Do You Hear What I Hear?

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cropped-deer-and-water-source1.jpgThe Sealed Letter by Emma Donaghue, a historical potboiler revisiting an infamous divorce case in Victorian England, seized my attention through the dark January days.  Based on real events, the novel exposed the fate of an attractive and frankly sensuous and sexually adventurous married woman who transgressed strict Victorian mores of acceptable feminine conduct.  The novel’s deftly created characters prove that even in this long gone world which is so often thought of as prudish and staid, a man had the freedom to express himself sexually as he pleased.  If he were discovered transgressing social norms, his life in society could proceed in much the same trajectory.  Not surprisingly, the man could also impose almost total control on every aspect of the life of the women and girls in his life.

A woman who confounded society’s sexual norms, however, did so at great peril.  The novel  examines the situation of an upper class woman whose   existence is essentially erased after her transgression is documented.  She is no longer a mother.  She is no longer a wife.  She is no longer a lady, She is no longer a friend. She has no money.  Her life is anonymous.  Sexual adventure equals annihilation.

The novel is particularly interesting in that it also plumbs the secrets of gender.  The adventuring woman’s fate is imposed not only by male dominated legal and moral institutions but by female Society and women’s scorn.  Further, what types of sexual expression is even tolerable to contemplate is addressed by the characters.  The novel requires consideration of how lesbian love could ever find a place in so restrictive a society.

Women have often been important forces  applying society’s laws, customs and mores which result in strict gender roles diminishing  female opportunity.

All these concepts streamed to mind a few days ago as I was listening  to Robin  Young’s interview on Here and Now on NPR  about Superbowl Sex trafficking Included Minors.

A veteran of the women’s movement, active in campaigns against domestic violence and sexual assault, I listened  with interest.    I registered surprise that the McCain family  ( as in John McCain)  would choose to address this challenge.  The University of Arizona has a center to study the issue!  But, as they say, the devil is in the details.

Five to Six percent of the trafficked persons were minors.  Obviously, that is five to six percent too many.  I join those of whatever political stripe who condemn the violation of the physical integrity of any child in any way, physical or sexual.  Further, I deplore the emotional abuse of children, which I would argue, can include excessively sexualized or violent images or other media for entertainment  or marketing which deluges our children from their earliest awareness.

But women are NOT children.  Men are not children.

There was a  problem with the University of Arizona report as described on the program despite Ms. Young’s best effort. Except to inform as to the number of minors involved,  no distinction was  made between various classes of commercial sexual activity.  ” Trafficking” implies that the persons offering sexual services are not doing so voluntarily but are subject to compulsion.  Typically, minors, undocumented workers who are held  by force, or other persons who are kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery are the concerns.  Sexual trafficking describes a worldwide horror.  The University of Arizona speaker Professor Roe-Sepowitz, however, seemed to conflate into this category, all “online sex ads” and “on-line sex buyers”.  She asks “How are we going to control this culture?”

This interview brought to mind an episode of  Borgen, that wonderful Danish television program in which all things reasonable seem to be able to at least find a voice.  A problem is identified in Danish society: Sex trafficking.  A bill is introduced with criminal sanctions.  A questioning mind wants to know if there is really a problem which requires fixing.  The  later hearings, investigation and drama reveal prejudices of those who condemn prostitutes and  the users of prostitutes and those who suggest that whatever one’s moral beliefs about these issues, society has institutionalized paid sexual services since ancient times: it’s a living, it fills a need and if there is no violence and there is consent, it is not a crime.  Also, it is not merely a heterosexual form of commerce.

We do not live in Denmark.

The impetus for the Arizona study (which engaged “ex-army intelligence” employees utilizing “internet sniffing techniques … to track terrorists in Afghanistan”) is that Arizona is the site of the next Superbowl.

I do not live in Arizona.

Now that the right wing cadre  of “let me throw the first stone” moral dictators have lost their quest to impose Plessy vs. Ferguson civil rights limitations on their GLBTQ citizens, usurping the  sexual freedom of adults under the guise of protecting legitimate victims of abuse, degradation, rape and more is cynical and hateful.

There is a legitimate debate to be heard about the issues of prostitution  with respect to consenting adults.  Nevada had such an ongoing debate successfully.  Sex trafficking is too great a harm to be cynically manipulated.

Are these  internet investigative techniques an expansion of power or are they old news?  Either way, discussion of the  study reveals a use of  government  surveillance and/or  military internet monitoring techniques in civil society for political purposes   which cannot be tolerated.  The stakes are too high.

If we are not watchful, it will be far too easy to see the reconstruction of a world where barriers to self-expression are everywhere. When the headlines are all about children and sex trafficking, we may not hear the words “military spying tactics used against US citizens in the State of Arizona.”

Wadjda

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cropped-praying-girl-1.jpgWadjda is an award-winning movie  marketed as the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia.  As a western feminist, I consumed available press about the film  and decided to watch it as an act of support for the woman who made it and the story I understood that it told.  My conjured  images of black shrouds in the searing sun suggested that I would be moved and educated by this film.  How surprising, then, is the discovery of delight!

Black forms moving slowly on sunlit streets do in fact inhabit the film.  My western eyes see this without fully comprehending as I am willing to suspend judgement.

Behind the gates and doorways, in the daily action of the real lives of the largely  middle class women and girls we encounter in this movie, all is completely as we know it.  Appliances are modern, gleaming and available for the plentiful food.  Western popular music stimulates the tween girl as she surreptitiously creates bracelets and other “black market items.”  Mother and daughter share intimacies in large airy well-decorated rooms.  Discreet tensions and open conflict overflows from these spaces to the rooftop above where the women still dress in jeans and cool shirts looking down on their world.

Certainly the conservative culture controls female life.   Wadjda  watches her dignified, beautiful mother carefully groom her hair and apply her make-up in the morning before disappearing in a swirl of darkness.  The girl  flares in anger when a taxi driver, clearly economically and educationally disadvantaged and possibly an illegal immigrant, chides the woman like a child for being tardy in getting into his taxi for the three-hour ride through the desert to her employment.  The woman’s friend ultimately rejects this ordeal to find liberating employment in a local hospital.  The dynamics gently explored include the powerlessness of the women , the control of the driver, the ingenuity of the children and the authority of a male even if a mere boy.

Wadjda watches the mother she adores measure her own worth through her father’s eyes in terms of the quality and quanity of  food she prepares.  She struggles to comprehend why this beauty  subverts her own desires for style of dress and hair to please a man so rarely present.  Wadjda is beginning to comprehend  too well that, in her world, biology is destiny.

Contemplating the viewing of this film, I considered that this would indeed be a “foreign” culture.  How startling then to understand the complexity of emotions seen in Wadjda as she endures her conservative, female-dominated religious school.  The insistence of conformity in appearance, down to the shoes which are worn, the  absolute prohibition of any feminine decoration, including nail polish, the suspicion of female friendship, much less love, remain cross-cultural signifiers of  patriarchal social systems and female enforcerment.  Similarly, scenes where students mindlessly recite memorized “beliefs,” use of  shaming and group ostracism as disciplinary tactics and consequent consistent competitive subcultures are also well recognised.

Startling and joyous to feel recognition of the delight of  a child’s physical freedom.  As Wadjda runs down the street, even skips a bit, walks solitary but dreams of riding a bike, the memory of that joy is irrepressible.  When a child is lucky enough to have a full stomach, a secure roof and no present threat of physical harm or illness, exploring the sun -filled day with muscular limbs is a complete pleasure.  Even from my sedentary perch, watching Wadjda, I could recall so many  hours jumping in the sun-drenched Chesapeake waters. I could almost feel again the breeze through my hair on a spring evening as I rode my bike through shaded  streets of row homes or as I explored city spots which I could pretend were dark forests.

Watching Wadjda play with her precocious friend Abdullah, I envisioned my fair-haired daughter racing her friends aside a swimming pool in the summertime.  I remember the tension and  gladness I felt as I watched her small frame dart through other little bodies in pursuit of a soccer ball on a fall day.  I felt contentment that, though grown up, she still chases my puppy down the lane.

Wadjda is not a film which will change the world, if indeed any film can.  It is not a soapbox for any particular ideology.  The movie treats character and culture with respect but not without a critical lens.   For me the movie was a surprise.  It was a reminder that there are universals in life which transcend culture and political or religious systems:  childhood, sunlight, clean and open air, curiosity, hope, movement, friendship and love.

 

Remembering Judy

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cropped-dscn0087.jpgMy friend died last night. I love her as I never loved a sister. She suffered a unfathomable illness with dignity and discretion for too long for me to say I am surprised today. No warning could ever have been enough to numb the pain of loss which follows the end of her ordeal.

I trusted Judith’s incredible wisdom.

The Dream

O god, in the dream the terrible horse began

To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,

Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,

And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.

Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground

When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.

Another woman, as I lay half in a swound

Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.

Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.

Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.

No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,

And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.

But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove

Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;

The terrible beast, that no one may understand,

Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

Louise Bogan from PoemHunters. com

She loved Jane Austen. The wonderful charm, wit and humor of Austen was shared by Judith.

I’ve a Pain in my Head

‘I’ve a pain in my head’

Said the suffering Beckford;

To her Doctor so dread.

‘Oh! what shall I take for’t?’

Said this Doctor so dread

Whose name it was Newnham.

‘For this pain in your head

Ah! What can you do Ma’am?’

Said Miss Beckford, ‘Suppose

If you think there’s no risk,

I take a good Dose

Of calomel brisk.’–

‘What a praise worthy Notion.’

Replied Mr. Newnham.

‘You shall have such a potion

And so will I too Ma’am.’

Jane Austen PoemHunters.com

Hours of conversation with Judith about the pitfalls of blind faith and the foundations of rationalism enriched our friendship.

“Faith” is a fine invention

185

“Faith” is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see—

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

Emily Dickinson  PoemHunters.com

Even into the months of her illness, Judith and I enjoyed sharing the names of good books and even good awful books! Though the years, her crackling fireplace on a cold afternoon in the Vermont light or the gently rocking boat moored on a summer day were wonderful seats to enjoy literary companionship.

A Book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson    PoemHunters.com

From my days as an “angry young woman” filled with an undirected sense of confusion at life in an unjust society, Judith spoke a language I admired and understood. She could flash out in anger. She had personally seen the destruction which the paranoia of power, anti-Semitism and greed wreaked upon a life. Generally, however, Judith advocated justice by living. When she took up a cause, she did so with grace and rational argument. Her passion for justice sparkled in her eyes. She taught me to understand and articulate what I had previously only felt. She taught me to feel that which I might unthinkingly articulate. Judith and I shared frustration that we seemed to be continually revisiting the same issues with little lasting progress. A rational realist, Judith continued her advocacy despite such incremental change.

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.

But it was there then,

In front of me,

Bright like a sun—

My dream.

And then the wall rose,

Rose slowly,

Slowly,

Between me and my dream.

Rose until it touched the sky—

The wall.

Shadow.

I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.

No longer the light of my dream before me,

Above me.

Only the thick wall.

Only the shadow.

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!

Langston Hughes  PoemHunters.com

Judith appreciated diverse expressions of art, music and culture. We shared this as well.

I think over again my small adventures.

My Fears,

Those small ones that seemed so big

For all the vital things

I had to get to and to reach;

And yet there is only one great thing,

The only thing,

To live to see the great day that dawns

And the light that fills the world.

(Innuit poem, 19th century)

Judith turned to music and natural beauty when facing some of her own great losses in life and the darkest of her days.

I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow

Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,

Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,

With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,

Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,

A song to fall like water on my head,

And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:

A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool

Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep

To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,

And floats forever in a moon-green pool,

Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Elizabeth Bishop

The solace which Judith found allowed her to continue her life of incredible achievement and genorosity. She lived each day expecting little but demanding from life the civility, beauty and joy which her world could give. She gave of herself what she demanded of others.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

254

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickinson    PoemHunter.com

Judith’s body betrayed her subtly at first, then loudly, creully, and finally vicously.

The Moment

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

Flying Inside Your Own Body

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,

wings of pink blood, and your bones

empty themselves and become hollow.

When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon

and your heart is light too & huge,

beating with pure joy, pure helium.

The sun’s white winds blow through you,

there’s nothing above you,

you see the earth now as an oval jewel,

radiant & seablue with love.

It’s only in dreams you can do this.

Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,

a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;

the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight

down on the think pink rind of your skull.

It’s always the moment just before gunshot.

You try & try to rise but you cannot.

Margaret Atwood

Judith did not lose her gift of friendship, her ability to love, her acute and precious mind.

Love is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat or drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be.  I do not think I would.

  Edna Saint Vincent Millay

At the end, it was excruciating for all.

No Choice

Six foot mounds stalk the fields

of frozen grass. Shrouded disc of moon,

almost full, lights the greying snows

which have lain too long under the veil of smoke.

The steady click, click, click of rain

splinters the silence of the February night.

Breathing, I am burned by the sharp 2 am air.

Too hard, too hard, too hard: say this will not be.

The kitchen at this hour blankets me in warmth.

The flames leap and dance to cast a glow about the room.

Seated in the settee I close my eyes,

No thing remains unmoved by the swaying world within.

Too quick signals from the brain are sent, collide.

Nausea, panic, rage propel me once more through the door,

Gasping in the dimness and the cold as if rising from the sea.

Too hard, too hard, too hard: say this will not be.

Across the road, a still doe looks towards me.

Her beauty is contained briefly within the night.

Suddenly, she vaults forward in the darkened world

that consumes the graceful form as though there had never been

so beautiful a creature; an anticipation of perfection;

the fulfillment of a dream, the incentive for improvement.

The space where the doe had stood survives emptied.

Too hard, too hard, too hard, too hard.

In the absence, in the loss, there is the feeling of so much unsaid.

When We Haven’t Said Goodbye

It’s the chance we did not have,

that metered stroke of a second before we knew

you were leaving, its luminous hand

unscathed by effort in the reigning darkness

like the sand in the hourglass our fist

could not keep from seeping into the lost

and forgotten. The moment was not ours.

The moment we would not have imagined,

borrowed briefly and returned to oblivion

in the aria of chimes played

by the mantel clock on the hour,

or in the wet glimmer of a kiss that we blew

into the open space we never

would have entered, telling us it’s over,

or in the grief of leaving a single word behind

had we said goodbye in time.

Joanne Monte  PoemHunters.com

In the end, however, I mourn the loss of Judith. Driving in the car, listening to music, I see her, suddenly, years ago, smoking a cigarette, I feel a physical pain. I awake at night remembering her patience choosing cobbed corn despite the heat on a summer day, how I admired her graceful movements. I look at a photograph of a family celebration, see her smile. The tears that fall are because I will never hear that laugh again.

A friend like Judith does not enter a life too often. You are foolish if that friendship is not treasured. I have no sadness for days past that might have been. I struggle only to understand how we move ahead without her.

The Wearing of the Rainbow

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rainbows1-11American Irish have shamefully commercialized and trivialized the celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day for decades. I grew up a dual Irish and US citizen in a devout Catholic home. My parents and many close friends and relatives recently emigrated from Donegal. More than once I enjoyed step-dancing in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York. I willingly joined the chorus of derision for american green beer,”traditional” corn beef and cabbage, pea-colored milkshakes, garish green shirts, disneyfied shamrocks and leprechauns. Among this chorus, however, no chant was directed at the brightly colored rainbow, for it was that which delivered the pot of gold.

Strange then to see that in 2014, the organizers of the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade still refuse to let a rainbow flag fly in their annual march lest the onlookers become aware that the Irish too are GLBTQ.

Stranger still the arrogance of the organizers. In reply to the announcement that Mayor DeBlasio would not march in a parade which discriminates against gay and lesbian New Yorkers, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League in New York City appeared gleeful. Newspapers quoted him stating he was “delighted” not to have marching in his parade a mayor who does not want to be associated with “Irish Catholics.”

I do not know Mr. Donohue. I can assume from the spelling of his name, however, that he is not an Irish Catholic but at best, “American Irish.” It is a fair assumption that the numbers of “Irish Catholics” parading in New York along any public official in 2014 will not be substantial.

In fact, condemnation resounds for Donohue’s bigotry voiced equally by the “Irish” and the “Catholics”

Paint homophobia Out of Existence GAYRIGHTSBACK DeBLASIO
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/church-moving-towards-acceptance-of-gay-people-1.1689449

Even the Irish Catholic Church is aware of the cruelty and inhumanity, the unchristian, nature if you will, of  its traditional anti-gay teaching.

A review of press of Northern Ireland and the of the Republic demonstrates an active concern with LBGTQ issues. A legislative study demonstrates that nationally both the Republic of Ireland and the North of Ireland are far ahead of most states in the United States in terms of civil justice such as equality in foster care opportunities,adoption rights, civil unions and consideration of same-sex marriage.

What is overwhelming, however, is that the Catholic League could choose to primly to defend the exclusion of certain persons from simply walking down the street carrying identifying symbols of pride. At the same time, the Catholic League which attempts to claim a “moral high ground” on issues of gender refuses to even address abuse with the Catholic Church.Catholic League Website This is a scandal which has deeply distressed Catholic society. Irish society has demanded that the Catholic Church compensate the injured through the courts even as it recognises the limits of such compensation schemes to ever heal these deep, infested wounds. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/some-magdalene-survivors-to-get-compensation-before-christmas-1.1587388Serial Clerical Child Abuse

In this month of the Olympics,national flags fly often and high.  . I realize as I pass a television tuned to the events that my upbringing in an immigrant home somehow instilled within me a sense of the “other,” the “observer” and a fundamental incomprehension of knee-jerk tribalism. Instead, I honor the deeply instilled values I understand. The beauty and solemnity of our finest Churches move me deeply. I respect the sacrifices of the workers who built them, the women who cleaned them , the worshipers who tended them and the clerics who prayed in them. I am in awe of the tapestry of cultural treasures bequeathed to civil society by the church through language, literature, art and music. The spirit of the Irish as understood through its history and reflected in its culture, landscape, agriculture, architecture and diaspora are extremely precious to me. Not because we are a nation of drunks and of drudges. I embrace my “Irish Catholic” heritage willingly for my much missed mother, my maiden aunt, my gay uncle, my chinese cousin, the nun who is my father’s niece by marriage, my queer daughter, and my jewish husband. Maybe I’ll go back to the parade when I can step dance underneath a rainbow.

Of Fantasy & Fortune

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As of January 24, 2014, the fourth homeless person this year succumbed to frigid cold in Philadelphia. John Smulligan Jr would have turned 31 today, according to an Inquirer, Philly.com article.He was a graduate of New York University, down on his luck after tragedy and illness entered his life. Proof, one might say, that unspeakable things might happen to any one of us given the wrong eventualities in life.

Would that Mr. Smulligan’s tragic fate were an isolated event. This year (still in its first days) in the U.S. alone, the media brims with reportage of the ravages of homelessness and hunger, unemployment and illness. Often these reports rest in glossy magazines above heart wrenching photographs of people aside glistening images of sumptuous foods, romantic seascapes or superfluous products.

As has been said so often one must fear it will soon become the stuff of another political cliché without result, we indeed live in two economic realities. All our cities and towns boast well landscaped, expertly tended homes with well designed vistas, quaint shops and efficient services. Often merely yards apart, decay and disinterest ruminate through the structures and institutions which serve the people who are of lesser financial means and political power.

The central myth which permits coexistence of these two realities is actually quite simple: the belief that unforseen fortunate things might happen to any one of us given the right eventualities in life.

Perhaps, this myth is the fantasy which fuels the embrace by so many of the television series “Downton Abbey”

A costume-period soap opera, with a glacial and weak narrative,Downton has, nonetheless, inspired all things Downton, from mugs and tee-shirts, tea sets and jams to museum shows and travel tours. This is, of course, in addition to the series garnering a mass audience and much media attention. While at first this strikes one as somewhat curious, upon reflection, this might be entirely proper in our economic and political climate. Downton is, quite simply, at the heart, a glittering and lavish ode to the capitalist myths and mantras held most dear in our culture.

In the current season, the grand English estate has survived the unspeakable horrors of World War I. Not unscathed has the family remained. Loss of life, health and sanity touched even the Grantham family and fellow gentry. The gruesome violence was a great leveler at the stage in warfare when those in battles included the grand as well as more of the ordinary. Nor did the health hazards of modernization, the influenza outbreak, such as, leave the family without scars. Indeed, even the darker risks arising from the hallmarks of modernization (the Titanic, the motor car) deeply wounded the family.

Still, the Granthams who survive remain largely fixed in their traditional world view. Unquestioning, they are dressed and undressed, pampered and served by a battalion of staff who live below the stairs in unadorned quarters without privacy or the dignity of being addressed, with rare exception, by other than a family name. Intimate family matters are discussed in front of household staff as though no other human being were present. Ladies lounge in luxury eating full breakfasts in silken robes in rooms filled with sunlight and crackling fires. As the staff, dressed in subdued colors, toil and serve, the aristocrats daily don formal dress, women wearing fashionable brilliant hues and elbow length gloves. This detailed ritual is precisely executed for the simple purpose that a family may sit around a dining table together and eat a meal.

Of course, among the staff, there is never harmony. The man in charge, though sometimes evidencing wisdom above his station and a human heart, largely growls at the personnel to remind them that they are inferior. Footmen compete with each other for the affection of kitchen maids and scuttle each other’s confidence. Women fear electrical appliances beyond reason. Servants evidence ignorance of city life, ambition, morality. The viewer is invited to accept that it is unfortunate for the staff that modern times will eliminate traditional service jobs. We are asked to believe that a man who does not immediately accept a demotion in a service position is foolhardy indeed.

Most significantly, the gentry at and around Downton still cling to the Colonial power of England. Despite the fact that a son-in-law is a former Irish Republican, within a few short years, he is no longer at home in the land of his birth. Such must be the seductiveness of the life of the Upper Classes and the lure of the Colonial Power that a man recently willing to sacrifice his life for his country now doesn’t even take his daughter home to visit the country of his birth. Other colonial natives, from India, Australia, Singapore and the African colonies, such as, are rarely seen. A black jazz musician is celebrated when he remains appropriately in the background. Yet when seen by the gentry as exceeding his “place” and dancing with a young, white Lady, he is quickly removed from her company. The distaste and censure are shared by all. Not even the turncoat Irish Republican experiences class solidarity with the talented man.

It is not that the Grathams and their kind are immune to the moral duty to give unto to others. The commoner mother of the late son-in-law of the Earl is the Conscience of the family. She indefatigably promotes the welfare of the villagers in various health initiatives and in efforts of individual patronage. But what is most telling, for the Granthams: one must be secretive about generosity.

When a tenant who has been “lawfully” evicted seeks reinstatement, the Earl smiles approvingly at the bold suggestion of the tenant that the families had worked the land in question for generations “in partnership.” (A suggestion which undoubtedly, five years earlier would have evoked the violent ire of a true Irish Republican who would have witnessed or inherited countless tales of the ransacking and destruction of many tenant homes.) With a sense of true generosity, the Lord arranges for the tenant to resume the farm by himself making a loan. But no one is to know! Of course, the tale requires that family members discover the fact of the Earl’s good heart. Alas, decorum requires that this too remain a secret. Indeed, the good Earl should not be shamed with the fact that others have discovered his empathy and generosity.

In the world of 1920’s England, the ruling class of many centuries, exhausted and traumatized as was the western world by the horror of World War I, perceived an uncertain future. The upper classes sought to consolidate their wealth. For some less privileged, even some of the working class, modern times brought new opportunities. Most, however, were left not able to reach the fabulous riches of their day.

Today, we hear calls of the socially aware, of the politicians, in the State of the Union, even, to beware income inequality. We turn away in mass numbers to enter the world of the fabulously if fictional rich. If only we stay mindful that the ultimate fiction is the fantasy that is pedaled: the chauffeur does not really become a member of the family and the frog will never become a prince.

Realizations in Black and White

/ maggiemcshane / 1 Comment

 

I love film.  I love watching films in a nice theater with deep comfortable seats and equipped with an audio system that will allow the soundtrack to encircle me.  I have found films healthy food for my intellect, enhancing for my literary sense, challenging for my mind, directing for my reading.  But I can recall few  films that can begin to meet the power or the challenging intellectual and emotional impact of   Fruitvale Station.

If you had asked me before I entered the theater whether I was aware of racism in our society, I would have said, quite reflexively, in fact,  “of course.”

However, driving home after watching the power of this film, I recalled what had seemed to me at the time an embarrassing, but not so important incident. Leaving a medical facility while under the influence of anesthetic after a medical procedure, I was assaulted by a man, although not injured.  When I reported the incident to the facility staff, the first question posed:”Was he black?”

I did not realize then that because I did not query back, “Why, does it make a difference?” I was complicit in a racist exchange.

In many discussions, in many places, at many times, I might have posed as a person who had special insight into “the race question.”  I might have told you that I learned about white privilege early when I attended a 1% white elementary school in West Philadelphia.  I probably would have shared how it was through the indiscriminate brutality of the nuns towards the children of color and their simultaneous treatment of the white children as “special,” that I saw the ugly face of racism and the embarrassing privilege of being white in the U.S.   I possibly might have   recounted my early experience of friendship with black children, exchanging and sharing snacks, believing this represented my own surmounting of our society’s racial divide.  Or I might have opened up about the magical friendship which I shared with my best friend in college, Sheena.  Sadly, this friendship was lost in those politically charged days of the late 1970s  when  identity politics was such a personal struggle.  Measuring identity as a black woman and its room for friendship with white women took a terrible toll,  yet this was one of the tasks which could become paramount in our young world where we claimed, “the personal is political,” convinced that we understood.

If you had asked me about racists, I most likely would have told you about my family of origin:  Irish immigrants and their offspring who spouted hateful statements as the civil rights struggle, the assassinations, the legal changes unfolded before our eyes as I grew up in the 1960’s.

Yes, I  was quite comfortable with that my liberal credentials allowed me understanding of the “race question” in the United States.

Not anymore.  Not after experiencing Fruitvale Station.

The film has been criticized by bastions of conservative propaganda as “whitewashing” the factual life of Oscar Grant, who was executed by a white Oakland police officer in 2008.  This criticism is almost the point.

Fruitvale Station bases its plot on the life of Oscar Grant the day before he was murdered.  It is implicit in the film’s action that we cannot know whether every word uttered, every embrace exchanged, each flash of anger, each moment of kindness is “real” or fictional.

We have learned that fifty people can witness the same event and report it entirely differently.  Do we not understand at the very least that one person’s honest statement of fact can differ dramatically from that of another?

What matters in this film is not that this WAS the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, but that this could have been the experience of Mr. Grant or any one of the young black men sacrificed on the United States’ altar of racism.

As I watched the film, I slowly traveled a path of new awareness as to how white supremacy infiltrates the life of a young black man, his family, and his friends.  From the fear he sees in the eyes of a white woman whom he addresses without knowing her, to the realization he accepts that for an unconnected, disrespected young black male, there will be no second chances, I saw reflections of myself, my family, my friends.  The search for a greeting card with black faces, while perhaps a cliché, in this film is a moment of transcendent understanding.  The image of a dead pit-bull is heartbreaking as we  comprehend that we are often easily aroused to sympathy for abused animals even as we are reluctant to engage in a conversation about the depth of the racial divide.

Perhaps most stunningly the film moved my consciousness from the screen to the theater.  Here, the audience for this film in an upscale art house theater was at least 50% people of color. Never before had I shared a film experience with such a diverse audience in this cinema generally populated with white, urban film buffs.

Ultimately we are left with a true image, that of Oscar Grant’s child.  It is this achingly poignant image that testifies to the truth of this narrative.  In the child’s face, we see pain passed on to another generation that will struggle in a society ravaged by a humiliating racial history.  The natural movement of her eyes escaping the camera affirms that it matters not whether Oscar Grant in fact decided to “go straight” the day before he died.  It matters only that, as real-time video captured in this case, a young black father was targeted to the exclusion of any white train riders. He was accused of crime based on the color of his skin, what that skin color means to whites. What matters is the brutality that was witnessed and tolerated by hundreds of onlookers who lacked the courage to intervene.  What matters is the shot that ended another life which had limited chances to change the narrative he entered at the moment of his birth.

I left that theater with a sense of shame. Shame at my skin color, shame at my middle class life, shame at my education, and shame at my foolishness believing I could even begin to understand.

(This post was first written in January, 2013 when the film appeared in theaters.  The film is now available on DVD.)