Spike Lee

‘Air’: Michael Jordan’s Silence Speaks Volumes About the Marketing of Black Athletes

Why does a film give Michael Jordan, the man who had so much to do with Nike’s success, so little to say? It is because the NBA legend isn’t the film’s subject, but its object.

The film Air, which tells the story of Nike’s signing of Michael Jordan, isn’t actually about Michael Jordan at all.

It’s about the beauty of design and the seduction of marketing. It’s about power suits, purple Porsches and Rolexes. It’s about white men languishing through midlife crises who salivate over the branding potential of a star basketball player.

As for Jordan? Audiences just see his back as he strolls into the Nike offices and his hands as he admires the Air Jordan prototype – but never his face. In the entire film, he utters only three words.

Much has been made about Michael Jordan’s representation or lack thereof in Air.

How could a film about one of the most famous Black men in the world obscure his presence?

The film’s true power is its ability to convey an unnerving truth about the sneakers’ mystique: Jordan’s athletic ability was crucial to the success of Nike and Air Jordan; not so much his face – and definitely not his words.

In this way, Air becomes the story of how a struggling company created one of the most successful brands in the world on the back of a Black body, a tale as old as America itself.

Liftoff

In 1983, Nike’s marketing director, Rob Strasser, wrote an internal memo explaining the importance of using star athletes to sell their products: “Individual athletes, even more than teams, will be the heroes; symbols more and more of what real people can’t do anymore – risk and win.”

This memo appeared during a turbulent period for Nike. The company had gone public in 1980 with a listless opening. In 1984, the company posted its first losing quarter and initiated a monthlong wave of layoffs employees called the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

Who would be that hero? The ailing shoe company sought a body brimming with transcendent talent, a superhuman athlete.

Enter the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan, of whom Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird once said, “I think he’s God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

During the summer of 1984, Nike shoe designer Peter Moore and Strasser gathered in the Washington, DC, office of Jordan’s agent, David Falk.

In a scene authors Rodrigo Corral, Alex French and Howie Kahn detail in their 2017 book, Sneakers, Falk, after exchanging pleasantries, looked to Strasser and said, “Rob, I’ve got an idea. I want to marry Michael to your airbag technology.”

Nike had developed its air cushions in 1977. It involved infusing the midsoles of shoes with pockets of pressurised gas to absorb shock, but the company was having a difficult time marketing it.

Falk then paused for dramatic effect, before uttering, “Air Jordan.”

In 1985, Nike released the first Air Jordan sneaker. A year later, Nike sold US$100 million worth of Air Jordan shoes and apparel, boosting the company’s profits to $59 million from only $10 million the year before.

After 38 years and 37 iterations of their flagship line of basketball shoes, Jordans have become a transcendent cultural talisman memorialising Michael Jordan’s career and basketball’s influence on American life – but also, his labour.

Today, Nike is worth a staggering $200 billion. Meanwhile, the Jordan brand, which was spun off into its own company in 1997, brings in billions of dollars per year, of which Jordan pockets 5%.

Buying a piece of Blackness

I’m writing a book that explores the intimate connections between sneakers and Blackness. In it, I argue that the Black body’s long history of objectification and commodification undergirds the branding, mass consumption and culture of sneakers.

What Air does better than anything else is to unbox a provocative, sobering truth about Jordans’ meteoric rise: They are cast as literal extensions of Black bodies. They represent the literal molding of a Black man’s feet, with their vulcanized rubber, leather and laces encapsulating Black athletic greatness and cool.

Finally figuring out how to sell Nike’s airbag technology was the other side of Air’s recipe for success.

In truth, Nike Air was a curiosity. It was unstable and unreliable. But runners became enamored with the idea of a cushioning technology they couldn’t see and much less understand. People knew they loved the sensation of Air even though the “how” remained a mystery.

The seemingly simple concept of explaining Air had eluded the company. In an interview with journalist Scoop Jackson, Bruce Kilgore, Nike designer responsible for the Air Force 1, articulated the difficulty of taking the air midsole from idea to execution to market: “How do you take something inherently unstable and put [it] into [a basketball shoe] that is all about stability?”

But six years after the development of the air midsole, David Falk cracked the code of Nike’s transparent, little black box: Don’t market the technology. Market the body that wears it.

This marketing ploy to shift the attention of consumers from mundane pockets of polyurethane to on-court performances, while indeed innovative, centers an incredibly old tradition of Americans seeing Black bodies as being spectacularly convertible to profit.

Air Jordans romanticise an American wistfulness for the stoic and branded Black workhorse. John Henry, the legendary steel driver, was a hero, and so, too, is Jordan. For Black bodies – Jordan and Henry, but also athletes like Damar Hamlin, who suffered a near-fatal injury during an NFL game in early 2023 – heroism is articulated through the hypnotising anthem of toil and exhaustion.

Sports provide an easy cover for the perpetuation of this myth. Disgraced sports commentator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder once said, “The Black is a better athlete to begin with … They can jump higher and run faster.”

How far removed is the marketing of Air Jordans from the words of Jimmy the Greek?

As the voiceover in the first Air Jordan television ad proclaims, “Who says man was not meant to fly?”

Bodies ripe for the picking

Before Nike’s dominance, brands like Pony, Converse and Adidas were popular on street corners and basketball courts around the country – a history told by DJ and author Bobbito Garcia in his 2003 book, Where’d You Get Those?

Nike and the Air Jordan, however, represented a watershed moment in which this bubbling market of “sneaker fiends,” as Garcia calls them, went mainstream. Through artful placement in Black films – specifically Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing – with an assist from Michael Jackson and hip-hop culture and music, the Air Jordan line transformed sneakers into one of the most important footwear items and fashion brands the world has ever witnessed.

Nike would go on to feature scores of other Black athletes in its ad campaigns, and the names of these heroes ring off the tongue sharp and proud like a trumpet’s blare: Bo Jackson, Penny Hardaway, Kobe Bryant, Venus and Serena Williams, Lebron James.

None of this would be possible without Nike’s big bet on Jordan.

So why does a film give Michael Jordan, the man who had so much to do with Nike’s success, so little to say?

I believe the answer is as uncomfortable as it is simple: Michael Jordan isn’t the film’s subject, but its object.

In one of the film’s more memorable scenes, Nike marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, played by Matt Damon, goes to visit the Jordan family in Wilmington, North Carolina.

When he arrives, he greets James, Michael’s father, before being passed off to the real decision-maker: Deloris Jordan, the matriarch of the Jordan clan. Viola Davis portrays Deloris with a drowning depth. Every utterance and glance simmers.

“Five generations of Jordans are buried in these forests,” she announces as she sits with Vaccaro in their backyard. She’s polite but distant. Her piercing eyes know to be wary of unannounced visits from white men in shiny cars. Everyone wants a piece of her son, and it’s her job to keep him whole.

In the film, before unveiling the Air Jordan 1 to Vaccaro and Strasser, Peter Moore, played by Matthew Maher, describes the shoe: “It has the logic of water, like shoe was always here, like it always existed.”

What Moore cannot know is how right he really is. Deloris Jordan and those five buried generations have always been here.

The Black body, from America’s inception, has always been there, as cotton and as sugar, ripe for the picking.

A. Joseph Dial, Disco Network Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Purdue University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Toronto International Film Festival 2020: Where Art Meets Politics

As TIFF (September 10-19) takes off in a new post-pandemic avatar, showcasing names like Regina King, Spike Lee, Chloe Zhao and Mira Nair, it also remains true to its commitment to gender parity and diversity.

As the 2020 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) kicks off, one of its most anticipated entries is actor Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night in Miami. Earlier this week it became the first film directed by a female African-American filmmaker to be screened at the Venice Film Festival.

A still from filmmaker Regina King’s ‘One Night in Miami.’

King had won the supporting actress Oscar for her dignified and reflective performance as the mother of a young girl trying to prove the innocence of her lover, falsely accused of rape, in Barry Jenkins’ achingly romantic and piercingly political film, If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). Now, with One Night in Miami, she is being pitched as a frontrunner for the Academy award for best director.

Based on Kemp Powers’ award-winning play of the same name, One Night In Miami is a fictionalised account of a momentous night in 1964 when four Black icons—boxer Cassius Clay Jr. (who changed his name to Muhammad Ali later that year), Nation of Islam leader and human rights activist Malcolm X, singer-songwriter-composer Sam Cooke and football player Jim Brown—had gathered together to celebrate Clay’s historic dethronement of the reigning heavyweight champion, Sonny Liston.

King’s film is a perfect fit for TIFF, in that it exemplifies the values of gender parity and racial equality that the festival has consciously tried to underline through its programming without giving short shrift to artistic merit. In that sense, it presents a contrast to the Venice film festival, which is critiqued ever so often for its lack of substantive gender representation and political heft.

Also read: Chadwick Boseman and the Global Power and Limits of Afrofuturism

In keeping with Canada’s policy of multiculturalism, TIFF has consistently shown a strong commitment to the representation of women, Black people, indigenous people, and people of colour in its selection. In 2017, the festival embarked on a five-year fundraising campaign, ‘Share Her Journey’, aimed at increasing opportunities for women before and behind the camera.

Not just that, TIFF’s Media Inclusion Initiative, now in its third year, approaches the task of accreditation with care, being mindful of the principle of diversity — it seeks to amplify the voices of eligible media practitioners from across the world — Black, indigenous, people of colour, LGBTQ+ and female film critics.

The last in the Golden Triangle of fall festivals — Venice, Telluride and Toronto —TIFF, especially its People’s Choice award, is also regarded as the barometer for the Oscar nominations which follow later.

Unlike the somewhat rarefied ambience of a highbrow Cannes or Venice, the most heartening aspect of TIFF is the openness and ease of access that it offers to cinephiles. In a year when the global COVID 19 pandemic has called for a major shape-shifting exercise in the film festival circuit, where being a part of TIFF translates to watching the Toronto film selection on a digital platform in the confines of one’s home in Mumbai, the human touch of a lively on-ground event is missing – especially the Torontonian’s passion for films, the overwhelming public participation, the patient, mile-long queues and cheerful, efficient volunteers across venues, from TIFF Bell Lightbox and Scotiabank to Elgin and Winter Garden theatres.

Another downer is the lack of availability of some of the major titles—like Chaitanya Tamhane’s portrait of a classical musician, The Disciple—that have been geo-blocked for specific regions, in this case India.

A still from Mira Nair’s ‘A Suitable Boy.’

The film package is smaller too. Unlike the usual 300-plus films that comprise the official selection at TIFF every year, this year it is a package of just 50 films. But what is clear is that the festival remains anchored to the principle of diversity and inclusivity.

Of all the titles in this year’s line-up, 43% are directed, co-directed, or created by women, and 49% of titles are directed, co-directed, or created by Black, indigenous, or POC (people of colour) filmmakers. The overall number of speakers at this year’s Industry Conference represents a 50/50 gender parity, as do TIFF Talent Development initiatives such as TIFF Studio and Filmmaker Lab.

Among the major titles helmed by women this year, are Academy award winning actor Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised in which she also stars in the lead role of a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter struggling to take a shot at the title and regain custody of the son she had abandoned earlier. Describing it as a “classic redemption story”, Cameron Bailey, the artistic director and co-head of TIFF, writes in the festival catalogue: “Berry crafts a textured portrait of a woman defined by her fight-or-flight reactions to the challenges life has thrown her way. Through her explosive performance, the character Jackie simultaneously radiates tightly coiled rage and heart-rending vulnerability.”

Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair’s six part BBC One series, an adaptation of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, will bring down the curtain on the festival on September 19 (Indian viewers will be able to watch it on Netflix later in October).

Also read: Taking Cinema Out of Expensive Halls

Acclaimed filmmaker Naomi Kawase explores the issue of adoption in contemporary Japan in True Mothers. Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as a woman with an itinerant heart, who keeps moving on in life to find new workplaces and homes, along America’s West. French writer, actor, filmmaker Suzanne Lindon’s debut feature, Spring Blossom, is about a teenager’s forbidden love for an older man. All of 20 now, Lindon wrote the audacious script when she was just 15. Another debut title to watch out for is Irish filmmaker Cathy Brady’s Wildfire, which locates the troubled lives of its protagonists—two sisters—in the larger political turmoil in the country’s own history.

Stacey Lee’s documentary Underplayed focuses on gender inequality in the electronic-music industry. Tracey Deer is making her debut with her part autobiographical Beans, a coming-of-age story about a young Mohawk girl during the Oka Crisis of 1990, when there was a standoff between the indigenous communities and the government in Quebec. She is slated to receive the TIFF Emerging Talent Award this year.

Academy Award–winning actor Kate Winslet gets this year’s TIFF Tribute Actor Award; the other awardee being the legendary Sir Anthony Hopkins. Winslet stars with Saoirse Ronan in Francis Lee’s same sex love story, Ammonite, that has been referred to as “2020’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire” by Cannes Film Festival’s delegate general Thierry Fremaux. It is being touted as one of Winslet’s best performances.

A still from Spike Lee’s ‘David Byrne’s American Utopia’, the opening film of the festival.

The festival opens with a timely film: Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia, a filmed version of former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s powerful Broadway show, conceptualised as an “anti-dote” to a divided and divisive America. Even as it raises social and political issues, “Spike’s latest joint [as his films are referred to] is a call to connect with one another, to protest injustice, and, above all, to celebrate life,” says the festival catalogue.

TIFF also marks 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement with special events under the banner of Planet Africa 25, started in 1995 as a programme dedicated to cinema from Africa and the African diaspora, which had a ten-year long run. This year, four new films from the selection have been highlighted as the inheritors of that spirit, among them Tommy Oliver’s 40 Years A Prisoner, the story of nine people from Philadelphia-based Black liberation group, MOVE, who were convicted of murdering a police officer they likely didn’t kill, and remain in prison 40 years later; and Dawn Porter’s election year documentary, The Way I See It, in which the former White House photographer Pete Souza dwells on the presidency of Barack Obama, , having had a ringside view of it. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s discussion on art, activism, and Black Lives Matter brings together the concerns of gender and race relations yet again, just like Regina King’s One Night In Miami. It is TIFF, after all.

Namrata Joshi is an independent writer and well-known film critic. She is the author of Reel India: Cinema off the Beaten Track (Hachette, 2019).

Two New Documentaries That Show Us the Lasting Impact of American Music in the 60s

For today’s generations, the films hold many lessons about the creative force of the individual.

At a time when the US is under much pressure and being reviled around the world, often with an ugly sense of schadenfreude, two films that released earlier this year (in America so far, hopefully elsewhere later) provide a much-needed perspective on the country’s cultural influence that changed the world for good. Once Were Brothers and Laurel Canyon are ostensibly just music documentaries but like the music itself, a lot else.

Once Were Brothers tells the story of The Band – formed by four Canadians and an American, beginning life as a back-up band (as the Hawks), and then being chosen by Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s to be his touring band. Dylan’s presence and ensuing influence inspired them to artistic courage and originality that elevated them to becoming one of the most influential and revered music bands in rock history. Sadly, their story ended prematurely, but with the greatest send-off in music history till date – Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Waltz. Forty-four years after that landmark goodbye, this film tells their entire story, from their main songwriter Robbie Robertson’s point-of-view, addressing later years controversies as well.

Laurel Canyon is a two-part miniseries that tells the story of how a rustic suburb in central Los Angeles became an unlikely centre in the 1960s for a musical revolution that changed not just America but the world. At its centre was another Canadian musician who had moved there – Joni Mitchell, confident in an otherworldly way, with a gift for the ages, using her own influences to become a huge influence herself eventually in an ecosystem that also spawned The Byrds, CSN&Y, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, The Mamas & the Papas, Jackson Browne, The Flying Burrito Brothers and many more, including the Elvis of the 1970s – Linda Ronstadt, who made many a career by simply covering an artist’s song with her once-in-a-generation voice.

Once Were Brothers notably touches upon Dylan’s world tour with The Band in 1965/66, when they were roundly booed every time (sometimes even had stuff thrown at them) as they began their blues-rock set, at venue after venue, because of those who believed Dylan was besmirching the purity of folk music. The disturbance was to an extent where members of The Band (with an average age of 24) lost confidence, and a “beat-up” Levon Helm even quit.

A steely and defiant Dylan, himself just 25, least interested in cashing in on his already legendary “folkie” status but on expanding the boundaries of popular music would say “just go on playing” to his band-members when the booing began. To his audience, he would snarl, “You all may remember this song and how this goes, well, here’s how it goes now.” What might have looked like masochism then actually was one of the most significant cultural moments in history, as it literally changed the world’s expectation from popular music.

Thereafter, The Band settled down near Woodstock, New York, and created some of the most influential music in history, both with and without Dylan. Their initial solo albums mixed folk, blues, gospel, R&B, classical, and rock and roll with American history in a way that had never been done or has been since then.

Also Read: Review: Bob Dylan’s Latest Album ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ Is a Grand Summing Up

Among the many stories in Laurel Canyon is also one about 23-year-old British Blues star Eric Clapton visiting Los Angeles in 1968, making a trip to Laurel Canyon, being invited to a house where 25-year-old Joni Mitchell was tuning her guitar and playing. He was so transfixed and blown away by her unique tunings and what she was doing with them that it played a significant role in his changing musical direction and focussing on becoming a singer-songwriter himself, much in the footsteps of what those musicians were doing (curiously, The Band‘s debut album was his other big influence).

The musical movement, even revolution, spawned by the Laurel Canyon-settled musicians was about looking inwards using the musical idiom of its time, an inner seeking that led to the “confessional” singer-songwriter, most memorably established with Joni Mitchell’s 1971 masterpiece ‘Blue‘. Dylan’s searing take on the confessional album would constitute the “singer-songwriter” movement’s apogee with arguably his finest album as well – 1975’s ‘Blood On the Tracks‘, but that’s another story. But those familiar with Rodriguez’s story (from ‘Searching For Sugar Man‘) who failed to make a mark in the US in the early 70s and was rediscovered after becoming a star in South Africa years later, would understand why even his quality music had little chance to stand out amidst the dizzying standard of music coming out at that time.

As Dickie Davis, the former manager of Buffalo Springfield has said in another documentary on the subject, in that period of LA music, the bedroom was the Laurel Canyon neighbourhood, the living room was the Troubadour (the club where many of those artists made their mark) and the church was marijuana. Definite mind-expansion and flights of seeking notwithstanding, in the last lies the main reason for this movement not lasting longer, primarily because of its upgradation to cocaine and heroin, and the destruction in its wake. And also because capitalism had the last say even there (as evidenced by the rise and trajectory of Eagles).

But, at its peak, the vulnerability that many of the Laurel Canyon artists embraced to create that music itself became the product. It also became the tilling and the fertilizer that shaped America’s cultural soil, becoming the conscience of not just that country at the time but of a promising new world, that despite the crime on the streets and wars on the anvil, constituted a trajectory that might have transformed it forever, “hippie” slurs notwithstanding.

The progressive and humanist slant of that trajectory is often overlooked today. It wasn’t just because of the second wave of feminism that more women made indelible marks on American music at the time than any period in their history till date, but because of the prevailing mindset then of individual talent over all else. Of course, now we have those who dismiss that as “white privilege” but look the other way when asked to explain the path-breaking African American music of the time (Spike Lee wouldn’t have a soundtrack for his films even today if not for that period) was embraced so emphatically by the mainstream. It went far beyond the momentum of the civil rights movement. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder in the 1960s/70s (very much products of their time, including its political climate) ended up having as much social impact as leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr did. Franklin and Wonder were in their mid-20s at their creative peak, while Gaye was in his early 30s.

At a time when the average age in The Beatles was 28 when they split up after changing the world creatively (something disconcertedly unthinkable today), youth actually represented something entirely different than what it does now. It was the most productive creative period in culture, not just music. It is worth asking if the greatest loss to the human race in recent years is the vital life-force of people in their 20s taken out of human evolution, especially the cultural component.

Instead of young people unflinching about confronting their innermost feelings, we now have a generation terrified of a point-of-view that is not their own. Instead of an appetite for clear-eyed discourse and reason, it is borrowed emotional outrage advocating half-formed ideas now, generating palpably postured empathy. Instead of a healthy exchange of ideas and celebrating their diversity, this youth is now shutting down conversations by invoking a mob in the name of outcoming diversity. Instead of seeking and exploring, they are warring and instigating, with the ludicrous idea that solidarity within a group (an unabashed call to tribalism) is more meaningful than individual talents or beliefs. Instead of building on universally undeniable evolution for greater equality, the ‘woke generation’ wants to tear down the results of hard-fought battles with no clarity about what to replace it with, deluded enough to believe they can “correct” history. The ‘start-up’ generation wants to restart history.

In any other era, they would have been laughed out of every room, instead of adding to the zombification of society; it really shouldn’t have required the Harper’s letter to accentuate this. The quality of celebrities at any given time and place reveal all about the societies they represent. On that count, the two above-mentioned films demonstrate what is really different between that generation and this one. The celebrities of that time were people whose music has lasted more than 50 years, not as nostalgia or even inspiration but as sheer stand-alone songs, even if taken out of context. Forget creating music that lasts even five years now, most of the celebrities of these times seem unable to even build on the enormous strides that generation made (which uncoincidentally chimes in with the woke mindset as well).

With social media meeting unbridled capitalism, with virtue-signalling and low attention spans lighting the way forward for the youth today, it is not surprising to hear the highly disposable music around us, with comic book cinema and “shock content” prevailing. They haven’t got here in a vacuum of course; the generations before led them to this too. But “illiberal left” is a long way to travel from good intentions, and it is really is time to look at the bigger picture before any irreversible damage is done.

Our cultural preoccupations are the most potent markers of this decay. Which is why it might be hugely valuable for new generations to visit these two highly entertaining and enriching films about American East Coast/West Coast music for the ages. And find within themselves a Bob Dylan who takes on the mob and wins big or a Joni Mitchell with the poise and confidence to reinvent an art form. And also to understand why the US’s real superpower was actually cultural.

Jaideep Varma is a writer and film director.

Pa. Ranjith: My Courage Comes From Babasaheb Ambedkar

In a wide ranging interview to The Wire, the director talks about resistance to caste discrimination, what it can learn from Black cultural expression in the US and symbolism in his movies.

From the absurdist Attakathi (2012) to his blockbuster hit Kaala (2018), director Pa. Ranjith has won both critical acclaim and commercial appeal. He also has his detractors. His directorial debut Attakathi broke mainstream Tamil cinema’s formula for romantic stories. Madras (2014) became sharply more political and is centred around the culture of political graffiti, a practise widespread in Tamil Nadu.

Speaking labour rights in Kabali (2016) and land reform in Kaala (2018), both starring Rajinikanth, have made him a well-known name outside of Tamil cinema’s usual viewership.

His Neelam Productions has released documentaries (Ladies and Gentlewomen, Dr Shoe Maker and others) and feature films (The Last Bomb of WWII, Pariyerum Perumal).

In an interview to The Wire, he speaks about ‘mass films’, caste discrimination and Dr B.R. Ambedkar.

Though Tamil mainstream cinema is often political, there is a radical ideological shift in your own films. What importance do “mass” films have and what has changed?

Of all artistic mediums, cinema is deeply embedded among people. In Tamil Nadu especially, it has a crucial place. Cinema fuelled the spread of the Dravidian movement because they didn’t think of cinema as mere entertainment. Dravidian filmmakers created a space to state their mandate, the struggles they stood for and to foreground Tamil culture, land and language pride.

In later years, many films on land identity [particularly rural narratives, which were popular] became about the pride of dominant castes, under the cover of ‘celebrating Tamil culture’. When I, as a Dalit, watch these films, I have to ask: “Where am I in these? Where is the justice for my community? If they’re speaking of Tamil culture, why isn’t my culture depicted?”

Also Read: How Tamil Filmmakers Are Making a Mockery of ‘Social Consciousness’

The representation of Dalit characters was painful. Either they were written out, or just their inclusion in the story was considered ‘revolutionary’. The films excluded the discriminatory practices of those dominant communities.

In this context, I had to reflect on what my stories could say. I wanted to show that my culture itself is based on discrimination and violence. Also ask, why were the ways through which Dalits assert their identity through clothes, food and music erased? Today, directors are more conscious when they write Dalit characters. There appears to be greater clarity.

What informs your own writing of Dalit characters?

First, I place myself in these stories and ask, ‘Where do I stand in society?’

More than anyone, Babasaheb [B.R.] Ambedkar has been my icon. He opposed Gandhi and the Congress when he thought they did not address the issues of Dalits. Despite that, after independence, he welcomed the means to legislate change as India’s first law minister. While I looked at him as inspiration, I realised how characters that I write already live in every Dalit community. My brother was the first to go to law school in my village. He helped bring about change.

That’s where resistance comes from and so does the idea for characters that I write. I don’t need to dwell only on degradation. Cinema has enough of that. There is a stereotypical victim: barely clothed, unable even to protest against atrocities done to them. A hero has to save them. That image needed shattering because that’s not how I am. I can stand for myself. My courage comes from Ambedkar. To depict such characters in cinema is a type of counter-culture. A model that I can point to is Spike Lee’s portrayals of black lives—a counter to the Hollywood format.

B.R. Ambedkar. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

B.R. Ambedkar. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

There are recent mainstream films vocal about caste oppression, but violence and spectacle are a huge part of the story. Your views?

I don’t doubt the intentions of these filmmakers. They seem to want to speak out, but there has to be a discussion after such films release. You can’t depict the violence done to my community but refuse to register the way they stand up to that violence. It sets up a politics which tells Dalits that you must be a silent victim and only certain others can save you. As a director, I don’t want to graphically show the atrocities that occur. Re-creating them with explicit detail is itself another layer of violence. I don’t agree that this is the only way to evoke an emotional response from the audience.

Speaking of counter-narratives, you refer to anti-caste ideologies in the form of Ram the aggressor, Ravanan the hero in Kaala. In Kabali—the name used for dark-skinned, dispensable, servile, henchmen in old Tamil films is now the hero. What impact does this have?

The point was to bring whoever stands in the margins, as just accessories to the hero’s righteousness in established narratives, into the centre. To make them the heroes. Ambedkar talks about the appropriation of Buddha into the Brahmanical system. He’s also spoken of what dark skin tones are made a signifier of, how lifestyles have made us the villains in the stories of the vedas. In the face of that, I have to state that these are not my stories.

In the tradition of careful symbolism in Tamil cinema, you repeat certain colours within the frame. Red, blue and black stand out. Their significance?

I wasn’t conscious about colour in Attakathi. The film was mainly about peeling away at the popular idea that “love is pure”, about how young people struggle with this concept. The film was a way of exploring these concepts from a Dalit perspective, like a love scene featuring beef.

What I’d been too afraid to say in Attakathi, I could in Madras. That’s where the wall became a metaphor for politics in Tamil Nadu and blue a symbol for Dalit identity. Sometimes, too much gets read into the colours, which is both interesting and saddening.

In Kaala, I very carefully used colours as symbols. Getting to the roots of why black means something lowly, and white means dominance. In the climax scene of Kaala the blue, black and red coming together was my statement: Ambedkarism (blue) and the ideologies of both Periyaar (black) and the Left (red) need to converge to defeat oppressive regimes.

Also Read: Kabali Destabilises the Established Idioms of Tamil Cinema

In Kabali and perhaps for the first time in mainstream Tamil cinema, there are images of Chinua Achebe and Malcolm X. Can the fight for racial justice still inspire anti-caste civil rights movements in India?

Caste and racial oppression have huge likenesses, though they don’t have entirely similar histories. Segregation is something I too had to live with as a child. Being banned from entering a shop through the main door, the owner handling my money only with a small stick, never letting me touch and test a toy before buying it.

There is so much to learn from black cultural production. From celebrating their blackness to speaking about issues that ravage their communities, they’ve done it well. They’ve made themselves towering figures within the mainstream. The impact of this cultural victory, especially in terms of music, is immense because it helps foster global solidarity. Today’s Black Lives Matter protests have international support, even white people are standing beside them.

If only caste resistance here could accomplish the same through culture, whether music or cinema.

A Black Lives Matter protest in the US. Photo: Reuters/Peter Nicholls

A repeated criticism of you is casting Rajinikanth to play a Dalit hero. In a state where cinema and politics are enmeshed this could have complex consequences, do you think?

I agree that once something is in the public space, there will be scrutiny regarding intentions and the effects it can have. In the case of superstar, he asked me what the story was and he liked it. To him, cinema is cinema. He’s completely dedicated to it as a vocation. For me, cinema is an opportunity to talk about changes that need to happen. He was supportive of what I wanted to speak about in the two films we did together. Certainly, there is no connection between his general politics and mine. Neither do I put them into my films. I haven’t compromised on my own ideological beliefs. I view him as a director’s actor. If he likes the story, he’ll work at it until the director is content.

The representation in Indian cinema of working class and Dalit characters as criminal is a concern you yourself have. Why then in Kabali and in Kaala, are the heroes gangsters?

No, in Kaala he’s not a gangster! The idea was to show someone asserting his right, by whatever means he could, against an aggressor. There are people like that in real life. I can’t accept that resisting oppression the way Kaala does makes him a gangster.

In Kabali, the story was about the history of Malay Tamils, from working in the colonial-era plantations as indentured labourers to current ethnic gangs and the Tamils’ relationship with the Chinese population. Even Madras has been called a gangster film, which isn’t true. Is everyone who stands up to violence done to them a gangster? If someone from a dominant community does the same, they’re a revolutionary. If an oppressed person does it, they’re rowdies. Well, society is responsible for that image.

Also Read: Seeing India Through the Black Lives Matter Protests

You’ve announced your first Hindi film. A biopic on Birsa Munda. In your view, what is the current space in Bollywood like, when it comes to social justice?

I can see that there are some recent efforts to make films on these issues. Masaan is an example. Sairat is a film I like, but that’s Marathi. Article 15 has happened now. Let’s see how it works out. In my understanding, Bollywood is very capitalist. They make movies on what will sell. To try and move away from that, towards focusing on what the people face, needs to happen. There is a slow inclination towards that now.

Filmmakers who’ve influenced you?

Alejandro González Iñárritu who made Birdman, The Revenant, Amores Perros amongst others. I love how he captures the range of human emotions. There is also a degree of spiritualism in his films, which are his beliefs of course.

Aside from him, I love the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Spike Lee.

Bharathy Singaravel is a culture reporter and interested in the overlaps between Tamil cinema, protest music and politics.

The Hits and Misses of the 2019 Oscars

This year’s Oscars signify a step forward in some ways, but the ceremony lacked personality.

The Academy Awards are known for following a script – in terms of not just the ceremony’s narrative but quite often the winners themselves. Like most awards, the Oscars are preceded by speculations and calculated predictions, and the final results, with few exceptions, are hardly surprising. This year’s Oscars, though, deviated from the script in multiple ways.

The obvious difference was the absence of host. The Academy, presumably mindful of the goof-ups in the last host-less Oscars, didn’t try anything flashy. The ceremony was straightforward, quiet and, there’s no kinder way to put it, dull. But given the messy lead-up to the awards, the Academy would have settled for that bargain.

The second deviation, however, was more significant: Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, was nominated for 10 Oscars. In a mediocre year for Hollywood cinema, Roma, a Mexican Netflix film, looked to sweep the awards. But by the end of the night, it won just three Oscars (Best Director, Best Cinematographer, Best Foreign Language Film). It couldn’t even win the Best Picture, which went to Green Book – a safe, simple film which, in a stronger year, would have struggled to get nominated.

The Best Picture’s winners have not always been unanimous picks – Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The King’s Speech (2010) and Argo (2012), in recent years, have given the Oscars skeptics much to talk about – but none of them have been as shocking as Crash getting the nod over Brokeback Mountain, in 2005. The Green Book win comes close.

But this year’s Oscars also signify a step forward. Ruth E. Carter became the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Hannah Beachler won for Best Production Design, the first time a woman of colour has been nominated in the category. These wins become more poignant in terms of historical context: No African-American woman has won a non-acting Oscar in 30 years. Similarly, Rami Malek, playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, became the first Arab-American to win the Best Actor.

The Best Animated Film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, like the multiple Oscar-nominated Black Panther, departing from tradition, centres on a superhero of African descent: the former’s protagonist is Afro-latino, the latter African-American. Spider-Man’s filmmaker, Peter Ramsey, became the first black director to win in an animated feature category.

The evening was dominated by people of colour and women – something that hasn’t happened before, a particularly potent fact in the wake of the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite protests. This year’s awards even had an Indian connection: Period. End of Sentence – set in an Indian village, tackling the stigma around menstruation – won the Best Documentary Short Subject. Guneet Monga, an Indian executive producer on the movie, was mentioned by filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi in her acceptance speech.

But the ceremony, on its own, lacked personality. It opened to a middling performance by the Queen (the centrepiece of Bohemian Rhapsody), and then segued into a largely insipid evening. The ceremony’s highlights were so few that you could count them on your right-hand, with a few fingers remaining. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, performing ‘Shallow’ from A Star is Born (which also won the Best Original Song), looked wonderfully co-ordinated – eyes locking, smiles dropping, singing in unison – that their piece seemed a whole in itself.

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform ‘Shallow’ from ‘A Star Is Born.’ Following the performance, Lady Gaga went on to win Best Original Song for ‘Shallow’. Credit: Reuters

Then there was Olivia Colman, winning the Best Actress for The Favourite, a well-deserved honour for a searing, haunting performance, who gave a funny acceptance speech, which was also delightfully disorienting: thanking a list of people she feared she would forget, taking digs at the Oscars (and herself), acknowledging the other nominees (Glenn Close and Lady Gaga), in part-disbelief and -admiration.

The star of the evening though, by quite a distance, was Spike Lee, nominated for the Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. After a point, Lee was everywhere. He was visibly non-impressed – effecting a slight wink and a mordant nod – when John Mulaney and Awkwafina flattered him on stage before presenting the Best Animated Short Film award. Then Lee won for Best Adapted Screenplay, and he came on stage, jumped, and embraced Samuel Jackson, with the excitement of an animated teen. (“Do not turn that…clock on!” he said, in his thank you note, referring to the acceptance speeches’ time limit.) Not long after, Lee stood up, threw his hand in the air, and bowed when Barbra Streisand, presenting the best-picture clip for BlackKklansman, remarked on their shared Brooklyn roots.

Spike Lee celebrates onstage with Samuel L Jackson as he receives the Best Adapted Screenplay award for ‘BlacKkKlansman’. Credit: Reuters

When Green Book won the Best Picture, Lee reportedly waved his arms in anger before attempting to storm out of the theatre (but was stopped at the doors). He was asked about Green Book’s win backstage, and Lee, sipping champagne, had no patience for ambiguity: “I’m snakebit. Every time someone’s driving somebody, I lose,” he said, referring to Driving Miss Daisy – based on a premise similar to Green Room – overshadowing his breakout film, Do the Right Thing, at the 63rd Academy Awards.

Green Book has, in fact, been criticised for perpetuating the ‘White Saviour’ trope. Expecting giant strides from the Academy is perhaps naive, but this year’s Oscars exemplify that self-reflection is not beyond its realm.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ – a Deadly Serious Comedy

‘BlacKkKlansman’ is more than a good story: it expertly weaves together comedy with serious drama to bring the story of past racism to illuminate present day issues.

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman delivers more than a brilliantly entertaining story. Officially, BlacKkKlansman is about Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of actor Denzel Washington), the first African-American police detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white proxy.

The film is based on actual events discussed in Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime. The actors humorously and yet believably drive home the film’s strong racial irony.

Stallworth’s operation upsets a string of Klan meetings and attacks, including a comically rendered attempt to bomb the female head of the Black student union.

Stallworth dupes the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, David Duke (Topher Grace). Stallworth and Duke have a series of phone conversations about Stallworth’s feigned white nationalist beliefs and the upcoming ceremony marking his initiation into the “Organisation.”

Drama and hilarity abound when Stallworth is assigned to personally guard Duke at the event and Duke is unable to make any connection between his new initiate and the police officer.

What makes this film good is not that it successfully delivers the story it promises, but that it also exposes how our racial past has only changed its bell-bottoms for straight-legs. Or put another way, BlacKkKlansman showcases how past racism still operates in the present.

Using the past to illuminate the present

Spike Lee offers a parody of US President Woodrow Wilson’s enthusiastic endorsement of the 1915 box office hit, Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation, based on a novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr., and unabashedly titled The Clansman, an Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, is set just after the American Civil War. Both book and movie were used as propaganda to depict the Klan as saving the white race from the newly emancipated Blacks, rendered in the film as crazed rapists and criminals.

Lee successfully uses the past, as he has done in movies like Do the Right Thing (1989), to artistically quash the anticipated criticism that a film by a Black director that portrays white racism is guilty of being anti-white.

‘Do the Right Thing’ is seen by many as one of the most important Hollywood films of the 1980s.

In contrast, by integrating the facts about Birth of a Nation, Lee explodes this phoney critique and points to the real racial irony: That films depicting white supremacy are likely to be wildly popular, even praised by presidents of their time, while a film that depicts the personal and professional impacts of racism, particularly on Black people, is subject to petty but popular criticism that the film is inherently anti-white.

Lee does not tread lightly, but marches into this racial terrain at the end of the movie by explicitly invoking images of US President Donald Trump’s equivocation that some white nationalists are very fine people.

Comic relief; deadly serious

To artistically execute this heavy history in a film that runs two hours and 15 minutes is no easy feat. But Lee does not disappoint.

Lee deftly offers comedy as a necessary relief. For example, Connie Kendrickson, (Ashlie Atkinson), the wife of a Klan member, Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Paakkonen), is an eager-Jane, reminiscent of a classically uncool, geekish, eager-to-please teenager. She dresses up — rather badly — in a two-piece, too loose, bright red pantsuit to pursue her first terrorist act of planting a bomb. She foils the plan and the result is pure humour.

Comedy is a great relief to the serious issues of American racism exposed in BlacKkKlansman.

On the other hand, Lee interestingly and expertly weaves together the serious mini-dramas in Stallworth’s life. Stallworth must face personal conflicts in his love life when his (completely fictionalised) romantic interest (Laura Harrier) holds anti-cop views. And he must deal with persistent racism when he is formally admonished and told to accept routine anti-Black sentiments expressed at work or face consequences for complaining.

Confronting American racism

BlacKkKlansman is, of course, not the first time cinema has been used to confront similar themes of Blacks infiltrating the KKK or using covert police tactics. These themes have been variously treated in popular culture since at least the 1960s.

The 1966 film, The Black Klansman was directed by Ted V. Mikels and depicts a light-skinned Black man, Jerry Ellsworth (Richard Gilden), whose daughter is murdered by the Klan. Ellsworth passes as white to become a member of the KKK to take revenge on the organisation and avenge his daughter’s death.

Another iteration was developed in the 1973 cult classic The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed by Ivan Dixon and based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. In this film, Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) is an African-American who becomes a top CIA agent after being trained in advanced warfare, spy work and subversion.

Freeman soon resigns from the CIA and lives by day as a social worker but by night as the leader of a Black nationalist group called the Freedom Fighters. Freeman leads the group in pro-Black both non-violent and aggressive military acts against corrupt police and anti-civil rights efforts.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ does more than chase laughs. Credit: Universal Pictures

Then there’s David Chappelle’s famous skit of Clayton Bigsby on Chappelle’s Show. Because Bigsby is blind, raised in an all-white group home, and no one ever tells him that he’s African-American, he develops deeply racist views and joins the town’s chapter of the KKK. He learns he is Black while lecturing at a white supremacist rally when the crowd requests that he take off his hood. Even then, his views don’t change. When asked why he divorced his wife of almost two decades, he responds that it is because she is a n***** lover.

So BlacKkKlansman has to be more than just another cinematic episode depicting how a Black subversive is finally sticking it to “The Man”. This story is about much more than one Black police officer who successfully and brilliantly subverted and breached the Klan to assist efforts of Black liberation.

And the film certainly does more than chase laughs by exposing the inanity of racist views. BlacKkKlansman is an insightful foray into the neo-passing genre. The neo-passing genre addresses contemporary injustices and asks audiences to consider and distinguish between “classic and popular narratives of passing” where contemporary versions of passing can be about performing resistance and contesting unjust social circumstances.

As a neo-passing story, BlacKkKlansman is ultimately about the current reality that African-Americans specifically, and other racial minorities in general, must continue to endure racism; that they must still argue that saying “Black lives matter” always means all lives matter. That Lee is able to highlight this through an entertaining adaptation of the past makes his latest film one to see and discuss.

Vershawn Ashanti Young, professor, Department of Drama and Speech Communication, University of Waterloo

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Going Undercover to Expose the Ku Klux Klan

In 1979, David Duke told the media he had launched a wildly successful recruiting drive in Connecticut. A local reporter wanted to test Duke’s claims – so he filled out an application to join the KKK.

Spike Lee’s powerful new film, BlacKkKlansman, tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch the Ku Klux Klan in 1979.

That same year, I also signed up to join the Klan. And at a secret meeting I even met the Grand Wizard himself, David Duke, the same Klan leader featured in Lee’s film.

I was a rookie Klansman at the time, and I’d been recruited to join the cause.

Sort of.

Like Stallworth, I wasn’t a true believer and had a very different agenda from the Klan’s.

The Klan descends on Connecticut

It was the fall of 1979, and I was a first-year reporter at The Hartford Courant when David Duke launched a recruiting effort in, of all places, Connecticut. His “Klan calling cards” and his newspaper, The Crusader, started appearing in factory parking lots, restaurants, high schools and college campuses.

To cover the story for the state’s largest newspaper, I was teamed with a veteran reporter named Bill Cockerham. We called Duke’s headquarters in Metairie, Louisiana.

David Duke was 29 at the time – an educated, clean-cut Klansman campaigning for a seat in the Louisiana State Senate.

“It’s the white majority that are losing their rights, not the blacks or the Jews,” he insisted. “We’re the ones being attacked on the streets and they call us haters when we fight back for our rights and heritage.”Duke was happy to talk. He made plain his aim to recruit young people and to remake the Klan into a gentler, kinder brand of bigotry. He wasn’t anti-black or anti-Jewish, he said. “We are simply pro-white and pro-Christian.”

It was vintage Duke. He was trying, as one expert told us, to be “everybody’s Klansman,” using his considerable marketing skills to sugarcoat racism.

He told us his recruiting efforts had struck a chord in the Nutmeg State, claiming more than 200 new members and several hundred more associate members. While no statewide organisation was in place, there were, he claimed, a number of robust, local dens. He did mention a statewide organiser, but when we requested repeatedly to speak to him, Duke balked.

The KKK was a secret organisation, he explained. He couldn’t do that. But because he was the face of the organisation, we could call the Metairie office any time – he’d be happy to talk Klan.

Getting access

The front-page article in The Courant appeared a few days later – “Klan Unit Attracting New Members: New Recruits Join Klan Through Mail” – and local radio and television stations pounced on the story.

Duke was suddenly a newsmaker, and the press and public struggled with the idea he could be successfully establishing a footprint in Connecticut, given that the Klan was mostly associated with the South.

Of course, no one knew whether Duke’s numbers were accurate; the story reported his claims of a groundswell of support.

Which is why I clipped out an application from a copy of his Crusader in our newsroom, filled it out using a false identity and mailed it to Metairie along with the $25 entry fee. (The use of deception in reporting is another story altogether, a matter regularly discussed in journalism ethics courses.)

My goal was to get inside Duke’s local outfit, identify his local leader and either verify or debunk his headcount of followers. In the mail, I soon received my Klan membership card, a certificate of Klan citizenship and a Klan rule book with a picture of Duke in his fancy Grand Wizard robe telling me to buy a robe for $28. Just like that I had joined the Klan.

Then I waited. I figured it wouldn’t take long for my compatriots to reach out and bring me into the fold, where I’d get the inside story. That was the game plan, and when I occasionally called down to Duke’s office in Metairie, using my new identity, I was assured I’d be hooked up with like-minded Connecticut racists in short order.

But nothing happened. Weeks went by. Meanwhile, David Duke continued to reap regular coverage in Connecticut media, with the imperial wizard claiming huge success in his statewide recruitment.

My break came in early December 1979. Duke announced he’d decided to travel to Connecticut and to two other New England states. The trip would be a kind of climax to his fall membership drive. He would visit several Connecticut cities and speak with the press at each stop, before holding a private rally at night with his Connecticut Klansmen.

And that’s when I got the call – all hands were summoned for the secret mass meeting on Friday, Dec. 7. I was told that for security reasons the location would not be disclosed until the actual day but to be on call.

The moment of truth

Teamed again with the veteran reporter, I spent most of that Friday afternoon on the move. I was instructed to call Metairie and was directed to head west from Hartford. While Duke staged a press conference at a Waterbury motel, I waited in a local bar, where Duke’s local point person finally contacted me. He directed me to Grange hall in Danbury, which they’d rented posing as a historical group.

I left my colleague behind and was met in a rear parking lot by three “enforcers.” They asked for my Klan ID card, and then waved me through. I walked into the dimly lit room on the second floor and looked around. The hall was nearly empty, except for around two dozen men quietly mingling.

That’s when it dawned on me why I’d never heard a peep from any other Connecticut Klansmen: There was no real organisation, or presence, to speak of.

While most were dressed in leather and jeans, the sandy-haired Duke wore a three-piece suit with a Klan pin on his lapel. He introduced himself to each attendee, showing off a three-ring binder with Connecticut newspaper clippings about him and the Klan.

Duke’s idea for a meeting was a simple one – a screening of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 blockbuster about the Civil War and Reconstruction. (In Spike Lee’s movie, a Klan meeting also involves a showing of the film.)

To Griffith, a Southerner, the robed Klansmen were heroes, riding to the rescue and saving the South from the lawlessness and chaos of Reconstruction.

That night in Danbury, Duke used the film as a teaching tool, turning the darkened Grange hall into a classroom for a course on white power. Standing next to an American flag, he read aloud the film’s subtitles and then added his own bigoted commentary. When a group of Klansmen on horses dump the corpse of a black man on a front porch, Duke began to clap his hands – a firm clap that grew louder as others in the room joined in to applaud the death of a black man on screen.

I left that meeting with the story we’d been after for months – the identity of the Connecticut leader and, more importantly, the actual numbers in Duke’s much-ballyhooed statewide Klan. It wasn’t several hundred but closer to two dozen. Duke’s run of media coverage in Connecticut dried up immediately.

We exposed Duke as the con man who’d bluffed his way into a run of free publicity to spew is pro-white nonsense – a transparently perverse message that somehow has regained currency today. The imperial wizard’s rhetoric of 1979 is parroted almost verbatim by a new generation of haters who are attracting plenty of media coverage.

I never spoke to Duke again, but I did receive a Christmas card from him that holiday season – addressed to my Klan alias, apparently mailed before the article was published.

The red card featured two Klansmen in robes holding a fiery cross. The caption read: “May you have a meaningful and merry Christmas and may they forever be White.”

Dick Lehr, Professor of Journalism, Boston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.