Hey, there! Log in / Register
Ben Affleck to use part of Beacon Street to rewrite some Boston history to keep the blacks out
By adamg on Tue, 05/29/2018 - 12:43pm
MassLive.com reports everything that's wrong with Ben Affleck's upcoming Boston-based Showtime series, which, of course, is about gangsters, and which will be filming on Beacon near Charles tomorrow.
For some reason, Affleck felt compelled to layer his story about Charlestown armored-car robbers (now there's a surprise) with "the Boston Miracle," which, of course, actual Bostonians know involved ministers, street workers, police and gang members ending murders of teenagers in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan in the late 1990s. But those are places Affleck's probably never been to, involving people who don't look anything like his mythologized Irish-Catholic Townie robbers.
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
What??
You seem to not be able to get over the fact that Boston used to (in many instances still is) be very racist pre-21st century. Nothing to be proud of but it's history; it happened & nothing can change that, ever.
Judging from your comment,
Judging from your comment, you seem to think the only ways to be "over" something are to forget that it ever happened, or to never ever ever mention it in any way.
And it's not history; Boston is, as you even alluded to, still a very racist place! There are many systemic problems involving race here.
Also, "pre-21st century" is only 17 years ago. It's weird that you brought that up and then dismiss it as "history" like it's the Bronze Age and not recent.
What?
No, it's not that. It's that Affleck has appropriated the name of a very specific thing to mean something completely different. It'd be like him doing a series called "Boston Strong" about a Boston baseball team that wins it all after 86 years.
I enjoyed his film about a
I enjoyed his film about a Boston optometrist looking for love, never realizing it was right in front of his face: "Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes."
Maybe it’s me...
The headline or caption is a little misleading... “to keep the blacks out” says one thing but the story says another, idk
Why I put it that way
The series is literally whitewashing a series of events in Boston that involved three black neighborhoods, by recasting the phrase to focus on white people in what was then a white neighborhood. And the article does get into that.
What do you mean?
Used to be racist? And in many cases? You don't read Boston Magazine?
The Irish as tough guys
Lets face the facts, the Italian gangster story has been done one too many times. African American gangsters stories except for the wire play to the worst stereotypes of African American culture. Irish Gangster stories about Southie and Charlestown sell because the rest of America is fascinated with stories about tough white guys and girls who are loyal to their neighborhoods. The toughest part about Southie and Charlestown today is finding a parking space or a condo under a million dollars.
Boston cliche
How many more movies and shows do we need about Irish wiseguys from South Boston and Charlestown?
The tootsie roll owl says...
A one, a two, (crunch), three. It takes 3 more films to get to the center of systemic Boston racism.
Now THAT's a film
Why not do a film around the workers of Tootsie Roll Industries, makers of Junior Mints just outside Central Square, Cambridge?
It could be about one out-of-state factory owner's struggles to make a great candy in a world dominated by biotechs and $750k condos. It ends with ICE raids and MIT buying the factory to expand.
Cambridge Brands
Tootsie Roll has its headquarters on the Southwest Side of Chicago, not too far from where I grew up, and has a huge warehouse/central distribution facility there. It purchased the "Cambridge Brands" around 1993. The Cambridge factory has been in operation for about a hundred years. The original owner started making Sugar Daddies around 1920 (in Chicago we had "All Day Suckers" instead), then moved on to Sugar Babies and Junior Mints.
No Tootsie Roll products are or ever were made there. When TRI took over, the factory was making Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, Charleston Chew, and Pom Poms. Pom Poms have been discontinued, but my guess is that they're still making the other brands.
It was over fifteen years ago, but I have been inside the factory.
--gpm
Even Better
Are the ones about the tough Southie from the Southie part of Dorchester.
Do you mean...
The tough Southie from the Southie part of The Chest?
None.https://www.youtube.com
None.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLwbzGyC6t4
As an irish person who lived
As an irish person who lived in Southie, it made me not want to be irish
As an Irish bank robber from
As an Irish bank robber from Charlestown, these movies make me want to be handsome.
God you're
God you're a single minded snowflake. What about how this move take a handle full of people from a single project and makes all of Boston's Irish look like scum.
But ya, this is diffidently more detrimental to the black community!
Oh, so you failed history, I take it
Yeah, Affleck's (and Damon's) treatment of the Boston Irish is enough, already. So now he's doing that again, only this time he's deliberately dissing a rather remarkable event from our city's recent history that has nothing to do with his cliched series (and that name? "City on a Hill" has become a cliche all by itself, and, as long as we're talking about history, let's not forget that John Winthrop, who coined the phrase, was a slave-owning authoritarian).
So he *sort of* coined it
Although I assume he was *sort of* quoting the Bible?
Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Yes, he borrowed the phrase
But gave it new meaning - he was referring specifically to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
*calls author snowflake*
*complains that a movie may engage in a stereotypical yet unfailingly sympathetic portrayal of a particular ethnic group*
Well, did you actually
live in those projects? Ever had to tell your GF's sister's beau how to pass single bills that still had the dye on them?
Ever seen a black kid beat on a street corner on Bunker Hill Street? One chased by a mob? I have to say, I actually drove down Walford Way yesterday and was happy to see that maybe, just maybe, all of the POC I saw just don't have to worry about getting the shit beat out them by some kid in a Scally cap wacked on dust.
Just a "handful" of people?
That must be why there are still several unsolved murders from that "code of silence" era - that "handful' of people who were not representative had a very large handful of snitch stoppers behind them.
Several?
There were 49 murders in C-Town during that period and not a one was solved officially, even though 80% of the time everyone in town knew who the killer was within an hour of the crime.
Did not know the exact numbers
... and did not want to overstate.
As usual, facts speak for themselves. Ouch.
When fits were being thrown over naming the Zakim bridge, I suggested "Victims of the Code of Silence Memorial Bridge" as an alternative "locally relevant" name.
Ouch
Although the Charlestown thing was certainly unusually bad, the whole "reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement" thing is not unique to the "Boston Irish", and I have to imagine that for at least some of these people, paralyzing fear of gangsters (perhaps abetted by corrupt cops or FBI agents) was part of their motivation, more than dark loyalty. And I've looked around a bit and it looks like there were in fact arrests in 26 of those 49 Charlestown murders. Between 2016 and 2017 (according to the BPD website) there were around 50 unsolved murders in Boston. Does that make everybody in those Boston neighborhoods also some kind of collaborator or "scum"? Or does it just mean a lot of people are scared?
You tell me....
Ever had your Mom wake up to a single bullet in front of her door?
And I never used the word "scum" to describe people who had no other choice but to live there and keep their mouths shut.
I think people are jumping
I think people are jumping the gun on the pedantry here (and I'm a well-known pedant), since it's based on a one-line description of a show which is still in production. It might be that the stuff about armored-car robbers is just the jumping off point for a narrative which eventually gets into Operation Ceasefire. Or maybe not! But it seems too early to judge.
If you want to really get pedantic, of course, there was no Boston Miracle. Crime fell everywhere in the 90s, and the murder rate had already plummeted in Boston before the operation began. I'm sure it helped some, but it wasn't a miracle.
I want to see the final product before cursing it out
The Code of Silence was broken in Charlestown in the 1990s.
Hard work of law enforcement and community leaders in Roxbury and Dorchester led to what we all call the "Boston Miracle" in the 1990s.
If they attach the moniker for the latter on a TV show about the former, that would be very, very bad. If the show spans the 90s and shows the different initiatives to reduce violent crime in the city overall, I'm okay with that. If the producers are only talking about the former and ditch the "Boston Miracle" talk, let the show stand on it's overall merits, artistic or otherwise.
movies about gangsters
and other smug secret-keeping backbiters of all stripes can never get old. get me?
see, it's better to see it on the screen, than in real life. but it's always there, in real life.
Maybe there will be a black judge
I see the argument for the criticism but the response is lots of black Gods and black judges. When I see it it takes me out of the movie. “Had to get em in there somewhere.” Don’t tell artists what to make. Even if it’s true it’s not your business.
Or maybe it's just that Ben &
Or maybe it's just that Ben & Co figured that it only makes economic sense to make movies about white people for white people since that's where the money is.
According to a 2015 study by a Federal Reserve, the median net worth of a black Bostonian is not enough to purchase a single movie ticket -and I am not trying to be funny.
"That was no typo: The median net worth of black Bostonians really is $8"
Boston Globe December 11, 2017
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/12/11/that-was-typo-the-median-ne...
Everyone chill the F out!
You want racism? Go to the deep south. Many places still haven't recovered from the abolition of slavery and blame the "Damn Yankees" for screwing up their economy. Now they are white trash meth addicts sooo...yeah, it could be worse. My buddy was in Mississippi and let a black driver go first at stop sign intersection. The white dude in car with him from there gave him an earful saying "why the f%*k did you let a n@$$&r go first? We don't do that down here." Wtf? Nothings perfect. Irish and Italians up here always at odds but not super serious. There is no utopia but it's not Boston in 1974 at least.
That's nice dear.
That's nice dear.