Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Music]] ==

* The [[Pulp (band)|Pulp]] song "Common People" is about the "slumming" phenomenon where upper class people try to live a working class lifestyle as a kind of "holiday", based on [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story|a real woman that Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker knew]] when he was studying at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Some of the lyrics are particularly relevant:

{{quote|''Laugh along with the common people,

* For that matter, the sections of the British blues scene of [[The Sixties]], at least for those less than authentic in their delivery or presentation. This, and the [[Follow the Leader|overexposure]] of blues and R&B influence then popular at the time, helped lead to the very British [[Progressive Rock]] scene. Ian Anderson felt he and his band were stealing a part of black culture and emotional experiences insincerely and not always convincingly, and that by strictly resigning himself to performing a "polite shade" of black American music he had little room for the [[Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly|full extent of music]] he wanted to make. He soon reinvented [[Jethro Tull]] as a very eclectic English/Scottish [[Progressive Rock]] band in [[The Seventies]].

* Tim "the Big Dawg" Westwood. Bizarrely, some people seem to think he actually pulls it off.

** Mr. B (the Gentleman Rhymer) mocks him splendidly [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6yh7ftRnw8 here].

*** It could be argued that Mr. B's entire act is a deliberate defiance of this trope; proof that you don't need to act black to be a white rapper.

* According to [[Cage]], [[Rick Rubin]] attended one of Cage's early performances, dismissed Cage as "a wigga", and walked out.

* [[Frank Zappa]]'s song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETvoNlcvswI You Are What You Is]": The first verse is about this, while the second one is about the opposite situation.

* A non-urban version is lampooned in Alan Jackson's 1994 hit song "Gone Country", although the song is often misinterpreted as being in favor of such a masquerade.

* White rapper Kreayshawn, born Natassia Zolot, is receiving a lot of criticism for this. She is being accused of appropriating black culture. [https://web.archive.org/web/20131010065106/http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2011/06/kreayshawn-another-case-of-appropriating-black-culture/ This] criticism of her says that even the way she dresses is a [[Double Standard]], since if a black female rapper were to do the same thing they'd be accused of being ghetto and uneducated.

* Yelawolf is an aversion; like Eminem, he came from an impoverished background and happened upon hip-hop naturally by way of going to school in the Nashville projects and becoming acclimated with the music there. Furthermore, his topics seldom touch upon the inner city and focus more on the unpleasantries of Deep South life, which is what he was used to.

 

== [[New Media]] ==

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

 

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

** Side note: Los Angeles has a very large "actual urban hip-hop culture," and Cena gets really loud cheers in L.A.

** What Cena has been doing is fundamentally no different from what [[Elvis Presley]] did in [[The Fifties]]. He is a white, upper-middle-class American who, in his soul, does not ''feel'' like a white, upper-middle-class American, and acts accordingly. Far from mocking black culture, he is actually celebrating it, while putting a less menacing (white) face on it for his white fans. You may quibble about the [[Unfortunate Implications]] of all this, but it's really nothing new. (And interestingly, Cena's longtime nemesis John "Bradshaw" Layfield was essentially [[Not So Different|Cena in reverse]]: a boorish, trailer-park Texan who became obsessed with money and riches, and rebaptized himself as a Wall Street tycoon. This resulted in a bit of [[Hypocritical Humor]] when in 2006 JBL was doing a bit of color commentary on ''SmackDown!'' where he mocked Anna Nicole Smith; he is, in a way, [[You Are What You Hate|basically her male equivalent]].)

* ''Too Cool''. Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor as wannabe rappers dancing to hip hop beats and later adding former [[Wild Samoan]] Rikishi to their act ended being one of the more surprising hits of the Attitude era in the then-WWF. What made the gimmick work so well was the delightful randomness and heterogeneity of it: two skinny white men and a fat [[Fake Nationality|Japanese]] guy performing impromptu dance moves to a style of music that neither whites nor Japanese are ordinarily associated with.

* Ray Gordy, currently known as Slam Master J is their 21st Century successor from the blonde cornrows down to the [[50 Cent]]-like clothes, but so far, merely a [[Butt Monkey|jobber]] teamed with Jimmy Wang Yang, a subversion in that he's "pretty redneck for an Asian guy."

 

== [[Recorded and Stand Up Comedy]] ==

{{quote|{{color|#0715cd|EB: that's fine, you are entitled to your opinion, i am just saying that being a white guy who is a rapper with a ventriloquist doll is not cool by any stretch of the imagination or by any definition of word cool, ironic or otherwise. that's all i'm saying.}}}}

** After having to clarify that the humans in ''Homestuck'' are aracial, Andrew [[Orwellian Retcon|changed]] 'white' in the above quote to 'Íæûë€Å', though it's since been changed back. He did this mainly to try and quell a [[Flame War]] on the forums.

{{quote|'''Tau''': He's a Gue'Vesa - 'Human Helper', or 'weaboo' in your tongue...

'''Tau''': They're obsessed with everything ''Tau'' despite knowing little of our culture. Their lack of social skills is made up for in an abundance of blind racist loyalty. }}

 

== [[Web Original]] ==