into the light of the dark black night
Again, with Prudence. Aside from a few other women in the Vietnam sequence--and, apparently, she's one of them--she is the only Asian in the cast. Jo-Jo isn't quite the token African American, but he's close. And, his introduction plays on his race as a token story inclusion. The cover of "Let It Be" in this movie is amazing but the Detroit riot sequence as an introduction to Jo-Jo, in retrospect, is a bit... trite, obvious, manipulative, and simplistic. Nucho (2007) points out, rightly, that "revisiting the Detroit riots with a gospel version of "Let It Be" blaring in the background; in fact, it's a rather self-serving, arrogant gesture to use a Beatles song to represent the revolution against hundreds of years of brutality and racist oppression in the U.S." The problem is cultural/racial appropriation. There is no in-story reason for Jo-Jo to be African American. Sure, he's our stand-in for Jimi Hendrix, but when your story is stru...
