Since its debut, I’ve been a big fan of Aaron McGruder’s comic, The Boondocks. I think it lost some of its spark a few years after it started, but I remain happy to read it. I’ve been vaguely aware that it was being turned into a television cartoon — I read a New Yorker article a couple of years ago and a friend e-mailed me about it many moons ago — but only discovered it a few days ago.
Amber and I now get DirecTV, something worthy of a lengthy blog entry unto itself, which includes a PVR. We recently settled down to watch some recorded shows, including The Boondocks. During one episode, in which one of the main characters opens a soul food restaurant, I sat straight up when I recognized a friend’s voice. “That’s Rob Jackson!” I jumped up, fired up Google and, lo and behold, my friend Rob “Blue Black” Jackson is working with McGruder and his long-time musical partner Gabriel “Asheru” Benn on the soundtrack to the show. Spotlight revealed that, in fact, it was Rob who e-mailed me to tell me about the show and that McGruder had called him to see if he could use portions of Asheru & Blue Black’s album Soon Come.
(Sidenote. Soon Come is, I maintain, one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever. It sprang from the musical movement that brought us Arrested Development, De La Soul, Meshell Ndegeocello, Get Set V.O.P. and, ultimately, Tribe Called Quest. It’s jazzy, fun, intelligent, and positive — in short, everything that’s lacking in modern hip-hop. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t own the pair’s second and most recent album, 48 Months, but the reviews are just as over-the-top glowing as they were for Soon Come.)
So it turns out that The Boondocks theme song is by Asheru and McGruder and, apparently, Rob Jackson is contributing, too. But that’s not why I’m writing this.
The episode was good, but the other episode that we saw, “The Return of the King,” was just amazing. Simply the best episode of an animation that I’ve ever seen. The premise is that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t die — he just fell into a coma. He wakes up in mid-2001 to find the world basically as it is now. He’s received as the hero that he is (was) but, from there, things go awry. It has got to take a lot of nerve to make an alternate-reality episode about a figure as storied as King, but it totally works. It’s funny, yes, but it’s also profoundly sad. His treatment at the hands of modern America for his principled stances is all-too-familiar (he’s pilloried for saying, after September 11th, that as a Christian he must turn the other cheek towards our attackers), and what makes it so sad is that I cannot doubt that McGruder’s portrayal is probably how things would really play out. King’s promotion of Christian non-violence, in the tradition of Ghandi and Jesus, would surely earn him nothing short of utter contempt from Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan and the like.
The Boondocks could well have been a total failure as a cartoon. Frankly, I assumed that it would be. Instead, it’s the most promising new cartoon since The Family Guy and, before that, The Simpsons. But it shoots much higher than either show, in terms of content, and it totally succeeds.
whaaat? Rob’s on “the Boondocks” ?
i might actually have to pay attention that now.
i stopped paying attention when the comic strip was in it’s first year, once i realized=
a) McGruder’s “witty” comments aren’t actually all that “funny”. he just lacks basic setup/punchline comedy skills, and he makes the all-too-common mistake of thinking that merely making a cultural reference equates to actually saying something funny about that subject, and
b) his illustration style imitates the worst aspects of watered-down japanese cartooning, and he basically has no overall sense of composition or visual storytelling.
McGruder may occasionally provide insightful political commentary, but his cartoons are ugly, hard to read, and tediously unfunny. OK, that’s a bit harsh, 1 out of 200 is actually kind of good, but it always seemed like it just wasn’t worth my time.
however, now that Asheru and Blue Black are on TV, i might have to check it out.
Waldo:
F-U-T-U-R-A-M-A.
New movies coming to DVD!!!!