Congratulations to K. BIG!!
I'd also like to congratulate all the hypemen who brought 'The Hurt Locker's' post-Box office presence back to center stage by penning the ultimate metanarrative: directordivorcegate-2010.
(Forget that lackluster list of contenders--the real award should go to you!)
But Bigelow v Cameron beefs aside, my personal (and, largely, FAILED!) 'Precious' campaign aside, please allow me to sip my Hater-ade one mo' gain.
Despite all my pro-Laz sentiments, here is why I've been a begrudging follower of James Cameron's 'Avatar'. WARNING: It sounds feminist and ABW-ist in all the expected places, and you're going to need to stay with me: I detour.
'Avatar' is trying to say something that I find really interesting. You may disagree. You're allowed. But here's the takeaway that's come to irk me about this celebrated pic: this isn't your typical intergalactic broo-ha-ha. This is a troublesome commentary on 21st century performance of dominant masculinities--particularly 'white' masculinity.
But before I get into my reasons for reading 'Avatar' in this way, let's pregame with a seemingly strange return to director Neil LaBute's 2008 picture, 'Lakeview Terrace.'
(Don't suck your teeth! I will give you a Sam Jackson side eye so quick...)
(via @LouisVuittonBum)
'Lakeview Terrace' took a beating from critics when it hit theaters only weeks before President Barack Obama's election, but IMHO there are some very eerie parallels between the commentary presented in this flick and its supposedly 'upscale', sci-fi tech advanced kin, 'Avatar.'
If you've never seen 'Lakeview Terrace', but plan to, here's your spoiler alert.
Samuel L. Jackson's cop character is an LAPD officer and widowed father of two. He lives in the same neighborhood where Rodney King was beat nearly to death by white LAPD cops on March 19, 1991. This next piece of information is extremely important to understanding Abel Turner's otherwise 'unjustifiable' rage toward his new neighbors.
But first, how is Abel Turner, a Black LAPD officer possible?
Well, he's supposed to represent the ultimate Black masculinity. By that I mean he's supposed to dutifully avenge the blood of Rodney Kings everywhere--brethren who have been either personally or psychically brutalized simply because they exist in the way of the white supremacist psychosis ingrained in American personal and political consciousness. Such psychosis was utterly apparent in the early 1990s.
Documentation of state surveillance of Black communities on the whole during this time produced some strong anti-cop sentiments among Black folk. Even in the context of art, this was the age of chronicling life in the 'hood as it played out under the thumb of post-Hoover paranoia, recent Reaganomotricks, and Bush Regime I. (Think 'Boyz N the Hood', 'Menace to Society', NWA, 2Pac, West Side Connection, RICO and on and on and on...) Only a few steps into the future, more stories of police brutality, 'gang' violence, turf wars, mandatory minimums and communities post-crack would come barreling out.
In light of all this, Abel is an older man trying to keep it straight, narrow and noble. (Kinda slick inversion of Cain and Abel.) His age in relation to his new neighbors (Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson) suggests that the 1980s and 1990s were not the only wave of bull-shiitake he's witnessed.
In becoming a cop, he occupies this dual-role in a literary/historical sense. On the one hand he exists as potential traitor, yet on the other, he is a could-be avenger of the Black communities that have been so thoroughly and systematically terrorized by racism. But here, also is a space where he can 'legally' fulfill his patriarchal purpose as a protector-provider-[insert patriarchal expectation here] of the community and maintain some stability for his own family while still loyally serving the community.
On a couple of occasions in the film, he assumes the posture of community elder, even in the course of detainment and arrest. Here is the dialogue between Jackson's character and the apprehended Damon Richards. Richards has just been called in for threatening to kill his wife and child.
Samuel L. Jackson as ABEL TURNER:Look in my eyes. Look in my eyes!ABEL:ls this gonna happen again?Caleeb Pinkett as DAMON RICHARDS:No!ABEL:What?
DAMON:No, sir! No!I swear to God, no!ABEL:God ain't here, you swear to me.DAMON:I swear. l swear to you, sir!ABEL:Now, you be a man, understand?l don't give a shit what your situation is!You take your responsibility.You be a father to that baby, you got me?Jay Hernandez as JAVIER VILLAREAL:
Abel!
ABEL:If I have to come back here,
I'm gonna be the one doing the shooting, you understand? DAMON:Yes, sir.
ABEL:Detective Villareal.
JAVIER:Yes, sir.
ABEL:Put some restraints on this young man.
But do it gently, please.
JAVIER:Absolutely.
This obligation to the community-at-large weighs on him even harder in light of his wife's death. Despite his career choice, he couldn't perform the function of 'protector' in his own 'domestic' sphere.
Samuel L. Jackson as ABEL TURNER:Today's the third anniversary of my wife's death.When Marcus went back to school,she became a home-care aide.Mostly old people.Alzheimer's patients, stroke victims.I don't know how in the hell she did it,
but it made me kind of glad thatthat's what she did, you know?
Sort of, you know, balanced things out,you know?Patrick Wilson as CHRIS MATTSON:How's that?ABEL:
Well, you know,because of what l do on my job.Three years ago to the day, I get a phone call.My wife's been in a head-on collision.Some guy high off his ass,
going 90 miles an hourthe wrong way on the 101They took her to Hollywood Memorial.She died on a gurney in the hallbecause somebody forgot to tell them she was the wife of a police officer,so they treated her by pigmentationCHRIS:How do you know that?
ABEL:
Because l know things.He couldn't fulfill these expectations for his own wife, and because of this failure on his part, he believes, she's become a liability of State Supremacy. Despite his careful posturing, he failed to protect her. And THIS, ladies, gents and germs, is the simmering rage we walk into when Abel Turner meets the Mattsons, played by Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson. For Jackson's character, the Mattsons are a 20th century death wish because of their interracial marriage.
Patrick Wilson's character is repeatedly being challenged by elder Black men who do not believe him capable of fulfilling his (patriarchal) 'role' as a provider and protector of this surrogate (in Jackson's case) or real (in the Black father in law's case) Black daughter. Patrick Wilson, for lack of better wordplay, is an encroachment for Abel Turner. He is a new age threat to the Black family--the personal sphere Jackson's character could not keep sacred.
Abel and Lisa Mattson's (Kerry Washington) father-in-law don't very much trust Chris Mattson either. Take this uncomfortable interaction between Wilson and co-star Justin Chambers (Grey's Anatomy):
(Chambers) DONNIE EATON:
Hey, Chris.
(Wilson) CHRIS MATTSON:
What?
DONNIE:
You hit the total jackpot, man.
I so want to date a black girl.I'm working my way up, though,
doing the Pacific Rim thing right now,if you get what I mean.CHRIS:
Well, good luck with that.
There's a sense that these elder Black men's suspicions are justified. Jackson's part as terrorist-in-uniform, then, is not simply unfounded paranoia gone postal, it's a reaction to fear of the future. Chris is genuine, but what about the Donnies? (I'm sure Justin got at least a sliver of heat for his role--his wife in real life, actually is Black.) What is Chris going to do when his Lisa and Chris Jrs are confronted with the Donnies? This is what Abel and Lisa's dad want to know.
If this response is any indication, Abel Turner may still look crazy, but hardly as crazy as before. Chris is going to have to do better.
It's one thing to marry a Black girl from Oakland (of ALL places!)--it's a whole 'nother ball game to understand AND challenge AND measure up to patriarchal standards when re-inscriptions of her identity are made 'on her body' by the dominant culture. (I'd get into the fundamental errors in "protecting her", but we'd be here another 7 days worth of posting...)
So for this reason, I'm conflicted about whether 'Lakeview Terrace' really missed its mark, lost audiences, or simply came out at a time when folks were too busy touting phrases like 'post-race', 'post-racial' and comparable mess to realize what was deeper than one Black man's isolated embitterment.
The strife Abel goes through in this film is OH-SO-VERY much like that of beefed up war manic, Col. Miles Quaritch, to whom we are introduced in James Cameron's 'Avatar' (except--surprise!--Stephen Lang isn't, um... 'Black'...). In the next post I'm going to swap out Chris Mattson for Jake Sully, and substitute Lisa Mattson with Neytiri.
then VOILA! Col. Miles' personal 'white' man burden--'Avatar's' proposal for a 'new' 'white' masculinity vis a vis Jake Sully.
Tea Party-ers might want to hold their hats.
Diawara’s piece resonates on, at times, uncomfortable levels. He is not the only individual I’ve read who deals with the idea of a resistant spectatorship on the part of viewers who reject presumptuous identifications (presumptuous on the part of XYZ casting director, writer, or director). Bell hooks, Black feminist scholar, calls it an “oppositional gaze.”
But more than character identification, which is Diawara’s primary concern, sign recognition should also function as part of the business of problematizing Black spectatorship. I should note that I am not under any circumstances trying to suggest that one Black work will satisfy the Black monolith, because no such thing exists. And in fact, Diawara’s disdain for “The Color Purple”, perhaps my favorite movie of all time, proves this point (even as it raises so many questions via the unusual marriage of Steven Spielberg and Alice Walker).
I do want to point out, however, that essays can be written at-length on the issue because of gaping absences and omissions of Blackness and formulaic treatments of Blackness—or any underrepresented identity—on the whole.
Diawara says, “The manner in which Black spectators may circumvent identification and resist the persuasive elements of Hollywood narrative and spectacle informs both a challenge to certain theories of spectatorship and the aesthetics of Afro-American independent cinema.”
Diawara has just laid out two important things:
(1) He has taken dominant theories of spectatorship, arguably, a key component of film theory at-large, and conceptualized it as a space where “Afro-American independent cinema” cannot be found (because, implicitly, it does not want to be found there); and(2) He is naming an alternate cinema, not simply Afro-American, but “independent.”
Furthermore, he’s suggesting this cinema might or must follow aesthetic principles that do not comply with Hollywood narrative formulations.
The independent description is crucial, I believe, to understanding how we arrive at Diawara’s essay in the first place. It is an interesting point to expound upon as I return to the ‘Hollywood-as-colony’ motif. If the six men who understood the “whole equation of pictures” in Old Hollywood ran a colony, then whoever’s running the New Hollywood is Puppet Master-Big Brother to the whole world.
Haile Gerima, director of “Sankofa” (his most critically acclaimed film) and most recently “Teza” (winner of the ‘African Oscar’, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga) describes my sentiment this way: “In my view, I do not believe cinema is a benign entertainment. I feel it’s one of the most unexamined, unscrutinized tool[s] of colonialism. It’s the most effective weapon that’s made the world a colony of one world.”
He continues, “[A]s American capitalism spearheaded the industry of cinema, (…)not only was cinema [NOT] just ‘benignly’ being cinema, but transforming the grammar and language of white supremacy in cinema. Literature didn’t do that,” he says. “No European literature went to Africa and invaded Africa. Africans have their own oral tradition around the fire.” (emphasis mine)
The art of storytelling, then, has been shortchanged.
Dominant cinema is so good, and so universal that it is imposed, engraved even, on the rest of the world to the point of (colonial) self-loathing. Gerima, born in Ethiopia, gives the example of displaced identification using an actual film he recalls from his early years. In the film, one white man kills 6,000 Africans. Gerima says, “Like hell, you—an African—will identify with the Africans instead of the white hero.”
While one may find an alternate reading of the characters as they view, he explained the complex he subtly began to develop once he examined the disconnect between himself and the people who are “supposed” to be like him, in order to illustrate how cinema has, in his words, “expedited the language of film.” This is the reason a documentary like “John and Jane” can be made, briefly citing one Indian woman’s narcissistic obsession with her blonde-dyed hair, or multiple instances of skin bleaching—all subtle cases of self-mutilation—can happen without anyone flinching. Or, to return to Diawara’s examples, if a Black male child views “The Color Purple” repeatedly, he’ll come to believe he must behave like a bumbling, stumbling Harpo or a physically/sexually/verbally abusive master rapist called Mister where his relations with Black females are concerned, lest he be ‘castrated.’ Or should he view “The Birth of a Nation”, he’ll subtly come to absorb the idea of limitless desire for Little Sisters everywhere—or he may resent all of these representations and inscriptions of his identity and those who require him to perform his masculinity in these ways on a subconscious level.
Continuing with “The Birth of a Nation”, Diawara argues, “[It] appears to misread history for ideological reasons: Not only is Little Colonel a fake father and hero, but the Black experience is rendered absent in the text. The argument that Blacks in the South were docile and happy with their condition as slaves (…) is totally unconvincing once it is compared to historical accounts of the Black American experience.” History in itself is not a stagnant text, but Diawara’s point, that Black audiences won’t accept these readings against ‘reality’ is debatable as well.
When Diawara consults Eddie Murphy’s character in “48HRS”, he’s really invoking the spirit of a shameful and sizeable amount of films Hollywood puts forth as contemporary “Afro-American” film. The dearth of dramatic roles—to say nothing of full, feature-length films—still speaks to a misreading of Black people as “happy” if not “docile”, and noble savage, or just plain savage if not “happy.” I’m not protesting comedy or the bloodiest gunfight, but as long as a “production and consumption” model is what Hollywood stands on, I find it hard to believe that anything will change; and I find it harder to believe that as it continues, the Black people to whom these images are being force fed, aren’t subtly wrestling with this indoctrination—apart from some kind of “accurate” historical/real-time reference work being done. In other words, when I laugh at Tyler Perry in drag as “Madea”, it’s a recognition of a character based on some real grandmother or great-aunt-like figure I can relate to rather than an ‘emasculated Black man in a dress.’ But as a Black male, I don’t know how I might read or relate to Tyler Perry in drag as “Madea.” I may laugh, but not as fully; perhaps quietly resenting the reappearance of this trope that won’t die—the ‘emasculated Black man in a dress.’
To use Gerima’s thoughts in conversation with Manthia Diawara’s essay, even the greatest exhorter and missionary could not make the entire world submit to this kind of self hatred and subtle, but concurrent, obedience to the white supremacist construction of the cinema. Diawara recycles the Frantz Fanon quote, “Every spectator is a coward or a traitor” (p 900).
The answer to the problem of spectatorship, in my opinion then, is Diawara’s Afro-American independent cinema. But if this cinema is to exist, sustain itself, even thrive it must do as Diawara says. It must fully complicate and problematize every questionable representation. It must prompt the conversation that film ought to be in with the communities it’s meant for. It must complicate the spectator’s role as much as the film itself. “One of the roles of Black independent cinema, therefore, must be to increase spectator awareness of the impossibility of an uncritical acceptance of Hollywood products.”
FEATURE PRESENTATION: Reading Pictures & Sounds in 2010
I came across The Drama Review (TDR) journal while I was in NYC in the garment district. It struck me, because on the cover is Paul Robeson, undoubtedly invested in the moment, surrounded by microphones, eyes intense and pointed fist raised mid-message.
The picture of Robeson is at a 1948 rally protesting the Mundt-Nixon bill. And it was this kind of performance—not Go Down Moses— that got Robeson blacklisted and called all manner of ‘Commie’ foolishness fo’sho, fo’t’real. TDR’s deal is to examine performance in its “social, economic and political contexts.”
And to echo Jay-Z: so necessary.
The picture of Robeson is at a 1948 rally protesting the Mundt-Nixon bill. And it was this kind of performance—not Go Down Moses— that got Robeson blacklisted and called all manner of ‘Commie’ foolishness fo’sho, fo’t’real. TDR’s deal is to examine performance in its “social, economic and political contexts.”
And to echo Jay-Z: so necessary.
LOOOOOOOOVE IT!
So let me put things in a smidge of perspective this Christmas day: North American box offices hit a new high in 2009, banking a record $10bn [in Pharrell-ian currency]. And the first thing that comes to my mind is escape. The economy sucks, to keep it modest. Somehow, I anticipate ‘TARP’ entering our lexicon the way ‘Google’ has as a verb, noun, and adjective. And honestly, there’s a lot of grit building up between the superpowers of the world. Grit we will soon and surely feel. (not just in Kabul or Tehran or Islamabad or Pyongyang or…)
So let me put things in a smidge of perspective this Christmas day: North American box offices hit a new high in 2009, banking a record $10bn [in Pharrell-ian currency]. And the first thing that comes to my mind is escape. The economy sucks, to keep it modest. Somehow, I anticipate ‘TARP’ entering our lexicon the way ‘Google’ has as a verb, noun, and adjective. And honestly, there’s a lot of grit building up between the superpowers of the world. Grit we will soon and surely feel. (not just in Kabul or Tehran or Islamabad or Pyongyang or…)
But movie houses are still packing ‘em in. We’re happy to dull the pain. Dissatisfied? Change the channel. Get ‘er On Demand. Go next door. Lull yourself to sleep with [insert network here]. Go ‘head an’ get high off of [insert sitcom/dramedy/reality show here]. By all means:
Entertain yourself to death!
But like Badu says on her “Master Teacher” track: you better ‘stay woke.’
Now is certainly the time—perhaps more than ever before—for us to master how we receive our entertainment. How do we read pictures? How do we read sounds?
Yes. I’m insinuating that apocalyptic things are happening.
I don’t mind saying it because they’ve happened before. But they happened at a time when we were much less connected, and much more impressed by the immediacy and emotional affectation of the moving images we saw.
As of 2009 (and well before), your friendly living room ‘idiot box’ and neighborhood cinema are not, as independent filmmaker Haile Gerima would say, benign sources of entertainment. Instead they are very much part and parcel to the propaganda of our times. And we would only be wise to read the message above the message; the commentary that lies within each and every 30-min. to an hour slice of television, the commentary that lies within each and every military spot run during shows geared toward ‘urban’ demographics during war time, and in every feature length and short presentation in a Magic Johnson Theater near you.
TV & movies is one heck of a drug [sic]. Available to the masses in bulk by only a few big time dealers. (NKOTB: NBCU-Comcast!)
Without the presence of critical storytellers who look like ‘we’—AND DON’T—and have experienced ‘we’ kind of stories from ‘we’ kind of perspectives—OR ARE AT LEAST CRITICAL ENOUGH TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE—there remains what David J. Leonard (Screens Fade to Black, 2006) calls “the rise of neo-liberalism and the hegemony of colorblind rhetoric,” which he believes has “infiltrated” people of color and independent storytelling to the point of “rendering analysis of the state and white supremacy as obsolete.”
Precious has become such a sensitive hit, in part, because of the critical acclamation it’s being ceded, and I’d daresay, because it presents a shadow of return to state accountability in the Black film—a notion H’W’D would love to say makes it a, somehow, less “universal” story. Yet, every storyteller in the game could take a cue from Lee Daniels and Sapphire and the whole cast and crew when it comes to chanting down Babylon to its face. Precious isn’t your typical 2000s Black film—where we neatly pull ourselves up by some invisible boot straps, cite kujichagulia, and toast in some ritzy downtown club where we get to be frou-frou, chic-chic Black. Because it is oh-so-trendy now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Instead, Precious gets a little uncomfortable in all the right places. What about a living wage? What about welfare today? What about the complicity of the State in creating the abuses we tend to think we’re above inflicting within communities of color since we got, like, BET and TVOne and Centric (ooh, and now a Black President)?
In the absence of storytellers who will say a manageable bit about hyper-surveillance (like in Boyz n the Hood) or provide a troubling view of gender roles and expectations (like Sweet Sweetback’s…) what is your entertainment NOT saying? Why? In the absence of such storytellers, what farce of an American Dream are you being sold in our sociopolitical climate? Who funds what you watch? Who doesn’t care what you don’t watch? What’s the message in the sum total of what you do watch?
You don’t need to answer.
Just treat this like your 0-101.
You’re welcome. A beautiful world, I'm tryna find.
Merry Christmas! ;-)
Entertain yourself to death!
But like Badu says on her “Master Teacher” track: you better ‘stay woke.’
Now is certainly the time—perhaps more than ever before—for us to master how we receive our entertainment. How do we read pictures? How do we read sounds?
Yes. I’m insinuating that apocalyptic things are happening.
I don’t mind saying it because they’ve happened before. But they happened at a time when we were much less connected, and much more impressed by the immediacy and emotional affectation of the moving images we saw.
As of 2009 (and well before), your friendly living room ‘idiot box’ and neighborhood cinema are not, as independent filmmaker Haile Gerima would say, benign sources of entertainment. Instead they are very much part and parcel to the propaganda of our times. And we would only be wise to read the message above the message; the commentary that lies within each and every 30-min. to an hour slice of television, the commentary that lies within each and every military spot run during shows geared toward ‘urban’ demographics during war time, and in every feature length and short presentation in a Magic Johnson Theater near you.
TV & movies is one heck of a drug [sic]. Available to the masses in bulk by only a few big time dealers. (NKOTB: NBCU-Comcast!)
Without the presence of critical storytellers who look like ‘we’—AND DON’T—and have experienced ‘we’ kind of stories from ‘we’ kind of perspectives—OR ARE AT LEAST CRITICAL ENOUGH TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE—there remains what David J. Leonard (Screens Fade to Black, 2006) calls “the rise of neo-liberalism and the hegemony of colorblind rhetoric,” which he believes has “infiltrated” people of color and independent storytelling to the point of “rendering analysis of the state and white supremacy as obsolete.”
Precious has become such a sensitive hit, in part, because of the critical acclamation it’s being ceded, and I’d daresay, because it presents a shadow of return to state accountability in the Black film—a notion H’W’D would love to say makes it a, somehow, less “universal” story. Yet, every storyteller in the game could take a cue from Lee Daniels and Sapphire and the whole cast and crew when it comes to chanting down Babylon to its face. Precious isn’t your typical 2000s Black film—where we neatly pull ourselves up by some invisible boot straps, cite kujichagulia, and toast in some ritzy downtown club where we get to be frou-frou, chic-chic Black. Because it is oh-so-trendy now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Instead, Precious gets a little uncomfortable in all the right places. What about a living wage? What about welfare today? What about the complicity of the State in creating the abuses we tend to think we’re above inflicting within communities of color since we got, like, BET and TVOne and Centric (ooh, and now a Black President)?
In the absence of storytellers who will say a manageable bit about hyper-surveillance (like in Boyz n the Hood) or provide a troubling view of gender roles and expectations (like Sweet Sweetback’s…) what is your entertainment NOT saying? Why? In the absence of such storytellers, what farce of an American Dream are you being sold in our sociopolitical climate? Who funds what you watch? Who doesn’t care what you don’t watch? What’s the message in the sum total of what you do watch?
You don’t need to answer.
Just treat this like your 0-101.
You’re welcome. A beautiful world, I'm tryna find.
Merry Christmas! ;-)
'80 Blocks From Tiffany's' and Why Vintage Is The Nu-Nu
The most memorable moment in 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s has got to be when community organizer, Ms. Joan breaks up a would-be scrap on the corners of late 1970s South Bronx. She takes the DJ’s mic and admonishes the block party crowd—rimmed with ‘hood leaders and the ghetto’s most prone to NYPD hyper-surveillance.
The most memorable moment in 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s has got to be when community organizer, Ms. Joan breaks up a would-be scrap on the corners of late 1970s South Bronx. She takes the DJ’s mic and admonishes the block party crowd—rimmed with ‘hood leaders and the ghetto’s most prone to NYPD hyper-surveillance.
The street corridors quiet down in reverence when they see her approach the booth—a respect most of the cops sidling up and down the street could only wish for (with or without heat). Seeing that the crowd is waiting for her gentle rebuke to grace the sound system, she finally speaks—and in the tone they expect and feel they deserve from a Mother:
“Freak! Now I mean, freak! We came here to party, hear??”
She breaks her sternness with a smile, the two so-called gangsters she broke up agree to fight tomorrow, and the DJ cranks again.
Now that’s “vintage.”
“Freak! Now I mean, freak! We came here to party, hear??”
She breaks her sternness with a smile, the two so-called gangsters she broke up agree to fight tomorrow, and the DJ cranks again.
Now that’s “vintage.”
And that’s what birthed hip hop as we know it. In the midst of a community that had been hollowed out by the disappearance of jobs (check), displacement of Black and Brown neighborhoods (check), imminent reign of Reagan (comparable enough to a recent departure of Bush, and who knowwwwws what Empire has in store next—check), and can suddenly be relegated to the shadows of an ice blue Tiffany’s kind of demographic that didn’t—couldn’t—exist or expect to only a few short years before…(check, but insert Starbucks here)
A culture emerged that quenched the thirst for rebellion.
And I hope the point is made: we could use a sort of revival.
Within the last decade, folks mourned and beat the horse past dead about Hip Hop’s fate. More than anything, what undergirded these discussions was a longing—not just for content that would nourish the aught-sick soul (riddled with degradation and commercial compromise) but for Movement that would protect that space where we can “freak” and let our minds be free (in the midst of social turbulence and chaos).
So it’s not such a terrible thing that SNL'er (yes) Gary Weis couldn’t churn the 80 Blocks doc out sooner en masse than October 2009. He made it in ’79 alongside Jon Bradshaw and George Van Noy under the tag Togg Films, Above Average and Late Nite Productions.
Within the last decade, folks mourned and beat the horse past dead about Hip Hop’s fate. More than anything, what undergirded these discussions was a longing—not just for content that would nourish the aught-sick soul (riddled with degradation and commercial compromise) but for Movement that would protect that space where we can “freak” and let our minds be free (in the midst of social turbulence and chaos).
So it’s not such a terrible thing that SNL'er (yes) Gary Weis couldn’t churn the 80 Blocks doc out sooner en masse than October 2009. He made it in ’79 alongside Jon Bradshaw and George Van Noy under the tag Togg Films, Above Average and Late Nite Productions.
His intention was to cover (we hope not fetishize) 'gang life' in BX with, it seems, a cursory glance at how tagging, emceeing, and deejaying threaded through (3 of 5). But you’d be wise to check it out.
Perhaps one of only a few glimpses we can get to guide us through the Palindrome mirror: RETWEET: Past and Future are but mirrors of the present moment. Live today as you would have it reflected through all time.
Where do we go from here, Hip Hop? Where do we go from here cinema?
Where do we go from here, Hip Hop? Where do we go from here cinema?
How do we shelter the people and stay awake just the same?
All the answers we could ever want are staring us down our backs. Sankofa.
All the answers we could ever want are staring us down our backs. Sankofa.
on ELLEN SEITER's
“Semiotics, Structuralism, and Television”
nineteen eighty-seven, 4/2009
I raised the ‘signs’ conversation in writing on [Manthia] Diawara’s piece about identification. More than merely identifying with the characters, the context that that character exists in, the context the program exists in and, drawing from E. Ann Kaplan, how all those elements are constructed must be taken into consideration. Contextualizing the entire unit and the signs represented in the unit—whatever that unit will be—seems directly related to the matter of identification and resistant spectatorship.Ellen Seiter sums up the ideas of Saussure and Peirce by saying that they “recognized that some signs have no ‘real’ object to which they refer: abstractions (truth, freedom) or products of the imagination (mermaids, unicorns). More important, they wished to argue that all signs are cultural constructs that have taken on meaning through repeated, learned, collective use” (p 34).
Roland Barthes, she says, believed verbal language closes down the number of possible meanings the image might have. She quotes Barthes as saying, “It is not very accurate to talk of a civilization of the image—we are still, and more than ever, a civilization of writing, writing and speech continuing to be the full term of the informational structure. (…) [T]he text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image causing him to avoid some and receive others; by means of an often subtle dispatching it remote-controls him towards a meaning chosen in advance” (p. 44).
So if the sign is a collective configuration, and if I employ the five channels of communication that Seiter will modify for application to television, the verbal is indeed informing what denotations I should embrace in receiving the sign of, say, ‘Black female character’ located on ‘XYZ primetime comedy.’ But given the greater context or paradigm of primetime comedies (with Black female characters…), my ‘collectively-informed’ reading of a Black female character is, likely, going to be constructed by very similar “speakers” of the text (McDonald’s interludes), or very similar syntagms (back-to-back ‘urban’ comedies on TV schedule or, over a period of seasons: cancellations - re-airings - unannounced appearances on different nights, etc).
In other words, I have a feeling, via a convenient sampling (2006, The CW, Sunday nights: Everybody Hates Chris > All of Us > Girlfriends > The Game > (America’s Next Top Model) and the sponsors of this programming, plus Mara Brock Akil, Kelsey Grammar, and Debbie Allen) that all the same things are informing the Black female character that I am ‘unconsciously’ attracted to on the television. The first signification—skin color—is what will probably draw me, because the second signification, “Black woman/woman of color” is what is denoted to me. The connotation will probably include a sense of her rarity on the television screen.
But, if I knew/cared to examine who “speaks” the text –whether at the level of production, commerce, or current events/public advocacy—I think I’m bound to find patterns that reflect why this image is marketable for those creating her—and what’s more—why I’m hard-pressed to find too much variation among these Black women, in terms of class, mostly, and why I know they won’t last long. (Only The Game is left.)
Of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t watch (I definitely did). Of course, in my viewing, my ‘gaze’ may still be an oppositional one—I’ll interpret the signs on my own personal-communal collective terms, since the ‘reality’ is a dearth of representation behind the screen as well as on the screen—where the so-called ‘collective’ builds the signs for highest maximum return. However, this kind of engagement with the signs I ‘should’ be identifying with is, arguably, characteristic of a ‘niche’ television viewing audience.
Later in the essay, Seiter recasts Emile Benveniste’s remarks about ‘discourse’ saying, this is the “medium” through which we come to know television. Seiter says that, “In its current usage, discourse carries the stronger implication of speech governed by social, material, and historical forces, which disallow certain things from being said or even thought while forcing us to say certain other things” (p. 67).
Seiter notes that discourse “is not ‘free speech.’” She cites how censure played out in the children’s viewing of Fangface. She cites Hodge and Tripp as saying, “Verbal language is also the main mediator of meaning. It is the form in which meanings gain public and social form, and through discussion are affected by the meaning of others” (p. 62).
This suggests that while Barthes may have a point where his ‘civilization of writing’ is concerned, there are still a very select few (globally) who are positioned in such a way to be about the business of dictating the ‘informational structure.’ As long as film and television are such corruptible, colonizing and dangerously popular worldwide exports via the image (constructed and informed by such a small minority) how can the discourse of television not function as censorship in and of itself? I knowingly paint with a broad brush, but television and film as a medium of (global) social ‘discourse’—and as a capitalist construct—keeps so-called minority and niche audiences out of the community that informs sign creation.
On E. ANN KAPLAN's
“Feminist Criticism and Television”
nineteen eighty-seven, 4/2009
“Feminist Criticism and Television”
nineteen eighty-seven, 4/2009
I think it interesting that to merit critical attention one must still engage these very rigid identities. Because while the conversation of Madonna—and salutation given to her “Blond Ambition” phase—at the conclusion of the essay is meant to point to her obstruction of the presumably (patriarchally) gendered lens, and complete awareness of the ‘televisual apparatus’ and the politics it engages, there’s still, ultimately, a reification of the identity she’s employing as an ideally desirable identity.
To return to the discussion of signs, specifically Ellen Seiter’s reference to connotation and denotation, I feel it useful to repeat her breakdown of connotation:
To return to the discussion of signs, specifically Ellen Seiter’s reference to connotation and denotation, I feel it useful to repeat her breakdown of connotation:
“On a connotative level, shades of hair color (the first level of signification)
are used to produce signifieds such as ‘glamorous,’ ‘beautiful,’ ‘youthful,’
‘dumb,’ or ‘sexy’ on the second level of signification. These connotations,
widely known through their repeated use in film and television, are ones that
have a specific history in the United States, one that stems from glorifying the
physical appearance of Anglo women (based on their difference from and presumed
superiority to other races and ethnicities). But they are also subject to change
or revision over time” (p. 40).
Seiter also points to Madonna’s music videos citing an instance “in which she deliberately ‘quoted’ Marilyn Monroe’s hairstyle and what it connotes: sexiness as a costume).” Which is really to confirm the ‘signifieds’ associated with the connotative significations: shades of hair color, shades of lip color, shades of skin color, etc.
(My first beef)
I am in no way a Madonna-hater, and actually would echo Kaplan’s sentiments about the ways in which her ‘filmic’ literacy constructs her performances as a violation of hegemonic patriarchy at work on the so-called idiot box. I would especially echo Kaplan’s statement that Madonna “challenges constructs of both genders because it understands gender as a sign-system that does not necessarily coincide with identity.” And I would go on to say that this statement is where I wanted Kaplan to go much sooner in her breakdown of feminist criticism of television—an awesome essay in such a short space of Allen’s complete text.
As a Black female (wannabe) filmmaker, already interested—if not necessarily competent—in the convergence of sexual politics, film and television, and what that convergence means, I will say I missed Kaplan’s reference to ‘womanism,’ coined, actually, by Alice Walker, and entering the lexicon of at least wom(e/y)n-of-color feminist thought(s) in the 1980s. Womanism came to be viewed as a necessary space for Black women in the absence of a feminism that spoke to their plight at the intersection of race and gender and non-normative sexual identification in an only recently post-Jim Crow era at that time. While these feminisms have their shortcomings and do overlap with the feminisms Kaplan has already laid out, I think I’ll still use ‘womanism’, Kaplan’s (Althusserian) Marxist-feminism, and the concept of post-structuralist feminism (specifically because she identifies post-structuralist feminism as an anti-essentialist theory) to build my response to her essay on the whole.
Kaplan references Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” piece in order to recast the ideas of ‘fetishism’ and ‘voyeurism.’ She uses these to give us a way of understanding the “three basic ‘looks’” that Hollywood uses to satisfy desire in the male unconscious. The first voyeuristic look is entirely dependent on the ‘scopophilic’-indulgent presumably male camera technician; the second is the perspective of the males in the narrative, meant to objectify the women within their gaze; and finally the look of the actual spectator, which is forced to mimic either previous gaze. A few sentences later (p. 263), Kaplan would go on to identify the whole female body as “’fetishized’ in order to counteract the male fear of sexual difference, that is, of castration,” and if the spectator is female, these are positions she is forced to inherit.
This would be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that we are assuming a lot about the spectator and the film-er. For one, we’re assuming they identify as ‘heterosexual’ and; two, in assuming a female objectification, we are forced to dis-imagine a non-heterosexual-male objectification. We haven’t fully problematized patriarchal-hegemonic constructions of the masculine side of the binary in our (albeit revolutionary, but short-sighted) feminist-analyses. While ‘womanism’ might recognize and beg an account of the racist-sexist lens (and likely include an analysis of the otherization and fetishizing of any woman-of-color presence, and non-every-American-is-middle-class presence), and (Althusserian) Marxist-feminism may recognize how these constructions obey the maximum-possible-return rules of capitalism even as they inform these identities and are informed by ‘real’ manifestations of these identities (Kaplan’s and Meehan’s “goodwife, harpy and bitch display[s]”), it appears to me that the post-structuralist-anti-essentialist approach is missing.
The very thing Kaplan will praise MTV and Madonna for is lost, because we’re assuming the very gender-specificity that Kaplan argues MTV and Madonna destroy. Perhaps, the root of the problem is what language “won’t allow” us to do when we’re having these conversations about these kinds of ideas. However, I’m feeling there’s an awesome body of work that’s been left untouched by television critics because of these same conservative bents and assumptions.
For example, I would greatly appreciate a similar analysis of Sri Lankan singer/rapper M.I.A; Even more dangerous, an analysis of rapper, Lil’ Kim or Jamaican dancehall DJ Lady Saw. These women, through their performances, and by their identification as women of color already ostracized by dominant forms of media and culture, are excellent examples of what Madonna may never be able to do for little girls of color, like myself, where reclamation of agency is discussed. How these women work the televisual-apparatus—with all of its rules and presumptions, and faithfulness to normative significations where race, historically/racially/morally constructed sexualities, and colonial relationships between the U.S. and the so-called Third World are concerned, and constructions of Black masculinities and men of color masculinities are concerned (something that Kaplan completely ignored, but was entirely relevant to her discussion of Madonna’s Cleopatra performance (p. 275))—is an area of ‘feminist’-deconstruction of film and television that I would love to see.
(My first beef)
I am in no way a Madonna-hater, and actually would echo Kaplan’s sentiments about the ways in which her ‘filmic’ literacy constructs her performances as a violation of hegemonic patriarchy at work on the so-called idiot box. I would especially echo Kaplan’s statement that Madonna “challenges constructs of both genders because it understands gender as a sign-system that does not necessarily coincide with identity.” And I would go on to say that this statement is where I wanted Kaplan to go much sooner in her breakdown of feminist criticism of television—an awesome essay in such a short space of Allen’s complete text.
As a Black female (wannabe) filmmaker, already interested—if not necessarily competent—in the convergence of sexual politics, film and television, and what that convergence means, I will say I missed Kaplan’s reference to ‘womanism,’ coined, actually, by Alice Walker, and entering the lexicon of at least wom(e/y)n-of-color feminist thought(s) in the 1980s. Womanism came to be viewed as a necessary space for Black women in the absence of a feminism that spoke to their plight at the intersection of race and gender and non-normative sexual identification in an only recently post-Jim Crow era at that time. While these feminisms have their shortcomings and do overlap with the feminisms Kaplan has already laid out, I think I’ll still use ‘womanism’, Kaplan’s (Althusserian) Marxist-feminism, and the concept of post-structuralist feminism (specifically because she identifies post-structuralist feminism as an anti-essentialist theory) to build my response to her essay on the whole.
Kaplan references Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” piece in order to recast the ideas of ‘fetishism’ and ‘voyeurism.’ She uses these to give us a way of understanding the “three basic ‘looks’” that Hollywood uses to satisfy desire in the male unconscious. The first voyeuristic look is entirely dependent on the ‘scopophilic’-indulgent presumably male camera technician; the second is the perspective of the males in the narrative, meant to objectify the women within their gaze; and finally the look of the actual spectator, which is forced to mimic either previous gaze. A few sentences later (p. 263), Kaplan would go on to identify the whole female body as “’fetishized’ in order to counteract the male fear of sexual difference, that is, of castration,” and if the spectator is female, these are positions she is forced to inherit.
This would be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that we are assuming a lot about the spectator and the film-er. For one, we’re assuming they identify as ‘heterosexual’ and; two, in assuming a female objectification, we are forced to dis-imagine a non-heterosexual-male objectification. We haven’t fully problematized patriarchal-hegemonic constructions of the masculine side of the binary in our (albeit revolutionary, but short-sighted) feminist-analyses. While ‘womanism’ might recognize and beg an account of the racist-sexist lens (and likely include an analysis of the otherization and fetishizing of any woman-of-color presence, and non-every-American-is-middle-class presence), and (Althusserian) Marxist-feminism may recognize how these constructions obey the maximum-possible-return rules of capitalism even as they inform these identities and are informed by ‘real’ manifestations of these identities (Kaplan’s and Meehan’s “goodwife, harpy and bitch display[s]”), it appears to me that the post-structuralist-anti-essentialist approach is missing.
The very thing Kaplan will praise MTV and Madonna for is lost, because we’re assuming the very gender-specificity that Kaplan argues MTV and Madonna destroy. Perhaps, the root of the problem is what language “won’t allow” us to do when we’re having these conversations about these kinds of ideas. However, I’m feeling there’s an awesome body of work that’s been left untouched by television critics because of these same conservative bents and assumptions.
For example, I would greatly appreciate a similar analysis of Sri Lankan singer/rapper M.I.A; Even more dangerous, an analysis of rapper, Lil’ Kim or Jamaican dancehall DJ Lady Saw. These women, through their performances, and by their identification as women of color already ostracized by dominant forms of media and culture, are excellent examples of what Madonna may never be able to do for little girls of color, like myself, where reclamation of agency is discussed. How these women work the televisual-apparatus—with all of its rules and presumptions, and faithfulness to normative significations where race, historically/racially/morally constructed sexualities, and colonial relationships between the U.S. and the so-called Third World are concerned, and constructions of Black masculinities and men of color masculinities are concerned (something that Kaplan completely ignored, but was entirely relevant to her discussion of Madonna’s Cleopatra performance (p. 275))—is an area of ‘feminist’-deconstruction of film and television that I would love to see.
