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'Barbershop' Controversy Boils Over Sat Sep 28, 2:42 PM ET By DEBORAH KONG, AP Minority Issues Writer When 26-year-old Steve Reali Robinson watched a cantankerous old barber deride Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks in the hit comedy 'Barbershop,' he just laughed along with other moviegoers. But the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton weren't smiling. They demanded an apology and called on MGM to remove the scenes from future releases. The flap over the popular movie has exposed a generational rift between civil rights activists and younger blacks who have no memory of the days of bus boycotts, freedom rides and lunch counter sit-ins, some scholars say. 'You have some individuals from the civil rights movement, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are utterly offended that some of their icons have been criticized,' said Todd Boyd, an associate professor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. 'You have another generation who finds no problem whatever in criticizing anyone who they deem appropriate for criticism. They have rejected this idea of the sacred cow.' 'Barbershop,' the nation's No. 1 film the last two weeks, stars Ice Cube and features a predominantly black cast. It's set in a Chicago barbershop that is a platform for free-flowing debate, casual banter and sometimes off-color humor. Cedric the Entertainer plays a blustery, opinionated barber who jokes about King's alleged promiscuity. He dismisses Jackson with a profanity. His character also says other blacks refused to give up their seats to whites in the segregated South, but Rosa Parks got attention because she was the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 'To take two people that are victims of the civil rights movement — Dr. King was killed, Rosa Parks arrested — and mock them is something that is offensive and something that is insulting,' Sharpton said. But Robinson, president of Hip Hop
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