washington D.C. finally obtained the suit O. J. Simpson wore in court the day he was acquitted, and it now stands as both an artifact in their "Trial of the Century" exhibit and a symbol of the American media's endless hunger for the criminal and the celebrity. This event serves as a launching point for Ishmael Reed's "Juice!," a novelistic commentary on the post-Simpson American media frenzy from one of the most controversial figures in American literature today. Through Paul Blessings--a censored cartoonist suffering from diabetes--and his cohorts--serving as stand-ins for the various mediums of art--Ishmael Reed argues that since 1994, "O. J. has become a metaphor for things wrong with culture and politics." A lament for the death of print media, the growth of the corporation, and the process of growing old, "Juice!" serves as a comi-tragedy, chronicling the increased anxieties of "post-race" America. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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Bear and his fellow members of the Rhinosphere, a group of African American professional artists, are outraged by the coverage of the trial by the media, particularly its prejudicial treatment and condemnation of O.J. (whose nickname is The Juice), who is portrayed as a rich and uppity black man who has committed two unspeakable crimes: marrying a beautiful white woman (and, even worse, a blonde), and viciously murdering her. In response, Bear draws a satirical cartoon (shown on the book's cover) in which he portrays O.J. as a quarterback about to receive a football from a woman who is meant to represent the U.S. media, to demonstrate that O.J. is running plays for the trial obsessed radio, television and newspaper broadcasters and columnists. However, one of his conservative colleagues at KCAK, a Hispanic woman whose popularity is based on her rants against her fellow Latinos, is aghaist when she first sees it, as she interprets it as O.J. sodomizing a white woman, and Bear is condemned by the new ownership and put on probation.
Bear continues to follow the O.J. murder trial obsessively, as he recognizes that all black men are, in essence, also on trial, and are being held guilty by association with him. His narrative provides an excellent summary of the details of the trial, along with prejudicial comments made by well known members of the media, along with its aftermath after O.J.'s acquittal. Reed makes the case that this post-trial outrage led to the rise and popularity of right wing media outlets such as Fox News, which commenced operations in 1996, and of conservative talk radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, along with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed companies to own more stations and for some programs to become nationally syndicated and exposed to a wider audience. He also demonstrates that the fallout from the O.J. trial explains the harsh, prejudicial and hypocritical treatment of Barack Obama by the right wing media during his eight years in the White House, who continue to largely ignore and overlook the current president's innumerable moral sins and personal shortcomings.
Juice! is one of the best satirical novels I've ever read, and it is a great introduction to Ishmael Reed. I'm ashamed that it took me this long to get to one of his novels, but I'll read the other books I own by him in the near future, starting with Mumbo Jumbo, his most acclaimed work. ( )