I’m just asking…about a topic disparate from movies.
…About the celebrated assent of South-Asian American politicians and political actors in the U.S.
When on October 27th National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” aired a piece, “South-Asian Americans Discover Political Clout,” about this grand success, they celebrated just how “all-American” Bobby Gindal, Nicky Haley and other hyphenated American politicians of color are. When I heard the commentary by Sandip Roy, I noticed that it held at its core the splendor that it is to be all-American. He praised just how often South-Asian Americans show that they fit in with almost anyone – they’ve assimilated themselves. Particularly Indian-Americans.
That’s when my ears pricked up. It reminded me of CBS News’ 60-Minutes recent profile of Mr. Gindal.
His disinterest and disconnection to his Indian heritage was made explicit. What about politicians of color having and proudly walking with a strong sense of identity? (I should be able to point to a beacon different from President Barack Obama) I just begged myself for an answer that I didn’t have: “why are they celebrating this…’all-American’?!”
The problem: that euphemism “all-American” has been a well-known code of bias for more than two generations – just ask a progressive-thinking HR person. Job ads routinely used to declare a company’s desire for someone all-American; that connotes someone who is either Anglo (or white for y’all who insist on describing folks by their color), or is easily assimilable, if not both.
Depending on just how provincial or conservative a workplace is, and whether it was nestled in a metropolis or far from one, the amount of brown, black and beige folks included could be slim. It might also omit very talented and ambitious – seemingly “less-American” – folks.
This subtle, scary attitude harkens to a line from Elizabeth St. Philip’s splendid short documentary, The Colour of Beauty, about the want, in America, for models of color. It harkens specifically to what a New York-based agent who said: the folks with whom he strives to book his models want “a white girl painted black.” In other words, no features of “an other.”
That the best known South-Asian American politicians’ lack a strong sense of ethnic identity puts me off. Readers won’t like this: “all-American” smacks of the world that Michelle Obama knew before she blurted out “for the first time in my adult lifetime I’m really proud of my country.” I sympathized with, and in several ways, rejoiced in her enthusiastic candor.
I’m peculiar. I know very well (too well) how very hung up America’s majority is on sticking with those people who resemble them. Most Americans remain xenophobes, rarely challenging themselves to approach those other people whom they don’t understand or are barely familar with.
Nothing against the rise of our South-Asian brethren, but oughtn’t we prefer that those who walk with a strong sense of ethnic heritage over those whose only remarkable difference from their Anglo opponents is their pigment?
So, do many people think that having easily assimilable people of color will help our society? Having them within the mix is fine, but I worry about youngsters of color who revere public figures who resemble them, but who only do so skin deep. This, without being able to talk to those youngsters about a minority’s dual consciousnesses, or about many nuances of their backgrounds. I’d be a terrible politician: I prefer candor (Well, tactful candor.)
When you consider how many different people get giddy over Halloween (the event) and its namesake movie from 1978, you might ask yourself and your friends…”So how would you like to be scared today?” (Can you imagine being asked that question when you amble into a haunted house attraction?)
Fear isn’t a scream. Fear triggers your scream. Do you remember the tagline from the film, Alien, from 1979, (that I still can’t see as horror, but only as science fiction): “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Let’s consider fear expressed as sound. Many of us have discovered that the seductive and counter-intuitive magic that pushes us toward horror is sound, specifically the music or even the silence that precedes it.
Neil Lerner, a musicologist at Davidson College, and author of “Music in the Horror Film,” and, Steve Connor, the science editor for England’s “The Independent,” have identified some of the illusive kinds of music that creep us out, and keep us coming back to test our fight or flight reflexes. Some readers, thinking back to the 1980s, may debate the potency of movie music. The 1980s era was chock full of a compulsion toward shock, satisfying teens’ appetite for gore. There, entrails and brain matter abound like some moist, chunky and sloppy confetti of flesh. While gore does something for you, the music is probably the true engine of that tension.
Consider Halloween’s original theme: Nearly unforgettable.
As an example, from an article by “The Independent’s,” Mr. Connor, “Imagine a horn. You blow it gently and a nice sound comes out… At some point, when you blow it too hard, the sound gets unpredictable, distorted and noisy.” That’ll tweak or trigger your tension.
Do you remember what Albert Einstein, yes the genius physicist, said about imagination versus intelligence? The most potent tool in horror, and in storytelling in general, is imagination. The second most potent tool is probably how music gives us cues about how we should feel at any moment. The individual and personal ways that we take in and respond to that chaotic and distorted music determine whether we’ll be scared enough to pee our pants or scared toward a heart attack.
Now, the remix for the 2000s:
Familiar, modern and creepy.
As with almost every film, the music and sound design set the scene and the mood; but particularly so, with horror, Mr. Connor says in that article, “It was only in horror and drama that the scientists found a significant use of non-linear sound to amplify an iconic scene’s emotional content…”
When he discusses Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, from 1960, based on the novel, from 1959, by Robert Bloch, which was inspired by vague details about Wisconsin’s deranged Ed Gein, Mr. Connor said, “…the discordant musical notes he (Mr. Hitchcock) was adding to the disturbing shower scene were in fact based on the sort of non-harmonic sounds used in the distress calls of wild animals.”
From “the shower scene” (and don’t be like, “what shower scene?”) from Psycho.
Consider Psycho and Halloween – and if you’re an enthusiastic cinéphile, The Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney, which flaunted its organ music – among a bevy of other horror titles. Neil Lerner, a musicologist at Davidson College, in Davidson, NC, and author of “Music in the Horror Film,” refers to “Horror film’s repetitious drones, clashing dissonances, and stingers (those assaultive blasts that coincide with shock or revelation) affect us at a primal level…” which harken back to privative instincts that ignore entirely however much education, breeding or sense of class you have. No matter how smart you are, that film, which ever one, will still scare the pants off of you. Here’s an interview with him, which includes a lengthy excerpt from the Phantom’s organ. But here,in a college article, Prof. Lerner discusses the kind of music that propels horror films and our senseless return to them.
Well, many of us have discovered that horror movie sound, specifically the music, helps those stories to make our hairs stand on end, and ourselves on-edge. I guess that’s part of why we’re crazy enough to flock back…for the love of Fear.
This political documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, tells how an Ivy-league trained policy analyst for the departments of State and Defense, Daniel Ellsberg, became disillusioned enough with Vietnam war politics and lies that he leaked a 7,000 page classified report to Congress, and finally the press. It had made his moral center shiver. He could no longer suborn or support the war, the politics or political actors.
Daniel Ellsberg outside a federal court house
The first two-thirds of the documentary serve as a maudlin confessional and broad biography for Mr. Ellsberg, until the final act. The first part is the problem: I wanted to hear objective points of view about the varied ways in which Mr. Ellsberg’s work, his attitude, and he himself had imperiled the United States, not his bleeding heart regrets. The first part is self-indulgent and self-pitying. Neither his biography, nor he deftly addressed the perils that his leaking the report posed to U.S. citizens.
If you want to watch a 70-something year-old impromptu activist spill his guts, and “share” in that maudlin experience, then this film might satisfy you. His gradual misgivings, and then disgust with the politics and various the political and defense department actors are woven through the fabric of his biography. That weaving is well executed, but only as piece of catharsis. We must wait until that last act for the danger and intrigue.
His story and that of the leak are interesting, but when PBS hypes the peril that is acts posed as the core of the narrative, why put that off until the last act?
The film could have been more potent if it had concentrated less on Mr. Ellsberg, the activist outrage and indignation, and more on the details of the copying and the leak process – his actions were what made him a danger, not his convictions. It would have been satisfying and fascinating to hear and see the effort and stress that went into to reaching out to sympthetic members of Congress, and “The New York Times,” and the 16 other newspapers that became a part of that “conspiracy.” Oh well. Too bad. The film rushed through that portion as though they had to finish it before the film or money ran out.
Frankly after 40-minutes or so of wanting this film to engage me, it flopped…until that final act. I just checked out, waiting for the objective facts and the dangers to be made clear. The latter portion was Mr. Ellsberg’s very own taste of the world of Woodward and Bernstein – that worked.
This documentary is Mr. Ellsberg’s own The Fog of War, in reference to a superior documentary from 2003. Too bad it also pales next The Fog of War about the Vietnam-era defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara. That addressed similarly colossal issues in a forthright way.
Night Catches Us is Philadelphia-based independent filmmaker Tanya Hamilton’s first feature film. It made its debut at the Twin Cities Film Festival on September 30th. The heart of the film is the connection between Marcus Washington [Anthony Mackie of The Hurt Locker and Million Dollar Baby], a pragmatic drifter, and felon, and Patricia Wilson [Kerry Washington of The Last King of Scotland and She Hate Me].
Night Catches Us gives us relationships. And secrets. And reckonings. And reconciliations. That’s a lot for 90-minutes, but it works well, except for this film’s twitchy volume dial; occasionally the dialogue or score would drop or leap a few decibels. That’s only a problem when you’re trying to pay attention.
There are the political stories, and the erotic. Some secrets to protect those adults from truths, which hurt more than their chosen, accepted myths. Other secrets to protect a child, letting her keep her fleeting innocence. Maybe the film’s title comes from the idea that the night catches us with our guards down, and secrets more accessible.
There are three or so pivotal relationships are tense, each carrying historical baggage. On the political tip, Marcus must move past or through Dwayne AKA “Do Right” [Jaime Hector], a former Panther and local thug, who just knows that Marcus’ snitching killed a Panther. On the erotic tip, he rekindles with his lost lover, Patty (That’s Patricia, damn it!) after what she calls abandonment.
In this tight, largely segregated community, their neighborhood is family; that family’s post-1960s politics has cooled into the pragmatic. In order to keep Patty’s home space calm, Marcus confronts a morose, young, wannabe Panther, Jimmy [Amari Cheatom], who is ne’er do well, lost in the romance of activism. Amid Marcus’ confrontations and rekindlings, Patricia strives to smooth the scuffles, which he leaves in his wake – she wants him to stick around.
Marcus has to reckon with “Do Right” for being the snitch that the whole neighborhood “knows” he is, but that he knows he isn’t. “Do Right” needs to assert and affirm his defacto reign over the area. Marcus has meager time for that viril, righteous, boasting. That doesn’t slow “Do Right” even a bit.
The knuckle-head character, Jimmy [Amari Cheatom], is a forthright jab at the myriad young Black men who are lost, scared, and struggling, but dare not let on. Weakness does nothing for street cred. He’s like the cats who spout off Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichaels’ well-worn words, but barely understand how much study and struggle went into them. Jimmy knows too little to carry the words, or the respect that he expects to earn by speaking them. He is a lesson.
Marcus and Patty reconnect.
The budding rapport between Marcus and Patricia’s daughter, Iris, is significant and special for the trio. The girl’s point of view is also a door that connects this film to To Kill a Mockingbird through her Scout-like precocity. Marcus’ quiet strength endears and engages her. He resembles the father figure whom she has lacked, nevermind that Patty already has been sharing her home, bed and herself with one steady man. Marcus is a different refreshing one; in being so, he eases Patty’s burden.
This is an atypical, even radical film, particularly for a Black person, and especially a woman, to make, in at least three ways. First off, there’s no urban blight. Secondly, Patty’s household is basically in-tact, and thirdly we are reminded of or given a primer on the Black Panthers.
The film flaunts no prototypical ghetto blights – neither drugs, nor prostitutes, nor typical gun play, nor casual swearing. In addition to those omissions, Ms. Hamilton’s story is subtly radical. We have an improvised, functional nuclear family with the temporary trio. Both adults are smart, warm, and educated. That isn’t even the radical stuff: Marcus and Patricia’s respective stories provide a primer on the Philadelphia Black Panthers – at least in broad strokes.
Marcus and Iris get close
I ought not fawn over this film or the satisfaction. Chris Rock has joked about “Givin’ people extra credit for doin’ shit they’re already supposed to be doing.” I know: I’m a film snob, along with my other assorted snobberies. But I yearn for stories like this, that are quiet and simple, and which remind me of Akeelah and the Bee. When cynical or quietly bigoted Anglo money men drag their feet, they insist that there’s no audience. Night Catches Us is a splendid surprise. There are scant well-made films for thinking Black people (or for brown or beige one). I hope this refreshes viewers and draws them to the cinema when Night Catches Us comes out on December 3rd. I give extra credit, hoping that that emboldens other filmmakers who want to follow suit.
Ms. Hamilton found inspiration for Night Catches Us from and made connections to To Kill a Mockingbird. When she had just arrived in high school, she found some of her “aunt’s” things: memories from her activism, like an arrest outside the White House. She was engaged and curious. Her “aunt” wasn’t – at all. Both surprises, the discovery and the stern reticence, opened her mind. In some ways, the girl, Iris, is the filmmaker. Ms. Hamilton’s experience was the slow drip through her life, which impelled her to finally translate that experience, and soem dogged research into this film.
On the technical and aesthetic tips, even though this is Ms. Hamilton’s first feature, she already has a film grammar that distinguishes her work from most of her peers. In a conversation with her, she said that her thesis film at Cooper Union also showed her chosen editorial style: a taste for a mélange of dramatic, archival, and different types of animated footage.
The opening or title sequence can tell a lot about the film and its maker. Is it banal or conservative, is it boldly artistic or vibrant, does it command your attention and interest? Much as out television themes used to describe the show’s world, objective, and attitude, this title sequence does too. It uses hip-hop music, hip-hop influenced images, and movements between those two, to outline the world, history, and dramas within Night Catches Us. Bottom-line: is it used to support the story; in a robust way? These sequences rarely merit a conversation. You can debate whether it should draw our attention, whether it should be subtle and conservative, or should resemble children as W.C. Fields often supposedly said, “be seen and not heard.” I am already biased and convinced.
How about the editing style or aesthetic? I cannot recall the last film I saw that dared to exploit more than dramatic and archival shots in one film, consistently. Night Catches Us moves beyond that: it uses animation, two different types, and does it in as many ways. It’s refreshing. A crude, hand-made Black Panthers comic book of mediocre line drawings comes to moving, swaggering life before Iris eyes as she thumbs through it. It grabs out attention too. It’s a remarkable and motivating animation until Marcus tells knucklehead Jimmy the truth about the propaganda’s source. He pops Jimmy’s bubble, and deflates some of its militant sweetness and fire.
