Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 853

HBCU Students Pay Homage to Spike Lee's 'School Daze' & E.U.'s "Da Butt"

"College Daze is paying homage to the cast of School Daze and the legendary film maker Spike Lee. School Daze was one of the reasons the majority of my peers choose to attend a historically black college. Thank you Mr. Spike Lee for introducing us to HBCU's and dance. When life throws us lemons, we do the butt until it makes us sore." -- Alexis Small

'Left of Black' Friday at The Root.com: Jasiri X

E
mcee and activist Jasiri X sits down to talk with Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal about current events and how he’s using social media and 1Hood Media to spread his message.

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"Finally, and Yes and No: The Best Man Holiday—Reviewed by Stephane Dunn

"Okay, so there’s a really good reason why this review of TheBest Man Holiday [written and directed by Malcolm Lee] is way later than I’d normally offer, especially since I had the good fortune to view it a few days before it’s nationwide opening. You guess wrong if you think I feared that legions of Morris Chestnut’s would-be wives or lovers might literally hunt me down or that The Best Man fans would slay me – figuratively and digitally speaking of course. No, I actually had a rare lack of motivation to review it period except in my own head. My Best Man nostalgia was all up in the way, ditto that any chance I get to peep Morris Chestnut (Lance) on the big screen is always cool, and hanging out with my on-screen sistas – that’s icing. Nia Long (Jordan) and I go back to soap opera watching teen years all the way through Fresh Prince, Love Jones and The Best Man (1999). Sanaa Lathan (Robyn) sealed her place in the sacred circle with Love and Basketball, and Monica Calhoun (Mia) is a sista actress who’s been underrepresented even in popular African American motion pictures.
The rest of the cast, including Terrence Howard’s bad boy, loyal friend Quentin, Harold Perrineau (Julian), and the always eye pleasing Taye Diggs (Harper), make up such an appealing crew that it renders Hollywood’s ‘surprise’ over it’s box office success that much more absurd. I had a little pent up hype built over so many years [fifteen] between the first film and the sequel, and I was bothered that after it was over, I thought too long and that was cool. No exclamation point that was cool just that was cool. What to do with that? Luckily, I have a cadre of real life sista’ colleague-pals and one rare holiday hour lunch talking everything, including Best Man Holiday, shook me from vacillating between to review or not. As it turns out, I’m not the only Best Man fan with a mixed review of The Best Man Holiday.
The great news is that I probably won’t be doing too much spoiling ‘cause fans have been going to see it. The Best Man Holidayis an undeniable success and for the zillionth time Hollywood is being reminded that there is and has long been a massive African-American movie-going audience, which will actually support African-American centered films. Best Manfans have gotten that sequel and gotten to see something we normally don’t get when it comes to black centered popular classics – a view of familiar characters further into adulthood – full-grown and living some complicated realities. The film starts promisingly enough with glimpses of the current individual lives of the crew and an invitation to a holiday gathering at the dream couple Lance and Mia's house.
After the crew assembles, Lee gets overly busy throwing in a whole lot at a jarringly accelerated speed; intriguing melodrama then veers alarmingly towards mere mushy sentimentality. Yes, movies, and this one is no different, are fiction and fantasy but we watch for it to be real - at least for two hours. Beloved central character, Mia's cancer is huge but the least amount of actual screen time is given over to the ramifications of that; there are too few scenes that linger over Mia’s  and her husband and friends’ grappling with her illness and the impending finality of it. The cancer reveal, Mia’s dying and death, all must be taken care of by Christmas Day, the prelude to which is the really big question: Should Lance play in the big annual Christmas Day football game or stay with his dying wife? Of course he must play. His noble dying wife encourages her husband to go and reminds him that he must play for a bigger reason than them both, God.
So there it is, problem number two. Now that Tyler Perry [with T. D. Jakes hot on his heels] has shouted out the profit potential in speaking to the Biblical, church-going-praying roots of black folk, the exhibition of Christian authenticity is becoming a annoyingly clichéd cue in films. In The Best Man, the religious fervor is taken seriously as we see young football star Lance starting his real grown up adult life by reforming from his college playboy days and relying on his spiritual roots to make the transformation, which the wedding to his college sweetheart Mia signifies.
An iconic moment in that first film features Lance on his knees praying after finding out his best friend Harper slept with his soon-to-be-bride; he struggles to contain his anger and hurt and go through with the wedding. But in Best Man Holiday, Lee allows it to be a too obvious cue, trying to make it play virtually the same as it does in the first movie. It doesn’t work. The older, successful, confident Lance is no longer the naïve, hurt, flawed young man trying earnestly to do right and find the courage and strength to love and forgive through his faith and prayer. He’s older and settled into an openly bitter anger and pessimism towards his estranged friend. His religious fervor isn’t endearing but heavy-handed, even self-blinding.  
Still, of course I was fumbling for a forgotten Kleenex in my purse by the time he races home from the victory field with his boys to his wife’s bedside, hoping he isn’t too late and in-between Nia Long sits silent, alone, tears rolling down her face when her nice girl nemesis hands her a Kleenex [after all, it dawns on me that Lee is actually going to go through with this killing of one of the central characters in my Best Man crew and like now, on the same Christmas Day now].
In the midst of all this serious business, major problem number three is really perhaps the worst. In the period between the first film and Best Man Holiday, reality shows featuring the ‘wives’ of everything with black women snipping, cat-fighting, and bitching their way to fame and some fortune have become a staple of contemporary popular culture. The fact that Lee perhaps tries to up the contemporary familiarity of his sequel by giving a totally unnecessary, rather consciously intended or not, nod to this staple actually drove a good sister-friend-Best Man lover fumbling for her Kleenex before the film got to the dying part.
I raged and fumed. So black women get authenticated once again through friction and conflict that must inevitably erupt into reaching for the weave, screaming expletives, and rolling around on the nearest flat surface be it a talk show, a restaurant, or the foyer of a gorgeous house in front of children? The treatment of Candace (Regina Hall) and Shelby (Melissa De Sousa) before and after the fight scene doesn’t mean nearly as much since the catfight is beneath who these characters are at present and the original film.
Problem number four has nothing to do with The Best Man Holiday or it’s director. It belongs to me and other fans and that’s the heavy burden of expectation that comes with sequels to films that manage to make us like them so much the first time around that we long for more but then fear that more won’t be as satisfying as the first round and then have to deal with it when the sequel doesn’t bring the same or fantastically better experience though it’s not that it was bad. At last, here is the short crux of a too long review, The Best Man Holiday satisfies and it doesn’t. Before you angry comment me, that doesn’t mean I’m still not glad I got to chill with my Best Man crew one more time. I’m even more glad it’s crushing at the box office.    
***

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.

"Carmen covers Outkast at Occupy Wall Street': excerpts from 'Sorry For Partying' – a Novella

“Then sing your heart out, sugar. C’mon, that’s our cue."

"Carmen covers Outkast at Occupy Wall Street": excerpts from 'Sorry For Partying'
– a Novella by Tessa Brown | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“Ah cain’t,” Antron whined. “Sure you can, lover,” said Carmen. It was six o’clock at Occupy Wall Street and they’d spent the better half of the afternoon rehearsing and making costumes. “I’m doing the hard part. Damn, you look good in a suit.” Antron’s suit had some blood and facepaint on the lapel from Corporate Zombie Day, but otherwise he looked pretty sharp, disguised from a lean pretty boy into a sharp office man with a tight mouth. He looked around nervously, pacing.  “These clothes ain’t right.” “It’s a costume, dummy.” Carmen reached a hand into the front of his dress and adjusted the rolled-up t-shirts that were serving as his breasts. “Does this look like my real body to you? Costume! Dress-up!”Antron gaped at Carmen’s ungainly breasts. He tugged at the neck of his collared shirt. “Singin’ and dancin’,” he began, slowly. “Shit make me nervous. I don’t like being the center of attention.” Carmen looked up from his chest. Behind them the backup singers were putting final touches on their props, adjusting their own suits and ties. “Don’t lie to me, Antron. I know you’re not really shy.”Antron looked terrified.“I seen you looking around. Don’t be embarrassed.” Antron blushed. “What are you talking about? I spend all my time with you!” “Honey, honey, honey,” Carmen crooned. “Deep breaths. When you get angry you sound like a northerner, and that ain’t sexy.” He rubbed Antron’s suited back. “All I’m saying is that after the show, everyone will want to meet you. Believe me. This ain’t my first time in a dress.” He winked. “You play your little part up there and I promise every pendejo in this audience is going to want to know where Antron gets dressed. Don’t you want to meet all these fine, filthy protesters, darling?”Antron looked at Carmen for a long moment, as though this were a very, very difficult question to answer. “Yea-ah,” he said finally, deliberately. “I guess I do want to meet everyone.”“Then sing your heart out, sugar. C’mon, that’s our cue.” A moment later they were standing in a clearing surrounded by a vast crowd of onlookers, or so it seemed to Antron. The college girls cheered and beside them the media nerds kept their eyes on their iPads and the old people clapped against the beat and a brown girl in a headscarf smiled wildly and the hippies picked up the clapping on their drum circle drums and with long, confident steps Carmen strode into the center of it all wearing the enormous dress he’d borrowed from an enormous occupying woman. Antron followed the other Arts Working Group-ers in a line out behind him, all of them in their cleaned off suits and ties. Antron had never been a yuppie back-up dancer before. They swayed. They deployed their cardboard signs: CAROLINE = CAPITALISM“I’m Caroliiine!” Carmen sang, and the crowd roared. “I’m Caroline, all the boys would say I’m mighty fine.” With vaudeville largesse, Carmen pointed at his cardboard crown, painted with dollar signs. The backup dancers  nodded, tongues wagging, as Carmen  slid his hands down  his enormous manly hips. “But mighty fine only gets me somewhere half the time. And the other half either got ya—” Behind him, the Yuppies swore and argued over Caroline’s enormous, undulating form.“Cursed out or comin’ up short, short, short!” Carmen fell to his knees and the crowd cheered. This was Antron’s cue. He stepped out of the backup line towards Carmen, who worked toward him on his knees, huffing and puffing, licking his lips, eyeing Antron with all the lewd fuckingness Antron was sure Carmen had been holding back this last week. Carmen grabbed Antron by the waistline, buried his face in his crotch while the crowd screamed and the drumline rolled on. When Carmen’s face looked up, Antron began dousing him with Monopoly money pulled from an inner pocket. Carmen waved his head lasciviously in the paper spray. Behind them, the backup dancers pulled out their cardboard calculators and typed furiously with knitted brows.  “Well, well, well, even though!” Carmen wailed. He jumped to his feet and began skipping around the circle formed by the Yuppies and the crowd, nicking a dancer’s calculator on the way, waving it around his head like the golden mascot it was. Now everyone sang along. “Even though! It takes a golden calculator to divide! The time it takes to look inside and realize. That real guys go for—” Carmen waved his hand to the crowd, held it behind his ear.“REAL! DOWN! TO! MARS! GIRLS!” they yelled. Carmen beamed. The drum circle sounded a fill. The backup dancers crowded around Carmen, who had pulled the straps of his dress down from his shoulders, tossed his t-shirt breasts to the floor and was now gyrating and rubbing himself in total earnestness. As the chorus began, he flailed his hips wildly with the beat, as though he were riding the song instead of merely singing it. The drummers slowed down.“Oh, oh, I know you like to thank yo’ shit don’t stank, but—” Antron leaned in and Carmen grabbed him by the tie. “Lean a lil’ bit closer, see that roses really smell like—”Carmen turned around and, still holding Antron’s tie over his shoulder, began grinding against him.“Yes, roses really smell like—”Carmen had begun hiking his skirt up over his knees—“Boo, boo boo!” With this, Carmen flung the dress up over his waist and exposed the huge bouquet of painted red paper roses he’d stashed under his ass like a perverted Queen of Hearts. This he began shaking at the crowd as Antron and the rest of the singers waved the stench of rotten global capitalism away from their noses.“Roses really smell like boo, boo, boo!”The crowd hissed and wailed. Carmen wagged his ass. The paper money flew. Antron slid back into the line as another dancer took over the next verse. Carmen’s dress flew around. The Yuppies loosened their ties and began to unbutton their shirts. Antron tried to focus on the crowd as he slid his jacket from his shoulders and moved his hips as the men around him did. The media guys were taking pictures. Everyone, actually, was taking pictures, with phones, cameras, iPads. All he could see was the endless peering mechanical eyes of the crowd, held high against the great black buildings beyond. Even the hippies had their disposable Kodaks. Antron danced for the camera. No one knew him. He remembered that no one knew  him as he smiled and danced and took off his shirt. ***
Tessa Brown is a PhD student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University, where she studies hiphop composition pedagogy. Her novella "Sorry For Partying" was a runner-up for the 2013 Paris Literary Prize, and you can read it all on Medium. Hit her up @tessalaprofessa. 

Making a Scene: Oprah Winfrey

New York Times Video

Making a Scene: Oprah Winfrey
The year's best performers star in 11 original (very) short films directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

The Making of an Education Catastrophe—One Activist's Journey of Discovery: Mark Naison at TEDxCCSU

TEDx Talks


The Making of an Education Catastrophe—One Activist's Journey of Discovery:  Mark Naison at TEDxCCSU
Mark Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of four books and over 200 articles on African American politics. During the last five years, he has begun presenting historical "raps" in Bronx schools under the nickname of "Notorious Phd" and has been the subject of stories about his use of hip hop in teaching in the The Daily News, Bronx 12 Cablevision, and Fox Business.

A ‘Left of Black Holiday’ Special w/ MK Asante & Maya Freelon Asante and Chuck D & Gaye Theresa Johnson

A ‘Left of Black Holiday’ Special with MK Asante & Maya Freelon Asante and Chuck D & Gaye Theresa JohnsonLeft of Black focuses on family on this Thanksgiving Week episode featuring Maya Freelon Asante, M.K. Asante, Chuck D and Gaye Theresa Johnson. Maya Freelon Asante  is a visual artist whose work has been described by poet Dr. Maya Angelou as “observing and visualizing the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being.” Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the U.S. State Department. Her latest work—a combination of tissue paper, printmaking, collage, and sculpture—was hailed by the International Review of African American Art as “a vibrant, beating assemblage of color.”Gaye Theresa Johnson is Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of  Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles.MK Asante is a bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, hip-hop artist, and professor who CNN calls “a master storyteller and major creative force.” Asante is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Buck, described by Maya Angelou as “A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style.”  His other books are It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop, Beautiful. And Ugly Too, and Like Water Running Off My Back. Asante directed The Black Candle, a prize-winning Starz TV movie. He wrote and produced the film 500 Years Later, winner of five international film festival awards, and produced the multi award-winning film Motherland. Chuck D is the iconic lead performer of the legendary Public Enemy.***Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.*** Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U

Tell Me More: From Morgan Freeman to Idris Elba, Who Played Mandela Best?

As Wal-Mart Workers Plan Record Black Friday Protests, Study Says Retail Giant Can Afford Higher Pay

Democracy Now

As Black Friday approaches, Wal-Mart workers and activists are planning another round of protests and strikes at the nation's largest employer on the biggest shopping day of the year. The Black Friday protests come at a time of heightened scrutiny for the company. It made headlines last week when a photo surfaced online of a sign made by workers at one of its stores in Ohio. The sign was taped to a table and read: "Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner."

Wal-Mart says the food drive shows the company tries to help its workers. But critics say it reveals the low wages Wal-Mart pays them. The National Labor Relations Board also ruled last week that Wal-Mart violated the rights of striking workers. We are joined by Catherine Ruetschlin, a policy analyst at Demos who co-authored the new report, "A Higher Wage is Possible: How Wal-Mart Can Invest in Its Workforce Without Costing Customers a Dime." We also speak with Barbara Collins, a former Wal-Mart employee fired after last year's Black Friday strike. Collins speaks to us from Bentonville, Arkansas, where Wal-Mart's headquarters is located. She has been protesting there since Friday as part of a group of eight fired workers who are demanding their jobs back after the NLRB's ruling that their firing was unfair. 

'Black Folk Don't...': Season 3 Trailer

Black Folk Don't...
We're back!! This time we are coming to you from sunny California with episodes on feminism, adoption, going green, plastic surgery and more! Check out the trailer and look for FRESH NEW EPISODES STARTING MONDAY DECEMBER 2ND! Watch at: http://BlackPublicMedia.org.