Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 313

Both politics and love humanize India’s massive 1947 refugee crisis in “Viceroy’s House”

Seventy years ago, during the partition of India, the world experienced its biggest refugee crisis ever. Memories of the event, which can be both a celebration and a tragic loss, tap into the deeply seeded emotions families have tied to place, religion and independence.

While India gained independence and Pakistan was created, 14 million refugees were displaced because of partition, and a million more were killed as violence erupted in the process.

Through Gurinder Chadha’s historical epic film “Viceroy’s House,” out in theaters Sept. 1, viewers can attempt to understand the political wrangling that went into the decision to divide up India in 1947. The film centers on the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten (played by Hugh Bonneville), as he negotiates with Hindu, Sikh and Muslim leaders leading up to partition.

However, it is through the storyline of Mountbatten’s personal valet Jeet (played by Manish Dayal), who is Hindu, and his romantic relationship with a Muslim translator, Aalia (played by Huma Qureshi), where the emotional, human connection is strongest.

Dayal spoke about his role in “Viceroy’s House” with me on Salon Talks.

On South Asians around the world connecting to the storyline:

There’s this anxiety. There’s this deep, deep pain that’s in their memories and to me that was what helped me tap into my character, and the characters in the film — their emotion during that time.

On the universality of the refugee story:

It’s definitely a very timely film in terms of what it means to be in a world divided and I think that that’s a conversation that we’re all having all over the world, not just here in the United States.

Watch the video above to hear Dayal talk about the richness that the research process, much of it personal and familial, brought to his role in “Viceroy’s House.” And click here to watch our full interview on Salon Talks.

Stridently minimal and forcefully propulsive: The Modern Lovers’ major label feeding frenzy

SPRING 1972: Starting a band is the easy part. Writing songs, playing shows, even the day-to-day tasks like hanging up fliers and maintaining a mailing list: those are the things that come naturally. The hard part comes when it is time to move up to the next level, when the time comes to find management and a label, to make the big moves it takes to get an album out into the world and into people’s hands. When art meets commerce is where things get weird, when bankers and lawyers and the financial interests of corporations with quarterly sales quotas all come into the picture. It’s like a game where three competing teams play different sports on the same field. Or a polyamorous relationship where each member of the relationship is actually a committee and each committee member has their own agenda and a long list of potential suitors just in case this specific courtship doesn’t last. It is a very complicated, very convoluted process. And it doesn’t help when an artist insists that they know what is best for their art. The record industry is not set up to make art the priority.

The Modern Lovers are very insistent about the importance of their art, confident that their sound, their style, and their inherent coolness were vital and unique. By the spring equinox of 1972, on the strength of Lillian Roxon’s record label-scolding live review in the Daily News, the Modern Lovers are a hot commodity amongst the rock cognoscenti. That Roxon would travel hours outside of New York to the backwater of Boston to see a band nobody had heard of spoke volumes—she moves in rock’s most elite circles, covers the biggest names in the scene. That she would compare them to her beloved Velvet Underground, a band that she helped canonize via their inclusion in her Rock Encyclopedia, said even more. Roxon is New York’s top tastemaker, she essentially broke the idea that rock music should be given serious critical attentions, and record labels knew better than to ignore her enthusiastic exclamations. And even more than that, Roxon has an unfailing ear for great songs and an eye for cute boys.

The Lovers may still be playing small, self-booked shows but their audience increasingly began to include some of the music industry’s most powerful figures. Clive Davis, head of Columbia Records and one of the industry’s most powerful men, had shown up to a gig in a high school gymnasium in Cambridge. David Geffen, the industry trailblazer who had just launched the artist-friendly Asylum records, is poking around. A&M Records, the label founded by Herb Alpert and known as a bastion of creativity and commercial success, has expressed interest as well, even sending out a young A&R guy named Matthew Kaufman to meet the band. And Warner Bros. are still interested, maybe even more so now that they know their competition is interested as well. And Danny Fields, who has left Elektra records and joined up with Johnny and Edgar Winter’s manager Steve Paul, is now looking to formalize a business relationship with the band after years of friendship and free advice. The band have options and leverage, a strange thing in a music industry where unsigned artists rarely occupy a position of power.

Over the course of the 60s, music industry power had slowly moved westward. Between L.A.’s studio-pop dominance and San Francisco’s acid-fueled ascendency, California has wrested control from New York City and began to recraft youth culture in its image. Even East Coast acts like James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, and Jonathan Edwards (of Bosstown also-rans Sugar Creek) had taken on the breezy smoothness of the Left Coast. Edwards’ “Sunshine” is cruising up the charts, it is bright, hopeful, optimistic. It lacks the unstoppable restlessness of youth and unmovable weight of age. It is a song blissfully unaware of the world around it. Laurel Canyon hegemony is at its height and country rock is king in this small hip-industry enclave.

The Lovers arrived in California on the company dime. Two companies to be exact. In a rare move for the music industry, the suits at Warner and the suits at A&M see eye to eye and agree to split costs, each label getting the chance to walk the band through the old courtship rituals but only having to pay for half the date. And the band still doesn’t have management. Kaufman has offered and Danny Fields and his new boss Steve Paul are interested but, still, no management; the band’s sense of self-importance was making it hard to hand over control of affairs to an outsider. It makes this record label ménage à trois an even more impressive feat. When the Lovers arrive in California, they are bringing a markedly different energy with them and playing by a different set of rules. Stridently minimal and forcefully propulsive, the sound the Modern Lovers make in these California studios stands in stark contrast to the prevailing sounds of the West Coast.

The Modern Lovers’ sound is diametrically opposed to the chart toppers and hit makers in A&M’s stable. The label that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss founded to release The Tijuana Brass’ dulcet instrumental “The Lonely Bull” has become an industry juggernaut over the course of the 60s. Artists like Burt Bacharach and Liza Minnelli, Paul Williams, and The Carpenters are dominating AM radio. Rock acts like Free and Humble Pie were finding a home at progressive rock stations across the country. Joe Cocker, Cat Stevens, and Carole King are straddling both, creating a new niche of adult-oriented, rock influenced music that emphasizes the singer and the songwriter above all else. A&M are even the home of The Flying Burrito Brothers, who, with founding member and current Emmylou Harris collaborator Gram Parsons, helped make country music cool in the eyes of rock fans. When the Modern Lovers went into the studio to cut demos with Robert Apperre and Steve Mason, there was nothing like them on the label.

Warner Brothers Records’ line-up was a bit different, assembled as it were through corporate mergers and label acquisitions in addition to traditional A&R work. From 60s veterans like the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, and Van Morrison to young stars of the 70s like Massachusetts-bred James Taylor and the ever-so-smooth Seals and Croft: that was Warner Bros. Their roster was stacked. Figure in their knack for ushering some of rock’s heaviest acts out of obscurity—Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Alice Cooper all have big, new hit records out—and Warner Bros. seem like a good fit. But, most importantly, John Cale is working with Warner Bros. After two albums for Columbia—Vintage Violence and The Church of Anthrax, his collaboration with visionary composer Terry Riley—the former Velvet Underground viola player had signed with WB subsidiary Reprise Records as an artist and producer.

Both of the demo sessions are simple, mercenary affairs, quick sketches in preparation for a painting of a much grander scope. The Modern Lovers aren’t recording an album; they don’t have time to indulge in overdubs or an infinite number of takes. These recordings are fast, furious reproductions of the band as a live unit, snapshots of the living breathing thing that is the Modern Lovers, but there’s a thickness of tone and nervous energy that didn’t come through during the Intermedia sessions. The band sounds more confident, less overwhelmed by the studio environment, more comfortable battling back and forth like they do in the practice room. While the rest of Hollywood overdoses on punch-ins and studio tricks, the Modern Lovers are making rock ’n’ roll the old fashioned way, four guys in a room doing it live, straight to tape.

Are Americans becoming more xenophobic?

(Credit: AP)

One might wonder how a country that’s becoming increasingly diverse — some projections have the country becoming majority minority by 2060 — is witnessing a resurgence of white nationalist movements that used to exist on the margins of American politics.

As a psychologist who studies social attitudes and biases, I am interested in the impact that increasing diversity and social progress can have on racial attitudes. In a recent study, a colleague and I analyzed how simple reminders of diversity and minority power can influence biases. The results show that the growth of minority populations in the United States could mean that xenophobic, racist rhetoric is more likely to resonate with many Americans.

How diversity influences racial attitudes

For the study we recruited 202 white people from across the country. We divided them into three groups. One group read excerpts from a New York Times article on the projected minority-majority population shift in America. Another read excerpts from a New York Times article on the racial significance of President Obama’s election in 2008. The last group — the control — didn’t read anything.

Next, we had participants complete a test of implicit racial bias. This means that we didn’t just ask people about their racial attitudes; we had them take a computerized reaction time test to assess their biases.

When it comes to sensitive topics like racial attitudes, people are often reluctant to admit their biases. Sometimes they’re not even aware what biases they have. The Implicit Association Test, the most frequently used measure of implicit attitudes, requires people to quickly categorize words (for example, good and bad) and pictures (such as faces of black people and white people) into categories. The stronger the associations we have between categories, the quicker we’re able to perform the categorizations. For instance, if a participant has more positive associations with black people than white people, they’ll be able to more quickly pair positive words with black faces.

Our results indicated that reminding white people of the increasing size or increasing political power of racial minority groups in America — whether it was via the majority-minority projection article or the article about President Obama’s election — led them to show more implicit racial bias against black people.

These findings are consistent with a concept known as Group Threat Theory, which is the idea that when minority groups grow in size or power, the majority group feels threatened. This, in turn, increases intergroup prejudice.

Other recent studies about the growth of minority populations reported similar findings. But group threat doesn’t just increase intergroup bias. It also seems to make people more politically conservative. Psychological research shows that reminding white Americans of the shifting racial demographics of the U.S. increases support for the Republican Party and political conservatism.

The role of minorities in Trump’s victory

So what can this research tell us about the success of Donald Trump, a politician who made — and continues to make — appeals to xenophobia?

Obama’s presidency could be seen as a threat to the power and privilege historically held by whites. On the heels of the first black president, Trump may have tried to capitalize on that threat to white power and privilege by promising to “take our country back” and “make America great again.”

Trump was also able to exploit the threat borne out of the increasingly large racial and ethnic minority population in the United States. As a presidential candidate, Trump hurled some of his most offensive and xenophobic insults at immigrants, stoking fear against Latinos and Muslims (or those from majority Muslim countries) in particular.

This isn’t to say that all Trump voters are racist or xenophobic. But for reasons stated earlier — growing diversity, a black president — many may have been more open to these appeals (or willing to overlook them). Trump certainly played on group threat, telling his supporters that immigrants were stealing their jobs, exhausting public benefits and challenging the American way of life. From a psychological perspective, we know these reminders will cause people to feel threatened.

Whether Trump did it knowingly or not, it was incredibly effective. And now other groups are following his lead.

Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published on Jan. 4, 2017.

Allison Skinner, Psychology Researcher, Northwestern University

Justice Department: No evidence to support Trump Tower being wiretapped by Obama

Donald Trump; Barack Obama (Credit: Getty/Jim Watson/Chip Somodevilla)

In a court filing on Friday night the Justice Department said there is no evidence to support President Donald Trump’s assertions that former President Barack Obama wiretapped phone inside Trump Tower.

“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets,” the motion said, according to CNN. NSD refers to the national security division of the Justice Department. “The motion came in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a group pushing for government transparency, American Oversight,” CNN reported.

In March the president made the absurd claims and ironically it all started with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as Salon has previously reported. After Sessions recused himself, right-wing radio host Mark Levin said, “the incredible scandal here is the Obama administration was investigating top officials in the Trump campaign, maybe even Trump himself — during the course of the election!”

Hours later the comments were picked up by alt-right website that is once again being run by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. The Breitbart article was placed “in Trump’s daily reading pile shortly before the president sent out his wiretap tweets the next morning.”

Trump then tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Trump wrote in another tweet.

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” he also tweeted.

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

American Oversight, the group that received the motion from a FOIA request, said in a statement, “The FBI and Department of Justice have now sided with former Director Comey and confirmed in writing that President Trump lied when he tweeted the former President Obama ‘wiretapped’ him at Trump Tower.”

The FBI & DOJ have now sided with Comey & confirmed that @realDonaldTrump lied about wiretaps of Trump Tower. https://t.co/ibUVAuFxOK pic.twitter.com/6gckOFkNgf

— American Oversight (@weareoversight) September 2, 2017

Trump has yet to recant his claims, issue an apology, or otherwise acknowledge that what he said was false.

The only back-to-school cell phone rules your kids really need

(Credit: Getty/dolgachov)

Whether your kid is heading to school toting a brand-new device or is already a cell-phone pro, you want everyone on the same page about the dos and don’ts. (Get more information on cell-phone parenting.) You can keep an eye on kids at home (kind of), but at school, they’re on their own. As with any kind of boundary setting, these conversations can be tense. Fortunately, there are only five rules for them to remember — and one for you, to show that you’re all in this together. (Tweens and teens can also play our animated, interactive Digital Compass game to pick up digital-citizen skills.)

Here are our key guidelines for cell-phone carrying kids:

1. Respect the school’s rules. Some schools permit students to use their phones at certain times: between classes, at lunch, on the playground, even occasionally in class. Abusing this privilege — like, by texting during a test or playing Pokemon GO in math class — could get your phone taken away and possibly jeopardize your classmates’ freedom. Only use your phone when you’re allowed to on school grounds.

2. Pick up when it’s parents calling. Ugh, why can’t they just text like everyone else? Sometimes mom, dad, or your caregiver need to talk to you. It’s probably very important, so don’t send it to voicemail.

3. Ask permission before downloading anything. Even if you have your own app store account, get sign off on any apps you download. If something has in-app purchases, those costs could wind up on your parents’ bill — so they need to know what extra charges a download may incur. They also need to make sure it’s age appropriate and reasonably good for you.

4. Don’t flaunt it. Owning a cell phone is a privilege that not every kid has access to. It’s OK to be proud of your phone — it’s an expensive piece of equipment for which you’ve been given responsibility — but showing off could make other people feel bad. Also, it could get stolen.

5. Use your phone for good, not evil. You’ll see all kinds of misbehavior and mischief regarding phones in school. Set an example for others by being respectful and responsible with yours. Ask permission before taking someone’s picture. Take a moment to consider whether a text or video could hurt, annoy, or embarrass someone else. Turn off the phone when you’re supposed to. Don’t let the phone be more important than someone standing right in front of you.

And here’s our essential rule for parents:

Don’t text your kid during the school day. Unless it’s a real emergency — like, you’re going to the hospital — resist the urge to text your kid during the school day. Kids have survived for many, many years without talking to their parents while they’re at school — and they need to be allowed independence. And if your kid texts you, make sure he’s not breaking any rules to do so.

How men recover from war

"Shooting Ghosts: A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer, and Their Journey Back from War" by Thomas J. Brennan USMC (Ret) and Finbarr O'Reilly (Credit: Penguin)

Finbarr O’Reilly was a canny Canadian war photographer embedded in Helmand province in Afghanistan. T.J. Brennan was a boisterous, profane and skeptical Marine sergeant who played host to O’Reilly in 2010, as he and his men undertook the thankless mission of fending off invisible Taliban fighters in a moonscape of dusty villages.

One day, Brennan, while out on patrol, was knocked down by the shockwave of a rocket-propelled grenade. O’Reilly took a photo of the wounded warrior, and they fell in love.

No, O’Reilly and Brennan are not gay. T.J. is married and has a daughter; Finbarr is an eligible bachelor who had no trouble attracting globetrotting girlfriends. But their deep emotional bond formed in the wake of Brennan’s traumatic brain injury is a masculine love story that runs throughout their new book, “Shooting Ghosts,” a joint memoir of how men experience — and recover from — war.

“Shooting Ghosts” is unflinching, yet it is not stoic. It is sensitive, yet not sentimental. It is especially compelling in the face of President Trump’s announcement that he is sending an additional 4,000 servicemen and women to Afghanistan.

The president’s decision — a reversal of his call in 2012 for “speedy withdrawal” — ensures that America’s longest war will continue. Which is to say, it will continue killing and maiming American soldiers like T.J. Brennan, as well as Afghan civilians, for years to come. If you want to know what Trump’s decision means for the lives of thousands of Americans now serving in Afghanistan, “Shooting Ghosts” is a good place to start.

The allure of war

O’Reilly and Brennan are certainly qualified to tell you that war is hell. But first they want you to know that war is also fun, fulfilling, exciting, boring, addicting, awful, comforting, and to the young male mind, very attractive. Like Chris Hedges in “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” they tell of the rush you get from risking your life, especially when you’re high on idealism.

Brennan was a patriotic wiseguy and George W. Bush fan in the Boston suburbs who wanted to test himself by putting kinetic force on bad guys. He went on to join the Marines and exulted when he reached the war front. He blew up houses in Fallujah and Helmand.

“For a demolitions man, there was nothing better than watching a house crumple after firing a rocket through an entryway,” he writes.

O’Reilly, the son of a doctor, had a passionate sympathy for people swept up in war. “Photography for me is about getting inside people’s lives, telling individual stories quietly,” O’Reilly says. He took award-winning pictures in Congo, Iraq and Gaza.

When Brennan is sent home to recuperate, he fights with his wife and ignores his daughter. He feels guilty about letting his men down yet yearns to return to the battlefield. He goes to therapy, but hides his suicidal thoughts and loss of memory. He is haunted by the memory of killing two Iraqi children.

“I’m trapped inside the distorted mindset of a warrior,” Brennan admits. “Our universe is unpredictable, random and unsafe.”

By then O’Reilly was in a tailspin on his own. The adventures that once seemed exhilarating became pointless, even sickening. His harrowing stories of escaping death, photographing plane crashes and losing friends in the battle zones are almost enough to give the reader his own case of PTSD. O’Reilly found himself in a major depression.

“By some cosmic twist, I’ve ended up living comfortably on one side of the lens because of the misery and want residing on the other,” O’Reilly reflects. “If all my efforts and sacrifices aren’t making any difference, what’s the point?”

Road to recovery

In alternating chapters, the two men tell the story of their growing friendship as they recover from war.

Brennan has the rude humor of a self-described “dumb boot.” He rages. He sulks. He bitches about the V.A. (and who wouldn’t?). He starts smoking cannabis and reconciling himself to the awful pictures in his head.

O’Reilly displays the neurotic flourishes of a cosmopolitan striver. His corrosive silences send his girlfriend packing. He studies the science of recovery. He watches re-runs of “Glee.”

Female readers may detect a familiar deficit in the talking-about-feelings department, but the two men go where most fear to trerad. They come to realize the healing power of their intimate and painful bond.

“When I have been traumatized, my only hope for being deeply understood is to form a connection with a brother or sister who knows the same darkness,” O’Reilly says, quoting psychoanalyst Robert Stolorow.

Brennan, who had no higher ambition than to open a coffee shop, decides he wants to become a journalist. O’Reilly, who takes a year off to study war trauma, becomes a mentor with a purpose.

“If T.J. can develop his writing and tell his story, it can serve a real purpose beyond what it does just for him,” he writes. “Others struggling through similar emotional pain might draw strength from a Marine with the courage to speak out.”

Brennan’s searingly honest posts for the New York Times‘ At War blog began to attract attention. He healed his marriage and started his own news blog, the War Horse, with the motto, “bulletproof reporting on war and trauma.”

Earlier this year, the War Horse broke the story of the Marines United Facebook page, where 3,000 servicemen shared nude photos of servicewomen. The story, picked up by the national press, prompted the Pentagon to ban non-consensual photo sharing and revenge porn. Brennan is a peaceful warrior now, although he might kick your ass if you mistreat one of his dogs.

O’Reilly refused to cover any more wars and turned his camera toward the visual splendor of the Dakar Fashion Show where his subjects are models and style, not atrocity and pain.

The two men don’t go deep into the details of the friendship — they’re guys, after all — but the pleasure they take in each other’s company is palpable and so is their commitment to helping others recover from the wounds of war.

“We still feel the tug of war’s allure,” O’Reilly writes, “but we recognize the surrounding myth for what it is — a ruse that allows those who are older, more powerful and more wealthy to send the young and idealistic to do their bidding.”

“Shooting Ghosts” is no easy story of uplift, but one of hard-won wisdom. Brennan and O’Reilly have tamed, if not broken, their addiction to war. Now if only the United States government could do the same.

“So simple it’s revolutionary”: On the increased variety of black male characters on TV

This Is Us; Atlanta; American Gods; Queen Sugar (Credit: NBC/FX/Starz/OWN)

Sterling K. Brown, the Emmy-nominated star of NBC’s hit drama “This Is Us,” is reaping the rewards of a long career climb that has at times been unsteady. This will be his second run at Emmy gold in two years; his portrayal of Christopher Darden in FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” secured him a statue for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or a movie last year.

But these plums are the sweet spot of a career spanning 15 years, which hasn’t always presented him with award-worthy opportunities. “I’ve done doctor, lawyer, cop, criminal, more times than I can count,” Brown said in a recent conversation with Salon. “I’ve died on screen about four or five times. I’ve been beheaded. I’ve gone to the gas chamber … That was my wheelhouse, if you will.”

Now, Brown embodies a character who is successful in business, “but it’s also sort of tangential to who he is as a man and the relationships that he values and cultivates in his life, as a son, as a husband, and as a father and as a brother,” Brown continued. “I love Randall and I love that he gets a chance to come into people’s homes on a weekly basis because he’s such a loving, caring individual who tries his best at everything that he does, sometimes even to his own detriment.

Omar Dorsey, meanwhile, has played an assortment of heavies ranging from the nameless — he’s listed on IMDb as “Thug #1” on an episode of “Entourage” — to the prominent, including the part of Cookie Brown on Showtime’s “Ray Donovan.”

When “Queen Sugar” executive producer Ava DuVernay asked Dorsey to read for the character he now plays on the show, “I was like, ‘I’ve never done this’ …  it’s a character that we never really see on television, you know, but it’s a character that as a black man, has been part of my whole life. You know, a hard-working brother who loves his family, loves his wife. He has no anger issues. There’s nothing negative about him. He’s just a regular man. And so, I was just so proud.”

The predominant options for up-and-coming black male actors working in television, an industry with an endless array of procedurals, tend to be cops and criminals, with the occasional member of a professional class — lawyer, doctor or judge — thrown in for good measure. Paint-by-numbers roles that pay the rent, unless one happens to be a comedian with a recognizable name, whose fame smooths mainstream acceptance to the idea that such a man might have somewhat normal family life.

In that case, you might get a sitcom.

But during the 2016-17 season Brown and Dorsey, as well as Dorsey’s co-star Dondre Whitfield, received the opportunity to show viewers very different depictions of the black male experience in America. Brown’s Randall Pearson, the adopted son of white parents on “This Is Us,” is at the center of one of the most talked about story lines on television. He’s a loving family man who reconnects with his birth father in the final months of his father’s life, holds a high-powered corporate job and enjoys nurturing relationship with his wife and children.

On OWN’s “Queen Sugar,” resuming its second season Tuesday, Oct. 3, Dorsey portrays Hollywood Desonier, a devoted, supportive partner to Tina Lifford’s Violet Bordelon, and a man ministering to a family member with mental health issues. “Queen Sugar” embraces a number of expansively written black male characters, foremost being Kofi Siriboe’s Ralph Angel, a former convict building a new life for himself by caring for his family’s farm.

If these characters sound distinctly ordinary, and if their challenges mirror those of ordinary people, that’s the point.

The actors interviewed for this story are regulars on four different series, including a comedy and three dramas. The time they spent working in the industry ranges from a few years to more than three decades. That honor goes to Whitfield: His first professional credit came in 1986 with a guest appearance on “Diff’rent Strokes,” according to IMDb.

Indeed, the last few television seasons have featured more complexly rendered black male characters reflecting a multitude of social or economic levels — more than we’ve seen in many years. These are men whose characters are granted deep development and complicated backstories, who aren’t connected to some fantastical version of fame and don’t have supernatural abilities.

Don’t get us wrong, there’s much to appreciate about Mike Colter’s work in “Marvel’s Luke Cage” and Terrence Howard’s operatic fire in “Empire.” But there are many more men whose lives and concerns more closely align with those of Hollywood Desonier, Randall Pearson, Ralph Angel and Remy.

Or, for that matter, Brian Tyree Henry’s Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles on FX’s “Atlanta,” a guy who sells weed but whose character isn’t defined by what he does to pay the rent.  Henry received his big break with a starring role in the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” and also has a guest actor Emmy nomination for his appearance on “This Is Us.” He said he was drawn to his “Atlanta” character specifically because Alfred reminds him of people he knows.

“What was most important for me with Alfred was to make sure that his story wasn’t lost in whatever microaggressions or stereotypes that people wanted to put on an Atlanta trap rapper. That’s not all of who he is, it’s not all of what he encompasses,” Henry said. “And I really wanted to get to the story of this relationship between these two cousins and what their lives are, traversing this life in Atlanta.”

Over on premium cable channel Starz, “American Gods” affords Orlando Jones the opportunity to don the impeccable threads of  the West African trickster god Anansi, known as Mr. Nancy in the story,  a rare offer for a minority working in the entertainment field.

“My excitement about Mr. Nancy was that I was going to be able to take a character that was born out of Africa and bring that character to light in a way that unapologetically spoke about the truth of our circumstances, and in no way, shape or form saw himself as subservient to any element of this story,” Jones said. “Mr. Nancy is a story of survival. Do not talk to me about the moral line he’s walking.  He’s attempting to survive and he has figured out a way to do that using his cunning and using his intellect, the very things that we don’t get applauded for.”

Jones began his career as a writer for “A Different World” in 1991 and cultivated his own brand in front of the camera, notably as a spokesperson for 7UP between 1999 and 2002. By then he had done 10 movies and carved out a recognizable comedic personality as part of the original cast of “MADtv.” This, in turn, culminated in a short-lived stint as a late-night talk show host for “The Orlando Jones Show,” one of FX’s earliest forays into original programming.

To a certain extent Jones’ familiarity places him among a small pool of actors whose name opened doors and opportunities for him where other players could not gain access. Even so, before his role on “American Gods” he was written off of Fox’s “Sleepy Hollow” despite his character’s popularity among fans.

And it’s for this reason that Jones cautions against the false idea that this broader range of depictions is indicative of lasting change. “I don’t think you can quite get around the fact that these stories are still by and large being told by white people,” he points out, explaining that much of the time thinly written characters are cast with actors of color to allow networks to add points to their diversity columns. “That’s not diversity of storytelling. That’s not particularly diversity of characters. That’s diversity in the 11th hour of casting. We have seen a great deal of that happen.”

From what can be surmised by lists of film credits, the longer an actor of color has consistently appeared on camera and the more familiar his face is, the better chance he has at scoring recurring roles that aren’t qualified by the designation of agent or cop.

Whitfield spent time in ensembles for a number of popular series including “The Cosby Show,” “Another World,” “All My Children” and “Girlfriends” before joining “Queen Sugar.”

What that series and “Atlanta” have in common are producers and/or creators who are African-American and make a point of depicting aspects of the black experience that either have not been seen, or are rarely portrayed.

Hence we have series that examine how African-American men are made to code switch, moving between the realms of community expectation while being keenly aware of the way white people are predisposed to view them and the women in their lives.

“I have the privilege, and we do as the men on ‘Queen Sugar,’ we have the privilege of being able to play men that are fantastic and humanly heroic, despite their flaws,” Whitfield said. “You can be all of that and still be a flawed human being because we all are. And sometimes I think that a lot of these shows have, in the past, featured us in a way that has been very one-dimensional, and some of our [white] counterparts have had the privilege of being able to be all of those things, to be a man who’s valued in that way, and that is heroic in that way, and manly in that way despite his flaws.

“Just because you have a blemish in your character doesn’t mean that you have to be a downright dirty dog,” he added. “That’s what I love about the men on our show, that the redeeming qualities are so valued despite the flaws.”

That factor is playing out in a significant way on “Insecure” as Jay Ellis’ character, Lawrence, navigates a predominantly white tech-world setting with different expectations about what he represents to his colleagues and to women.

“We’ve gotten to a place where people want to see real worlds. Television for so long was so broad so we could reach the biggest amount of people, but what kind of got lost in that was authenticity,” Ellis tells Salon’s Pete Cooper in an interview conducted in early August.

As he explains, part of that is exploring an idea that is “so simple it’s revolutionary”: that millions of women and men share existences similar to Lawrence’s but aren’t depicted on television.

The availability and development of these characters is keenly important right now, when racial tension in the United States is spiking once again, when a cop feels comfortable with joking on camera about killing black people. Backing this up is a recent examination by the Marshall Project, which determined that whites can kill a black man and face no legal consequence nearly 17 percent of the time.

Many factors led to these depressing statistics. But surely the flood of negative images of black life and black men on television has something to do with the common view of black male lives as disposable. For years broadcast and cable shows flooded the audience with images of black men as either criminals to be interrogated or arrested in the course of solving the crime of the hour, or as professionals who somehow transcend race, with very few deeply developed characterizations of everyday people in between.

That makes the existence and popularity of Randall, Alfred, Hollywood, Remy and so many others extraordinary in their profound ordinariness.

“lt’s nice that we’re in a place where the stories of people of color are being recognized for their universal appeal not just to appeal to the demographic that they represent,” Brown observed. “But there’s a universality where people recognize the humanity in themselves regardless of their race, creed, culture and background. It’s always been my belief that you get to the universal through the specific.”

And he’s right. Even Henry is experiencing that with his work on “Atlanta.”

“I usually get approached by older white ladies of a certain class,  with their pearls and, you know, their Talbots on and everything,  and they’re like, ‘We just have to say, we know we’re not your demographic but we love Paper Boi, we really love this show and we love what you’re doing.’ It’s totally cool.”

Of course, in the larger context of the industry we’re merely at the starting line. A wide gap still exists between where the rate of inclusion should be in Hollywood, and where it currently is. White actors still claim the majority of lead roles on television, playing 76 percent of the 806 scripted roles on broadcast series during 2014-15, the most recent season analyzed in the 2017 Hollywood Diversity Report commissioned by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

Minorities accounted for 11.4 percent of lead roles in broadcast scripted programming during that time period, up from 8.1 percent in 2013-14. That number still reflects an underrepresentation, proportionally speaking, since minorities accounted for 38.4 percent of the population in 2015.

And minority actors lost ground on cable series during the same time period, where they accounted for 15.8 percent of lead roles in 2014-15, down a percentage point from 16.6 percent in 2013-14.

During these seasons ABC’s “Black-ish” and Fox’s “Empire” aired on broadcast, with Starz’s “Power” having recently debuted on premium cable and the long-running comedy “The Game” coming to an end on BET. Leap forward a couple of years, and these series have been joined by FX’s award-winning and Emmy nominated comedy “Atlanta,” “Survivor’s Remorse” on Starz, HBO’s “Insecure,” and “Greenleaf” and “Queen Sugar” on OWN, among others.

The success of these shows and the variance within these characters also add to the conversation about who gets to tell these stories. “Insecure” is the creation of an African-American woman, Issa Rae. “Atlanta” was created by Donald Glover, and “Queen Sugar” is steered by Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey and Monica Macer.

However, “This Is Us” and Randall came from the mind of Dan Fogelman. “Survivor’s Remorse,” one of the more astute satires about wealth, fame and family on television, follows a pair of black male leads and features a predominantly black cast but was created by actor and writer Mike O’Malley. Both are white.

And “American Gods” is based on a novel by Neil Gaiman and adapted for television by two white executive producers, Bryan Fuller and Michael Green – both of whom made it a priority to adhere to the book’s description of its racially ambiguous main character Shadow Moon by casting Ricky Whittle, a black British actor.

Referring to Fuller and Green, Jones said, “One of the things I’m most proud of is being able to work with creators who actually genuinely appreciate things that many creators just, you know, don’t pay any attention to. I mean those guys are incredible artists and absolutely 100 percent woke.  Like, way woke.”

“We don’t need to be superheroes,” Whitfield said.  Some people want black and brown folks to be featured as superheroes and that’s it. I just want us to be portrayed truthfully. Not one-dimensionally. Not as superheroes. Otherwise I have a problem with that. I just want our stories to be told truthfully and to be a person who has integrity.

“That’s what our entire society should be about,” he added.  And we can actually be a catalyst that maybe society will one day reflect. Instead of it being, you know, art mirroring what is going on in life, life will begin to mirror what art is first. Sometimes that’s what does help to bring about real change.“

How Jay-Z’s new album and interview made me a Tidal believer

Jay Z (Credit: Getty/Dave Kotinsky)

Over two years ago, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter held a press conference. He gathered some of the music industry’s most famous, most profitable and wealthiest voices to announce the relaunch of the streaming service Tidal, with the slogan “Tidal for All.”

“Every great movement has been started by a few brave people who banded together for a common cause,” the Tidal spokeswoman said, before introducing artists like Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Daft Punk, Jack White, Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna and Nicki Minaj. The overwhelming message was: artists should get more money than current streaming companies provide.

It was a bizarre press conference where words and phrases like “revolutionary” and “changing the status quo” were thrown around in a format that was deeply disconnected, and a clear marketing fumble. People felt it, media outlets called it out, and Tidal had a hard time bouncing back from it.

However, on June 30, when Jay-Z’s 13th studio album “4:44″ dropped exclusively on Tidal, things began to change for the platform. And that’s not just because of a new, excellent Jay-Z  album — music piracy and streaming have long made almost any music available for free somewhere on the internet. Rather, it was the content of the album that finally made statements like “revolutionary” in relation to Tidal make sense.

Across the 10-song album (minus bonus tracks), the rapper addresses systematic racism, how to build wealth in the black community, the homosexuality of his mother and his newfound self-reflection and ownership of his past struggles. It’s unequivocally the most personal and vulnerable work Jay-Z has ever delivered.

Jay-Z followed the album’s release with a two-hour long interview released by famous hip-hop journalist, and now Tidal editorial director, Elliott Wilson and rap journalist Brian Miller for their podcast Rap Radar.

In the course of his discussion with Miller and Wilson, distributed exclusively via Tidal, Jay-Z said “nothing was off the table,” when it came to creating “4:44.” The same proved true for the interview.

Jay-Z talked about the intense criticism against Tidal compared to the broad acceptance of  similar streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. But he also took accountability for “that terrible press conference. I would never do that again,” he said. “That was a powerful lesson for me.”

Accountability was certainly a theme on the album and in the interview. Jay-Z mentioned going to therapy to address “trans-generational trauma.” He talked about how he evolved spiritually after questioning hypocrisy in religion. He took ownership for past lyrics that may have caused critics or casual listeners to see only capitalist motivations in his music and persona. Powerfully, he peeled back the layers of Jay-Z, the entertainer and businessmen, to reveal the core values, struggles and growth of Jay-Z, the human being.

Despite being a huge Jay-Z fan, I was skeptical about the validity of Jay being interviewed by his own employees as much as I was skeptical about Tidal itself. But as I watched a lengthy interview in which a famously guarded star spoke openly and honestly in a welcoming space, I was forced to reexamine the very premise of Tidal, or what would be possible if artists had full control of their means of distribution.

It’s well-known in media that most artists hate interviews. They hate being asked the same questions. They hate when their statements are edited down to soundbites and turned into sensationalist headlines. But Jay-Z did not hate this.

For perhaps the first time ever, Jay-Z could converse at ease, because he did not have those fears. Also, by presenting the interview in full, this enormous figure was pulled down from his typically inaccessible pedestal to the point where we could recognize his humanity. “4:44,” in all its raw expression and vulnerability, did the same thing.

I still think “revolutionary” is too strong a word to describe what Tidal is doing, but after this interview, I’m on board. Artists receiving a larger portion for the music they create is a good thing, period. Will artists still get challenged on their statements and beliefs in such a controlled environment as Tidal? I’m not sure, but certainly a place where artists can safely open up about who they are beyond the music is meaningful.

Jay-Z is slated to go on a solo tour this fall, beginning with him headlining his own music festival, Made in America, this weekend. He teased in the interview that the stage setup would be in the middle, “amongst the people, because this is what the album is about — it’s about people, it’s about the culture.”

A summer of drive-by listening

Kendrick Lamar; Migos; Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee; Jay-Z (Credit: AP/Amy Harris/Getty/Frederick M. Brown/Sergi Alexander/Theo Wargo)

September 22 is the final day of Summer ’17, which leaves the pop field two weeks to put a small dent in Luis Fonsi’s claim for this year’s Song of the Summer. Fonsi’s hits “Daddy Yankee” and Justin Bieber-featuring Latin dance smash “Despacito” have held the top spot on Billboard’s “Summer Songs” chart for the entire summer — and then some. This week marked “Despacito’s” 16th atop Billboard’s Hot 100 (a different chart that is essentially the same chart without the exclusive focus on summer), tying the record set by “One Sweet Day,” Mariah Carey’s 1996 gospel duet with Boyz II Men.

The popularity of “Despacito” surprised me. I’ve spent the summer only vaguely aware of its existence and even more vaguely aware of what it sounds like. When I listened to it today, I thought perhaps I had never heard it before; when I listened to it again, I thought perhaps I had heard it many times, and it simply hadn’t made an impression on me.

Don’t get me wrong: “Despacito” is notable for a whole host of reasons — not least of which, it’s the first Spanish-language single to top the U.S. charts since “Macarena.” Maybe it’s been the soundtrack to your summer, but for me, it’s been absent. The song hasn’t followed me around like some past summer smashes. Last summer, I had the recurrent experience of being put unconsciously into motion by Drake’s “One Dance.” In previous summers, songs like Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” were impossible to ignore, not only for their beats and hooks but for the way they dominated the conversation, inspiring countless think pieces on topics like consent and appropriation.

But who cares? What is the Song of the Summer if not an arbitrary and unofficial award created to drum up content amidst the doldrums of the Silly Season on sites like this one? You’ll notice that the idea of a dominant summer song has been around for generations in America but that it was only in the mid-aughts — right around the time that blogging was coming into its own — that the entertainment press took the concept and ran. The New York Times’s former music critic Kelefa Sanneh, following in Ann Powers’ footsteps, began regularly writing about the Song of the Summer around that time. Billboard’s “Summer Songs” chart was born in 2010. And in 2013, Stephen Colbert satirized the debate over the year’s definitive summer song with a segment on the “Colbert Report” called “Song of the Summer of the Century.”  

There’s a less cynical way to look at the Song of the Summer, though. The concept arguably became resonant when it did, not because of the need for content but because of the new importance placed on shared experiences. The mid-aughts was a time when CDs and radio gave way to iPods and mp3s en masse and when listening became more solitary. For most people, summer is the only time of year when music is experienced communally. It is the season of barbecues, pool parties and weddings. It is the season of car trips and driving around with the windows down and the volume up. To move around a city in the summer is to be constantly confronted with music played by other people, and usually that music is played with other people in mind. Summer songs need to be crowd-pleasers.  

The shared aspect of the Song of the Summer is, I think, the reason why there is a debate each year over the one song to rule them all. Each year’s song is representative of the culture at large at a given moment. In 2014, Amanda Dobbins described the Song of Summer as, “by its very definition . . . a consensus choice.” She continued: “It is the song that wrecks wedding dance floors. It is the song that you and your mother begrudgingly agree on. . . . It does not necessarily have to hit No. 1 on the charts, but it should probably be on the charts, because it must be widely played. It must bring people together. It must be a shared enthusiasm.”

This summer, I made a conscious effort to monitor what I was hearing in shared settings. Until a few weeks ago, my workspace was near a traffic light on a mildly busy street in the middle of Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn. When I opened my window, I could hear whatever song was blaring from a stopped car, if that car had its window opened. When I heard a song, I would Shazam it and add it to an ongoing Note. I did the same thing when I was walking around. Some days I forgot to keep track of what I heard. Other times I was too slow to catch the song. And now and again the noises on the street would prevent Shazam from picking up what was playing. What I wound up with was a small, highly unscientific, FiveThirtyEight-unapproved survey of the summer’s songs, captured in an attached playlist.

I took note of about 50 songs, and within that 50, a few songs repeated. I heard a lot of Migos (“T-Shirt” and “Bad and Boujee” particularly), a lot of Kendrick Lamar (“DNA” and “Humble” particularly) and a lot of Jay Z (“Bam” and “The Story of OJ” particularly). Most of what I heard was hip-hop, and most of what I heard was made by men (the only exceptions being “Bam Bam” by Sister Nancy and “I Can Love You” by Mary J. Blige).

The list probably looks the way it does because so much of it was generated in Bed-Stuy. Hov’s old stomping grounds may be rapidly gentrifying, but hip-hop remains the area’s dominant sound. (Caribbean music is second.) The predominance of hip-hop on the list also explains why so little of what I heard was made by women: hip-hop, even in 2017, is a mostly male genre.

On the other hand, it occurred to me that maybe men tend to be the drivers who play music loud enough for the world to hear, and men want the world to hear them playing masculine-sounding music, which is often hip-hop. It’s just a hypothesis.

But regardless of why I heard what I heard, I found it interesting that what I heard only kind of jives with Billboard’s “Summer Songs” chart. I heard pop hits like Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I like” and DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One,” but I didn’t hear the ostensible most popular song of the summer (“Despacito”) once. Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Or maybe the communal experience of moving around a city in the summer can’t compare to listening to pop radio.

It was also notable that so much of what I heard was released in the winter and early spring, if not years ago. The tail for publicly playing music is longer than the one for downloading music, it seems. We think of summer anthems as songs that are released in the late spring or early summer, but often the songs that find their way onto summer playlists are just classics — from earlier in the year or from years earlier.

Will “Despacito” be one of those songs? Will it reenter summer playlists in five or ten years? For me, that’s hard to imagine; I was barely conscious of the song at its height. But maybe you’ve been walking around different streets.

“Salon Stage”: Lukas Nelson carries on father Willie’s legacy in exclusive set

Lukas Nelson’s career is rooted in integrity and authenticity. That doesn’t mean he has no expectations. He hopes his music moves people and “transports a state of mind” from himself to his listeners. But maintaining his truest form of self is the highest goal.

Perhaps it’s because he’s already experienced the music industry in one sense, as the son of legendary country singer Willie Nelson. But for the last 10 years, Nelson and his bandmates have been fine-tuning their own experiences and sound. On August 25, they released their self-titled album “Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.”

Nelson joined “Salon Stage” to play an exclusive acoustic set of “Find Yourself” and to discuss the lessons music has taught him.

On what music means to him:

It’s something that I do so that I can get my feelings out there, because I’m awkward at parties. It’s a means of expression; music is my spirituality; it’s my religion; it’s something that I try to embody in my daily life, as well as in performance.

When I play music I let go; I transcend. I find my bliss.

On whether he feels he is continuing his dad’s legacy:

I do love my dad, and I sound like him sometimes. He’s my best friend. I look up to him in a lot of ways, of course. He’s a legendary musician. So I got to learn from the best and from others that are to his caliber. I hope that I can carry on some of what he has. But I have different experiences; I have different types of pain inside that I have to get out, and so that’s what happens when you’re a different person. But I do respect him to the ends of the earth and beyond, and I hope to continue some of what he is just by being me.

On maintaining authenticity in the music industry:

We all are real, but some people act a certain way because they feel like they have to. They get told by their friends or society that they have to act a certain way, and they have to change who they are in order to conform. I don’t like that; that’s not real to me. Even though everybody is real inside, a lot of people wear masks in life.

Watch the video above to hear “Find Yourself,” and click here to watch Lukas Nelson’s full “Salon Stage” set, including a cover of Eric Clapton’s “Change The World.”