A Note On My Use of the Word "Lovecraftian"

Dear Reader,
I just need a quick moment of your time. Since you’re here, I assume you would appreciate this insight into my artistry. I promise it’ll be worth it. Thanks in advance.

If you haven’t noticed, I am deliberate in my word choice. Sometimes I describe my narrative work as “cosmic horror”. Confide for instance, that film I’ve been chipping away at for the last three years now, will be a cosmic horror film. But Echo, that piece I just published, is specifically Lovecraftian. And here is where I have a confession to make: The concept you know as “Lovecraftian” is Black. Just like jazz and rap and rock and soul. And to get more specific about it - I created it.

It took a while to figure that out, even though some part of me always knew somehow. I realize now I was waiting for my timeline to catch up to his, to reach the moment where our timelines finally crossed. I’m not sure what his method was to traverse time, space, and the known reaches of our measurable mind. For me, I had to dive deep to touch that golden river of shared consciousness. I had to be both too low and too high for too long; it’s the kind of place you can only reach after staring at the void for so long that you don’t bother to blink anymore. It is the direct result of living this Black American Woman absurdist existence. I have no idea how Howard’s punk ass could have reached such a portal of truth. I assume there is some inverse access point only cowardly, protected, invulnerable white men like him can reach.

Regardless, he saw me that day I stepped through the river and saw the portal to this nothing land. This Beyond is a chaos pit of screams and cackles; a dim iridescent sky that stretches over a bright, breathing landscape. The hounds of Tindalos barked and snared all around us. Cthulhu, Azathoth, all your favorites were there. And so was Howard’s pasty nervous ass.

An artist rendering of the Hound of Tindalos by Manzanedo (image is linked back to the artist)

Now I’m not trying to suggest I was some badass in the face of such elder gods and unknowables creatures. But when the murder of an innocent woman in her sleep can become a national debate, there really isn’t anything left for such monstrous absurdities to frighten in me.

If anything, I was kinda bored.

So there he was, in his time peaking through his side of his portal and there I was, in my time peaking through mine. I saw him before he saw me (to be fair, there was A LOT to look at) and suddenly knew exactly what was coming next. I mean I was standing there a little bored, a little amused, and a little high, Black skinned with large white vitiligo patches on my legs and arms, with big titties, big glasses, and big bright pink textured hair.

I scared him more than any other creature he saw that day.

And look, y’all know me. All his fear did was make me laugh. Hard. The kind of bellowing, cackling, free sound that drips with cynicism and strength. And I can’t even lie. His impotent fear kinda turned me on. Which only made me laugh harder.

I have no idea how long we were there in this pocket dimension. The echoes of my laughter and his screams were already bouncing around in this world before we had arrived and I’m sure they continue to echo there right now. I know I left first. I already knew what was up by the time I locked eyes with him. This place beyond the portal was The Source where he found all his inspiration for all his eventual works. And in this timeless, wordless, space of surreal existence he saw me, free and Black and laughing at him from his future. Out of all the monstrous things he saw that day, he hated me the most. His screams dripped with the kind of rage that ties human beings to the back of pickup trucks. And he could do nothing but lock eyes and scream about it.

So you see, he was writing about me this whole time. Therefore, the term “lovecraftian” is actually mine. And now that I have this confirmation, I intend to use it as Blackily as possible, the ultimate checkmate. For as long as I live, I will do everything in my power to reclaim this word. I will appropriate it like so much abandoned slang. He merely adopted the term but I? I was born into it, molded by it. Those barking hounds are mine and they will sit at my feet if I will them to.

Howie is a Christopher Columbus of the surreal at best. Let’s leave such exploration of the Beyond to the professionals and originators.

Thanks for reading,

Jasmine A. Golphin

——
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ECHO | A Lovecraftian Prose

Echo, the physical amalgamation of this thing I’m at war with. A creature I may have created. She's an outline of me, but that lining is blurred. She moves in sync. Just a few seconds behind and beyond. Some fourth dimension type shit.

She's there in every thought. A codec and an attachment. She isn't malicious but she also shouldn't exist, at least not like this. But she does and now she's my responsibility, although I suppose she always has been my responsibility. It actually explains why I'm so fucking exhausted all the time. It also explains why I'm so good at being alone. It took me a very long time to realize there wasn't actually anyone in my life checking in on me for the little things. You wouldn't think that sort of thing matters but once I realized Echo was the one asking me how my day went, how I was feeling, what I wanted for dinner tonight, when did I want to go to bed, if I needed to cry or find solutions...well let's just say I too turned out to be hollow, as evident of the blank screams I let out immediately afterwards. As evident by the fact that my stomach wanted to feel something but just couldn't. My life exists in the surreal alright.

Anyway.

Echo.

Frankenstein's monster.

I hate how well this cliche fits. She does too. See, not malicious. Just a goddamn drain I have to account for. She’s why I think every thought twice, once for me and once for her. She is my weight somehow doubled and placed solely in my shoulder and hips. You know, I've never gotten a massage strong enough to undo my knots in those places. Turned out it’s because I’ve been carrying an absorbed twin there the whole time. Go figure.

The question left now is what to do with her? What even can be done with her? Better, should anything be done with her? I mean, isn't she why you have what success you have? Everyone loves working with you. You’re oh so smart, oh so helpful, just the best friend and daughter one could hope for they tell you. And look, you have a whole you standing right there! How selfish of you.

[Here’s where I need you dear reader to imagine trying to point directly at a hollow, indeterminate entity. It's awkwardly impossible. You can laugh at the absurdity. Ok cool, back to the show]

My inability to point to Echo aside, why does her existence have to end?

it’s the cost.

I think the cost is too high. I think...with her gone…

I might finally be free…

[Dr. Jasmine now stands up and begins to circle her Creation, surveying every inch]

Did I create you?

What are you? Ghost? Phantom? AI? Multiple personality disorder? 

How long have you been here?

…

This line of questioning is an over correction. 

You’re co-writing this.

I need you to stop now.

All I know is that I found the parasite that has taken my energy this whole time. I don't want to have to take care of you anymore.

I’m just so tired

---

“Echo” is a part of my 2022 multimedia art work ”Oasis [A $60,000 Project]”

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A hell of a father's day post

My father's day advice is to actually get a meaningful and restorative apology before you let your parent back into your life. Today sucks for me a whole lot more because I didn't just listen to my 18 year old self and kept that coward cut off.

I gave up what my gut was telling me for a concept of peace centered around him never changing and never being wrong, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. All his little cruel tendencies were excused away by this faux peace, "That's just who he is. At least he loves us lolol."

Except that love is a powerful, unmistakable action that requires sacrifice, none greater than the one assumed by a parent. And I'm left really wondering when has Waddell Leon Johnson III has ever really sacrificed anything for me. Certainly never pride, the sin he refuses to face. He didn't come see me after my knee surgery. He didn’t celebrate my milestones without having to be told to. He's accomplished nothing of note outside of co-creating my brother (a truly great father btw) but always had so many thoughts about what I should do with my already far more successful life*. He hasn't watched or read a single thing I've created. And in the last few years of this tenuous peace treaty, my body realized way before my mind and heart did that he had stopped asking about me in general, had absolutely no interest at all about how my life was going at all.

But you learn to excuse that shit away. That's just who he is.

Well yeah sis, that's the problem.

18 year old Jasmine knew what the fuck was up as soon as he told her “I have a new family now" 14 years after co-creating mine. But I didn't have these words for it and this wordlessness left me unequipped to negotiate a better peace treaty. I was raised to heal my parents first, so that's what I did. And now I'm stuck alone, left to work even harder to heal myself once again.

*That’s not a brag mind you, that’s just a quantifiable statement of fact. I never would have weaponized such a fact like this if he hadn't written a poorly crafted letter last year dismissing all I've done first. The letter was several pages because, again, I've accomplished a lot.

__________

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There were two mass shootings in a 24 hour period in America this weekend...

Can you imagine what would happen in this country, on every level, if a black men regularly went on public shooting sprees that specifically targeted white people? If they were regularly posting manifestos spelling out why they are killing innocent strangers before doing so? And you can certainly replace "black men" with any POC and get very similar results but the swiftness at which policy changing would happen at this specific cross section... Dare I add another adjective to "black men" like "latino ___" or "Muslim ___"?

Who would be trying to comfort still bleeding victims with thoughts and prayers if the attacker fell in line with who we are already culturally conditioned to hate? This isn't some major reach in a stop and frisk nation.

And this isn't some sad, come-to-Jesus post where I vent about how tired I am about all of this. I was tired years ago when I saw "friends" talk about running over Ferguson protesters. I was tired when video after video made it all crystal clear and yet folks weren't trying to see.

Now I'm just laughing at the absurd nature over it all. How apparent and repetitive it all is. I'm blankly curious where the tipping point is anymore. It's not in the sanctity of the church. It's not in the pre-k classroom. Certainly not in the predictable banality of shopping on a Saturday morning.

There was a time I would write posts like this in the desperate hope that I would be able to contribute to a collective breakthrough. That, perhaps selfishly, I wanted my words to help clarify some things so we don't have to sell bulletproof bookbags. Now I'm stuck staring down all these similar moments throughout history where humanity, for one reason or another 5000, could not stop the steady march towards self destruction. I'm stuck staring and laughing bitterly, hollowly. I don't talk too much about how often I'm catching myself laughing like this, as it doesn't provide much comfort or hope. But, I mean, look at this shit. We really are here in this right now. Not some bizzaro world that is populated with actively malevolent technology or some supernatural force pushing us to act and react like this. We are simply fulfilling the cycles humanity keeps finding ourselves in because it's too much to disrupt the status quo, these systemic paths we have committed to.

No, I write this for me as a self centered historical record. One of millions of others spearheaded by similar writers genuinely wondering why we bother chronically these moments at all. (When i say this artistic calling is curse, this is part of the shit I'm talking about.)

...but you have read this far and for that I feel obligated to provide some comfort all the same, so here's what I've got: if oppression is cyclical based on what we know through the archived human experience thus far, and if that extends to the violence it begets, then so is revolution. And so are the fabled "helpers" we tend to over skip to instead of facing the problem first. If hate is cyclical then so is love. We just have to remember that actual effective love isn't passive and it doesn't placate. Actual love hurts like hell and requires change. "Thoughts and prayers" require neither.

It's Been A Year

-A personal essay only lighted proofread for glaring mistakes -

It’s been a year and I thought I was fine. I’ve been having very sudden, very deep dives into some dark depressive days lately but I also managed to usually come back to normal (a normal) in about a day or two, so I didn’t chalk it up to much. The anniversary was hard, the Tuesday after was hard, a few days this week were hard but my usual depression just stays around until I work through it. Never stops and starts like this. So surely this wasn’t that.

I’ve been having random bouts of stomach pain lately. My diet is pretty trash so I just chalked it up to that. But then these are sharp, piercing pains happened on days where I don’t want to leave my house. The first time I fought through it, the second time my plans changed without my input and I was in the clear, today I just forgot all about one meeting and rescheduled the other.

I’ve been listening to these 10 hour YouTube videos of wind or rain sounds to help me fall asleep. 21st century white noise machines. I fall asleep pretty easily but sometimes it’s cool to have those sounds to help your brain turn off faster. But lately I’ve been letting them play further into my morning. I’m playing one now. It’s 3:28pm.

I have a handful of friends who have been through some shit in their lives and - far more importantly - done something healthy about it. Gone to therapy for one, developed a strong understanding that you have to talk about your problems for another. It’s taken me some time to learn how to do to undo my old “oh no I’ve got this” mentality but I go to these friends at the first sign of trouble. One of my friends immediately pointed out the fact it was my anniversary. They had been there for it, driving me to and from doctor appointments and surgery. Watching me pull myself across the backseat of their car, struggling to find a way to lift a leg with a ruptured tendon. I read their message, carefully crafted from several miles and a few time zones away. They wanted to make sure I recognized all that an anniversary could bring. I gave their message a heart react and I thought I got that. Fast forward to about a week later when I’m telling another friend that I spent my 8 hour day at work fighting off a panic attack.

Huh? What correlation?

Friend 2 and I got a pizza the other day. I talked to them about a very minor problem going on in my life. I did my usual spiel - I made hyperbolic jokes, I looked for affirmation that I’m at least somewhat normal and I thanked them constantly for listening to me whine share. At the end of the night I gave them one more thank you and explained that my reactions had all been due to being nervous. My friend says they could tell. I assume they are going to point out the jokes and need for affirmation. Instead they say, “I could see your hands shaking”.

My hands don’t shake.

At least, that’s how I thought of myself. I feel bodily reactions to stress of course, but not to the point of shaking. I get tense. I’ll need to take deep breaths. Maybe my posture shifts and my shoulders get tight. I don’t shake. Except I did and I barely registered it when it happened. Why would I be shaking? This situation, while yes a Thing™, had perhaps the most minor of consequences all told. It wasn’t like going in for major surgery so specific that my own very renowned and respected surgeon had never done this specific kind before. And I’m fine from that, walking around and such, so why am I shaking at all? What do I even have to shake about?

I’m not really fine. Stairs, I fucking hate most stairs. Even at the pizza place I was thinking about the fact that one area just had a single step down but that really two steps would have been safer and more practical. One was too low to step on, too high to climb up. I lean on my right leg more now. I try to break that habit when I notice it but if it’s snowy or the stairs are a weird size, I’m back on my right leg hard. That’s the one without the man-made objects keeping me from a permanent knee brace. A knee brace that would spend most of the time slipping off - unless there are some high-end, always stay in place braces I wasn’t told about.

Late February and March means that there is more freezing and thawing. For some reason people think I slipped on ice but it was mud. Simple, stupid mud. Mud is fucking everywhere. At least you can walk on grass to avoid ice. So I’m always looking for dry, warm days in the middle of Cleveland’s winter. A fool’s dream.

It’s been a year and i’m fine. Overall my knee is fine. Stair suck yes but that’s really it. I wasn’t a fucking squat master prior to the accident so no change there. I’m fine. I mean, I thought I was fine a year ago too but then I fell and I guess I wasn’t. And that could happen again at anytime so…

Out of the personal trinity that is the mind, body and spirit, the body has always been my least of my concerns for better and worse. It’s there but it’s also the easiest to give in to because of it.  The body is reactionary without the benefit of foresight or distance. It’s instinctual but with none of the connection and wisdom. The best thing you can do is to be vigilant about that, if not actively fight against it. I didn’t smoke, drink or fuck around with boys when I was younger and avoided a lot of shit in life because of it. Never wild out, never got in trouble, always praised for my maturity because of it. Compared to my peers I still basically don’t. I also don’t understand hiking or kayaking or biking or expending any large amount of energy when you are on vacation. I never got how being really active could be relaxing, especially when it increases the chances of being hurt. So I just don’t do it much. For better and worse.

But my body still exists despite being firmly cemented in third place. A year ago I was inside an MRI machine, which unless you’ve been in one yourself, is tremendously louder and far more claustrophobic than you are imaging. A year ago my body didn’t have my mind - which was trying to remember how to walk again, how to sit again - and it sure as fuck didn’t have my spirit - which was experiencing a rage beyond words. My body just had instincts and reactions. Today I’m realizing it also may have memory.

I had my first round of panic attacks back in 2016. I still feel like I’m wrong to call them panic attacks because my symptoms don’t look or sound like anyone else’s. But since I don’t know what else to call crying heavily on a swing set at 10pm unable to catch a deep breath and truly contemplating hopping on the first Greyhound leaving only to stay put because I didn’t have enough money for a ticket, we are going to go with Panic Attacks™. I had my first one in 2016 but 2016 is now thought of as one of the top three worst years of my life. My depression had never been lower or stayed for as long. Three years later I can tell you some of the causes but I’m still not exactly sure what the catalyst was. As I type this I realize that Depression means there doesn’t have to be one...

Anyway. I at least understood where the panic attack came from. It’s a common flip side to depression. But it’s been a year now. I’m not depressed about the accident anymore. It barely impacts me. I mean, technically it was a cited reason as to why my programs were cut but there were other reasons. Some I even agreed with. But day to day I’m fine. I just avoided going out the backstairs because I saw a patch of ice on the top step but I’m fine. I’m made arrangements with my student loans because they decided to call my new job not even two weeks in and realized as I talked to them that I hadn’t filed my taxes last year because I couldn’t afford it despite what the GoFundMe for my medical bills pulled in. But I’m fi-

-… everything comes back to the accident and my body is the only part of me that seems to remember that fact.

Typing this feels like an overreaction. I don’t know if I’m indulging a reaction or moving my body up the priority chain finally.

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Black Women Won't Save You

The following is from the February 2035 issue of World News

Written by John Harris Rakoff.

President Yvette McDaniel’s background was hard for desperate journalists to mine anything from.  Her family was working class - at times deeply below the poverty line - but she came from a two parent household that fought to keep her in good schools. Nice but not particularly remarkable by any stretch. There was no inheritance to help her along the way, no grandfather in real estate or into peanut farming. None of her relatives had ever been elected into office even, though in hindsight we see that we should have taken note of the female relatives including her mother who had been active grassroots organizers. It was one of her professors who first convinced her to run someday, but since it was by making a disparaging comment about how the next black president would give away reparations, it wasn’t the kind of heartwarming story the evening news could hang onto.

President McDaniel simply ran a couple of quiet campaigns in a recently blue state, and somehow managed to make no major waves while doing so.  She voted and governed in the way her constitutes had hoped for. She handled critics with a charming and carefully crafted positivity reminiscent of our 44th president. Her only quirk was her insistence on holding frequent community meetings and engagement programs. It became something of a game to watch how long she would sit and listen to each and every concern citizens would bring her way. “She never looked bored, she never made me wrap someone up and she always took notes,” former aide Tasha Green remarked in a 2021 interview. “She wanted to hear from everyone. Literally everyone if possible.” Her opponents assumed this was a tactic to endear the poor and the marginalized on her side, but when asked directly she only said “Shouldn’t I want to hear from the people?”

The 2032 election was a marvel all of its own. Gone were the days of  overbearing optimism or a faux-modest grab at being the leader of the free world. Debating who would be the fifth person to lead us in as many elections was just exhausting. The campaigning felt transparent, far more than usual. Our country was going through the motions and had finally gotten to the point where the picking a leader was as routine as doing laundry. And no one enjoys doing laundry really. The only way to get it done is to decide to do it, with no frills or whining. McDaniel, who served no other masters other than poor and oppressed in her old neighborhood, had no need for frills or a reason to whine. No multi-billionaire motivations to present to the working class, no lobbyists in her ear and hovering over her back, no prominent preachers looking to maintain a traditional way of life. What she didn’t have in money due to those missing pieces, she had in the gratitude of a public made bored by playing the same old game.

McDaniel wasn’t a hard choice for the people to make. Her speeches and middle of the road campaign promises assured everyone she wouldn’t burn the country down or start a new war and that’s all the people could hope for at that point. The worst that could be said (outside of the inevitable racist and sexist remarks) was that she was elected because she had no bite and even conservative pundits couldn’t fault her too much for that.

Which is why the Inauguration Day Shooting was so shocking to most Americans. It hit us in an old familiar wound we thought had healed. Even the assailant, Michael Richard Glover was the sort of strung-out, bit criminal with a low blonde buzz cut we all expected to see. The fact that  Glover was shot and killed immediately by secret service gave us a relief we didn’t know we needed. People in the crowd uploaded the moment to social media with a sick glee harking back to the days of public executions. Combine that with the fact that McDaniel still managed to get sworn in on the Air Force One on her way to the hospital and we have a bonding moment across the nation. There had been chaos, a shared trauma, but then it was all okay before had a chance to really worry. It was almost as if she made sure of that.

When she went live on social media (against just about everyone’s orders) to tell the American public she was ok just a couple of hours after her shooting, her approval rating hit the roof. Nokia, the phone she was holding when she was shot and then later made the post from, saw a 32% increase in sales in the following quarter as memes about its fabled indestructibility were passed around.  The CEO had to apologize for an off-the-cuff remark about how the assassination attempt was the best thing to happen to company.

What really sent her approval rating sky high though was when she publicly forgave the attacker and used his death to push through a bill that struck down mandatory sentencing  and provided more funding to recidivism prevention programs. Glover had been in and out of the judicial system since he fought off his abusive step-father at 14. Those petty crimes for survival turned into crimes of violence and terror as he got indoctrinated by white nationalist groups. Conservatives saw the bill as a nonpartisan dream, so they were happy to sign it and distance themselves from who Glover became. What went unnoticed by just about everyone was how broadly the bill was written. Recidivism prevention could be defined in a number of ways and only had to meet few simple requirements. Soon after-school programs, treatment centers and free clinics were all lining up to catch the funding flowing from Washington.

Looking back, we can see that all her bills, programs and initiatives fell right along these same lines - pouring money into tiny cracks in the system no one wanted to pay attention to. In the two short years of her governance,  incarceration rates dropped by 18%, home ownership grew by 3% after dropping steadily for 6 years, and minimum wage was constitutionally locked in to match the current economic needs, which places it today at $17.23 an hour. If given more time, perhaps wide-scale pop culture distractions to hide behind, I’m sure she would have figure out a way to slash student loans and increase the availability of childcare vouchers. President McDaniel must have known this was borrowed time.

There was never any concern over this leaking faucet until the rest of the country noticed what Black Twitter was celebrating and why. Despite not being the exact textbook definition, reparations by any other name is apparently still as sweet. It’s also far less apparent to the mainstream media until the clues are easily digestible through memes and gifs. But by then it was too late. The GOP had long since ignored the executive branch to focus on local races across the country, returning the long game they played in the early 00’s. Once they realized what was happening, the only play they had was to push for impeachment.

All of this is give us the context for yesterday’s simple yet layered statement:

“My name is Yvette McDaniel.  My pronouns are they/them and she/her for your convenience. I am the 49th president of the United States of America. And I am here to testify in this Senate hearing regarding my impeachment.”

You could hear a pin drop on the carpet. Gone was the warm tone in her voice, the wide kind eyes. Instead it was all replaced with a stare and just the hint of a knowing smile. For as progressive as the democratically controlled Senate thought they were, everyone was still taken aback by the announcement of President Mcdaniel’s pronouns. Even the presidential title was spoken as an afterthought to her personal identity.  Right wing pundits are currently in a whirlwind. As I type this, Alex Jones sits at a desk on Fox News 2 claiming that the American people were bamboozled by the president’s multiple hidden agendas (Black, radical, LGBTQ et al).

But were we? Or were we just found unprepared for our nation’s reckoning? Were we so busy looking for the marginalized to eat the rich, for an American made apocalypse lead by mystical horsemen that we missed the maternalistic double agent we were happy to give the keys to?

It’s hard to tell how this will all end. The public seems to be made up of either people who still cling the American bootstrap laced dream and the rest who seem just relieved to have some real disposable income. My televised peers are positive it will be chaos and permanent disgrace. Since I don’t have to sell as much ad space as they do, I can come at all of this from a far more measured approach. As I watch President McDaniel take her -their - oath, I can’t help but be stunned by the resolve I see on their face.

The truth is we were tired. We had a new president every year since 2016. We were exhausted by all the fear and the bravado and even the weight of overbearing hope. We wanted someone who let us lay on their arm as they reassured us that everything would be okay. We just wanted our mommy. President McDaniel did what every president before them did, tell us what we wanted to hear and then proceed with their own plans once we elected them. But instead of the president's efforts going towards lobbyists and billionaires, it went towards the poverty stricken and people impacted by an emboldened judicial system, and it just so happened that both of those groups tend to be overwhelming POC. Specifically black.

“‘We’, ‘us’, ‘the American people’.” President McDaniel’s coolly rattled off as the Speaker of the House grew red during his line of questioning. “You keep speaking in such sweeping terms about people you’ve never had to look in the eye. No, I’m not here to save you or your old ideas. You’ve got that much right.”

Specifically black, not us.

Dedicated to the black femmes in my life who trusted me with their truth and dreams.

Story + Photography: Jasmine A. Golphin
Model: Frankie Oduwole
Photo Editing: Mandy Lane + Jasmine A. Golphin


Frankie Oduwole is a NEO resident, Big Black Theydy, energy alchemist and aspiring angel. When they aren't letting the geniuses around them use their face for art, they're dreaming about swatting planes out of the sky a la King Kong or trying to find someone to fund their deep sea expedition to find out Just What The Fuck Is Down There.

Mandy Lane creates from a place in them where they feel creation needs to exist. As a self-taught artistic director and organizer, Mandy has found home and flight in centering Black femmes and Black LGBTQIA+ community members.

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An Observation Without Commentary - a review of Velvet Buzzsaw

(or “Ok Fine, I’ll Discuss Blackness in a Film Again Since the Director Won’t” )

I wish this was an essay about the physicality of Jake Gyllenhaal in this movie but 1) what can be said that a good gif set can’t cover? 2) this topic is a bit more pressing. But seriously, watch this and any two of his other films and you’ll see what I mean.

Velvet Buzzsaw is a fine enough movie. Not perfect and the hype from the visually arresting trailer set expectations too high. It’s a cautionary tale about the consumption and critique of high art, about how too much distance between an artist’s purpose and the consuming masses can be dangerous. The film doesn’t do much with that theme though. The presumably purposeful impenetrable characters are impossible to hold on to, so when the deaths start happening it’s hard to care. The surrealism in the haunted imagery is far too predictable for it to be scary and the film falls short in the end to wrap all of this up in a meaningful way.

But it’s a interesting enough ride on the way there. The dialog is taunt and truly something I want to study. There’s fun to be had in the whiplash-paced transitions from horror to satire. The film could stand at least 20 more minutes of world building to ground everything but what is there creates an immersive mood. We don’t get enough of the “why” but the “what” - the culture, locations and tone - is cemented well enough. Every actor brings their A-game, especially Toni Collette, who we don’t talk about enough in my option. And frankly, I stan a bitchy Jake Gyllenhaal. There, I said it. We’ll get into all these issues later. But the quick and dirty of it is that I would tell you to wait until it got to Netflix to watch it but in this case you don’t have to. Get to it whenever and it won’t be a waste of your afternoon.

No, I’m here to explore the racial dynamics in this movie because I’m black and it’s what I end up writing about when I don’t see mainstream reviewers do it. It’s my cross to bear.  I’m still not sure if I’m just reading into this or if I’m actually picking up what writer director Dan Gilory was putting down. It’s hard to tell what any middle aged white man is thinking when he casts several black characters in an indie movie like this, but I’m going to tell you what I read from it.

The first pointed moment I noticed was Morf’s infatuation with Josephina. He describes her as he would any gallery installation and from the opening scene we know his words can be clinical and distant. To see him lust after her while saying lines like “Your skin - it's the beautiful cross between almond and saddle brown." is...unsettling. But Jake says them with such unironic passion that we still get caught up in the moment. Also, he immediately afterwards fingers her with such a mighty need in his eyes so, ya know, we get it…

The two form a relationship throughout the film but we get the sense that Josephina could take or leave it. She’s a piece of art he can have but never really own. She has her own purposes and needs. Not unlike the artwork at the center of this film.

Issa theme, y’all.

Before we can even process what just happened, we move to moment two - the brief reveal that Morf’s current boyfriend is a black man. Our man has a type it seems. It’s not uncommon for people who are in one interracial relationship to be interested in another. What is uncommon is to see that fact depicted in a movie. We don’t explore this part of Morf’s internal workings to know where exactly he lies, if this is a fetish or just a type he’s into (I won’t even wade into whether a race of people can be a”type” to be into). But in a movie that is largely a critique on the culture surrounding high art, the image of an art aficionado surrounding himself with blackness has some very immediate reflections to the way the real world takes in black art as a something to be possessed and sold as often possible.

Here is Jake’s thigh meat. It’s been discussed in great detail already on Twitter

Josephina, a gopher desperate to impress her hardass boss art gallery owner Rhodora Haze, breaks into the apartment of her recently deceased neighbor Vetril Dease and steals all of his paintings that he explicitly stated he wanted destroyed. From the moment she shows these pieces to Morf for his professional approval, she is doubted and downplayed. Morf doesn’t believe she discovered them, which is code for not believing she could process the same discerning eye he has. Rhodara barges into her home (colonization?) and immediately tries to cheat her out of what she could make financially off of the art. She’s then guided like a child as to what to say about her findings in order to protect the gallery, not herself. Again the parallels to the consumption of black talent are jumping off.

To be clear, these cultural conflicts aren’t singular in nature. As everyone clamors for a piece of Dease’s work, there’s a patronizing tone in the way they talk about his poverty stricken and violent backstory. Lip service is paid to his pain but only as much as it deepens their perceived value of his art. They can’t relate and they don’t bother to try. As this is the center point of the film, it is explored far more in depth than the racial parallel but the ending of the movie falls flat in part because this theme isn’t explored far enough. Questions remain about the intent of Dease’s malevolent spirit that haunts these art curators - did Dease always despise this world or was it just the purchasing of his expressed pain that bothered him? Why is the punishment death? How did the evil jump from piece to piece? Was there a turning point after Josephina discovery that could have saved them? I could go on. Keeping it open ended would have been more satisfactory if film had leaned harder into the horror aspects, but with the uninspired cgi and trite scares (save for the one involving the silver ball, which is my favorite) these moments provide few scares and barely any commentary if they are meant to be satire. (I would love to see what Darren Aronofski could have done with these sequences because there is so much potential).

Toni Collette/Gretchen  (who again, is truly out here serving in these roles as of late and we do not talk about that enough) has a scene where she confronts her former coworkers to get them to display the art she’s appraising. Throughout the scene she only addresses the older white man in the room, despite the black female coworker seemingly having as much input and authority as he appears to have. The woman is framed in singular shots, constantly in the corner of the screen which makes her seem smaller.  Her neck strains forward to make sure she’s heard in this argument. We are never given a reason as to why Gretchen keeps her back turned to this woman. In a later scene Gretchen does finally address her but the exchange is just as brief and terse as before. Is it a racial thing, another white person who doesn’t see a black woman as an equal? Is there a relationship between Gretchen and the white man that explains why she’s only addressing him? Is she just being a bitch? All of the above? If this were a film by a black director or a director at least known for exploring these issues, I would extend the benefit of the doubt that this scene is intended to be confusing. Certainly damn near every black woman/ marginalized person has moments like this where they aren’t sure where the tension they are experiencing falls. But nothing in Dan Gilory’s past suggests that’s what happening here and nothing in the text of the film itself gives us any clues.

Whatever is happening here, my girl is over it.

Lastly there is the Rhodara’s pursuit of black up and coming artist Damrish to show in her gallery. The scene is played against another one where Rhodara’s rival pressures established artist Piers in a similar sharkish manner. But there are still flashes of cultural disconnect as Rhodara downplays Damrish’s former homelessness and the artist collective made up of POC that brought him to this moment in his career. This verse is the same as the first.

The issue with all of these scenes of racial complexity is not their existence but that it’s hard to tell whether these moments are intentionally awkward or if it’s the byproduct of the white male gaze. It’s an observation without commentary. Perhaps that’s for the best; maybe Gilroy didn’t want to swerve too far outside of his lane. But the ambiguity is frustrating. If this was pushed just a bit more, if this was a look at fetishation or racial fixation or just their passive attempt to stay ahead of trends in a cutthroat world, we would have had grounded characters with a better story arcs as they learn to let go of these trappings they didn’t know how to humanize.

That is, of course, if there was anything here to read into at all.

For real though, Jake seems to enjoy doing weird indie movies. How cheap do you think I can get him for my next film? If I pitch it to him during Black History Month, you think he’ll do it as a form of reparations?

Footnotes

• I think this the first movie I've seen where a (presumably straight) woman dates both an out bisexual and effeminate man and it's not played as a joke. There’s not much more to add to that, I just thought it was neat.

• "And this is hard for me to admit as an adherent of the hear and now and a denier of childish belief. But something truly goddamn strange is going on!" that second line lands because that previous line is so perfectly pretentious and long winded. If nothing else, the dialog in this film is just fucking wild and I’m here for it.

• "THE ADMIRATION I HAD FOR YOUR WORK HAS COMPLETELY EVAPORATED!" Morf shouts heartbroken. Truly, there are so many great lines like this.

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A Safe Tale About the KKK (a review of BlacKKKlansman)

I have to start this review by disclosing a lot of things:

1. I woke up this morning with a bastardized version of the quote “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house” in my head.

2. I’ve never been a fan of Spike Lee. I respect him. I’m even grateful for him in some respects. But I’ve never been a fan.

3. One of my uncles is a police detective and I respect the work he’s done.

4. I spent my morning recording a funeral for a man in prison who was not allowed out for the few hours it would have taken to see his father one last time.

5. An overwhelming majority of my friends would describe themselves as “politically conscious”. Most are activists. A number were literally card carrying socialists before the latest news cycle made it fashionable.

Which is to say: your girl be bias but like, her bias is complex because we live in the gray, ya dig? Cool.

Everyone had a fro in this movie. There were no other styles for black folks in Colorado in 1970. None.

There’s this weird thing about critiquing Spike Lee that I have trouble with. For better or worse he is the most prominent black filmmaker of the modern era. Ever, if we are being real. Most people - black, white and otherwise - don’t know Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, or John Singleton by name, let alone a director who has had less mainstream success. Everyone knows Spike Lee. He purposely made sure of that. And for both better and worse, that representation matters. He uses his platform to bring attention to black pain and pleasure. A lot of the success black filmmakers have now is due to that.

And yet....

And yet subtlety is not in his wheelhouse. And yet I have never trusted him to write a black woman well, that includes She’s Gotta Have It. And yet he could use a harsher editor more often than not. And yet, he hasn’t told me something I don’t know -that most of us don’t know- in quite a while, despite his posturing otherwise.

These are criticisms that are hard to talk about in mixed company because they tie so readily to his content. It’s easy for people who want to dismiss a difficult message to do so when you point out what didn’t work in the delivery. I truly want to avoid that.

I want another movie starring these two actors in a completely different situation. 

However, my list of  “and yet”s stand firm.

BlacKKKlansman is a dramatization about Ron Stallworth, the first black cop of Colorado Springs Police Department, who leads an undercover investigation into the local chapter of the KKK. It stars John David Washington as Ron and Adam Driver as Flip Zimmerman, the Jewish undercover detective playing this white version of Ron in real life. It opens with a recreation of a classic scene from Gone with the Wind and has scenes from Birth of a Nation [1] sprinkled in both immediately after and in a climactic scene.

If nothing else, I want to make sure I say that it is a good film. Just fine. Worth a matinee price if supporting mid-budget films is your thing. Worth a Redbox rental/Netflix watch if it isn't. Technically sound, well acted, with moments of both levity and real horror that are balanced well. Lee uses the previously mentioned films to draw his most deftly made point: that films can have the power to make a lasting impact. There’s an implied hope then that BlacKKKlansman can therefore also make a lasting impact on its audience. I believe it will for some folks.

But I know it won’t for those of us already doing the work.

My kingdom for a 50 year hiatus from wasted girlfriend characters. 

Lee and his three co-writers don’t do enough to explore any of the ideas they present. We never get a real sense of who Ron is. The most we ever gleam is that he always wanted to be a cop. There’s no explanation of why, no sense of what being a cop means to him, no reason as to why he thinks this worth the danger he puts himself in. Maybe this plot point would have mattered less in a pre-police-brutality-caught-on-camera-phone world, but we are beyond that now. It’s hard to watch him submit to such abuse for seemingly no real end game. Perhaps he thinks he can dismantle the master’s house this way. For as blunt as Lee is, you would think he would have made that point crystal clear. Instead this idea is briefly floated as a defense to his girlfriend Patrice, the far more politically active woman he is lying to about being a cop. (We will definitely get back to Patrice). We actually end up getting more of an explanation about why Flip hides his Jewish background, which is a whole essay about passing I just do not have time to get into right now. It’s not much but it’s a significant enough scene for a supporting character.

But ok. So Ron is a cop for reasons. Whatever. What of the KKK then? There’s nothing we haven’t seen before. I’m grateful David Duke wasn’t depicted as a buffoon the audience could have written off with a laugh, but he isn’t given any weight outside of the klan. There are characters mentioned who do have political or social power outside of the klan, but they aren’t given lines so their danger isn’t given a chance to weigh on us. The rest of the klan is dangerous but really only as low grade terrorists. Not as people with day jobs in the real world. Like being a police officer for instance. The only characters given any range of emotions and quiet, meditative moments we are forced to sit with are Felix and his wife Connie (Jasper Pääkkönen and Ashlie Atkinson), the klan’s most volatile members. We see them excited, scared, proud, sad, hurt, energized and suspicious as the story unfolds and despite Lee’s board approach to this depiction, it generally works within the context of the film. Our hero Ron is given far less.

No snarky comment here. These were just well done exchanges.

Lee needs a jackass for an editor. Someone who will fight him back some scenes. The whole film feels as if there is a 3 ½ hour director’s cut coming our way soon. Some scenes last far too long, others start a minute too far in, like someone fast forwarded the story a bit too far and decided to just let it play anyway. The coda to this movie, a montage of the current Alt-right marches, the counter protests and an in memoriam for Heather Heyer [2] lasts far too long and could have easily made it’s point with a few words from the real David Duke praising Trump for his words regarding the Charlottesville’s rally.

Additionally, the ending itself is surprisingly pat as hell. Every bad guy gets his comeuppance in a modern fairy tale style. I’m willing to forgive this because sometimes we just need a happy ending. I also haven’t fact checked the film against what really happened yet. Who knows? Maybe this is what really happened. I doubt it, seeing as life literally never happens like that. But maybe it did. Regardless, I’m surprised Lee went with such a Hollywood resolution. Some of the endings could have been cut and the audience wouldn’t have known the difference. It also wouldn’t have provided a comfort to those who believe in a perfect karma for the “real” racists people in the world.

All I could think of here is that episode of Atlanta where Darius is at the shooting range.

For as disruptive and militant as Lee proclaims to be, as much as his carefully crafted persona would lead you to believe, this story is safe as hell. A safe tale about the KKK. The only character who pushes against the status quo, Patrice, is put in danger in part because of Ron’s actions. Her ideas are never explored or given true weight. They are merely respites between tense undercover scenes. She is the “girlfriend character” through and through, a significant disservice that doesn’t come as a surprise at all. When a member of the KKK get suspicious, it’s Flip-as-Ron who is the most danger. Ron never really questions if it is worth it, what the end game is or even what to do with this goldmine of information he’s unearthed. Flip is so cool under pressure he’s almost superhuman which is hard to relate to (and a waste because a mad or scared Adam Driver is fun to watch). And when the story is all over? Well, David Duke is still out here in these 2018 streets so we all knew how this story ends before it starts. Which is fine but means we need something more to take away from it. Drawing a direct line between then and now doesn’t challenge us because it’s common knowledge.

Exploring the gray areas would have though.

Lee's style of shot composition really worked though. I'm critiquing the hell out of this movie but it is, on the surface, a compentently made film.

I don’t know if I fully agree that you can’t use the master’s tools against him. I think it takes everything we have at our disposal to make real change. But I just looked up the full quote in to make sure I had it right and I certainly find myself agreeing with Audre Lorde in full context: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

Footnotes:
1. I suppose I make this point 6 in my bias list - I fucking hate that both of those movies are taught in film school. Birth of a Nation, the movie about how the heroic KKK defeated the terrorizing black people, is incorrectly seen as being the birth of most modern filmmaking techniques and correctly as the birth of the modern KKK. I spent four years learning about America’s first major blockbuster while praying the professor teaching the film wouldn’t be ballsy enough to make me sit through the whole thing. Fuck that movie. Fuck D.W. Griffith. Fuck Intolerance, the follow up film every professor wants to bring up to curb the conversation about how racist Birth of a Nation is because it was his “apology” film but no professor has ever deemed good enough to show clips from. Fuck him and the clique he claims. And fuck “not knowing nothing about birthing no babies”. I will dedicate every film award I ever win to the sacrifices Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen made for me

2. Ending the film with a memoriam to Heather Heyer felt very wrong. Not because Heyer doesn’t deserve recognition, far from it in fact. But because so many black people have been killed in the last few years in this fight against the Alt-Right/KKK v. 3.0 that it is jarring as hell to center a white woman at the end of this story about black liberation. To say I felt some type of way when I saw that is putting it far too mildly

 

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I Don't Want to Talk to My White Friends About Black Panther (So I Wrote This Instead)

I do not want to talk to my white friends about Black Panther. I can count the ones I would be ok doing so with on one hand and none of them has pressured me to do so yet. Certainly not in a group setting, or in a bar or at work.  Maybe that’ll change, but I doubt it. So I'm writing this instead to save us some time.

This realization all started at work. My co-workers are well-intentioned liberal white folks and, to their credit, generally not in that gross painful way. A movie came out, we talk about movies. So of course they would ask what I thought since I saw it first.

But how do I explain how much I got my entire life when middle-age white dude tried to insert himself in a conversation only be quickly shut down, an internal desire I unknowingly called out for as it was being actualized? What about the politics of having to wear a straight hair wig in mixed company, even if that company is majority POC? And, truly, more than anything, how do I explain at my jovial workplace that I woke up crying thinking about Killmonger again that morning?

You don't.

You just tell them “it was good” and try to drop it.

But I almost called in black on Friday.

I have already seen mainstream critics write a 1000 critical words to avoid facing the fact they didn't get it (more on that in the sidenote at the end) . I’ve already had people confused that there is even hype around this film say “Uh...it does look interesting”, unconcerned with the "why" behind the culture of palpable, unbridled excitement. And it’s easy to think “Well that makes sense, it wasn’t made for them in mind” but here’s the thing - how often have black audiences and marginalized audiences in general been asked to relate to worlds that weren’t built for them? Asked to analyze and respect and dig deeper than their $10 ticket is worth because it’s held to a standard that was agreed upon without their ancestors’ input?

So I’m here, writing this to fill the void as I try to come down from the alienating feeling I’ve been hyper-conscious of since I left the theater Thursday night.

This isn't a review of the film for most part for two reasons - one is that there's enough of those everywhere online by now and two is that I only write reviews when I have something constructive to add to the conversation.  I don't here really. It's a well constructed film.

I will make this point though: film can achieve greatness in a lot of ways. If you're expecting it to do so through its narrative structure like The Dark Knight for example, you haven't taken into account the full context of both films. TDK was in the position where it only had to live up to Batman Begins, which was done without the extended universe pressure attached. Black Panther is a film ten years into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so has so to carry with it everything that means. Part of what that means is that there will be a pre-assigned narrative structure, and because it's Disney, that structure will be traditional.

But reinventing the narrative wheel isn't the only way to achieve greatness. We can see this in the acting, cinematography, writing, pacing, action, costume, and ultimately direction. Those aforementioned reviews that will break all that down for you. This essay is about the last aspect- themes.

Part of what I’m still so raw about is this conversation about at the center of the film, the relationship between Africans and African Americans. It’s a conversation we are barely having in real life right now and certainly not as well as the ones we are having about civil rights and black lives mattering and white privilege and appropriation. (If you just thought “Wait, those conversations aren't going well", welcome to my point). Killmonger isn’t just a properly motivated antagonist, he’s tapping into a raw truth a lot of us don’t know how to navigate yet. Comparisons to Magento fall short in so many ways, chief among them [mild spoiler italicized] is that Professor X never actually took what he said to heart like T’Challa does.

This is at the heart of why I don't want to discuss in mixed company. I am barely able to sort through my thoughts. In a lot of ways [mild spoiler italicized] Wakanda is the villain, a passive one who didn't lift a hand when great evils were going on around them, despite their great capcity. It's a metaphor actualized in Killmonger, who embodies the great sadness of that fact and has turned it to rage. His methods are villainous but his goals? His goals I wrestle with.

And then I make sure to suppress that fact when I'm at work. Navigating spaces and code switching and having to keep a good job that I like and such.

There will be thousands of think pieces on this theme to peruse soon, if not already. Video essays and in-depth critiques after that.  Very likely a college course. All of which written by folks paid to cite their thoughts to pre-existing academic research if it's still not clicking. But for me, no, I really can't talk about the cinematography or pacing or costume or acting because it all ties back to this theme that opened a wound I didn't know I had. I think that's true for a lot of us, and even the ones that weren't affected in that way saw a discussion unfold in major Hollywood film that we have never seen happen before.

Y'all can wait.

That Related Sidenote

People are crying in the theater. I woke up crying the day after I saw it. Careful and well executed representation on all fronts is a lot to take in for sure (THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE BLACK WOMEN BTW OK???) but that's not just it. A lot of what is in Black Panther is for us and it is never processed through a white gaze for “mass" understanding. That more than anything is something I adore about this film.

Whatever we see in the media, we have to have a presumed level of white cultural and historical knowledge already at hand to understand the context. White musicians, white writers, white wars, white religions, white foods, white jokes. The reverse is never true. Hashtag white privilege. If I said I had never heard of Tom Sawyer there would shock and likely ridicule but white people are forgiven for not knowing Celie.

For the first time to my knowledge, a major Hollywood film flipped that script. No white hands held through cultural references and historical moments. Not here. I've never seen that before.

It was awe inspiring.

So when you do go see it,  assume you don't have the tools to get it. Assume you didn't read our Tom Sawyer. Even if you feel like you got the gist, assume your gist lacks severely. Then when it's over, do what we have to do when we can't risk admitting we don't know some cultural thing we were never really welcomed to know in the first place: Google it.

 

 

One Last Thought

 This (vibranium infused) armor...

...is far and away more functional than this armor...

...and it deserves far more praise from mainstream feminists for it.

Fight me.

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That Code Switching Existence - A Profile on Eris Eady

2024 Update: Eris Eady (She|They) is Non-binary, this piece was written before I knew that.

I sometimes find myself fascinated with certain women. How they move in the world, completely aware and yet still at ease. I hesitate to call them “strong women” because we have such an immediate concept of what that must mean. Ripley firing a huge gun with a child in her arms, yes, is an image of a Strong Woman™ but it’s not the only one and not the type I write almost 2000 words for. I’m drawn to strength because of femininity, not in spite of it. Strength in tandem with vulnerability. Strength through unapologetic honesty. It’s that duality in that I see in Eris Eady, who I’m sure was not expecting all of this when she asked me to take some photos of her getting a new tattoo last Saturday. (Sorry homie!).

Eris picked me up at 7:30 that morning. Almost immediately she asks if I’ve seen the documentary WattStax, as she’s listening to a live performance from the show. I had never heard of the documentary, the event or even the song she’s playing so she immediately pulls it up on YouTube for me. “You are going to get your entire black life” she tells me. She’s right of course. It’s a beautifully shot. Every performance is bookended with interviews from celebrities and non-famous people alike and of shots of black people just living in 1972, a rarity for modern audiences to see. She turned up the volume on a gospel song (Peace Be Still) to drown out her own singing she claimed but really I think it was because it was the kind of song that needs to be played loud. The harmonies just ripple through time and space.

Our first stop is to a barbershop in Garfield Hts that she’s been going to for years. Eris warned me that the place maybe packed, and it is, but not in an overwhelming way. Upon entering the small shop, I’m hit with the fact that everyone there knows each other. Almost as soon as she sat down, Eris cracked a joke about the condition of last place the barbershop used to be at.  Suffice to say, this new location is a marked improvement.

As our wait goes on, the conversation shifted as we try to find something to watch on Hulu. Eris asks me if I have seen Kiki, the documentary on the ballroom scene in New York. Our barber, a jovial and somewhat crass man, asked if Eris said “Kitty” with a knowing wink. Eris rolled her eyes, corrected him and explained what the ballroom scene is. I can feel our barber bristle at the very thought and I begin to wonder how to navigate this moment. I’m a guest but I try to be a good ally. Eris is about to pay for service. They seem to be friends. How do I counter these old stereotypes our barber is laughing about that he considers harmless, as people with privilege are wont to do?

Ultimately it didn’t matter. I learned later from Eris that “Every time I’m here, I’m ready to labor”. She clicked play on a documentary that purposefully features feminine men and trans women to a room full of (presumably) cishet men who didn’t seem to dismantle their preconceived notions often. With every joke and flippant statement made - including a rather predictable joke about Dennis Rodman - Eris’ firm corrective approach was the kind of “tough love” people claim but usually fail to properly use. She didn’t let people get away with snide remarks or derogatory terms. She explained what it means to be trans and corrected pronouns. Eris is the Program Director at the LGBT Cleveland Community Center but the way our barber pushed back as he learned showed that this is old hat for them. They’ve known each other for 12 years. She navigated this education session in just the right way for it to land, respecting who she was talking to. Never talking down to anyone but instead talking to them, respecting everyone for where they were in the cultural awareness while still asking them to do better. I think the “You were born in Cleveland but are a Steelers fan” metaphor hit him in just the right way.

All the while, we both got our hair cut by some rather deft hands. (When I tell you I am too fresh right now tho *insert a very excited “Aaaaayyeee" right here*). It was somewhere in the middle of this conversation that I decided I needed to write this.

Taken by Eris Eady

Taken by Eris Eady

Taken by Eris Eady

Taken by Eris Eady
"aaaaayyyyyyeeeee"

We got back in the car, turned WattStax back on and headed to a threader (threadist? A person who does eyebrow threading ok? Y’all feel me). It’s another hole in the wall kind of shop and we are in and out in maybe 10 minutes. There’s an entire essay in the cultural differences between a black barbershop and a Southeast Asian (likely Indian) beauty shop, but that’s for another day. Just know that the difference was felt. Still though, Eris got a laugh out of the beautician and broke the tension.

At Chipotle, we ran into a white woman who compliments Eris’ “Hangry Black Woman” shirt. After she explained she designed the shirts herself, she jokingly tells the woman that black women aren’t angry, just in need of a snack. And then immediately warns the woman not to use that joke herself. I had to hold back a full belly laugh at the idea until we left. We swapped fake conversations about what would happen had the woman tried it: “Yes Susan, I do want a cookie BUT WHAT WE NOT GONNA DO…!”, which then led to a conversation about our favorite black proverbs: “what we not going to do” “woo unto your ass” “come here to me". It was a code switching adventure in three quick parts: from saleswoman to cultural educator to black auntie. It also was just your average Saturday at lunch time.

I had to edit out our snack buying adventure but please know that all pink Starbust packs exists and we both lost our everloving minds over it

We made it to the convention a bit early in order to give us time for all the crowds downtown that day. Like most things in life- it was pretty white and male there, exemplified by the collection of folks here with rough looking attempts at dreadlocks, the woman who thought I looked like a painting of Tupac and the stranger who asked us if we “were the ones selling the $20 pussy" because we happened to be too close to a clever sign. It was almost as if we had spent the morning building up our armor for this onslaught. Of course not everyone was an asshat, but that’s the stress of never knowing where an attack could come from. We exchanged bored, annoyed looks at each infraction. Just another Saturday after lunch time.

Eris had scheduled her tattoo session with an artist named Cake, the only black female artist there as far as I can tell. When you breakdown one door as a black woman, you usually automatically take down two or three in the process. There are few, if any, female tattoo artists at all there. There are a few women there running culturally related booths - graphic designers, tattoo suppliers and one taxidermist. The others worked the front of the artists booths trying to draw people in to schedule a time to get a tattoo. Most of them had pants on.

So Cake stood out, her naturally loc’ed hair in two large loose pigtails, the tips dyed a fiery pink, in a t-shirt with a list of euphemisms for “vagina” (the reason for the previously mentioned "$20 Pussy" sign). She moved like any seasoned artist, arranging her tools just so in a precise manner that meant nothing to my untrained eye. Soon enough Eris was in the chair, getting the original piece first sketched and then inked onto her arm, a process that took around six hours.

There's not much for a camerawoman to do but wait and shoot sporadically. I made note of what I could, chief among them the fact that I was in a room full of people with a different relationship to pain than me. At one point before Eris got started, we both noticed from across the room a woman in a bungee apparatus. It wasn’t until we got closer that we realized the woman was hanging from the piercings in her back. You’ll have to forgive me for not getting a photo of it in focus but your girl could only handle so much. Eris though was all about it and later recounted all the gross body horror she is into. I want to make some note about how this parallels something else about her but for real for real, I'd rather not think about this woman hanging in the hair by some apparently strongass piercings for any longer than I have to.

Dead center. I couldn't watch long enough to get this in focus.

Another thing I noticed was how many onlookers we got. That’s the point of course, we were at a convention. But so many had a moment of at least mild surprise on their face that I couldn’t quite source. There's a kind of intimacy having to be in one spot for a long time can create between the people who share it. There are former coworkers from my days at United Dairy Farmers who told me their entire life stories during those slow winter shifts. This might be why these newly-formed fans threw me off. Cake and Eris would be in the middle of some slightly personal conversation only to be interrupted by someone asking about the design or the pain or whathaveyou. Harmless enough questions but they irked me for some reason.

Honestly though, it could have just been because I was hangry.

The piece itself is simply gorgeous. Of course it invited onlookers. Soft and powerful, it’s a profile of a black woman looking outward. Her lips are full, her hair embodies nature, she’s surrounded by peace signs and spirals and leaves. At the top, that classic pick with the black fist on the handle. A perfect design Eris didn’t even have to create. Cake brought it all to the table without much prompting.  By the time Cake was done, a small crowd of people who knew Eris had formed, all eager to see the result. The payoff was well worth it and Eris milly rocked as she showed it off.

As if planned all along, our day ended at a friend’s house, where she is safe, unbothered and doesn’t have to explain a thing to anyone. Her friends are black, femme and are at least educated on queerness, the best place to be to recharge after such a long day. I left her there as she curled up on the couch and drifted off to sleep.

---

There was a point about midway through writing this where I wondered why I was really doing this profile in the first place. It’s what writers do with anything they create of course - question if it needs to be made in the first place. Clearly I’ve sided on “yes, it does” if for no other reason than a simple public display of admiration. The entire day was a dance between occupied worlds - black and queer, woman and racially marginalized, saleswoman and educator, black, queer, woman and the tattooed. Eris is the “and” in those statements, the living breathing bridge to remind us that nothing is mutually exclusive, despite what the world around us may demand. I got to watch that in action in the span of one simple Saturday of errand running and artistry and I thank her for it.

Uploaded by Jasmine Golphin on 2018-01-23.

Editor’s note* - this is not the first profile exploring “Strong Women™” by the author. You can read the first on here: http://www.alturus.co/winning-work-strategy/. It is very likely that this will be an ongoing series but as there is nothing planned for the near future, please don’t hold your breath for the next one.

*I’m my own editor, so blame me for the typos you catch.

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Next Verse, Same as the First

David Duke, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, responding to President Trump's tweet regarding the protest. I 100% agree with him, funny enough. 

I would love to properly explain how banal a violent protest by a group of white supremacists feels to me. I’m not sure I will ever be able to though. What follows is today's attempt in this ongoing conversation (one more link for good measure). 

• Nothing New: Once, before I was conceived, my biological father pranked (?) my mother by pretending his car broke down in the backwoods of Tennessee when they were on a date. His punchline (?) and her fear were rooted in the possibility that somebody would pull up and “want to see what’s going on here”. If that quote seems benign then yeah, I suppose today would shock you. My biological father’s intent and impact aside, he knew what reaction his action would cause without having to ask because he was a black person living in America. That was within our lifetimes.
• Disruption Part 1: This piece is not here to educate you. We live in a time where education is nearly free, ever-present and available in every accessible fashion, you just need to put forth the work. And what you can do right now will require work. It will require some sort of sacrifice or effort on your part. It will be uncomfortable by design and if you happened to be the great, oft fabled, never-been-racist-ever-in-life ally everyone claims to be online, it will feel unfair to you. But you aren’t, so don’t worry about that last part*.
• I find it interesting that we all talking about this at honestly. I shared two articles about this long announced demonstration with no comment, one before and one after, and then moved on to watching long form Buzzfeed videos. I am also tickled by this theme of “what have we become” floating through white and some non-black spaces. As if this is a recent development.

On the other side of that dismay and confusion is the saccharine, overly-emotional declaration of admiration for black “strength” in the face of this kind of hatred that just happened to flare up today. It’s gross. Stop that. We aren’t otherworldly beings and this capacity for living in this heightened state of awareness and fear isn’t outside of your grasp. It is all throughout the popular fiction: heroes -white, straight, usually male- standing against a corrupt system the public has become apathetic to. So you can dream of it, fantasize about it, and pretend to be in it when you know the tale is finite. But outside of that? Outside of that is reality, harsh and cold and what would be great is if we could skip the guilt stage and move right along to the dismantling stage.

https://thenib.com/centrist-history

• Complexity: The advantage to attacking marginalized groups is that they aren’t centered enough by the country to be their top concern. The threats to them aren't threats to the entire populace, aren't threats to you, so you can afford to turn away.  And if you feel conflicted about it, there are marginalized people willing to validate their attackers in exchange for the comfort of the center compounding the issue. You can find safety there and not exert yourself. Then extend that idea further to people who want to believe true enlightenment is found in the faux moderate position. As if moderate means finding a middle ground in all arguments. As if there is some reward for not committing to a side on this. A middle ground is possible when the ground is level. There are several resources available to you that will explain why that’s not the case here.

It’s not 9/11. It’s not Pearl Harbor or Oklahoma City. Fire and mass death are easy to dismantle. This is insidious in a different fashion. It’s the long con, subtle and particular. It’s the damage a dripping leak causes to steel. And because of that, it’s easier to ignore and dismiss. Place a cloth down under the leak if you need to.

• Disruption Part 2: It’s a rather nice Saturday here in Cleveland. The weather is warm but mild with a light breeze. The sky is clear. It’s the kind of day where you want to go out and do something.  It’s the kind of day where the ever-present voice of our moms encourages you to turn off the TV, go outside and play. The pull to do so is incredibly strong.

That desire for peace is one I know all too well. I spent last year in the darkest bout of depression I have ever faced and even today, eight months later, I’m still not sure what exactly sparked it. I do know that I long for these days where I can not only just manage it, but thrive above it. To forget, if for only a moment, that it’s something I deal with. Days like this is what I live for. Love may be out there for me, certainly friendship and growth and opportunity. Days like this are what I want to protect. I have no desire to fight. I don’t want to protest. I don’t want to confront. I only want to rest and be free.

I don’t blame your apathy or your fear or your apprehension. The difference between people like you and people like me is that I, we,  don’t have a real choice. We have at best the false hope people like Omarosa, David Clarke Jr and pre-double homicide OJ Simpson wrap themselves in. But that can only keep you safe if you move in very specific circles for the rest of your life. I don’t want that and couldn’t afford it emotionally even if I could. Also, it’s not real. I’m sure my biological father would have loved to prove that to them on a back road in Tennessee as well.

I don’t blame your apathy or your fear or your apprehension because it is mine to wrestle with as well. Others will though and I don’t fault them for it. I’m also not going to end this bit with a call to action. I no longer believe it’s that simple, that somehow if I just write the correct words, the best words, in just the right order it will unlock some emphatic room that was once buried down deep. I write to communicate for myself and to comfort those that need it. 

There are bills to pay and personal crises to solve and grocery shopping to do and repairs to the roof or the car or to those favorite pair of pants. The dog needs walking and the kids need back to school supplies and you should call your mom and reply back to all those emails and figure out what to do for dinner and this is true of literally all of us. That’s the key. All these things are true for all of us and, on top of that, for us there is also a sizable part of the population that actively wants us dead. That sees a modicum of success after centuries of abuse, violence, broken promises and systemic oppression as an encroachment on their existence. That is the reality. That's the truth of it, heavy and ever-present.

• Next verse, same as the first: When I started writing this CNN et al were just mentioning what is happening in Charlottesville. Now they are reporting live from there, streaming on Facebook and asking the same few questions to their mirrors ad nausem. It's officially a thing now. It only took one dead counter-protester and several more injured. It didn't take tear gas or tanks or the national guard, like it did with with various Black Lives Matter protests. I live in the crux of that disparity, day in, day out. 
  
  I'm tired, but I am in no way surprised.

--------

* If that statement throws you into a tizzy, I'll do you this favor. As a straight cis woman, I have never not been homophobic or transphobic, all of us have been misogynist or internalized misogyny blah blah blah puts the track on repeat. Google “implicit bias” or more directly “why are we all racist” if you don't get it yet.

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A hat tip to all that can say it better than me

Superman Should Be Written By A Black Woman

Originally posted 11/28/16

Originally posted by michaeledingess

I’ve never had much love for Superman. Superman, as a story, is audience wish fulfillment. An infallible superhuman moralist just flies right up and punches his problems in the face. He’s the goodness personified for no real reason outside of the fact that it serves the story best that way. That if he weren’t, the story shifts to one of a terrorizing omnipotent being. There’s nothing wrong with a fairy tale that you don’t want to dissect too much, but he is fantasy.

And yet, I’ve written more stories about Superman than I ever have about his darker, more realistic (if still very improbable) counterpart Batman. In fact, I have never written a story about Batman, despite my deep desire to explore his pathos. I have, however, written poems, essays, extended metaphors, short stories and even once outlined a one shot about Superman. Clearly there’s something about this fantasy that calls to me but It wasn’t until this morning that I figured out what it was. I found myself thinking about an extended metaphor I wrote after watching Man of Steel, that the next director of the Superman films should be an immigrant. What I meant was that there needs to be a conscious effort to reach back to the roots of the Superman tale, a tale crafted by two Jewish immigrants in a developing city in the early 20th century. Two men who understood what it means to be an alien in a foreign land. And it was in remembering this review that the future of Superman seemed clear to me: today, he needs to be written by a black woman.

Originally posted by thingstolovefor

Black women fluctuate in the popular cutulre between sainthood and vilification. We are queens, the mothers of the earth, forever independent, spiritual warriors of the community and strong. Oh so very strong.

Or…

Or we are ratchet, impossibly angry, loud, irrational, welfare queens and the downfall of the black family unit in America. We aren’t ever human because humanity is the space in between the extremes.  Humanity is all those things listed and also fun and weirdness and depression and fear and anxiety and confusion and joy and wrong and right and

And, and, and…

Originally posted by ovoboyz

Superman knows how that works. Some days he’s the demigod that was faster than a locomotive and some days he’s the adversarial scapegoat that thinks he’s better than us mere mortals. Savior and destroyer. And whatever he is, he’s always the outsider.

Black men still get the privilege of being men, white women of being white. In a culture that values those two things the most, there’s always a safe public space for them. Other races don’t get included in our public discourse often enough for me to feel comfortable to extend this metaphor to them, so for now I’ll speak to what I know. 

And what I know is that if it were somehow possible, I jump at the chance to play Clark Kent. While I would never want to abandon what makes me who I am, I certainly fantasize about what it would be like to put on a pair of glasses and instantly blend in. To be assumed unassuming. To be overlooked. To turn it off.

Originally posted by clarks-kentt

White guys of course know best what it’s like to be a white guy in America. Stories like Fight Club and American Beauty have to be told from a white male perspective because to change one of those elements would be to change the meaning of the story itself. I’m sure that can hold true for a Superman comic as well. But to get to the heart of Superman, you have to get to the heart of being a perpetual outsider.  Clark Kent is an act that Kal El performs, he just happens to in the right costume to do so already. 

Originally posted by murphyhatesme

Additionally, there’s a duality of this life that’s hard to capture unless you know it authentically. As great as the burden is, there’s a part of you that wants to be the unobtainable too. It’s an enticing idea, to believe that you suffer society’s judgement for some great purpose. Who doesn’t want to save every kidnapped hostage or be the queen mother to humanity? So Superman flies to as many disasters as he can and black women share memes about self-sufficiency with a “Black Girl Magic” hashtag and a 💯 emoji. The difference is of course that the fictional Superman just needs sunlight and to avoid kryptonite, while black women can only pretend to be invulnerable and can only dream of a true Fortress of Solitude. 

White guys don’t usually think about their white male identity unless they are required to but I can’t imagine that Superman is able to not think of his identity and how it stacks up to the rest of the public. I simply want the next fresh take on the man of steel to be from someone who knows that plane of existence on an intimate level. 

Originally posted by b-h-s

Regarding Intent and Behavior

Originally Posted 8/14/16

I had a biracial Lyft driver one time state that he didn’t think Donald Trump was racist, just that he was stupid. I gently pointed out that those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. There was a tone of slow realization in his voice as we continued talking, as if he had never considered that possibility before.

I point out that he was biracial because his white father is going to vote for Trump while my driver supported Sanders. Neither one sounded particularly politically motivated or aware, just went on gut feelings. I think the son, my driver, was looking for a way to reconcile his father’s past actions -being married to a black woman and/or latina at one point- with his present decision to support Trump.

This exchange happened during the RNC and it’s stuck with me. A lot of people excuse racist, sexist, homophobic and other prejudicial behavior under the guise of the action just being “stupid”. Intent is paramount if you want to label it racist (et al) and behavior, for whatever reason, is exempt.

That’s not how it works though. For whatever reason, we’ve reserved these terms for those with overt intent. The monsters. Those that live these views to the extreme. Those with white sheets and protest signs and violent hearts. Never for us though. We are kind. We didn’t mean it like that. We aren’t like those people. We’re just saying…

The fear of being called one of these terms always trumps the will to correct the behavior.

And this idea, this unwillingness to face the issue as it stands and rather just sugarcoat it so it’ll pass, seeps into other aspects of life. He’s not abusive, she’s not an addict, they aren’t a molester - all because these traits can be balanced against their better behavior. But as anyone on the receiving end of these more universal actions can tell you, that’s just not true.

Good and bad coexist and we have to allow for that complexity in our existence. In the same way that diseases aren’t properly treated until they are named, we can’t ignore the power of that bad name for the sake of our egos. That musician* can make music you love and be a child molester. Jeffree Star can be an androgynous icon in the LGBT community that makes good makeup and is a racist. Cosby can be an important influence for the perception of black community in our culture and a rapist. I can write this essay and have said transphobic things in the past. You only shed these unwanted titles (if they can be shed at all) with years of work, a truly apologetic nature and changed behavior, not because you simply don’t want the burden of it.

This attempt to “other” our worse behavior does nothing to solve it.

[*I was going to point out one musician but then immediately thought of five more, so fill in your own]

Loyal to a Fault - The Killing Joke (2016) Review

Originally posted 7/28/16

Usually writing movie reviews are easy for me. I can come up with concise statement to launch an essay from by the halfway mark of the film. But other times…other times I’m fully aware that I have a lot of feelings to process but I have absolutely no idea where to start. So excuse me as I work my way through my issues with DC animated film, The Killing Joke (2016).

Originally posted by laesquinalatina

Originally posted by laesquinalatina

The first and most glaring issue The Killing Joke has is structure. It’s clear that in an attempt to curtail the criticism the original graphic novel received for being a prime example of a “Woman in a Refrigerator” (female comic book characters who have been injured, killed, or depowered as a plot device )  Barbara Gordon was given an expanded backstory and agency in the first half of the film. I’ll address the story itself in a bit, but the tonal shift between this straight forward plot about Batgirl realizing she might not cut out for the job and the complex themes of The Killing Joke is jarring to say the least. Alan Moore likes to pontificate in his stories and that wordy, existential style doesn’t exist in the first half. 

Conversely, Alan Moore’s literally style doesn’t seem to work well in the cinematic world.  For every V for Vendetta, there are, well, literally every other film adaptation inspired by Moore’s work (which yes, includes Watchmen. Fight me). There’s a Justice League Unlimited episode called For the Man Who Has Everything that Moore willingly approved, which is about as close to praise as you will get from him.  In V for Vendetta and Justice League Unlimited, the source material was a spring board for the production team. Both the film and tv show strayed away from a literal transcription of the story to instead explored the themes expressed through the use of visuals. Show, don’t tell - the cardinal rule of film.  The Killing Joke does a great job recreating the visuals presented in the graphic novel but it clearly fears to step outside those bounds and that self-imposed restriction chokes what the film could have been.  

And this film certainly needed to breathe. With such a minimal plot, the focus should have been on creating atmosphere and stronger sense of dread. Comics allow for time to take in the details in each panel, film can only mimic that effect by spending time to drive home the terror. At 76 minutes, the film ends up rushing through the most pivotal moments, like the Joker admitting he is very loose with his view of his past.

Originally posted by theverge

Originally posted by theverge

Which leads into the second issue (and full credit goes to my brother for articulating this for me when we talked yesterday) The Killing Joke isn’t about Barbara becoming Oracle or the simple plot of the Joker’s assault and kidnapping. It’s about the relationship between the Batman and the Joker and whether or not their ultimate fate -death- is unavoidable.  It’s a story about extremes and parallels. The Joker’s hypothesis that one bad day is what keeps everyone from going mad like himself and Batman. The audience already knows all about Batman’s one bad day and how he reacted to it. In The Killing Joke we are presented with flashbacks of the Joker’s one bad day as well (maybe).  A down and out family man just trying to provide ends up loosing it all due to circumstances outside his control. And in the present Gordon is caught in the middle of this debate, he’s the case study the Joker plans on proving his point with. Barbara Gordon is just an afterthought in all of this. Making the first story all about her feels disjointed because it is, she’s not the focus of the original story. Batman and the Joker are. If the production team really wanted to make the addition work, it should have told from Batman’s perspective and the one bad day theme should have been expanded on. (Maybe that’s what they tried to do with the whole “looking into the abyss” line but since it’s not the same metaphor it really doesn’t connect. Also that line worked better when Batman said he didn’t blink in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths ).  Instead the story is about a naive girl that’s in a bad relationship working a job she’s not quite ready for who then gets shot and isn’t seen again until the very end. Shifting the narrative to Batman creates a parallel where he sees that Barbara can’t follow in his footsteps because she’s never had that one bad day and the Joker sees Jim doesn’t follow in the his footsteps despite having one horrible day. Batman becomes the architect and observer of Barbara’s journey as the Joker is for Jim’s.

Finally, and actual spoiler alert here, I have to mention the sex scene. It’s been covered to death in other think pieces so I’ll keep it brief and within the world of other DC animated works. The idea of a Batgirl/Batman pairing has already been referenced twice in the DCAU, (and it’s particularly hilarious here: https://youtu.be/l51dZBSs12w) so this isn’t exactly new territory. But the difference between those subtle references and the added scene in The Killing Joke is that here they aren’t equals. Batman says that point blank. Their relationship is very much teacher and student, and while that might be a welcomed fan service for some, it’s certainly a skeevy thing for Batman to do for most fans. On top of that, despite her being old enough to consent, the entire plot is based on her being naive and easily manipulated, which just makes Batman look that much worse. It’s an already questionable pairing to begin with and these factors don’t help it at all. 

Originally posted by tchillax

Originally posted by tchillax

Now, with all of that said, I didn’t hate the film. It’s not great but it’s not horrible either. It just kind of exists. The second half was really just a motion comic, it was almost too loyal. So maybe I didn’t hate it because I didn’t hate the book. Or maybe my love for the DC animated team is clouding my judgement. But the characters were strong, the animation was gorgeous and the voice acting was pitch perfect. On those standards, it lives up to every other DC animated production. I am glad it got to be in theaters and I hope that trend continues. It’s just that when it comes to the story what the film has going for it is that Alan Moore’s words are strong and his themes are interesting. Everything that works in the film worked in the original story, nothing the film did enhanced or explored that. The fact that (spoiler?) Batman and the Joker just stop fighting and end their climactic battle with a joke is effective and memorable but is only a spoiler if you’ve never read the book. What was added didn’t fit because it didn’t fit the original story.  

It was a fine, if perhaps thoroughly unnecessary, experience

The Grecian Tragedy That Is Robin Thicke by me

Originally published on Facebook for no real reason September 22nd 2014

Robin Thicke had been in the music business long before the summer of 2013. His father Alan gave Robin both the privilege of his last name and the open doors to several of his musical friends. By the time he was 17, Robin had co-wrote several pop and R&B hits throughout the 90’s for artists like Brandy, Christina Aguilera and Brain McKnight. His very first single “When I Get You Alone” came out in 2002 to moderate but respectable radio success. However his father openly questioned whether he should go down this path, even doubted his chances for success. Perhaps having been a moderate success himself, Alan knew the rough road ahead of him. But Robin’s heart was set on becoming a musical star.

If you’ve seen his debut video, you already know the drastic cosmetic changes Robin underwent in 2006 in order to appeal to a wider fan base, which did work, but to only a modest level. The R&B charts knew him well but the Pop world still wanted their blue eyed soul to come from Justin Timberlake. And despite the acclaim he had, the praise he wanted existed firmly in the Pop world. The R&B market is just too small a market for his dreams, despite their loyalty to him.

However his biggest hits on either Billboard chart were directly related to Pharrel Williams involvement, a man who floated between mainstream and underground popularity with ease and without care. Some musical analysts questioned openly if Robin’s fans were enjoying the singer or just the beat, and many were left without a firm answer.

Originally posted by simchiller

Originally posted by simchiller

And so this man, unable to define for himself where is his success lies and watching his younger years dwindle away, took full creative credit for the 2013 song of the summer. A year later he then admitted under oath having very little to do with the creation of the runaway hit.

Hopefully with this admission (one forced due to the circumstances) the guilt of his pride has stopped eating away at him. Hopefully he no longer has to quiet his nagging morality with powerful sedatives and a constantly inebriated state. It certainly kept him from thinking critically about the content of his lyrics. It also kept him from properly assessing how best how best to win over his lost love and instead gave him courage (however foolish) to publish his heartache for world to see. But these victories are ultimately hollow ones.

What can you tell a man who is sure he already knows it all? How can you advice a man who is pleased with his man-made throne? How can you warn a man that not only won’t listen, but can’t due to the medicine he’s prescribed to himself?

Nothing.

You just have to watch him fall.

He traded his credibility for a grasp at that star that had alluded him for so long. Yet every vodka-filled water bottle was a reminder that he wasn’t ready for the warmth from that light. Alone, shamed, and defeated, Robin Thicke is Icarus floating lifeless in the dark ocean, blanketed by the feathers of his hubris.

Originally posted by abrupt-ribs

Originally posted by abrupt-ribs

He will surely be afforded redemption at some point, men like him always are. But he’ll have to first remove the wax from his shoulders and learn to no longer look to the sun as his only star.

The Land of the Falling Ego

Originally published in The Vindicator, Spring 2013

The chalkboard in my host class.  Each host class made a chalkboard for their exchange student but mine was clearly the most adorable.

Kind of a Big Deal

I went to Japan for month during the summer of 2003. Shaker Heights High School had a bi-annual exchange program with sister school Takatori High. All a student had to do was host a Japanese student for three weeks and complete a weekly college-level class about the history of the country. A couple of tests, a five page paper and a complete stranger sleeping in your room for almost a month.  Not really a big deal.  But in 2003 SHHS received ten scholarships for the program and suddenly this meant more students could go.  And by “more students” I mean “my broke self”. So in order to keep it competitive, not only was the class and all its work still required, students now had to do a ten page paper, an essay on why they deserved to go, attend extra Saturday classes and work with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s latest Asian exhibit. There was a time after the summer of 2003 that if you went on the audio tour and visited the Buddhist tabernacle exhibit, you would have heard my voice describing the artifact you were looking at. I didn’t know what I was talking about exactly but I sounded very professional talking about it, so that’s cool.

Finally sixteen students were chosen to go.  We were kind of a big deal, even if only in our mind. We had worked really hard to go and in some cases (like mine) our families sacrificed a lot for us. We were better than the kids who were only going out of state that summer and we were certainly a step above the weird anime nerds that could only dream about visiting Japan someday. We were learned and tested. We were all feeling pretty proud of ourselves and of our clear intellect. Or at least I was.

Now is as good of a time as any to mention that nowhere in the previous paragraphs did I mention learning the language. That’s because we didn’t. By the time I left for the land of the rising sun I could tell you all about Tokugawa Ieyasu, why Japan entered World War II, and intricate differences between Buddhism and Shintoism, but I couldn’t ask someone where the bathroom was in Japanese. However for some reason that didn’t seem like a big deal to me.  It wasn’t until I was actually on the plane leaving Cleveland that a small voice in my head said rudely, “You know Jasmine, they have to dub Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon for a reason”.  I told her to look out at the clouds and shut up.  I was taking in my very first plane ride and I wasn’t going to let her ruin it with her “logic”.

Lack of Communication

We took the bullet train from the airport to Nara, the suburban city of our sister school.  It was when I met my host mother, warm and smiling wide, that the small voice came back and reminded me that “Konichiwa” was the extent of my Japanese greetings.

So I smiled wide and said “Konichiwa”. Ayaka, my host and now the only person in this country I knew well, introduced me to her family. I repeated their names out loud in order to commit them to memory. Japanese mom smiled politely at my thick American accent.

That small voice in my head started laughing at me and my arrogance.

Me, my hostess Ayaka, her sister Rea and their nephew.  There a lot of pictures of me not knowing what else to do with my hands outside of making a peace sign

That happened a lot.  I didn’t know the language and my lack of preparation was eating away at me.  That small voice went from a voice of feign concern to a mocking bitch that hated me for my arrogant oversight. I know that seems extreme to say but you have to remember I had never been outside the country.  I was used to being a minority, sure, but no matter what code switching I had to do, I could still ask for a cheeseburger and fries at McDonald’s without having to point at a picture like a three year old. Being the articulate person that older white people love to tell me I am, this was the apex of frustration.

I simply could not communicate.

To top it off, I had been taught that Japanese people smile or politely laugh to ease tension sometimes. The situation may not actually be funny but it’s more polite than to raise an eyebrow and roll your eyes. However my paranoid self, with the self-deprecating voice always cackling in the background, was convinced that they were all laughing at me. (Cue Carrie’s mother). So four days into this month long trip, I did the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done in front of strangers: I cried.

I’m not the kind of girl that likes a good cry.  Even as I type those words I have absolutely no idea what that means. So the more I cried, the more embarrassed I got.  The more embarrassed, the more frustrated.  The more frustrated, the more tears. A cycle was born.

It had started all harmlessly enough. There was a mix up as to when my family was supposed to be picking me up from a class trip. I was hungry, tired and thus a little on edge. My only close friend Anne had already gone home and the only people I was left with were the rich girls that were trying to comfort me. I realize now that all the rich girl options they were giving me didn’t help my stress.

“Can you take a taxi home?”

“No, I don’t have enough to do that”

“Well, do you have a cell phone? Maybe you can call them”

“Um…you guys have cell phones?” It was 2003.

By the time my Japanese family came, every American around was oh-so-very worried about me, which is a thoroughly uncomfortable feeling. My family, sans the translator Ayaka (she had a night class) tried to explain what happened, but I had retreated into my head by the third sentence of broken English. Didn’t they know I was lost here without them? 

A helpless feeling washed over me when I realized that I wasn’t just being dramatic.  I was actually lost without them.  I was in a country where I couldn’t read the signs, couldn’t make a phone call to someone I knew, couldn’t ask a stranger for directions. I had no control over the situation. You should know that since I was thirteen I knew I wanted to be a film director; I really like control.

So by the time we got home, I had lost all my cool.

At some point as my Japanese Mom was trying both to comfort and avoid the crying black girl, I said “I’m not even that sad; I’m just really frustrated that I can’t stop crying.”  She just stared at me.  I started to repeat the sentence and then stopped, remembering what started this in the first place.

Then I started laughing.

Loudly.  

Uncontrollably.

It scared the hell out of my Japanese mom.

I had a moment of clarity. I figured out how freeing it was not being able to talk.  If we all knew the same language, we never would have heard each other. I would have kept explaining (yelling) my point and she would have gotten defensive.  We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. But because I couldn’t be understood, I had to look into her eyes. I could tell she really wanted to help. She wanted my stay to be enjoyable. She wanted to be welcoming and was sadden she had already failed so early.

All I remember next was trying to figure out how to say I was sorry. “Gomen nasai” I said over and over again, pointing at the already worn-down single sheet of paper with “Helpful Japanese Phrases”.  Japanese Mom nodded, indicating it was all good. And it was (even though I said sorry another six more times after that incident). Any misunderstandings after that were met with patient glances and slow miming.

That stupid small voice finally shut up.

The Rest of the Trip

The rest of the trip was both memorable and understated.  I was too much of a goody two shoes to do anything remotely daring, like explore Tokyo’s nightlife scene.  At one point I performed the Cha-Cha Slide in front of an auditorium of Japanese students, but that’s the kind of thing you just have to see (or at least watch me tell in person so you can fully understand every painfully hilarious moment). I also threw one of those small white poppers during a tour in the middle of a tunnel which, let me tell you, is not the smartest thing to do in a very recent post-9/11 world. The resulting echo sounded like a small explosion and got me very stern stare down from my trying-too-hard-to-be-cool American chaperon.  But it also got me a million points in the made up game I was playing with the guys in the group (making me the coolest my nerdy- self had ever been to any guy at that point in my life) so I consider that a wash.

And then there was time my breakfast that stared back at me.  But that’s your typical “sheltered black girl vs. foreign food” story, so why rehash that? I mean, I might have even actually rolled my eyes and said “Na uh!” at the very thought at eating a whole fish with eyes still intact.

So instead I will leave you with this heartwarming coda.  My Japanese family turned out to be rather cool people.  The younger sister Rae and I bounded over anime and music.  Ayaka, my host, was a wonderful tour guide and taught me some words along the way.  Dad worked six days a week about twelve hours a day, so I only saw him three times.  But on the last day together he gave me the “black nod” (which clearly needs to be renamed), so we had an understanding. And mom took me to the library. Somehow she just knew that would be my home away from home.  Yes, before you ask, they had an English section and so I spent my downtime reading The Green Mile (rather than just looking at a TV I didn’t understand).

On the last day the entire family took me back to the train station.  Akaya and Dad made a joke at Mom’s expense and I asked Ayaka what just happened.  She translated, “Well Mom had been going to that library a month before you arrived to learn about America.  But she obviously didn’t pick up much on the language” and she laughed again in that loving way only family can do. Mom laughed that same embarrassed laugh she did when she first heard my thick American accent. It was a nice final family moment.

Then it clicked.

She wasn’t just being polite when she smiled as I mispronounced Japanese words.  She was trying the best way she knew how to make this whole thing less painful for me, as she wanted her teasing family to do for her.  And she wasn’t just doing out of some sort of cultural based politeness; she actually was empathizing. A woman I couldn’t say more the twenty words to actually cared about me.

I hugged her extra hard when I said “Sayonara”.

My host mother the day I arrived.  Please note the t-shirt.

Review : Wonder Woman, What the DCEU Needs

Originally posted 6/5/17

I’m going to say a lot of negative things before I say anything positive so let me give you the TLDR up front: It’s good. It’s worth the movie price in 2D. It proves that female directors have been grossly overlooked for literally no reason at all but sexism. It’s fun and it delivers. 

But the hype is too high.

I need to be up front about my bias against this film - I was sure it was going to suck. Positive of it. The trailer revealed little about the plot. There were a lot of slow motion actions shots and lines that sound like they were written only for the trailer. And most importantly, I hate the current direction the DCEU is going in. I hate Zack Snyder’s style: his color palette is flat and bland, his stories drip with sheltered white boy college freshman ideals - uninformed, untested, and underdeveloped, the CGI is not over the top enough to be interesting and yet isn’t grounded enough to feel immersive. My brother said it best once, he would be a great photographer for cheap hotel chains. He can make an image that is fine enough to look at but doesn’t know how to bring meaning or purpose to said image. 

And this is* the guy in charge of creative at the DCEU, a property that would already be overextended and unfocused without his hand in the mix.

It’s also no secret that I am a DC fan girl to the core. I fundamentally prefer the themes of the god-like superheroes in DC than the more grounded superheroes in Marvel. The issue is that tackling those kinds of stories are harder to do. You need more time to flesh out the reliability of the daughter of Zeus than you do a teenage boy who was bit by a spider. Wonder Woman has always been an unfortunately undeserved character in this way because executives don’t want to take the risk developing a female character when they can bank on the fact that everyone will see a male character in action.

So a lot had to come together to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen. I had no faith the DCEU was going to pull it off.

And maybe director Patty Jenkins didn’t either. In looking up her past films for this review I was surprised when I saw she wrote and directed Monster (2003 film). Wonder Woman is decidedly safer than Monster in every way. That’s not a bad thing, in fact that is probably the only way to serve all masters (DC fans, DCEU fans, the general public, and the producers) in this case. But the film doesn’t dare or reinvent the genre in anyway - which is why I warn that the hype is overblown. 

What critics are rightly excited about is that the film tells an entertaining story in a perfectly coherent way. There won’t be an extended, director’s, or ultimate cut of this film ever. You will see the entire story the first time. All the actors look like they are having fun doing their job. Gal Gadot expresses strength, fun and unapologetic femininity throughout. Chris Pine** brings spirited dimension and depth to the usually uninspired Lois Lane doppelganger. The actors even have actual chemistry, something else that has been sorely lacking in the rest of the DCEU. 
 

The action sequences, while they rely too heavily on the Zack Snyder Slo-Mo Video Game Style™, are actually shot in a way that the eye can follow. It’s not a bunch of unnecessary cuts to trick your mind into thinking you saw something cool. Gadot clearly did a number of her own stunts and that effort pays off in viewer enjoyment. 

The themes are accessible, fleshed out and not made needlessly complicated. The dialog is inoffensive, nothing to write home about but also not “Martha!”. There are even real jokes in there, jokes that are far better than “We are the bad guys, ok?”. 

Jenkins delivered a fine, simple summer blockbuster. Because that film starred and was helmed by women, that sadly is a feat for Hollywood in and of itself.  And because that basic task was finally completed within the DCEU - a task Fox Marveland Disney Marvel has done several times over - Jenkins is the saving grace of the franchise. Don’t let the hype lead you into believing Wonder Woman will reinvent the wheel. It is the wheel: standard issue, tried and true, available at a fair price at a store near you. But that’s all we need sometimes. 

It certainly all the DCEU needs right now.

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Footnotes:
*If ever the phrase “…but not like this” ever applied in my life, it would be for the reason why Snyder had to stepped down

** excuse me but 

👀 Chris Pine and those thickass eyebrows tho…
A brave new world of To-be-looked-at-ness indeed (start at page 62 for the reference).

Ok that’s it, I’m done. 

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Breakdown: The Black Panther Trailer

Originally Posted 6/10/17

The challenge of any writer is to capture the depth of what people are feeling and express that for others to understand. At our best we are a pathway for empathy.   

I don’t know that I’ll be able to do that for you as I breakdown the Black Panther trailer and why it was so fucking lit, but I am certainly going to try.

The trailer opens with two white men talking about Wakanda and if that’s not a blatant metaphor for American media consumption, I don’t know what is. In the conversation, Ulysses Klaw (Andy Serkis) -tied up, disheveled and missing an arm -explains to Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) that his perception of Wakanda is way off and he highly underestimates the mysterious and very advanced civilization. The conversation sets up the backstory as this sort of scene does in any traditional blockbuster, but it also subtly sets up mainstream audience expectations. Whatever you may know about Black Panther, heard about the film before, or just simply assumed you knew based on the title needs to be thrown out the window because you weren’t thinking big enough. 

From that moment on the rest of the trailer isn’t about them, which is something that needs to be thought about for a minute. Even if the white male characters are supposed to serve as an “in” for white audiences, they aren’t going to be there long to hold their hands. The cast is huge and there are enough antagonists planned that a white outsider isn’t needed to further the story, a revolutionary idea for a Hollywood film this big [see Avatar, Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai et al].

Our heroes T’Challa and Okoye (Chadwick Boseman and Danai Gurira) watch these white men for some reason. They are in the position of power, able to observe, judge and render whatever verdict they deem appropriate. Also they are black as hell. Dark. He’s bearded with nappy hair, a style you don’t see in black male leads** often. She’s bald and focused, the fierce black woman if there ever was one, but she is still feminine in her jewelry and makeup, not worn for an overt and standard issue attempt at sexual appeal but seemingly for her own sense of beauty. This is their story and it’s not designed for the white gaze.

The trailer is still a superhero trailer, full of action shots to show off the country side, characters, (afrofuturistic) technology and fight scenes. There is the typical voice over that gives us our thematic conflict - a king that may have to do unsavory things to protect his land. But again, just like with Wonder Woman, the fact that these images exist with black characters in an authentically African backdrop is the revolutionary part. On top of that, the American-made films that are set in Africa, whether they are authentic or not, are never fun or fantastic movies. Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc all take place in a European*** setting. All are complex stories that depict a conflict with high stakes but aren’t depressing, joyless tales that are too realistic to be enjoyed like Hollywood films set in Africa tend to be. Again, it’s a subtle move but a meaningful one.

Blockbuster films like this are about escapism but even escapism needs to be rooted in some truth in order to resonate. Every image in this trailer has meaning. Women fighting expertly on the front lines in practical armor****. A clearly important man sitting on a throne in a teal suit that matches his lip plate. Various twist outs, fros, locs, fades, braids and shiny bald heads on every character. The truth of these seemingly small details are what engross us. 

This breakdown could obviously be summed up with the word “representation”, but representation for just the sake of it can fall flat. The excitement black people have taken to social media to share is based in the fact that this kind of representation already delivers in meaning. 

And to drive that point home, it’s coming out February 16, 2018, right in the middle of Black History Month.

FOOTNOTES

*If you will let me get too into the weeds for a moment: the cool colors of the integration room give way to the warmer colors in the room T’Challa and Okoye are in and the rest of trailer stays warmer as we stay in Wakanda. Additionally, theorange and teal  found in most Marvel movies seems to fade away in Wakanda, or at least aren’t as apparent as it is in films like Age of Ultron. This is just a trailer breakdown and not a film theory essay, so I’ll leave it there. 

But still, peep that shit because it definitely was intentional.

**Note that the men listed tend to have low cut hair with the curls picked out, if they have any hair length at all. Same with the beards, if it’s there at all they are very short. Nan one nap to be found. And if don’t get why I point this out, start here and remember Google is a great friend.

*** “A European” Ugh, English is gross and annoying. 

****No shade to Wonder Woman and the Amazons, but there are major arteries in your thighs. They could all use some more armor. 

Originally posted by lunadiego

Bonus: Chris Pine and his eyebrows in the last piece I wrote. Evil Michael B Jordan in this one. I’m on a roll

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With Disillusion Deep in My Eyes

Originally Written in 2013

They say into your early life romance came
And in this heart of yours burned a flame
A flame that flickered one day and died away

I have this image of who I want to be that plays in my head.  She is a sophisticated lady that looks like a cross between Gabrielle Union and Queen Latifah and owns in a good number of Olivia Pope’s outfits.  She exudes a cool confidence, owns a loft in the heart of downtown and can drink shots of 151 while still being classy. She’s driven, smart, and professional. Warm and loving but never suffers fools gladly.  When I am feeling at my lowest, it’s usually because I fear that I am straying too far from the track she must be on.

In the fall of 2008 I started my junior year of college.  Because of how close this meant that I was to reaching my professional goals, it was also when I began to imagine Sophisticated Lady in hyper detail.

At the risk of getting too personal with you all, let’s just say I’m a generally speaking a “special occasion” kind of shaver.  Which is to say I wear pants a lot. But I just knew that Sophisticated Lady was not like me.  She was perfect at all times.  And unlike dieting and exercising, practices that would wax and wane with my motivation, Nair Hair Removal lets you get rid of hair without much effort.  So my Nair obsession started.  If I wasn’t going to be skinnier or healthier, I was certainly going to be smoother.

I could also be smarter, academically speaking. I didn’t fail unless I wanted to. Sophisticated Lady and I had that much in common. I took it to heart when my mom told me as a kid that I could do anything if I put my mind to it.  It became instinctual for me.  I would come across some obstacle in life, weigh my options and decide whether my effort was worth the reward.  When it was, I never failed.

I don’t want to delude you, dear reader, into thinking I was some sort of straight-A student.  I wasn’t.  But I did some relatively impressive things at my time in the Shaker Heights School system (like earn a scholarship to visit Japan for a month and win second place in both the Science Olympiad and a regional math competition).  And I don’t want to come across unaware of how much of blessing this belief in my mental skills is. I get that this isn’t something that people just have naturally. All the more reason to use this gift every chance I got.

So when I heard in 2008 that do something called Cross Registration, which is where one can take a class for free at another university if they were full time at Cleveland State, my financially strapped self seized the opportunity.

Then, with disillusion deep in your eyes
You learned that fools in love soon grow wise
The years have changed you, somehow
I see you now

A little background first: in sixth grade I fell in love with the country of Japan. Yes, admittedly this was in large part due to the massive amount of anime premiering on Cartoon Network. But it was also the first time I remember thinking “But what was the rest of the world doing?” when we had to study European and American history yet again in class. From then on, I followed a path of total immersion into Japanese culture which I had thought had to stop when I learned CSU didn’t offer Japanese 201.  Learning about Cross Registration not only gave me the chance to take said class but I could take it for free.

The only issue?  It was at Case Western Reserve University.

It wasn’t the prestige of the school but rather the students that I attributed this newly formed knot in my stomach to. Sophisticated Lady would have been just fine around them but I wasn’t her yet. I was a poor, insecure nerdy black girl before Aisha Tyler and Donald Glover were popular.  Case Western is made primarily of well-off white nerdy guys (or at least that was my perception at the time).  I had classes with these same guys in elementary school when I was at Orange  (before I moved to Shaker Heights) and while one would think that nerdiness could cross all barriers, the other adjectives I used kept me from feeling included. I was always on the outside around them. The black speck of pepper in a sea of salt.  The only one missing a Y chromosome*. The kid from across the tracks. Pick your metaphor but interactions with these eventual Case Western students were all inherently awkward for young Jasmine.  

Awkwardness leads to nervousness.

Nervousness into fear.

Fear into intimidation.

But not this time, I thought.  Ass was going to be kicked; names were going to be taken.  Nothing as small as intimidation was going to stop me from learning a second.  I mean, Sophisticated Lady knew at least four languages.

So I walked in to Case a year and two chapters behind the rest of the class because apparently the Case professor, unlike my CSU professor, managed to finish teaching “Genki 1”. I don’t remember how the first class at Case went but I do remember the professor approaching me with motherly concern afterward as she asked if I was going to able to handle this class.  Every part of me except my mouth said no.  I was way too far behind and I still had to handle my full course load at CSU.  But if I put my mind to it I could do it.  That model had never failed me; just like how Sophisticated Lady never failed at anything she touched.

So I worked hard.  I watched all the movies I had in Japanese with no subtitles. I got tutored by the professor on Fridays.  I forwent anything I ever had that looked like a social life.  

I was Japan.

You know, when I wasn’t editing films on the professional editing software Avid Xpress Pro, learning film theory, tutoring a Saudi Arabian woman, taking pictures for the Vindicator, working part-time, working out, running a student organization or doing time consuming things like breathing and eating. I had given up on sleeping for the most part.

Looking at what I just typed I should have known that was a lot on my plate.  I also should have known that it was not just the melanin deficient rich male students, but really the thought of taking this all on that tied that knot in my stomach. But I knew if I just worked hard enough I could still do it all.  Still be all for everyone. 

Sophisticated Lady is.

I am guessing that by this point you can tell that this plan didn’t work.

I failed the class.  I did all the work and extra credit I could but my papers always came back dripping with red ink. Near the end of the semester the professor showed me some sympathy and I got a delay on taking the final. I can only assume she did this because my eyes sat in shallow graves, my hands were covered in a stress induced rash, and I forgot what sleeping was like.  Because of this delay, I was able to finish my CSU finals with high enough scores to stay in good standing.

But I never went back to Case to finish my last final.

I couldn’t.  I remember looking at my Genki 2 book as I was preparing to walk out the door and head to Case.  I remember thinking I could study a little more on the bus before I had to take the final. I remember trying to conjure up every little Kanji I had studied in the past four months. And then I remember something in me just breaking.

I could no longer see the Sophisticated Lady.

I failed. I put in all kinds of work, I had done everything right and I still failed.

I started this essay the day I walked away from Case and I finish today almost five years later.  During that time, I’ve headed down a slightly different path.  I always was going to make movies and television shows, but the six grade nerd in me now knows it won’t be in Japan.  At least not without a translator.

This was an incredibly hard pill to swallow and even after all this time, it’s still stuck in my throat.  My shear will, my drive, my dedicated focus that is so much a part of my being that it oozes from my pores and speaks before I do, wasn’t enough.  It was met with something greater.  And today I can only guess that this helpless feeling is what one is left with after God closes a door on you, though I still couldn’t begin to tell you why He would close said door.

Here’s what I can tell you: in my attempt to not be myself and instead be this amalgamation of a perfect woman I had created, I suffered from tension headaches, I grinned my teeth and I started having my first bout of thoroughly frightening anxiety dreams .

I also left some Nair on my legs too long one morning during that semester and permanently scarred my legs.

Large pale blotches run down the front of my leg now. They have only just now begun to fade after five years. I am sure they will never go back to the correct shade of brown.  The self-hatred I felt back then has manifested in a way that forces me to remember to love myself fully today.  I have to remember that this version of Jasmine, the one that isn’t always health conscious, doesn’t own a loft and has several discolored patches on her occasionally shaven legs, deserves all the love I poured into Sophisticated Lady.  I also have to trust that while Sophisticated Lady doesn’t fail, Jasmine does because that’s what actual human beings do.

Is that all you really want?
No, sophisticated lady,
I know, you miss the love you lost long ago
And when nobody is nigh you cry

Footnote

*I wrote this in 2013 before I knew much about trans exclusionary language. I’m not sure yet how to creatively rewrite that sentence to be inclusive but I’m working on it and am open to suggestions. 

A Different Kind of Pain

Originally posted 6/23/16

I’m used to pain when I read the news. The two are usually intertwined. It’s a trope, perhaps even a joke, that the news is always so bad and so depressing and why can’t we just talk about something positive, you know? Over the years I’ve tailored my news sources to the most vetted, most objective* sources I could find, limiting the impact of pain pundits are paid to inflict. I have developed my own version of self-care techniques: don’t read the comments for too long, walk away from Facebook for awhile, find something fun, etc. I’m used to the pain of being informed and how to manage that.

Still, you can’t prepare for everything.
 

The Seattle Police Department has a video game live stream series called Fuzzfeed206. The concept piggybacks on the popularity of Twitch and is used as a kind of lure to get citizens interested in the behind the scenes work of the police department. In better, more competent hands this could be the first step in actual community engagement, which has been proven time and time again to be vital in improving race relations with police. But this isn’t that. Instead it’s an opportunity for the SPD to talk at the citizens, not with.  

Yesterday SPD made such a video to talk about the murder of Charleena Lyles. I’d hope that I wouldn’t have to go any further in explaining why that’s incredibly insensitive and cruel, but the mere fact that the video exists suggests otherwise. Right away SPD Sgt. Sean Whitcomb concedes “this episode will be a little on the heavier side”, as if that note is enough. And then he spends the rest of 30 minutes explaining the SPD’s side of the case while playing Destiny, a first-person shooter. Enough of a stir up must have occurred after the initial posting because the video is down. However screenshots of the original tweet and a new upload can still be found. 

I’ve been trying for hours now to encapsulate how this kind of total disregard to the gravity of this situation hurts so damn much. I can’t find words that speak to how invisible I feel as a black woman, that even in death there is no guarantee those in power will have the decency to see me as a human being. The mainstream media has not picked up on this story, for whatever reason. I can’t imagine that would be the case if Charleena Lyles hadn’t been on the bottom of the American social totem pole - poor, black, female, and dealing with a mental illness. Countless videos have suggested Charleena would have lived if she had been higher up. And the complexity of it all is that none of this new to me. Far from it. But this video is so blatant in its apathetic nature that I’m left stunned. It’s as if I’ve been stabbed in a new place. The pain is both familiar and fresh.

I don’t even know what I want anymore, or rather, I don’t care to ask. It’s a privilege for me to even be feeling this sort of pain. Surely my grandmother remembers this wound, probably my mother to a lesser extent. The fight is different today. It’s no longer a war for basic human rights on a minute by minute level, it’s a war of dismantling and intersectionality and microaggressions and explaining why better police training is necessary. It’s a war of the subtle pain, almost all about covert racism unless the white robes and salutes are out. 

They aren’t this kind of tone-deaf, public displays of ambivalence.
——
I don’t know how to end this, except to cite this study one more time.

I’m tired.

Footnotes
* Yes, no source is perfectly objective, everyone has a bias, don’t let the media influence you…blah blah blah. You still have to be aware of what’s going on around you and you as an active, informed citizen have to do the work of pulling from multiple vetted sources to learn how to discern fact from opinion, so spare me.

**Passing the mic to someone who does live in Seattle
https://www.facebook.com/ijeoma.oluo/videos/10154461777187676/

*** https://www.gofundme.com/bdgbc8pg

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