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! ;-)
