This ain't so bad

This is so bad

2011-04-23T14:40:00.003-04:00

One of my love brothers died. As an only child, I adopt people I wish were related to me. Mary grew into a stellar blood component of my immediate family and that's a treat. But I didn't get Mae for 13 years after I'd developed this particular habit.

Here in NY, after B and Dane left, I only had Carl and he's harder to catch than rabies. When the bar opened downstairs I got another bit of family that rescued me from my loneliness. Then, in 2007, the universe gave me 2 new brothers. T & Cakes. I remember telling Cakes about some wack nigga business and him being all "you know we've only known each other for a few months, right? And you're blowing that nigga's spot up." My response was "uh un. Remember when we were in grade school and..." That's how I felt. Like I'd known him forever. We'd just been separated. And w/T, who'd graduated from Howard the same day as me, it was easy. We had the same language.

And to watch the two of them was to watch two men who loved and respected each other be able to demonstrate their love and respect. I'd just watch them laughing and hugging (T's a big hugger) and smile. I love watching black men demonstratively love.

I learned that my heart brother died. It was last Thursday and it's been a whirlwind every since. I've barely been alone and when I am I just stare blankly at things. My current drug of choice is Law & Order. The original, cause I can't deal with SVU right now. It's comforting. I'm all about comfort right now.

I made my therapist cry yesterday. That's cause he knows how much Cakes meant to me. He was my writing soulmate and hero. He was the coolest and you can hear his voice in every word he writes.

That's all I can do for now. I've got to take a shower and deal with one of the worst days I've had yet. Tonight is his memorial service and every time anyone hugs me they pour their sorrow into me. I'm exhausted and this is just the beginning.

My Heart is Broken

2011-04-23T14:39:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorites from Cakes:

Monday, June 02, 2008
bloody knuckles

i got into a fight.

it was in front of the bar. it started out as an innocent confrontation that turned into a shoving match which then mutated into a beat down and finally evolved into an all out brawl. i dont think i started it, but i guess, in a way, i did.

it all started with a cigarette, or more to the point, my desire for one. i was at the bar having an animated conversation with my friend CT when the very familiar urge to inhale nicotine swept through us both. we put napkins on our drinks and headed towards the door. no one was fighting yet.

the door opens outward and in front of it, preventing our exit, was a kid, about 20 years old, shirtless and in sagging shorts, pushing a girl around his age into the door. it looked as if they were playing - one of those aggressive, sexual games that involve a lot of contact - and i just said to them, "you cant do that here, you have to move out of the doorway."

thats when the kid freaked out. i dont know what his problem was, maybe he and the girl werent playing, and he was really angry at something she had done. maybe he misheard me and thought i'd actually said, "i fucked your mother." maybe he had taken some bad steroids and they'd just kicked in. maybe he has father issues and i look just too damned similar. i dont know what it was, but the kid was furious.

he's screaming at me unintelligibly. angry, hateful gibberish that im sure we have all spouted off at one time or another. at first im kind of shocked, then confused. remember, i'd initially figured he and the girl were just having fun, so the change was so sudden it seemed like i had hit some dreadful switch in his psyche that indicated BRING THE PAIN. i had to stare at him a moment and gather if he was serious or not. i'm not a small man, and although he had his shirt off and could act extremely peeved, i wasnt as afraid of him as i was bemused.

he was pushing up against me with his chest, a torrent of curses and challenges roaring from his mouth to my face. i pushed him away from me and i think said something to the effect of, "you better back up off of me kid." he didnt. his tirade just grew in fury. he was pushing me, still wild and screaming. i stared at him a second, hoping maybe he would calm down. he didnt. he pushed me a few more times. i waited for him to throw a punch but then he just pushed me again.

so i socked him in the jaw.

the next two seconds were long and somewhat dramatic. the first second was filled with us looking at each other. he looked confused that i had hit him and i looked confused that he looked so confused. the next second was filled with a gasp. then someone said "ooooh."

then they were upon me.

the rising sounds of grunts and yells swelled in the street. voices heading my way. an army of growls. i look and see about ten kids storming my way. fist clenched. all baggy clothes and screwed up faces. a herd of angry teenagers barreling straight towards me. thats when i think "ok, im gonna get my ass kicked. i better just brace myself for it."

i move from the doorway so as not to be trapped. i push someone, i dont know who, away from me, and three kids are already at me. i cant remember if they are punching or shoving or what. i see a long arm come at me from over the top them and it connects with my temple. there is that ringing white light you see and hear when getting hit hard. more yelling. hands everywhere. i'm pushing people away. shoving. not throwing punches, trying to keep my arms close to protect myself. more kids are on me. fist rain down on my head and body. my shoulder slams against a wall. i continued shoving and pushing, keeping my arms close. my friend Griddy comes from no where and punches a guy whose hand is clawing for my face, connecting squarely with his jaw. i see the kid crumble a bit. then half the kids go for Griddy. then im backed in a door way with 5-7 kids on me and im pushing them away. someone is pulling kids off of me and someone is saying whoa! whoa! whoa! and arms are flailing everywhere. it is pandemonium.

there is a small moment of calm while everyone assesses the situation. i am in front of a door and three kids are in front of me. one of them being the kid i hit. he makes his approach and then a foot flies from no where and kicks him back. i wonder where it came from and i realize im standing behind CT, towering so far above her i dont even realize shes in front of me. she says, "you better get back!" and the kid steps back. i just stand behind her, waiting, when i see some guy on the ground getting kicked. its Griddy. so i race over there and start pushing kids off of him and lift him from the ground. he is a little hurt but he stands firm, adrenaline firing on all cylinders. fist still clenched. we look around, prepared, but the kids then scatter. all of them. they leave. up the block. under cars. behind bushes in the shadows. suddenly they are gone.

the police come and ask questions. my hand is bleeding where i split my knuckle. i tell them what happened and we all just shrug our shoulders and say, "kids." i go back in the bar and we talk more about what happened over whiskey shots and beer and cigarettes. a complex rush of violence, fear, and testosterone shivers through me. i ask myself over and over weather or not i should have hit the kid but can only come to one conclusion: what else could i have done?

now i have to be wary of the neighborhood i work in, which is unnerving to say the least.

posted by -jkg at 5:16 PM

If you build it...they will come?

2011-02-17T17:31:00.002-05:00

So I have started a storytelling night at Bar Sepia and I have no idea what I'm doing. Whoo. That felt good. Now maybe I can organize it or something. I know, I'll write out my mission statement for it here:

Mission Statement:
To create a safe space to share real life stories and making our neighbors (and new neighbors) know each others humanity thus strengthening our neighborhood.

That sounds awfully lofty. Does it even mean anything? Speak plainly kiddo.

I want the newbies in Pros. Heights to hear the stories of us old timers and for us to hear them. I'm doing this for myself because I don't particularly take a shine to the newbies. I think they're arrogant and rude for the most part and inconsiderate of the people who've lived here before them. I know, it's still part of my gentrification blues. I know, they're not all demons and some of them are struggling. But the ones who are buying million dollar apt's and giving the finger to us poor renters, well fuck you too.

So that's why I wanted to open a forum to help me with my own prejudices and tell some stories. I also want to be able to tell my own stories. It's funny how everyone has a certain idea about why I want to do this. But it is really something I'd do for free. Sure I need money, but I know the money will come. It always does. I want to do it out of love. That's what always brings me money.

My first month was excellent. I was nervous but I knew I had some great stories coming my way. This is what I do. I tell stories. I have to get over myself. I'm still censoring myself publicly. I want to tell riskier stories but get freaked out by it in front of my friends. It's like, am I too fat to tell this story? WTF? This world's done a number in my brain.

So I'm building it. I hope they come. I want to be cool as a cucumber and just trust that I do what I do.

We'll see next Monday.

I've got your Cabliasian right here

2009-12-08T15:44:00.002-05:00

Look, I've been avoiding all this Tiger Woods business until I read a really great blog about it today on the heels of talking about "important" news stories I'd missed the last couple of weeks with my kid sister. While I had to google Adam Lambert (I don't Idol), I knew that Tiger'd been in a car accident. Megalomaniacal me said "nobody cares when I hurt myself" so I ignored it.

Then I started hearing about affairs, mistresses coming out of the woodwork, the wife chasing him with golf clubs and smashing windows. That's interesting, but no. I'm going to remain on my moral high ground and continue to ignore. I've lived through enough sex scandals to know that unless someone's been living under the bed in a dog collar, it's just fodder.

I told The Kid last night that if one of the mistresses was named Darshawnqa with long airbrushed nails and hair sculpture- then I'd be interested. But this morning I read this from one of my favorite blogs and I paused (and laughed at the video). But only long enough to write this post.

In conclusion, he's 33 years old and been playing professional golf since he was a teen. He hasn't had a life. Leave him alone. Who cares. Now I'm part of the problem, but enough is enough already. He likes pussy. Let him be. He's not the first or last professional athlete to cheat. I think the over arching statement of pro athletes should be that they're going to cheat on their spouses. The ones that don't- they're the exceptions. If I went from town to town with women throwing themselves at me- I'd probably be too tired to even play whatever game I'm getting paid for.

THAT IS ALL.

Emails, A Retrospective

2009-06-10T02:38:00.003-04:00

For some reason my email program will randomly pull up all the emails off the server. So when I check it I have like 700 "new" messages from like months ago. As this happened today it gave me a chance to see what kind of crap I really receive. Most of them make me long for the life I had when those services or that information was something useful.

Expedia, Travelocity, American Airlines, Travelzoo and various other travel sites telling what great deals they have right now that I can't take advantage of. I'd love to go to London for $400 with taxes included. When I went to Europe last year my tix was like $1100.
Oprah- I actually found myself saying to my Wednesday on Oprah's "Best Life Week: Finding Your Spiritual Path" - Suck it Oprah. Why don't you help tell people to hire me for stupid commercials on your show, or better yet, make me sit at my computer and write for @ least 2h a day so I can turn these words into the kind of gold bullion you have in your HOUSES. And ya know I loves me some Oprah.
Nordstrom, YOOX, Bluefly, Endless, Gotham City, eBay- shoes and clothes that I used to see on sale or say "oh, that's cute" click on it and miraculously there would be these wonderful boxes of beautiful things that barely fit or I'd give away to my friends.
Target, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Overstock- okay, I do have a lamp in my Target queue, but it's replacing the Pottery Barn one that I've broken.

These are the ones that hurt. They hurt when I've put $1200 worth of clothes in my Nordstrom bag. Now, I totally did this before, but then I could get a little sumthin' sumthin'. It hurts when Eco-Tulum, my favorite cheap Mexican getaway is giving away rooms for like $25 a person for our 4 person palatial cabana right on the beach (and tix to Cancun are $87 each way and everybody wants to go but nobody has any money or time).

But there are the ones I do use and relish more now than I did before:

Jewel Diamond Taylor's Success Gems Thought for the Day- for obvious reasons. I actually print them out and stick them all over my house so I don't feel so alone.
LiveStrong- any man who can win the Tour de France with one ball gets my attention.
eDiets- new ways to make my beer belly go away because real spirits are out of my budget right now unless I buy a bottle of Jameson's and drink it all alone in one day, which is bad. And painful. And not as cute when you're almost 35 and unemployed and have apparently no transferrable skills and can't even understand half of the job postings online.
Astrology.com- they never ask me for money and since I'm a Leo, rarely give me bad news.
Joanne Jimenez telling me when Francois K, Joe Claussell or Danny Krivit are spinning.
Huffington Post, NYTimes, and NYPost because I have to have something to post on Facebook.
Hope Clark, Writer's Digest and the millions of other writery ones that don't actually make me sit down and write, but make me feel like I'm taking writing seriously. Thanks guys.

And finally the ones I can do without that will never go away:

Chase- "Funds transfer not processed" or "Overdraft protection alert"
Juniper Visa- "You are approaching your credit limit" when I'm like $50 over my credit limit
AT&T for a landline I don't use but I need it for the Direct TV, or do I? It's not on now. I just found a phone. Okay, that's stupid; I'll take care of that tomorrow.
Citicards- "Thank you for your payment." Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. What payment? Shit, now I'm gonna get another one from Chase.

So now that I've re-deleted them. I'm going to look on them with fond memories. I'll still put some shoes in some baskets. I actually have tens of thousands of dollars in shopping carts all over cyberspace. It's my virtual shopping that I pay for with all of my winnings from internet poker.

Open Letter to Michelle Obama

2009-04-02T13:17:00.004-04:00

Dear First Lady Michelle Obama,

Your husband and his people have been sending me emails for months now. I was sure you'd caught on because then you started sending them me too. After the election, well I thought we'd put this all behind us. But unfortunately, I'm still receiving emails and, well, I thought you should know.

You seem like a nice enough lady. I've even written you a letter that's published in the book "Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady". It appears none of our missives elude publication.

You looked so lovely and happy at the inauguration I thought we could put these minor dalliances behind us. But they continue. I need you to be understanding about this, because I NEED you to be with your old man. You're too important to a battalion of highly educated black girls who have all formerly had (and currently have) perms and have all enjoyed 4 wings with mild sauce from Harold's, if you know what I mean.

But I would appreciate if you could get them to stop with the emails. I appreciate the updates, but I do read Huffington Post.

With Reverence and Love,
Charity Thomas

Open Letter to President Barack Obama

2009-04-02T12:58:00.003-04:00

Dear President Barack Obama,

I love you.

Sincerely,
Charity Thomas

P.S. I love you in a clean reverent "leader of my free world" way, that's all. Make sure you tell Michelle that. I'm just saying, 'cause I don’t want her coming after me. I mean, I do have the weight advantage, but with height and arm length and strength- she’s got me beat. I, also, can’t pull my “I’m from the South Side of Chicago” intimidation routine on her. I know for a fact that if she though I was really trying something, she’d CUT MY FUCKING HEART OUT. So, it’s a platonic love. And it’s a true love.

Open Letter to the OcotoMom

2009-03-10T23:54:00.002-04:00

Nadya Suleman: A New House And Six Angry, Sad Older Kids

Dear Nadya Suleman (or Crazy Baby Machine, or Crazy Clown Car Uterus Lady, as I affectionately call you),

While I can sympathize with not having a job and wanting to be on TV, I have to ask if having a litter of babies is the most effective way to do that? I mean, I don't like kids particularly, I guess I could start there. When I heard you had 8 babies at one time, I was like "Whoa man. That's a lot of babies!" Then I heard you ALREADY HAD 6 AT HOME, didn't have a job and lived with your mom. Then I was all "WTF? Is this bitch crazy?"

No, really. What The Fuck? Are you mad? I watched that Ann Curry interview and you sound crazy as cat shit. How are you really going to provide for those kids? Your loving presence does not diapers make. And you don't have udders despite your litter of kids.

You seem to be a religious woman. You had six miracles despite your bad plumbing. Maybe, as a way of course correction your tubes were blocked for a reason. I know that's mean, but look what you did when you superseded the natural order of your particular body. You were given a gift.

Then you just got greedy.

Incredulously,
Charity Thomas

Open Letter to Dana Dane

2009-03-10T23:03:00.001-04:00

Dear Dana Dane,

Since the old days, rap now sucks. Please make it better.

Sincerely,
Charity Thomas

P.S. Please tell Big Daddy Kane that he can still come over
my house anytime he wants because he's The B- I- G D- A- double D- Y givin' good and plenty....

Open Letter to Crazy Connecticut Monkey Lady

2009-02-19T14:16:00.005-05:00

Dear Crazy Monkey Lady,

Monkey's aren't pets. Chimpanzee's aren't people. You can't feed it, get it liquored up, have it BRUSH YOUR HAIR and not expect it to go APE SHIT on somebody. That's where the term APE SHIT came from I think.

And on top of all of that, the thing that really is heartbreaking is that- the chimp had to die. The chimp that was probably a little tipsy and on Xanax. The chimp who has been turned into a surrogate human in a bunch of really messed up ways by this poor disturbed woman, had to get shot (after being stabbed and hit with a shovel).

That's just fucked up.

Shame on you Crazy Monkey Lady.

Shame on you.

C

EVENT: Ali/ Patterson fight, Las Vegas Convention Center, 1965

2009-02-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

Floyd Patterson’s wearing black shorts. The defending heavyweight champion of the world Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) is in white. That is the battle in 1965. Black against white. Good against evil. Christianity against Islam. America against the world. These two gladiators are fighting for more than the Heavyweight Championship of the World. They’re fighting to see who’s going to be a player in the new world order. Patterson is the good. He’s is a Christian, follower of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and an hope of the new Black American world- an integrationists’ dream. Ali (who commentators as well as Patterson still refer to as Clay) is evil. He hates America. He hates whites. He follows Elijah Muhammad and is in the Nation of Islam. He’s a proud big mouth who’s braggadocio is going to get him in trouble. He’s too proud and too cocky. He must be defeated. That will be the only way to shut this kid up. The crowd boos every punch he lands. Needless to say the Las Vegas Convention Center is a cacophony of boo’s this evening in 1965.

Ali eclipses Patterson. The power of his left hand is only matched by the playfulness of his right. The calm on his face is that of a Zen master. Patterson is only one in a line that will lose this eternal battle. The righteous vs. the unrighteous. Which one is which is unclear contextually in 2002. Ali is the star. Patterson is only a rung on the ladder to greatness. Ali is The Greatest. His punches are like the waves in the ocean. Patterson is a man drowning in a sea of uppercuts. He throws wild shots that seem to glide off of The Champ. Round 8- Patterson is looking to get leverage. Even when he gets inside he’s ineffective. By round 9 the commentator slips and gives Muhammad Ali his proper respect and call him by his chosen name. The name of his adopted faith. It’s a fight to get the respect given any other man in simply being called by his name. Patterson stands his ground. He must defeat this kid. His back is bothering him. He’s not as young as he used to be and Ali moves like the ether. The eleven thousand strong in the convention center can’t muster enough cheering to encourage Patterson to a win. They seem to not be able to convince themselves that Ali is evil but they must continue trying. Patterson can’t seem to get off a punch. He’s trying to stay away from Ali who runs out at the beginning of Round 12 anxious for battle. Patterson’s confused and on the receives the message of every hook Ali delivers. Ali hits his mark every time. The referee Harry Krause ends the fight. Patterson concedes to the 24 year old- Muhammad Ali. Winner and still the heavyweight champion of the world.

After the fight Ali thanks Allah for his supreme boxing wisdom and gives thanks to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad for his prayers.

This ain't so bad: Open Letter to Michael Jackson

2009-01-18T15:41:00.000-05:00

This ain't so bad: Open Letter to Michael Jackson: "www.tripnyc.org"

It Ain't Free

2008-11-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

I wrote this in 2004....
Irony's always ironic.

America pumps it’s market driven interests throughout the globe only to naively ask, “Why do people hate us?” and then answer their own question with “because we’re free”. Now I now one true fact about my life – IT AIN’T FREE.
Art ain’t free. It’s very expensive when working within the capitalist model. Working outside that model? Here in the US that’s called underground. To be an underground artist takes work and perserverance and either rich parents or a job that’ll pay a living wage. Not that it can’t be done- but we’re talking about models here. Sure the underground model can work. It builds prestige, a market base and respect among comrades. The most important product of this work is the integrity the artists feels about the art s/he’s creating. The integrity of the work, the spirituality of the creative process, perhaps even the illumination of truths are indeed rewards in themselves to the artist. But will it support you? Probably not. And I’m sure there is somebody this has worked for but I’m talking about large monetary scale support. But how much money does one really need? Does the truth sound better or ring truer when delivered in a Bentley?

Underground is what it is because it’s outside the radar of populust consumptionist culture. Any hip-hop created outside the states is underground in the US. Any art aimed at communities of color that isn’t commercially marketed is called underground. Once the underground moves into the light of success it loses the edge- some argue the truthfulness- of it’s alleged pre capitalist roots. Finding diasporic artistic movements and contributions is an effort to Americans. To find out about different (read as non American) forms of artistic revolutions takes effort. It takes time and desire to experience something else. Why when bred in a culture that tells you that you are what everyone else on the planet either wants to be or destroy, would you look outside to find other modes of artistic expression? MTV et al barely show non mass produced music and images from within the US. When you’re told that art is either an imitation or a negation of what you believe to be art, why would you not believe that your expressions (and for a lot- not all- of this generation of “urban” youth it’s hip hop) can’t be translated into a global struggle against oppression?

Why can’t we Americans get up off of that? Because it’s a “Lovely Day” when the Gap tells us to all look alike like most proletarian/ elite models. We see through the unitarianism of our systems, not specifically governmental, but the transnational bent of American corporations the need to create a consistent market base for their products. Products! It’s sad to think that James Baldwin, Fela Kuti, Gil Scott Heron, Nina Simone, etc could be thought of as product. But when looking at the current cultural landscape of mass produced “artistic” endeavors… you have to wonder if you would even have heard of them today. When we make an effort to move through cultural differences it’s apparent that colored artists all over the world living in “decolonized” war zones are moving in a similar rhythm.

True power comes from controlling one’s own destiny. Money is not (always) the answer to that problem. Changes in policy, educational curriculum, early cultural and media studies education are some of the steps to freeing the minds of youth of color to see the links they are in the struggle for the global destruction of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Moving past methods of control and searching for ways to find truth and integrity globally through art could be the key to bridging power structures leading to the bonding of the links to personal freedom.

Comments on 300

2007-03-22T10:18:00.000-04:00

Interesting. I've been getting a barrage of comments on my "300" post that mostly consist of people telling me to "chill out, it's only a movie". I have no idea who these people are and they have obviously only read post and not the entirety of my blog. I'm a media studies scholar. I'm a media literacy expert. It is my job in life to read the context of things on a grander scale than those prescribed. Of course, it's only a movie but if we don't contextualize the entertainments we're being fed, then we aren't aware of what we're being told to think. America doesn't create entertainment to entertain you. This is a capitalist society that creates commodities that serve the greater needs of the prevailing power structures. It depends on us being sheep and having no/low critical thinking skills to go to jobs to make a pittance of what someone is making on your backs. During the 1940's the medium of film was the most powerful propaganda machine for creating support for WWII. Do not think for a second that Hollywood is there to entertain you. It is there to sell you things. Lifestyle particularly. So for all of those who find it necessary to leave me comments simply about "300" who haven't read my thesis or any of my other work, while I appreciate your visit, you can save your typing time. Your comments are simply annoyances if they hold no serious critical comments. Thanks.

300

2007-03-17T10:02:00.002-04:00

This film is about 300 Spartan warriors lead by King Leonides who held against King Xerxes and his horde of "Persians". You can read any review somewhere that will tell you of the debate brewing about this movie. I agree with most criticisms and cringe at the affirmations. That being said here's what I think:

Propaganda. Blatant sheer racism. The upholding of American national identity at its most precise. Americans racist xenophobia against Iran was so clear (really against the whole world that doesn't adhere to the same code or is the same color) that I laughed out loud. Spartans discarded the weak, sickly, or misshapen babies leaving only strong warrior men born to Spartan women. They respect their women above all. These women would have been crushed beneath the weight of the soldiers who's airbrushed six packs made even the boniness of the women pale in comparison.

That's not really how I want to say that either. I left the theater furious. They've got all the blacks and people who look like me behaving like animals when the Persian Empire was one of the greatest forces of civilization in history. (Ironically enough the Persians believed in truth above all else, no wonder we're at such a historical impasse.) Making the Persians a hyper-sexualized conglomerate of all non "Western" people who are all slaves to a megalomaniacal god/ king monsters exemplifies America's demonization of those who don't share their adolescent mindset. In Xerxes harem, the traitorous hunchback is offered the pleasures of the flesh from beautiful women of color who smother him with kisses, undulate seductively beneath him and (sigh) lick his hump. At that I stated, in perhaps not my quietest inside voice: "This is some bullshit. The only women who look like me are licking a hunchback. Black ladies will even fuck a hunchback. This movie is some real bullshit!" I concede the inappropriateness of that behavior, but I was incensed.

For the generation of young boys sitting in their basements playing their x-boxes and wondering what this world has in store for them the idea of doing something for glory must be appealing. It's appealing to me. To believe in something so strongly that you'd give your life for it has moved men and women since the beginning of time. But at a moment when America's intention is to overpower Iran, to not place this film in a contemporary context belies a naïveté I don't believe we can afford as a democratic nation right now. Americans are the world leaders on propaganda. I know I help create it. We have created a national identity out of who we want to be or at least want the world to believe about us, not who we are. We tell ourselves so many lies and ingest so many that we can't separate them. A friend of mine said it was propaganda for going to the gym and working on a six-pack. It most certainly is. Because that's what we believe about ourselves. We believe we are those perfect, powerful, noble Spartans. Well then we'd be doomed, because the majority of Americans couldn't lift a spear nor hold a shield and would run the other way before risking their life for another. But we're not all soldiers. Oh, yeah right... Abu Ghraib & Gitmo. Right. Soldiers.

The black lady licking the hunchbacks back made me really mad though. And they were the only women who's ribs you couldn't see. They could be warriors. Not those bony Spartan women. And the homophobia... Did I mention that Xerxes was all done up like a video ho? So terrible.

Oh and Leonidas' last speech of the movie stating that they fought against mysticism and tyranny. Really? Is he running with Giuliani next year? This thing was a mess and it was not the best movie since the Matrix. What a load of crap. That's what got me in there. But imagine the feeling you might have had (I know I did) when I first say the Matrix. Not only was it visually stimulating, but also the story was unprecedented. They worked in tandem. This story was so bad that the effects meant nothing to me. But I'm old school. I still go to the movies to learn something about myself or others that don't exist in my real personal life. Yes it's an escape, but there has to be something that draws you into a fantasy of escape that truly grabs you. Something that holds you rapt. But I'm old school.

Maybe more later, but I do feel better now.

it's really dumb not to write here

2007-03-13T14:48:00.000-04:00

I'm writing everyday but not posting on this thing. I have to split my focus to do both and I'm not really sure if I want to do that. The other writing's getting really good to me. I do have a few rants to get out of me. Like the person who changed the time. I'm pretty pissed about that. I don't know why Caesar has decided this is a good idea to get some history books to take heed to something other than greed and mongering of all kinds on his behalf. I have to choose my words carefully because this is the main agent of information to all agencies. But come on. Really! And global warming is real. So are vulture funds. So is slavery in Guatemala and the Cote d'Ivorie and others. Things are not right. Whatever your idea of right is. But I guess as long as Britney Spears is on the loose, nobody cares.

Oh, that felt good. I can do that more.

Getting it Together

2006-12-13T16:17:00.000-05:00

HARD WORK BUILDS CHARACTER.
DON'T FEAR IT.
DO IT!!!!

Write like your life depends on it
-BECAUSE IT DOES.

love

2006-12-13T16:07:00.000-05:00

Soft like an easy chair-
my ass.
It's just the mood I’m in right now, I guess.
I don't write about love-
don't want to write about it because it makes
me feel like a romantic fool.
There's no room for romantic notions
in a hyper technologized world of IM.
The time to develop the intensity of feelings
and bonds of trust have become truncated into
smiley faces and empty and
quick "I love you emails" and text messages.
I say it so much that the feelings I used to have
when I felt it is gone.
The heat and swelling in my chest.
The flush of my cheeks.
My hands going numb.
Ears throbbing and mind made blank by an emotion
so intensely overwhelming there was, as
the alcoholics would say, the magnificence of God.
But I say it back to everybody that says it to me and
when I think about how much I don’t mean it-
it only adds to the emptiness I feel
about my everyday existence.
When I don’t think about it but feel how empty it is
All I want to do is drink.
Booze is no muse though.
It only magnifies the desperation of being surrounded by
I love you’s" and not feeling loved.
It does, however, temporarily hide the fact that all of
this means nothing.
Nihilism is on short order after a bottle or two of montepulciano.
And whisky knocks it down that much better.
So love-
I’m writing about love and it’s new status as an apparition.
A ghost of what was and what everybody hopes to attain
Without knowing its true nature.
With no experience base of its highs and lows.
Because sans this understanding of the heart and mind
that relegated it to the dream realm,
the nether regions,
we all believe in reality TV’s version of love.
And that’s some real bullshit.

Traveling while black

2006-09-18T17:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm in Tulum, Mexico. Tons of Italians (apparently August is their month off) and my friend Simone says Argentians. She's deduced this from all the staring. And I don't mean a curious look of not expecting a person of color (who's not Mexican and in service of some manner). I mean a fork in the air- mouth open-full minute stare upon entering a room. Sitting at a table of compatriots and everyone at the table fully turning around and staring boldly even after the party of color- namely my friends and I- are seated and going about ordering cervezas. Sunni says it's because I'm beautiful that the children stare (thanks honey, right back at you). I buy that but what explains the adults? There are few cultures left on the planet in which this degree of staring without speaking is acceptable and many more where it's downright rude. When I give my friendly "Hola" there's no response. Of course, they're mainly Europeans and I must admit I don't expect many human courtesies from them- sorry. But the staring must stop.

On the other hand, I must say that during this trip I've never been so happy to see black people in my life. Remember, I'm from segregated Chicago and honestly believe that there are black people everywhere. Or, at least, we've been there. The people I know have been all over the globe so I don't believe I'm like James Baldwin when he went to Sweden. But, maybe I am. Dude. My people. We've got to travel more. It's fucking cheap down here. and a black person told me about it. Only here it's clothing optional (as I believe the entire beach is here in the Mayan Riviera) and I'm constantly aware of the historical context of my naked body (naked HOT! body). The reality of the skinny women in bikinis give me visions of Aushwitz. It's very disconcerting. I do love that the Spanish and Italians have some meat on their bones. The Americans are crazy skinny or crazy fat.

But being black gives me the feeling of unwanted novelty. I'm obvious everywhere and everyone remembers me. It was easier to think about when my friends were here. But today as my first full day alone, we'll see. I don't want to go to the pounding techno music party in Playa but to one closer to home at Mezzanine down the beach. I was there last week con mi amigos. Lets see what happens when I go alone, dancing and a little drunk hopefully. We'll see what the interest is then.

8.4.06

2006-09-16T12:51:00.000-04:00

So reinvention is heavy on my mind again. When I think about Chicago, I know I can do it. Go back more traveled, less known and so some society. But not like the Links, something entirely new with the same kind of social mores. I do think this is somehow part of my deal. I have had a dream of society, but I need to define what it is. I want to create my own with it's own rules, but only exclusionary to a point of behavior and belief. (Oh no Charity. That's not megalomaniacal at all. Everyone wants to recreate society.) Since ghetto is the rule rather than the exception it must be the point of departure for rule creation. So we have to define what ghetto is in order to destroy it and see what we shan't be. But I'm actually more interested in value systems than behaviors. Values define our behaviors. So what do I want to propagate?

yeah, yeah- i know

2006-09-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

It's been like a month of Sundays, but I forgot my password in Mexico. I actually forgot all of my passwords in Mexico, sue me. I'm 32 now and gonna forget a lot more. Here's what I wrote while away... Enjoy

In Speech to N.A.A.C.P., Bush Offers Reconciliation - New York Times

2006-07-23T02:01:00.000-04:00

In Speech to N.A.A.C.P., Bush Offers Reconciliation - New York Times

Ha-What? Do I still live in the 21st Century? This is an age when I can sit here all day, playing in my computer and come up with all kinds of information. Now I understand that this guy is theoretically "running the country" but we all know the truth about that one. Did he really just defer to Karl Rove like that? No... that couldn't be so.
So let me get this straight:
I am supposed to believe that the "extension" of a law that protects my rights as an American citizen is bridge building?
Wait a minute... what would have happened had it not been extended? Would I have to recite the capital of all 50 states to be able to vote? Would my voting rights be revoked? Why do we still have this anyway... It's not about registering to vote it's about motivating people into believing their vote counts and that their voices will be heard. People don't get bopped over the head anymore to register. They're just hard pressed to go on a Tuesday morning to vote for someone that's not going to do anything to change their lives in any tangible way.
This is all some bullshit. More bullshit to get black people's heads away from the fact that more hell is being raised in the middle east and more black people are going to die because of it. If we don't get our heads out of the past, our actions out of the past the future is going to eat us alive. I thank God everyday that I don't have to suffer the inhumanities my parents did. They worked hard to make sure I, not only, didn't know that kind of hatred but also had a healthy love for justice and the truth. Only they couldn't train me for this new form of racist/ classist insidiousness. I might not be called a nigger (that often) but people certainly attempt to treat me like one. Like our current administration. That guy, GW, is so busy blaming history for his ignorance and lack of concern for a group of HUMAN BEINGS... I don't know why I'm allowing that to make me angry. He does it all over the planet to anyone who's not part of his clique. Oh, but I remember why I'm allowing it to upset me: CAUSE I DO VOTE. I'm from Chicago and I vote early and often and it still didn't work.
I have to think more on this and see what else I'm supposed to be paying attention to while this is being waved beneath our noses. I bet they're gonna pull OJ out of a hat soon... They tried a little Michael Jackson business, but it didn't move us past Lebanon.

The anti-no fear

2006-06-06T08:49:00.000-04:00

My mantra of "no fear" keeps me afraid. As long as I'm waiting for the moment to be fearless, I'm ignoring the present. I can live outside of social conventions and fear. I have to move past the superficiality of success and action that I perceive from others and create my own momentum. The springtime of my discontent is over. It's time to move. And instead of recklessness based on fear- stemming from fear- I'm going to turn it into a recklessness of confidence and boldness. I can't be afraid of motion. I will not allow cigs and booze to be an excuse for not moving and succeeding. By the end of the year I will be a well paid published writer fully engaged in the process of my work and enjoying the writing because I'm not afraid of it. Trusting it and myself. Trusting being prolific. I think I can be. I know I must be. Be about the business of it. I have to remove the "shoulda/ gonna" fakeness of it. Being engaged, not having a choice. And getting money. A lot of money for it without losing myself or my love. All of this spiritual work is the build up to this. I must be engaged in my life. Not researching it. Not asking other people about it. Being really terrified about it and doing it anyway.

Feeling Better

2006-05-19T09:18:00.000-04:00

I decided I'd feel much better about myself today if I'd posted to my blog before I went to my swim class. My Thursday and Friday swim classes with the women I most affectionately call "my old ladies" are the only real moments of structure in my life.
I love them because they inspire me. They show up weekly, as their schedules permit, and I love that they have these busy lives even though they could just sit around being grandmas. They've taught me just how skin deep beauty really is. That our inperfections (remember we're in bathing suits) are as beautiful, natural and human as what we might laughingly refer to as our perfections. They remind me of my grandmas. Only since I don't officially belong to them, I get a degree of candor about their lives that my grandmas would never reveal to me. Our naked steamroom talks are like fellowship meetings among women who've lived (and live) active productive lives. Their reassurance of me finding what I'm looking for in this life is comforting because I can trust their collective "don't worry about that sweetie, you have plenty of time". They have collectively been all over the world and still travel every summer. They give me recipes and tell me about the special days and activities they still share with their girlfriends. They tell me about meeting their husbands and their grandchildren's triumphs and problems. Most importantly to me, they see me as one of their own. But as a young woman with infinite possibilities who is taking advantage of life. They know my money woes are temporary although I feel like it's the end of the world sometimes. Coupled with my own experience, I know it's not the end of the world. They also want me to buy property. To go to jazz clubs to find a boyfriend- a jazz musician preferably (but been there- done that). To continue to travel and be free. I just love them. And now I'm on my way to go work off this ass of mine in the second of the 2 intense aqua-aerobic workouts of the week. I'm still taking aspirin from yesterdays. And they move. I'm sweating in the pool. But I know if they can do it, I can too. When I began going about a year and a half ago, I was gonna chicken out. I hadn't been in a pool outside of vacation splashings for years. That's when Miss Ruth said "well you're here now, go put your toe in the water. If you don't like it- take a nice steam." A year and a half later, that's what I know tell myself about everything I get scared about.
It also doesn't hurt that comparatively I look like, to quote Miss Victoria "a Playboy Bunny". Nice.

Dying to Get Rich

2006-05-16T14:41:00.001-04:00

In 1971, Melvin Van Peebles produced, directed, edited, and starred in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which has now been dubbed the first “blaxploitaion” film. The films of the decade that followed used the commercial success of this film showing a Black man against the system and diluted the revolutionary-ness of the image to cater to white mass-market sensibilities. It’s this marketing and the re-appropriation of the caricature to a commercially viable creation that concerns me. As long as rappers can espouse “thug life” as cool and make lots of money from it- for themselves and more for their white owned record companies- this stereotype retains it’s power to terrorize white America while creating dangerous situations for Black men at large. The phenomenon of racial profiling is hinged on this caricature.
In Sweetback the movie’s stars were the Black community. In later movies, such as New Jack City (directed by Melvin’s son Mario Van Pebbles) the idea of community is used only to create a market for its own destruction. I use New Jack City as an example because it shows the generation of children born in the blaxploitation era and raised in the Reaganomics era of excess. Given the rise of drugs and violence in everyday urban life and the image of whites living “Dynasty” lives on TV, these children (now teenagers and adults) see money as the great equalizer. But the pursuit of material comforts demand an individualist capitalist modus operandi that is destroying the Black community and making Black men moving targets while commodifying Black women. In New Jack City, while they gave away turkeys to the community at Thanksgiving the “Cash Money Brothers” were in the process of turning a low-income apartment building into an all-inclusive crack haven. Therefore their seemingly generous gesture was really just a marketing scheme to win the trust of the community they were about to decimate and murder for profit.
Now with the popularity of everything hip-hop, what began as protest and revolution in lyrical and musical style, the line between commercialism and revolution has been smashed. Hip hop/ rap is used to sell everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken to Chevy cars. Hip-hop as a culture has, beginning in the mid ‘90’s become about “money, hoes, and clothes- all a nigga knows” (Notorious B.I.G. “Juicy”). The line between fiction and reality in hip-hop has blurred and the drug dealers become rappers Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Doggy Dog, Fat Joe, Jay-Z, Master P. are just a few of the more popular (and lucrative) examples. The violence needed to become a successful drug dealer bled into the reality of being successful rappers. Even rappers who had more middle class upbringings, like Tupac, fed into the brute stereotype because it sold albums. The “badass” moved from being an agent for revolution to a puppet for capitalism. Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac paid for their roles with their young lives.
The flip side of this image is the searing of it in the minds of white America. The brute image was created to instill fear of free Blacks into the minds of the post Civil War white consciousness, particularly white women. The conglomeration of the sexually indiscriminate and uncontrollable Black buck with the violent animalistic Black brute is what can be seen today most in media images. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was the visual marriage of the two images locking the Black man’s sexuality with violence leaving the brute image as a predominate staple of American popular culture. In the “Law and Order” clip I showed in class the perception of the threat of rape, whether real or imagined, got a man killed. The perception of violence got Amadou Diallo massacred. Emmett Till was murdered for allegedly looking (sometimes the story is whistling) at a white woman in Mississippi in the 1950’s. It’s a commonly held perception that Black men are dangerous and they are being sold as such. From the Supreme Court to Brentwood, even outside of the hip-hop community Black men are dangerous.
But are they? I think so. I think so not because of the threat of physical violence but as a Black woman who is acutely aware of the psychic violence that is currently breaking down the Black community and communal ties. I’m aware of being called a bitch or a ho or being perceived as a gold digger or being bought for the price of a dinner. The media doesn’t tell me that’s how I’m treated, experience does. The rapper Nas released a song “You Owe Me”; he tells a young lady that she owes him her body because he’s bought her things. Female rappers aren’t blameless either; they perpetuate the wonton sexuality slave masters used as an excuse for their rapes of female slaves. Yet my concern is with the Black men, because it’s costing them their lives.
Sweetback was necessary viewing for the Black Panther Party because a Black character standing up for himself and rebuking a comfortable life as a nonentity was unprecedented. He used his sex to get himself out of trouble and even his sexual encounters were communal activities. He moved from being controlled by it to controlling it and using it as power. There are still flaws in that schematic, but he’s not a victim. Nino Brown killed his “brother” G-Money in New Jack City over what came down to his capitalistic individualism at the expense of the Cash Money Brothers (his created community), but still in the midst of that, a woman he “took” from G-Money. The notion of being “your brother’s keeper” keeps literally getting shot to bits and forget about being “your sister’s keeper”. There is no responsibility taken by these men (and women) for their actions. Yes- as an artist one should have the right to express themselves however they see fit. But it’s the proliferation of this one image for more than a century that is obviously gotten into our psyches as well. The saddest part is that as evidenced in the Fat Joe and R. Kelly video “We Thuggin’” simply being Black and Latino means thug… because they’re singing, dancing, talking about what they have and ogling women. That’s not thuggin’ not by Nino Brown’s standards. The contemporary rappers with their “ghetto fabulous thug” mentality now equate sex with money with power and it’s destroying the community- by my estimation.

12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself

2006-05-16T14:31:00.000-04:00

Ask Yourself: Are We Living The Dream?

If The Negro Would Try

"The Negro race has never tried to do very much for itself. The race has great possibilities. Properly awakened, the Negro can do the so-called impossible."

Carter G. Woodson

12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself by Nannie Helen Burroughs
(Circa Early 1900's)

1. The Negro Must Learn To Put First Things First. The First Things Are: Education; Development of Character Traits; A Trade and Home Ownership.

*

The Negro puts too much of his earning in clothes, in food, in show and in having what he calls "a good time." The Dr. Kelly Miller said, "The Negro buys what he WANTS and begs for what he Needs." Too true!

2. The Negro Must Stop Expecting God and White Folk To Do For Him What He Can Do For Himself.

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It is the "Divine Plan" that the strong shall help the weak, but even God does not do for man what man can do for himself. The Negro will have to do exactly what Jesus told the man (in John 5:8) to do--Carry his own load--"Take up your bed and walk."

3. The Negro Must Keep Himself, His Children And His Home Clean And Make The Surroundings In Which He Lives Comfortable and Attractive.

*

He must learn to "run his community up"--not down. We can segregate by law, we integrate only by living. Civilization is not a matter of race, it is a matter of standards. Believe it or not--some day, some race is going to outdo the Anglo-Saxon, completely. It can be the Negro race, if the Negro gets sense enough. Civilization goes up and down that way.

4. The Negro Must Learn To Dress More Appropriately For Work And For Leisure.

*

Knowing what to wear--how to wear it--when to wear it and where to wear it, are earmarks of common sense, culture and also an index to character.

5. The Negro Must Make His Religion An Everyday Practice And Not Just A Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Emotional Affair.

6. The Negro Must Highly Resolve To Wipe Out Mass Ignorance.

*

The leaders of the race must teach and inspire the masses to become eager and determined to improve mentally, morally and spiritually, and to meet the basic requirements of good citizenship.
*

We should initiate an intensive literacy campaign in America, as well as in Africa. Ignorance--satisfied ignorance--is a millstone abut the neck of the race. It is democracy's greatest burden.
*

Social integration is a relationship attained as a result of the cultivation of kindred social ideals, interests and standards.
*

It is a blending process that requires time, understanding and kindred purposes to achieve. Likes alone and not laws can do it.

7. The Negro Must Stop Charging His Failures Up To His "Color" And To White People's Attitude.

*

The truth of the matter is that good service and conduct will make senseless race prejudice fade like mist before the rising sun.
*

God never intended that a man's color shall be anything other than a badge of distinction. It is high time that all races were learning that fact. The Negro must first QUALIFY for whatever position he wants. Purpose, initiative, ingenuity and industry are the keys that all men use to get what they want. The Negro will have to do the same. He must make himself a workman who is too skilled not to be wanted, and too DEPENDABLE not to be on the job, according to promise or plan. He will never become a vital factor in industry until he learns to put into his work the vitalizing force of initiative, skill and dependability. He has gone "RIGHTS" mad and "DUTY" dumb.

8. The Negro Must Overcome His Bad Job Habits.

*

He must make a brand new reputation for himself in the world of labor. His bad job habits are absenteeism, funerals to attend, or a little business to look after. The Negro runs an off and on business. He also has a bad reputation for conduct on the job--such as petty quarrelling with other help, incessant loud talking about nothing; loafing, carelessness, due to lack of job pride; insolence, gum chewing and--too often--liquor drinking. Just plain bad job habits!

9. He Must Improve His Conduct In Public Places.

*

Taken as a whole, he is entirely too loud and too ill-mannered.
*

There is much talk about wiping out racial segregation and also much talk about achieving integration.
*

Segregation is a physical arrangement by which people are separated in various services.
*

It is definitely up to the Negro to wipe out the apparent justification or excuse for segregation.
*

The only effective way to do it is to clean up and keep clean. By practice, cleanliness will become a habit and habit becomes character.

10. The Negro Must Learn How To Operate Business For People--Not For Negro People, Only.

*

To do business, he will have to remove all typical "earmarks," business principles; measure up to accepted standards and meet stimulating competition, graciously--in fact, he must learn to welcome competition.

11. The Average So-Called Educated Negro Will Have To Come Down Out Of The Air. He Is Too Inflated Over Nothing. He Needs An Experience Similar To The One That Ezekiel Had--(Ezekiel 3:14-19). And He Must Do What Ezekiel Did

*

Otherwise, through indifference, as to the plight of the masses, the Negro, who thinks that he has escaped, will lose his own soul. It will do all leaders good to read Hebrew 13:3, and the first Thirty-seven Chapters of Ezekiel.
*

A race transformation itself through its own leaders and its sensible "common people." A race rises on its own wings, or is held down by its own weight. True leaders are never "things apart from the people." They are the masses. They simply got to the front ahead of them. Their only business at the front is to inspire to masses by hard work and noble example and challenge them to "Come on!" Dante stated a fact when he said, "Show the people the light and they will find the way!"
*

There must arise within the Negro race a leadership that is not out hunting bargains for itself. A noble example is found in the men and women of the Negro race, who, in the early days, laid down their lives for the people. Their invaluable contributions have not been appraised by the "latter-day leaders." In many cases, their names would never be recorded, among the unsung heroes of the world, but for the fact that white friends have written them there.

"Lord, God of Hosts, Be with us yet."

*

The Negro of today does not realize that, but, for these exhibits A's, that certainly show the innate possibilities of members of their own race, white people would not have been moved to make such princely investments in lives and money, as they have made, for the establishment of schools and for the on-going of the race.

12. The Negro Must Stop Forgetting His Friends. "Remember."

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Read Deuteronomy 24:18. Deuteronomy rings the big bell of gratitude. Why? Because an ingrate is an abomination in the sight of God. God is constantly telling us that "I the Lord thy God delivered you"--through human instrumentalities.
*

The American Negro has had and still has friends--in the North and in the South. These friends not only pray, speak, write, influence others, but make unbelievable, unpublished sacrifices and contributions for the advancement of the race--for their brothers in bonds.
*

The noblest thing that the Negro can do is to so live and labor that these benefactors will not have given in vain. The Negro must make his heart warm with gratitude, his lips sweet with thanks and his heart and mind resolute with purpose to justify the sacrifices and stand on his feet and go forward--"God is no respector of persons. In every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is" sure to win out. Get to work! That's the answer to everything that hurts us. We talk too much about nothing instead of redeeming the time by working.

R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R

*

In spite of race prejudice, America is brim full of opportunities. Go after them!

Inside Man

2006-03-27T00:48:00.000-05:00

This is an incomplete thought, but I saw the new Spike Lee and I have to say something. It was the top grossing film this weekend and the most money in a single weekend Spike has ever made. But I didn't like it. It reeked of Spike Lee. The story was hot. The actors were hot. Denzel was doing that thing he does now, like Bill Duke in the police scene in Juice, a lot of "smiley talking". Spike didn't write it but it still sunk into preachy monologues. How?

And the reality is- Jodie Foster's character was bad as hell. She was the kind of woman that I still hope to be when I grow up-only with a stronger moral compass. But how could the word "cunt" still be used to describe her? No, really? (Spike didn't write this one either.) Isn't bitch bad enough anymore to describe assertive women with questionable ethical behavior? I think bitch still works.

Oh and did I mention the part where the female bank robber is remembered for her rack and in trying to identify her, the women who fit the big busted profile are asked to unzip their tops.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'll have more later.

I can't believe I haven't written in over a month

2006-03-01T17:02:00.000-05:00

I'm working and sleepy all the time now. I can only muster enough strength to play Monopoly at games.com.
More later.

Travels with the Make-up Guy

2006-01-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

This is my friend Tyrone's Blog...
It's a lot of fun.

Travels with the Make-up Guy

I'm Race People

2006-01-27T16:06:00.001-05:00

I’m race people. I come from a long line of race people. People who raised me to be a black, proud, smart, well mannered lady. It’s a sentence I don’t feel should even be written in the 21st century, but it’s the sentence that keeps me from writing about race. I’m so concerned now with being multi-culti, and my blackness so intrinsic to my being that writing about it seems obsolete to me. But we’re in trouble and my talking about it and not writing about it is part of the problem.

I had Tyrone put a texturizer in my hair, blow it out and straighten it…
And it’s straight and all Nona Hendrix right? (Or like Malcolm X before he went to jail.) And then I watched John Henrik Clarke’s "A Long and Mighty Walk" and went and washed the straight out of my hair.
I love having an Afro.
I love looking and being black. I do believe in race. It’s very important to me. It fills me with an incredible sense of pride.

But that all still sounds very pedestrian to me. Simple statements that don’t reflect the complexities of the subject. My intersection with race is directly tied to my particular environment. But since my environs have evolved so has my spin on race. I’m not of the school that race doesn’t exist because I don’t live in the world of people not noticing my race first. I mean, I’m black. People who try to describe others without race when race is the obvious distinction annoy me. “The guy, you know he had on a baseball cap and a blue jacket. He was standing over here.” “You mean the black guy?” “Um, yeah.”
Now isn’t that more to the point. It isn’t as if calling someone black is an indictment. All of this political correctness is making it difficult for any serious conversations on race. By being so obtuse, we are denying a fact of life on these shores. And living in a dream world. The fact that simple descriptions are politically loaded- that’s the problem. I’m offended if I’m the only black somewhere (like at work) and people go ten ways around the moon to describe me as opposed to “she’s the black girl” (although I guess I’m quickly moving from girlhood.)

But here in NY, surrounded by the people I’m surrounded by, race is even more complicated than my Chicago definitions. I love it. It confuses me and challenges me.

And I watched Amistad today and wish the straight-backed pride of being Africans, of being sure in our skins, of being wonderful (and boy I love Djimon Hounsou) was the reality of the totality of my people today. But the calling of ancestors, regardless of its cinematic merit, should be a common virtue (practice?) of all in the African Diaspora.
I’m quite aware of the fact that I wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t chosen to live in deplorable conditions, chose to live in general, for me to exist. I am the promise of things unseen. I am the promise of many sacrifices and I must succeed because of the sacrifices and choices made for me to draw breath. Regardless of what Budweiser tells me late at night, I will fulfill this promise. My writing this is a testament to my belief and fulfillment of this promise.

I Don't Know If You Know How Much I Love Oprah Yet

2006-01-27T15:32:00.000-05:00

I love Oprah. I can't watch her show all the time, because... well I just can't (a recent incident with a pair of boots she had on has kinda set me off the whole "watching her show thing"). But as a powerful black lady...I adore her. As a writer (and a budding capitalist) her bookclub selection is up there with me winning the Pulitzer. I didn't read the Frey book because I'm not in the least bit interested in any rehab stories, but the story around it... well- let's put it like this: Michael Jackson was acting up again this week and I didn't even google it. So here are a few words from me on the spanking she gave this lying sack of....

There's not enough money in the world for me to be in trouble with Oprah. I'd have been laying on the ground crying and holding on to her feet screaming "Please! Please Miss Oprah!!!! Please don't be mad at me. I'm so sorry. I'm the worst. Please. I love you so much. It was that lady. She made me do it. She treated me like Miss Millie treated you in The Color Purple. You know how that is. Oh, Lord. I think I'm gonna fall out. Please!!! ARGHHHHHHH!!!!! PLEASE!!!. I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll go pull sex offenders out of cars or playgrounds, or wherever they hole up. I'll pay more attention to Dr. Phil. I'll wear the right sized bra. Please don't relinquish me to a place where Miss Oprah's light doesn't shine on me. ARGHHHHHHH!!!!! Sweet Jesus, NOOOOOO!!!!!"
but that's me.
Excerpts From 'The Oprah Winfrey Show'
The following are excerpts from a transcript of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" from Jan. 26, 2006, featuring the author James Frey and Nan A. Talese, the publisher of his book:

OPRAH WINFREY: I have to say it is--it is difficult for me to talk to you, because I really feel duped. I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. And I think, you know, it's such a gift to have millions of people to read your work, and that bothers me greatly. And so now as I sit here today, I--I don't know what is truth and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with--with The Smoking Gun report titled "The Man Who Conned Oprah." And I want to know, were they right?

Mr. FREY: I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate, absolutely. I think they did a good job detailing some of the discrepancies between some of the actual facts of the events and...

Ms. WINFREY: What they said was that you lied about the length of time that you spent in jail. How long were you in jail?

Mr. FREY: I was in jail for--they were right about that, I was in for a few hours, not--not the time...

Ms. WINFREY: Not 87 days?

Mr. FREY: Correct.

***********

Ms. WINFREY: ... [W]as there a Lily?

Mr. FREY: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that--that's been a question for a long time before...

Ms. WINFREY: Well, the thing that doesn't make any sense to me is, if you were in jail for 87 days, and you say on page 420 of the book you and Lily are saying goodbye and, 'I have to go to jail in Ohio and it's only going to be for a few months and I'm going to write you every day.' And I have to tell you, James, that when I was reading that book and I get to the last page and Lily has hung herself and you arrived, you know, the day that she hang--was--was hung, and I couldn't even believe it. I'm, like, gasping. I'm calling people, like, `Oh, my God, this happened.' So if you weren't in jail all that time and you're telling her to hold on, why couldn't you get to her?

Mr. FREY: I mean, what actually happened was I went through Ohio. I was there very briefly. I went down to North Carolina, where I was living at the time...

Ms. WINFREY: Mm-hmm.

Mr. FREY: ...and I was closing up my life there.

Ms. WINFREY: Uh-huh.

Mr. FREY: The process was vastly accelerated from what I wrote in the book. She did...

Ms. WINFREY: I don't know what that means. What does that mean, "vastly accelerated"?

Mr. FREY: I mean, it happened in a much shorter period of time. And we were planning on meeting up with each other, and--and she committed suicide before we met up.

*********

Ms. WINFREY: I called defending you on "Larry King" because I believed that the essence of the book was true, and at the time, I didn't know Smoking Gun was true or not, because you had had a strong relationship with my producers and they so believed in you. And we had asked the publisher if this was true when we started to get criticism after the book--after we had announced the book, and the publishers had all told us it was true. So that's why I trusted you and believed you. But this is--this is the thing. Why would you lie--why do you have to lie about the time you spent in jail? Why did you have to do that?

Mr. FREY: I mean, I think part of what happened with a number of the things in the book is when you go through an experience like the one I went through, you develop different coping mechanisms, and I think one of the coping mechanisms I developed was sort of this image of myself that was greater probably than--not probably, that was greater than what I actually was. In order to get through the experience of--of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it--it helped me cope. And when I was writing the book, I--instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.

Ms. WINFREY: And did you cling to that image because that's how you wanted to see yourself, or did you cling to that image because that would make a better book?

Mr. FREY: Probably both.

********

Ms. WINFREY: Nan Talese is the publisher and editor in chief of "A Million Little Pieces" and the senior vice president of Doubleday, which is a division of Random House. ... Nan is the person who would have overseen the publication of James' book, which you did, right?

Ms. NAN A. TALESE (Publisher of "A Million Little Pieces"): Correct.

Ms. WINFREY: Correct. And so, Nan, James has admitted that he embellished his memoir. And I--what responsibility do you take in that?

Ms. TALESE: Well, I can only tell you how the book came to me and how I read it. And I read the manuscript as a memoir and I thought it was an extraordinary story of a man with drug addiction, going through hell of both the addiction and the recovery and the process. And I thought the book was absolutely riveting. And you talked about the novocaine and you know, you were implying that perhaps that was a red flag, that the publisher should have said, 'Hey, this couldn't possibly be true.'

Ms. WINFREY: Yes!

Ms. TALESE: In fact, I have had a root canal without novocaine, not particularly because of the choice but because of a extraordinary inept dentist.

Ms. WINFREY: OK.

Ms. TALESE: And I'm here and I, you know, it's really awful. It's very much as James described it. So I didn't think that it wasn't a red flag to me.

Ms. WINFREY: Do you--I don't know why that wouldn't be a red flag to anybody, Nan. I'm sorry, even if you'd had it yourself. That whole--the whole book, one of the reasons why we're all so taken with the book is because it feels and reads so sensationally that it--it--you you can't believe that all of this happened to one person. When did you realize that James hadn't told the truth in his memoir?

Ms. TALESE: I learned about the--the jail, the two things that were in Smoking Gun at the same time you did. And I was dismayed to know that. But I had not--I mean, as an editor, do you ask someone, 'Are you really as bad as you are?'

Ms. WINFREY: Yes!

Ms. TALESE: Because someone...

Ms. WINFREY: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, you do. Yes.

********

Ms. WINFREY: You never questioned it?

Ms. TALESE: No.

Ms. WINFREY: OK. Because I'm thinking as a reader, up until this moment, sitting on the show, that Lily hung herself. Well, obviously, after all these reports came out, I started to think, `Well, if he wasn't in jail, if that's true, and he wasn't in jail all that time and he was trying to get to Lily, then maybe there wasn't even a Lily.'

Ms. TALESE: Well, no, I understand that. And I understand the questioning. The tragedy is not in the hanging or slitting her wrists. It's in the suicide. And I'm not excusing it.

*********

Ms. WINFREY: Let me say this: Eight days after we announced this book, and it had already made the bestsellers list, we were contacted--eight days afterwards--by a former Hazelton counselor challenging the truth of James's memoir. And our producer told me about it, because this woman is now saying that what James is saying in the book isn't true. I said, `Well, did she work with James? Was she there when James was there?' I said, `Well, I--I--I don't know if what she's saying is true. What you need to do is contact the publisher. Contact the publisher and ask them if it's true.'

So, we contacted your representatives, and we were told by them that the claims that this woman was making, we were assured that there was no validity to those claims. And we asked if you, your company stood behind James's book as a work of non-fiction at the time, and they said absolutely. And they were also asked if their legal department had checked out the book, and they said yes. So in a press release sent out for the book in 2004 by your company, the book was described as brutally honest and an altering look at--at addiction. So how can you say that if you haven't checked it to be sure?

Ms. TALESE: You know, Oprah, I mean, I think this whole experience is very sad. It's very sad for you, it's very sad for us...

WINFREY: It's not sad for me, it's embarrassing and disappointing for me. That it's embarrassing and disappointing to me.

Ms. TALESE: But I don't--I do not know how you get inside another person's mind...

WINFREY: Well, this is my point, Nan: otherwise, then anybody can just walk in off with the street with whatever story they have...

Ms. TALESE: But you know...

WINFREY: ...and say "this is my story."

Ms. TALESE: That is absolutely true, and people in publishing and editor...

WINFREY: Well, that needs to change.

The Phat Lady Sings: ON FEELING FAT

2006-01-23T15:52:00.000-05:00

The Phat Lady Sings: ON FEELING FAT

Femme Fatale

2006-01-23T15:39:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have received my mix CD's as December holiday gifts... you're familiar with what is affectionately called "The Cheemix". Today is a day for that. I've posted a bunch of other things I've written for various school projects. Here's another:

Claim: Femme Fatale or What’s Brian DePalma Thinking?

A lesbian jewelry heist at the Cannes Film Festival leads to a double cross leads to a suicide leads to a stolen identity leads to a photographer leads to… who knows? In this weaving heavy handed film laden with inside jokes thumbing its nose at Hollywood and Bizarro world Hitchcockian references, subplots are really plots and seeming randomness becomes the key to understanding. Twists and reversals make a script great. Yanking peoples emotional chains and playing cinematic mind games generally makes people angry. Yet, and this is the big one, it’s fascinating. You might want to throw things but you have to know what’s going to happen. That’s the most annoying part of this movie. Once you come to grips with the fact that nothing is what it seems you have to know the truth. You know the whole things a set-up, but how? Why? It’s hard to say it’s horrible. (Not impossible, though). It might be- but not boring. This is a film for adults. Not just because of the utterly bizarre and gratuitous striptease scene, but because you have to think. You might not want to or like it… but think you will. As a side note: Rebecca Romijn- Stamos is a model. Hello? A model. Brian DePalma keeping her silent during the first quarter of the movie doesn'’t erase the fact that she'’s the "Femme Fatale" of the title and eventually, to let us know what'’s going on, she must speak.

HAIKU:
Too much deja vu
Antonio Banderas
Really, what’s going on?

Roger and Me

2006-01-23T15:34:00.000-05:00

Roger and Me
Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me” is a perfect metaphor for the search for the culpability of corporate America. The film follows Moore searching for GM chief executive Roger Smith to bring him to Flint, Michigan to see the devastation the closing of the plants (which were the economic backbone of the city) has done to the community. This film follows a clear path and there are no extraneous moments. It is a three year culmination of events detailing the personal and communal tragedies of a formally prosperous town. Though this vision is decidedly anti- corporation and is edited in a way that shows both sides, the weight of the argument on the side of the fired auto workers is clear.
Moore’s genius in this film is his clarity. From the beginning the viewer is clear on his position and can thusly posit themselves in a way that avoids manipulation. Even those not suffering from the lay-offs and with a set position of “it’s not that bad” can see how it is that bad for others. Those feeling the effects of the economic downsizing can feel they have a champion and know their story was told. Those outside of Flint can make their own decisions and still have a choice in their opinion on the facts of the case. Yet, Moore has told the audience from the beginning whose side he’s on. He told his history in the town and how he’s a part of it. Although it’s a documentary this film isn’t a documentary with no comment. Moore has the advantage of having a personal history with these people in addition to being a journalist, which adds to the different dimensions of his evaluation.
While trying to interview Roger Smith and bring him to Flint to see the ghost town it had become, Moore made a poignant comment on corporate America. Corporate America was given a body and a name- Roger Smith. The elusiveness at finding someone to hold responsible in corporations is clear. The levels of bureaucracy are so deep and multifaceted, yet Moore’s tenacity and subsequent failure at even speaking to Roger Smith is a painful illustration of how powerless individuals can be in the face of corporate power. This story doesn’t have a happy ending. People are displaced. Communities are destroyed and it’s “nobody’s fault”… it’s just how business has to be in a competitive capitalist society. That’s a sad but true statement that was beautifully illuminated in this film.

Hip Hop Ads

2006-01-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

In a grad school class we actually had to post to a blog weekly. The postings were whatever the assignment were for the week:

Pro: Hip Hop Goes Commercial by Erik Parker (Village Voice September 11-17, 2002)

In the late 1980’s I remember my journalism teacher telling me that hip-hop wouldn’t last the next five years. Well, more than 20 years after it’s inception hip-hop culture and music has woven it’s way into all parts of global living. So it’s only natural that it would be used as a commercial vehicle. Like all underground movements that gained pop culture status, hip hop is now being used to sell everything from burgers to cellular phones. If everything sang or rapped about becomes “cool” then it goes without saying that the artists should gain financially from it. This is a capitalist society and there’s no such thing as free advertising. It’s only fair that a cultural movement began by economically impoverished minorities should be able to benefit from big businesses that co-op culture for monetary gain.

Con: Hip Hop Goes Commercial by Erik Parker (Village Voice September 11-17, 2002)

Conspicuous consumption and market branding has ruined hip-hop culture and music. In the late 1980’s hip hop was about community building and the upliftment of an economically impoverished people. Even if you weren’t poor you could still benefit from the teachings of the music and the sense of community it fostered. Yet today unless you care about Motorola pagers, Courvoisier liquor, Range Rovers, platinum, diamonds, and any number of brand name foolishness, then hip hop isn’t for you. Everything is to further individual materialistic desires usually by means detrimental to the human community as a whole. Hip hop has spread it’s materialistic message across the globe. It’s an infection that’s only getting worse when Snapple bottles start breakdancing.

Make the Call That May Make the Difference

2006-01-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

Make The Call That May Make The Difference.

Using slow motion and the faces of smiling calm children, McNeil Consumer Pharmaceuticals presents a vague glimmer of hope for the parents of children with ADHD. No doubt some of these children need help and one would only call or get information from the website if their child has ADHD. Yet this commercial has a kind of creepiness that borders on an image of mind control. The increase of pharmaceutical companies advertisements seems to be either the chicken or the egg of a bigger American problem. The medicalization of everyday life. The children are shown with their parents being the type of children seen on television in generic “childhood” situations such as playing with other children, working with their parents, doing their homework, eating breakfast. This is all fantastic if only there weren’t graphics over the montage saying “12 hour dose”; “Once daily medication”; “Consistent symptom control”. The parents calm pleased voices tell of the process the children are making from their medication. In the shot showing the success story video and ADHD advances brochure (with questions for your doctor) this is when it’s apparent what’s being sold. What’s being sold is the idea that your child can be like these kids. Not to negate the real problems some children have, but a national ad campaign shown during daytime TV to mothers watching their soap operas seems a little sinister. Yes, this might get the information to a mother who has a child with a real problem, but what about the mother who simply doesn’t know how to handle her child. What about the loud rambunctious children who are natural explorers and trouble makers? Certain kinds of these ADHD medications have been safely and widely used for over 40 years. Does this explain the increase of the overall pharmaceutical campaigns for treatment of anxiety disorders. There’s no shame in getting help for problems, yet a commercial showing television children leading television lives seems to be a poor (and dangerous) method for getting help for those who really might need it as opposed to simply those who can get it.

Boomtown

2006-01-23T15:21:00.001-05:00

Now this show is now defunct... but let's think about it again- shall we?

Boomtown:

Looking at a single crime from at least seven different viewpoints is a clever working of the postmodernist theory of no master narrative, yet Must See Sunday on NBC might not be the tableau in which to paint this particular masterpiece. The outstanding ensemble cast and brilliant concept of Boomtown may get lost in the very gimmick that makes this show interesting.

The audience is guided through a crime from the point of view of it’s seven major characters: two detectives, two cops, a paramedic, a district attorney, and a reporter. That’s brilliant. “Sometimes the best way to tell the whole story about something is not to try to tell the whole story, but to tell all the little stories and let the viewers put it together themselves,” according to Graham Yost, series co-creator, executive producer, and writer. In addition to the regular cast, the story is also told through the eyes of the victims and perpetrators of the crimes (and sometimes quirky passersby). The vignettes are woven together by white titles (telling the audience who they are now) on a black screen. During this half season every situation has neatly been handled. It’s not always pretty, but there are no pesky questions lurking around on Monday morning.

Let’s stop for a moment. This is a show that’s daring enough to allow an American TV audience to believe they are experiencing life through the characters eyes, yet heavy handedly guiding them the most obvious choices. Boomtown needs the leash taken off. It wants a smart audience but doesn’t trust itself or the audience enough to give them the freedom to make up their own minds. The audience, according to the commercials, are people: who travel, shop by computer, drive luxury cars (as well as small foreign and beefy American ones), eat chicken and beef, use wireless phones and digital cameras, vote, have health insurance and families, care about wrinkles, and wear underwear. That sounds like a broad sampling of America. That sounds like people who can be trusted. Boomtown should trust these people and not treat them like idiots while telling them their “smart”.

Watching this show feels like having a crush. You see the person. You like them. You kind of follow them around, and you learn about them through other people. Just enough to make you want to know more. You start having small conversations with them and then you discover- all they have is small conversation. There’s nothing else. No depth. Some interesting, even alluring, detail is mentioned, then it’s back to the weather.

It’s not that the characters on Boomtown don’t have depth. That’s what’s infuriating. There’s more story there. We’re given glimpses of who these people are. Wonderful glimpses. But everything feels like a shadow. As soon as we’re getting some understanding we’re somewhere else being someone else. On commercial series television- there must be some master narrative. Even Twin Peaks had central question. Something to make an audience care. In the midst of solving a crime, the audience also has to sympathize with these characters. The viewers experience is experiential, yet we never really get a chance to experience.

The strength of the performances keeps it alive. Actors Donnie Wahlberg (Detective Joel Stevens) and Neal McDonough (Deputy D.A. David McNorris)- both from Graham Yost’s “Band of Brothers”- lead a superb ensemble. These actors are fighting to give the audience what they need to hold their attention. But as soon as the door cracks open to understanding… there’s a commercial, or a cut, or a little piece of business that destroys the moment. It screams “CABLE!!!”.

So at mid-season I leave you with these questions: Will Boomtown trust itself enough to not rely on it’s flashy editing style to show the characters development? Will Boomtown trust it’s audience enough to know that flashy editing and titles won’t be necessary when the characters and their motivations are clear? If not… we might have to see what the mid-season replacements have in store.

Freedom

2006-01-23T15:18:00.000-05:00

This was written for my brother's magazine years ago:

When given the prospect of writing on freedom, particularly the freedom of not wearing underwear, I was elated. Finally, some forum to express my little slice of rebellion , however seemingly mundane, against the repressive bit of binding holding in my holiest of holes. When I was young the thought- the very idea – of me not wearing underwear was as close to sin as taking the Lord’s name in vain (which I also didn’t get because- What does she care?) The first time I didn’t wear them was an accident. When my grandmother found out she obviously didn’t it was as funny as I did. I might as well had been selling pussy for the reaction I got. So after that, I didn’t dare go bare until I was an adult. The era ended when I would ask my two best friends why they weren’t wearing any panties, and their answer was “Why should I?” I couldn’t answer them so off came the drawa’s.
It’s one of my many struggles against social mores. It’s me knowing I’m a sexual being at every moment of everyday. Men find it sexy, but more importantly I find it sexy. There’s a bit of exhibitionism to it. There’s a sense of power that comes with being able to hike up my skirt anywhere I choose and take a whiz. To have to check my sexual thoughts, as men do, to make sure I’m not sitting in a puddle.
But moreover, it’s my little secret. (Well not anymore I guess). But when I ‘m sitting at work listening to these ball-less fucks tell me to do mind numbing bullshit, I know that if I wanted to I could stand up, piss on their shoes and tell them to kiss my ass in one fell swoop. And on top of it all, I believe it’s made me more of a lady.

Marion Berry Loves Cocaine

2006-01-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

I was born in DC. I went to Howard. I spent my summers in DC. I remember when my cousins and step-brothers and sisters got summer jobs because Marion Berry had created a wonderful work program for the little black girls and boys in the city. As a child, raised in segragated Chicago and in love with Harold Washington, having a black mayor was really important to me. I loved Marion Berry because being the mayor of DC was tough. There were tons of politics. Particularly in the Reagan years... but, Marion... you gotta pay your taxes. You can't do cocaine. YOU can't do cocaine. And I've also heard some more disturbing news about MJ today... but we'll save that for later.

MARION BARRY TESTED POSITIVE FOR
COCAINE: Mandatory drug test last fall
came up dirty.

*Former Washington D.C. mayor Marion
Barry now faces an increased risk of serving
the maximum 18 months in jail for misdemeanor
tax charges after testing positive for cocaine
use during a mandatory drug test administered
last fall.
Barry, who was elected to the Ward 8
council seat in 2004, has since begun treatment
for drug use, sources tell the Washington Post,
but his dirty drug test violates the terms of his
release in the tax case. Instead of probation, the
politician now faces and 18-month bid during his
sentencing scheduled for Feb. 8.
Barry, interviewed Tuesday night in his Howard
University Hospital room, where he's being treated
for hypertension, said he did not deny accounts
of his drug test and treatment but declined to
discuss his case.
"Write what you want to write," he told a
Washington Post reporter. "That's my official
quote. No more, no less."
The tax case involves Barry's failure to pay
most of his federal and D.C. income taxes for six
years after his fourth term as mayor ended in
January 1999. Prosecutors said he received more
than $530,000 in income over the next six years
but did not document most of it. Barry's plea
agreement also calls for him to make
arrangements to resolve his tax debts.
Barry grabbed national headlines last week
after two young men who helped him carry groceries
to his Southeast apartment returned to rob him at
gunpoint. The suspects, who escaped with Barrys
wallet containing more than $200 in cash, his drivers
license and two credit cards, are still at large.
In 1990, during Barrys third term as mayor, he
was videotaped smoking crack at the Vista Hotel
by federal agents.

Museum of the African Diaspora

2006-01-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

"I've Known Rivers: The MoAD African Diaspora Stories Project" is up and running.

My poem "Poor People" can be seen here: http://www.iveknownrivers.org/stories/adaptation.htm.

Here's a little background on the project from the website:

SAN FRANCISCO (September 12, 2005) - In Africa it is said that when a griot, or oral historian, dies, "a library has burned to the ground." In recognition of the fabled tradition of the griot and in an effort to document stories of the African Diaspora, San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) has embarked on a landmark project.

I've Known Rivers: The MoAD Story Project is an unprecedented effort by an international museum to collect, publish, and archive "first voice" narratives about people of African descent. In light of the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and its effect on the lives of thousands of African Americans, this project's story-collecting mission takes on an even greater significance.

An international museum based in San Francisco, California USA, MoAD is scheduled to open in December 2005 and is poised to become one of the world's pre-eminent cultural institutions. Unlike anything ever offered by a modern museum, I've Known Rivers: The MoAD Story Project will be similar in vision to the historic WPA Federal Writers' Project (1936 -1940), which archived thousands of items, including essays, oral testimony, folklore, and authentic narratives of ex-slaves about life during slavery.

"We are excited about people everywhere sharing inspiring stories which explore our African roots," said Emmy award winning journalist and MoAD Board President, Belva Davis. "These stories will create an international conversation about what it means for us as a global community to be connected to Africa." International Call for Stories

MoAD has issued a global Call for Stories in an effort to collect, publish and archive authentic stories from throughout the African Diaspora. Stories should be submitted in the form of first-person essay, short fiction, and poem by published and unpublished writers as well as authentic voices from across the African Diaspora. Additionally, the stories must be related to MoAD's four founding themes: origin, movement, adaptation, and transformation.

In partnership with User Logic and funded by the ATT Excelerator Grant, MoAD will begin publishing these selected stories on the museum web site starting Fall 2005 and continue leading up to MoAD's grand opening in December 2005.

The most highly distinguished twenty-five stories from the entries submitted will be published online and considered for an inaugural hard cover book for the museum.

After the opening, the project will continue to collect and archive stories, creating one of the first international virtual archives of African Diaspora Stories by a modern museum. In addition, the I've Known Rivers: The MoAD Stories Project web site will serve as an online writer's lab, providing the newest applications in instructional media to assist those in the general public to write their own African Diaspora stories.

It's a great way to start the new year.

There will be more exciting times to come.

Things I wish I'd Known In My 20's

2006-01-11T16:31:00.000-05:00

I know I've asked people to comment and I appreciate those who have.
I didn't put my list on here, because it's a little more revealing than I like to do... but this is what this forum is for.
So, even though I totally don't want to- I'm going to reveal.
What do I wish I’d known in my ‘20’s?

That things smell funny and it’s okay.
Things being your own body

That men are nasty and will do anything to get laid.

The weight that you used to lose in a week now takes months -even years-of concerted effort to lose.

Smoking stinks and it’s mad hard to quit.

Cocktails only get more delicious with time
Men don’t like to hear the truth
Shit, sometimes I don't like to hear the truth
Friends leave
There’s no such thing as a grown up
You can save $100 a month and not spend it on shoes
There is such a thing as too many shoes.
Just because you sleep with a guy that you think is your friend… doesn’t mean he’s going to call
Mind blowing sex does not a relationship make
Sometimes, your best friends will abandon you
Most times your best friends will save your life in ways they'll never know
Maybe your mother is really crazy- I mean really crazy
Siblings are God’s way of saying everything’s okay-or that you might be just as screwed up as them
You’ll still get crushes that will completely occupy your mind
You'll still have pretend boyfriends/ girlfriends because you're still too scared to say something to them.
Money comes and goes. Worrying about it doesn’t change it’s nature.
Don’t worry the money will come
You have to do a lot of work to get a lot of money
Freedom is worth more than money
Joy is worth more than money
Piece of mind is worth more than money
Doing what you love will always pay off
I don't want to go to work everyday- damn.

Arghhh, and I still want to remove some...
So now there's no excuse for not helping me out.

Just A Lousy Dime

2006-01-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

“We want to leave early so that we can get in for free. So can you be ready by 9?”
“If I take a nap. I’m exhausted. I haven’t had time to sleep yet.”
“Well you know you have to go with us Minah. It’s your last night here. I haven’t seen you since graduation and now you’re flying off to Paris... I can’t even talk about it or I’ll start crying.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll go but have to start my nap now. It’s already 6 what time are you calling?”
“Okay, I’ll call you at 8.”
“That’s cool, I have to shave my legs so yeah, that’s cool. Eight o’clock.”
“I’m so happy you’re going.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll see you later.”

Minah laid down with Miles Davis asking “So What” on his trumpet. She dozed off with visions of the Seine flowing through her mind, then the phone rang.
“You up?”
“What time is it? “
“Five after 8. I just finished cleaning up and I’m about to take my shower. We should be over there in about 1/2 hour. I’ll call first.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to you in a little while.”
“Cool.”
Minah got up and turned on her light. The room was bare. Everything was packed except for some pictures she wanted to carry with her and her traveling clothes. She picked up a stack of pictures and started flipping through them. She stopped on a picture of herself with her “big brother”. Though they weren’t related by blood, they spoke everyday until she left for school. She hadn’t spoken to him in two years. Two years? Has it been that long Blueboy? She missed him, he always wanted to go to Paris. But pain kept her pride from giving in to fits of sentimental fancy. She’d accepted his flaky behavior as part of his character, but after that Christmas she couldn’t stand being stood up by him one more time.
The final straw had been her missing a party she’d planned because of him. Her car was being ravaged by the unnaturally cold Chicago winter. It was quite naturally cold for her, but her car was Japanese and still not used to the weather. So who else to call but her brother who only lived a few blocks away. She knew she was taking a chance, but she figured, Hey, we’re adults now and made the mistake, yet again, of depending on him. He called and told her he was on his way and she woke up the next morning in her bad-assed boots and a mini-dress in the recliner by the door. He called the next morning with some excuse she’d already heard and she hung up on him. He called periodically but she never spoke to him. She didn’t trust him. She had a couple of boyfriends who tried the same game. She had no tolerance for it and they got the same treatment. When they asked why she was “trippin’ so hard” she’d just say she had her reasons. She flipped to a picture of herself as a child standing in front of the window smiling and holding a little suitcase.
“Minah, sweetie, is your bag packed to go to your Dad’s?”
“Yes, I even put little Minah in there.”
She points to a brown yarn doll wearing a yellow sundress and black toe-shoes. “We’re dressed alike today, only I don’t’ have a bonnet and she doesn’t have on gloves.”
“Well you have a little while before your dad gets here. Do you want to watch some TV?”
“No thank you. I’d like to sit in the window and see him pull up so he can see I’m ready. We’re going to see the Muppet Movie and we can’t be late.”
“Okay baby.” her mother said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. As she did she stroked Minah’s cheek and looked lovingly at her daughter. She looked so much like her father it sometimes scared her. Please let him come this time. One of the few good things she believed about her ex-husband was that he loved Minah. Yet she knows he loved her when they were married but that didn’t stop him from disappointing her. She hoped he wouldn’t have the same relationship with Minah. As she walked back into the den, she looked at her daughter so little and vulnerable, then at the clock. He was already 20 minutes late.
Minah comes back to the present and puts the pictures down. On the top of the stack is the picture of her as that child. Ironic, she laughs to herself, as she pulls out a similar dress to wear on her last hurrah. As she jumps in the shower she throws in her favorite Jimi Hendrix CD and together they declare “there must be some kinda way outta here” as All Along the Watchtower begins reverberating through her empty apartment.
About ten “there must be some kinda way outta here”’s later she’s dressed and waited for her friends. She puts her wrap, purse and shoes by the door and sits in her living room smoking a cigarette and looking through more pictures. She runs across another one from the same day except it’s with her and her mother at Fun Town, the now defunct amusement part that was Chicago’s equivalent to Coney Island. She remembers waiting in that window for hours waiting on her father and running for the door every time a car started down her quiet street. She sat there until the phone rang and her mother came out of the den and told her that her dad wouldn’t be able to make it today and that he would come and take her out tomorrow. As soon as her mother finished telling her, Minah started crying. Her Mommy came and picked her up hugging her tightly to her.
“It’s not that bad Sweetie,” her mother said in that soothing Mommy voice. “You’ll see him tomorrow and you two will have a great time, you’ll see.”
“But why didn’t he come today? He promised,” she said through her tears. “What’s wrong with me? I look pretty today, don’t I ? Tomorrow I might not look as pretty. He promised. Why doesn’t he keep his promises?”
“Oh Baby,” her mother said with tears now in her eyes that she fought to keep out of her voice. “You look pretty as always and you’ll look just as pretty tomorrow. This isn’t your fault. You know your daddy loves you it’s just... well... it’s just that sometimes the things you may think are important he might not feel the same way about. And that’s not his fault. Now I’m not saying he should break his promises, that’s not right, you just have to make sure you tell him, or anybody else, how this makes you feel. Okay?”
“I guess so,” she said feeling better and not really understanding why.
But she understood why now. She couldn’t, then or now, cut her father off. But anyone else who pulled the same act got the boot. She sometimes explained why, and like with Blueboy, explained over and over again how she felt, other times it was just not worth her breath. She said in the beginning of all of her relationships if you can’t make it or are gong to be late, just call and tell her what’s going on. No big whoop. Just a thin quarter.
At 9:45 she slid on the jeans and tee-shirt she was going to wear tomorrow. She taped up the last of her boxes and started a book. Her friends called at 10:30 explaining but she didn’t answer. She was on the other line talking to her father. She wanted to see what time he was coming to pick her up for the airport in the morning- before she packed her phone.

Merry Christmas

2006-01-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

Sure it's late- but I get to do whatever I want here. I was sitting around watching TV while trying not to play Monopoly on games.com (completely addictive and I'm trying to get everybody hooked. There's a movie like that... it'll come to me.) So I sat with my notebook next to me and wrote what my limited attention span could muster. Now I share it with you:

The closer we get to Christmas, the shittier the gifts get. I mean a jar opener? Really? Do people consume the bulk of their nourishment from jarred foods? How many olives can you eat? A jar, can , bottle opener. Who needs this? Are we really this lazy?

Law & Order was really good when it came out. Razor sharp writing, exquisite timing, compelling characters on every side. Smart. Development of characters on all sides.

Okay. I said there was a dirth of mental activity on my part. I've been busy. Law & Order, the original and SVU, had marathons over the holidays; I was partying with my friends; Monopoly. Come on. That's a ton.

I'm working on a story that I have to finish this week... I'll see how that goes and share.

ok, ok...

2006-01-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a minute- but HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I've been busy getting myself into trouble and avoiding my work like the plague. I've been writing, only not posting and that, my friends, is ending now.
It's a new year and a new perspective on life. (BTW, anyone who wants to hire me for American dollars-or euros- give me a shout.)

So I'm now trying (again) to change my layout, but it appears that my master's degree hasn't prepared me for code harder than Chinese algebra.

Alas, I will share some of my newest thoughts, ideas, rants, stories and such within the coming week.

Oh, and I'm trying out the google ad business too.... but right now it appears that my open letter to MJ and the frequent references to Dubai have steered the ads in an interesting direction.

Open Letter to Michael Jackson

2005-11-15T11:04:00.000-05:00

Dear Michael Jackson,
I've been needing talk to you for a long time... this is really difficult. Well, part of it is that I love you so and I don't know what to do to help you. But I've got to tell you. YOU NEED HELP. Living in Dubai isn't going to solve your problems, particularly if you don't speak or read Arabic or understand the customs. (Although I'm sure it's beautiful and will come visit you anytime.) You once told me you were going back to Indiana. I think that would be best.
Or, Maybe you should talk to Oprah. I'm sure she'll talk to you. You can move into one of her complexes. She'll call Lil' Richard, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Dr. Phil. You guys will talk it out, eat some ribs or something. Work out whatever is making you CRAZIER THAN HELL. Excuse me. But I'm so frustrated right now because your behavior is affecting me adversely. I need to hear your voice. You have such a beautiful voice and it's at the peak of it's maturity. Just when I want to give up on you, you give me "Butterfly". It's beautiful. Your voice is beautiful.
Please stop being crazy. Let the bass come out in your speaking voice. Stop having slumber parties with little boys. Stop wearing sheila's in Arab countries and going to ladies rooms. STOP BEING SO CRAZY.
We'll discuss it more when we talk.

Love,
Charity

Arabian fright: Ladies'
rest room hi-Jacko'd

BY MICHELLE CARUSO
DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU CHIEF

Jacko's blushing - and this time it's not just his rouge.
The Queen, er, King of Pop, disguised in an Arabic woman's head scarf, got caught fixing his face in a ladies' bathroom in a Dubai shopping mall Saturday.
Cops were called to the scene to resolve a dispute between Jackson, 47, and a shocked Tunisian woman who snapped his picture as he primped at the mirror. No arrests were made, according to The Khaleej Times.
Maybe the wigged-one couldn't read the Arabic word for "women" on the rest room door, or maybe he chose the ladies' lounge rather than risk powdering his cheeks in a Middle Eastern men's room.
Dubai Police Col. Abdul Jalil Mehdi said he believed the pop star made an "innocent mistake" in using the ladies' loo, the Times said
Mehdi did not comment on Jackson's choice of head-wear - the traditional Emerati women's scarf known as "Sheila."
A 37-year-old teacher, identified as Latifa M., "screamed in shock and ran out of the ladies room" in the Ibn Battuta Mall when she realized Jackson was a man, the Times said.
But the school-marm shutterbug went back and snapped some pictures of the pop star with her cell phone camera.
Jackson chased after the woman and demanded the photos. She refused and asked for "compensation," the Times said.
The ruckus attracted cops, who told the teacher her demand for money was illegal. The photos were "erased," the Times said.
Jackson has been living in Bahrain as a guest of the royal family since his acquittal on child molestation charges last summer. He recently purchased a secluded $1.5 million property in the Amwaj Islands and plans to make his home there, according to reports.
In the U.S., Jackson's official Web site, MJJSource.com, is down. His longtime friend and makeup artist Karen Faye posted a note to fans saying the site "is down because we have had no cooperation with Michael and his present team. ... We were Michael's voice, but if he doesn't wish to speak or pay his bills for MJJSource, there is nothing we can do."

Okay, now it's your turn

2005-10-25T15:00:00.000-04:00

I'd like to get comments answering the questions:
What are some things you wish you knew in your 20's?

barbeque 4 dane

2005-10-15T01:25:00.000-04:00

my best friend left me and broke my heart years ago.
i had a slight nervous breakdown.
she's reconnected and i don't know what to say
she said she'd read my blog.
she broke my heart.
but this was one of her favorite poems....

BARBEQUE

I’m drowning in a sea of skulls
While Adam’s ameoba looks
for that lost rib.
Am I missing one too?
Not unless I want to be a pop
star with a smaller waist.
Maybe I should sit up 200 times
a day, but I might get bed sores.
Besides, there must be enough
room for people to live inside of
my body and suckle at my udders
while my ass becomes roast for
Oprah’s Texas cattlemen. Yee Haa!

The End

2005-10-14T14:09:00.000-04:00

so I've put my entire thesis on here now (w/o works cited...if anyone cares for them let me know- i'll send them to you). I've been reading it here and i've gotta say... it ain't half bad. actually it's pretty good. big ups to me and my friends who helped me do it. but i do welcome any comments

Conclusion- Where Do We Go From Here?

2005-10-14T14:07:00.000-04:00

Conclusion-
Where Do We Go From Here?

In this thesis, I have explored the visual representations of black men, black women and black couples primarily in film. I wanted to answer the questions: How have loving relationships between blacks been portrayed? How have the images of black love influenced the hip-hop generation?
Black representational media readings have historically been based in the reading of stereotypes. Stereotyping defines a way of seeing a visualized “other” outside of the flow of experience; yet, when that “other” internalizes the representations of themselves, created within the context of global media conglomerates, the result is a re-appropriation of stereotype into a false sense of empowerment. “The degree to which the fantasy of film interfaces with reality in the public imagination, especially in the imagination of the younger generation for whom such image induced definitions are central to our identity, can no longer be ignored. For young Blacks grappling with questions of their own-some living close to the battlefield and others in the thick of it- popular culture, […] rather than societal institutions, have provided answers- often wrong headed ones.” (Kitwana 139). The combination of the lack of visual images showing blacks loving each other, and the profusion of the absence thereof reinforce a false ontology.
Brooklyn based writer Angela Ards’ Ms. Magazine article “Where is the (Black) Love?” tells a familiar story of the effect of racism on the behaviors men and women of this generation exhibit toward each other. In her article, she states that as young people,
We don't want to mold our relationship to mirror traditions that don't serve our realities. We rack our brains to name couples whose unions we admire. The lack of viable paradigms and role models humbles us. Can we be so arrogant to think that we can make love between black men and women work when, besides Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, the couples around us largely have not? (Ards)

This familiar story is mirrored in the realization that I could not think of many other media examples of committed black loving couples, either real or fictional.
In discussing black manhood, we see that black men are portrayed as sexist, sexually compulsive, nihilistic and untrustworthy. Black women are seen as supportive of patriarchal models, sexually manipulative, emasculating and untrustworthy. Young black couples are perceived as sexually transient, afraid of commitment/ marriage/ responsibility/ pain, exist in peer based support systems, and are untrustworthy.
Black men have become frustrated with trying to fulfill the white patriarchal model of manhood; their hopelessness has been translated into rage against black women, which is evidenced by the abundance of unloving imagery created in film, television and music videos. “On the manhood front, the image of the militant black prince fighting for his freedom was soon replaced by the get- over playboy image of the daddy mack, ‘the pimp.’ … While they might not possess the political and economic power of patriarchal white men, they could out do them on the sexual front. When it came to sex, they could win… Embracing sexual images that were racist/sexist and dehumanizing gave black men the license to use and abuse black women.” (Salvation 138)
The absence of the self-reflection needed to emotionally mature past these images is the fuel that feeds a capitalist patriarchy. When there is no self-reflection there is no growth. Combined with the legacy/ mythology of black male infantilism by the alleged matriarchal female, many hip-hop generationers, regardless of class, remain emotionally, socially and sexually retarded. They are stuck in puberty- the moment when sexuality is blooming and adolescent experimentation begins. When viewing images of their imagined selves black men learn, “that a real male is fearless, insensitive, egocentric, and invulnerable (all the traits powerful black men have in movies) a black man blocks out all emotions that interfere with this ‘cool’ pose” (hooks, Cool 61). Obsessesed with teenage cool, the black man- regardless of age- is represented in the media, and reflected in his subjectivity, only one evolutionary step from child.
The lack of self-reflection and self-definition is not only emblematic of black men. The female characters in the films discussed show us that women are ready to create loving relationships and have been taught under patriarchal tutelage that women must sublimate themselves to men. I agree with bell hooks in her assessment that black women overall are not feminist. “Many of us were raised in homes where black mothers excused and explained male anger, irritability and violence by calling attention to the pressures black men face in a racist society where they are collectively denied full access to economic power. They clearly believed…that racism was harder on males than females, even though many of these black women worked for low wages in circumstances where they were daily humiliated and mistreated” (Yearning 75). In addition, many of the specifics of the mainstream feminist movement did not apply to the realities of black women’s lives and white feminists were not particularly interested in exploring issues of race within their fight against gender oppression.
Young black women, trying to define their roles within the media’s assault have molded their behavior to how they are seen by men. They have adopted the complementary performance to the men’s pimp thug by becoming his moll. In “an already entrenched understanding of women’s bodies as objects of consumption,” the hip-hop generation’s women continue the support of black male sexism with their acceptance of this role (Rose 168). Despite the new dominant mythology that black women are moving up the economic ladder, black female sexuality is still seen as commodity that black women are willing to sell to the highest bidder.
According to black people’s imagery in film, and subsequently in music videos, there is no sexual fantasy a man (black or white) can have that a black woman will not fulfill. Music video and film reciprocally influence one another creatively reinforcing both visual and social cues. Music videos, again, borrow films visual power while entering the private sphere of the home. This constant reiteration of dehumanizing images within the home can arguably be more influential than those created in film. I am not arguing that music videos have no redeeming socializing value, only the proliferation of such a small set of images (mostly the body parts of a shaking young woman draping herself over a rapper or singer) so wholly monolithic and constant when set to music can be a powerful influence on an individual’s behavior. It is the reinforcement of the one image that is disturbing. Despite there being others in the world of music videos, the rewards go to those who best promote empty selfish values and who have the most anti-loving images as their advertisement. Increasingly these images are feeding the reality of women’s sexual definitions. “When any black female acts out in a manner that is in keeping with negative stereotypes, there is more room for her in the existing social structure […]. No doubt this is why so many young black women feel that the only options they have are to claim the roles of bitch and ho” (hooks, Salvation 106).
In a recent Village Voice article titled “The Height of Disrespect” Thulani Davis discusses how a study of young black adolescents have adapted patriarchal sexist dogmas. Young women admit to having sex with multiple partners as a way to overcompensate their increased lack of feelings of power or value. “Since many do not expect exclusive relationships with partners, and sex is spoken of as a transactional relationship rather than an emotional one, keeping a partner by way of sex or pregnancy seems a viable strategy, at least temporarily”. Using strategy and manipulation to “bag” a man who is only interested in sex increases feelings of mistrust between black men and women. Subsequently, their feeling of devaluation leads to dangerous sexual behavior, “‘Young people today are facing a …whole set of images of themselves—hypersexual, sexually irresponsible, not concerned with ongoing intimate relationships. [They] can’t help but be influenced by those images.’ When several young women were talking about their reluctance to use condoms, one said that no one on TV or in films is ever shown using them” (Davis).
Like the visual relationships discussed earlier, the space black couples inhabit is practically a war zone. The images perpetuated in hip-hop music and videos expose, “…the extent to which patriarchal black males, like the males in general, see sexuality as a war zone where they must assert dominance” (Cool 73). It is in this space that the future of the black family is being created. In many black homes, it is the women who provide material support for black men, women, and children while some men take these loving actions for granted as well as the women not being thanked or supported emotionally, psychically, or spiritually. “When it comes to issues of love, the mass media basically represent black people as unloving. We maybe portrayed as funny, angry, sexy, dashing, beautiful, sassy and fierce but we are rarely represented as loving” (hooks, Salvation 51). Yet if the women do not trust the men and vice versa where do the children learn to love and trust? The media?
Media literacy is our hope. One of the goals in being a media literate society is to understand the role media play on personal behaviors. “Because the Europeans did not have enough manpower to control the vast territories and populations they were taking over in Africa and Asia, they began to use the media as a form of mind control, colonizing people around the world, just as they also colonized information about the world. Today the mass media includes every visual object that influences the mind—billboard advertisements, commercials and more, but especially movies and television” (Clarke). In order for the media to not be considered “mind control” those immersed in and connected by the media must have an understanding of how it not only reflects society but has the power to shape it from the inside.
In John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk, historian John Henrik Clarke stated that the family is the nucleus of civilization and if the black family is in trouble, then the black community is in trouble. There will be no black family without “loving relations” in some form. What I found was a battleground of hurt feelings, hopelessness, sexual pathology, and scarred people, afraid of each other; afraid of media reflected images of themselves.

visuals 2

2005-10-11T18:40:00.000-04:00

the visuals

2005-10-11T18:34:00.000-04:00

a bit about my "missionary work" as my mom calls it

2005-10-11T15:57:00.001-04:00

so i've decided that i'm going to write and go to the gym everyday i'm not working for american dollars. the story i'm writing now is driving me a little crazy, but i have sent an old story out and feel productive. i guess i should write something about my going to new orleans to take supplies, but it was so surreal i don't really have much comment on it. Delissa, the owner of the wonderful bar sepia (downstairs if that tells you anything about my struggles) and friend, organized for us to drive down there and take the donations left at the bar. we drove the 22h with mr. hooper (quite unexpectedly- but he donated the truck) and literally dropped the stuff and started DRIVING BACK!

one thing that D said that has stayed with me was that there were no thank you's. my first response was, yeah- but we didn't do it for thank you's. but that doesn't mean that as a human being you don't say thank you. we couldn't get the boxes of clothes off of the trucks fast enough before they were being ripped through. the statements that stand out in my head most are "where are the plus sizes?" and woman holding up a pair of pants saying "who can wear these little things?". it was a bit of an anticlimax. i don't know what i expected really, but i didn't expect that.

i don't know. i say thank you to everybody for every little thing. driving through slidell, seeing the utter destruction and feeling the devastation moments before this lead me to believe everyone must be in a state of shock. but i'm sure it goes deeper than that into a number of class/ political issues that are ugly, complex and that i'm still suppressing.

Chapter III- Hopeless: Moving Past Postmodern Hip-Hop Adolescence

2005-10-09T12:47:00.000-04:00

Chapter III-
Hopeless:
Moving Past Postmodern Hip-Hop Adolescence

Love and Basketball and Love Jones are culminations of all of the previous representations with the distinct voice of the hip-hop generation. They stylistically reflect the influences of music videos while addressing the biggest challenge the hip-hop generation faces-- how are we supposed to behave? These films re-appropriate hip-hop’s superficially materialistic and sexual manifestations and show the ramifications those images have in our everyday existence. Gender lines are not as specifically defined in these films creating different approaches to relationships. Without the specific struggles against racism and classism, these films are also a reminder of the personal and spiritual work the black community as a whole must continue to do in their intraracial, interpersonal relations.
These characters are the beneficiaries of all of social, cultural, economic and political changes of the last thirty years. The hip-hip generation, imbued with the legacy of sexualized youth culture, sees marriage as the end to the freedoms (sexual and otherwise) they have enjoyed and seen as their right their entire lives. Marriage is a pseudo fantasy that for men marks an end of youth and for women idealizes security. It is also seen as something done by “grown ups” (an act performed by the previous generation) or whites. Sex- only relationships and strong male-female platonic friendships (most with the possibility of sex) are the dominant models for relationships. The blurring of the lines between these relationship positions reinforces the question of how the hip-hop generation is supposed to behave. No longer looking to their parents as models, the media offers behavioral cues. In these films, their portrayals begin to question what they have been taught and follow them on their explorations of how they learn to define their lives for themselves.
Love and Basketball tells the story of a young man and woman who grow up next door to each other and their love of basketball is what pulls them together and ultimately drives them apart. They grow up in an upper middle class environment in two parent homes. Throughout high school, they are best friends. Their intimacy for each other grows from their love of basketball.
Monica is a tomboy. She hides her dresses, hates having her hair combed, is obviously, as the younger of two girls, the son her father never had. She watches her mother defer her dreams and never stand up for herself and decidedly abhors anything she deems as “prissy.” Q is a talented and privileged young man who idolizes and emulates his father, an ex professional basketball player. His mother is a stay at home mom who tends to his and his father’s every need.
At the age of eleven, Q asks Monica to be “his girl” after watching her get her hair combed through the window while listening to his parents have loud passionate sex, thereby infusing Monica with sexuality. William Simon discusses the role of parental sexuality in the lives of adolescents:
“Parents, particularly the parents of the opposite sex for those experiencing themselves as moving towards heterosexuality, will obviously have many of the attributes that the adolescent is expected to recognize and respond to as being sexual. This connection becomes particularly significant when the child sees the parents as being sexually active, sometimes increasingly evident particularly to those adolescents who have witnessed parents returning the dating and mating game. The stereotypical notion of Victorian reticence and prudery clearly create a different set of conditions for managing the problems of inclusion and exclusion than would be true for most of the varieties of contemporary middle-class North American families- even where the family remains intact. (83)

The adolescence of the parental relationships in this film teaches the children dysfunctional relationship models. Q’s parents ultimately divorced because of the father’s infidelity. Q’s identity was tightly wound with that of his father, and the women he later dates are sexually feminized like his mother. When Q sees Monica the next day, she has changed from the androgynous being, (who was beating him at basketball, leading him to push her on the ground, scarring her face for life) to a cutie in dress with her hair in plaits and accepting of his advances. When her mother told her the night before that Q was riding to school with her in the morning, she told her sister to make sure her hair looked nice. She’s developing a sexuality not outside of her tomboyishness, because after they share her (their?) first kiss that morning, he demands she ride on his bike because she’s his girl and his dad drives his mother. She refuses by telling him “ I don’t have to do what you say,” a verbal argument ensues before she pushes him off his bike and they start rolling in the grass fighting. Despite her change in costume, the performance of gender equality was the same. It was not until after he called her “an ugly dog” that she made the fight physical. She had already been initiated by the letting of blood with the scar he had given her on her chin the day before. She was not going to be his victim again.
Fast forward to senior year in high school where they are both the stars of their basketball teams. Q is sexually active and Monica is pining away, loving him but able to relate to him only through basketball. The use of the ball as the link between the two identifies her not just with Q but also with both his father and hers. The inclusion of parents in this film shows the hip-hop generation’s longing for behavioral models, but finding only antiquated ones. Monica complains that her mother never attends her basketball games. The fact that she played basketball took her out of her mother’s domain. Even after Monica has played all over the world, her mother does not understand or know basketball lingo; effectively not knowing anything about her daughter. Therefore, when Monica has a problem, she asks her father. Senior year, she asks him to talk to the coach so she can stay in the game that her temper keeps getting her kicked out of. Her contention is that she’s “a ball player” and if she were a man, she would just be showing heart. Monica is one of few black female characters that address sexism. Her playing a sport makes her gender conflict keener.
At one of the two games her mother attends, her mother scolds her from the sidelines for not behaving like a lady. The visual separation of Monica from what is traditionally “women’s work” is the division of labor in the household. While she is talking to her father, her mother and feminized sister are setting the table. It is here that she tells her mother that she is a lesbian, “well that’s what you think ‘cause I would rather wear a jersey than an apron.” It is also here that her father tells her that since she has not been recruited, that she might want to look at different roads. She’s upset by his lack of faith and her mother’s comment that she has more going for her in the off- handed compliment of her being smart and “[she] would be pretty if [she] did something to [her] hair”.
Later she goes to the Spring Dance that her college-aged sister not only gets her a date for but also her sister dolls her up. Naomi Wolf discusses the image of the “doll” as “[o]n TV, female sexuality was about these dolls who were obsessed with getting dates with men. It was not a mature sexuality…There was no power in their sexuality…Being doll-like was part of how you reeled in a man. But what you did with him after you reeled him in- I had no clue” (Wolf 17). Neither did Monica. Her mother’s advice was to “enjoy being beautiful”, but to what end. At the dance, she is visibly uncomfortable in her skintight dress and heels. Unlike the young women in music videos who fit Wolf’s “doll” image, Monica is attempting to define herself through her own actions and not through anyone else’s acceptance. She is redefining standard gender stereotypes without being all feminist about it. Monica is simply working on being comfortable in her own skin.
When she gets home and talks about her date to Q on their mutual rooftop, she tells him that she went parking with her date, and while he was kissing on her and touching her, she could not remember how many offensive boards she got in the finals. That is her version of sex. She has attached it to the power she feels on the court. Her performance is not in the doll-like prissiness of sexuality but in the intimacy, it gives her with the one man who understands her love for basketball. That night she and Q physically make love. Director Gina Bythewood does not portray her body as the “docile body” as described by Foucault, traditionally associated with female sexuality, and it is at this moment that the narratives surrounding the black female body collide. According to Peterson, “to the dominant culture the black body was often both invisible and hypervisible… or… the black female body could be perceived as simultaneously feminine and masculine” (xi).
Yet, her sexuality through the rest of the film is focused on Quincy- the masculine. When he is not around, she is not sexual. Q on the other hand uses their emotional and sexual intimacy as his power over her. When he needs her and she is not available to him because of her basketball schedule, he starts “dating” another girl. Monica, despite her love for Q, when faced with his ultimatum, chooses basketball over him, and he leaves her. She ultimately conforms, in a way, to a model of male domination. “Females who wanted black male partners felt they had to conform to sexist expectations. Tragically, where much attention had been given to these conflicts, all the attention was now focused on black male satisfaction.” (hooks, Salvation 166) Quincy’s emotional denial through his sexual infidelity further demonstrates the behaviors that sustain the lack of trust between black women and men.
When Monica loses Quincy, she loses her love for basketball, despite her playing in the European League. Like Tracy in Mahogany, success means nothing because she does not have anyone to share it with. She comes back to the states (five years later) to find Quincy, now potentially unable to play basketball himself, engaged to an archetypical female. She gives up basketball and takes a job at her father’s bank.
On her mother’s advice, Monica challenges Q to a final basketball game for his heart. She has no female peers, despite all of her years on female basketball teams. She has only bonded emotionally with Q. He is her only friend. Therefore, when she looks to matters that require a “feminine touch” the only person she has to turn to is the mother she has fought so hard not to become. She acquiesces to her prescribed gender role and is rewarded by marrying Q, having a baby and playing with the WNBA. Only when she gives up her youthful insistence of gender ambivalence can she achieve marital attainment. Like Bleek, Q had to lose his ability to pursue his passion for basketball to be able to finally settle down.
Love Jones is a standard Hollywood romantic comedy set on Chicago’s segregated Southside. It weaves through the lives of a group of middle class college educated black friends, focusing on the romance of Darius and Nina. Darius, a writer, pursues Nina, a photographer, who plays (not so) hard to get. They have a casual sexual affair—“ just kickin’ it”, begin to “catch feelings” for each other, and use half-truths and other manipulative tactics to discover the other’s feelings. They break up, get back together, break up, and ultimately get back together.
Where do they learn the social workings of their sexuality? In discussing adolescent sexuality, which all of the behavior in this film points to, William Simon’s comments,
… the collapsing into a brief period -- some might say too brief -- of the time between the initial sense of oneself as a sexually significant person and the point at which regular socio sexual involvement occurs…. Most adolescents, then, find themselves within richly sexualized subcultures where there are modes of acting in sexually significant ways that are not necessarily genital in uses of language and costume, as well as pluralized definitions of relationships in which they are expected to be sexually involved. There is probably more social support for adolescent sexual activity by peers and others than has been known previously in modern Western experience. (81)

The peer relationship is paramount in their dealings with each other and their advising support systems. Yet when the married person, the group’s older statesman of sorts says, “falling in love is the easy part, but could somebody please tell me what to do to stay there?”, how does anyone learn anything?
Darius is a standard twenty-something male losing the women that he loves by “trying to be a player”. Although he is the economic, cultural, and educational antithesis of the nihilistic young men in Menace II Society and Baby Boy, his sexual behaviors are exactly the same. His behavior is endemic of many young middle class black men who are in short supply among their female counterparts. His “music video” mentality of spreading himself around to avoid getting “caught up” ultimately backfires. This environment breeds the lack of trust that ultimately destroys their relationship.
Although Nina’s sexuality is more developed than Monica’s, her behavior is not. We meet her reminiscing about love lost as she is packing up her life to start anew. When her best friend, Josie, asks when Nina is going to return her former fiancé’s ring she says, “I would if I knew where the hell he was. Or maybe I’ll just keep it as a reminder to never make the same mistake twice…[Josie: get engaged?]… No, falling in love. Because that shit is played out like an eight track”. Nina does not trust that she will be able to become vulnerable again because of the betrayal of her ex-fiancé; and like Angela in Boomerang, she is.
She then goes to a poetry reading where Darius creates a provocative poem for her on stage where he invokes African and African American literary and spiritual images along side of:
Hey girl- can I be your slave…who am I? It is not important. But they call me Brother To The Night and right now I’m the blues in your left thigh trying to become the funk in your right. Who am I? I’ll be whoever you say. But right now I’m a sight raped Hun blindly pursuing you as my prey. And I just want to give you injections of sublime erections and get you to dance to my rhythm…. Come on slim. Fuck your man, I ain’t worried about him….Cause rather than deal with the fallacy of this dry assed reality I’d rather dance and romance your sweet ass in a wet dream.

That poem sums up the course of their relationship in this film. Who is he? Does he even know? How will she know who he is? Dealing with the “fallacy of this dry assed reality” is called living life. It is not realistic or practical to believe he can live in the fantasy of a wet dream. It is an imaginary existence reinforced by the constant perpetuation of youthful sexual freedom. The superficiality of their ensuing relationship is reminiscent of teenagers who have sex and do not know how to communicate their feelings for each other because they do not understand them. They just know they do not want their feelings hurt and will do anything to not experience rejection.
Immediately after that performance, Josie reminds Nina about love being played out and Nina responds with a guilty look. As if she is thinking about love with a man she does not know. Who is talking about love? Physical attraction is not love or anything close to it. He just did an inappropriate sexual poem about a woman he had just met at the bar. Afterwards she tells him that he probably would not know anything about love, in front of his three male (and one female) friends who begin a teasing ritual about what they would do to her if it were them.
Darius then uses his female friend to get Nina’s information and shows up at her house after she had told him she was not interested. She acquiesces to a date, which after much back and forth and “I can’t go out on a first date like that,” she sleeps with him. He awakens the next morning and makes breakfast, signifying that he, like Marcus, is “pussy whipped”. Darius’s married friend Savon appropriately states, “when a man gets a hard- on, ya know where the blood come from, right? … His head and his feet. So A. he’s stupid and B. he can’t run.” Is that what a relationship is? Is that what adult sexual expression is? Stupid men who cannot move their feet? Nina, like Nola in She’s Gotta Have It, is just as trapped in her role of a sexual being as Darius is.
Rose identifies a certain amount of resentment and hostility by black men towards black women based on women’s ability to control sexual situations using rejection and manipulations of desire. She states, in discussing hip-hop lyrics, that black men have an “…intense desire for and profound mistrust of women. The capacity of a woman to use her sexuality to manipulate his desire for her purposes is an important facet of the sexual politics of the male raps about women” (173). Black male masculinity, though evolving, is still equated with his sexuality; only it is how the sexuality is viewed and used that changes its perception.
The childishness displayed on all fronts can not help but lead one to believe that the collapse of time Simon discusses, has stagnated their emotional growth and relegated the idea of love to be forever synonymous with sex and sexual desire/ longing. Fear of being “whipped” and losing their male power is unfortunately the same fear bonding these young men to their behaviors, regardless of how destructive they are in their lives.
Nina and Darius’ reconciliation occurred when they had a “perfect date”, this time at Nina’s invitation, which did not involve “bumpin’ and grindin’”. That night Nina denied Darius sex claiming to want to “save something for later” to which he replied “Baby, you ain’t gotta save mine for later, I’d rather have it right now anyway”. She then asks him to unzip her dress, she seductively walks up the stairs, aware of his gaze and picks out a sexy negligee to sleep in. The night ends with them dancing over a montage of her adopting his habit of smoking and various “intimate and romantic” scenarios with them as a couple, with his friends. We never see Josie again.
Even after Darius and Nina reconcile, their lack of communication and the emotional blackmail they exact on each other, shows that romance leads to sex, not a mutually loving relationship. Nina is once again dumped and once again longing. She moves to New York, comes back to Chicago to do a shoot and, seeing his book published and dedicated to her, finally decides to perform a poem on stage:
“I was hoping a certain someone would be here tonight, but I don’t see him, so I guess I’m gonna get it out anyway. Funny what you can do in a room full of people that you can’t even seem to do in front of one person…It is the color of light, the shape of sound high in the evergreens… I am tasting the wilderness of lakes, rivers and streams caught in an angle of song…. I am dancing a bright beam of light. I am remembering love.”

Darius catches her outside (soaking wet in a rain shower- he’s dry as a bone) and tells her “I want us to be together… for as long as we can be…this here right now is all that matters to me. I love you. And that’s urgent as a muthafucka” This harkens back to slave days when the slave master could permanently end the time spent with loved ones at any moment. The urgency to love was hard and fast. Though the possibility that love might at any moment be stolen from them is still a reality for black men in America, the perpetuation of that kind of speed, on top of the speeding up of sexualities in a postmodern arena, leaves little time for the kind of honest self reflection needed in a mutually loving relationship. It leaves no room for the “care of self” Foucault discusses.
Comparatively, Love and Basketball fares better in it is depiction of romantic love in the hopefulness that in Q holding the baby while Monica plays ball, he may have abandoned his patriarchal notions of family. However, the audience will never know. Though it still has the Pollyanna happily-ever-after ending, showing the contexts in which these young people interact reflects their familial socializations giving them more depth than their Love Jones counterparts. Yet the sexualized roles of the female leads still fit into traditional Hollywood madonna and whore scenarios. Monica’s alleged (the filmmaker chose not to show her with any other men) sexual mummification denies her the growth beyond her childhood relationship. Nina’s sleeping with her fiancé, a man who left her allegedly without a trace, while still “kickin’ it” with Darius and getting upset because she saw him with someone else, is infantile.
These films attempt but fail to do what bell hooks suggests of black filmmakers (women specifically) and take us outside “conventional racist and sexist stereotyping” (hooks, Reel to Real 212). Instead their imitative qualities of standard practices lead black female viewers to use an adjusted oppositional gaze. There is a level of recognition and identification, yet upon closer readings, and outside the readers’ own romantic paradigms, the immaturity of the relationships is heartbreaking. Particularly, since the filmic fantasy of finding love is so seductive.
In a demographic marriage is being postponed further and further (if ever), and the ratio of black men of similar class, emotional and educational levels not being equal , simply seeing young black people attempting love is refreshingly dangerous trap for young women bombarded with a steady stream of hip-hop cultures abusive images. The relief of seeing people on the big screen “representing” lives more closely related to middle class blacks experience could arguably increase identification with the fantasy. “[Claude Steele] argues that ‘devaluation grows out of our images of society and the way those images catalogue people. The catalogue need not be taught. It is implied by all we see around us: the kinds of people revered in advertising … and movies (black women are rarely seen as romantic partners, for example)…” (Harris 183). These films images of romantic relationships do make visible experiences not commonly seen between blacks while, I argue, reinforcing their verisimilitude, “the norms of motivation for ‘believable’ behavior, the requirements for effects to be shown to have causes and hence the demand for certain forms of narrative conventions” (Cowie 368).
I suggest that the social effects of such portrayals on the hip-hop generation have been multifold. First, was an increased lack of trust between black men and women. If a relationship is simply sexual then there is no emotional bonding. When images of sexual abandon and freedom, independent of any emotional connection, are perpetuated; blacks not participating in romantic relationships become normalized. If the emotional connection that leads to an emotionally equal relationship is absent then it not only leaves no room for vulnerabilities to exist, but also creates a space for disrespect to abound. Such is the space dominated by hip-hop videos.
Secondly, the lack of emotional bonding also reflects the significant decrease in black marriage. Marriage is viewed as an alternative relationship in black communities. When the marriages in these films are dysfunctional or unseen, where can we look for models to learn the skills necessary to sustain a committed monogamous relationship? When only older adults or whites are seen getting married, it moves outside of the hip-hop generation’s perception of attainable goals. Our expectations or even desire to marry is a fantasy we cannot afford to have because as a generation so thoroughly and constantly disappointed by our models of marriage and each other; the idea of creating that bond is scary and unfathomable.
Thirdly, friendships become a familial substitute, which increases the space for men and women to discuss everything together without the responsibilities of a romantic relationship. It creates a space for emotional bonding but does not foster the skills necessary to create lasting emotional communicatively intimate bonds within sexual relationships.

The Time

2005-10-08T12:39:00.000-04:00

The time is so short
Much like Herve Villachez
But not as severe
Maybe it is
It bites your knees too
Rockets don’t move fast enough
For the movements of the symphony
Yet we’re trapped inside the music
The notes locks us to this alleged reality
Releasing our souls to the next ethereal plane
While our bodies rot in this mortal shell
Expiring
Expired
like the milk they feed us
Because it’s for baby cows
Not for baby humans
Yet we refuse to believe that it’s
Killing us
And making us weak and fat
We capitalists are executing our purpose
Not dying steadily and constantly
An unnatural death of consumerism
Fueled by the light from the box that tells
The truth resting comfortably in the lies
It has grown to love
And we fight time
As if it’s our enemy
Instead of our teacher
Full of infinite wisdom
We’ve been told time and time again
From Charlamayne to Baldwin how it goes
And we as infinitely arrogant beings
Refuse to believe it
But whether we do or not
Time doesn’t care
And the lines around our smiles
Become our passport to our own destruction
While leading us to the ways of the past
Time laughs
At our arrogance and trepidation
And our race is lost
For by the time we understand the truth
We’re too old to do anything about it.
Ahh, sweet youth.
We certainly do shake it fast.
12/07/00

Luna-see

2005-10-08T12:36:00.000-04:00

maybe I’ll write a poem.
the full moon tomorrow.
yesterday.
last week.
cutting off circulation to my brain.
can’t think.
only emote madness.
crying
crying
are you crying too?
go hide behind the silver lining that hides your tears.
your pain of getting your face walked on while having so much work to do.
who thinks about that?
saying you’re made out of cheese-
well that must be painful.
how ridiculous.
but they say I’m made out of sugar and spice and everything nice.
they’ve always been idiots no matter who they are.
you have to control the tides,
calm the soul,
drive people mad with desire, lust ,anxiety, and fear
when you’re full of yourself.
any other time that damned sun tries to steal your glory
by concealing some of your splendor
until once a month
you’re gone.
but not the sun.
no
no
you won’t catch that bitch hiding-
not coming up at all
so why would she do that to you
i’ll get that sun.

Tuesday Afternoon

2005-10-08T12:32:00.000-04:00

Today
I stood over a pot of water
and it boiled
it was boring
but it boiled
I watched it
whoever said it wouldn’t
lied

the 21st century

2005-09-29T22:21:00.000-04:00

When one no longer differentiates
between the word and artificial reality
the clouds passing the moon become
rays of light protecting us from the
hole in the sky.
Madonna becomes the goddess of the
universe and what shines out of a
little box takes the place of the word
and holds all truths.
Moving through the earth becomes
natural and our feigned self-proclaimed
independence makes murderers of us all.
There is no word thus there is no truth.
We have changed the rules and there is only
chaos beneath the thin veneer of order.
Yet without this chaos we humans would
be forced to look within.
Into the most frightening place there is.
It’s much easier to go to the moon than
to look within ourselves.
At least we don’t know what’s on the moon.

who knows

2005-09-29T22:15:00.000-04:00

Stumbling out of the bowels
of the earth at 3:40 am weighed
down by what parts of my life
I could carry I dropped
my last cigarette.
Bloody Hell!
This is great.
It still fascinates me how this
whole life thing works.
How moments- seconds-
the time it takes to nuke leftovers
can completely uproot an entire existence.
Then as I lurched down the street
I heard someone’s alarm go off.
It’s Sunday morning and someone’s
life was just beginning again as it
did yesterday just as mine was
about to end.

Chapter II- When Ya Say Ya Love Me It Doesn't Matter- Goes Into My Head as Just Chitta Chatta: Black Womanhood

2005-09-29T22:08:00.000-04:00

Chapter II-
When Ya Say Ya Love Me It Doesn’t Matter-
Goes Into My Head As Just Chitta Chatta:
Black Womanhood

The black women portrayed in this chapter’s films are perceived as sexually manipulative, emasculating and untrustworthy. Simultaneously, these same characters are often developed in a way that supports sexist patriarchal models. For better or worse, newly re-sexualized images of black women update post-reconstructionalist racial stereotypes. When given an oppositional reading, the manipulative, licentious, Jezebel and emasculating, ball-busting Sapphire are more complex than they appeared. Within the confines of the given film texts, they are predictable and stereotypical. Based on the films I critique, these women are willing but unable to reach levels of emotional equality, communicative intimacy, and reciprocal vulnerability because of the lack of care and respect given to them by black men. The men in their lives treat them as objects for their pleasure with no thought of reciprocal care and support.
In the representations in these films, black women exist only in relation to the black men in their lives or lack of men thereof. The historical representations of black female strength and independence are now charged with the sexual energy and freedom the women’s movement provided for them. It could be argued that this strength and independence was largely based on the feminist notion of women not needing a man contradicting the reality of a lot of black women’s lives. They might not need a man, but many desire male companionship, comfort and care. Because of the lack of trust and expectations between black men and women, women’s desires are often unarticulated despite their actions betrayal of them.
The women in Boomerang, Mahogany, and She’s Gotta Have It are professional and upwardly mobile. They easily fitting into the hip-hop generations’ new mystique that black women are more economically stable than black men. The real economic hardships that plague the audiences were not these women’s concerns, furthering their role model positions in a filmic fantasy world and allowing their black female audience the fulfillment of their unspoken desires. In discussing the relationship between fantasy and the cinema, Elizabeth Cowie wrote,
…reality is realistic in representation insofar as it conforms to the accepted conventions of representing. ‘Realism’ in representation can be seen both as a defense against fantasy and as a ‘hook’, involving the spectator in the fantasy structure ‘unawares’, and thus as froe-pleasure. This making real of what isn’t real reaches an extraordinary culmination in cinema,… For not only does cinema offer the specularisation of fantasy, but it offers this as a real experience, at the level of auditor and visual perceptions (366).

The women in these films represent lives with no practical everyday difficulties and as such their main concern was ultimately satisfying their own desire for male attention and affection.
It must be noted here that while films like Daughters of the Dust, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Losing Ground, and 30 Years to Life by black female filmmakers such as Julie Dash, Leslie Harris, Kathleen Collins-Prettyman, and Vanessa Middleton are also important examples of how black women are portrayed in the context of black loving relations; I have chosen to focus upon three films that were key to mainstream cinema’s affect on the social development of women of the hip-hop generation. It is also important to note that when black women attain the opportunity to shape the portrayal of blacks in visual media, as Dash et al have, the portrayals begin to achieve the complexity and insight necessary to reach my definition of loving. Yet because these films were independently produced, they arguably have made little social impact on the relationship practices of members of the hip-hop generation because of limited mainstream distribution.
In Mahogany, Chicago aldermanic hopeful Brian Walker woos aspiring fashion designer Tracy Chambers. Their courtship is classic Hollywood romantic drama; except in classic Hollywood studio system, blacks were not allowed to play the ambitious man and the career girl roles. The chemistry between these two actors made the affections believable and textural.
Brian and Tracy are playful and affectionate-- behaviors not commonly seen in films featuring blacks until that point. (They have a similar dynamic in Lady Sings the Blues.) Williams courts her. They like each other and have a good time together. They fight, laugh and love together; even moving toward reciprocal vulnerability and communicative intimacy. They do not achieve emotional equality because Brian is too resistant to Tracy’s ambitions. She finds a way to create a space for herself in Chicago to aid him in his campaign and show her designs, despite his insistence that his work was more important than hers. She is supportive of his dreams, which by films end he never attains, while in the same time span she has lived what seems like two lifetimes but is incomplete without him.
Brian and Tracy’s relationship mirror the social changes of the black community as a whole. Their love being torn apart reflects other social conflicts of the mid-late 1970’s. Each character shows a side of the black struggle for identity after the civil rights movement. Brian’s main concern is the rebuilding and empowerment of the black community. He wants to do the grassroots work necessary for self-sufficiency. Tracy wants to reap the benefits of desegregation and explore her identity by moving outside of the community to experience the different social and cultural milieu that has been made more accessible. She uses her body to get there. Like her ambitious and misguided artistic progeny of the rest of the century participating in “a wide variety of videos, photos and other aspects of creative production and marketing, women who are called “hotties” or more derogatorily “video hoes” or “skeezers” are willing participants in their own exploitation” (Rose 169).
She loves him but she wants to see life outside of the South Side of Chicago while for Brian his life is the South Side of Chicago. She supports and respects Brian’s political aspirations, while he feels she should spend more time helping him empower black people than making pretty dresses for white ladies to wear.
Jane Gaines describes the larger social struggle between Brian and Tracy as the “two struggles which structure the film: the struggle over the sexual objectification of Tracy’s body in the face of commercial exploitation, and the struggle of the black community in the face of class exploitation. But the film identifies this antagonism as the hostility between fashion and politics, embodied respectively by Tracy and Brian, and it is through them that it organizes conflict and, eventually, reconciliation” (407).
Tracy leaves Chicago, goes to Rome, and becomes a supermodel named “Mahogany” by the psychotic photographer who discovers her. Brian is confronted by the world she desires and inhabits versus the Tracy he loves. Tracy now internally identifies with the egotistical objectification thusly becoming “Mahogany”. They fight in her apartment when she tells him nobody loves him because he is a loser and he tells her “success means nothing without someone you love to share it with". This conflict corresponds with the women’s liberation movement and the common teaching that women do not need men. She eventually comes back to Chicago after becoming a huge success in Europe. He asks her if she will love, cherish, and stand by her man if she got him back to which she emphatically answers, “YES!” ending the movie with their kiss.
How is this loving? Since the movie is posited from Mahogany’s point of view, the audience sees her transformation from poor art student/ department store secretary to super model to “mega hit” designer. We witness firsthand the selling of pieces of her self associated with success in the “white world”. She sold her imagined self back into the mainstream and was rewarded for it. The adoration she receives from her fans and friends eventually “means nothing” because she does not have her black man “to share it with.” Yet, Tracy’s emotionally unequal relationship with Brian does not provide the space for her to articulate her desire to be loved for herself (whoever that is) and not simply for her accomplishments. She apparently abandons her success for a man who cannot acknowledge her beyond his own desires; and does not appreciate or respect her hard work and personal sacrifices regardless of agreeing with her goals or not. Black female personal sacrifice for black males has historically been a linchpin in the Civil Rights movements.
Brian believes personal sacrifices must be made for collective freedom. Despite her successes, he was the fulfillment of a middle class dream of creating success within the black community to create economic, social and political control. This control rests on the perpetuation of a patriarchal model. Middle class success was not only financially rewarding, but also garnered the distinction of being a credit to the race. Tracy must fit into his world because he is not interested in understanding hers. Black women are shown that their safety and survival relies on standing behind black men. Brian’s constant and unwavering loyalty to black people makes him a hero despite his inability to empathize with his female counterpart’s dreams. By offering herself sexually to a white man, after rejecting the black man who loves her-- regardless of their interpersonal problems, she must be punished. The perspective outcome of this film can only be that black women’s sexuality is for black male use only regardless of the level of care, understanding and support reciprocated.
Tracy is punished for her individualistic counterrevolutionary and emasculating actions; first by a near fatal car accident at the hands of her original white savior, the fashion photographer, after his failure to perform sexually with her. She is punished a second time, for the same reason, after her second white savior finances her clothing line and expects her to sleep with him as repayment. These examples reinforce the idea that white men only want black women for sex and black women- to attain social status and financial security- are willing to give it to them, thus proving their licentiousness.
The moral of the story becomes how Tracy-cum-Mahogany demonstrates trusting whites corrupts success causing one to lose one’s self and the adoption of their standards leads to destruction. Or perhaps Mahogany/ Tracy comes to the realization that, despite the sacrifices made by those who worked to get her the freedom to even become Mahogany, in order to be in a loving relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability and communicative intimacy- sacrifice of self must be made. We do not know. All we get to see is that she misses Brian and leaves her life as a designer in Rome behind to return to him. Her personal desires and motivations other than Brian are unspoken.
He loves her, and she loves him. They are going to compromise (well -- she is going to compromise) to build together on the South Side of Chicago. It is Mahogany’s sexuality and exoticism that made her a star in Rome. On the South Side, she gets to be Tracy and to be a star because her man is a star. This film supports the patriarchal black bourgeois standard of life that corresponded with traditional civil rights and Black Nationalist traditions in the midst of the black filmic sexual revolution occurring around it.
It reinterpreted the classical patriarchal models of romantic dramas of the ‘30’s and 40’s when career girls chose having husbands and families as enough to fulfill them. We do not know if she really had to give up her dream, but the movie’s ending shows that he definitely is not, and she is definitely going to be with him. Ultimately, Mahogany had to relinquish her power and status to get her man, because she had to have a man.
As the social climate changed and the idealism of the civil rights movement became the bitter reality of the Reagan years, the gulf between classes widened and many blacks were struggling to make ends meet. The new burgeoning middle class was still reaping the benefits of their material comfort and position. Young women and men were exploring the new opportunities as Tracy did, only with the egotism of the “me” generation.
As a sexually liberated woman rejecting black middle class sexual mores, Nola Darling in She’s Gotta Have It, is supposedly an independent, honest and self-sufficient woman who has to have “it” – it being sex. She surrounds herself with black men whose insecurities (which were not touched upon during the machismo of Blaxploitation but felt much more under Reagan’s thumb) are more readily seen. Her male entourage not only sexually fulfills her, but also each represents something different for her. There was Greer, the precocious Buppie fashion model; Mars, the comedic underemployed homeboy; and Jamie, the sensitive blue-collar stoic. They were all parts of a whole. This greedy desire to create one man out of three is the same cynical behavior hooks believes, “leads young adults to believe there is no love to be found and that relationships are needed only to the extent that they satisfy desires… Relationships are like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable…Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. And friendships or loving community cannot be sustained” (All About Love 116). Greer best described her behavior when he said that Nola had created a " 3 headed-, 6 armed-, 6 legged-, 3 penised- monster". All of whom have more control over her body and mind than she does. Jamie kept asking her what she was looking for and she could not articulate her feelings.
Nola spouts a self-controlled dogma but behaves as a woman fully self-identifying with the role each of the men assigned to her. Like Tracy in Rome, Nola neglects the responsibility of self-definition because her self worth is based on her ability to perform sexually and be seen as a sexual object. Tracy and Nola both are reflective subjects in the eyes of those who look at them. “The mirror image can no more be assimilated than any…privileged objects, yet the subject defines itself entirely in relation to it. As a consequence of the irreducible distance which separates the subject from its ideal reflection, it entertains a profoundly ambivalent relationship to that reflection. It loves the coherent identity which the mirror provides. However, because the image remains external to it, it also hates the image” (Silverman 344).
It could be argued that Nola’s behavior, like the young women in music videos, is a “sort of exchange in which women do the pursuing can be interpreted as a mode of female empowerment. These women are choosing their sexual partners (more aggressively than most women do in regular situations) and collecting sexual experiences not unlike men do” (Rose 169-70). What Nola is really doing is trying to sexually satisfy an unknown desire due to her lack of self-reflection. Tracy was of a different generation and saw her sexuality as a patriarchal transaction for material gain while Nola’s is endemic of a generation of people defined from the outside with little interiority.
Writer/ director Spike Lee’s imitation of the dominant cinematic traditional male gaze dictates that his depiction of a sexually free woman equates her with being a freak. Nola hated the word "freak" like she hated the word "normal". Greer tells her that she needed psychiatric help, that maybe she was a nympho. Only to have a female doctor tell her that she has a normal, healthy sex drive. The doctor tells her that total female sexuality begins with the beautiful sex organ between her ears not between her legs. Nola does not take that affirmation to a level of self-reflection, and continues to relate her own self worth only as a sexual being. Despite the use of monologue through out the film, Nola is only a mouthpiece for male desire and fantasy. The initial reading is that Nola and her partners are having a confluent love affair. “Confluent love,” Giddens writes:
…develops as an ideal in a society where almost everyone has the chance to become sexually accomplished; and it presumes the disappearance of the schism between ‘respectable’ women and those who in some way lie outside the pale of orthodox social life. Unlike romantic love, confluent love is not necessarily monogamous, in the sense of sexual exclusiveness (63).

Nola’s alleged control of her own sexual agency was a smoke screen to disguise a misogynistic sexist work pretending to be about black female sexuality. Nola’s consent to rape is not about loving. As she says, “It's really about control. It's my body, my mind. Who's gonna own it? Them or me?" Unfortunately, those questions go unanswered. During Jamie's attack on Nola he was barking the question "whose pussy is this?" to which Nola's declared that it was his, simultaneously giving him the power and the orgasm he required. In the end, Nola became the victim of what could have been an interesting discussion on black female sexual empowerment—if she actually had any power.
Nola is “a patriarchal design: the sexually and mentally dispossessed woman whose body is a conquered terrain where men game, hunt, and create territorial boundaries through dating, marriage, and paternity. Nola’s relationship to Jamie, Mars, and Greer reflects such a patriarchal construct. Her dependence on them resembles the colonized racial object’s relationship to the sociopsychic forces that construct the colonized” (Reid 96). There is little space in these films for a woman to have control over her own body. The three men’s insistence on dominion over Nola’s body negates her personal desires. Despite the display of Nola’s sexual freedom, inevitably she is still a male creation who allows herself to be controlled by not one but three men.
Boomerang‘s female protagonists, when positioned beside Nola and Tracy, are the culmination of a group of traits common among black female portrayals; but transformed in several interesting ways. Boomerang is a film about gender role reversal. It shows how a sexually compulsive man would react if his behaviors were exacted upon him.
Jacqueline and Angela are the counterparts to Indigo and Clarke in Mo’ Betta Blues. All of the women are dealing with a “doggish” man, Marcus. Only Jacqueline is the female version of a non-committal man. Jacqueline is sexy, sexual and holds a more powerful position over Marcus, who is used to being in that position thus idealizing Jacqueline the perfect woman to him. Her perfection is rooted in his attachment to superficial attractions since he never develops relationships past their sexual level.
All of the tricks and romantic manipulations Marcus routinely uses to seduce women backfire with Jacqueline. Yet, when she reappropriates his own manipulations against him, he easily succumbs. Marcus is not used to socializing with women in this way, in any way outside of the sexual. Jacqueline turns Marcus into the “woman” in the relationship. She reduces him to the vulnerable position usually occupied by women.
During one of their love making sessions she is on top of him asking him “who’s is it?” as Jamie did Nola, only this is consensual in that Marcus does not want to have an orgasm and have this woman have such control over his sexual pleasure. Interestingly, in director Reginald Hudlin’s DVD commentary, he states that “since the whole movie turns on him being ‘pussy whipped’, we really wanted to deliver the moment where he’s broke down” and this scene, after the sex act Marcus covers himself with a sheet, is the “visual summation of the premise of the movie ‘cause it’s such a girlish action that he suddenly feels naked and violated.” Jacqueline is therefore the ultimate emasculator, even reducing him to sucking his thumb. Bram Dijkstra states “[m]edical science had shown that indiscriminate indulgence permitted women to absorb ever more of their mate’s ‘masculinity.’ Thus, from a biological point of view, women were growing stronger the more promiscuous they were, while men were growing weaker with each encounter” (Dijkstra 350-1).
Angela is the “good girl” redemptive figure in Marcus’ life. She was the friend on the sidelines that his compulsion led him to after being emasculated by Jacqueline. She was the one who could reap the benefits of his newfound sensitivity only to have him lie to and cheat on her with Jacqueline in an effort to regain his manhood. Yet, she did not just sit back and take it like Indigo – she acted. She did not allow herself to be used and acquiesce to a man-sharing situation. She him left after confronting him honestly (and slapping him).
Her self worth was more valuable than just having a man around. She expressed to him how being vulnerable leaves one open to heartbreak by selfish people. She too controlled her own situation, but the relationship still highlighted the lack of trust between men and women. When she left- she left and did not look back. She went on to try to find herself and heal and just before she became too hardened; he came back. He came back to her months later with his new sense of love and having reprioritized his life told her he knew he loved her.
Angela and Jacqueline had been friends. In all of the films mentioned, the women have none of the female bonding the men do. (All of these films are also directed by men.) Black women are only given a voice in her bed and are voluntarily isolated from any supportive feminine contact. Men do not discuss women’s intimate friendships for fear of making visible partnerships where they are not the focus, much like the dominant media’s overall treatment of black sexuality. The unbalanced ratio of black men to black women in America breeds a culture of mistrust among black women vying for the attention of a lot of sexually compulsive men. The women in these films are in social and economic situations that make it difficult to have a larger pool of eligible candidates. Yet it is the lack of sisterhood that makes their lives appear empty when there is not a man around. Given these examples, it follows that lack of trust between women leads to a lack of loving in everyday life.
Since this was a mainstream studio production, Angela and Marcus reconcile because he realized he loved her and she loved him. She expressed her fear to him and trusted that he would not disappoint her again. But the final scene is of them walking off into the sunset discussing the new relationship. She wants to retain the autonomy she developed further during their separation. There is still a lack of trust, but more of a hope for trust. Angela, like Indigo, gets her man but she has more of a sense of herself than Indigo was felt to have, but Angela’s character was more developed than Indigo’s. She is more of a person than Indigo, Clarke, Tracy or Jacqueline.
Jacqueline was what Nola’s character was supposed to be. Jacqueline is comfortable having a sexual relationship with Marcus, only unlike Nola, she really is in control of her own sexual performance. She does not want anything from him but sex, and it appears that is all he has to offer her from her point of view. She is his boss and, like him, power turns her on. The power she has over men and the power the men hold turn her on. After Marcus became “pussy whipped”, according to the director, he became unattractive to her. She was the patriarchal ideal of manhood in a woman's body without being masculine. It was an interesting gender switch. Jacqueline emasculated and feminized him by not acquiescing to his machinations. By not falling into the role he assigned to women, when she did not behave as he expected or needed her to, he assumed the feminine role. Jacqueline did this through both the power of her sex and the power of her position. This is a change from Mahogany’s Tracy who needs to share her success with a man. “In analyzing data collected from graduates of 28 selective colleges and universities, sociologist Donna Franklin found evidence of serious trouble with marriages where the wife was the dominant wage earner. The black women surveyed were much more likely than white women to have husbands who earned less; those who had been married were also more than twice as likely to have gotten divorced” (Cose “The Black Gender Gap”). This view of financially successful black women could arguably lead tot he conclusion that they only need black men for sexual satisfaction which further deepens the schism between black men and women.
The social effects of these particular portrayals is a general disrespect for women by black men, women’s acceptance of commodifiying hyper visual sexualization as reality, and the lack of expectation of love. Mahogany, She’s Gotta Have It, and Boomerang are three popular and easily accessible films available to the young women of the hip-hop generation when they were developing a sense of their places as women in this world.
The indifference for the personal and emotional well being of the women in these films reflects the cultural acceptance of disrespect and disregard for black women. This disrespect manifests itself in physical and emotional abuse by black men toward black women. Brian, for example, was not physically abusive toward Tracy, (as Jamie was to Nola), yet his lack of support does not emotionally foster the love he expected from her. His leaving her was a punishment of her success. The appearance of black female survival, within the mores of patriarchy, feminizes black men, as shown by Marcus’ character in relation to Jacqueline. The inability to perform the much-desired male patriarchal role contributes to the lack of social power and position. This, I believe, is one of the factors that led to the explosion of sexually degrading images of black women in music videos. This lack of trust in black women’s success leads black male media producers to create images of black women that feed into the white supremacist stereotypes of black women under the auspices of “celebration” of black female sexuality. On the other hand, the new common description of women as gold diggers and the popularization of that image in songs and videos displays the schizophrenic relationship black men have with black women. While black women are complicit in still showing up for the music video casting calls to populate these images, the artists could create work that is not so unloving.
The media’s constant assault on black women as hypersexual, compounded with the lack of care being offered by black men, leads many women to accept and manifest the ontology of the images presented of them. Laura Mulvey discussed women’s exhibitionist role as a “to-be-looked-at-ness” in terms of the male gaze and male desire (383). Yet when examining the racialized fetish of the black woman who is simultaneously sexualized and desexualized, that same degree of “looked-at-ness” becomes an acknowledgement of existence. When in the white American beauty/ value aesthetical hierarchy what is most valued is the antithesis of the black American cultural aesthetic of beauty, the desire to be desired- or even seen trumps the respect due her as a human being. “Clearly, negative stereotypes and myths regarding black women's sexuality are prevalent within American culture and reflect her devalued position within it. That such falsehoods persist, that they are continuously propagated in the literature and mass media, speak directly to black women's oppressed status in American society. It is as a result of their powerlessness that so often they are denied the freedom of self-definition, and instead must struggle constantly to ‘defy culturally imposed negative identities’ (qtd. in Brown and McNair). Black men, in hip-hop for example, reappropriate these negative identities and appear to honor them while simultaneously doling out emotionally abusive lyrics to songs or dialogue in movies (such as, worshipping shapely thighs and calling women “hos” at the same time), further deepening the distrust between black men and women.
When black women do not feel respected by the men they historically love and care for, they have no expectations of being in committed loving relationships with black men therefore they settle for non-loving sexual situations. The fear of vulnerability among the hip-hop generations women is a fear to expose themselves to men who now actively participate in a culture that has commodified hatred of black women. “Black male hip-hop artists who receive the most acclaim are busy pimping violence; peddling the racist/sexist stereotypes of the black male as primitive predator” (hooks, Cool 60). Salt, of hip-hop group Salt ’N’ Pepa, succinctly sums up the growing feeling among young black women: “I just want to depend on myself. I feel like a relationship shouldn’t be emotional dependence. I, myself, am more comfortable when I do not depend on hugs and kisses from somebody that I possibly won’t get. If I don’t get them then I’ll be disappointed. So if I get them, I’ll appreciate them” (qtd. in Rose 175).

Chapter I- Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile: Black Manhood

2005-09-28T09:15:00.000-04:00

Chapter I-
Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile:
Black Manhood

I argue that black loving relationships are not present in most films with black male protagonists. Portrayals of black men in the context of black loving relations are dysfunctional. Black manhood is represented in its various sexually compulsive forms with an underlying sexist nihilistic thug mentality regarding women.
Sweet Sweetback Baadassss Song contextualizes the moment black male sexuality becomes overtly visible. The film opens with a child having sex with a whore in a brothel. We learn that this child is Sweetback and that the brothel is his home. Sweetback grows up to be a sexual performance artist. He is the epitome of the sexual buck; all show and no substance. His overt sexuality is the physical manifestation of the sexualized racist mythology that got black men lynched in the early 20th century. In the restricted environment of his home (a brothel) his sexuality is controllable; but director Melvin Van Peebles allows Sweetback’s sexual identity to explode onto the street to become a revolutionary stance against oppression.
Sweetback uses his sexuality as an expression of his control over himself and his situation. Instead of just saying "Fuck You!" he actually does it by performing in sexual shows. Sweetback as an erotic figure, is the " paradoxical, distinctively masculine potential of the phallus...threatening to penetrate others..." so that he can thusly "absorb the whole world into himself" (Katz 113). The only control Sweetback has over his life is through sex, like the men in the other films discussed in this chapter. They are all playing out the sexualized roles prescribed to them from the dominant cultural milieu.
Sweetback was programmed, in his abusively sexualized childhood environment, that his survival and self worth were defined by his sexual performance. Even when not in that environment, he continues to use sexual performance as a method of survival. Facing capture by the police, he feigned sexual intercourse with a black woman who concealed Sweetback’s face. He projected his sexual pathology onto her, and it became intertwined with her protection. It was not just the community’s refusal to “rat him out”, but black women protecting a black man who they believe is working to make them free.
When cut while running, he makes a salve of urine and semen that helps harden his wound, thus saving his life. His sexuality, again, saved him. The primitivism of his survival techniques is similar to that discussed by bell hooks, “….black male bodies were not coming to the new world obsessed with sexuality; they were coming from worlds where collective survival was more important than the acting out of sexual desire, and they were coming into a world where survival was more important than sexual desire” (Cool 69). The marriage of sexual “desire” and survival all but eliminates the physical and emotional connections between desire and sexuality. It reduces sex to the performance of an individualistic physical act.
The performance aspect of Sweetback’s sexuality signals an emptiness that mirrors that of the world. Sweetback, like many of his black male counterparts who do have a voice, has no interiority. He wields his sexuality like a badge of honor because he has created his identity based singularly on his sexuality. The choice to make him the type of silent hero unlike his filmic antithesis the intellectualized integrated characters Sidney Poitier played made him a new figure in black visual life. Yet this silence provides no insight into the character of a man whose sexually abusive childhood has debased him into a sexual puppet. Sweetback is all show. There is no emotion behind his actions, and he personifies the stoic silences of abused men who continue the cycle of abuse. This sexist dismissal of black women as props for black men was the legacy of the Black Nationalist and Civil Rights movements. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song was required viewing for the Black Panthers, reaffirming the idea that racial political goals could not incorporate the discussion of the objectification black female body.
Sweetback’s character provided the prototype for the black male stud of Blaxploitation era films as well as most of the hero/ antiheros for the black male driven film vehicles of the 1990’s. Films such as Superfly, The Mack, Shaft, and numerous others depict black men as superstud with no regard for their sexual partners outside of any relation to themselves. Relationships with women were there to prove their own masculinity. While fulfilling racial revenge fantasies, black male film heroes also imitated their white male counterparts enacting their own version of phallocentric manhood.
These were the films older hip-hop generationers were exposed to during the 1970’s and then rediscovered during the early 1990’s. Blaxploitation employed pseudo-politically driven themes, initially, in that they were generally about racial revenge and pretended to demolish the servile stereotypical roles blacks had previously been relegated to in the dominant cultural and social arenas. Yet many of the films politics served more commercial vehicles supporting the white supremacist status quo than as anything that had black liberation or love in mind.
Black intraracial sexuality took a key revolutionary role in these films because of it had been historically ignored. In white America the justification for the separation of the races was to eliminate the risk of black men having sex with white women. In black community institutions, the upper and middle classes that are traditionally in leadership positions are also sexually conservative to the point of silence. West states:
But these grand yet flawed black institutions refused to engage one fundamental issue: black sexuality. Instead they ran from it like the plague.....In short, struggling black institutions made a Faustian pact with white America: avoid any substantive engagement wit black sexuality and your survival on the margins of American society is, at least, possible (124).

Sexuality was also a source of shame because of the importance whites gave it: the slightest hint of sexual impropriety could get one killed. The reality of black men’s lives is often the antithesis of emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy. When the thug mentality is about street survival, the fundamentals of a loving human relationship are outside of the parameters of survival, leaving one open to cracks in the armor of invincibility of the street. To care too much for anyone, even one’s self, makes one vulnerable.
Drug dealing, pimping and unbridled individualism, as portrayed in the Blaxploitation classic Superfly also came to define the black male dominated film boom of the 1990’s. The visual representations of black manhood in Superfly encapsulate the general mood of most of the Blaxploitation films. The story of Youngblood Priest, a drug dealer and pimp, who wants to get out of the game, contains one of the sexiest love scenes between blacks on film. Priest and Georgia, strategically covered in bubbles in the bath set to Curtis Mayfield’s sensual and revolutionary soundtrack is a beautiful scene amidst a misogynistic, unloving, counterrevolutionary film. Donald Bogle in Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Film observes in that Superfly’s sex scene “like the sex scenes in other black films…frequently was more graphic and lingering than any such scene in white movies of the time and looked as if it had been inserted simply to play on the legend of blacks’ high-powered sexuality. While the movies assiduously sought to avoid the stereotype of the asexual tom, they fell, interestingly enough, into the trap of presenting the wildly sexual man” (240). It was gratuitous in that it did nothing to drive the plot or give any insight into the characters. Sex was a transaction to Priest because he was after all, a pimp. Despite his tenderness with his “main lady,” it did not stand in the way of his plan to flood his community with enough drugs to finance his freedom or cheating on Georgia.
The stereotype of the nihilistic drug dealing thug in films such as Menace II Society and Baby Boy that dominated the visual landscape of the early 1990’s continues through today, now mostly in music videos. With Blaxploitation’s renaissance in the early 1990’s, the hip-hop generation was reintroduced to these images when their reality closely paralleled those represented in those films. “The Hughes brothers gave us horrific displays of Black-on-Black youth violence at a time when young violent criminals were being labeled ‘super-predators’ and experts lamented the rise of youth crime, predicting a 20-25 percent increase in the youth population by 2006” (Kitwana 127). It was when America’s essential underground drug economy was being glorified and demonized simultaneously. The drug boom of the 1980’s created a new brand of drug dealer that was young and black, with nothing to lose. This model of behavior is the dominant thematic model for many of today’s music videos. Young men, who were then the problem of the day on the nightly news, are now marketing fodder in popular entertainment.
In films such as Menace II Society and Baby Boy, black male sexuality is defined by and for young men through peer interactions and emulations. There are adult males present in these films but the peer-oriented nature of the male fraternization is poignant. “Women are discussed as less valuable than drugs and money, including endless references to Black women as ‘bitches,’ ‘hos,’ and “skeezers.’ Furthermore, abusive and violent language is used indiscriminately to describe all women, including those with whom the leading characters were most intimate” (Kitwana 130). These films show a cross section of class representations yet at base black male sexuality is still closely linked to a nihilistic thug mentality. The nihilism of the male characters in terms of love, which has more to do with sex than any emotional vulnerability, is representative in their relationships with women.
In Menace II Society, the relationship between Caine and Ronnie is the only space Caine receives any loving care. Caine’s life is one of violence and a general disregard for human life. Only in his relationship with Ronnie does he find a safe harbor where he can open himself up emotionally and attempt to lovingly care for someone else. Nelson George writes, “Without sucking her teeth or flaunting a ‘ghetto’ accent, [actress Jada] Pinkett’s Ronnie shows the growth of an urban woman child from gangster moll to suddenly mature mother. As a homegirl free of clichés Pinkett gives Menace a feminine souls and offers Caine salvation, both romantically and with her dream of them building a life…” (204). While Ronnie’s love and affections offer Caine a place to explore his own vulnerabilities. (It is important to note George’s prescribed idea of black female behavior. Being without “homegirl clichés” defines her as mature.)
Street life leaves no room for vulnerabilities and Ronnie’s love cannot erase Caine’s past. Despite all of the murder he has both borne witness to and participated in, it is his creation of life that ultimately leads to his own murder. Caine’s sexuality was not like Sweetback in that Sweetback’s “ability to perform skillfully require[d] the discipline of a soldier intent upon killing the enemy; such a performance cannot be interpreted as primitive lust nor a reflection of emotional desire” (Reid 77). Caine’s primitive existence is based only on desire. All things and people become material to satisfy his lust. When a young woman he casually had sex with calls him crying, telling him she’s pregnant; he dismisses her after questioning the paternity of the child because he has no regard for anything outside of his desires. She was a receptacle of his desire and is now the potential mother of his unborn child.
Kitwana observes that “[a]lthough the stigma has retreated, the expressions ‘baby momma’ and ‘baby daddy’ point to the antagonism brewing between young Black men and women who make these dubious social connections” (116). The “baby mama/ daddy” situation agitates the already precarious relationship between black men and women. Unwed parenthood is not hip-hop generation specific, its lack of stigma is. For Caine, the price of this “dubious social connection” is death, as violence ultimately was the answer for an ill-fated sexual encounter. He was not afforded the opportunity to live with the consequences of his actions, unlike Jody in Baby Boy.
Baby Boy, like Menace discusses the nihilist worldview of young black men, only it speaks more to the sexual obsessions of the men who feel they have no control over their lives. Jody is introduced to the audience as an adult embryo in the womb. His life is that of a child with the ability to spread his seed throughout the neighborhood. Upon returning from a brief incarceration, he returns to his childhood room with nothing to do but have sex, live off of his two ‘baby mammas’ and his own mother.
His maternal dependency is replicated within his two sexual relationships. He expects these women to provide for him and when they do not he accuses them of not caring for him. His mother is portrayed as young mother trying to still have a life after raising her son to adulthood. She insists that he grow up, but it is obvious he hasn’t been given the skill set to do so. Like Caine at the end of Menace, Jody wants to do something, but does not know how or what and is not given any guidance. Jody’s identity is his sexuality -- like Caine and Sweetback before him. When confronted by Yvette, his main ‘baby momma’, about the reality of his cheating, unproductive economic situation and his life in general, he flees and begins a new sexual relationship. He ultimately does not complete his new sexual transaction, but the compulsion to gain a sense of power through sexual means shows his immature emotional development. For hooks, “Equating manhood with fucking, many black men saw status and economic success as synonymous with endless sexual conquest” (Cool 71). Jody seems to solve his problems through his ability to sexually satisfy young women. The young men in these films are moving through life with no sense of a non-sexualized self. Even attempting emotional equality, communicative intimacy or reciprocal vulnerability is outside of their frame of reference.
Lack of emotional maturity cannot be seen as simply a symptom of the hip-hop generations’ youth. When looking for contemporary models of behavior, Spike Lee (with his proliferation of black visual images) is poignant because despite his sexism, as an older member of the hip-hop generation, his view on manhood is highly regarded. When applied to representations of older black men the hip-hop generationers could emulate, the same behaviors exist even in the absence of financial and social woes.
In Spike Lee’s Mo’ Betta Blues, the same lack of caring for women’s feelings or even existence as seen in Baby Boy and Menace, is also exacted by the film’s male protagonist, Bleek. Mo’ Betta Blues creates a love square between a man, two women and his music. This film’s emotional nihilism supercedes the materialist aspects of the previously discussed films yet the lack of trust and respect for black women and their bodies still provide the narrative with its dominant force. Bleek is a jazz musician who is dedicated to his music and engaged in sexual relationships with two women who know about each other. One of his “lovers”, Clarke, tells him “We don’t make love because you don’t love me... but I’ll take some of that mo’ betta. [sex]”. In hooks’ discussion of the film, “…he is unable to see the ‘value’ of the two black women who care for him. Indeed, scenes where he makes love to Clarke and alternately sees her as Indigo and vice versa suggest the Dixie cup sexist mentality (i.e., all women are alike). And even after his entire world has fallen apart, he never engages in a self-critique that might lead him to understand that phallocentrism (he is constantly explaining himself by saying’ it’s a dick thing’) has blocked his ability to develop a mature adult identity, has rendered him unable to confront pain and move past denial” (Black Looks 105).
The women are interchangeable objects that fulfill his sexual needs, not individuals who have any thoughts or feelings without reference to Bleek. Lee reinforces their irrelevance to Bleek by never letting the audience experience these women’s personal lives. When Clarke asks for his support and possible assistance in attaining her singing goals, he is literally unable to hear her. Like Baby Boy’s Yvette, Clarke’s desire to fulfill her own life is dramatized as her being a manipulative shrew, as opposed to Indigo’s quiet victim. Bleek is caught in a web of his own selfishness, and the women are distractions- literally something to do outside of his homosocial jazz world. To love one woman would take him away from his art. They exist only to satisfy his sexual needs.
It takes his complete destruction to make him decide to marry Indigo. Indigo, like Ronnie believes through patience and by ignoring his lies and disrespect, she can change him. In this film, a man must reach a point where he identifies his incompleteness before he can commit to marriage. Bleek and Indigo’s lives literally become a mirror of Bleek’s childhood familial structure. It is not of his own desire that he becomes emotionally available, let alone vulnerable to this woman. It is only after his life becomes unmanageable yet still absent self-reflection that he is able to commit. It could be argued that his “settling down” and marrying Indigo is exactly that. Since he is incapable of performing music, which is his first love, he settles comfortably into a monogamous patriarchal structure where he has some control.
The concept of love within committed relationships (such as marriage) is, arguably, an alien concept to hip-hop generationers because they rarely see it work or desired within their age demographic. It could also be assumed that marriage is often position as something done only by “old people”. The singularity of sexuality as the discursive space by which black males exist necessitates that certain other imagery (namely black loving relations and family) be ignored. The result is an increase in transactional relationships, which are “relatively uncommitted and often meant to be short-term.” (“Survey”). The skills necessary to develop lasting committed connections such as honesty, mutual respect, and care are not nurtured while sexual promiscuity is celebrated. These conflicting messages create ambivalence about marriage and committed relationships among the hip-hop generation.
The images created in this filmic space were reinforced by the music and music videos of the time. In Menace a powerful example of the marriage of music to film (which provided a summer’s worth of music videos) was when Caine was preparing his drug product for sale to Too $hort’s “Dopeman”,
The choice of music, the gangsta rap song ‘Dopeman’, provides an additional layer of meaning. The lyrics describe dope dealers as lecherous entrepreneurs who supply illegal substances to a community of desperate drug addicts. The composition of the sequence skillfully portrays the dilemma that confronts black youth like Caine: whereas participation in the underground economy is an attempt to gain advantage over a social and economic system that has little use for poor youth beyond menial labor, this lifestyle also establishes a counterideology that functions mainly to exacerbate the already wretched conditions of ghetto poverty (Watkins 209).

The male dominated world of hip-hop through the 1990’s into the 21st century flaunts a “keeping it real” drug dealing/ pimp mentality. The argument for “keeping it real” is how many urban youth’s accept the reality of the limitations of their lives. Glorifying ghetto life with a tough nonchalance backed up with the sexual drama of the “bad boy”, many black men use this glorification as a shield against the real hopelessness of their situations. In the 1990’s a new crop of young black male filmmakers created a body of work that re-created images of sexualized thuggery. With rap music (as film soundtrack) and using rap music videos as commercials; images of misogyny and violence became the lingua franca of the end of the century.
Cultural and social incidents such as the rape convictions of boxer Mike Tyson and rapper Tupac Shakur informed cultural production while stirring controversy regarding black male sexual stereotypes. At a time when hip-hop music videos were dominated by men creating patriarchal images for and of each other, “[f]or many young black feminists, the support their male peers gave Tyson and Tupac reinforced the overwhelming evidence that many Black men do not like or respect Black women. Increasingly, the feeling is mutual. Although this attitude is not universal among young Blacks, it is such a significant segment of our generation that it has become apparent in our day-to-day interactions. For some, the feeling has crossed the line beyond resentment to hatred” (Kitwana 106). These incidents not only increased black male and female fragmentation, but the mainstream media’s involvement exacerbated an already unpleasant situation. Gendered battle lines were drawn as to who was believed and in the midst of it; the lack of trust between black men and women became woefully apparent.
Emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are outside of mainstream male homosocial practices. As evidenced by this chapter’s discussion of popular mainstream films, since black manhood is so steeped in sexuality, sex alone becomes the outlet for these three qualities (behaviors). “Once the image of the playboy was projected as desirable, it became acceptable for black males to father children and assume no responsibility for parenting.” (hooks, Salvation 138). In addition to the lack of parental responsibility assumed by the men, women began to expect less emotionally from them intensifying the lack of trust and hope for care between them. Some women of the hip-hop generation created their own defense mechanisms by expecting only sex from men to ward off the disappointment that that is all they had to offer.

It Ain't Free

2005-09-27T10:27:00.000-04:00

The removal of cultural boundaries creates familiarity amongst people. In a world where before 9.11 cultural boundaries were closing the world’s economies became more centralized and the international language of money was required social cache; one could sit in any country with a Viacom (for example) satellite office and watch any number of the mega conglom’s subsidiaries in whatever language was needed to get people to spend. This was the model that worked in America and it would work everywhere else- NOT! The gross income for Liberian family is $114 US. That’s some American kid’s weekly allowance.
America pumps it’s market driven interests throughout the globe only to naively ask, “Why do people hate us?” and then answer their own question with “because we’re free”. Now I now one true about my life – IT AIN’T FREE.

Art ain’t free. It’s very expensive when working within the capitalist model. Working outside that model? Here in the US that’s called underground. To be an underground artist takes work and perserverance and either rich parents or a job that’ll pay a living wage. Not that it can’t be done- but we’re talking about models here. Sure the underground model can work. It builds prestige, a market base and respect among comrades. But will it support you? Probably not. And I’m sure there is somebody this has worked for but I’m talking about large monetary scale support. Any hip-hop created outside the states is underground in the US. Any art aimed at communities of color that isn’t commercially marketed is called underground.

Underground is what it is because it’s outside the radar of populust consumptionist culture. Once the underground moves into the light of success it loses the edge of it’s alleged pre capitalist roots. Finding diasporic artistic movements and contributions is an effort to Americans. To find out about different (read as non American) forms of artistic revolutions takes effort. It takes time and desire to experience something else. Why when bred in a culture that tells you that you are what everyone else on the planet either wants to be or destroy, would you look outside to find other modes of artistic expression? MTV et al barely show non mass produced music and images from within the US. When you’re told that art is either an imitation or a negation of what you believe to be art, why would you not believe that your expressions (and for this generation of “urban” youth it’s hip hop) can’t be translated into a global struggle against oppression?

Why can’t we Americans get up off of that? Because it’s a “Lovely Day” when the Gap tells us to all look alike like most proletarian/ elite models. We see through the unitarianism of our systems, not specifically governmental, but the transnational bent of American corporations the need to create a consistent market base for their products. Moving through cultural differences we see that colored artists all over the world living in “decolonized” war zones are moving in a similar rhythm.

True power comes from controlling one’s own destiny. Money is not (always) the answer to that problem. Changes in policy, educational curriculum, early cultural and media studies education are some of the steps to freeing the minds of youth of color to see the links they are in the struggle for the global destruction of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions

2005-09-27T10:01:00.000-04:00

September 26, 2005
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON
Editors' Note Appended

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation to back them up, said Mr. Skinner, who declined to provide details.

"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," he said. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste."

Congress appropriated $62.3 billion in emergency financing after Hurricane Katrina struck. So far, a total of $15.8 billion has been allocated from a FEMA-managed disaster relief fund, of which $11.6 billion has been committed through contracts, direct aid to individuals or work performed by government agencies.

An examination of the contracts granted to date and interviews with state and federal officials raised concerns about some of the awards.

Some industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high. And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

The investigators are asking how much money AshBritt will collect and, in turn, what it will pay subcontractors performing the work, said a House investigator who did not want her name used because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The contracts also show considerable price disparities: travel trailers costing $15,000 to $23,000, housing inspection services that documents suggest could cost $15 to $81 per home, and ferries and ships being used for temporary housing that cost $13 million to $70 million for six months.

For some smaller companies, the recovery work will be an extraordinary test. For example, Aduddell Roofing and Sheet Metal, an Oklahoma City business run by a former steer wrestler, shares with a partner a $60 million contract to install temporary roofing on houses in Mississippi. Aduddell's single biggest contract before this was for $5 million, company executives said.

Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup.

The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended their performance.

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, complained that FEMA and other federal agencies were delivering too much of the work to giant corporations with political connections, instead of local companies or minority-owned businesses.

"There is just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Mr. Thompson said. "FEMA and the others have put out these contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers."

As of last week, the federal government was spending more than $263 million a day on the recovery effort.

"There was a crisis situation and a lot of very quick contracting was done," said Greg Rothwell, the chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security. "We will be looking at every invoice we get to make sure we were not paying extraordinary prices."

While several federal agencies have approved contracts, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, by design, have spent the most so far, according to the list of contracts from federal government agencies assembled by The New York Times.

Much of the spending has been in large amounts, but the contracts also include entries like $80,000 from a company called Bama Jama for clothing adorned with the E.P.A. logo and $3,300 for Doc's Laundry and Linen in Baton Rouge.

Rapidly buying the goods and services needed to respond to an emergency is difficult for any government agency. Federal contracting rules allow agencies to approve deals without standard competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances."

To provide some safeguards, federal agencies can hold an open competition in advance for products routinely needed in emergencies. Such agreements are known as "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity," or I.D.I.Q. contracts.

The Defense Department relied on that type of contract in assigning Kellogg, Brown & Root to perform more than $45 million in repairs to levees in New Orleans and military facilities in the gulf region.

Records show, however, that FEMA did not use this approach for the blue sheeting used to cover holes in roofs, a standard item in the disaster tool kit. Instead, the agency bought $6.6 million of the material from All American Poly of Piscataway, N.J., on Sept. 13, without full competitive bidding.

Before signing contracts with mobile-home and travel-trailer makers worth in excess of $1 billion, FEMA said it did solicit bids. But the awards were made without the standard open competition required for government contracts.

Mr. Rothwell, of the Homeland Security Department, said FEMA needed to expand its number of I.D.I.Q. agreements so that when disasters struck it could bring in contractors more quickly and at a competitive price.

The two most expensive services the government has signed contracts for so far are manufactured housing and debris removal, which alone have totaled $2 billion, according to contracting records.

The debris contracts have attracted the scrutiny of investigators from the House Homeland Security Committee, in part because of the price agreed to by the Army Corps of Engineers.

AshBritt, which has won the biggest share of those contracts, is being paid about $15 per cubic yard to collect and process debris, federal officials said. It is also being reimbursed for costs if it has to dispose of material in landfills.

But three communities in Mississippi, which found their own contractors rather than accept the terms offered by AshBritt, have negotiated contracts of $10.64 a cubic yard to $18.25 a cubic yard, including collection, processing and disposal.

And other experts have questioned AshBritt's fees. "Let me put it to you this way: If $15 was my best price, I would rebid it," said Mike Carroll, a municipal official in Orlando, Fla., with experience in hurricane cleanup.

AshBritt has cleaned up debris for FEMA and other government agencies after other hurricanes. Besides possessing a huge roster of subcontractors and the logistics expertise to route hundreds of trucks, the company is also politically well connected.

According to Senate filings, AshBritt paid about $40,000 in the first half of 2005 to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobbying firm co-founded by Governor Barbour of Mississippi, who is also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

AshBritt officials declined to comment on the Hurricane Katrina contracts. Jean Todd, a federal contracting officer who helps oversee the AshBritt deal for the Army Corps of Engineers, said she was determined to ensure that the price was fair.

"We have auditors that will be looking at all of this," Ms. Todd said.

FEMA has led the effort to line up contractors to install tens of thousand of temporary homes. The scale of the job is still unclear - depending on demand, FEMA may downsize its plans - but the agency has been rushing to buy as many travel trailers and mobile homes as it can. It has signed five contracts each worth more than $100 million with major manufacturers. And it has scoured the country, buying up whatever it can find on dealers' lots.

That has turned into a bonanza for businesses like Wagner's RV Center in Suamico, Wis., which sold 69 trailers to FEMA for $1.3 million.

"In a single sale, we cleared out most of our leftover inventory from the 2005 model year," said Leonard Wagner, the owner of the RV center. "That does not happen very often."

For some small businesses, what started off as big contracts have quickly grown into giant ones. Aduddell Roofing, the Oklahoma City business, was first hired with a partner on a $10 million contract. In a matter of weeks, that deal had grown into a $60 million contract.

The project is being run by Timothy Aduddell, the company's president, who until recently was on the professional rodeo circuit, said Ron Carte, the chief executive of Zenex International, the company that owns Aduddell.

"You have to be there to see it," Mr. Carte said of the hurricane work. "As Mr. Aduddell says, 'It's pretty cowboy.' "

Editors' NoteTuesday, Sept. 27, 2005
A front-page article yesterday reported on the awarding of billions of dollars in federal contracts to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The article said many contracts had been awarded without bidding or with limited competition, and it cited two major contractors whose political connections have already raised questions among government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

In naming these contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - the article noted that they have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The article should have carried a response from Mr. Allbaugh, or restated a position he expressed in an earlier article in The Times: that he does not help any of his clients secure federal contracts, and has not done so in this case for Shaw or Kellogg.

Eric Dash and Leslie Eaton contributed reporting from New York for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

ONLY A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME

2005-09-24T22:51:00.000-04:00

ONLY A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME

There’s a funny thing about loneliness.
It’s so ever present that sometimes
you know you’re going to be consumed
by it.
It doesn’t matter who’s around
or how gay you appear to be,
it’s there lurking in your heart.
Stalking you.
Waiting for a moment when you
feel genuine joy,
loneliness pounces upon it
leaving behind only despair,
desperation and
frustration.
Constantly trying-
sincerely trying to be happy,
but it is always just out
of your reach
like an elusive lover.
Until finally one day
you forfeit your quest for joy.
You just surrender.
And at that moment you realize
what loneliness really wanted.
It just wanted you to sit with it
for a while.
To enjoy its’ company.
And once you stop fighting against it
you see it’s not so bad after all.
It just has a bad rep.
And it’s there,
in your epiphany that your elusive lover
happiness
finally falls under your spell and
you consummate your relationship.
Yet in your blissful state you forget
how you got there.
And there loneliness is...
alone again.

me and my generations

2005-09-24T12:20:00.000-04:00

as i'm reflecting on my age and the age i live in, this picture always comes to mind. it's me, my mom, my grandma, my great grandma, and my great-great grandma. these women sacrificed and lived with secrets, lies, and shames so i could exist. they gave me a sense of unconditional love that it's taken me until recently to understand isn't universal. we weren't rich but they gave me a richness in character that comes from a pride that they didn't always have. they also gave me hangups that i can now see were necessary for their existance that aren't necessary for mine. but i needed them to know what i don't want. they instilled in me a love and respect for education, but not just the book sense, for learning about the world and a belief that anything and everything is possible. they were proud of me but let me know that my excellence wasn't an anomoly, it was what was expected of me. to whom much is given much is required. this from women who picked cotton. who came north for better lives and carved them out. who loved men who, while not always physical faithful, were fiercely loyal and loved them implicitly. and they were not victims. they were these fierce creatures who loved hard, drank hard, smoked, fought and raised a strange crop of progeny.

If love is not present in our imaginations, it will not be present in our lives: Black Love and the Hip-Hop Generation- Intro

2005-09-23T13:15:00.000-04:00

Introduction-

This thesis will examine how loving black relationships are being portrayed in film, and will analyze the possible social effects of those portrayals on the marital/ committed relationship practices of the hip-hop generation . Loving relations will be defined as a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of, what cultural critic bell hooks commonly describes as, America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” . Being a member of the hip-hop generation, I experience the daily assault not just on my black womanhood, but also my humanity. The images of male-female relationships that have been normalized are so pathological and hateful, creating such unloving environments, that I wanted to know where these ideas were formed. Though this thesis focuses mostly on film, the convergence of film and television (through cable, VCR’s and DVD’s) makes it necessary to mention the interrelated qualities of music videos and contemporary films. This thesis investigates how the hip-hop generation’s imaginations are fed.
This paper hypothesizes that the lack of visual representations of blacks loving each other (as opposed to simply being sexual objects), given that the media operates as powerful social educator, adds to the risk of a lack of loving in everyday life. Stories of courtship, romance and love have been storytelling fodder in some form since antiquity. The powerful yet seemingly invisible role of film and television as social educator has been greatly chronicled. Yet influence of film and television specifically on the hip-hop generation’s black sexual relationships is only recently being researched . There is still a gap in the body of research regarding black loving relations as an indicator of emotional well-being. Violence, HIV prevention and teen pregnancy are the general research catalysts to study media’s relationship to this particular age group as opposed to marriage or current interpersonal relations. This paper contributes to current studies using discursive methods regarding loving representations in order to analyze black film images. The visuals being analyzed have been chosen because of both their relevance to the body of black media images and their mainstream appeal. More obscure images, while interesting for scholarship, were omitted because of an assumptive lack of influence on the relationship practices of the hip-hop generation. I will analyze the selected films based on the romantic theme and plot in instances, as well as the driving forces of the film. The way we, the hip-hop generation, have been taught to love has such an important influence on how we will teach to love. As such, I will focus on intra-racial heterosexual, intimate/sexual romantic screen relationships, from the post-civil rights and feminist movements of the early 1970’s through the end of the century, and I will argue that they serve as a microcosm of community. I looked for some of the ways hip-hoppers have been taught to love.
Black representational media readings have historically been based in the reading of stereotypes. Stereotyping defines a way of seeing a visualized “other” outside of the flow of experience. Sexuality in relation to stereotyping blacks shall be important to this discussion.
Sexuality, particularly after the dissolution of the Hayes Code , is a major part of American film’s visual and thematic landscape. Black sexuality is peculiar because of its schizophrenic political and social history in reality and in the American imagination. D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation not only seared the American imagination with the use of innovative and groundbreaking film techniques (such as the introduction of the long narrative, the close-up, and the wide angle shot ); but also promulgated a set of Americanized racist stereotypes to a global audience, stereotypes which are still actively perpetuated and must be considered when discussing blacks in film. Descriptions of the stereotypical mammy and exotic primitive characters for black women and the brute Negro (who evolved into the thug) for black men are the most sexually charged of these still perpetuated visual images . Historically most stereotypical black portrayals evolved from literature to the stage to film and television screen. I am interested in exploring new images created by a people thinking of themselves in new ways.
Currently, loving relationships in the black community are fractured. According to M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan:
Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of Black women who had married by age 24 decreased by half from 56% to 23%; while the proportion who had ever married declined from 83% to 63% …. Although there was a similar decline in early marriage in the general population (from 64% to 37%), the proportion of women in the general population who had ever married stayed the same (77%). Over the same period, Black divorce rates, as well as that of U.S. women as a whole, nearly quadrupled. However, since divorce was much higher among Blacks even in 1970, the 1990 differential is quite striking—358 divorces per 1000 women among Blacks, compared to 166 among women overall. African American women are also less likely than other groups of women to remarry after divorce or widowhood. The explosion in divorce rates is one factor in the greatly changed living arrangements of children. In 1970, just under one-third of Black children were being raised in single parent homes. By 1990, that figure had increased to 55% (compared to 25% in the general population) (“Understanding Marital Decline”).

As a result of economic, social, and political disenfranchisement, the images seen of blacks loving each other do not inspire romantic expectations and can subsequently lead to a lack of love in everyday life. I will present some examples of how fictional media images both emulate and propagate the lack of positive loving images of blacks.

Defining Black Loving Relations for the Hip-Hop Generation

I have defined loving relations as: a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”.
Three separate ideas have informed this definition. I looked to bell hooks, first and foremost, for insight into blacks in media but also for insight into loving relationships in the black community. She also provided strong theoretical critiques from a cultural studies and feminist perspective. In hooks’ book Salvation the statement “If love is not present in our imaginations, it will not be there in our lives,” gave a title to this thesis and led me to further want to look into the question of filmic representation within, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (53). “When it comes to issues of love, the mass media basically represent black people as unloving. We may be portrayed as funny, angry, sexy, dashing, beautiful, sassy and fierce but we are rarely represented as loving” (51). She goes on to mention the failure for blacks in positions of power to create “new images of blackness” that do not depend on the caring for whites – and caring for each other. This view includes the historic and economic realities of black representation in film: Black economic power and authorship means nothing if the product created only perpetuates oppressive racial stereotypes for the turning of a profit.
Secondly, Cornell West’s Race Matters provided insight into the distortion of black sexuality in the American (specifically) and colonial (generally) imagination as a method of control and propaganda of oppressed people. Sexuality is not something commonly discussed among blacks and in its most recent commodification –again- provides an easy visual. Cornel West states:
Black sexuality is a taboo subject in America principally because it is a form of black power which whites have little control- yet its visible manifestations evoke the most visceral of white responses, be it one of seductive obsession or downright disgust. On the one hand, black sexuality among blacks simply does not include whites, nor does it make them a central point of reference. It proceeds as if whites do not exist, as if whites are invisible and simply don’t matter. This form of black sexuality puts black agency center stage with no white presence at all. (125)

The current creation of images of black people in intimate sexual situations perpetuates standard racist stereotypes under the auspices of black agency. Although black sexuality has more visual accessibility due to music videos, music video production is still produced and controlled by mainstream capitalist interests. Those interests maintain the black body’s position as the same marketable commodity that has defined it since the first arrival of black Africans on these shores.
I looked finally to Anthony Giddens’ The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies for insight into the changing nature of intimacy in modern society. Giddens examines “the potentialities of the ‘pure relationship’, a relationship of sexual and emotional equality, which is explosive in its connotations for pre-existing forms of gender power” (2). The construction of gender is challenged by egalitarian sexual relations which redefine gender roles. I wanted to see how this dynamic of “pure relationship” transferred to the black community. Images of intra-racial, romantic, heterosexual relationships which move toward “pure relationships” are rare. It is easier to show sexuality -- it is tactile and more visually dynamic; and showing blacks in sexual situations is part of racism’s current subtle double entendre.

The Hip-Hop Generation
The generation of adults now 20-35 is the one most heavily influenced by hip-hop culture . Hip-hop began in the late 1970’s as a burgeoning musical art form and evolved into a “fad” that has lasted almost thirty years. The beneficiaries of the progress made during the Civil Rights Movement’s progress helped propel this grassroots urban music form into a now multi-million dollar industry. In his book The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, Bakari Kitwana defines this demographic as:
…hip-hop generationers -- those young African Americans born between 1965 and 1984 who came of age in the eighties and nineties and who share a specific set of values and attitudes. At the core are our thoughts about family, relationships, child rearing, career, racial identity, race relations, and politics. Collectively, these views make up a complex worldview that has not been concretely defined.” (4)

The lives of hip-hop generationers (particularly those born between 1965- 1975) are not specifically marred by the same degree of racism the previous generations experienced. There are no social and legal Jim Crow laws, yet the racism they experience has more to do with class and its subtler social injustices and humiliations. At the same time, technological advances have created a mediated world driven by a global capitalism. “We live in an age where corporate mergers, particularly in media and entertainment, have redefined public space, the viewing public is constantly bombarded by visual images that have become central to the identity of an entire generation” (Kitwana 9).
Youth oriented means more television oriented. Movies are seen on television. Television remediates film, using Bolter and Gruskin’s adaptation of the word as “the way in which one medium is seen by our culture as reforming or improving upon another” (59). Coming of age with the VCR and the expansion of cable, watching films on television is normalized . It can be argued that this generation makes no real distinction between film and television. “Today, more and more Black youth are turning to rap music, music videos, designer clothing, popular Black films, and television programs for values and identity” (Kitwana 9). The batch of children born after 1965 entered a world their parents generation had created, and were learning themselves, leaving their children to either follow their parents’ baby boomer models of mating and courtship or learn it from the new media teacher- television.

Film as Social Teacher
The films discussed in this thesis present various ways that the media could be viewed as undermining black loving relations by creating black unloving images -- as well as images that can be read as loving. I believe it is not just that the same images have been recycled in newer clothes, but that the social contexts show men and women moving in such opposite directions that the space where they could express themselves lovingly is destroyed as well. In the chapter discussing relationships, the films chosen are an attempt to show sexual relationships that have shades of emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy.
I argue there are four interrelated points that describe how black unloving images are portrayed. The first is the distortion of black sexuality into a commodifiable transaction (such as that between pimps and whores; or masters and slaves) further legitimizing colonial mythologies. When the human body is reduced to the basics of its physical existence absent any interiority, the humanity of that body is more easily devalued. “White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, and their culture less civilized, their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples” (West 122-3).
Secondly, nihilism is felt throughout the black community but is acted out specifically by black males. Nihilism is defined as the “entire rejection of established beliefs, as in religion, morals, government, and laws,” and philosophically as, “the denial of all existence; rejection of objective reality or of the possibility of an objective basis for morality”. (“nihilism” def. 1 and 2) West furthers this definition of nihilism specifically in reference to the black community as “[…] the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness. The frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive disposition toward the world” (23).
The third point is abject materialism – as counter stance to abject poverty and as sign of middle class success. Contemporary black rappers’ celebration of possessing and obtaining material objects by any means necessary feeds not only their music video personas/performances but also informs the narrative of many films created for black audiences. Black women are often reduced to a series of body parts and are treated as objects that are easily replaced if male desire is unmet. On the other hand, black women use this as a way to gain some value from sexual transactions that they have no expectation of leading to committed relationships.
All of this contextualizes the fourth and final point: the lack of trust between black men and women. Based on history, observed behaviors and the reinforcement by the media, there is no space allotted black women and men to find a way to learn to trust each other. From music, to books, and largely the visual media of television and film, black women and men are constantly bombarded with reasons why they should not trust each other.
The chapters of this thesis are organized by the depictions of images from the point of view of black men; black women, and films that present their narrative from the dual sides, i.e. the “relationship”. In Chapter I, “Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile” : Black Manhood, black men are represented as sexually compulsive, sexist, nihilistic thugs regardless of class. Sexuality and its performance has become the core of identity formation for the hip-hop generation. In Chapter II, “When Ya Say Ya Love Me It Doesn’t Matter- Goes Into My Head As Just Chitta Chatta” : Black Womanhood, black women are represented as sexually manipulative, emasculating and untrustworthy. Simultaneously, these same female characters are often developed in a way that supports sexist patriarchal models. In Chapter III, “Hopeless: Moving Past Postmodern Hip-Hop Adolescence”, the relationships in these films re-appropriate hip-hop’s superficial materialism and sexual manifestations. These images give examples of how the hip-hop generation is attempting to learn how to behave. The idea is to draw a line through the visuals created, discussing manhood and womanhood, and the interactions that should lead to family. In the Conclusion: “Where Do We Go From Here?”, the discussion of contemporary romantic images fuses music videos with film, highlighting the complex relationship hip-hop generationers were having with media representations of themselves.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before- Thesis Prelude

2005-09-23T13:02:00.001-04:00

i have an entire thesis i need to have published and out there...
why not put it here. duh!! and i have to look at my friend's pictures and write stories from them. since i'm languishing in office hell, i'm trying to do something that doesn't involve eating. i'm bored gordeless and don't really understand how people do this. there is no sense of connection internally for me. i'm counting time when i have nothing else to do and this is an acceptable behavior because there's going to be times that there's nothing to do. it's inherent to the job. interesting. i learn so much about myself when i've been somewhere sitting for more than 5 days. when i'm not busy, i just want out. i can't imagine how the sitting and collecting money helps anyone and why would they want you to do it. just to be a body here? that sounds silly. worker bees must be more productive when they aren't miserable. and this place reeks of misery. sure it's one of the hippest trips in america... but my sweet lord.

Really?

2005-09-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

i'm standing in times square, in front of 1515 broadway, watching kanye west's video for "gold digger" on a crystal clear movie theater sized screen in gorgeous HD. the video show beautiful, sexy, shiny, thin half dressed black women done up like pin-up girls. jamie foxx and kanye are just singing and the captions show the song lyrics "i'm not saying she's a gold digger, but she ain't messing with no broke niggaz"... hmmm. interesting. okay, oh, here come the girls again. so i look up and then i look at the street. these aren't the women i see walking down the street. only women coming out of 1515 even vaguely resemble these shiny, sexy, gyrating girls. the women i see are tired, overweight, run down, leaving work or on their way to work. they don't want to hear some spoiled brat pontificating the benefits of dating poor men because of the ambitious look in his eyes. but who are these women? who are these men? and why must i be subjected to this when i'm walking down the street or going to work. granted, i work at mtv this week, but i don't watch mtv in public. yet how can i complain about one of the most mediated spaces in the world being more mediated? because i can.

Flickr

2005-08-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

my first time

2005-08-10T01:51:00.000-04:00

i decided on my recent vacation that i now am looking for ways to create my own opportunities instead of "trying to figure out" what to do.
so i want to write?
well now i'm writing. and i get to write anything i want.
that's liberating.
not much, huh?
(whistle sound, rocking on heels)
uh, i can show some pictures of belize.
uh.....