Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Third Day of Bank Protests In Chicago
According to the HuffPo this is the third day of these protests, and this is the first I've heard about it. Not even Ed Schultz is talking bout it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
THE RHETORIC OF PLEASURE: Prose Style & Today's Composition Classroom
If you haven't heard about this, the information for the National Day of Writing, sponsored by the National Gallery of Writing is here. Today, October 20, 2009, is the the Opening Day. In celebration everyone may contribute something of your own to the site.
In my case, I've decided to talk here about a book that not only deals with writing, but about teaching writing, written by our friend (2003; Boynton/Cork Publishers, Portsmouth, New Hampshire). Among his extensive, hands-on experience with teaching and writing is what he's learned as Director of the Writing Program at Tulane University. Moreover, he's a very good writer himself, as I can vouch for, having read work of his that is neither academic nor pedagogical. At the same time, I can also vouch from personal observation the energy and enthusiasm with which he approaches writing and with which he teaches his students to effectively communicate as writers. His classes are his number one priority. You know this is true because of the very many hours he spends on them every week: planning, preparation, reading and critiquing his students' papers, following up on their work, answering their questions, providing advice and assistance that is directed to their individual writing challenges. (There's a reason he's received numerous teaching awards; he's also passionately involved in the music communities of New Orleans and gives a great deal of time to them, including his own broadcast jazz program, Jazz From the Market, on WWOZ. He goes to the gymn -- definitely gets away from the desk and out of the office.)
His students have to work equally hard. They write, critique, revise, re-write, constantly. The class isn't about your personal traumas and problems, it isn't about 'self-expression' and it is not journaling. The class is about your writing problems. TR's methodology is fairly based on classically tested, effective methodology, i.e. what the Greek Rhetoricians studied, taught and practiced, provides joy, rather than punishment.
A premise of The Rhetoric of Pleasure is that the 60's*** were about "pleasure and the quest for the infinite." As part of the greater dismemberment backlash of everything the "60's" seems to represent for those who prefer a controlled, confined order, our culture was manipulated to value instead, an empty, anxious super-consumerism. Along the way, shopping and buying replaced "Rhapsode" as the social objective of activity and of discourse.
The foundation of TR's methodology, then, is the long list of the Rhetorcians' pre-Socratic stylistic devices, which his students need to learn. They learn by, first, assigned engagement with 3 - 5 of these devices in their papers, then later in the term, with their own choices of the devices in their papers. He teaches rhetoric as its ancient, original objective: powerful medicine, i.e. magic, healing magic. As illustration he cites Chrysippus, a Stoic, who wrote The Therapeutikon, also known as The Ethikon. This heals the student of her writing incapacity, which leads to effective communication in other modes. In simpler words, the students learn how to say what they want to say so others can understand what they want to say.
From now on this is me speaking, what I thought about while reading TR's book, not necessarily what TR writes or advocates in terms of the classroom. The review linked to above describes TR's methodology and what he advocates with greater expertise, wider experience, than I can.
Most programs designed to teach students the basic competencies employ an industrial methodological approach: a rigid construction of dry concepts without context (raw materials) are drummed into the students (the industrial machinery) to turn out the repetitive, contextless 5 paragraph essay (the product). These students are generally the most unpopular to teach, who have the least contact with their school's English Department's most experienced and passionate lovers of literature and writing, as these students' lack of competencies are judged unworthy, meaning incapable, of such pleasures. Often they are shunted off to the adjuncts and teaching assistants, who in turn, are often the least experienced and skilled in teaching anything, much less what they have been students of so recently themselves.
The Rhetoric of Pleasure advocates a methodology that employs the most elegant, sophisticated thinking and writing devices with the students who have the fewest competencies in writing. Instead of being punished for their lack of perceived compentency, by denial of writing and literary pleasure, they are provided personal, (generative) hands-on experience of the joy, the pleasure of communicating effectively, with writing. TR gives his students the intellectual respect of expectation that they can learn what he is teaching, and the results of their end-of-term papers show that they do learn it.
Across our national culture, vitality of social discourse has been displaced by ignorant outrage, debasement of language and meanness. This makes communication among diverse groups impossible. The healing magic of language has been leached out by our anxious fixation upon a social status ranked in spiritually valueless buying of things, and that we are falling from our rank on the consumption ladder. There is no pleasure, much less 'there' there.
Our inability to communicate with others pits us all against everyone else. Instead of coming together to practice joy, as in dance, music, language, art, we prefer to come together in hatred directed to some Other – howling at the other candidates in an election campaign, at sports events, chasing down a woman from another 'race,' beating and raping her as a group activity. We have become a nation of two year olds, perpetually frustrated into tantrums because we lack language skills – the very capacity that so many insist is the great divide between souless animals and ourselves, divinely ensouled by god -- that we cannot communicate effectively even with ourselves. We lack the words, the grammar, the devices that basic literacy provides to evaluate or think effectively. This has been fostered at least since the days of Reagan when the words for offices and jobs officially changed, allowing then, governance by Big Lie effectively to turn government into an oppressive, exploitive force that exists only for the corporations' benefit
Thus students arrive at the university sadly lacking in capacity, and then are punished for not possessing what they've been denied, by college courses designed to make them miserable in course of supposedly being taught 'to write.' Kind of like Lou Dobbs theory of parenting: beat the child until the child submits, i.e. until the student produces a 5 paragraph essay repetitively signifying nothing but an arbitrary minimum of spelling and grammar errors, with a thesis sentence and concluding sentence. Anyone (like me) who has had to read and grade these end of term essays knows this means punishing the reader equally with the student.
Beyond this, professional writers, with fiction or non-fiction, will find from TR's book useful and fresh ways of thinking about their own work. Though the book deals seriously with the many theoretical designs popular among teachers of literature and writing, the author knows these theories so well that he can play with them, and we play with him. The parts of it that deal with language as healing medicine will be particularly interesting for writers whose mode invokes that transcendent, the Romantic, the Fantastic.
Words in intentional form can create two different kinds of language magic, generative or arrested magic. These two forms of language magic are in oppositional and complementary relationship. At this time we as a national people have lost both forms of language magic.
Arrested magic is static and rote learned; it is not of the person, but from outside. Arrested magics are of the community; within them reside cultural identity, its persistence and transmission through a community's generations. Examples of arrested healing language are community verbal charms, prayers, incantations, scriptual snippits worn as amulets and charms, eaten, hung on doorways.
Generative magic comes from within the individual, is controlled and directed by the individual purpose. It creates, it moves both the practicioner and the world around her. These are what enrich the great trove of a community's language and culture, which keep it vital, growing and changing in a healthy manner. Examples of generative healing magic are sacred songs and chants created by the individual healer or patient.
Anyone who has experienced a healing from a long illness knows there is no joy like this, a return from our exile as a member of the large community of friends, family, work, the world. Someone who has not been able to write effectively, and has now proven to herself that when she needs to she can do this experiences a joy quite like this. The more members of our community that have this capacity, the more joyous our polis becomes, the more pleasure each of us finds a capacity to experience.
*** TR is rather too young to have been in the thick of what we think of these dys as the 60's. What he's contrasting, among other things, is the energy of exhuberant joy that prompted and infuses Louis Armstrong's writing -- he carried a typewriter with him everywhere -- which so influenced Kerouac and later, others, like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, who became iconic 60's writers. So many (particularly masculine) aging writers and their more contemporary colleagues look back at this era with passionate nostalgia, as so many of the same writers look back to Hemingway with passionate nostalgia -- despite their diametrical opposition in technique and even objective.
In my case, I've decided to talk here about a book that not only deals with writing, but about teaching writing, written by our friend (2003; Boynton/Cork Publishers, Portsmouth, New Hampshire). Among his extensive, hands-on experience with teaching and writing is what he's learned as Director of the Writing Program at Tulane University. Moreover, he's a very good writer himself, as I can vouch for, having read work of his that is neither academic nor pedagogical. At the same time, I can also vouch from personal observation the energy and enthusiasm with which he approaches writing and with which he teaches his students to effectively communicate as writers. His classes are his number one priority. You know this is true because of the very many hours he spends on them every week: planning, preparation, reading and critiquing his students' papers, following up on their work, answering their questions, providing advice and assistance that is directed to their individual writing challenges. (There's a reason he's received numerous teaching awards; he's also passionately involved in the music communities of New Orleans and gives a great deal of time to them, including his own broadcast jazz program, Jazz From the Market, on WWOZ. He goes to the gymn -- definitely gets away from the desk and out of the office.)
His students have to work equally hard. They write, critique, revise, re-write, constantly. The class isn't about your personal traumas and problems, it isn't about 'self-expression' and it is not journaling. The class is about your writing problems. TR's methodology is fairly based on classically tested, effective methodology, i.e. what the Greek Rhetoricians studied, taught and practiced, provides joy, rather than punishment.
A premise of The Rhetoric of Pleasure is that the 60's*** were about "pleasure and the quest for the infinite." As part of the greater dismemberment backlash of everything the "60's" seems to represent for those who prefer a controlled, confined order, our culture was manipulated to value instead, an empty, anxious super-consumerism. Along the way, shopping and buying replaced "Rhapsode" as the social objective of activity and of discourse.
The foundation of TR's methodology, then, is the long list of the Rhetorcians' pre-Socratic stylistic devices, which his students need to learn. They learn by, first, assigned engagement with 3 - 5 of these devices in their papers, then later in the term, with their own choices of the devices in their papers. He teaches rhetoric as its ancient, original objective: powerful medicine, i.e. magic, healing magic. As illustration he cites Chrysippus, a Stoic, who wrote The Therapeutikon, also known as The Ethikon. This heals the student of her writing incapacity, which leads to effective communication in other modes. In simpler words, the students learn how to say what they want to say so others can understand what they want to say.
From now on this is me speaking, what I thought about while reading TR's book, not necessarily what TR writes or advocates in terms of the classroom. The review linked to above describes TR's methodology and what he advocates with greater expertise, wider experience, than I can.
Most programs designed to teach students the basic competencies employ an industrial methodological approach: a rigid construction of dry concepts without context (raw materials) are drummed into the students (the industrial machinery) to turn out the repetitive, contextless 5 paragraph essay (the product). These students are generally the most unpopular to teach, who have the least contact with their school's English Department's most experienced and passionate lovers of literature and writing, as these students' lack of competencies are judged unworthy, meaning incapable, of such pleasures. Often they are shunted off to the adjuncts and teaching assistants, who in turn, are often the least experienced and skilled in teaching anything, much less what they have been students of so recently themselves.
The Rhetoric of Pleasure advocates a methodology that employs the most elegant, sophisticated thinking and writing devices with the students who have the fewest competencies in writing. Instead of being punished for their lack of perceived compentency, by denial of writing and literary pleasure, they are provided personal, (generative) hands-on experience of the joy, the pleasure of communicating effectively, with writing. TR gives his students the intellectual respect of expectation that they can learn what he is teaching, and the results of their end-of-term papers show that they do learn it.
Across our national culture, vitality of social discourse has been displaced by ignorant outrage, debasement of language and meanness. This makes communication among diverse groups impossible. The healing magic of language has been leached out by our anxious fixation upon a social status ranked in spiritually valueless buying of things, and that we are falling from our rank on the consumption ladder. There is no pleasure, much less 'there' there.
Our inability to communicate with others pits us all against everyone else. Instead of coming together to practice joy, as in dance, music, language, art, we prefer to come together in hatred directed to some Other – howling at the other candidates in an election campaign, at sports events, chasing down a woman from another 'race,' beating and raping her as a group activity. We have become a nation of two year olds, perpetually frustrated into tantrums because we lack language skills – the very capacity that so many insist is the great divide between souless animals and ourselves, divinely ensouled by god -- that we cannot communicate effectively even with ourselves. We lack the words, the grammar, the devices that basic literacy provides to evaluate or think effectively. This has been fostered at least since the days of Reagan when the words for offices and jobs officially changed, allowing then, governance by Big Lie effectively to turn government into an oppressive, exploitive force that exists only for the corporations' benefit
Thus students arrive at the university sadly lacking in capacity, and then are punished for not possessing what they've been denied, by college courses designed to make them miserable in course of supposedly being taught 'to write.' Kind of like Lou Dobbs theory of parenting: beat the child until the child submits, i.e. until the student produces a 5 paragraph essay repetitively signifying nothing but an arbitrary minimum of spelling and grammar errors, with a thesis sentence and concluding sentence. Anyone (like me) who has had to read and grade these end of term essays knows this means punishing the reader equally with the student.
Beyond this, professional writers, with fiction or non-fiction, will find from TR's book useful and fresh ways of thinking about their own work. Though the book deals seriously with the many theoretical designs popular among teachers of literature and writing, the author knows these theories so well that he can play with them, and we play with him. The parts of it that deal with language as healing medicine will be particularly interesting for writers whose mode invokes that transcendent, the Romantic, the Fantastic.
Words in intentional form can create two different kinds of language magic, generative or arrested magic. These two forms of language magic are in oppositional and complementary relationship. At this time we as a national people have lost both forms of language magic.
Arrested magic is static and rote learned; it is not of the person, but from outside. Arrested magics are of the community; within them reside cultural identity, its persistence and transmission through a community's generations. Examples of arrested healing language are community verbal charms, prayers, incantations, scriptual snippits worn as amulets and charms, eaten, hung on doorways.
Generative magic comes from within the individual, is controlled and directed by the individual purpose. It creates, it moves both the practicioner and the world around her. These are what enrich the great trove of a community's language and culture, which keep it vital, growing and changing in a healthy manner. Examples of generative healing magic are sacred songs and chants created by the individual healer or patient.
Anyone who has experienced a healing from a long illness knows there is no joy like this, a return from our exile as a member of the large community of friends, family, work, the world. Someone who has not been able to write effectively, and has now proven to herself that when she needs to she can do this experiences a joy quite like this. The more members of our community that have this capacity, the more joyous our polis becomes, the more pleasure each of us finds a capacity to experience.
*** TR is rather too young to have been in the thick of what we think of these dys as the 60's. What he's contrasting, among other things, is the energy of exhuberant joy that prompted and infuses Louis Armstrong's writing -- he carried a typewriter with him everywhere -- which so influenced Kerouac and later, others, like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, who became iconic 60's writers. So many (particularly masculine) aging writers and their more contemporary colleagues look back at this era with passionate nostalgia, as so many of the same writers look back to Hemingway with passionate nostalgia -- despite their diametrical opposition in technique and even objective.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Two Items of Interest For Those With New Orleans Interests
They both come from the Times-Picayune.
The first is a write up about the Zócolo Conference by Lolis E Elie. Vaquero's invoked in the closing.
The other is about the plans of a local group, Mondo Bizarro, to bring more tourism and recognition to New Orleans Central City district, long known as poor ghetto, with all that implies to so many white tourists from middle America.
The first is a write up about the Zócolo Conference by Lolis E Elie. Vaquero's invoked in the closing.
The tension between Latin immigrants and native born Americans can be predicted, Suro said. In places like New York and Los Angeles, where there have traditionally been high numbers of immigrants, new arrivals tend to blend in with relatively little friction.
But in a place like New Orleans, where the number of Latin immigrants is unprecedented in recent history, tension can be expected to grow. "It tends to be quite high in places where the Latin population is quite small and has grown rapidly...."
The other is about the plans of a local group, Mondo Bizarro, to bring more tourism and recognition to New Orleans Central City district, long known as poor ghetto, with all that implies to so many white tourists from middle America.
Central City is huge. On a map, it is the massive midsection of the city -- hard to miss, really -- yet reasons and opportunities for locals or tourists to go there are scant and, indeed, most folks do make a point of missing it.The name of the group, for this purpose though, seems from over here, a bit unfortunate, but that may just be me. I do applaud their intention and energy and effort, for they are, of course, right.
Yet the area -- that huge blank canvas bordered by St. Charles and Claiborne avenues, running from the CBD to Napoleon Avenue -- is home to myriad architectural gems and curiosities, historic landmarks, and a massive, often invisible population.
Longtime Central City residents know a lot of stories that are not about gang warfare, police brutality and bad schools. Like everyone in New Orleans -- and most people everywhere -- they are ordinary people living extraordinary lives, and the fresh, passionate and nostalgic experiences they have to share offer a profoundly different view of the area that so many locals associate mostly with images of yellow police tape.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Dispatches From Baton Rouge and Tipitina's
The Louisiana Book Fair in Baton Rouge reading went better than Vaquero expected:
-- His was the last one scheduled for the day;
-- It was late;
-- There were so many authors reading that many of the readings were barely attended.;
-- He'd brought a guitar, which he'd had to carry with him all day; he felt like an idiot, because he knew there'd be no reason to play it.
However he had an enthusiastic audience present, with a central cadre of African American women, who really like both his New Orleans books. Some of them, were now reading the Cuban music book. He read the parts he's settled on for readings, including the surreal night in Charity Hospital's emergency room at the start of our time in New Orleans (Charity Hospital no longer exists). The 25 people or so there laughed all the way through. He concluded with playing his "Between Piety and Desire," and that went over well too. Books were sold and signed. So it turned out to be perfectly lovely when he expected it to be otherwise (he's not feeling well either -- the cold wind down there, like the cold wind up here, has made us both fairly ill from the junk that it is blowing around).
Situations like this don't always turn out so positively, but you have to do this anyway. Whoever thinks touring to support your book is an easy gig has never done it.
He rode back to New Orleans with the head of Reference for the State Library, so that was an interesting ride.
Later he hooked up with friends and went to Tipitina's, where there were other friends. Heard the Brasilian group, Os Mutantes, who were included in an AfroPop program that he did back in the day on Brasil Tropicalia Movement, with amigo CD, who was chair of the Spanish-Portuguese Dept.
CD's currently stepped down as chairperson for a sabbatical he's spending doing research in Brasil. CD is among the Tulane friends written about in The Year Before the Flood. It turns out a Times-Picayune writer was at Tipitina's too, who is writing an article about the Tropicalia movement. She'd read TYBTF, so she got in touch with CD down in Rio, to ask him some questions. TYBTF has put a lot of people in touch with each other, who otherwise might not have been. That is so cool!
So my baby's coming home later today, yay! He's got so much to do though, it probably will feel almost as though he's not here -- and then he's off again, for California.
-- His was the last one scheduled for the day;
-- It was late;
-- There were so many authors reading that many of the readings were barely attended.;
-- He'd brought a guitar, which he'd had to carry with him all day; he felt like an idiot, because he knew there'd be no reason to play it.
However he had an enthusiastic audience present, with a central cadre of African American women, who really like both his New Orleans books. Some of them, were now reading the Cuban music book. He read the parts he's settled on for readings, including the surreal night in Charity Hospital's emergency room at the start of our time in New Orleans (Charity Hospital no longer exists). The 25 people or so there laughed all the way through. He concluded with playing his "Between Piety and Desire," and that went over well too. Books were sold and signed. So it turned out to be perfectly lovely when he expected it to be otherwise (he's not feeling well either -- the cold wind down there, like the cold wind up here, has made us both fairly ill from the junk that it is blowing around).
Situations like this don't always turn out so positively, but you have to do this anyway. Whoever thinks touring to support your book is an easy gig has never done it.
He rode back to New Orleans with the head of Reference for the State Library, so that was an interesting ride.
Later he hooked up with friends and went to Tipitina's, where there were other friends. Heard the Brasilian group, Os Mutantes, who were included in an AfroPop program that he did back in the day on Brasil Tropicalia Movement, with amigo CD, who was chair of the Spanish-Portuguese Dept.
CD's currently stepped down as chairperson for a sabbatical he's spending doing research in Brasil. CD is among the Tulane friends written about in The Year Before the Flood. It turns out a Times-Picayune writer was at Tipitina's too, who is writing an article about the Tropicalia movement. She'd read TYBTF, so she got in touch with CD down in Rio, to ask him some questions. TYBTF has put a lot of people in touch with each other, who otherwise might not have been. That is so cool!
So my baby's coming home later today, yay! He's got so much to do though, it probably will feel almost as though he's not here -- and then he's off again, for California.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Before Men Wore Earrings -- "The Harder They Come" (1972)
At the end of the 1960's Jamaican reggae was about to take over the world as the music of revolution. At the same time in the Bronx, uptown baby, where the people are fresh baby, what was going to soon be called hiphop was just reaching out to ska and socca and the many techniques the Kingston yardie dj's had recently devised to play music without the big, expensive, heavy equipment that the millionaire white rock bands took for granted. The pioneer beat makers in the Bronx didn't have it much better than the yardies in Kingston. The Age of Bling, with diamonds in the ears and grill, gold hanging heavy as lead from the neck had not yet arrived, but it was on its way.
In 1972, from this Jamaican music revolution out of the necessity of the poor, came Perry Henzell, producer (and Chris Blackwell as sleeper producer), and Jimmy Cliff, with the first Jamaican movie, The Harder They Come. Earlier this week by chance I had listened to the album after a very long time, which made me want to see the movie again. Like the album, this film hasn't aged a minute either.
On the other hand, I have changed tremendously in the meantime, meaning what I know and bring to this film vs what I didn't know the first time I saw it (and loved it though) is a life chasm that can barely be comprehended. One way of bridging that chasm is that the, to me, now, short, recording session scenes in The Harder They Come aren't as boring to me now as they were then -- though if I had a dollar in a savings account for every hour I have spent bored in the recording studio since 1972, that would be a respectable savings account. (And now, recording studios per se, for pop music, are just about irrelevant dinosaurs.)
The story of The Harder They Come is set in the music industry and the ganja trade; the theme is the capitalism that screws the little guy. In the 70's and 80's, and now too, this is is what the hiphop that spawned gangster rap dramatizes and reflects: the drug trade is a predatory, evil trade; it is capitalism distilled into its purest, unmasked energy. The oppressed mirror the oppressor.
No matter how talented, no matter how hard s/he works, the little guy can't evade the monopoly hold on means, production and distribution kept in a stranglehold by the Big Guys. All these parts collude to keep it that way: music industry, church, police, media. Though the recent change in technology has allowed some to escape in terms of music production and distribution -- the Big Guys are spending millions a day figuring out how to put a stop to that. Even your fun, your resistance, your spiritual nourishment exist to enrich us, the Big Guys.
One clue as the story's connection to capitalism is that Our Protagonist's name is kept on the downlow until about the middle of the movie. Then we hear it only as "Ivan" (i.e. a common way of referring to the Soviet Union), though in the script he's known as Ivanhoe, i.e. a knight in shining armor, taking on the Bad Big Guys. Underlining this is the rescue plan for Ivan when all parts of the establishment are chasing him. The plan is to smuggle him out to -- Cuba. "That's revolutionary," Ivan says. "And they can fix my arm." He's been shot up pretty badly. It's a reference to the universal free health care that Cuba is already famous for in 1972 throughout the Caribbean and South America. The hunger of poor Jamaican children, and that they can't afford even the means to get to a doctor, is present throughout the movie. These facts also help drive the story.
The Harder They Come also commnets on movies' influence in creating a criminal resistence to the system's stranglehold on productivity and creativity. Ivan, like his peers all over the developing world, is enthralled by the violent resistence of the Hero of U.S. westerns and crime films. They know all the moves of Hollywood's glamorous dance with guns. Like the criminal primary characters of Hollywood's 'new glamour' hit of 1967, Bonnie and Clyde, Ivan knows the choreography of violence. He has himself photographed with his guns, in his pretty clothes, by a professional photographer. He sends the photos to the newspapers.
The movies and television have not only gotten him and his peers desperate to possess all the things that are the markers of the Big Guy life, but also to possess fame -- which then allows them the wealth to acquire those things. Capitalism creates a need in those it exploits, which can turn and bite capitalists on the ass. Sometimes. For a while.
The adulation that Ivan's violent resistance has brought him is the double-edged sword with which the colonized can cut himself even more badly than s/he hurts the oppressor. Perhaps only Fidel was able to dance that into a successful end-game in our history ....
Cutting down Ivan is handled by the system via divide and conquer. Mr. Hilton, who lives large on Kingston's music holds back Ivan's hit to punish him for wanting more than $20. Ivan's girlfriend tells her revered minister about Ivan in order to get help for a sick child. The preacher tells the cops. The Jamaican police, who live large off the ganja trade punish the little criminal guy, from the growers to the dealers when they want more than the $15 a week so they can feed their children and given them health care, by shutting down the trade. When the Ras growers and dealers protect Ivan the cops keep the ganja trade shut down until they turn Ivan in. "Business is business," even the Ras agree. Their babies are hungry. The police order Hilton (who also owns the radio stations) to stop playing Ivan's hit, which Hilton''s doing now that Ivan's a folk hero for taking on the system -- the record's selling so well and making him richer -- and Ivan's going down, so he doesn't have to split the money. "The police tellin' us what music we play now?" asks Hilton's dj. "When it glorifies crime, yes," says the cop who has gotten filthy rich supplying the ganja to the Super Big Guy distributors in the States. The police also order the newspapers to stop running the photos and stories about Ivan.
All the parts of oppression lock seamlessly into place to put an end to the Resistence embodied in one emaciated, wounded body. At the end, in the traditional movie dance of gun death that we all know so well, Ivan's black face is half white from the white sand, as with the Congo kaolin clay white line, signifying the line that divides the underworld, the world of death, from this one. On the run, Ivan's been half dead for days already, maybe for his whole life in this system that is rigged to keep him from getting ahead.
Along the way we see much of Jamaica that surely hasn't changed in 37 years, the yards of the poor of Kingston. We also see much that surely has changed -- pristine, unsullied beaches, which now have been developed for the sake of the tourist trade, or ruined by the mining corporations. Jamaica's Great Resister, John Maxwell, was writing about this 37 years ago. He's writing about this still.
Women and men today can wear an earring or four, and piercings ,and tats, and be socially acceptable. White folks of any gender try out the Ras's dreads. Reggae took over the world as the music of Resistence. It has now been taken into latin salsa and timba, morphed into the less threatening, non-resistence reggaetón. Women are still treated as disposable, interchangable prey, almost less than human by the men of whatever color line. The Anglo-Saxon protestant church created a Black Church in Jamaica and the U.S. unlike anywhere else in the African-Atlantic diapora, producing a black powerhouse of musical influence found nowhere else in that diaspora. – those churches and unique musical traditions are still alive and vital in Jamaica as in the U.S.
Not much changes. Nor has this film. It is still eye-opening and pulsing with a density of data. It moves fast. And, of course, the music is world-class.
In 1972, from this Jamaican music revolution out of the necessity of the poor, came Perry Henzell, producer (and Chris Blackwell as sleeper producer), and Jimmy Cliff, with the first Jamaican movie, The Harder They Come. Earlier this week by chance I had listened to the album after a very long time, which made me want to see the movie again. Like the album, this film hasn't aged a minute either.
On the other hand, I have changed tremendously in the meantime, meaning what I know and bring to this film vs what I didn't know the first time I saw it (and loved it though) is a life chasm that can barely be comprehended. One way of bridging that chasm is that the, to me, now, short, recording session scenes in The Harder They Come aren't as boring to me now as they were then -- though if I had a dollar in a savings account for every hour I have spent bored in the recording studio since 1972, that would be a respectable savings account. (And now, recording studios per se, for pop music, are just about irrelevant dinosaurs.)
The story of The Harder They Come is set in the music industry and the ganja trade; the theme is the capitalism that screws the little guy. In the 70's and 80's, and now too, this is is what the hiphop that spawned gangster rap dramatizes and reflects: the drug trade is a predatory, evil trade; it is capitalism distilled into its purest, unmasked energy. The oppressed mirror the oppressor.
No matter how talented, no matter how hard s/he works, the little guy can't evade the monopoly hold on means, production and distribution kept in a stranglehold by the Big Guys. All these parts collude to keep it that way: music industry, church, police, media. Though the recent change in technology has allowed some to escape in terms of music production and distribution -- the Big Guys are spending millions a day figuring out how to put a stop to that. Even your fun, your resistance, your spiritual nourishment exist to enrich us, the Big Guys.
One clue as the story's connection to capitalism is that Our Protagonist's name is kept on the downlow until about the middle of the movie. Then we hear it only as "Ivan" (i.e. a common way of referring to the Soviet Union), though in the script he's known as Ivanhoe, i.e. a knight in shining armor, taking on the Bad Big Guys. Underlining this is the rescue plan for Ivan when all parts of the establishment are chasing him. The plan is to smuggle him out to -- Cuba. "That's revolutionary," Ivan says. "And they can fix my arm." He's been shot up pretty badly. It's a reference to the universal free health care that Cuba is already famous for in 1972 throughout the Caribbean and South America. The hunger of poor Jamaican children, and that they can't afford even the means to get to a doctor, is present throughout the movie. These facts also help drive the story.
The Harder They Come also commnets on movies' influence in creating a criminal resistence to the system's stranglehold on productivity and creativity. Ivan, like his peers all over the developing world, is enthralled by the violent resistence of the Hero of U.S. westerns and crime films. They know all the moves of Hollywood's glamorous dance with guns. Like the criminal primary characters of Hollywood's 'new glamour' hit of 1967, Bonnie and Clyde, Ivan knows the choreography of violence. He has himself photographed with his guns, in his pretty clothes, by a professional photographer. He sends the photos to the newspapers.
The movies and television have not only gotten him and his peers desperate to possess all the things that are the markers of the Big Guy life, but also to possess fame -- which then allows them the wealth to acquire those things. Capitalism creates a need in those it exploits, which can turn and bite capitalists on the ass. Sometimes. For a while.
The adulation that Ivan's violent resistance has brought him is the double-edged sword with which the colonized can cut himself even more badly than s/he hurts the oppressor. Perhaps only Fidel was able to dance that into a successful end-game in our history ....
Cutting down Ivan is handled by the system via divide and conquer. Mr. Hilton, who lives large on Kingston's music holds back Ivan's hit to punish him for wanting more than $20. Ivan's girlfriend tells her revered minister about Ivan in order to get help for a sick child. The preacher tells the cops. The Jamaican police, who live large off the ganja trade punish the little criminal guy, from the growers to the dealers when they want more than the $15 a week so they can feed their children and given them health care, by shutting down the trade. When the Ras growers and dealers protect Ivan the cops keep the ganja trade shut down until they turn Ivan in. "Business is business," even the Ras agree. Their babies are hungry. The police order Hilton (who also owns the radio stations) to stop playing Ivan's hit, which Hilton''s doing now that Ivan's a folk hero for taking on the system -- the record's selling so well and making him richer -- and Ivan's going down, so he doesn't have to split the money. "The police tellin' us what music we play now?" asks Hilton's dj. "When it glorifies crime, yes," says the cop who has gotten filthy rich supplying the ganja to the Super Big Guy distributors in the States. The police also order the newspapers to stop running the photos and stories about Ivan.
All the parts of oppression lock seamlessly into place to put an end to the Resistence embodied in one emaciated, wounded body. At the end, in the traditional movie dance of gun death that we all know so well, Ivan's black face is half white from the white sand, as with the Congo kaolin clay white line, signifying the line that divides the underworld, the world of death, from this one. On the run, Ivan's been half dead for days already, maybe for his whole life in this system that is rigged to keep him from getting ahead.
Along the way we see much of Jamaica that surely hasn't changed in 37 years, the yards of the poor of Kingston. We also see much that surely has changed -- pristine, unsullied beaches, which now have been developed for the sake of the tourist trade, or ruined by the mining corporations. Jamaica's Great Resister, John Maxwell, was writing about this 37 years ago. He's writing about this still.
Women and men today can wear an earring or four, and piercings ,and tats, and be socially acceptable. White folks of any gender try out the Ras's dreads. Reggae took over the world as the music of Resistence. It has now been taken into latin salsa and timba, morphed into the less threatening, non-resistence reggaetón. Women are still treated as disposable, interchangable prey, almost less than human by the men of whatever color line. The Anglo-Saxon protestant church created a Black Church in Jamaica and the U.S. unlike anywhere else in the African-Atlantic diapora, producing a black powerhouse of musical influence found nowhere else in that diaspora. – those churches and unique musical traditions are still alive and vital in Jamaica as in the U.S.
Not much changes. Nor has this film. It is still eye-opening and pulsing with a density of data. It moves fast. And, of course, the music is world-class.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
New Orleans, Fall 2009, Part 2, Updates
Big thunderstorms, very big thunderstorms, every day.
The Octavia Books reading and signing on Saturday (it was wet and overcast) went very well. He read and read, and nobody left, he was told to keep on going. An excellent q&a afterwards, and books were sold, which is what makes the bookseller (and the writer) happy.
Had a terrific Second Line Sunday with Prince of Wales -- again, second lines are terrific opportunities to Go Bang, i.e. to see all your friends at once. He's also hearing great music. Well, um. duh -- this IS New Orleans.
Working very hard on three projects at once for the week: the script and taping for the AfroPop Worldwide show on the Hogan Jazz Collection -- yesterday they listened to tapes of 19th century cajun music (obviously NOT recorded in the 19th century ...); the keynote for Friday's Zócolo Foundation Conference; the Louisiana Book Festival appearances in Baton Rouge for the rest of the weekend.
Thursday, of course, President Obama comes to town. Will his perceived snub of NO earlier be overcome with this visit?
And me, I'm living in 1972 - 1974 for the MIP, going through New Mexico newspaper archives. What one can researcgh from one's home desktop these days, and more is possible nearly every day, as archive after archive gets digitized and put up on the web.
The building's heat came up about 5:30 AM, for the first time this year. It's still only in the 40's at 2 PM. Judging by the sounds of the building's plumbing at that time the heat woke all of us up too. Dayem.
The Octavia Books reading and signing on Saturday (it was wet and overcast) went very well. He read and read, and nobody left, he was told to keep on going. An excellent q&a afterwards, and books were sold, which is what makes the bookseller (and the writer) happy.
Had a terrific Second Line Sunday with Prince of Wales -- again, second lines are terrific opportunities to Go Bang, i.e. to see all your friends at once. He's also hearing great music. Well, um. duh -- this IS New Orleans.
Working very hard on three projects at once for the week: the script and taping for the AfroPop Worldwide show on the Hogan Jazz Collection -- yesterday they listened to tapes of 19th century cajun music (obviously NOT recorded in the 19th century ...); the keynote for Friday's Zócolo Foundation Conference; the Louisiana Book Festival appearances in Baton Rouge for the rest of the weekend.
Thursday, of course, President Obama comes to town. Will his perceived snub of NO earlier be overcome with this visit?
And me, I'm living in 1972 - 1974 for the MIP, going through New Mexico newspaper archives. What one can researcgh from one's home desktop these days, and more is possible nearly every day, as archive after archive gets digitized and put up on the web.
The building's heat came up about 5:30 AM, for the first time this year. It's still only in the 40's at 2 PM. Judging by the sounds of the building's plumbing at that time the heat woke all of us up too. Dayem.
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