Rap Music and Race

If you don't like rap music or more precisely certain types of rap music does that mean that you don't like Black people. Well it might. But as a pure question of logic of course disliking rap music doesn't mean you are a racist. One of the things that is funny about modern life is how thoroughly and completely many people came to associate rap music as the sole music which young black people were permitted to enjoy while still being "authentically" black. The flip side of this expectation is of course how fiercely some black people defend any attack on any type of rap music as being a a racist attack on all black people. Well maybe. Maybe not. I was moved to write about this because of a relatively recent incident in Houston, Texas in which the white female owner of a famed local club declined to book two rap acts because she found their lyrics offensive from both a gender and racial perspective. She also went on to make a few uncharitable comments about the type of people who came out to enjoy such music. She said that she would continue to book other types of rap music but of course by then the cat was out of the bag. Some comedians and musicians said that they would boycott the club because they felt unwelcome or that the owner was racist.

Movie Reviews: Black Book, Holy Rollers

Black Book
directed by Paul Verhoeven

There are a number of thoughts which I had after re-watching this 2006 Dutch drama film set in the waning days of World War 2. The first is that the lead actress Carice Van Houten, just like her character Melisandre in HBO's Game of Thrones seemingly hasn't aged at all. Maybe it's just good genes and clean living. She wasn't wearing a ruby necklace in this film. Actually often she wasn't wearing anything in this film. The second thought is that if real life were a story, after the unpleasant experience of being invaded, defeated, occupied and subjugated you would think that the Western European democracies would have realized that violence, racism and colonialism were wrong. But real life is not a story. Freed from Nazi threat or rule, the post war European democracies almost immediately all fought vicious, bloody and ultimately pointless wars attempting to maintain white control over non-white nations in Africa and Asia. Some of the very same people depicted here leading the Dutch underground against the Germans wound up in Indonesia doing the same thing or worse to Indonesians that the Germans did to the Dutch. Life is strange. Everyone's a hypocrite. And the last major issue which crossed my mind after viewing this film is that both loneliness and love make for some very strange bedfellows sometimes. Even the worst of us usually still need human contact. 

Today we have people opposed to the current U.S. President who style themselves the Resistance. Their opposition primarily consists of snarky tweets, strongly worded opinion pieces, hats shaped like female genitalia, sucker punching Trump voters and an occasional march or two. What would the Resistance look like once people start getting shot?  Death has a tendency to reveal just who is real and just who is faking the funk by calling themselves the Resistance. There's no shame in recognizing that in facing real oppression, most people will go along to get along. Most of us would prefer not to be shot.

Book Reviews: I Am Providence

I Am Providence
by Nick Mamatas

The title of this book will be instantly familiar to any Lovecraft fan. It's what is engraved upon Lovecraft's tombstone. It's also an atypically boastful quote from the writer. So you might expect that this is a book about H.P. Lovecraft. Well it is and it isn't. If you are the type of person who avoids horror or sci-fi stories then don't worry because despite the seeming subject matter this is not at all a horror or sci-fi story-with perhaps just one or two minor exceptions. However we earn our daily bread there are millions of other people who do so in the same fashion. And from time to time people in the same line of work will have reason to come together for conferences, dinners and social gatherings. The conversations at such meetings may well be incomprehensible to people outside of that particular circle of experts. There are discussions about the finer points of the law or physics theories about dark matter which would not only bore me to tears but which I do not have the training or experience to follow. Someone who works on a farm may have a deep understanding of bovine diseases and be excited to compare notes with like minded people dealing with the same issues. A person who writes or acts for a living will probably be excited to rub shoulders with other artists who do the same thing and discuss challenges which less artistically inclined people simply can't understand. Cops get together to discuss the latest tactics in crowd control, legal requirements and forced entry. Accountants get excited over new payroll software. Guitarists may spend days arguing over amp circuity and music theory. And so on. Everyone has some area of knowledge which intrigues them and in which they may well be expert. This book asks the reader to imagine that the experts in question are not accountants or lawyers or physicists but instead H.P. Lovecraft fans, writers, would be writers and even a few groupies.

The Lovecraft experts, many of whom fit the stereotype of nerds blissfully unencumbered by traditional notions of hygiene, politesse or body hair removal, have come together in Providence, Rhode Island for the Summer Tentacular, an annual Lovecraft convention. Just because they all get together doesn't mean they like each other. A lot of the attendees are just there for the food and feuds.

Roosevelt Franklin and Baby Breeze

Sesame Street used to come under pressure to have muppets that were easily able to be identified as African-American so that African-American kids could feel that they were part of the Sesame Street family. One of the characters who came out of this desire was Roosevelt Franklin, who was voiced by African-American actor Matt Robinson who played Gordon. I liked Roosevelt Franklin a lot. As an adult, I was surprised to learn that the character was cancelled/phased out because some people (no doubt some of the same people who were clamoring for definitively black muppets) found Roosevelt Franklin and associated muppets like Baby Breeze to be stereotypical and negative. I didn't see it that way at all. My parents were pretty vigilant about such things. If they thought Roosevelt Franklin was stereotypical I can pretty much guarantee I never would have watched it growing up. Oh well. Everyone has different tastes and sensitivities. My brother recently sent two Roosevelt Franklin skits/songs to me. I don't remember the street crossing skit but I can say that I feel the same way as Baby Breeze does about people trying to talk over me at meetings that I called. Just don't do it.

And the message in "The Skin I'm In" is still relevant in 2017 America, which is kind of messed up. I do remember the "The Skin I'm In" song. The lyrics "I know my letters and numbers/Maybe better than you/So if you look at me funny/I look at you funny too" remain a pretty humorous and accurate take on being black in America.

Historical Narratives, Namibia and Self-Respect

Can you imagine a statute honoring SS boss Heinrich Himmler being erected in Tel Aviv, Israel? No?
Do you think that current day residents of Nanjing, China would support a monument to the bravery of WW2 Japanese General (and Prince) Asaka, who oversaw the horrific Nanking Massacre? That probably wouldn't go over too well either. Well would modern day citizens of Bulgaria be in favor of a monument to the Ottoman Turkish general who ordered the Batak Massacre? Perhaps not. Presumably locals would be unmoved by callous arguments that these men were trying to bring civilization to recalcitrant ungrateful hardheaded backwards savages or that whatever atrocities occurred were regrettable, rare and overstated or that hey you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs or the old standby that it was a different time and place so we shouldn't judge those brave men by our current moral standards. It has always been a bad thing to rape and murder people. It has always been a bad thing to deliberately target non-combatants. It has always been a bad thing to attempt to wipe out entire groups of people. The problem is that humans are as a species very tribalistic. We often have difficulty applying the moral standards that we know are true to people who are not part of our tribe. And the greater difference that someone shows in behavior or looks from us the more trouble we can have accepting that this person has the exact same moral claims to life, liberty and happiness that we do. So even though we know that certain actions are wrong often times it doesn't hit home that those things are wrong until someone does them to someone who either looks like you or someone that you care about. 

Movie Reviews: Get Out

Get Out
directed by Jordan Peele

Get Out is a horror movie that has the Black American experience of race and racism at its core. You would think all else equal that more horror films would explore all the rich story possibilities that race/racism allow. I mean what could be more horrific than being kidnapped and treated as subhuman for generations without end. Horror movies quite often reference either directly or more often obliquely social questions and concerns: gender, sexuality, child abuse, feminism, class struggle and many others. But it's rare for a a horror movie to include references to race other than the easy cheap plot device of the sole black character dying first. It's even more unusual for a horror film to tell a story from a black point of view. This is very simply because most horror directors and writers are not black. And even those who are are often under pressure to minimize or eliminate black concerns. This isn't unique to the horror genre by any means. There are many black film directors and writers who can tell war stories of having their book covers altered to avoid informing the reader that the protagonist is black or of having producers and studios refuse to greenlight big budget movies with black leads. But the world is changing. Get Out is a film that might not have been made or more accurately distributed and marketed by a major studio ten or definitely twenty years ago. Not only does it have a black protagonist but American racism is the animating theme of the movie. Wisely Get Out avoids the normal cheap plot device of having the bad guys be Confederate flag waving, low class, incestuous, pickup truck driving, banjo plucking white people from the land that time forgot. The film is both more ambitious and more subtle than that. As I wrote times have changed. Although recently it seems as if a loud minority would indeed would indeed like to turn the clock back to some time around 1922, I would argue that certain incidents not withstanding that racism as most black people experience today doesn't include howling mobs bent on pogroms. Things are usually more subtle than that. 

Jeff Sessions: Oh You Mean Those Russians!!!

There are a number of different ways to not tell the truth. You may say something that's untrue because you don't know the truth. You may honestly not understand the question because it's vague or you're not too smart. You may forget to include information that is relevant to the question you're answering. You may answer with extreme precision the exact question that you're asked, knowing that the interrogator has mistakenly not asked you the correct question. And of course you may just flat out lie and tell the person asking the question something that you know to be untrue. Lawyers often tend to be masters of this sort of wordplay. Exact wording is something that has been used both in fiction and in real life both by heroes and villains to give their enemies their just deserts or prevent said enemies from getting their proper rewards. The Norse god Loki, having wagered and lost his head, prevented decapitation by insisting that he had bet his head, not his neck so no sword or axe could touch his neck. The Witch-King boasted that not by the hand of man would he fall but apparently forgot that women and hobbits could wield swords. Khal Drogo, having watched his annoying brother-in-law Viserys, threaten to murder his own sister, Khal Drogo's wife, promises to give Viserys a golden crown. He keeps his word by giving his brother-in-law a molten golden crown which kills him. So exact words can be tricky. I mention all of this because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, having been asked under oath in increasingly direct ways if he had had any contact with the Russians during the Trump campaign, said no. It has come out that in fact Sessions did have contact with the Russians.