Another Cartoon Courtesy of BET-Bid Em In & NY Times Talks about Read A Book

Unfortunately, I'm finding out about another BET cartoon after the dust has settled but it appears that this film short has a far more positive edge to it than the cable network's last effort, Read a Book. I posted an entry analyzing the Book animated effort as being somewhat disingenuous towards its audience. BET essentially tried to lambaste or critique an audience (much like what Hot Ghetto Mess purports to do) that it helped to create. Think of a drug dealer dissuading his customer base from buying the narcotics that he sells-that's BET. Nevertheless, I found out about the Bid Em' In cartoon while perusing today's NY Times piece on the controversy brewing around Read a Book. Check out the Times take on the issue:

BET Says Cartoon Was Just a Satire

By MARIA ASPAN
Published: August 27, 2007
Black Entertainment Television’s new animation division seems to have stepped right into a pitfall of self-parody: a short cartoon video it introduced on July 20, “Read a Book,” seems to flaunt every negative stereotype in the African-American community.

In a gloss on the hip-hop videos frequently shown on BET, an animated rapper named D’Mite comes on with what looks like a public service message about the benefits of reading, but devolves into a foul-mouthed song accompanied by images of black men shooting guns loaded with books and gyrating black women with the word “book” written on the back of their low-slung pants. The uncensored cut is making the rounds on YouTube, while a cleaner version was shown on BET.

The cartoon, which represents an effort by the network to broaden its programming, was the subject of an article on Friday in The Los Angeles Times, which noted that the network has been “long criticized for showing gangsta rap videos and those with scantily clad female dancers.”

“It’s meant to be very satirical, and in a real way kind of mimics and mocks the current state of hip-hop and hip-hop videos,” said Denys Cowan, senior vice president of animation for BET. He said the video was not part of any literacy campaign or “Schoolhouse Rock” alternative, but was intended for BET’s demographic of 18- to 34-year-olds.

Opinion online has been divided. Someone who posted the video on YouTube praised its “positive message” and “social satire,” while another anonymous user uploaded it under the title, “BET racist rap?”

“Read a Book” makes an especially jarring contrast with another animated short in rotation on the network, “Bid ’Em In,” a sharp and sober depiction of a slave auction.

Mr. Cowan said the contrast was a deliberate reflection of the broad range of projects that his division hopes to tackle.

“They’re not the same, and there’s room for both of them on the network,” he said. “We don’t want to underestimate our audience’s ability to understand what they’re looking at. There is no one monolithic black way of doing things.”

And for those who couldn't get enough of Without Prejudice, let's take a gander at another episode: