joelfrominwood

Red Tails!

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:20:36 -0500

At some point, while watching Red Tails yesterday, it occurred to me that while George Lucas said in all the interviews that he was trying to portray unambiguous black heroes (as opposed to victims), he was also, in releasing the flick, trying to get a sizable American movie-going audience to:

Get amped over black men killing white dudes. Okay, so the’re Nazis. Still, let that sink in.
Root for a black male romantic lead in an explicitly sexual relationship with a white woman. Okay, so she’s an Italian-European rather than American. Still, let that sink in.

The possibility of this flick successfully navigating this privileged mental morass is approximately 3,720 to 1.

I’m still trying to figure out whether taking on this project is a strategic use of privilege on Lucas’ part or if it simply showcases his privilege without doing any good. Also, whether this movie could actually successfully cement black folks’ role in our mythic best war ever into the understanding of the broader American movie-going public.

Either way, I should still probably check out Pariah.

Peace and Love,
Joel

Rid-All: A Green Movement

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:07:00 -0500

Yesterday I peeped a community theater production at Karamu House called “Rid-All: A Green Movement”:

a science fiction adventure which explores the value of environmental stewardship while educating urban youth and the general community about environmental sustainability. The experience is interactive and fun with a hip-hop twist to encourage taking care of the planet through recycling, agriculture training and going green.

The play is based on a comic-book series produced by Rid-All, a recently-launched partnership that is working on developing urban agriculture jobs and educational opportunities in an area I sometimes call the ‘urban-post-apocalyptic-rural-frontier’ of Cleveland (if you want to get a birds-eye view of what I’m talking about, check the New York Times’ Census 2010 demographic map and check census tracts 1144, 1148, and 1201, East of East 79th Street. It’s ridiculous. If you want to get a person, dog, or deer’s-eye view, google ‘ruin porn’). Rid-All bases their work in part on the mega-dope model developed by Will Allen out of Milwaukee, Growing Power. You can find more information on Rid-All here, here and here. They’re doing what so many people in Cleveland are talking about, and I think they’re grand.

Rid-All: A Green Movement opened with a Star Wars-style rolling text exposition, but instead of a John Williams triumphal-soundtrack-palooza, included as audio-accompaniment what I can best describe as a loving homage to SpottieOttieDopaliscious. Or maybe some Dilla. The opening tells us that we, the audience, are coming on the scene in the midst of a Galactic Struggle that has been waged for generations between a cosmic superhero, Rid-All (pictured above), and the evil WOES, who go from verdant planet to verdant planet in an attempt to pollute and exploit them.

Let’s just pause and appreciate the degree to which I just described basically everything I’ve ever loved in my life coming together. For yall who didn’t know me back in high school, google ‘Joel Solow’ and ‘Pied Piper Children’s Theater’ for lols. I have nothing to hide.

Anyway, without giving too much away, I loved it. The play draws from some standard comic book tropes and archetypes including the old “alien falling to Earth, warning humans of impending doom, and imbuing ordinary humans with special powers” standard, and “humans learn that their special powers are less significant than their awareness, cooperation and organization” trick. It mixes it up with some awesome dance-battles between the forces of green and the forces of pollution, though unfortunately the evil crew of Woes kind of had cooler moves. And of course, dear to my heart, it reinforces environmental messages around the importance of recycling (making points about water and energy conservation that seem to have entered the recycling framing since I last paid a whole lot of attention to recycling- awesome), urban agriculture and food deserts, and even the importance of community organizing over shiny technological solutions to environmental problems. I thought it was great, and the rest of the audience seemed to as well.

But are me, my friend, and the typical-of-a-community-theater-production audience (that is to say, mostly old) the people Rid-All: A Green Movement is really trying to reach? That is to say, if Rid-All: A Green Movement is intended to reach urban youths where they’re at and get them to think about going green in a positive light and take action based on that, did it in fact do that?

I only went to one show, and so cannot speak to whether other shows garnered a younger audience. I also haven’t interviewed or talked with anyone involved in the production and so can’t say beyond what’s stated in the on-line description what they wanted to achieve by it. It could be that in Rid-All’s ‘Theory of Change’ (the “if we do this, than this will occur”, the assumption of how the play would achieve its goal), we the theater-goers tell our friends, grandkids, nieces and nephews to check this out, and spread the word that way. Or it could be that they simply hope to effect a change in the actors themselves, and primarily teach the youth and young adults in the cast (who I was surprised to find were almost entirely from the suburbs, particularly Bedford, Lakewood, Shaker and most surprisingly, Strongsville- there’s a great story there) about sustainability issues.

But I doubt it, given the form of the play (based on a comic-book format, with writing clearly intended for comprehension by youths) and the message, overwhelmingly one I hear from adults towards youths: get involved, do something constructive. And so if the play’s message is “get involved, do something constructive” and the receivers of that message are… the involved and constructive youth participating in the play and the involved and constructive adults watching the play-

We’re talking to ourselves. And really, we need to be talking with the people we don’t talk to.

I don’t mean to sound too harsh in this. First of all, I think the Rid-All folks are leagues more advanced in their thinking and strategy here than most operations in Cleveland. So props. They know the youth need opportunities and they further know that part of making those opportunities palatable and desirable is making them relevant in a fun, cultural way. Being that ahead of so many other initiatives opens up the possibility for deeper questioning and strategic thinking than would be possible if I were writing about initiatives that hadn’t even made those advances in their Theories of Change. I just wonder if the format chosen (community theater play based on a comic book) is one that the youth are really into or if it’s one we (those of us who want to reach the youth) are into and are projecting based on our own experiences as youth, our understanding of what the youth find fun. And I wonder how the outreach for promoting the play was done, and what kind of outreach really reaches youth on their level.

And secondly, most of this is so resonant to me not because I want to split hairs about other peoples’ projects, but because I see the same issues in my own work. I see initiative after initiative intended to reach youth (or residents, or potential voters, or rural landowners, whoever) that just rests on what appear to me to be incredibly faulty assumptions about what motivates youth (and residents, etc.) and what media effectively speak to youth. Too often, instead of asking youth what they want and how we can help, we ask ourselves, refer to some theory, or talk amongst ourselves about a society that we have abandoned, left behind, or never participated in in the first place.

Until we acknowledge the gaps that exist between us and those with whom we seek to connect (however much we think the people we’re trying to reach are “part of our community”), and then work to bridge those gaps first with our mouths closed and our ears wide open, I fear we will continue to see change-agents not so much ‘having an impact’ as much as looking in the mirror and reciting lines by rote to ourselves, rather than engaging in conversation for change with the world outside our bedrooms.

As always, Peace and Love,
Joel

New Blog: Happy MLK Day!

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:56:45 -0500

When in the course of one’s life’s events, it becomes necessary for one amateur blogger to dissolve the digital bands which have connected them to their first attempt at saying something profound on the internet, and to assume among the cyber-community a more natural and representative station reflective of their outlook on life (and including also occasionally liberty and the pursuit of happiness), a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the establishment of a wholly new blog, when they had a perfectly okay one already. Or something like that.

Long story short, I got tired of Citizen Obie and trying to fit what I had to say into a thing I started in the waning of my senior year at Oberlin. So, in a Bowie-esque act of transformation, I decided to start a new one afresh, so as to be unencumbered by the baggage of the previous blog (which I do not disavow, and do take responsibility for).

It seemed only fitting, today being what it is, that this first post direct you to some of the sweetest oratory by, I would argue, the most successful revolutionary in United States history, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

While most commentators today will try and extract some exegesis that reflects their own political or social predispositions from his words, I’ll present them without comment (except for what I said above, obviously that’s a bit of a bias on my part), and encourage whoever might be reading to come to their own conclusions, challenge that text, and make of it what you will. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man from a different time, operating under a different set of contexts, and working in a movement that was motivated and bound by conventions that were similar in some ways, but different in others to those that frame our action today. So in the words of another pop-culturally beatified American, Think Different:

Rediscovering Lost Values, February 28, 1954, Detroit

The Birth of a New Nation, April 7, 1957, Montgomery

Loving Your Enemies, December 25, 1957, Montgomery

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963, Birmingham

I Have A Dream, August 23, 1963, Washington, DC

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964, Oslo

Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967, New York City

Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, April 30, 1967, Atlanta

Recently Recovered Speech, 1967, Glenville High School, Cleveland

The Drum Major Instinct, February 4, 1968, I think Atlanta

I’ve Been To The Mountaintop, April 3, 1968, Memphis

and, just ‘cause it’s a good one, here’s John Lewis’ speech from the March on Washington- the original copy, rather than the re-written, toned down one.

Peace and Love
Joel