Herman Cain, the Magical Negro…and Other Topics on Ontological Blackness

2 Nov

Carlos Osorio/AP Photos

Let me just be up front and honest: I don’t like Herman Cain.

Granted I dislike his opponent Texas Governor Rick Perry even less, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann has devolved into a “Love Boat” joke, I just really don’t care for Herman Cain.  His politics seems to hearken back to a Brady Bunch or even “Leave It to Beaver” era of this country–one that never truly existed–and people are eating it up.  Maybe that’s what it is; I’m just mad people are actually buying what he’s shoveling.

But why not?  He’s a magical Negro.

Yes, the phrase “magical Negro” is a bit of a tongue-and-cheek mash up and probably draws more questions that it answers, but if you will go with me, I would like to explore this magical Negro called Herman Cain.

Let’s be honest, since we’re not in a post-racial society despite what mainstream media continues to assert, more and more people are trying to wrap their minds around the now seeable possibility of having two men of color run for the office of the President of the United States.  What is interesting to me, is that both of these men have had the core of their blackness challenged.  For Barack Obama it was his mixed ancestral heritage, being raised by his white grandparents in part and for Herman Cain his affiliation with the Republican party and aligning himself with the likes of other GOP’ers who take such conservative stances when it comes to the disenfranchised of this country.

So how is Herman Cain able to ascend to the point he has now despite being black?  I think very much the same way Obama did for the Democrats: there’s a level of “safeness” about both of these men.  This country isn’t ready for a black man to be president (( wink wink )).  By black man, one need only reference the 2004 nomination process for the Democrats and Al Sharpton didn’t make it past South Carolina.  While Sharpton was able to parlay himself into a nationally syndicated radio talk show and now a full time slot on MSNBC, an elected official he is not!

It’s easy to call Herman Cain a sellout for his political position when it comes to his comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement by inferring persons need to simply go get a job.  Even the most simple of political commentaries understands that with a 9.1% unemployment rate nationwide to suggest protesters need to just get a job wholly oversimplifies the problem.  And that’s Cain’s political achilles heel to me: he oversimplifies relatively complex problems.  While his 9-9-9 plan (( think 9 pizzas, 9 toppings for the low low price of $9.99 )) is easily repeatable, it’s a rather basic solution to a real complex problem.  Even in the last debate, after I finally got the gist of it, Cain was left comparing apples and oranges, literally, to an audience and debaters who could see through it.

This is the problem that Cain faces when it comes to his blackness being challenged.

Most political commentators with any validity to their reputation (so this excludes most anyone who appears on Fox News) and across color lines will admit that the issue of race is not a simple one: it never has been and will probably never be.  Cain’s haste to oversimplify things flies in the face of conventional wisdom in many of the black communities across this country.  This is why Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia in 2008 following the initial fallout behind Jeremiah Wright was so poignant and resonated with many people.  It was the first time in recent memory we heard a speech that tackled the issue of race head-on and didn’t use euphemisms to address it.  Obama’s speech was the only speech on race I had heard in my lifetime coming from somone with the high level of political status as he, it at least did not dismiss race nor add to the apathy and disillusionment that often characterizes the lives of disenfranchised people.

A potential GOP nomination of Herman Cain could actually be a political jackpot for the GOP when it comes to issues of race.  The GOP has been facing ever increasing flak from the black communities across this nation when it comes endearing blacks to their party.  It’s a joke worthy only of the black blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter when GOP events are aired on national TV and we sit back and count the number of black faces we see in the crowd.  Usually we never run out of fingers.  With the recent chairperson of the GOP, Michael Steele, being black he was forced to deal with these questions directly, and the GOP as a party was able to point and say “Look, we’re not racist.  Our chairperson is a black guy!”

But, as I noted above, that oversimplifies the issue of race.

What the GOP obviously fails to realize is that running a black conservative candidate against Obama runs the risk of political suicide.

Just ask Alan Keyes.

Granted the GOP in the state of Illinois had Barack Obama running unopposed for a U.S. Sentate seat for six whole weeks, but Alan Keyes, as the paragon of foot-in-the-mouth conservatism was the absolutely worst candidate to run against an Obama campaign.  But Obama won 70% of the vote with over four million votes cast in a state that outside of the Chicago metropolitan area consistently voted Republican and in a state that has no qualms about electing a Republican governor when they feel like it.

70-percent.

For social conservatives to vote for a black man in a political office is the equivalent of the “oh, I have black friends” meme.  It somehow tells them that they’re really not that conservative–or prejudiced, or bigoted, or racist–deep down.  What makes this a falsehood one tells one’s self to sleep easy at night is the fact that voting for the likes of a Herman Cain don’t require much of a leap.  Herman Cain’s rhetoric, for the most part is interchangeable with that of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry at this stage of the game.  Nothing Cain stands for or has spoken about would look any different coming from a white GOP politician–no one would raise an eyebrow.

With the latest political bungle lain at the doorstep of Herman Cain surrounding this sexual misconduct from years ago, he seems like a Manchurian candidate of sorts to me.  He seems out of his political element–like Sarah Palin.  The folksy-ness comes off as aloof and unaware of the stakes of the game.  While I don’t mind perceived flip-flopping on the issues when new information is available, Herman Cain’s doublespeak is pushing the appalling level.  And his speaking in unknown tongues referring to not knowing the capital of “Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” doesn’t show salt-of-the-earth values, but rather a frightening dearth of knowledge of foreign affairs.

Launching into a rendition of “He Looked Beyond My Faults” at the National Press Club earlier this week–as though he were singing a sermonic selection before he preached…

…doth not a presidential candidate make.

Honestly, I don’t like the guy, but as a fellow black man, it felt like Cain set us back the proverbial 400 years when I saw him launch into song.  It came off as a minstrel production; that to placate to white conservative sensibilities he felt the need to sing a song.  It hearkened back to a time when racist whites of the antebellum and Jim Crow era dismissed Negro work songs as songs sung because we were happy to be doing the back breaking labor.  Certainly it roused images of blacks portrayed as mere entertainment and advertisement with black face, exaggerated lips and noses plastered on billboards, food labels and the like.

Notwithstanding Cain’s matriculation at Morehouse College or his parents insistence to not get involved with Civil Rights protests in Atlanta, to be unaware of the consequences of singing as he did disturbs me.

But so is this Magical Negro–the one Herman Cain.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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A Final Word on President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus

29 Sep

President Barack Obama speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus Phoenix Awards banquet on September 24, 2011

The less and less I’ve found myself blogging over the past couple of months, when I do I try and add something new to the conversation.  Something new doesn’t necessarily mean adding something contrary or opposing to what’s already been said, but often times it is and sometimes it’s just taken that way.  But this topic, who knows how it’s really going to be received.

This past weekend, President Barack Obama spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus about various policies and initiatives all of which were tailor made for the specific crowd.  He opened up with a quote from the revered modern Civil Rights-era icon Rev. Joseph Lowery (the same man who gave the benediction at his inauguration in 2009) from a famous biblical passage of the three Hebrew boys who are at the center of the story in Daniel 3.   It was as if Obama was taking a text.  All I was waiting on was a sermon title.

In a speech (not a sermon) shortly over some 23 minutes, he closed if you will, on this call to action for the CBC to “take off [their] bedroom slippers” and put on some “marching boots.”  There was some admonishment to stop grumblin’ and complainin’ as well.  Here’s a clip below:

 

Invoking Martin Luther King and the old modern Civil Rights motif of “the Promised Land” as some ethereal and mystical utopia where humanity lives in harmony, the concept of “stop grumblin’” and “stop complanin’” is a clear enough reference to Moses and the former Hebrew slaves, making that metonymical transition into Israelites.  The story of the Israelites in the wilderness is one of them complaining to no end–complaining to the point that they wished they were back in slavery because at least Pharaoh fed them, but they believed they had been led out to the wilderness to die.  Many times Moses’ conversations with Israelite tribal god of Yahweh was focused around the people complaining to no end.

To which I say, I think President Obama’s speech was on point and to the right audience.

While I agree with Congresswoman Rep. Maxine Waters that Obama would have never said this to another demographic such as the Hispanic/Latino caucus, an LGBT political community or a Jewish community, it’s probably because those demographics aren’t the personification of a “rubber stamp.”

Granted that’s a very, very surface analysis of the situation, but I’m going somewhere with this, so journey with me.

From jump the other demographics don’t have anything of their own demographic represented in the singular personhood of the President which starts complicating this dynamic portrayed between Obama, the CBC and the black community’s subsequent reaction.  But, all of the other demographics have a working political base that’s operates on politics based within the last decade, not the last half century.

 Let’s just be honest, we don’t hear a lot about the CBC on a national level that often.

We can’t trace the hand of the work of the CBC in the last five years.  While yes the individual members may be doing meaningful work in their own districts, as a unified body they are not a force to be reckoned when it comes to being able to influence political thought in an electorate.  When the CBC is imaged by the disgraced Congressman from Harlem, Charlie Rangel or by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee or Rep. Maxine Waters (whom I both like by the way) what most in the black community see is the old guard, still stuck in a political era long gone.  For what it’s worth, it says a lot that Barack Obama ran against Rep. Bobby Rush in Illinois, lost, only to win the U.S. Senate seat and finally the Presidency.

And where is Bobby Rush?

I don’t know.  When I voted in 2010, I thought that was one of the most depressing ballots I casted.  I honestly couldn’t point to something Bobby Rush had meaningfully done for our district in all my life–at least nothing beyond the status quo.

It also needs to be said that complaining does not equal meaningful discussion.  I’m not against talk if it’s talk that’s moving us forward, pushing our minds, pulling us toward challenging our embedded political philosophies–but talk, for the sake of talk somewhat equals complaining.  With recent events such as the Troy Davis execution and recently hearing about possible voting rights violations in Texas, one is wondering where is the civil rights outcry?  Instead our organizations that have historically done this well such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have become reactionary rather than controlling the rhetoric and being proactive in their fight.

Granted reactionary politics, showing up a day late and a dollar short has come to categorize the nature of liberal politics in America in general in the age of neo-conservatism that we’ve seen since Bush II administration, it still doesn’t absolve one from finding refuge in the reactionary and solace in being go-along-to-get-along types.  Prior to the jobs move that the CBC launched this past summer, I would be hard pressed to think of an instance where their name was attached to an independent initiative that had national ramifications.  Truth be told, I think they were just riding the wave of anti-Obama sentiments that had been kicked off by the rather public disagreements amongst the academic Negro intellectuals namely Melissa Harris-Perry and Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, but perhaps that’s for another blog post.

Nevertheless, what I saw in Obama’s speech amounted to a coach lighting a fire under the butts of a team that might have been the underdog going into the big game.  What baffles me about the nature of being black and being political is that often times we use the exceptionalism card when we it’s to our advantage and we reject it when it forces us to look in the mirror at our own actions.  Many blacks have been complaining the whole summer about Obama isn’t black enough. [ I think some of this was thanks to Cornel West's observation that Obama was a "black mascot" and that Obama had a fear of "free black men" combined with a comment that "he {Obama} feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men..."]  And it reignited the same questions about ontological blackness that we’re no closer to ending than we were before we elected Obama than we were at the beginning of the 20th century when DuBois so famously remarked about the nature of the “color line.”

Given Obama’s hesitation to make appearances at decidedly black functions in the 2008 campaign season and his pitiably few appearances at decidedly black functions even now, I was just happy that it was getting significant press coverage that he was speaking at the CBC.  But the nature of being black and the nuanced relationship of politics behind just being black in this country gives many blacks the privilege, for lack of a better word, to move back and forth between exceptionalism.

Case in point, Obama’s speech with the CBC.

For what it’s worth, the CBC could have found themselves in a position to complain either way.  If Obama had given a straight laced speech, Rep. Waters might have very well ended up saying complaining that Obama didn’t connect well with the room and the larger national audience.  And the blogosphere would have lit up saying Obama wasn’t black enough.  But, since Obama did his damnedest to connect with the room and a larger black national audience, we’re essentially saying that Obama came off as too familiar with us.  Bottom line is that Obama didn’t have this tone with the other demographics because he’s not a member of the other demographics–which is what I said at the beginning of this.

When it comes to organizations that have their roots directly tied to the modern Civil Rights struggle in this country, understanding this political exceptionalism that blacks sometimes help themselves to is rather difficult.  The younger black generation recognizes it much easier.  No, this is not some roundabout way of me talking about reverse racism, but exactly what I’m calling it: political exceptionalism.

Somehow I think Obama knew this which is why he called on the people to stop grumblin’.

Beyond ALL of this, why are we fixated on one line of a 25 minute speech?  Isn’t this what we defended his former pastor about in 2008?  A handful of quotes and soundbytes out of a 40-plus year preaching career?  And why, just why are we defending the CBC’s right to participate in one of the most pedestrian and banal exercises of one’s First Amendment right–the right to complain and grumble?  Shouldn’t we at least aspire to be known as more than that?

In retrospect, Rep. Waters should have known better, that was red meat being thrown out by the mainstream media and she went for it.  For the last couple of days, that was the media cycle about Obama’s complaint about the complainers, who in turn complained about his complaining.  No one is talking about the context of his speech, but we’re discussing the very, very superficial aspects of it–who’s winning now?

If I can see this, surely the people who do this for a living can.  C’mon people, wake up.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

P.S.  Happy Birthday to Mama Uppity

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Coonery or Comedy: What’s the Difference? A Case Study of Tyler Perry

16 Sep

Every once in a while I pose a question on Twitter and actually get some responses.  Today was one of those days.  I visited fellow blogger Average Bro’s website and I saw his story on the recent news that Tyler Perry raked in the most money in Hollywood for a year between 2010 and 2011, a nice sum around $130 million.  Naturally, the black blogosphere had jumped on this a day before when the story broke and a fresh new round of criticisms about Tyler Perry were refreshed.  It’s as though we treat Tyler Perry like some wound that as soon as the scab begins to crust over, we pick at it again opening a fresh wound hellbent on making sure that we create a permanent scar.

The question coonery or comedy isn’t exactly a new one, and certainly not a new topic surrounding Tyler Perry and his brand of cinematography and small screen ventures.  But, since Facebook is enjoying reminding its users of status updates from the past two years on any given day, I saw that this time last year I was encouraging and hoping the best for Tyler Perry as his screen adaptation of “For Colored Girls” was then soon to be released.  For me, that was when the tide turned and I seriously stopped hatin’ on the guy and decided to congratulate him for his successes.

What I posed today on Twitter was:

You can’t criticize Tyler Perry and his Madea image if you think “Coming to America” and “Friday” are funny.

While many people went on to tell me how one could criticize one and not the other, I began thinking what constitutes coonery and what constitutes comedy.  For a basic definition, fellow Twitter follower @Brandale2221 said to the effect that comedy is new jokes in new places and that coonery is old jokes in old places.  While have some nuance differences with that statement, I think most people would agree to that; it sounds good.

Let’s be honest, black comedy has seen a number of “envelopes being pushed” throughout the ages.  From the likes of Redd Foxx, Flip Wilson and LaWanda Page all the way to Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Adele Givens and Sheryl Underwood.   We’ve seen many of these black stand up comedians and comediennes jump from the stage to the silver screen and small screen making cameo roles to even being Hollywood stars themselves.  Many of them have shows and movies that particularly depict black culture and add to the conversation of what is blackness.  For good or bad, they add to this image.

When the 1990s came around and we had safely moved away from the blaxploitation era of movies, the image of the Huxtables had easily began to dominate the scene, gangsta rap had fully emerged as a force to be reckoned with birthed out of the hip hop culture.  This hip hop culture had given birth to movies such as “Coming to America” to “Boyz N Da Hood” and we saw television shows such as “Living Single,” “Martin” and “The Wayans’ Brothers” become top shows amongst black audiences.  From black romantic comedies such as “Boomerang” to “Love Jones” showed an image of black love rarely seen on the big screen.

But none came out the gate swinging more than Spike Lee.  Quintessential Spike Lee movies from that era still speak volumes for the black community and the purpose of this discussion: “School Daze” and “Do the Right Thing.”  [I would include Malcolm X in this list of quintessential movies, but since it's a biography, it doesn't quite fit the genre comparisons that I'm going for.]  We hold Spike Lee and these movies as the paragon of what it means to be black, male, writer, director and producer–the holy trifecta of the Hollywood movie making industry.

Somewhere, sneaking under the radar came Tyler Perry.

Helloerr!

Perry doesn’t fit the mold of any of the aforementioned black productions.  His movies don’t achieve the level of political and racial consciousness of Spike Lee joints; they don’t exude the smooth romantic comedy vibe that was eloquently delivered in “Love Jones” and his movies certainly don’t fit the genre of the gangster movies such as “Menace II Society.”  Tyler Perry came on the scene in a country that had survived 9/11 and in what some sociologists are already referring to as “the Lost Decade.”

The 20-aughts have seen the death of the live studio audience sitcom replaced by reality TV shows that take you from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the chef’s kitchens of Los Angeles and audiences will pay money to see human jackasses on screen play tortuous pranks on one another.

What better time for Tyler Perry to step on the scene.

Na’im Akbar, the acclaimed clinical psychologist, wrote in his book Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery even before we knew who Madea was, wrote about “the Wayans’ Brothers and “Martin” as coonin’.  For me, personally, much of the comedy of Martin Lawrence on the show vascillated between comedy and coonery.  A typical scene with him, Cole, and Gina and Pam all playing off one another when the plumber died in the apartment was sheer comedic genius.  Watching Shenehneh Jenkins act a fool in the hallway was coonin’ to me.

Did I laugh?  Sometimes.

A basic question I pose when I have this discussion is what’s the difference between Flip Wilson in a dress, Martin Lawrence in a dress, Jamie Foxx in a dress and Tyler Perry in a dress; what makes the first three comedy and the last one coonin’.  One someone told simply that the first three are funny and that Perry isn’t.  Well, what’s considered an appropriate emotional stimuli to overbalance neurological stressers that produce laughter is highly subjective–just because you think it’s funny doesn’t mean I will.  But, to suggest that because one doesn’t find Tyler Perry funny automatically means it’s safe to call it coonin’ I think is disingenuous.

Tyler Perry isn’t a stand up comedian who made the crossover, but rather he’s a guy who has said that he’s trying to put forth a message about black culture.  He didn’t go to school for filmmaking and he hasn’t been working in this area terribly long compared to other blacks in the industry.  He’s overtly religious and spiritual in his films.  All of these things make him a clear outlier from the other disparate writers, producers and directors.  And he’s producing these movies in different cultural climate than the one’s we often compare him to–and he’s clear that he has a different target audience.

Much of what I fielded from criticisms about “The Help” are much of what I see in criticism of Perry that are levied against him.  ”The Help” as a movie, never set out to tell a gripping tale of black domestic life in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, it set out to be an entertaining movie about black domestic life in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.  Perry, clearly unlike Spike Lee, never set out to tell stories about racial and political injustices–nuanced and blatant–or a clear and pointed view of black culture.  Perry, at best from what he’s said in interviews, set out to tell tranche de vie stories about blacks with basic human uplift themes–he just wasn’t trying to be all that deep.

And boy did he suceed.

Yes, Tyler Perry’s movies and sitcoms are bland at best.  The plots of his movies fall marvelously flat like a cake in a oven on the set of The Bozo Show; a horrible, tired and staid punchline that you can see coming a mile away.  The acting leaves a lot to be desired, and the writing is bad.  It’s so bad that to see the likes of Angela Bassett and Lynn Whitfield have deliver some of those words is truly cringe worthy.  The level of comedy of the sitcoms “House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns” is on par with that of a 1st grade Christmas pageant.

But, Tyler Perry has made power move after power move and for that alone, I celebrate what he’s been able to do.  What makes him and Spike Lee comparable is that, to my knowledge, they are the only two black people in Hollywood who comprise all aspects of writing, directing and producing–and acting–in their full-length productions.  Most times in Hollywood you find black directors and black writers, but to have black producers who also own their own production company is what incurs the wow factor.  While yes you have the Smith’s (Will and Jada) who have their own production company, if one looks at the credits you’d see in Spike Lee and Tyler Perry films, they’re not sharing the rights of production with anyone else but themselves.

That’s some Steven Spielberg type ish!

I guess the next power move for Tyler Perry is to start his own film distribution company to which I say more power to the brother as well!

As with things of this topic, if it’s something you seriously don’t consider to be comedy but view it as coonin’  just flip the channel, as I do when I see Ella’s short T-Rex arms appear on my screen in “House of Payne.” [SN: You know that's the same character hanging out the window of the girls dorm at Mission College yelling at Dap to go away?]  And given the plethora of foolish images we as a black culture have dealt with in the past and are dealing with right now, I somehow think we’re overreacting.  The vapid lyrics of “You Look Better With the Lights Off” from the New Boyz featuring Chris Brown or the anti-love song Miguel is crooning out saying “I Don’t Wanna Be Loved” and that he only wants a quickie–no bite marks, scratches or hickies please–I think has just as much an impact on how black culture is viewed as “Madeas Big Happy Family.”

In an age where Italians are reduced to the images of greasy haired mob bosses or guidos from the “Jersey Shore” and middle class white families paint their young daughters as hoes in training on “Teen Mom” I think Tyler Perry’s image of Madea is about right on target for the U.S. as we see-saw between life imitating art or art imitating life.

Slightly diverging from this line of thinking, but I think equally important in this entire conversation, no one ever questioned the sexuality of many of these previous comedians to the point and extent of Tyler Perry.  Mind you, “Boondocks” did an ENTIRE episode openly criticizing this man’s sexuality.  While the “Pause” episode was brilliant and stood in stark artistic difference to the production work of Perry himself, still, was it morally right for Aaron McGruder to do that?  I think we, as a black community, have given ourselves a bit more of a green light to openly criticize the work of Tyler Perry and Tyler Perry himself because we feel that we are morally superior–we don’t go around acting super churchy all the time while dressed in drag, therefore we’re in a position of moral judgment.  I dare say if Perry wasn’t so overly religious and spiritual in his films that some of the issue we may have with a man who’s 6’5″ dressed in drag would somewhat be allayed.

Still, does that make one’s criticisms less valid?  I would say no, but as much as I’m always interested in authorial intent when I read novels, and works of non-fiction and certainly when I read the biblical text, I ask myself the same thing when it comes to entertainment.  One criticisms are always valid, but what is the intent of your criticisms?  Are they from a knowingly subjective vantage point or from a delusional and seemingly objective point of view?  What bothers me is false objectivity.  I have no problems with people being clear with their bias, but to ignore it, to me, bankrupts the value of your opinion.

For those who think I’ve evaded the question, for me, comedy is rooted in the intent of the artist.  If the artist is simply pushing the envelope for the sake of laughter, then it’s comedy.  Coonin’ is also rooted in the intent of the artist–if the artist is compromising an artistic integrity for the sake of laughter.  

Failing to be, who you be, and be the best at it….you’re nothing more than a coon.

Keep it uppity and truthfully radical, JLL

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Uppity Updates

25 Aug

Seeing as how I have a “day job” now, I’ve noticed my posts have gotten farther and farther between–monthly almost.  But nonetheless, I’m still here in the blogosphere and you can check out my comments on some other famous blogs that I visit pretty regularly.  That being said a lot has happened in the month since I’ve last posted, so here’s a rundown on the latest current events with the usual uppity twist to them.

Obama and the Debt-Ceiling Crisis

Quickly stated, Mr. Obama acted as he always has: slowly, yet deliberately.  That’s half the reason why he won the nomination in June 2008 because we believed in his ability to be a bit more calculated in his approach to politics.  With recent blog topics and op-ed pieces throwing out the question of Democratic buyers remorse with regards to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the question is moot.  Neither had any presidential experience and Clinton still has none, I think to ask such a question opens up the topic to too many “what ifs” and nothing is concrete.  To ponder seriously is to fall into the trap of “the grass is greener on the other side” myth that really does nothing to help the current situation.

Nonetheless, there is a liberal fatigue that is sweeping the nation, so much so that former D-NY Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seat is actually being contested by a GOP candidate–seriously so.  I would encourage people to not miss the forest for the trees.  Even if someone is elected who’s a GOP (the trees), I wouldn’t worry about the 2012 election (the forest) for a district that has historically been Democratic and the people aren’t changing that much in the long haul.

What I do think the White House has done a bad job of is getting the word out about Obama’s fiscal responsibility.  The Congressional Budget Office clearly can show that just in the two years Obama has been in office that we’ve seen reduced spending in comparison to the Reagan/Bush I years and Bush II administration with a drastically reduced spending in the future.  Part of this reduction is because of the predicted withdrawal from our wars overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.  While Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security have been the proverbial third rails of politics since the mid-20th century, the issue of the mountains of money shelled out to fund these wars has been almost mum from the White House to the GOP and to all other talking heads.

Simply stated, the wars are driving us to the poorhouse–and quickly.

Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and the GOP Presidential Contenders

Rick Perry

I still say Mitt Romney is the best hope for the GOP up against Obama come 2012 given the trajectory we’re headed.

Seeing as how I don’t have a glimpse into the future, I don’t know how well or how terrible the economy is going to fair in the next 12 months or so, but if unemployment numbers stabilize and don’t uptick, a GOP candidate can still come in and Obama would lose the White House.  It’ll be a tough sell if jobs numbers begin to go up and unemployment starts ticking down; all Obama needs is a solid full 1% drop close enough to the election time when the jobs gains are close enough in the voters minds.  I will admit this: if unemployment drops to 8.1% or hell, even a nice 7.8% by December, and it hovers between 7.5-8.0% for all of calendar year 2012 during campaign season, this country would still elect a GOP candidate who ran on the promise to bring unemployment down further.

The problem with Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann is that they’re not center enough.  The religious right that elected the likes of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush aren’t in existence the same way.  I think its safe to say the country has ticked a bit left to center (evidenced by Obama’s election), but the far right has dug in their heels in a way we haven’t seen before in this country–just look at the Tea Party.  While they have candidates in office across the country, most of them are in state representive or House of Representative offices and in highly conservative districts that haven’t seen liberal Democrat elected in decades if ever.  The districts that switched from Democratice to Tea Party GOP in 2010 were districts that have historically flip-flopped and had a mostly evenly divided electorate anyway so to believe anything otherwise is pretty much smoke and mirrors.

As of this moment, I don’t think the Tea Party has enough collective capital with the U.S. population to garner a national election.  Considering how Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell’s campaigns in Nevada and Delaware for U.S. Senate so gloriously imploded upon themselves as major Tea Party candidates, I’m really not convinced about the campaign of Michelle Bachmann and even a Tea Party support candidate of Rick Perry.

Black Racial Sensitivity and the Nivea Ad

Honestly, I don’t think there’s much ado about nothing.

For me to call something racist, I have to first understand what’s the intent.  If anything, the ad is weird before it’s racist–or prejudiced or bigoted.  Why there’s a cut off head in the guy’s hand is a mystery to me.  And seeing as how Nivea has a series of ads with random people holding random heads, I think we’re being hasty in judgment in calling the ad racist.

There’s a nuanced discussion we need to be having when it comes to discussing “post-racial America.”  One of which is whether or not post-racial is really where we need to be headed.  One of the initial problems with this concept is that it advocates the “melting pot” theory over the “gumbo pot.”  A melting pot speaks toward us moving toward a homogenous texture irrespective of race, religion, thought and everything else that makes one culture unique.  A gumbo pot on the other hand takes uniquely different items, mixes it together to form a unique taste, but the shrimp is still the shrimp, the andouille sausage is still the andouille sausage and the chicken is still the chicken.  The roux forms and acts as the substance that blends all flavor to produce a new taste and holds all of the disparate parts together.

When I speak of us moving toward a post-racial America, I am speaking of reconcilliation.  There must be a day in human history where we can “study war no more” and discover our similarities and celebrate our differences.  Do I think this Nivea ad is holding us back or moving us forward?  I don’t think it’s doing either quite frankly.  But just as Jay-Z and Kanye pulled the clip from “Blades of Glory” on their track “Niggas in Paris” where Chaz Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy are having the discussion about “My Humps” song being used and Chaz says “because it’s provocative,” I think such a phrase is appropriate here.  Just as Jay-Z and Kanye give an explanation for some of their imagery, the same holds true for this ad–it’s provocative.

London Riots and U.S. Flash Mobs

Riot police patrol the streets in Tottenham, north London as trouble flared after members of the community took to the streets. Photo: PA

Let me be clear from the beginning, I do not condone violence as an appropriate means of offense and protest.  That being said, I’m still at a loss for what was going on with the London riots.  For the life of me, I cannot rationalize violent acts throughout a municipality as a means of public protest.  Does this mean that I side with the British officials that are wantonly calling the looters as “thugs” and miscrients of the lowest kind?  No, I do not.  Rather, I am more interested in trying to move said protests toward relevant revolution.

There’s a difference between a revolt and a revolution.  Revolutions are interested in the long term and usually are a series of events that lead a point in history and result in structural and fundamental social change.  Revolts on the other hand result in short term gains for a small section of a populace and possibly can result in negative gains.  This is not to say that either aren’t birthed out of the same oppressive conditions that need to be changed, but the question protesters must always ask is what is the ultimate result.

I had a conversation with a colleague when I pressed the matter saying how can the London rioters loot their own neighborhoods for the sake of material spoils whilst knowing that eventually it was going to settle down?  He responded that the acquisition of material possessions was a mimicry of the oppressor; getting the same things that the ones who they claimed to be oppressing them possessed.  I thought it was a keen observation.  Why are we, the underclass and oppressed, struggling for the same things that the oppressor owns?  For me, the question of struggle is are we moving toward reconciliation or simply vying for the formerly oppressed to now be the oppressor.

What spurred the flash mobs in American cities as of late, namely Philadelphia, was the result of oppression American style.  Much like in London, police brutality brings out the masses to riot.  One need not go to the Watts Riots or the King Riots or even the Rodney King Riots, but think back to the Cincinatti race riots of 2001 or the Benton Harbor, Mich. race riots of 2003 all spurred from police brutality cases.  The problem that I have with the governmental response in both London and Philadelphia is that it’s the same oppressive rhetoric that helped create the atmosphere for teh rioters to riot.  Yes, order needs to be restored as soon as possible, but labeling the protesters as anything less than concerned citizens worthy of being reasoned with is a recipe for disaster.

Check the clip below [particularly from minute 9:00 and forward]:

Notwithstanding the black church culture, the image of the black preacher and all that went into this moment, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter choosing to focus on many of the aesthetics of young black teens and hearkening back to an era that has long been passed and using tactics that are outdated and outmoded for an iPod and social networking society, one is dead in the water.  Just last Sunday, I was talking to some of the young male students where I work and was asking why some of the incoming freshman males were standing outside of the chapel rather than waiting inside.  They responded that young black men don’t like church, I asked why, they said “We don’t like being talked at.”

That’s what’s happening.

We’re talking at the youth and certainly are keeping the marginalized marginalized for the sake of our own selfish sensibilities.  As humans and fellow citizens we have a responsibility to ourselves to live in harmony with one another.  No one group, young or old, rich or poor should be subjected the way many of these demographics are.

And these are my uppity updates.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Romanticized Victimhood of Black Women and “The Help”

22 Aug

Emma Stone (left) and Viola Davis (right) star in "The Help"

I was able to see “The Help” back in July for a pre-screen and even after sitting on the front row and watching the grossly distorted images courtesy of looking up vertical to a 30 foot screen, I walked away surprised at what I saw.  I was happy to watch a movie that told the stories of black and white women, side-by-side and across generational lines–I haven’t seen a movie like that.  For each main character from Aibleen and Minnie to Skeeter and her mother; Hilly juxtaposed to Celia Foote’s character and even the story of Constantine–all characters showed development from the beginning to the end of the movie.   I was expecting a movie similar to that of the “Dangerous Minds” or “Freedom Writers” that portrays the liberal whites as making a difference in the lives of the poor black and Latino children and ends with a storybook ending and usually throws in the death, by a bullet, of one of the children.

However, black women across the blogosphere didn’t see it that way.

Blog upon blog of black women prior to the movie’s release had begun the rants against “The Help.”  Some were coherent and others not so much.  Famous bloggers said they weren’t going to read the book or see the movie and gave their reasons why. I was left reading whole articles about why someone wasn’t going to see it based on what I felt were bad assumptions–prejudices if you will.  Perhaps because I saw the movie already I knew that much of what people were allegedly having a problem with as far as the concept of the movie was somewhat incorrect.

I think the promotion of the story was a bit misleading, probably for the sake of a white American audience.  But let’s be honest, this movie wasn’t intended to be a movie specifically for black audiences or a movie that didn’t really care whether blacks attended or not.  Fact of the matter is, blacks as a demographic are not a driving force when it comes to box office sales.  That being said, I think some of the beauty of the movie was lost in the marketing and promotion of it.

Nevertheless, black people–not just black women–as the opening weekend drew nigh became more and more critical of a movie that hadn’t even been seen and by most people who hadn’t read the book.

From the likes of Melissa Harris-Perry to other black female bloggers nationwide, this was still an incorrect image in which to portray black women.  This was still the same image of black women as subservient and unempowered that got many people bringing up the image of “mammy” and decrying the fact that Minny went on about fried chicken through the entire movie.   Some even found the pie-eating story unrealistic.  Harris-Perry tweeted that she thought the violence meted upon one of the other minor characters was the only realistic part of the movie.  Which left me asking So black women only identify with violence?

For the sake of this blog, I’m talking about black women, but I think at times this is true of blacks in general. [Yes, I'm aware I'm stepping into some murky territory here.]  I don’t say this often, but I do think there is a romanticized view of violence and victimhood that blacks collectively suffer from.  Collective suffering comes from systematic and collective oppression; we were uniformly oppressed in this country therefore we uniformly have some amount of suffering as a result.  What results is a “my oppression was worse than your oppression” matrix that groups contextually operate.

The tenor of the conversation that I’m reading about and hearing about surrounding “The Help” is that it doesn’t paint a realistic image of black women domestics in the South.  For Harris-Perry to identify with the violent part the most was highly disturbing to me.  Seriously, it got my attention; it was a tweet that stood out from the crowd amongst her others.  This leaves me wondering what is the view of historical black women or even historical blackness at that time.  The subtext that I read is that experiencing lynchings were an everyday occurrence in any given community, that everyone suffered from Night Riders from the KKK, that every black domestic faced sexual threats from the patriarchal white males in their households and that it was all really just that bad. News flash:

Black folks eat fried chicken.

Black folks are fat and eat fried chicken.

And watermelon.

Oh, and we clap our hands on the 2 and 4 beat in church as well.

I am not at all trying to minimize the historical oppression and struggle of blacks in a Jim Crow South, but I think far too many of us are succumbing to looking at history through too contemporary of a lens.  Based on just the stories out of my own family, the level of unempowerment that blacks faced on a day-to-day basis was serious and social conditioning was real.  It’s as though we’re ashamed of the image of black women that doesn’t show them being a triumphant and metaphorical Celie from “The Color Purple.”  The silent struggle of Aibleen resonated with me much more than the towering images of black womanhood such as Fannie Lou Hamer.   Hamer went to bat and was an outlier amongst thousands of unnamed black women who never mustered the courage to speak up, and on behalf those that had sacrificed their lives and their womanhood when they did.

And….if it wasn’t for some courageous white people, the modern Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have been what it was: a revolutionary movement.  A revolution happens in slow, incremental changes, not all at once.  Yes, there are watershed moments that make it in the history books, but the annals of history tell of countless stories full of unnamed men and women who used their own smaller acts of resistance against a system that they were unaware was unjust in the future hope of generations yet to come.  The Civil Rights movement in this country began when the African slave woman decided to pee in massa’s morning coffee back in 1621, it did not start with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in 1955 and end one decade later with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ella Baker

Is this a story worth telling by a black woman?  I answer with a resounding yes.  Would I pay money to go see it?  Yes I would, and I’d buy and support the book.  Am I entitled to my opinion of how black men are portrayed in the book?  Of course.  That’s one of the issues in the movie, the only image of a black man in the movie was a totally faceless one and that of an abusive one.  But, I resolved that in my mind because the movie made men in general take a back seat–this was a story about what it meant to be a woman–white or black–in the Jim Crow era South.

Seeing as how this was historical fiction, there was some basis for truth in this story.  I think this was the case of William Styron’sThe Confessions of Nat Turner revisted: black folks, particularly black women, were just incensed that this wasn’t a story told by a black woman.  While I discount people’s opinions of the book or the movie who have neither read nor seen it, I think many of those that read it or saw it had unrealistic expectations of the movie.  It seemed as though the likes of Harris-Perry were expecting this movie to be “The Color Purple Redux” with heavy elements of “Eyes on the Prize” documentary infused into it.

I think even if the bloggers who had issue with movie went to go see it, they’d be so jaded and be able to offer an opinion without severe bias attached to the judging process.

That’s it.  I just wanted to join the chorus of rants on this topic as well.  It’s officially dead and buried for me.  #ontothenextone

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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Jumping The Broom: Understanding Sex and Marriage as Religious and Cultural Oppression

19 Jul

Yesterday I read an article at TheFreshXpress from another blogger who goes by the name DCDistrictDiva (her award winning blog is “The Dithering of a District Diva“) on the topic of sex and marriage.  The article was entitled “Twisted: Why God’s ‘No Marriage, No Sex’ Rule is for Protection and Pleasure, Not Punishment.”   I began reading and I probably figured where the article was going, but I figured in all fairness to read it in it’s entirety before I passed judgment.  By the second paragraph, however, she had begun quoting numerous scriptures to support her point.  Anyone who knows me knows that I shy away from using Bible verses to support a point because of the general assertion from the quoter that by doing so, it effectively ends the conversation.

I plodded through the article reading numerous assertions about premarital sex supported by various scriptures hopping from the New Testament back to the Old Testament and then back to the New Testament.  I trudged through notions about marriage and what it meant to have sex in the context of marriage and what it didn’t mean and doctrines of sin all asserting a particular theology.  In short, I disagreed with just about every thing that the author had to say on the topic.  I viewed the article as incorporating bad exegesis of the biblical documents to support a patriarchal and Victorian view of sex in marriage.

This doesn’t make the author a bad person, just makes her someone who I disagree with–vehemently I might add.

Blacks are still relatively conservative on the issue of sex in general and subsequently marriage.  The idea of a couple, one man and one woman, meeting, then courting, then getting engaged, then married, then having sex–for the first time–still acts as the both preferred method of moving toward marriage, sex, then children and also acts as that archetypical view of what life is supposed to be; a fairytale storybook image if you will.  I really don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that image, but to suggest that any deviation from that plan is immoral or in fact a sin poses a problem to my sensibilities in the year 2011.

Using the vantage point of my U.S. citizenship as a background and understanding the progression of the Abrahamic religious tradition as it diverged into Christianity, I would like to take a moment to try and debunk some of these contemporary myths that we have about marriage in the context of the black community.

One of my main issues with how we’re framing our marriage talk in this 21st century is our insistence on using the biblical text to support our beliefs.  Personally, I want to know why do we primarily take our cue for understanding sex and marriage from a brother who lived and died nearly 2,000 years ago?  Yes, I’m talking about Paul.  Even in writing his treatise on sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians, Paul is speaking in first person (I, Paul) and even went through the process of taking God out of the process as if to say this is what I think, not a mandate from God.  Not to mention Paul thought Jesus was coming back in his lifetime!  I certainly think that such a perceived life trajectory would affect one’s lifestyle.

Honestly, would you abstain from sex if you thought Jesus was coming back in November?

The concept of sex in a 1st century world from which Paul was writing had no concept of STDs the way we do, there were no contraceptives that were in widespread use aside from the withdrawal method (pull out).  Marriage was certainly seen through the eyes of patriarchy with the woman as property, everything she may have owned became the husbands and in fact her livelihood was directly connected to how her husband would treat her.  Paul wrote his understanding of sex and marriage operating from the Septuagint (LXX) which included the Hebrew Bible and other historical and theological documents found in the Apocrypha.  I’m not saying that what Paul had to say is just flat out wrong, but I am saying that what he had to say may not necessarily be appropriate to our own modern day settings.

What I found more problematic in DCDistrictDiva’s blog was how she understood the passages in Jeremiah that imaged the tribal god Yahweh as a husband and the tribal nation of Israel as a bride.  This has been a troubling image for many scholars in the more recent years of the theological academy.  As views shifted on feminist theology and how we view women in the Bible juxtaposed to how we view women in our culture (remember through the eyes of American citizenship), such an image of Yahweh (God) as a husband and Israel as the bride or wife is just seething with patriarchy and heteronormative ideals.  To that end, such an image is troubling at the least.  This isn’t an unfamiliar image, however.  In other books of the Old Testament’s minor prophets, such as Ezekiel, we see this “married couple” operating as well.

DCDistrictDiva used a Jeremiah 2:23-24 passage to support her concept of marriage, but the passage images the woman as a) a sexual object b) a wild animal and c) as someone to have the husband’s will imposed on the woman.  Aside from viewing God as a man and summarily a husband, there are passages where the husband/God is in fact abusive to the woman.  The woman in another passage that DistrictDiva quotes views the woman as a prostitute in Jeremiah 3:2.  For me, these passages have absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage, be they in the 7th century B.C.E. or the 21st century C.E.  Contextually, those passages had to do with the nation of Israel and their dallying with other gods from other tribal nations and their assimilation into the culture of the their captives.  [Seeing as how chronologically previous passages in the biblical timeline say that Yahweh "delivered them into captivity' {one helluva phrase right?} how does someone get mad when the oppressed assimilate into the culture of the oppressor--but that's another blog post.]  This was not a Hebraic commentary on marriage.   For that, one needs to go back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Again, these passages I think harp on the very, very traditional understanding of marriage.

And what do I mean by “traditional understanding of marriage”?

By traditional marriage, as understood by most U.S. residents, it is this very Victorian construct of familial life.  The male is the father and husband and the head and the one wife and children are subservient.  For the record, this is a departure from the thousands of years of Hebrew culture that many people want to conflate into the biblical understanding of marriage.  With examples of Abraham marrying his half sister; the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle; David who had a man killed just to marry the woman and certainly with Solomon and his many wives or Hosea marrying “a wife of whoredom” all as famous examples, somehow we theologize those examples.  Many find some reason to say God didn’t support Solomon’s many wives thus it led to his downfall.

In Hebraic culture, I doubt people were running to the county courthouse to get legal documentation to say that they were married.  At least according to the biblical writings, it wasn’t even the ceremony that declared one married but it was the arrangement and agreement of both families (negotiated by the patriarchs) and the act of sex that constituted a marriage.  Even by the 1st century C.E., Jewish culture still for the most operated on that same idea even in the midst of Roman occupation.  Fast forward to our African American context, African slaves and descendants of African slaves weren’t running to the county courthouse either to justify and satisfy wedding requirements.  The tradition of “jumping the broom” was one way of signifying marriage and it added to the festive and cermonial atmosphere.  Marriage in slave communities and even after the Civil War was about the merging of two families–not about a piece of paper.

Now, the process of going before a pastor is synonymous with going before God and the marriage license acts the official thing that makes one married.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient as Christins like to profess, wouldn’t God have already ordained the marriage prior to showing up before a Justice of the Peace or an ordained pastor?  Such an understanding seems to hold God subject to a legal document: God doesn’t ordain the union of one man and one woman until a county official signs it and places a seal on it.

Whatever the case may be, I think Christians have to acknowledge that marriage as we know it has changed over time.

Certainly in the black community.

Too often we like to use the fact that people aren’t getting married like they used to and those who do get married are succumbing to high divorce rates under the metanarrative titled so ominously “The Downfall of the Black Family.”  Sociologists have traced roots back to the infamous Moynihan Report and even back to antebellum days in the United States.  Whatever the case is, we have no problem talking about The Downfall of the Black Family which of course leads to The Downfall of the Black Community.

As if to say all is bad.

Yeah, I’ve written posts that we’ve reached critical mass in any number of social, political and economic matters and that we need to declare a state of emergency and that we need to be outraged–yes, that is true in many respects, but we can’t offer a simple fix to what I consider to be a complex problem.  We’re not going to solve black family situations by young black couples suddenly marrying one another.  Will it help?  Well, maybe, but I certainly don’t think it would hurt the problem.  The problem with DistrictDiva’s approach and what many others do when it comes to this topic is offer what seems to be a clear cut solution to a varied, multi-layered and highly complex issue that we’re facing.

First of all, not every black person in America is Christian.  The argument she preposed suggests that everyone should follow said precepts about marriage and sex because it’s what the Bible says.  Not to mention there are a fair number of black Muslims, Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites, Buddhists and other religions, faiths and non-faith persons who have had their own AHA! moment when it came to understanding spirituality and religion.

Secondly, not every black person is heterosexual.  Her approach, as with many others in black religious culture, only operate in the “one male, one female” context.  With the LGBT movement growing every day, seeing the passage of gay marriages in the state of NY, this is going to be an ever increasing issue that the black religious culture is going to have to contend with.  While some gay blacks still voice concern over their unique issues–being gay and black (with gay black men and gay black women having differing concerns)–I still believe it’s just a matter of time before many of these concerns are going to be more and more laid at the feet of the old guard of the black religious community; no longer ignoring the issue.

Thirdly, not every person is going to get married.  I really just think it’s ludicrous to accept that” sex feels so good, but you can only enjoy it if you’re married” idea.  Usually when I ask what do we say to single persons on this issue, the other person somehow dodges the issue.  Frankly because most people don’t want to imagine someone going their whole life without experiencing the joys the sex have to offer.

Fourthly, and finally, I think to make premarital sex so forbidden results in fetishizing it.  When we tell hormone laden and perpetually horny adolescent teenagers to not have sex and that abstinence is your only option, not only do they want to do it all the more, when they do it and realize that God didn’t strike them down, we have a much bigger problem on hand than what shows up at the surface.  The same for many adults.  Time and time again, we do these so-called “sinful” acts and the punishment we were taught to expect never shows up.  Sure people catch an STD here and there, or even get pregnant, but given the medicine for most STDs and given adoption and even dare-say abortion as relatively viable options for a pregnent woman, the concept of hellfire and brimstone somehow gets pushed to the back burner.

So as opposed to the black religious culture pushing sexual responsibility, they teach abstinence.  Of course most public schools offer a sex education course because they’re aware of increasing STD numbers in younger and younger students and they’re aware of the pregnancy rate amongst teens and how school districts are increasingly having to accomodate pregnant teens and their children.  They see the problem and are attempting to do something about it.  The black churches see the problem, but because of what “the Bible says” we ignore it.

As I conclude, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and start a’whoring and galvanting naked throughout the countryside, but I am directly challenging what the biblical scriptures say about marriage throughout the years and I’m unapologetically defiant against the lens through which we like to understand sex and marriage.  The patriarchal and heternomative lens does nothing more than allow us as blacks to oppress other segments of our own community–in the name of God.

Stay tuned for some more issues around “Jumping the Broom.”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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How The West Was Won: Violence in the American Wild, Wild West

20 Jun

 

A little known factoid about me is that I like modern Westerns.

I don’t know what it is about them, but I do.  Personally I blame the “Back to the Future” trilogy.  That was a movie my parents had taped for me, only had part two and part three, but I watched them on repeat.  The third installment took place in the first week of September the year 1888 in the fictional Hill County, California.  It used all the stereotypes from the old Clint Eastwood movies with women wearing the frilly petticoats and dresses, the men all carrying six shooter pistols, fraught with saloons, blacksmiths, steam locomotives–something straight out of a Hollywood set.

I’ll admit, my intricate knowledge of the frontier is a bit slacking, that is to say that I’m not a scholar of this part of American history, however most Americans have become scholars in the Hollywood narrative of the American west.  My love for westerns, I think came from my liking of the computer game “The Oregon Trail.”  I remember the original game that my parents had on their Packard Bell 386 that you had to access the game from the C-prompt in DOS after you logged out of the Windows 3.1 version.  I remember the oxen dying and morbidly living through the virtual death of family members you named as they died from cholera and dysentery along the side of the 2,000+ mile trail.

I grew older and movies like “Back to the Future III,” “Tombstone” and “Young Guns” and even the comical “Cherokee Kid” and”Wild, Wild, West” were movies that I liked–the modern Westerns.  The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was the movie that made me pause and think this out however.  The remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was a reaction more toward railroad barons and the expansion of America than the typical cowboys and Indians concept we have of when we think of Westerns.  Then I looked back at all of the Westerns that I had come to enjoy over my short years and I realized that for the most part Indians were non-existent in these movies.

Out of the movies that are a part of my modern Western viewing memory, only one short scene in “Back to the Future III” shows any aggression on behalf of tribal Indians.  In the other movies, Indian portrayal is that of some pseudo-assimilated male who is shown as a skilled warrior who doesn’t have a speaking role.  If an tribal woman is shown in the movie, she’s usually portrayed as some mystic or exotic beauty that transfixes the lead character and becomes some type of romantic interest for the movie.

Like I said, I’m not a historian, but somehow these staid plot lines seem like Hollywood machinations.

What bothers me about this is the gross romanticizing that gets done in this movies.  It’s one thing to portray this fictional historical account about “how the West was won” with regards to American settlers on tribal territories and the reverse barbarianism of whites against Native Americans, but even the false depictions of everyday life have begun to irritate me.

Now I was the geek that watched the episodes of “1900 House” and “Frontier House” set in 1883 Montana on PBS (and yes, I remember seeing Oprah with no makeup when she and Gayle did a guest appearance on “Colonial House”), and trust me, the life was NOT glamorous.  The people were dirty all the time, there was no indoor plumbing, life was hard even on a good day and sicknesses were a constant threat.  So when I watch these movies and see these people in pristine clothing that looks tailor made (as it is a costume), no one exerting more energy than what it takes to saddle a horse and draw a pistol or a knife, I find myself rolling my eyes.  To see these women, as portrayed in “Tombstone” living the grand life of ease and even wearing makeup–by golly, they had makeup out in Tombstone, Arizona that readily available?  Color me surprised.

But, I’m not a historical expert on this.

It teeters into the realm of revisionist history.  I think even the most conservative historians would have to admit that Hollywood has romanticized the view of the “wild, wild, West” to the point of pure fiction.  What personally irritates me is this glorification of Americanity through violence.  The West, as we know it, was “won” through violence.  For as much hard work, endurance and perseverance settlers and homesteaders who emigrated west put into establishing towns and settlements, they were occupying previously inhabited land.  I guess the glory of the slayings of tribal Indians doesn’t go over well in Hollywood.

No wonder we haven’t seen a modern Western movie about the Battle of  Little Bighorn, huh?  Portraying the might of the American military as losers just isn’t a story worth telling for Hollywood.

I had a friend in high school, the son the Polish immigrants to Chicago and a Poland native himself evidenced with a last name full of hard consonantal clusters say in our 12th grade AP U.S. History class that if it wasn’t for the settlers that we’d all be living in teepees.  I think that’s when I stood up and knocked over my chair incredulous that he felt comfortable enough to say that out loud, let alone that this was a belief of his.  And others in the class just seemed a bit indifferent to the statement.  So if the son of Polish immigrants felt this way, one had bought into the American story so wholly as his own, what about the rest of us?

"Manifest Destiny"

Without question, history is written by the victors.  In this case the victors are white, heterosexual males.  The “cowboy” depiction is one of those Alpha-male images that Americans easily identify with.  It’s a defined ruggedness that is equated with the epitome of maleness.  From images of the Marlboro Man wearing the large Stetson to George W. Bush making covert cowboy references with regards to our foreign policy on terrorism and Osama bin Laden.  Such images and rhetoric respectively conjure sensibilities that are familiar and uniquely American.

What I’m having issues with is that a) how we have seemingly revised the history of the American west post-Civil War until 1900 and b) how comfortable we are with “West being won” through means of terroristic violence.

The acts of terrorism on behalf of railroad barons, US military and the pop-up haphazard local law enforcement from local territories toward tribal Indians was merely one small step away from being categorized as a successful genocide.  The calculated and wanton extermination of Indians is absolutely repulsive.  I guess it’s not a hard stretch because of the infuse of theology into the equation.  The historical concept of “manifest Destiny” is just as much of a theological mindset as it was a domestic policy concept.   There was the belief that the American settlers had been ordained by God to inhabit the land.

This isn’t an unfamiliar biblical concept.

The Israelites were sanctioned by God to inhabit the “land of the giants,” which was Canaan and they had God-specified orders to kill everyone and everything.  I’m not making this up–go read the first eight chapters of the Book of Joshua.  We so readily identify with the victors of the story that we rarely if ever see things from the side of the victims of the story.  Honestly, can you imagine Canada saying that God told them to begin inhabiting the city of Jericho Detroit, just on the other side of the river Jordan Detroit and the U.S. would be okay with it?

I was spurred to write this story after seeing the following trailer.

I can only imagine what this plot will hold for us.  No doubt the name of the town is going to have some apocalyptic end-of-the-world terror infused in it and I’d bet money that somehow the cowboys and Indians are going to unite powers in order to defeat the aliens–yet again, history isn’t being told.  I guess when you throw aliens into the story line all bets are off on sticking to historical facts.  To that end, I guess I can concede a bit.  But I wonder will the film fall into the “us vs. them” dichotomy, but still reserving Americanity as superior and therefore “us” is better and will prevail.  I mean, I can hardly see a Hollywood moving diverting from that path; why would we image “them” as better than “us”?

But if the movie goes that way, the aliens being superior–obviously when it comes to technology–then what does that say about cowboys versus Indians?  Does it not admit that belligerent and hegemonic behavior is abhorrent?  Essentially it does, but no doubt the underlying message will still be that America is the best.  No doubt the cowboys of the movie will prevail based on their grit, their endurance, perseverance and their strong belief in American values (whatever those are) thus showing that the alien and Indian narrative are subordinate to theirs.

Is it wrong that the nomenclature of “alien” in the midst of our ongoing domestic immigration policies with ethnic Mexicans is a bit too ironic for me to not laugh at loud?

On another note, why are imaging manliness with a name that refers to men as a “boy”?

Just asking.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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