Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 786

The Spin: #FergusonOctober & The Whiteness Project

The Spin with Esther Armah
#FergusonOctober - Four Days of Resistance, Rebellion on the Streets of Ferguson, with Patrisse Cullors - freedom fighter, artist, educator - one of the leaders of the movement in Ferguson and  Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charisse Jones offers historical context. Plus, THE WHITENESS PROJECT--to be Caucasian in America, a project on privilege & identity + this week was Columbus Day--we talk Native Americans &  Public Education. 

Dear White People and the Myth of the Post-Race College Campus

Dear White People and the Myth of the Post-Race College Campusby Stephane Dunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Dear White People, writer-director Justin Simien’s first feature, comes at a perfectly timed moment, an irony that makes the young director laugh aloud. A Halloween party takes center stage in the film, setting up a scenario for a different kind of Halloween narrative that takes far more glee in barbed words rather than blood and gore. The news making minstrel parties at primarily white institutions such as Dartmouth, University of Florida, and University of Mississippi, among others in recent years provide fuel that Simien maximizes in a supercharged, intense canvas of warring social identities. These pivot around Sam (Tessa Thompson), a mixed race, aspiring filmmaker student with a controversial ‘Dear White People’ campus radio show. But Sam, who proves more complicated than the angry black woman she initially appears to personify, is just the initial central provocateur; others are archetypes of the college social groups Simien makes certain we haven’t forgotten – the Afrocentric black student union group of which Sam is the chosen face, the privileged, prejudiced white frat boys like the president’s son Kurt (Kyle Gallner), the Dean’s son Troy, the cool, bourgeoisie black legacy kid who goes from familiar conservative, new millennial post-black consciousness to complicated and frustratingly contradictory.
Other characters are firmly set in their roles [the white girl – the President’s daughter wrapped in the fantasy of black Mandingos and Troy’s symbol of post-black, upper middle –class status] while others are less so, most significantly the weave wearing, white boy-fame-seeking Coco (Teyonah Parris) through whom Eurocentric notions of female beauty and popular raced, classed, and sexualized notions of black femininity are funneled. She remains disappointingly tragically confused and politically passive. While Sam is the catalyst for the orientation of the story, it’s Lionel Higgins, played poignantly by Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hate Chris fame) as resident nerdy, gay black writer-ultimate social misfit who resolves it, moving from passive observer to active agent and fittingly so since Lionel exemplifies the multiplicity of competing identities and identity crises Dear White People parodies. Dennis Haysbert as Dean Fairbanks and Troy’s demanding father, and President Hutchinson (Peter Syvertsen) play the authority figures as the leaders of the college trying to restore economic stability and maintain the illusion of racial and social harmony at fictional Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League school. Dear White People can’t help but invoke comparisons and contrasts to some significant, unapologetic forbearers– Melvin Van Peeble Sr.’s Watermelon Man and Sweetback, Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, John Singleton’s Higher Learning and most notably, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, School Daze, and Bamboozled [from which it takes some of its stylistic cues as well]. But don’t sleep and immediately cast Dear White People into the black race film box as a Sundance reviewer did when praising it as a striking entry within the ‘2013 year of the race film.’
Dear White People doesn't merely copy or recycle still relevant cultural critiques about the racist imagery that infuses film and American culture though Simien certainly traverses some familiar ground – racialized representations in pop culture and warring notions of black authenticity, brought up to date with Aaron McGruder-like Boondock boldness. Dear White People adds its own chapter taking on ‘post-racial’ - ‘post-black’ contemporary discourses. However, that and title aside, its concern is with a range of competing social identities, particularly class and sexuality and the intersection of these with race. Race is as much a device as key theme. Dear White People is bound to illicit the same kind of passionate, differing responses as the aforementioned films; it's stock representation of skin color self-hatred through the Coco character and overall uneasy, percursory treatment of gendered, raced femininities deserves scrutiny. Some spectators will embrace its insistent critical edginess and appreciate its intellectuality and gleeful indulgence in a collage of cinematic styles and ideological perspectives; others won’t embrace the non-stop political onslaught or the theatrical framing. Simien takes for granted that the audience can get and digest the weighty dialogue balanced, if unevenly at moments, with sardonic humor.
Dear White People is purposely not easy viewing.  You know when the two bookends to the movie could be two of the director’s favorite reads – Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria  (2003) and writer-cultural critic Toure’s provocative and problematic , Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now (2012) that he wanted to start some sh*t – motivate dialogue around some of our continuing confusion and hang ups about how we self-define ourselves through social identities that are slippery and blurry as well as rooted in racist, sexist, and classicist power relations, fear, and ignorance. Simien intends to announce his arrival on the film scene with a feature whose title is as hard hitting as its themes so at least, he says, it will be hard to forget. Dear White People could be accused of trying to be too smart for it’s own good and it is indeed a bit of that, but that’s also why it’s worth seeing. There’s something wonderfully idealistic about this imperfect gem of a first film by a promising new director. It’s a testimony to how an artistic vision can be realized on the big screen when a filmmaker is a serious student of not only his academic film studies but of literature, theatre, cinematic history and technique, politics, social culture, and American history as well as a thoughtful observer of his own experience while navigating the social culture of college and beyond. Simien says long before he arrived at this opening week of his first movie, he had seen what Spike Lee did with Do the Right Thing, so he knew that someday he could do his own thing too. And so with Dear White People he has.  
***
Stephane Dunn, PhD, is a writer who directs the Cinema, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program at Morehouse College. She teaches film, creative writing, and literature. She is the author of the 2008 book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois Press). Her writings have appeared in Ms., The Chronicle of Higher Education, TheRoot.com, AJC, CNN.com, and Best African American Essays, among others. Her recent work includes the Bronze Lens-Georgia Lottery Lights, Camera Georgia winning short film Fight for Hope and book chapters exploring representation in Tyler Perry's films. Follow her on Twitter: @DrStephaneDunn

In the 'Left of Black' Studio: Award Winning Filmmaker & MacArthur Genius Fellow Stanley Nelson

Filmmaker Stanley Nelson visited the new  Left of Black  set with Mark Anthony Neal to talk about his career, the stories he has wanted to tell and his forthcoming film on the Black Panther Party.  The 4-Time Prime Time Emmy Award Winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow is most well known for his films  The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords  (1998), A Place of Our Own: Black Resorts and the African American (2004), Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,  Freedom Riders  (2010) and Freedom Summer (2013). Check for Mr. Nelson's episode in November.
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center and the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE)  at Duke University.

"Spend the Night" -- New Music Video from Dave Hollister

Learn the Meaning of 'Country Cosmopolitanism': A Preview of 'Left of Black'

The Root.com
In the preview of the next Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal talks via Skype with Zandria F. Robinson about the concept of "country cosmopolitism" and her new book, This Ain't Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South (University of North Carolina Press). Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis. 

Mark Anthony Neal Discusses New Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship

The Center for Arts, Digital Cultural, and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) is a new organization at Duke University working in collaboration with the Duke Consortium for Social Equity. Professor Mark Anthony Neal is the director of CADCE.

ReelBlack Interviews 'Dear White People' Director Justin Simien

ReelBlack
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE writer/director JUSTIN SIMIEN recently visited Philadelphia and RBTV's LYRISPECT got a chance to get to know him. In this exclusive clip, Simien talks about his indirect route to becoming a feature director and the need for Black voices in the "Smarhouse" space. 
We hope you'll go out and support DEAR WHITE PEOPLE when it opens in NY, LA, DC and ATL on 10/17 and across the country on 10/24. Camera: William Tucker. Edit: Mike D. Special Thanks: Allied/THA. Follow Justin @Jsim07 and @DearWhitePeople For theaters and showtimes visit www.dearwhitepeople.com

Prince: "Breakfast Can Wait" [Music Video]

Music video directed by Danielle Curiel. © 2013 NPG Records Inc.

When a White British Songwriter Made R&B Go Pop: 7 Songs

When a White British Songwriter Made R&B Go Pop: 7 Songsby Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Happy Birthday to Rod Temperton, who turns 67 years-old on October 15, 2014.  Born in England in 1947, Temperton would become one of the architects of Black pop in the late 1970s and early 1980s, remaining an obscurity for those who might be surprised that a White British guy could help create some of the most soulful music from the period.  In celebration of Temperton’s birthday, here are seven songs that define his sound.
“Boogie Nights” (1976)--Heatwave
In 1974 Temperton joined the group Heatwave, responding to an ad for a keyboard player.  The group dropped it’s first album Too Hot to Handle in 1976, releasing two singles to little effect including “Ain’t No Have Steppin’” (which caught the ears of early Hip-Hop DJs).  But it was the third single, the Temperton penned “Boogie Nights” that caught fire, hitting #2 on the Pop Charts, just as the Disco explosion was popping off.  The song's opening jazz flourishes give early indication of Temperton’s sophisticated take on R&B.
“Always and Forever” (1976)--Heatwave
At a time when radio jocks were still allowed to be curious and creative, often making their own playlists, no doubt a few of them perused Heatwave’s debut and found a gem of a slow jam in “Always and Forever.”  Powered by the rich tenor of Johnny Wilder, Jr., “Always and Forever” became a Quiet Storm classic and showed that the British cat knew a little something about “Blue Lights in the Basement.”
“Rock with You” (1979)--Michael Jackson
Temperton left Heatwave in 1978, though he continued to write for them.  He could be forgiven, catching the attention of Quincy Jones, who was working on the Michael Jackson's solo re-boot. Jackson’s subsequent Off the Wall may be the most perfect pop record ever--though firmly grounded in a glossy R&B production--and “Rock with You” may be the most perfect of those tunes on the album.
“Give Me the Night” (1980)--George Benson
Jazz guitarist George Benson was still tinkering and trying to sustain the success of his pop breakout “Breezin’” (1976) and the surprise that was his live remake of “On Broadway,” so he wisely turned to Quincy Jones to produce Give Me the Night (1980). Had Off the Wall not been in the room, we’d talk more about this album; this was the cross-over sound that Benson craved, and of course with Quincy came Temperton, whose work on the title track is joyous, though for my money, it’s “Love X Love” that still gets the weekly “spins” on the iPod classic.
“The Dude” (1981)--Quincy Jones with James Ingram and Michael Jackson
With Off the Wall, Benson’s Give Me the Night, his own The Dude and then Thriller, no producer can really claim the run that Quincy Jones had from 1979-1982--and Temperton is with him at every step. Co-written by Temperton and Q’s god-daughter Patti Austin, “The Dude” represents Q’s uncut persona.
“The Lady in My Life” (1982)--Michael Jackson
So…let’s just call “Lady in my Life” the Blackest song on Michael Jackson’s historic Thriller recording--and what does it mean it was Temperton who was the sole writer?  Temperton get’s praise for the title track, though that may have to do more with the visuals than the music, yet it remains odd that the only tracks not released as singles, “Lady...” and Temperton’s “Baby Be Mine” were the two with the most distinct R&B DNA.
“Mystery” (1986)--Anita Baker

“Mystery” first appeared on Manhattan Transfer’s Body and Soul (1983) and got spins on R&B radio, but it is Anita Baker’s version from her 1986 breakthrough Rapture that everyone remembers.

Gripping Mo(u)rning: Black Indignation, Artistic Rescue, and Fooling Death

Gripping Mo(u)rning: Black Indignation, Artistic Rescue, and Fooling Death by Hashim Khalil Pipkin | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness!Morning by morningnew mercies I see. All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
—Thomas O. Chisholm
A mourning in fact and by right interminable, without possible normality, without reliable limit, in its reality or in its concept, between introjection and incorporation. But the same logic, as we suggested, responds to the injunction of a justice which, beyond right or law, rises up in the very respect owed to whoever is not, no longer or not yet, living, presently living.
—Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
These are strange times. That is no secret. The colonial idea of blackness -- as some type of elixir that crumbles personage into commodity, playground for militaristic state ideology, and de facto posture for capitalist exploitation-- has translated itself into a contemporary iteration that is still, embarrassingly, bound intimately with death. 
The names of our slain: Trayvon, Jordan, Renisha, Michael, and so many others are fixtures in our national lexicon and specters in our national memory. Their signatures on the story of black striving in this country confound my sensibilities, imagination, and courage to hope. I mourn for the return of their cohesion.
This desire did not last long. I was quickly reminded of the ontological safety granted by the tradition of black creative genius while watching the short film for Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar’s “Never Catch Me.”
Any attempt at summarizing this piece of art will undoubtedly fail (please follow the link). But for the purpose of this piece: this video places the viewer in the middle of the funeral of two black children whose spirits, how I understand it, dance becausethere is no tomorrow. And they dance. Their bodies carve the air around them meticulously and deliberately. There is technique; but more importantly there is emotional freedom.
This video is a testimony for the urgency to make our art now. Our creative locus can be our mourning. Our confusion can be our canvas. Our art is our protection from the rambunctiousness of normative time and hegemonic history. I have no idea what it feels like to lose a child. I have no point of reference for that type of anguish. I do not know what kind of gloss would fall over my eyes or what type of prayer I would be able to utter. But what I do know is that we must take solace knowing that even when our backs are touching the bottoms of coffins, the fierce artistry of black survival will always exceed the boundaries of death.
Day breaks and night ends; that was the salvific function I understood the idea of “morning” to possess. As the first excerpt that leads this piece suggests, one of the great hymns of the Christian church identifies “morning” as the temporal trace for the divine’s presence. The newness of day silenced the festering regret of night: what I wished I had done or said differently that day. But this same logic also makes “morning” something for which I have to wait. I am convinced that is a luxury we can no longer afford. What if we dared to import the salvific promise of “morning” into the artistic rage of black “mourning” now – and in turn, yield a new day for black artistic freedom that stretched morning into night?
What does this look like? I am not sure. But I think the short film for Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar’s song might provide some insight. It might just look like dancing at a funeral. It might require that level of courage – that degree of righteous anger and performative purpose. Because there is a generation of black life at stake, not too different from the group of black children who are still in the throngs of American living at the end of the video chasing after the hearse of their beloved. Like them, we must be in unflinching accord with the ancestral spirits who fooled the finitude of death because of their creative might.
In the second epigraph for this piece, Derrida refers to the condition of “justice” that longs to contain the boundlessness of mourning, so that; respect for those who are lost has a chance to be exercised. What I think “Never Catch Me” does is advance a practical meditation on the gaps in Derrida’s theoretical formulation by synthesizing artistic production with emotional health. Black art is our justice – we dance for those we’ve lost because like the institution of the black church, the context for this video -- black dance and other performative presentations testifying to black striving can serve as sites where black consciousness is organized – a task that not only honors black life, but undoubtedly escapes time.
***
Hashim Pipkin, Writer, Cultural Critic, Ph.D. Candidate at Vanderbilt University.