Representation and Cultural Exchange in Anime and Animation

Insofar as the American public wants to think there has been progress, it will have one very simple thing. I don't want to be given anything by you. I just want to leave me alone so I can do it myself. We have lived from these intolerable conditions for how many years or 40 years. We have evolved a certain kind of style to meet it, and a lot of that has been involved with the lies we have told you. The intersection where black popular culture meets social justice. Hello, I'm Booker at which Professor of Practice in the Creative Media Industries Institute. And I am Lisa Farrell, Producer Project Manager at the Creative Media Industries Institute. And I am Likita Barnett Bailey, Associate Professor at Georgia State University in the Department of Africana Studies. And this is the intersection where black popular culture meets social justice. Anyone who's been paying attention to pop culture for the past couple of decades understands that hip-hop, but the music and the culture is arguably the largest cultural export out of the United States. And that Japanese culture, particularly anime, has without a doubt gone fully mainstream. Now, the relationship between anime and hip-hop culture and in turn Asian and black American cultures are long gone. We can argue it is one that has been developing since the 70s, the era of black exploitation films that were dying heavily on Kung Fu movies. Black theaters get the films cheaply, and the two genres were the rare source of reliably non-white protagonists. We should probably start by defining what anime is for the uninitiated. Anime is a term for a style of Japanese comic book and cartoon animation in which the main characters usually have large, dull-like eyes. It is also the dominant style in Japanese comic books and manga. The storylines are often very sophisticated and complex and extended to episodic series. Typical anime themes or genres include ninja and other martial arts, the supernatural or horror stories, romance and science fiction including robots and spaceships. Also, anime accounts for 60% of the world's animation-based entertainment. Netflix recently told the Wall Street Journal that more than 100 million households around the world watched at least one anime title on their service in the year up to September of 2020, which is 50% up from last year. Although you can trace the growth of anime in black culture directly to the era of Kung Fu films, there was already a precedent set in hip-hop for the integration of Japanese music. Across genres, artists claim Japanese synth, pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra as pivotal figures in modern music with sample credits for musicians like Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Two Live Crew, and De La Soul. Africa, Bambada even jokingly claimed that the group he sampled in his taped death mix might have invented hip-hop. A lot of people cite one of the first open references to anime in hip-hop as Lupé Fiasco's bar. Guess who's on third? Lupé still like Lupin III from Kanye West's late registration album in 2005. Lupin III is a character with many different appearances including Hayo Miyazaki's 1979 feature debuted the Castle of Cogliastro, or from the Lupin III Part II, the series that was acquired by Cartoon Network in 2002. Many black anime fans say that anime parallels what black people feel about themselves. Take this quote from the riser. Dragon Ball Z represents the journey of the black man in America. He goes on to say, "You see it more clearly as the story goes. You learn that Sun Goku is part of an ancient race called the Saiyans who come from a distant planet and were known as the fiercest warriors in the galaxy." So Sun Goku has superpowers but doesn't realize it. A head injury destroyed his memory, robbed him of his knowledge of self, then one day he gets stressed beyond his limits and hooks out into his alter ego, Super Saiyan. In an article titled why black man love Dragon Ball Z, writer Gita Jackson interviews many long time black Dragon Ball fans about why they fell in love with the series. Many referenced how the series appealed to them as kids due to the intense action, but the series also helped many of its viewers mature as they grew up. The thing that they all had in common is that the main character was always some sort of underdog said one viewer, something about having an underdog that can like raise up and make something happen. I think black man particularly identify themselves with that. Every lover of hip hop and anime goes back to the rise of Cartoon Network with a few exceptions. Most people who came of age in the late 90s and early 2000s, either discovered anime or solidified their love for it on Tsunami on Cartoon Network. It also premiered music from artists like Gorillas, an anime inspired virtual band who collaborated with plenty of hip hop artists including Dell, the funky homo sapien of the Hieroglyphics and Dell Tron 3030. In 2001, Cowboy B-Bop launched on Cartoon Network. With Samurai, Shampoo, launching in 2003, pairs a story from the past with music from the future by having hip hop be the driving sound of the show and turn to a team of rappers and producers including Force of Nature, Fat John, the ample soul physician, and the late New Jabbies, a pioneer in low-fi hip hop. After Shampoo, Boom Docs appeared on Cartoon Network. The one-two punch confirmed what black anime fans believed. We were the target audience for anime. Then in 2007, Afro Samurai, which was actually produced by a Japanese company, premiered on Spike TV and featured a soundtrack by Rizza of the Wutain clan. The same man who claimed that Dragon Ball Z was the story of the black man in America. In fact, the most obvious example of cross cultural appreciation comes from Rizza and the Wutain clan, who took their sampling repertoire from Foundations Lay primarily by Shaw Brothers Studios, which produced Kung Fu films like the 36 Chambers of Shaolin and Shaolin and the Wutain, where they obviously took their name and actually the name of their first album, the 36 Chambers. Today we have the privilege of having Professor Dr. Don Elisa Fisher, also known as the Deaf Professor, who is an associate professor at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses on black popular culture, information technology, and virtual ethnography. Having published on the topics of race and cyberspace, Japanese hip hop and globalization, her book reviews, blackness, race, gender, and trust nationalism in hip hop and anime give us a perspective today on our discussion of social justice, representation, and animation. Welcome, Don. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hi, Don. We are so excited to have you here. So excited. So I will start by asking you, could you provide us with more information on your research and your experience with anime slash animation? Sure, sure. I've been researching hip hop and as part of a global human rights agenda for maybe 25 years. And so midway through and so part and part of that work included doing research in countries outside of the US, including Japan. Now my mother, whose frontline direct action activist, was fluent in many languages, including Japanese and Chinese. And so I grew up with her, sometimes actually accompanying her on research projects in different countries. And so that leads me to sharing that one of the sites that the site of my dissertation was doing ethnography in Japan. On hip hop as part of a transnational social movement organizing effort. And so I, as a scholar of hip hop, one recognizes how hip hop samples and connects to multiple popular cultural genres. And the present as well as the past and even gets futuristic. And so as such, setting in the site to the USA and Japan, I could not ignore anime or manga as being folded in to the transnational cultural production. Now it, within my doctoral work, it was discussed, but it wasn't the primary focus necessarily. Yet at a moment in time, as I was teaching classes about race and cyberspace and virtual community and online social movement building and so forth. From the site of the Bay Area, where there was Occupy, Black Lives Matter and other social and related social movement organizing going on. There was a moment in time where I noticed an overlap of what I kind of like artists, who at one point in time were referred to as sound clown artists. For example, but not limited to at this point in time, but there was a moment in time where I noticed there was this overlap with online social, Black social movement building or global social movement building like Black Lives Matter. And so, anime and manga aesthetics and hip-hop. And so, I mean, I re-sturched it for a while and then decided to focus to do some formal inquiry on it. And that was the basis of the proposal that I submitted for the Nasir Jones Fellowship Award at the Hutchins Center at Harping University in 2016. Looking at the intersection of hip-hop and anime, it's something that's always been present as part of my Black activist transnational political life. But as far as like a formal unit of analysis, I would say that it shows up as a center in research and presentations and writing that I've been doing around 10 years ago actually, because we're coming on the 10-year anniversary of 3/11 in Japan, Fukushima. So, I mean, it was really then where looking at art that came out of the United States, looking at art that came out of Brazil, looking at art that came out of Japan and reaction to how governments were handling crises and disaster. I could not continue this like hip-hop political scholarship without recognizing how artists were utilizing and integrating anime, African futures and more at that moment. And I have one more thing to say, just to kind of like, not the post-2000, my mama. My mother, who just had a birthday on March 8th International Women's Day, came out of an exageral alum, St. Mary's Academy alum, studied East Asian languages and literature at Ohio State in the 70s, the only Black woman in the program. My mom took us to, my mom, who was my first Japanese language teacher, would take us, my family, my brothers and I, to Tuesday night, independent cinema at the local university in the city where I grew up, or in the town that I grew up. And so there were a number of independent films that I saw in the 80s that were generally not accessible to many people in the public unless you happen to be in one of these like Metropolitan Cultural Art Centers or, yeah, or like in that crew. So from the rural position that I grew up in in the Ozarks, I saw films like El Norte and my own private Idaho. And even Spike Lee's, she's got to have it and so forth, we're part of that in the 80s, and I'm talking about the 1980s, it's part of this independent cinema tour, shall we say, that weren't accessible as they are now with things like Internet movie streaming and so forth. So one of the films that I saw with my family was Akira. And at the time I was really young, it was the 80s. So I was like, ooh, I like the animation and I'm also disturbed by apocalypse. So I mean, Akira's one of those films that I've dealt with over time and have different understandings of and so forth. But that was one of, Akira was one of those, that was like that breakout hit to where we could have conversations with people who didn't understand anything about global politics or even animation in that way. So that was one of those films that I was able to engage these topics with my peers. And prior to that, Black aesthetics and animated features, spanning from the 70s, was something that was part of my household and cultural life growing up. And then of course, just one more thing, got a shout out Ghost in a Shell, the 1995 VHS version that we would circulate along with like Wu Tang clan and souls of mischief and so forth. So I wanted to kind of share and we see this in like, we see wonderful examples of this from the pioneering work from Aaron McGruder and some of the work that we'll see debuting. I think it's April 29, 2021, the work that, yep, Flying Lotus and you got to fill in the blank because I don't have my notes with me, so name all the names but like work that's come. We see this now, but that was a long answer, my bad. No, thank you. So I have the next question. So you referenced a lot of hip hop artists, Wu Tang and souls of mischief and others. But based on your research and your experience, what do you see as that relationship between hip hop and the, well, the hip hop culture and anime? Because it wasn't always present, no, at least an early hip hop, it definitely wasn't present and even, you know, probably right up to the Wu Tang clan, I think is where it became more evident at least to me. And I'm not as versed in anime as you or Lisa, but what do you, what do you see as that relationship between the hip hop culture and anime? So, thank you for that question. So my book is called "Representing the Unseen," which I was inspired by Madlib's work that came out as the character Quasimodo. Just like season change, I bring rainfall, sun shine, when it's summer time. So that's how long it goes. It's been something like, ooh, you know, I mean, like I'm applying to grad school. I just graduated from college and I'm going to write this book, because it's going to be called "Representing the Unseen." And so over the years, I've been like, oh, maybe at some point in time, I have to change a title, because it'll be seen. Right. But what you just mentioned is still unseen, right? So I want to honor what you said in that perhaps prior to a certain moment in time, this idea of anime, maybe was considered to not be related or influencing in any way. What we consider hip hop art, but I would respectfully disagree. I would honor that it's been unseen perhaps, but I would challenge us all to think back critically and wonder if it was there, but maybe it was noticed. Right. In that, okay, so hear me out here. At one point in time, we're like superheroes or comics ever not involved with hip hop art. I'm talking going back to the '70s. Yeah, never. So, right. So we've been it. We've been we've been integrating like comics, fantasy narratives, and understandably, like aspects of science fiction or futurism, right. As part of our get free. Right. I mean, and he about can be complex, right. I'm like, not trying to like sell this as like an unproblematic toolkit. Like, you know, but if we go back and think like, okay, like even like Rizza is Bobby Digital or Dr. or Q Colt Keith is Dr. Octagon, I mentioned Cosymoto earlier. I like to like not stay in only mentioned males doing this because like there were a lot of females who were unseen, again, representing the unseen, who were doing work or participating or working on albums. We just don't know their names because the misogynnoir and so forth, but we have a renewed opportunity to go back and do that archival. The biology of knowledge to like lift up people who had an influence and and also recognize people who are out there doing stuff right now, yet I digress. So this idea of like hip-hop and anime not always being connected. I would say that at least in so again, I'm not my experience took me a long time to to admit that perhaps my experience was not normative. I thought I thought everybody's everyday black life was like mine growing up right? I had brothers who had comic books. I mean like trunks full of comic books that I wasn't allowed to touch, right? Because they were in the little plastic and everything. They were watching, we watched animated films like Heavy Metal and of course Akira. So there was like, there was an, I mean, you go back to that like science fiction futures. I mean, it wasn't always like, we didn't always necessarily see black characters. So to speak, but this is where encoding decoding and agency is important, right? But we could reimagine ourselves. Like I would definitely imagine. And to be like, my mind, it wasn't just storm that was black. Wonder Woman was black, she was just light skinned. Like, I'll be like any character I could remake is black. And me, I'll be like, I'm that character. My brother and I talked about this all the time in regard to, I think it's Dr. Strange, faint lab. Let me not speak for him. So what I'm trying to say is like, we've always had this and I see this with the rappers that I was studying as part of my like most recent research project, right? Like, like Xavier Woof, this rapper Adam Memphis was talking about how he was this 14th captain of this bleach squad, right? And then I see people, it's not people and interviews that I've done. Artists and fans, they're not just only seeing themselves stuck into black animated characters. They may, they may, those characters may resonate with them, but they also may be like, oh, Kempachi's me, Kempachi's black. I have a family member that actually like remade Kempachi with more pigment and it was like not this mob bleach character. So, and we see, we see this. So like, I know I'm jumping all around. So let me, let me go back into the timeline. So I would, I would want to put forth for consideration that perhaps black, black political, like black cultural production and people that were engaging at at at various levels of black political life may have been watching Kung Fu Flicks, right? I know I switched countries. I'm not being angry. Like, may have been looking at this, if we look at that artifact of what we used to be called Third World Liberation Fronts, right? And, and not just intersectional, but also like multicultural coalitions or whatever. I mean, the, the term changes depending on what decade we're looking at, there's always been some along with exchange of political information. There's often been exchange of aesthetic information. And, and it's complicated. And so I would argue that some of the people who are like around, you know, what we'd call like hip hop generation, there's, it's possible to consider that there's all, there may, those people may have always been or like myself. Um, these I statements that I have always been engaging on some level, even if it was just in college, like when I watched Ghost in the Sun, Ghost in the Show, I think it was like an alpha, alpha movie night. So clearly I wasn't the only black person in the room, right? So, you know, we've always been kind of like engaging. And then when we see like what we see though at a particular moment in time with like MF Doom, with like, um, uh, press a piece, press and piece, press and piece. And, um, like what we see with Daytona 500. It's a piece to catch a rock, acknowledged knowledge is sweet, as well as just light up the mic, God knows the remix speed racer online, you know, like with the, with the, um, hip hop videos. And even like the album covers of say, like Dr. Octagon and some of the work, like we start to see, we, we, we see, I mean, we're decades into an obvious mashup of genres. And so one could say, oh, that was comics or that was, um, that wasn't anime and this in the specific way or shape or form, but I would argue that, um, like, um, diaspora wide, we've been interested, we've been integrating. And, um, we've been creating art that samples and references. And so, yeah, I was a little bit too much. So, um, no, you're amazing. I will want to take any class that you're teaching. I wanted to share something that was interesting, um, that I uncovered in my work was, um, talking to publishers of manga and people who work on the business side of animated adaptations of manga that we know is, uh, as anime and then also, um, interviewing manga, like, our artists, I don't know if I probably just already said that. So I'm going to just talk about bleach because that's like what I'm known for talking about a lot, but it's not just bleach. But like, so Tate, Tate, Tate, Tate, Kubo, the, uh, the main manga, who gets accredited to drawing bleach, right? He's my age with same age. And, um, so it's, it's, it's impossible. That someone, my age would have grown up and not having access at one point, not saying you have to like it, but not seeing hip hop, not seeing black bodies in popular culture. And that was a question I was going to ask you. What was from your research? What was the acceptance, embracement, um, perspective of hip hop within Japanese culture? So how did they view and see hip hop? Well, as an ethnographer, it's important to me not to speak for the people, right? So I have, but I have snapshots of, um, what people have to say, um, from like the fan person who may never ever get out of their province due to economic constraint and like a mobility to the international traveling artist to the artist who maybe like, uh, very well known, but has not been able to travel internationally. So, um, I think that because I joined a particular community, like when I was 17 years old and I've grown, I mean, it's been many decades, I've, I've most likely have like a biased idea, right? Um, yet though as a professor, right? I've been engaged with people about talking about hip hop from the subject position of Japan all these years. And so, um, I mean, when it comes to like hip hop and embracement, bracing, um, Japan as a country is like any other country and, and on earth in that, um, hip hop at this point is considered like something that's autocthinous or indigenous, right? Because at some point, like depending on when one was born, it just always was. Now I'm not saying everybody likes it, like everyone has their taste and preferences, some people like different types of pop, some people like country, jazz, reggae, whatever, like everyone has their click, but, um, but as far as, um, hip hop, I was attracted to hip hop in Japan because it was in other countries, but specifically my long term research in Japan, because it was like a place where I felt that, um, I could practice my anti racist political struggle as complicated, but it was it. It seemed to be a place for me to build a sense of community and sense of belonging. And, um, so what I was trying to get at about like the about hip hop, um, is that because of hip hop's visuality and sampling and so forth, we may see, um, we have seen, not just the integration of comics and animation, but we also see, um, reproductions from black film, right? And I talk about this in another talk of what, like how Pam Greer talks about black exploitation, just contested, but I'm quoting Pam Greer, Professor Pam's career. So, um, so we see these images of black cultural production, um, in circulation and influencing people who are non black, drawing black characters into the genre. And then we see black artists consuming that genre and reinterpreting and putting that back out. And what I'm seeing right now is that art, like say, from Megan, the stallion, for example, then again, influencing, mangaka, we're creating right now. I don't know if that was too confusing. No, that makes, it makes perfect sense. And that gets that representing the unseen, because I think historically black cultural production or black, the mutual mutual influence or co authorship, uh, inspiration. The citation has been absent. It's been rendered unseen or invisible. And so part of our political project right now is to, as I said earlier, do that archaeology of knowledge in the amplify what's already there. And so it's teaching people to see. Are there any specific social justice issues that are addressed in anime? I mean, for me, if I were going to do a generalization of the entire like very, very diverse form, I would say that there's often themes of apocalyptic of of challenging authority and narratives about like avoiding apocalypse or or or or or coping and averting more apocalypse after post apocalypse, right? Post apocalypse apocalyptic avoidance. Right, you feel what I'm saying though, like with the like like dragon balls ease or full metal alchemist, they're like, I mean, generally there's this like there's there's nationalist discourse going on that maybe unseen to people who aren't familiar with like nationalist discourse that's with it local to the geopolitical entity of Japan and the complicated layers of colonization and being colonized. So there's a lot there's there's but we get on a general term to look at like the challenging of authority. And I think that's something that in my interviews has come up with many artists is that that that seems to translate across across national boundaries across state boundaries across across identities and that this idea of. And if we want to put a feminist a black feminist lens into it of challenging this idea of what is respectable, what is what is confinement, how one is supposed to be supposed to act in order to get free doing as one what is told these are these like. These are these kind of broader themes that we may see in in in in animated genres and this idea of saving the world or uncovering some horrible conspiracy. I mean, when you look at some of the details and stories in genres. In some of the text and some of the the animated adaptations. It might be like, you know, children are being right like press a promise never land children are. I don't want to give away spoilers, but like, you know, just like child abuse. I mean, there's this stuff happening right or like the government secret government plot the police are corrupt. Like they may not be police as we call police, right? It may be like like in bleach at some point it's soul reapers and it just gets more complex from there. But like, you know, this idea of. There's these the power and authority or the people were supposed to trust may not be keeping it real. They may be hurting the children. Somebody's got to save earth humanity. Certain identity of people. And then within the movement, there's counter movements and corruption. And so those type of themes and ideas resonate well with the people who have survived coin tell pro are still struggling against it. It's like, oh yeah, I know that. I've seen that. So and if people don't know about it, because they didn't get a chance to take African American study courses, then they can turn on Netflix and look at some of the like new dramatic and fictional interpretations that are being circulated today. I still think people should take African American studies courses. I like either would agree with you. Yeah. And so will we right away? Yes. Um, what should we know about the future of hip hop social justice and anime? All about black them in this theory. Yo, so internationally, internationally. So I didn't talk about critical gender inquiry and answering the last question. And, um, uh, that's important. Um, for a long time, while I, while anime was definitely part of like this, my, my global popular culture, um, community as a, as a researcher and as a political activist. I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to touch that. Like, it's this difficult. So, uh, so, uh, and yet, I think, yeah, um, I feel ready. I've been, I felt ready for about 10 years now, but maybe, maybe, maybe just maybe five or six. Um, and that, uh, this is something that I was saying back when, uh, Dr. Bonnet Bailey, and I were probably doctoral candidates, right? And that, um, you know, uh, intersectional identity and critical, our, our critical race and critical gender, political movement building, you know, must be inclusive. And we, we cannot, um, continue to get free, if not all of us are free, or some of us are holding off or waiting or silenced or being controlled. Um, and so I'm, maybe I'm speaking too ambiguously, but, um, if we go back to the 90s, 2000s, hell, maybe even 10, five years, look at the campaigns with Vice President Harris, right? Like, like, this idea, like, if women would just put their clothes on, then we could all be free. Is that, I mean, I don't know if that's the idea, but like, so that's the kind of narrative. I mean, I guess I'm being very basic with it. And so, as a result, I want it like delve into what we know about, um, anime, um, and, and, and, and problematics of how characters are drawn from critical gender, critical sexuality, critical race, critical global location, um, critical spirituality, like any intersectional that identity you could think of, but let's, um, uh, think about how characters are drawn, think about how people are taught to draw, think about the, um, history of representation, and how that gets encoded and decoded and, and circulated into part of our freedom movements and part of our oppression or suppression movements. And so, it's because of, like, that, that history, what would Kisha Fikes calls the history centered studies of race, and it's a intersection with gender that I, and other, um, and sexuality, that, um, hell, like global economic freedom that I think that, um, right now, in this political moment and moving forward, um, we, uh, a transnational black feminist theoretical perspective is useful at every level of research design at every level of activism, and even in everyday conversation. We have too much of an opportunity right now with what's happening in social media is too accessible or it is accessible, but if you don't, if it's not in your digital footprint, then break out your algorithm and get access. There's, um, weekly campaigns coming from the African American policy forum, Kimberly Crenshaw and crew sending out information, Cheryl Harris is having conversations with her son, Tebe Earl sweatshirt, uh, you can watch the whole conversation online. I mean, it's too accessible to not. Educate oneself and engage and continue that meaning-making process with one another, um, and, and do the knowledge, as we say in the 90s. So, uh, this is a moment where, um, it's important for us to be educating ourselves and centering black feminist theory, centering black feminist intellectual thought. As we decode any popular culture that we are engaging in our personal lives and that may be useful to educating our shared political agendas. I just want to say, Dawn, thank you so much. You are amazing. So, uh, this is felt like, uh, like a webinar. Yeah. Like we were in class. Sure. A great class. So, thank you. No, I'm not kidding aside, especially, um, for someone like myself who is, like I said, I'm so far. This is not a part of my. Every day intake of entertainment or cultural, I'm, anime is not a thing for me. You know what I'm saying? So learning about this to, to actually, uh, prepare for this podcast and even while we were waiting for you to come on, we were talking about, uh, the boondocks, um, which has been very popular in African American culture and a lot of my students would tell me about it years ago when it was just coming on television. And I was asking, um, Dr. Barely, if she, if, if there was a parallel between the boondocks and 70s, exploitation films as far as where they sit within the animation timeline, because my experience, which was very limited because I tried to watch it once and I felt like it was very stereotypical like the, the things that I was saying was just so just so too many stereotypes for me to connect and say I want to continue to watch the next episode. So out of ignorance, I didn't get the layered things that were happening in there and all the social justice things and now understand Martin Luther King was on there and all these types of things like Martin Luther King was on. So I missed all of that because my mind said, this is some ignorant, I'm not watching this, right? Um, and so I've been educated to now, like I'm, I'm going to find it wherever is I'm sure so on one of the million different streaming services that I can find, see, there you go. And I'm going to, I'm going to get past that type of stuff. It's kind of like I, it's akin to how long it took me to get into Game of Thrones. And I noticed this counter related, but, but different. When I first saw previews on HBO for Game of Thrones, like I'm not watching that bleed dragons and like that's not, we don't do that. Like where I'm from, I know dragons, when that's just too much fantasy crazy. And somebody that I respected and trust kind of there, I told me said, he calls me B, B, just watch the first episode just simply the first episode. I promise you, if I'm wrong, you know, I have to talk to me again. I was like, and still it took me another six months to watch the first episode. And when I watched the first episode, I watched six seasons in two weeks, because I could not turn it off. You can ask my wife. I could not turn it off. Inside the dragons were like background noise. You know what I mean? The story lies in the layers of the writing, which is so good to me that I was able to get that. So now you guys are like that person who have told me, hey, Booker, trust us, get past one episode, and you'll be okay. Now if I'm not, I'm going to come back on another episode. I definitely want to hear your opinion after you watch it, because I have a series. So if you need me to drop the DVDs off to you, I'm most blessed. I don't think I have a DVD player. I feel you, Booker, I think these are the kind of conversations that have to happen. Or I don't have to, but I'd like them to happen. Because because, I mean, we're, you're talking to me at this moment in time, right? Like, I had similar experiences with Boom Docs, right? Like I would be pulled in. And then I'd be like uncomfortable offended and and then maybe, you know, like not pulled back in. But I definitely like the Dr. King skits. Oh my goodness, that I was writing my dissertation. I had that on repeat. Says something about want to talk, but not right. And I was like, oh, let me write my dissertation. And the R Kelly skits, the R Kelly ones, I mean, before people were actually breaking up and criticizing R Kelly, who he was the first one that was saying, you know, we need to ban R Kelly, you know, now we're banning R Kelly, but here he was talking about banning R Kelly. And Raleigh was on the other hand, was like, but his music so good. And he was like, but he's like, I can definitely relate to that conversation. That's what it is, though. It's breaking silence. It's the same argument that many of us do in political hip-hop scholarship about hip-hop, like, like some of our, like elders and mentors would be like, you can't study this. And so I was just reading to a student before class, before we got on, like, I was reading, I'm not going to say who somebody from 1997 that was like, hip-hop had political utility, but then they started calling women, these in H's, I'm not going to say, because I don't know what y'all can say on here. But it's literally, quote, and, oh, man, I open up a kind of word. The point is that we say, like, but it's breaking silence. It's breaking silence on what's happening. And we get that anime. So even some of that very uncomfortable stuff that we see in Game of Thrones, that we see in, in, in anime, and we see in hip-hop, people breaking silence on and being critical of cultural practices that we, that go on question. Like, we need, I mean, ideally, I mean, Dr. Tony Morrison share, right? Like, we need, we need art to be like, wait a minute. Why are we doing this? Because it is, because that's the way it's done. Like, hold up. Can we question this? Cause like, what's happening? So I think that's the, yeah, I love what y'all mentioned about like, I would like to say also being a parent of a teenager that after lives of this stuff. I mean, so there's like the first contact type stuff with some of this art. And then like, as my son got to be the age to be able to watch boondocks, like, I can't remember what his father thinks about. So I don't want to speak on that, but like, but I, I maybe was with it one of the siblings that he was watching. I don't remember how, but he was watching the boondocks and he'd be like, mom, you got to see this episode. And like, seeing this stuff again, the second or third or whatever time around immediate laugh is like, he's like, are you joking? Cause I'm laughing at this point of, of, what is it? Oh, absurdity. I mean, let's just think 12 months ago, right? Like, at this point, our reality was changed. So, but also so absurd, boondocks seems normal. Like, I mean, some of the stuff that was happening and still, you know, so I didn't know, y'all got to get class off. And I got to tell you the like, even growing up, I knew that I was like a huge nerd. So when I met these people, I felt like I was coming home. And because back in the day, you did not let people know that this is stuff you like. Yes, oh, but that's the release of the rail is saying right now, right? That's the other part that didn't even come up the blurred. Like now, it's like normally I could be a blurred. But for some of us, I don't know, we all grew up in different places maybe, but like, that wasn't the reality in the 80s or 90s that I recall. Not at all. We could be encyclopedic and meticulous in our like, comic or video game, maybe hip-hop circles. But like, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, Dr. Bonavaley. Thank you, professor. Thank you, deaf professor for coming. It's always interesting. It's always, you're so always so brilliant. And I always enjoy having conversations. You know, we can stay on the phone for hours. Talking about stuff. So I definitely appreciate you coming in and shedding some light for us. As my daughter told me today, new is the new term. So I am a new to anime. And apparently that means newbie. I thought it was something else. But yes. So, you know, we are definitely seeing the kids transition. She is into K-pop. They watch anime. I mean, all she does all day is watch K-pop and K-Drama. And it's just, yeah. So this is something new. So I'm sure the next time we have this conversation, maybe more familiar as she makes me watch some of these things. And I'm learning about these various artists and, you know, the crossover of artists like BTS and Stray Kids and some of these other artists that are becoming more popular. We're seeing this crossover effect, this infusion throughout the diaspora of culture. And from ours, from our kids, embracing Asian culture to Asian kids, embracing black culture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again for agreeing to do this. Thank you. So, how do we get from the early beginnings of anime where there are some obvious issues with black representation in the drawings or some of the characters to these more modern times where most people don't think twice when they hear an anime reference in hip-hop lyrics or see their favorite hip-hop artists, professing their love of manga, cosplay, and all things anime. My reference point here is this is way off. Like I'm so not in the anime world. Like as far as animation, you know, like I grew up on loony tunes. And, you know, black representation was fed Albert, right? Those are the cartoons or the Jackson 5 cartoon in the 70s. So, you know, I'm dating myself here. But I really think, you know, part of the answer to your question is just the generation of hip-hop artists now and the time that they grew up in. So, where I was talking about those who grew up in the 90s and 2000s. So, those kids are now in their early 30s, late 20s. And what was happening on cartoons, because cartoons for us was just Saturday morning. You had to get up early on a Saturday morning to catch your cartoon. And it was very limited, right? On one channel you had Scooby Doo on another channel. You might have had, you know, I don't know, something else, Yogi Bear, probably the same channel, because that's all Hannah Barbera. But my point is our pickings were slim, right? Loony Tunes, Woody Woodpecker, maybe on an evening later on by the time I got to junior high school. After school, you could catch like some Tom and Jerry or something on like a UHF channel. You know what I'm saying? To where we get into it. It's interesting you mentioned Tom and Jerry, because even though cartoons that you're mentioning, they have problems with representation of black people. Yes. All the stuff that went over our heads as kids, you know, it's just like, oh, who's the big African American woman that's owning Tom that you only hear this very stereotypical voice when she calls Thomas. And you see these big feet and she's in the apron like all she does is cook all day. So as an adult, I saw that, but as a child, it was completely. Yeah, it's just a cartoon. Yeah. But yeah, she was in a stereotypical depiction of a Mammy, right? So she had the apron. She was the oversized woman. And we never saw her face. All we saw was her arms, which were, you know, black or brown and her legs and she had on slippers. Slippers. Yes. And as I was preparing for this podcast today, because like you, Booker, I am not well versed in anime at all. I was actually looking up some of the older cartoons, the ones that you mentioned that we grew up on that we used to watch. And one that always comes to my mind is the Bugs Bunny episode, where at the end of the episode, they bust out into a menstrual-like depiction of bunion and some other people behind him. And they're singing the song Mammy. And this is a song Mammy from the, from the menstrual shells, you know, that we are all familiar with, which I am not going to try to recreate today on this podcast. But it is definitely, you know, we saw the racism within American cartoons. When we saw the depictions, especially Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny had a lot of cartoons that had racist depictions in his cartoons. Well, you know, look at it. That's an excellent point that we saw the racism in American cartoons because America exported the racism also along with the culture. So you can look and see that perhaps the anime characters that the Asian artists were creating were based on what they saw in American culture. So like the two of you, I'm also from, you know, the same generation with the same cartoons, but I also have two nephews. So they grew up, which means I was indoctrinated into so much anime. So Dragon Ball V, Yukio, Pokemon, all of these things, so much that we watched them all day. And any kind of like toys or cards or trading cards or t-shirts, I hadn't be up on it. So I know what to get them further for their birthdays or Christmas. And so I'm a little more versed in anime plus being a producer of animation and I've judged some c-graph Asian animation festivals. So I know what styles I'm looking for and that sort of thing. You know, I do want to say though, you know, Tom and Jerry just came out with a film, right, that was just released like in the last week prior to us recording this podcast. And I watched it just, I was a Tom and Jerry fan as a kid, but also in kind of preparing for this. And they left the lady out there on top. Exactly. She got no part in the movie at all. And I'm not sure that was even a thought. It was a thought because you've had some people pushing back on the cancel culture of taking her out to some people and, you know, who are saying that even the cartoons are coming with cancel culture. And I'm not going to mention who they are because I think you can figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so here's where I was going to get to like where I see, you know, kind of like your question, how did we get to a point where even with the anime where we don't think twice about it being mentioned in hip-hop songs. Well, when I was growing up, so we talked about the Rizzah and his reference to the Wu-Teng and how that tied into anime and how he parallels the character. And which character was it that he said had the same, you know, this parallel and black man's life. It's on Google. Right. So the Rizzah is from our generation. Those guys are in our age bracket. Their bridge to animation was Kong Fu Flicks. Yep. And so this is kind of the next generation's Kong Fu Flicks. And I was never really into the Kong Fu Flicks as a kid because I couldn't get past the synchronization of their lips and the words. And that may have had something to do with kind of my profession now. Like I'm an audio professional and that's one of the things we look for if we're doing anything and post the words have to be synchronized. So I could never get past that to get into all the fighting and stuff because it didn't make sense to me. It felt crazy. But that brings our generation into the anime generation because so many of the themes of the anime movies or the anime cartoons are basically based around martial arts. And then again, it's just, you know, the next generation, our kids watched Cartoon Network where you had cartoons 24 hours a day, seven days a week, anytime you wanted to. And so there was so much more material for them to consume, right? So much more product just there and they got into all of these different types of things to where now it's part of their vocabulary. Whereas the risk of reference comes through Flix because that was a thing for people in our generation, right? These kids, they watch anime. And so of course it comes out in the lyrics in their rap. So of course they're referencing because the people that they're talking to get it. And they're not necessarily talking to my generation because I was, you know, I had kids there at age and I wasn't necessarily sitting down watching Cartoon Network with them. Yes. And I think one thing, like when you're looking at anime and doing the research for this, you know, some of the things we saw in the similarity with characters like Naruto, which I'm familiar with Naruto and with bleach and those comic books because they were actually really popular back when I was working at a bookstore, which I loved. But when you're thinking about Naruto, it is the story. It is a depiction. Black people can relate to it because Naruto is marginalized. He's alienated from society. You know, he's trying to fight to gain his acceptance into society. So it is a story of triumph. And it's a story that black people can definitely relate to. And I think a lot of black youth are looking at his story as being this underdog, as being this marginalized, alienated person in society that's fighting to gain acceptance and fighting to gain visibility and inclusion in society. And so the whole story of Naruto and his struggle is one that we see that relates to the African American community. And it was one of the first animated series to actually appear on things like Netflix. And so when we're thinking about how we got to a place where black people are more interested in anime, I would have to say that it was the advent of technology. Because as Booker, say it, and then you co-sign Lisa, when we were watching cartoons, it was just what we saw on Saturday mornings on the TV station. Now young people have the option to look to YouTube. They can look to Netflix and all of these other various sources in order to find cartoons that they are interested in. And so they have a more expansive catalog of cartoons and animations to look at than what we had. We only had what appeared on television at the time. And of course with the creation of Cartoon Network, that was an expansion as well as far as the catalog of cartoons and possible cartoons that we see in television. And you could also look to the cross-platform of anime. Because as you mentioned earlier, Lakita, it's already being sampled in the music. But then you've got like their favorite celebrities who are openly professing their love of anime and cosplay and things that in the past people may have considered nerd culture. Kind of embracing nerd culture and flying that flag freely. You've got Megan Stallion, you've got Lupin Fascow that you already mentioned. And Wu Tang Clan, so you've got all of these people who are saying it is okay to like these things that may not be mainstream. And it's okay to like cosplay and to dress up like your favorite character and go to conventions and meet other people who will like you. And so the more that is brought into the mainstream and made to not be seen as something friend or strange, I think the more of black youth that will feel free to embrace it and let you know. So yeah, this is what I like. And I think another thing that you mentioned or alluded to in your question was representation and how they depicted us and how that is actually getting starting to get better. And I think that's coming from actual people of color, African Americans specifically actually starting to be animators and produce these projects. Afro Samurai is a product of the Rizah. And I sent you guys an article that I just saw this morning on, is it the key stand feel? Yes, yes. That play most recently in Judas and the black Messiah, but he's going to be the voice of a black samurai. And I'm going to pronounce this wrong, Yasuki, which is an anime that is created by Leshan Thomas, who's from America, who went over there and got with one of the biggest anime. Anime companies there and produced this project that's coming out on Netflix, which now I'm kind of interested in seeing that I wouldn't have even thought about Washington before we started discussing doing this topic. I just mentioned him voice and that character, Samuel Jackson voices Afro Samurai. And he says it's one of the characters that he feels closest to out of his long career. Yeah, and when we're thinking about representation in the picture of blacks, you know, anime started with problematic representation as you stated, Lisa. I do think it was the creation of series like boom dogs and the inclusion of black, black anime creators that kind of changed the way that black characters looked in anime. But there has been this infusion of hip hop within anime as well. And so while the characters were still misrepresented as far as depiction and imagery, there has been an inclusion of hip hop within anime. Even in those anime series that didn't necessarily have any black characters. And so, for instance, Killer B was in Killer B is a character in Naruto, who his greatest, his goal is to become the greatest rapper the world has ever seen. But he is an Asian character, right? But one of his goals is to become the greatest rapper. So we've seen this relationship between it. We know how big hip hop is in Japan. Ian Condry wrote a book about Japanese hip hop. And our guest today has conducted research on hip hop in Japan as well. And so hip hop culture was one that was taken over, taken to Japan and embraced by Japan as well as was some Japanese cultures embraced by hip hop artists. And we've seen a number of that. I know one person that stands out to me. As I was doing this research, I saw a lot of references for little oozy vert. I think I pronounced his name right. - You got it right. Philadelphia rapper, right? - Yes. And so with little oozy vert, he actually has an anime car collection where he's taking like, I'm going to say, probably say all of this wrong because I don't know anything about cars. He's taking like Bentley's and Rolls Royce. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, they may not be the actual cars that he's taking. I just watched a little YouTube video where he had all these cars and he wrapped them in anime characters. So all these cars he has, he has unwrapped in anime characters and some very nice car. I think it was a some type of Porsche or something that he bought for $1.6 million and he wrapped it in anime characters. And so just to think about the influence in with little oozy vert, he also has a. - A dividend for it. - Yes, he has done this for it. So one article said he's turning into a real anime character, right? With the dividend is for it, but he also has a video where he switches between real characters and anime characters throughout the video. And that video is a piece and cues, the name of that video is pees and cues. And in that video, throughout the video, while he has real characters, those characters have those big dough-like eyes that you described before, but then they switched to actual animation. So throughout the video, you have these different scenes where they are real characters in a Japanese classroom or they are switched to anime characters. So it's a very interesting concept and one that I'm not that familiar with, but I think the younger people are more aware of. And he uses a lot of references to anime characters in his songs. He's a very popular rapper. One of my oldest son, who's in his 20s, one of his favorite rappers is little oozy vert. So he's got a lot of street credibility to go along with this nerd kind of credibility too that you guys are kind of associated with, which in hip-hop, those two worlds didn't necessarily coexist in the past in our areas. And they didn't seem to anyway. I think Kanye kind of ushered in the acceptance of, not necessarily, and there are some references of Kanye with anime and things that at nature also, but just the references of the guy who's not necessarily a street guy being accepted in music. And now we have kind of this hybrid fusion of street guy or the background of the streets for rap, you know, for your credibility. So very much into something that would be considered kind of nerd culture to some. Well, now it's time to transition into the student portion of the podcast. Students through your speakers. Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen, are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. It's good to know we have the support of the faculty. Listen to me. We'll make you as comfortable as I can, but you ain't gonna be totally comfortable. Students through your speakers. Students through your speakers. Everybody, welcome in to Students Through Your Speakers. This is our second official actual segment with the intersection podcast. This is your host, Colton Heyman here with my co-host, Noah Washington. What's up, everybody? How are we doing today? I hope you guys enjoyed our first segment with Jerome the Bus, Betis. And we are here to bring you with the second official segment with our special guest, Mr. Mark McCray. Mark McCray, how you doing, sir? I'm doing great. It's so wonderful to be here and to be part of the podcast. Thanks for inviting. Absolutely. I mean, you were so willing to as soon as we reached out about getting involved at the student level, you were so quick to respond. So we appreciate that a lot. Yeah, no problem for any of those you don't know. Mark McCray is actually an award-winning TV writer and an author of a book, the best Saturdays of our lives. He actually worked at Mr. McCray. Actually, you can speak on this. You worked for over two decades in the entertainment industries, specifically an animation or did it kind of encapsulate all? Well, yes, so mainly from the programming strategy point of view. So, you know, it's part of the team that helped launch the Boomerang network. And, you know, I was hired because I'm an expert at some of the old school scheduling strategies that, you know, a lot of these old school cartoons. They were part of, you know, the old school networks like CBS ABC and NBC, but there was definitely a strategy and I was hired because I had a lot of these schedules and strategies in my head. So I was able to contribute to that. But, you know, I'm a fan of animation always has have been. And so when I moved over the cartoon network, I brought a lot of my scheduling strategy experience. But also because I'm a fan of the cartoons, you know, like let's do a pile of girls marathon, but let's present the 10 best adventures or maybe it's a dexter's lab mad scientist and we show like dexter's crazy experiments just to get people to watch and check things out. So that part of it was really good. And, and then I moved over to adult swim and the difference there was that at cartoon and Boomerang, I scheduled mainly television programming. So, for example, palpuff girls at eight o'clock, at a netty at a 30 is that a good flow or should it be at a netty first and then maybe palpuff girls second. So, you know, that job, that was my job at cartoon and Boomerang just figuring out good programming flow, what the competition is on the other networks and making sure that I was shows came out on top. At adult swim, it was a little different because instead of programming the actual series, it was my job to come up with promotional strategy and packaging. So, for example, coming up next, new robot chicken or next week on the boondocks, it was my job to make sure that those promotional pieces aired in the right places. And in doing a job like that, she still want to be able to tell a story, you know, so like, for example, I was Saturday anime block tsunami, which was the most intense block on adult swim. That block that sometimes started 11 o'clock, started 11 30 or might have started at midnight had a lot of bells and whistles. And the fans had a direct link to adult swim. So, something didn't air correctly, you know, we heard about it when we got back to work on Monday. And so, some days I would be home like on a Saturday morning thinking, did I check to make sure everything is good with tsunami for Saturday night? You're going to be waking up at 2 a.m. in your sleep, like, oh no, I forgot. Hey, man, I remember growing up on tsunami. That is absolutely man. My father may have a few words to say. You were at Cartoon Network in the 90s. I was at Cartoon Network. No, I joined the network in 2000. Officially, although I mean it had been around, I believe since 1992, Cartoon Network had been around since 92. And how I became associated with Cartoon Network, I used to publish a monthly newsletter called the best Saturdays of our lives. And in that newsletter, I talked about old school programming strategy and competition between the networks and who were the rising executives of the time. And studios that absolutely just hated each other. But because they did hate each other so much, they were also trying to outdo each other. And as a result, it was the viewers that benefited because there was a lot of great content that was being produced at the time. And I sent the newsletter to Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, because around that time, around the early 90s, DC Comics and Marvel Comics was still marketing their comic books to kids. And so like anyone in the industry that touched kids' content at the time, I sent my newsletter to them and people liked what they were reading and the newsletter took off. I got lucky in a sense that back in that, back during that time, people opened up their own mail. And the other factor that I think helped was that content creators who were doing animation, they were... I wouldn't say that they were desperate, but they were open to people promoting whatever animation project that they were doing because, you know, back in the... I mean, even before the 90s, even, you know, like, say in the 60s or 70s, you know, a lot of animation projects were not getting a lot of love from the media, from public relations, you know, like a lot of animation studios in their projects really had to fight, you know, for attention. And then this sort of like this hierarchy in the industry that prime time television is much more important than kids entertainment. And a lot of that stems from the fact that prime time television makes three times the amount of kids TV. And so it's sort of not viewed in the same way, you know, from a business standpoint. And so a lot of people, you know, if I, if I called them up, like, for example, Fox kids, they were like a really great partner because they were a new network, you know, and they were really fans of animation. And I connected with a PR person there and I said, well, look, I want to be able to promote your lineup and promote your shows. And I mean, she set me everything, you know, like images and everything that a PR person from a network would send. Whereas trying to get information, say from a traditional network was a little bit harder, but like Fox kids, they really, you know, really helped me make my news letter great. And even though they knew that my new letter wasn't going to a lot of people, you know, a little publicity is better than no publicity. So, um, so yeah, and Mike Lazo got a hold of my newsletter and he loved it and he sent me a note back and we went back and fought for a while. And then I ended up doing, I ended up filming a pilot with cartoon network. It was called this week in tunes. And it was sort of like, um, I don't know if either one of you have ever watched like the weekend. There were programs where, you know, um, like the Georgia gang, for example, that's like a local political program that talks about events happening in Georgia. And you have Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other side. And they started to bait the issues. And so this week in tunes was a similar format, except we talked about cartoons, the ones we like, the ones we didn't like. The first project I did with them and I was still living up in New York at the time. Well, actually, I had moved from New York. I was living in Connecticut. Okay. And, um, I met a person on the production side and she said, well, if you move to Atlanta, you know, there may be more opportunities like this. And so I moved. And I had to wait like a couple of years, you know, like maybe a year and a half before I actually got in. And when I got in, it wasn't at the network level. It was, uh, I became coordinator with the cartoon network library, which at the time was the largest library in the world. Wow. Well, I should say the turn of library. Well, as we transition into our later half of the conversation, I wanted to actually bring up because we are the intersection we're having to do with how black popular culture meets social justice. Is there a way where animation or even just anime at a simple level? It is representational and is it a growing market? Can you speak on that a little bit? Yes, I can. So it's so funny because when, you know, you emailed me yesterday and I was thinking about, well, what could I say? And, you know, Lisa and I talked about there is an African American owner that lives in Japan that has his own anime company. And it just opened up, correct? I think he's, I think it's been open for a while. Okay. Um, if we're talking about the same. Yeah, me and Lisa have had the same conversation. She was telling me about I was blown away. I loved it. I loved it. Right. And, um, but then, um, you know, I'm kind of like scrolling through stuff and I find this show called, um, Yashuke that is going to prevail on Netflix. I believe next week. And it's the, you know, Yashuke is this, you know, African samurai, you know, it's based on a true story about who's playing it? Look, he's Stanfield. Oh, really? Okay. Right. And it's also being showrun by, um, it's a gentleman named Lashan Thomas, who worked on black dynamite and worked on the boondocks. Now and so it's his show, it's his baby. And he was just really intrigued about the real life, you know, African samurai that, you know, fought battles in feudal Japan. And now the animated series is not going to, it's not going to be an exact historical representation. Okay. It's going to be, you know, more fantasy elements. But, you know, I feel like the fact that the show is getting made. I think it's great. And I feel like a show like, I feel like a, like content like this needs to be made because if it's successful, it will open up the door for more people of color to want to do this type of series. And I just think it's important because one of the things I remember, you know, working at cartoon and working out adult swim was that people of color sort of over indexed when it came to, you know, ratings for particular, you know, programming, including superhero shows. Do the independent or when I used to do the independent conventions before COVID, a lot of independent publishers of comic book, you know, people of color. I mean, 90% of it was science fiction and superhero stories, you know, so, there's definitely a love or an interest there. And like to do a show like this, I just think would, would be, it would be helpful to the industry and it would be helpful and inspire and give people ideas, well, maybe I need to explore other stories that take place with anime. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, a Yash case story, but it could be something cool that takes place in New York or maybe Japan or maybe Portugal, but it has an anime feel to it. So I feel like, you know, that show was going to be the step in the right direction, but I also feel at the same time that there needs to be more, you know, part of the issue is it's just having the opportunity or just having a seat at the table. Absolutely. So to make, you know, these type of decisions and, you know, the fact that it's airing on Netflix, sort of speaks volumes like, you know, I'm not, I don't work at Netflix, although I wouldn't mind. Yeah, really, right back at you. But they seem to be open to new ideas, new content. And it's getting the same sense. Right. And I think that for other streaming companies or what we call on the industry, OTT over the top platforms. If you want to get, you know, if you want to compete with Netflix, you have to come up with something that is trending and something that is different. As well as, and that's a kind of hard thing, you know, what a scale. Yeah, absolutely. You can kind of see that with Disney plus, you know, Netflix is buying crazy amounts of content to release and then Disney's maybe putting out like one or two new things per week, but they're still doing crazy numbers. Right, right. And, and that's it. And the thing is, you know, the fact that you have, I think ludicrous is also doing the show with Netflix. You know, so now I think what is going on is that they're just bypassing the networks all together. Yeah, you know, even if the network has a robust OTT platform, it's like, oh, thanks, but no thanks. Yeah, you know, and some of that could be relate, you know, could be, you know, due to relationships as well, you know, why try to pitch something to that network. But, you know, they weren't ready for it. And so there's Netflix sort of in the wings like, hey, come over here. We'll give you whatever you want. You know, so I think, I think that's a part of it. I don't know if a show like, yes, K would have been made at a traditional network. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's very interesting. You say that. And one thing as a program or somebody who may be on a day-to-day basis, which is more focused, but is the timing right for a show like the one you just mentioned, being that we're in a pandemic and we're kind of on that streaming/everybody's got more free time. So maybe this is the time to make it available. Yes, I think, yeah, I think this is the perfect time for it. I mean, right before I got on the call with you guys, I was talking to another friend, I mean, my friend Dan Clink, who I co-host, I will podcast with. And, you know, we were saying, we were talking about that people are like really hungry for content because everything is off to sports schedules. Yeah. Well, and I think that people are just really hungry for content. Absolutely. No, you wanted to ask a question about the current environment with the LGBTQ community. So I'll just get straight to brass tacks. Basically, there's been heavy speculation that Cartoon Network was not happy with the direction that their LGBTQ inspired and promoted show Steve and Universe. And it was an extremely popular show. And there's been heavy speculation among fans that that's why it was canceled or ended. No, no, that is not as far as I know that is. Right. Yeah. That is just a room and I will tell you why because there are interviews with Rebecca sugar. That's out there. And what she says is that she wouldn't have been able to make that type of show that she wanted if she did not get the support from the higher ups. Okay. Yes. And so they were all on board with it. And when I was working at the network, I never saw anything negative about that series. I said anyone or anybody, they had the full support of the network. So it was completely hurt when the show came time and it was a hundred percent her decision. Now that part, I don't know. It probably was. But you know, I don't know what the rating situation was because I was working on the adult swim side at the time. Yeah. But so I really can't answer to that if it was her decision or the network's decision. Okay. But I personally was sorry to see the show go. Okay. I mean, but if you were a fan and watched it, I mean, I think I really feel like all the stories were told already. You know, I mean, you know, the fact that the diamonds were on earth and they weren't trying to conquer the universe anymore. You know, I don't know where they could have gone from there. Exactly. Where do you push your narrative? I mean, that's a whole other discussion for another day. But for the most part, I do, I do, I do agree with you. It was just a question, you know, that a friend asked me to ask, I'll admit. Yeah. I mean, that's fine. And you know, like, when I first started a cartoon network, I mean, the episodes will go on and on and on forever. As long as the creator wanted to do the show, there wasn't any pressure ratings wise to this continuous show. But as the years went on, a lot of that policy, you know, had to change. It was, it was, you know, you have a series. And if the series is, is not, you know, if they had diminishing returns on the series, you have to figure out when you want to pull the plug. And you have to let the show runners know, well, come up with a great ending for the series, which is, you know, I talked about the good old days. That's something that also never happened, you know, like, like a lot of show creators were not allowed to end their series. And that's why you had to have like a TV movie that sort of ended the series, which, you know, as she has later, everybody looks older, it's not the same. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, as we wrap up here, we just wanted to take the time and say, thank you so much for being available for us going into all these different and tough topics of conversation. So though, we know that you mentioned you had a podcast. Can you plug us in with that? Anybody listening that might want to go check that out? Yeah. So it's the, it's called the best Saturdays of our lives podcast and it's available on Apple and, you know, many other podcasting platforms. And it's an extension of my book. And so we talk about, we go into details about things that my book didn't necessarily cover, like, for example, who owns it. So there was a year that there were two separate Batman animation productions on two separate networks from two separate studios on the air at the same time. And something like that would never happen today, but back, but, but a long time ago, sometimes the rights to the character was not necessarily exclusive. And so it would set things up that way or another topic we covered. So we talk about programming strategy, for example, so you know, you had a guy named Fred Silverman over at CBS and you had a dude named Advane over at ABC. And these guys, to me, were like the Martin programmers. I mean, their approach and philosophy in terms of how to program a particular block was really advanced for the time. And you know, Fred Silverman went on to go to prime time television. And he's still the only program of the go from CBS to ABC to NBC. And he greenlit a lot of iconic shows like Charlie's Angels and three company. And I think over at CBS, he greenlit all in the family and the Jefferson's, you know, and then later he went into content creation for himself. And we talk about sort of the insides of TV programming or maybe why wasn't your favorite show renewed. So another terrible thing that used to happen back in the day, not only did series not have a chance to end. There wasn't enough budget to go around for all content to get second season renewals. And so what that meant is your content might get renewed. There won't be any new episodes. The next guy's content will get renewed, but he'll get eight episodes. If your ratings were like super duper high, then you would get a full, like maybe 15 or 16, a new episodes that season. And so there wasn't enough money to spread around. And we sort of go into the reasons why that happened. There was a series called Thunder Barbarian that came out like in the 80s and Thunder did huge ratings. And then the show left ABC and went to NBC and started doing huge ratings there, even though they will all replay episodes. And so Joe Ruby and Ken Spares, the team that created the series, they went to NBC and they're like, hey, shows doing great ratings want to make some new episodes and NBC was like, no. To anyone listening to this podcast, obviously you can see that Mr. McCray here is an encyclopedia of animation. Right. So. Oh, wait. I'm on two podcasts. I just. All right. Plug us in. We got it. Now we're talking. We love. The other podcast that I'm on. I'm a co-host for Thunder Talk, which is we talk about everything, you know, nerd related. You know, we might talk about the Avengers movie or we might talk about, you know, well, did we like the conclusion of WandaVision? Oh, we might talk about something like really funny or random. Hey, how many celebrities have you met in real life? And if they were nice to you or not, you know, like absolutely. And so if the best Saturdays of our lives podcast, if it were a series, it will be the eight o'clock show. The Thunder Talk, who's, you know, who's hosted. I'm a co-host, but Dan Clink, who, anyway, Dan Clink runs Thunder Talk on one of the co-hosts. And there's other, there's three other people. So best Saturdays podcast will sort of be the eight o'clock show and Thunder Talk would sort of be the 11 o'clock. We're talking Cartoon Network versus Adult Swim. Right. It's that Cartoon Network and Adult Swim dynamic. Right? That's the Colton and Noah dynamic. Yeah, really. Well, you might hear me curse on the other side. Now we're talking at the sea. That's what I'm going straight to then. That's the one people listening are going to be like, let me just pull this. They're already scrolling through their phone to find it right now. But yeah, I mean, the fact that you're involved with these kind of podcast, even still to this day, it shows your dedication to the industry. And I think as somebody who's interested in getting involved in the entertainment and maybe hasn't given enough thought to how animation can either impact social justice or just content creation. Getting to hear from you and talk about just the different aspects, but it's been absolutely a pleasure. So I appreciate you again, taking the time to talk to me and Noah today. Yes, thank you so much. No problem. Glad I'm glad. Thanks for the invite. We really appreciate you being here and thank you audience for taking the time to listen to us. Thanks for listening and please follow us on your favorite social media platform. You can find us at Intersect Pied ATL on both Twitter and Instagram. And like our Facebook page at the intersection where black popular culture needs social justice. I've been through the cloud with the game my pocket. Maybe making noise trying to feel like they got it. When they come to bars, I ain't worried I got it, but when I had to play my part in life, I always forgot it then. Let the closed door, but the windows are open and history ain't this and that I guess I gon' play pretend. You can't read my story if you live with your broken limbs and I don't want the glory, my peace not in the end. Choosing with the subject, I know it. Grab more than I talk and put it. I had to be too, I can set a Jordan. I had to give one gift to a boy that's the one to be on top. If I'm staring at Forbes list to get for my name 'cause I'm trying to fill a port in 'cause I'm trying to see my fortune. I've been in for the show, but I know I'm at the intersection. I need another minute. Need a good hour before I try to finish. Yeah, been about. I'm at the intersection. Just give me one minute, give me one, give me one minute. It's a good hour before I try to finish. Yeah, been about. I'm at the intersection. Just give me one minute, give me one minute. It's a good hour before I try to finish. Yeah, been about. I'm at the intersection. Just give me one minute, give me one minute.