First things first, I am a Quentin Tarantino fan. This should not be interpreted to mean I stan for the guy. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction in high school and falling in love with it. Subsequently I went out and to dig up Reservoir Dogs and have since followed most of his catalog. I have to admit he’s an excellent film maker with some deeply problematic politics around race and gender. I can analytically separate the two, but figuring out if I really can or do like Tarantino is a whole ‘nother conversation.

Second, Self-Determination is probably one of the most important things to me. When asked my politics I often simply respond, “self-determination.” The classic definition associated with the Kujichagulia is, “To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.” I think that what you are called matters (don’t believe me? just say Dumi “isn’t your real name” and see what my response is). I believe that defining our condition, our responses to oppression, and creating our path is the height of our political and spiritual potentials.

So now onto Django Unchained.

When I first heard of Django Unchained I thought two things, “ugh oh, Spike Lee’s not gonna like this” and “I loved Inglorious Bastards, I wonder will it be like that?” Well on both cases I was right. With good reason, Spike Lee is concerned that Tarantino’s portrayal of slavery will be off-mark and that Tarantino’s general regard for Black people is questionable. After all, for hundreds of years when White men have loved the word Nigger or Nigga so much we’ve been right to question their affinity for Blackness, today is no different. I think Django Unchained was much like Inglorious Bastards, comical, gory, and decontextualized enough to be watchable by all without the pesky feelings of guilt or animus.

The major problem is that Tarantino is Tarantino. Witty, irreverent, violent, and hyper-masculine in a film that could (note that I said could not should) be treated with more care. Tarantino has never been interested in carefully addressing an issue, instead he’s an over the top film maker (in my non-film critic opinion). He has been heavily influenced by Westerns and Blaxploitation and Django Unchained is just that – a Western Blaxploitation film. I think its strength and weakness lie in this fact.

I love a number of Blaxploitation films (Coffy is my favorite) but I have to acknowledge as potentially liberating as they could be, they fall far from the mark of actually letting us speak for ourselves, determine our path, and create the world that we want. In classic Blaxploitation fashion Django is a bad nigger and is almost a bad nigga (word to R.A.T. Judy). In all senses of the word he is spoiled property, lawless, dangerous to the order around him, but still held in by that world. When Django draws his gun someone White is gonna die, it’s just that we know it’s only going to be “the bad” White folks. While Django is the best shot in the West you never think he’s going to shoot his white partner Dr. Shultz and Tarantino writes the other Black characters as too stupid to shoot anyone but who they are told to shoot (I’m sure one of those brothas on that chain gang would’ve freed themselves and Django from the jump).

I have seen a split response (though definitely not 50/50) on Django among my friends in looking over facebook, twitter, and in casual discussions. There are a lot of folks who saw Django and loved it! Some of my more radical leaning comrades said it was brilliant and sweet song of revenge for our enslaved ancestors (yeah, some folks were that dramatic! I’m sure subsequent discussions will likely drag them back from these hyperbolic reflections). Another cadre has decidedly said the film was unfulfilling, obsessed with “the n word”, and another liberal White fantasy about slavery and its (dis)contents.

I think both are equally right and wrong. The first group misses that Django is as programmed and scripted as any “Black liberator” in a Blaxploitation film. He does nothing that is beyond his own personal interests and has no connection to his community other than saving his and his wife’s butt. Look at Django’s dialogue with others who who are enslaved, sparse yet telling (even in the final two scenes). When Django speaks white folks listen because of the gun and Black folks listen because they’re (in Tarantino’s imagination) too dumb to do anything else. Django Unchained is not about creation of maroon colonies, it’s not David Walker’s call to arms, it’s not Harriett Tubman’s “freeing a thousand slaves and could have freed a thousand more if they knew they were slaves.” It’s a portrait of a super human bad nigger who gets revenge and his prize (yes, women are prizes in this tale).

Django however is a tale about manumission, about breaking Southern race rules, and limited-justice being served. The film is written in such a way that in 2 hours and 20 minutes the audience rarely has to contemplate the ills of slavery as connected to their legacy or inheritance. Instead, you get the “privilege” of a far out tale without the icky feelings of contemporary inequities. I didn’t expect Tarantino to really do “the peculiar institution” justice, but I was amazed at how he could deal with many elements of slavery without making viewers grapple with racial memory or reconciliation (the dog scene largely being the exception).

All in all, Django is a good movie, but it’s not a movie about actual self-determination. Django “settles some scores” but never really “rights the wrongs” of the institution of slavery. Admittedly that’s a tall task for a movie, but don’t we go to movies to see the impossible if not the improbable? Django Unchained is so important because as Salamishah Tillet pointed out there are so few popular movies that wrestle with slavery and in a moment of racial amnesia we can identify with Black individual success but collective Black progress is left unturned.

In fact, I think there will be more Djangos–good films with kick ass characters that speak to a racial past– but I dream of the day that we (Black folks) are able to write ourselves into the pages of slavery’s past with the vibrance, diversity, genius, and power that we actually exhibited. As Anna Julia Cooper told us, “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” We need more griots who understand our lives across gender, class and sexuality. Telling our stories is difficult work, but people of African descent has specialized in the impossible and done it against all odds. I guess we’re simply being called to create ourselves anew, but more fuller whether in movies or in our daily lives.

I’ve had it! I can’t take it any more. I cannot bear to have one more Black Awards show go on like this. That’s right, this is a cease and desist notice to: The NAACP Image Awards, The BET Awards, The Soul Train Awards, The Vh1 Hip-Hop Honors, The Source Awards, The You’re a Person of Color Awards, (okay you caught me—I made the last one up). However the point remains, the more Black Award shows we seem to have, the lower quality they seem to get!

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If you can’t see the video embedded click here.

hat tip to LM

Recently, I had the pleasure of being on the Addicted to Race podcast. I was on with Tami from What Tami Said, Andrea Plaid  who guest blogs at Racialicious, and Deesha Philyaw of CoParenting101. The conversation was a great one which started with a discussion of Black women and women of color’s absence in the growing body of Mommy Memoirs.We then talked about my post “I’m for Gay Rights but…” and issues of civil rights, gay rights and social justice in the African-American community. Followed up with a discussion of the movie Precious which has been received with very mixed results and why we think this has been and what it means for Black media representation. We concluded with a discussion of CNN’s Black men in the Age of Obama. We talked about the ways that CNN has met the challenge of covering ethnic communities but questioned what could have been done better. Great topics, witty commentary, what more are you waiting on? Click here to hear it!

The short recently screened to rave reviews at the Pan African Film Festival, San Diego Black Film Festival and continues to make waves and ripples on its tour around the country. Let’s welcome Karra and G-Trification back uptown with some love. Check out the trailer here. It screens for free at 5:30pm at the Harlem School of the Arts (645 St. Nicholas @ 141st)

So I had no intention of writing a review of the new movie on Biggie, Notorious, but the reviews that I’ve been reading have left me with no choice. I will keep my comments brief and give you the punchline upfront. The movie sucks, if you have ten dollars I can think of plenty of other things to spend it on. In fact, if you were going to take someone else, you two can put your money together and get two snuggies … they even come with a free reading light. Alright, to my review/thoughts.

I got a chance to see the movie at screening in Chicago, which means I spent no money on it, meaning I’m as objective as they come… well as objective as I can be. I’m a Hip-Hop head, I consider Biggie one of the all time greats. I love Hip-Hop. I am a tough critic of movies, so going in I decided to take it easy on the film. Coming in, it was my hope that Notorious was not another Too Legit. I hoped that it would capture the complexity of cat who could drop Suicidal Thoughts and Dreams. I wanted the movie to really get at the changes that Biggie underwent that led him to end up ensnared in a tumultuous battle with a man who he felt taught him the game. I wanted to see how the cat who called himself “Black and ugly as ever” was able to become a sex symbol and the poet laureate for the hood. Instead, I encountered a movie that is destined to be a BET Blackbuster hit that will certainly be on Saturday day afternoon rotation soon enough. Now if you’re reading this and saying “what’s wrong with BET Blackbuster movies?” Stop reading, really dog? How did you even get to this blog?  ;)

Back to the task at hand. There are a few MAJOR issues with the movie. First, the script must have been inspired by MC Lyte’s early work, cause it was paper thin (not a diss to MC Lyte, really a diss to the writers). It was like a long ass Vibe article that was uncomplicated, trite and lop-sided. Obviously it was supposed to tell Biggie’s side, but when we got to the East v. West beef part of the story and Biggie was shown to be  “above the fray” I had already grown tired of yelling to myself, “this is some bull****.”

The second issue is that there was very little acting in the movie, but there were a whole lot of impersonations. I, nor the folks sitting with me, could control our laughter every time Derek Luke did his Diddy impression. It was like watching an Aries Spears skit, spot on, but it was so ridiculous that it could only be parody. Don’t believe me, watch it yourself. Then can someone explain to me why every time Puffy was on screen his lips looked like he had just finished off a 2 piece from Popeye’s? Can someone tell me why Lil’ Cease looked pre-pubescent the whole movie? Can someone tell me why Lil’ Kim couldn’t keep her clothes on in more than two scenes? Come someone tell me where and what kind of accent did Voletta Wallace have? And will someone please tell me explain to me how Puffy was the Dalai Lama with all his “wise counsel”? All of it was like a Vanilla Ice album (get it? to the extreme).

A third issue was that none of the characters had depth. During the course of the movie I managed to not become connected to anyone! Not Biggie when he was locked up. Not Kim when she was “the other woman.” Not Faith when she was cheated on. Not the White girl when Faith whooped her butt. I swear I was reading characters written by a high schooler they were so flat.

I could document the many issues with this movie, like the way Biggie’s cadence was off, how lyrics were flubbed, but that ain’t even the point. I’d rather just tell you what I never felt. I really, really, really wanted to get pulled back to that golden age in my mind of Hip-Hop. I wanted to hear a beat drop and have my head compulsively nod and remember what it felt like to lug around timbs in the cold, to floss in sun, or to consider the value of my life. These were the things Biggie meant to me and the movie captured NONE of that. As a fan of the man and the music, this movie fell short from start to finish. When the movie ended I wanted to leave and put on a Mister Cee Mixtape like the “Best of Biggie” to cleanse my eyes and ears of the visual catastrophe that should be called “The Worst of Biggie.”

“Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so our children can fly!”**

This message, while inspirational, demonstrates the ways that one of the most historic and powerful presidential runs ever gets looked over, if not just downright ignored. In 1972, the campaign of Shirley Chisholm broke both the gender and race barrier in American presidential politics, but her campaign is still relatively unknown. Let me start this with an admission, I knew that Chisholm ran in 1972 but I had no idea about the discourse she pushed, assassination attempts, and what was certainly more than a symbolic run. At the close of the summer, I got to watch the documentary Chisholm 72- Unbought & Unbossed at Sundae Sermon. As I sat on a hill watching Shirley Chisholm challenge historical figures like George Wallace, George McGovern, and Hubert Humphrey, I was amazed at her vision, inspired by her bravery, and humbled by the ways we leave her out of history. That is a living example of why we need herstory, particularly within the Black community.

The film, by Shola Lynch, brilliantly transports the viewer into the political terrain and turmoil of 1972 politics. Watching primary footage of candidates eerily disturbed me as I heard the same rhetoric batted around 36 years later. In fact, while John McCain was still a P.O.W., Chisholm was the original maverick. She was the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Chisholm was the first serious female presidential candidate and she had a platform that explicitly spoke to the interests of Black people throughout the United States. Born to Bajan parents and raised in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, Chisholm formed political alliances with the Black Panther Party, National Organization for Women, pushed the Democratic party to the left as they grappled with the development of splitting factions, and was founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (though the CBC couldn’t get their act together to endorse her… gender politics as usual).

Chisholm’s campaign was absent from our discussions of Black presidential candidacies as we deferred to Jackson’s runs as the foundation for Obama’s run. In reality, had Chisholm not ran, neither Jackson nor Obama’s campaigns would have been able to achieve what they did. As we celebrate the historic election of Barack Obama, I pray that we do not wash the memory of Chisholm from our already tattered ledger. Her run, her work, and her vision laid the foundation, and her words still are relevant,

Prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them …. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.

*The title of this post is an adaptation of a line from Biz Markie in “Nobody beats the Biz.” He said, “Reagan is the pres, but I voted for Shirley Chisholm.”

**The first variation of this I heard was at the 2008 Black State of the Union by Rep. Cleo Fields. There is a lot of internet debate about its origins, so I thought I’d link to the youtube here.

This past weekend I shelled over my hard earned bills to see Blood Diamond at the theaters. Going in, I had my expectations set at the level that I set them when I’m going to listen to a Method Man album (that’s pretty darn low). But I was rather impressed with the film. Of course there were your standard issues of gender and race (e.g. Black Africans find White woman in the bush and she charms them with her camera — don’t even get me started) but the message about conflict diamonds was very clear to me. Conflict diamonds help support war and distinguishing between a conflict diamond and free diamond is damn near impossible. Neither of which were new concepts to me, but I thought they were both well illustrated in the film.

When the film was rolling out, I was interested to see that Nelson Mandela came out with a statement about diamonds and their positive impact on African economies. I was immediately a little bit concerned, as were others. Eventually, I had to wrestle with Mandela potentially selling out or if there was a degree of pragmatism attached to support of the diamond trade for the wealth or rather reduction of gross debt for African nations. I think my history with Nelson Mandela allowed me to take his statements within a larger context, when Russell Simmons opened his mouth however, I heard cash registers ringing.

Who the hell died and made Russell chief of Diasporic Affairs? And can I really take him seriously if Jim Jones is on his side with a diamond crusted bracelet? Okay, that’s just my bias! For years, I saw Russell Simmons as I saw Bob Johnson, a damn good Black capitalist (not endorsing this just calling em like I see em). Now with his explicit support and retort to Blood Diamond, I see he’s graduated to a damn good (Black) capitalist pawn… I wonder is there a difference between the two?

Not your Idlewild?
There has been a little bit of controversy around the movie being set in Idlewild, Ga (a mythical place). A year or so ago I heard about Idlewild, MI and thought that the movie was going to have a special connection to the area. I didn’t particularly have an issue with the name and the setting, which was cool with me, but not with some.

“They take something with such historical significance as Idlewild, take the peripheral aspects of it, and turn it into a shoot-‘em-up, bang-bang minstrel show. It demeans me as an African-American.”

That was the comment of Coy Davis, the director of Whatever Happened to Idlewild. I hear that it’s a good documentary, but I was pretty suprised that he would come out his neck so quickly about the film. There was shooting, but it wasn’t a shoot-em up film. A minstrel show, interesting… there weren’t even any White folks in the movie that I recall. There was the presence of the Black Middle class,decent representations of the juke joint, commentary on the “chitterling circuit”, oh I guess characterizing Black culture in rural areas is minstrely … maybe I missed it. I think it would have been nice to set it in Michigan, but maybe people like Davis’ reaction dissuaded that possibility seriously.

Also, I think the name Idlewild represents the condition of the place. Percival (Andre) was “idle” in his place in the town, while the Church represented a dynamic setting with almost a religious excuberance from its attendees and was often “wild”.

Storyline and Acting
I think the story line was solid. I didn’t expect to have a thriller or many plot twists, instead it was straight forward movie. One where the viewer is encouraged to suspended disbelief. As the film opens the cinematography moves you into the images of old and I felt there (in part) for the time in my seat. I think the script was written close enough to Big Boi and Andre’s characters that I didn’t feel uncomfortable with their acting, even though Faizon Love was a little over the top, but delivered some great quotables.

Time Travellin’
The times that I was taken out of the old occured via the music. If the film made me realize one thing, it is that Andre is a musical genius! I wanted to see how they blended hip-hop music and classic juke joints. I was kind of shocked honestly, most of the music performed in the film were tracks that Outkast had already done, with some very small alterations (i.e. no references to tapes, cds, baby please…). I coudn’t quite figure out why they didn’t remix more stuff or change up the messaging. My best explanation is that they were attempting to challenge our conceptions of time and the fluidity between the juke joint and the hip hop spot. Some of the music meshed seamlessly (Andre’s She Lives in my lap) while other moments felt odd (Big Boi rapping Church into the camera). The fluidity with with they treated time and progress was best represented by Percival’s room and his wall of clocks. Throughout the film I kept thinking of afrofuturism, but that may just be me seeing too much Andre in the film.

My Verdict
Overall I was impressed with the film. It was an ambitious and well executed. Of course there could have been things that were done better, but the overall project was pretty fresh. It’s what Carmen could have been (lol).