If they know about him, they think he was a singer, or an athlete, or an actor, or an activist, or that he somehow spoke as many as 20 languages.  The average American doesn’t know that each of these described him and helped to define him, and his legacy, and his meaning to his people.  It’s a great and terrible thing: the great is that he was all of these, and more.  The terrible: too few people know this.

Why the hubbub? April 9th marks his 115th birthday.  He was unique; as a black American he was extraordinary.

Unfortunately, today he is barely remembered or even seen as a role model.

His school days hinted at his extraordinary range of interests and high standard of excellence:

According to a faculty blog of Marquette University, “few college students have ever excelled at the level at which Robeson performed at Rutgers.  He graduated first in his class; was elected Phi Beta Kappa as a junior; and won the college’s oratory contest each year that he was enrolled.  He also won twelve varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track.”  Too boot, he was an All-American football player.

Here Robeson briefly describes his comprehension of William Shakespeare the his play, Othello, and its title character.

He left his mark on the National Football League, the Harlem Renaissance, the Red Scare, Shakespeare and human rights activism.  How have we forgotten him or his feats?  Granted, he died in 1976, nearly 40-years-ago.  The year when “Bionic Woman” premiered on ABC, and Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple.  Time passes.  Memories fade.

While college educations and professions are available to young people, most of them seem to aspire to be pro athletes, or rap, rock or Reality TV stars.  Young people are rarely exposed to the exploits of people, like Robeson, who aspired and excelled across diverse and divergent fields.

If you want to know beyond the superficial, then read; there are books about him: Here I Stand, in which he reflects on how the House of Representatives mistreated him for standing with his convictions, or the Undiscovered Paul Robeson.  There are two volumes: An Artist’s Journey, and Quest for Freedom.

Robeson may have been more impressive and more extraordinary in his time, than Pres. Barack Obama is, given the racial and economic obstacles of 40-years-ago.

People usually forget about or ignore independent, documentary and short films, even though the best stories are often compelling and memorable.  They receive so little publicity that they lay or languish below America’s pop cultural radar.  Well below it.

I was grateful a few years ago it dawned on me just what kind of eclectic selection I could have in movies if I simply visited my local library a couple time a week!  While the feature-length movies are supposed to be organized by genre, after borrowers’ hands touch them they don’t stay so strictly organized.  That makes it adventurous.

I’ve found several films that way, which I might not or flatly would not have noticed if I’d relied on a social media queue or searched for those, which my friends recommend.

I recently discovered Foreign Letters, which documents the childhood bond between two almost teenaged American immigrants.  Their bond helped to insulate them from the cruelties that children can levy on one another.  And it stuck with or sustained them into their adult lives.  Most children know what it’s like to move to a strange place, be the new kid and have to carve out a new social life.  The girls’ story is sweet, smart, perceptive and dramatic.  Rare!

You just don’t find these stories at your local mall’s multiplex anymore!

While social media movie queues have their places, there is a pleasure, an old-school (or maybe just mid-20th century) pleasure in the randomness and adventure of watching what a grab bag give you.  A grab bag approach to choosing movies is a fun and novel way to accidently find some of the best and most unappreciated films you might not have otherwise found.  You could probably do this via Facebook or Flixster, but those media lack the hands-on and face-to-face satisfaction that I appreciate.

I wrote about this two years ago; here are my thoughts.

Those books that are frequently challenged have ideas for which some young, formative minds are rarely or barely prepared.  For some people this type of censorship is a matter of questioning loose morals, open minds, and an interest in or inclination toward critical thinking.

Sometimes people feel threatened by books or topics that challenge or question their home spun convictions.  These books are not yet ready for primetime when it comes to young people, who are not yet sure of whom they are, their own convictions, or what they want to accomplish once they’re grown.  This, at least, according to parents.

What about when those classic stories are made into films and put into movie theaters?  You wonder: how much better do people respond to or accept “Of Mice and Man” or “The Scarlet Letter” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” as a film than a book, of if there is a remarkable difference?  It’s that great question that I could only speculate on; it’s worthy of a coffee table conversation.

Lauren Myracle is the author of many wildly popular books, which teen and tween girls just eat up, and which parents often seem to be bent on banning.

According to her, during an interview with ABC Radio, she observed, “It’s fear, swear to God.  Fear that turns into anger.  …They (parents) want to keep people wrapped in a bubble condom…”

Sometimes books are knocked for simple objections to profanity, or for frank portrayals of sex or sexuality, violence, or other reasons.  Reasons, which are unsuitable to the youngster’s age, or which clash with or confuse local communities’ standards.  By far the parents are the main objectors, unless you consider when it comes from an institution’s voice; then, it’s the school or its library.

“To Kill a Mockingbird”: Challenged in Eden Valley, MN (1977) and temporarily banned due to words “damn” and “whore lady” used in the novel. A resident had objected to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression.  The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it.

“Of Mice and Men”: Challenged in Greenville, SC (1977) by the Fourth Province of the Knights of the Ku Klux KIan; Vernon Verona Sherill, NY School District (1980); St. David, AZ (1981) and Tell City, IN (1982) due to “profanity and using God’s name in vain.”

The ALA has documented the voluminous reasons or rationales for challenging many of our world’s classics.

Here’s a video, from high schoolers, reminding us of why this censorship is at best or at beast silly.  All but two of the classics mentioned here, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Catcher in the Rye,” have been made into big screen films.

In America race is one of the hardest, most awkward, most personal and most prickly subjects to raise, much less confront.  When I think about Intouchables, on one hand, I understand the nearly universal enthusiasm and delight in response to it, based on a true life story.  It’s an exuberant tale that joins two of the least likely men, from two of the edges of society.  On another hand, if you’re sensitized to and paying attention to them, you’ll soon find a few major stereotypes at play.

In the last 20 years, only a few Francophone films have dealt with race with forthright courage: Café au Lait, (1993) and La Haine (1995) (which translates literally as “hate”), both by Mathieu Kassovitz, who was called France’s own Spike Lee, when Lee was at the zenith of his polemical and popular works.  Café au Lait is the story about a mixed-race 20-something woman who has a choice between two lovers: a white Jew or a black Muslim.  La Haine looks at race from a neighborhood and economic point of view

In 2010 Le Nom des Gens came from France.  It’s at least as exuberant as, but I believe more memorable and smarter than, Intouchables.  And it contends with race, politics and religion in a deft, subtle, hilarious and sophisticated way.  Unfortunately Intouchables doesn’t.

The actor, Omar Sy, a star in France, spoke to this briefly but pithily on Shadow and Act.

Omar Sy: I was a bit surprised to hear the criticism, because it’s a film that I believe in, I defend the film, and I would never be involved in a film that has racist overtones. It’s a French movie and it has to be read in the context of a French society. If you look at it with a different set of criteria you can come up with a different meaning.

 

In France, the banlieues (suburbs) is a completely different environment than what you have in the United States. It’s not as racially segmented. The people from the banlieues, be they from Hispanic origin or black origin, they’re in the same socio-economic slice. In America, [people of color] may have ancestry tied to slavery or immigration.

Daphnee Denis discussed this ably in her posting for Slate.

After I saw the film at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, I faced a fork in the road of discussing it.  I could choose between leveling a critique or criticism.  When people asked for my opinion or review of it, their interest in a conversation would rapidly dissipate if I raised my concerns about the stereotypes, and the bigotry that their presence implied.

(left to right) Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy

What’ll this bode for how well or how much better either country digs the other’s point of view on race, or recognizing it?  At the least (and maybe least useful) it reminds us, yet once more, of how much farther each country has to venture in order to shed our connection of everything in life to color and features (or the denial of that as a social reality).

Talking about is a part of the power of a provocative movie.  Isn’t it the movies that leave us with blank minds and nothing to say that are the problems?

So, this impass at a movie theater, and between countries and cultures, presents an opportunity to discuss how race, too often discussed in divisive and agonizing ways in the US and “never” officially in France, is understood in a hit film.  I regret that as seldom as these opportunities come, it is just as rare when any of us handles them as smoothly as most of us say we want.

In our collective national grief, disbelief, fragility and rage, it was easy to find the enemy in the other.

That’s common.  What was unseemly was that we took it farther: reducing a whole people or whole faith to that.

The more critically thoughtful and open-minded of us chastised those who clung to their “facts” about Arabs and Muslims.  I usually discuss subjects that involve the mass media or politics, or the intersection of that duo.  Dissent is vital to both, as we hope that civility might also be…one day.

When this date, September 11, comes around, someone usually says something foolish, or ignorant or outright brain dead, one of those peoples.  Do we respond to this with any more grace or civility than we used to, as we did on Sept 10, 2001?

I’m Just Asking…

Between Sept. 10th and 11th, a lot of our American culture changed.  Dissent in time of war didn’t become bad, it became worse than bad.  Why is dissent a disgrace in some peoples’ eyes?  And why are those people so often conservative?

Please think about Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words:

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

We Americans have a devil of a time understanding, absorbing and acting on this fact.

When I think about September 11th, what hangs in my mind, after memories of the TV news coverage of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, are the American voices that became louder and shriller saying, on one hand, get the Arabs and Muslims, and, on the other, all the Arabs and Muslims; why all?   Soon it became a pissing context between conservatives and progressives over what makes an American, true American.

The last eleven years have been scary for dissent: Do you remember when Bill Maher lost his job after having stood fast in criticizing Pres Bush’s policies and politics?  How about when the Dixie Chicks did, after lead singer Natalie Maines apologized to Great Britain because Pres. Bush was from Texas?

I’m Just Asking…

An historical and iconic CBS News reporter, Edward R. Murrow, said that

“we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.  When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”

That’s typical, and contrary to the day’s raison d’être.  If you look at the website of the U.S. Dept of Labor, the commemoration of a “workingmen’s holiday” dates to 1882 and the actions of the Central Labor Union in New York.  By 1894 most of the United States had agreed to take the first Monday in September to celebrate working people.  But how often are they on our minds on that Labor Day?

If few of us think about America’s workers during Labor Day – and if TV programming on that day reflects our prevailing psyche, we don’t – then probably even fewer people think about women in the work force or what “women’s work” means today.

I remember the most pointed and indelible symbol I’ve seen of the struggle for gender equity in the work force.  When I was a temp with a huge American bank in the 1990s, I stepped into a file room where someone had posted a laminated photocopy of a section of newspaper want ads circa 1970s; it read “Woman’s Work.”  I’m in favor of women’s equity, and when I saw that my jaw dropped.  But I couldn’t gawk.  I had to get back to work for my boss.  A woman.

Depending on what part of the 1970s that section of the newspaper hailed from, about two generations have passed.  That means four decades.  America’s working women have gone from the affirmation of Betty Friedan’s seminal book “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, and wondering why domestic work left them unsatisfied and on to asking many questions about what and who defines women’s work and women themselves, to Prof. Anne-Marie Slaughter at Princeton University.  She “came clean” in The Atlantic Monthly about why, in her esteemed and sage opinion, the heart rending compromises and absences from family mean that the vast majority of women cannot “have it all.”

Our most popular images and notions of American culture come from mass entertainment: movies, TV, music and more, no matter the platform.  When you consider the portrayals of working women in movies, Norma Rae, 1979, 9-to-5 1980, Working Girl, 1988, North Country, 2005, about a crisis of sexual harrassment that dated back to a 1984 lawsuit.

As the Virginia Slims box read circa 1970 women have “come a long way, baby” from the notions of woman’s work.  There are still many chronic, persistent quandaries that hinder progress, such as divisions over personalities and politics.  Still you cannot deny or ignore the progress, only its pace, velocity or ferocity.

Aside from the occasional feature or issue-oriented story on evening news programs, the only program that concentrates on and advocates for gender equity in life and work may be “To the Contrary,” a 30-minute weekly talk program that airs Sunday mornings on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Americans are talking about women in the workplace, but when they seem to be only women.  And the men who still set company culture and make the policies can make women and feminist men feel like Chicken Little.

Of course with gains, a prickly question arises.  Women must answer them for themselves: what does it mean to be a working woman, and what kind do you want to be?  Never mind what Whitney Houston sang about being every woman in 1993.  No one professional woman can stand in for any of her sisters.

In the midst of August, and with an imminent return to classrooms, students gird themselves for the rigors of classes and reading.  As usual, in terms of this, students feel torn between watching a movie, a passive escape, and reading a book, an active engagement.  With that in-mind I wondered how movies portray reading and books in positive ways.

In a world where Netflix, videogames, Facebook and twitter prevail, books and literature command ever less of our attention.  Some folks just don’t “get” books, and, of course, if your family or friends don’t make a habit of reading near or with you, that could explain it.

What if your friends or neighbors think an interest in books is a sell-out or uppity trait?  Freedom Writers (2007) gives us a rousing and rare take on that problem.  A white teacher comes from a suburb into a harrowing neighborhood in Long Beach, CA wearing pearls, and tries to persuade her students to read.  For some communities and people the pleasures of reading are far from their work-a-day struggles.  But an assignment to read “Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl” reaches and touches them; some of them see their poor, urban plight reflected in Anne’s ordeal.

Reading isn’t cool to everyone; they’re not used to using or appreciating their imaginations, at least not in that way.  That’s a crisis that some research points to: NEA Reading at Risk.  Folks are concentrating on surviving, paying rent and the simple pursuit of a safe and stable life.

Well, what if you can’t read?  That is a problem.  A crisis.  To the presumably “average” and basically educated American that disability is absurd.  We can “all” read.  But what if you couldn’t, at least not fluidly or with self-confidence?  Stanley & Iris (1989) provides a poignant and sometimes pointed wake-up call for the skill, which we who can often take for granted.

A disparate and less sentimental but bittersweet story about a consequence of illiteracy.  What if a book granted you a power, a connection to, or a feeling of gratification that something else just couldn’t do or would be a poor imitation of?  The Reader (2008) is a compelling and profound tale, whether read or watched, about a teenager in post-war Germany who reads some of the classics to a beautiful, but disturbed older woman, with a troubled war-time past, in exchange for sex.  He reads to her, and then she has sex with him.  The act of reading has a pivotal and turbulent effect on the young man that stunts his growth as a man in subtle, profound and unforeseeable ways.  All of this happens because he reads to her?  Yip.

What do you get out of movies that are about but not necessarily adapted from books: each story is a portal to an adventure, to a different world, or a foreign but surprisingly similar one, that engages you in ways that a movie probably can’t in all of two hours.

Movies about thinkers rarely become money trees.  Movies are about entertainment, appealing to the masses, and making money, not teaching.  It is nice though to see the occasional one that tips its hat to the hero who reads, thinks, and uses his or her wit as a weapon instead of just brawn.

One problem is that the most publicized lists serve a general audience.  If you don’t fit that, then you’re left out.   That’s where my appetite, which Netflix calls cerebral, falls.  Any of those lists ignores or omits revered and beloved titles and does so for reasons that are just as often arbitrary as they are educated or elucidating.  Roger Ebert explains this later in an excerpt.  What’s more, few of them make an effort to include minorities’ stories.

Alred HItchcock’s “Vertigo” replaces Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” as the best film ever made!

If you’re an ambitious viewer, and far choosier than most, you set an ambitious, even daunting standard for your movie experience.  You probably want to see innovation and risk-taking in the storytelling – excellence.  Few, very few films satisfy that mixture of standards.  The chronic problem or crisis with these lists is the very diverse bevy of memorable movies they leave out.  From a sentimental point of view people like to see themselves represented, as when Dale Carnegie told his readers of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” that a person’s name is their favorite thing to hear.

This reminds me of when I was studying film history as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, and the question that I often heard while I waited in line at the dining hall of my dorm: “what’s your favorite film?”  It irked me; after a while I came to hate it because, as with any “what’s your favorite…?” question, it forces you to make unjust and absurd choices.  Those are also what make lists like the BFI’s decennial one.

There are so many genres and styles of movies that are made by many different kinds of peoples from cultures as different as they themselves are and who see the world in a bevy of ways, some of which Westerners don’t easily understand.  Any of these lists can accommodate only a few titles.  Fans are bound to feel their favorites films, and in-turn themselves, are left out.  This harkens to Mr. Carnegie’s observation.

We rely on (hopefully) highly literate people, the critics who write about and discuss movies, and who have studied its history.  Their experiences and studies have prepared them to write about and discuss movies effectively.  One of them, Roger Ebert, takes pleasure in slamming most best- and worse-of lists, including the BFI’s decennial one.

Mr. Ebert, who earned the first Pulitzer Prize for film criticism in 1975, has an iconoclastic point of view about best- and worst-of lists, which he described in Roger Ebert’s Journal from April 2012: “For years they had value only in the minds of feature editors fretting that their movie critics had too much free time.”

“All lists of the ‘greatest’ movies are propaganda. They have no deeper significance. It is useless to debate them. Even more useless to quarrel with their ordering of titles: Why is this film #11 and that one only #31? The most interesting lists are those by one person: What are Scorsese’s favorites, or Herzog’s? …The most respected poll, the only one I participate in, is the vote taken every 10 years by Sight & Sound, the British film magazine, which asks a large number of filmmakers, writers, critics, scholars, archivists and film festival directors,” he wrote in Roger Ebert’s Journal in July 2009.

A commentator, Bim Adewunmi, at UK’s newspaper The Guardian provides an endearingly sardonic point of view, which complements Mr. Ebert’s  “‘Best of’ lists – what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.’”

Best of lists are valuable up to a point.  If you didn’t study film history, and have little time or energy to follow movies news or new releases, then maybe you want a nudge, that is some guidance.  While it’s amusing to read or even peruse the BFI’s latest decennial list the Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, or another list, you the viewer still have to decide for yourself.

When summer arrives I know that need to await a film festival or wait until the fall, when the “important” movies come.  I’m peculiar in this tweeted world, where Facebook is a verb:  I believe that patience is a virtue, and vital.  Still, I hate that wait.

Are you the kind of movie-goer who is hungry for stories that defy the tradition of escapism and grand distractions; those smart ones that take risks and push viewers beyond their comfort zones?  Summer’s not your season; you already knew that.

The first idea: hold your nose up, and abstain from the summer of escapism and distractions that serve the masses.  So, you’ll await the “important” movies in the fall.  That’ll test your patience; that’s a long wait!  That’s a bad idea.  It won’t work.

The second idea: in summer 2012, the movie theaters won’t be empty of substance.  “The Dark Knight Rises” promises to provide a smart and sophisticated plot.  And then “Brave,” provides a story of what the Spice Girls called Girl Power; the girl must defy traditions and authorities as she discovers her strengths and herself.  Another one, “Beasts of Southern Wild” provides a story that Imdb describes thusly, “faced with her father’s fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother. ”  And “Safety Not Guaranteed” tells the story that Imdb describes as “three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel.”  These stories themselves might hold you over until September when the substance enters theaters.

The third idea is ambitious: remember the loads of movies that you forgot or ignored in the last how many years because of timing, and catch up.  For example, here’s a list of the most important film for each year in the history of film, or some viewer’s take on the 50 most important documentaries. You probably have a “bucket list” of movies.  Why not use it?

You may want to consider what makes a movie “important” or “serious.”  Here’s a link to a story that I reported in fall 2011.

Some production companies that make content for YouTube have A-List Hollywood connections and budgets; some others want to, and list almost enough above-the-line crew to resemble that; still others have ambitions that are independent and riskier.

Until a generation ago, aspiring media makers went to film schools for formal training.  Some people called them the film school generation.

I discovered the draw of professional-grade YouTube videos when I spontaneously clicked on “FunEmployed” from Wong Fu Productions, in Pasadena, CA.

Now, a shining few make their livings and their dreams come true on YouTube, and make it seem easy!  YouTube, all of seven-years-old is the best known place to “broadcast yourself.”  That’s their tagline.  The latest New York Times feature, “On YouTube, Amateur is the New Pro,” about YouTube’s growth, indicates that a few are making big money, while others who find inspiration in them, are trying to make sense of it and make enough to live on their own creativity and ingenuity.

But as with the politics and biases of traditional media productions, it’s harder if you’re note white.  Prof. Aymar Christian, at Northwestern University, has a  blog provides a list of programs by creators of color, particularly Latinos and blacks.  Each is a long list.  But there are complications.  First, he deems few of them to be worth watching, and second, few of the teams that produce the series have recent or new content.  Truly, several of the series or short films are at least 18-months-old.

Some of the successes are  “Awkward Black Girl,” and “Fly Guys,” but these programs provide a narrow range of images similar to that, which viewers find in the traditional media.

YouTube is one of the proven, least costly and most accessible distribution channels.  Some people also use Vimeo and DailyMotion.  YouTube also incubates talent and inspires the next generation.  A question remains.  A pivotal one: why aren’t there more creators of color, those who take risks?  A change in technology and distribution methods does not mean increased ethnic diversity in the videos.

Asians are represented.  With Wong Fu Productions, Ryan Higa and KevJumba, at least one slice of that tremendously diverse group is covered.  Wong Fu has nearly 200-million views, and more than 1-million subscribers.  And Mr. Higa more than 1-billion views and more than 5-million subscribers.

What about other, browner minorities’ stories?  A harsh economic reality, in regard to programming for small or niche audiences, according to Prof. Christian, is that “there’s not much money in web media generally, and even less for content geared toward minority audiences.”  With ever more productions, viewers’ standards raise the bar to a similarly demanding level.  If you’re a minority producer, good won’t cut it.  Your work has to be great, as often as possible.

But Prof. Christian says, “most of the inequalities we see in traditional media are replicated online, particularly with regard to race.  From film students to advertising executives, most people in the industry are white” and men.  ”Still,” he says, “there’s a great diversity in production.  …Black audiences have Issa Rae” the woman behind ‘Awkward Black Girl’ “and Al Thompson. Latinos have the creators of ‘East WillyB.’  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”  In the end, in terms of durability and critical acclaim, entertainment history has proven that distinctiveness wins out.  If you think about it, ethnic diversity is one side of that complex artistic prism.

Another question pops up, though, when you remember that most of the videos on YouTube seem to come from amateur producers who just have too much time on their hands.  The title of that New York Times feature story clearly emphasizes amateurs.

Furthermore, according to that same story, “with or without Hollywood, it’s getting tougher to break through to YouTube stardom and become the next Phil DeFranco.  …Perhaps inevitably, the weird originality gets harder to maintain as new aspirants try to replicate what is already popular.”

One YouTube producer and star, Matt Sloan, made a related point on the “Director’s Cut” program from Wisconsin Public Television in 2010.  He is a co-creator of and actor in the “Chad Vader” series from Blame Society Productions.  “I think a lot of people think that you have to make something that appeals to the masses.  That’s not true; you have to make something that appeals to yourself.  It’s gonna be unexpected, personal and interesting to watch,” Sloan said.

That idea is not news unless, of course, you’re young enough that…it is.  As is often the case, youth rules.

I regret that, after having contacted the people at Wong Fu Productions, Blame Society Productions and Sweet Irony Productions (begun by Jaleel White), none responded in time to press publish.