I just finished listening to the Mister Cee Hot 97 interview and here’s the thing that I think is getting lost in this conversation about this interview: there is genuine love and respect and compassion between two, and then three, black men who are discussing non-heterosexual sexuality.
Fatigue, Fluidity and Compassion: Some Thoughts On the Mister Cee Hot 97 Interview
Posted in Sexuality
Tagged black gay men, Black SGL men, Breeze, fluid sexuality, Funkmaster Flex, gay, homosexuality, Hot 97, Mister Cee, SGL, transgender
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Portrait of a Black Man: Reviewing ‘Fruitvale Station’
“Seen as animals, brutes, natural born rapists, and murderers, Black men have had no real dramatic say when it comes to the way they are represented. They have made few interventions on the stereotype…Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of White supremacy is that Black male identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it.”
–bell hooks
There’s a scene late in Fruitvale Station that is about as astute and subtle a depiction of the disparities between white men and black men in America as I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture.
Oscar (played magnificently by the phenomenally talented Michael B. Jordan) is standing outside a store waiting for his girlfriend, Sophina (beautifully portrayed by Melonie Diaz), and her friend to come out of the bathroom. He had just sufficiently charmed the owner into letting the two women go in when a white couple appears. The wife is pregnant and needs to use the bathroom too. The owner lets her in as well, begrudgingly, leaving Oscar standing outside with the husband. The two have a casual conversation that serves three purposes: one, to let the audience know that Oscar has been seriously considering asking Sophina to marry him; two, to remind us again how charming and at ease Oscar is with all kinds of people (remember – he also charmed the young white woman who didn’t know what fish to fry), and three – and most notably – to underline just how much harder it is for black people, black men in particular, to get their lives together than it is for white folks.
And yet, this is what the film really leaves us with, what it’s really about: A young brother who is just trying to get it together. We have spent the bulk of the movie watching Oscar fumble about trying to sort out his life. We watch him trying, by turns, begging and threatening, to get his job at a grocery store back. We watch him contemplate going back to dealing drugs. We watch him argue and seduce Sophina, charm and spoil his mother for her birthday, bail his sister out of her own money troubles, and perhaps most poignantly, dote on the one thing in his life that makes total and complete sense to him – his daughter. The struggle is real, specific. We care.
After a trying day, Oscar then gets to listen to this white man talk so casually about marrying his wife when they had “nothing” and then starting a business that is apparently doing well enough that he hands Oscar a card. Jordan’s reaction – a remarkable combination of respect, admiration and, just a touch of jealousy – says all we need to know. For this white man, things come so easily. In Jordan’s performance in that moment, we are reminded again that it’s just not as easy for a brothers like Oscar to get their lives together.
Posted in Film
Tagged black film, criminal justice, Fruitvale Station, Michael B. Jordan, Oscar Grant, race, Ryan Coogler
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On Trayvon Martin and the Zimmerman Verdict
I couldn’t watch the George Zimmerman trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin for more than 10 minutes at a time. The pain was too acute. The trial was such a mockery of everything that we are told to believe the “justice” system is supposed to be. I couldn’t bear to listen to the “balanced” coverage discuss how it’s about race and also not about race.
To see exactly how the system is rigged was simply too much.
And yet, there was a split second last night right between the time the judge asked the jury if they had a verdict and the moment that the verdict was read that I thought that George Zimmerman would be convicted of murdering Trayvon Martin.
A split second.
On J. August Richards’ Webseries, ‘The Hypnotist’: Black People and Science Fiction
I’m struck by the fact that the great J. August Richards is developing a sci-fi webseries, The Hypnotist, featuring black people that seems to center blackness.
“…African hypnosis. It was essentially lost during the slave trade, but goes back thousands of years.”
I’ve had many a conversation about why it is so uncommon for Black folks who have money to explore science fiction; and how this limits the kinds of stories that black people have access to and how it limits black people’s ability to see themselves as expansively as they could. There has yet to be an adaptation of an Octavia Butler or Tananarive Due novel and yet we make a fair number of romantic comedies, comedies centered around a black comedian, hood tales, and Black American historical epics.
So good on J. that The Hypnotist seems to not only be a science fiction story but one that plays with blackness and Africanness. This is a teaser so one can’t know how deeply these themes will be explored, but I’m struck by the fact that this 50-second trailer so forthrightly names blackness, Africanness, and slavery. That. is. just. dope.
The question then is: how will this all work?
I’m wondering if The Hypnotist will be a play on Egyptian doctor Imhotep’s “temple sleep” and if part of what is explored is this notion of reconnecting to that subconscious Africanness that was erased by white supremacy and centuries in North America. There is a lot of subtextual room to play here that I think could give the show some deeper resonance that is specific to the Black American experience and psyche.
These are big questions, to be sure. We shall see just what J. has in store.
Posted in Film, Television
Tagged black film, J. August Richards, sci fi, science fiction, The Hypnotist, webseries
4 Comments
On Kelly Rowland’s ‘Dirty Laundry’
I think if you’ve followed Kelly Rowland’s career, you’ve always gotten the sense that she was holding something back. Like she was afraid to be as magnificent as we all know she can be. There was always the sense that we weren’t getting the full extent of her artistry. And not because it wasn’t there, but because she didn’t quite believe in it.
Every album had magnificent moments – Beyond Imagination, Haven’t Told You, Love, Like This, Motivation, Keep It Between Us – but they seemed incidental. Accidental. There didn’t seem to be much effort behind anything she was doing. The background singer destined to be a star, but never quite comfortable anywhere but in the back seat.
So when I listen to Dirty Laundry, it plays as a stunning admission of her crushing insecurity more than anything else. Sure, we learn about Kelly having suffered domestic abuse and that she has complicated feelings about Beyonce’s solo success, but that’s just not what the song is telling me emotionally.
“who wanna hear my bullshit?”
It doesn’t feel like we’re reliving something she’s moved through. We’re living something she’s still in…with her. The song doesn’t turn on an awakening. It doesn’t turn at all. We are sitting in her insecurity with her.
Those five little words are almost an aside in the structure of the song. As if she’s still not quite sure. Even now when she’s being as revealing and honest as she’s ever been, I still get the sense that she’s struggling against a profound sense that no one cares at all about Kelly Rowland. It’s riveting, but I have to wonder what is next.
I want this song to represent a turning point in her career. A point that we’ll all look back and say “that was the moment Kelly Rowland started to become a great artist.” But I worry that this will be the only song on the album that gives us something uniquely Kelly.
I sincerely hope she doesn’t think one song is enough.