Photos: Facebook\Netflix\Wikimedia Commons
Today, the CEMOTAP Organization will hold a demonstration against Netflix’s “Insulting Cartoon” ‘Good Times Reboot.’ The demonstration will take place at the Netflix headquarters at 888 Broadway (near 18th Street in New York City. The demonstration starts at 5:00 PM, June 5, 2024.
Read CEMOTAP’s Black Star News story on the Netflix\Good Times Reboot controversy. In the article, CEMOTAP co-chairs Dr. James C. McIntosh and Betty J. Dopson condemn and characterize ‘Good Times Reboot’ as an “insulting cartoon” that promotes “the most superficial and negative relationship to the original Good Times TV series.”
Below is an excerpt from the open letter article that CEMOTAP sent to Netflix’s Co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos:
Sir, the purpose of this letter is to express outrage at your ill advised and ill named release of “Netflix Good Times Reboot.” This insulting cartoon has only the most superficial and negative relationship to the original Good Times TV series. The claim by some of the creators that this is satire is so bogus as to not warrant response. The great satirists took on powerful people, not the people in the ostensibly less powerful position. When powerful people such as yourself and Seth McFarlane portray African people in this way you are ridiculing us not satirizing the powerful.
Historically such ridicule has often preceded actual violence against the people ridiculed. Hollywood’s “Birth of a Nation” preceding the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and Red Summer of 1919 in which more Black people were lynched in America than in any other year of its history, is just one example of that sequence. If you do not understand this reference, google it. It is not the purpose of this letter to educate you comprehensively.
…Since you have released all 10 episodes of this atrocity, already and appear to have the intent to leave them available to the public indefinitely. There is no room for negotiation. We are going to exercise our right as free people to withhold our dollars from your enterprise for as long as you show this outrage and to withhold our dollars for at least an equal amount of time after you stop.
