Madame Thursday

Oct. 4, 2011 at 10:13am with 280 notes

Reblogged from karnythia

[Images: Three promotional images for a sadly not real TV show called “Jazz Kings”. The first image shows a vintage, black and white sky line of New York with the show’s title and a thin Black woman wearing a flapper hat and dress laughing as she spins and dances, her long necklaces flying into the air. Beneath it is an image of actress Zoe Saldana in vintage 1920’s dress, looking through the veil of her hat at the camera. The third is of actress Ziyi Zhang in period dress as well in a green 1920’s style cheongsam(?), looking over her shoulder to the side.]

missturdle:

JAZZ KINGS a drama set in 1920’s Harlem New York during the influx of the Harlem Renaissance, the upswing of gangsters, prohibition, and suffrage, following Evelyn “Evie” Holmes [Zoe Saldana], as she navigates her new life in the city, where she quickly becomes beguiled by the new Jazz scene and the world of the men who run it…

I’ve got this whole concept where Evie is from Louisiana, but wants to try her luck as a real New Yorker cosmopolitan kinda gal, and so she legs it to Harlem and gets herself a job and a crappy tiny apartment with a few other girls, and meets some really glam dolls who lend her things so she can go dancing (because she’s so obsessed with work and they just wanna show her a good time) and she learns to loosen up and becomes a bit of a rebellious flapper since she’s away from her parents and she makes friends with Zhang Ziyi’s character who was working as maybe a waitress or something and they just get it and how people are bringing them down and they bemoan working and Evie meets the Jazz scene boys, with different groups and their followers vying to be the Jazz King, and there is sneaky alcohol consumption and mafia, and ~trendy~ white people who try to move in on the scene but mostly cause problems and the white ladies are always chatting about suffrage but they really only care about themselves for the most part and their new ability to vote. People have intense literary discussions and talk about Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston or Dorothy Parker if you’re gettin’ outta Harlem and Warren G Harding scandalizes everyone then DIES, Calvin Coolidge gets elected, people listen to the radio for news. Also people are dropping dead of wood grain alcohols smuggled in as drinking liquors and sometimes people get bumped off if you know what I mean~ and there would be a lot of sex because progressivism.

IT’S THE BEE’S KNEES.

…In my fake TV show, I’m having Zhang Ziyi. Fight me.

Jazz Kings 1 | Jazz Kings 2

HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN I AM BEYOND EXCITED. I WISH THIS WAS REAL SO, SO, SO, SO BAD. Gahhhhhh! Be real and on my TV, show! Be real!

This should really, really be a thing. Especially since right now I’m watching the Ken Burns series on Prohibition (it is seriously lacking in any real discussion/portrayal of PoC and non-white immigrants and what Prohibition was for them and their roles in it. Which is inexcusable, I find, as a historian). All I can think of is the total awesomeness of this show, and also of the hilarious scenes of some of the white suffragettes being unbearable, what with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union mostly just being the White Christian Temperance Movement. But mostly OH MY GOD ZIYI ZHANG AND ZOE SALDANA. ALL Z’S, ALL AWESOME, ALL THE TIME.

Seriously, though, documentary. If you’re going to use lots and lots of jazz tunes from the era to symbolize the booziness and what not, at least TALK SOME ABOUT THE ACTUAL JAZZ ARTISTS AND WHERE THEY CAME FROM.

This totally needs to be a thing that’s real.

(Source: turdlewexler)