Hello, Everyone!
ProvidenceMine is here.
This blog post will be a short one, but it's about something that I have to get off my chest (yes, again ).
I was at the bank, and had decided that afterwards I would pick up a few things from the drug store next door.
Well, I was able to pick up my vitamins and toothpaste so I headed to the cash register. I was on line waiting a few minutes as a woman was helping her elderly mother pick up her items, and when they were finished I was called down to the register ( one thing I like about this whole Covid-19 thing is that there are no crowds or long lines ) where the cashier rang up my items, and while I was waiting I took a look at the magazine section and noticed on the rack a commemorative issue of Entertainment Weekly dedicated to the late actor Chadwick Boseman, star of the enjoyable but overrated blockbuster The Black Panther.
I was rather hit sideways when I saw the issue.
As you know, Mr. Chadwick Boseman died from a four year battle of colon cancer quite recently, and the outpouring of condolences has been huge, and while the news was tragic, I simply can't understand this commemorative issue by Entertainment Weekly.
Why, you may ask?
I will tell you simply by relaying my own personal experience. Honestly, I had never heard of Mr. Boseman until the movie Black Panther was out in theaters. Before that time, he wasn't even in my radar. Was Chadwick Boseman really that big of a name to even warrant such an issue?
Let's be clear. Chadwick Boseman was not Burt Reynolds nor was he Paul Newman. Reynolds and Newman were Hollywood legends, and a commemorative issue on them would make sense. If James Earl Jones or Denzel Washington had died, it would make sense to give them a commemorative issue as well.
I realize that Boseman had played James Brown and Thurgood Marshall in two films, but I didn't know this until after The Black Panther had been out for some time. I don't think this actor had been in the industry long enough to have any real impact. He starred in one blockbuster movie following films that came and went.
You are probably wondering why I am going off on Entertainment Weekly's commemorative issue in this fashion. I'm doing so because there is something creepily exploitative about it. This actor was a man who was literally on the cusp of what looked like stardom, but never really got there. I know that he had done other films afterwards, including some action thriller where he played a cop-does anyone know the name of that film, even? I seem to remember that it came and went with a snap of a finger.
Listen, I know who Dwayne Johnson is. I know who Chris Pratt is. I knew both actors for many years because they have established themselves in a number of hits throughout the years. Those two are household names.
Chadwick Boseman was not a household name. That doesn't mean that he would not have been sometime in the future, but he really wasn't when he died. He was an up and comer. Never in my life have I seen a commemorative issue dedicated to an up and comer.
It's clear to me, that Entertainment Weekly decided to make a commemorative issue on Chadwick Boseman in order to cash in on his very recent and untimely death and all of the outpouring of sympathy that his family has been getting. I would also go as far as to say that the whole resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement had played a large hand in influencing the planning and publishing of this particular issue.
Now, you might ask, wouldn't a commemorative issue on established Hollywood legends be exploitative as well?
Perhaps, but it would make more sense because there is a hell of a lot more to commemorate.
Boseman has had one blockbuster hit movie while the rest of them have not been such. I only know of the James Brown film and the Thurgood Marshall film, and I don't even know the titles of those particular films. The only thing I remember is when I saw one picture of Mr. Boseman as Thurgood Marshall and thought how he looked absolutely positively nothing like the legendary Supreme Court Judge and of how he was a bizarre choice for the role. As for the James Brown movie, I had thought that the actor who played Lafayette in True Blood was James Brown, only to find out-when he had passed-that he wasn't James Brown, but was in a supporting role.
Exactly what kind of fillers were inserted in this commemorative issue of this unfortunate actor?
You just wanted the money, Entertainment Weekly, that's all. You just wanted to make money off of this man's corpse, so you decided to squeeze out what you could in order to put it in your junky gossipy trash heap of a magazine and sell it.
Disgusting.
Really and truly.
Seriously, between tag teaming a bad review on a streaming series that your critics had hardly viewed and a commemorative issue of a man who barely had a career to talk about as of yet, what in the hell will be next?
I shudder at the thought.
