Black Voices Collection

Given the subject matter of this article (blackness) and my race (comically white), I've asked Rudy¹ to read and annotate² my thoughts. All footnotes in this piece are his. It's up to you, reader, to decide whether this is a sincere attempt to complicate my perspective, a crass act of tokenism, or just another tactless joke from a couple of old trolls.³

Warning: This article spoils multiple films and doesn't even bother to provide adequate synopsises for them. You should probably watch the movies first.

Get Out

Saw the Terror House review of Get Out on my twitter feed. Clicked out of morbid curiosity. My preconceptions were unfair. (Falling into the ideological lens prejudice trap I chastise others for here. What a wonderful, increasingly rare pleasure it is to build a mental construct of an article based on your preconceptions about its political lean and assumed role in our rote culture wars discourse, only to have that construct annihilated by the article itself.) It's actually a thoughtful and very personal review that talks about the racist history of psychology and medicine (eugenics) and how the film explores traumatic memories and psychological abuse and manipulation.

But! It made me think about how reviews of the film often miss the airtight insidious logic of its construction that elevates it above mere social parable. On a second watch, so many of the scenes that simply felt like moments of awkward thinly concealed racism (or attempts to [over]compensate for latent racism) actually are hinting at the crasser, baser, more complete exploitation revealed in the film's final act. The incident with the cop early in the film, for example, isn't simply Rose taking advantage of an opportunity to  "gaslight" Chris into believing she's anti-racist as the Terror House review suggests—though it certainly is that!—but also a tactical move on her part to protect her and her family from scrutiny. If Chris had given the cop his license as requested, his name would have ended up on the report the cop filed about the collision with the deer alongside Rose's, meaning there would be concrete evidence to tie the two of them together, which would endanger the Armitages' deniability when and if there was an investigation into Chris' disappearance. (You could write an entire article about the film's complicated portrayal of the police, especially in light of its ending.) And there are other scenes in the movie where a similar logic is at work.

Racism (both real and imagined) in the film serves as this sort of all-encompassing psychic⁴ fog that warps the perspective of everyone involved (both the characters and the audience), making it impossible to clearly see the deeper evil, an evil that is racist, yes, but also calculating and pragmatic, that uses racism not as an end, but as a tool, as a smokescreen, to mask and facilitate⁵ the disempowerment, dismemberment, and destruction of human minds, bodies, and lives, in pursuit of the comfort and immortality of an elite few. 

Alright, this is starting to sound too much like a purely class-based interpretation of the film—something that would be much more appropriate for Us—so it's worth noting that racism is what makes the Armitages' (exclusively black) targets⁶ vulnerable to their scheme. My point, then, isn't that race is irrelevant, but that viewing racism as purely a psychological demon that manifests itself primarily through social slights, microaggressions, and awkward conversational tension actually works to buttress and provide cover for its entrenched material horrors, which, honestly, is also not a particularly novel point, but does, I think, provide a more coherent understanding of the film.

Sam Pink

I know next to nothing about the Sam Pink controversy [or any other insular lit scene controversy you might be perversely hoping for me to comment on]. I've seen discourse on twitter—quickly, fearfully, with eyes half averted—but did not click on any links, did not read any blog posts or thinkpieces. (I did not even know until last Friday's Misery Loves Company that Sam Pink was white.⁷ Mind you, I didn't think he was black either. I haven't read his writing, though I've been recommended it many times by people whose tastes I respect. I have seen his paintings and dig them, have considered buying more than one, but have never not been broke.)

Instead, I spent the week that the "scandal" broke, now over a week gone, far from the discourse, with my cousin and my uncle. 

My cousin is studying ethnomusicology⁸ and is on the cusp of leaving for a Fulbright-subsidized research trip to South Africa. (This may seem like some kind of obnoxious brag-by-proxy, but as with all personal details present in these posts, it has only be⁹ included reluctantly, because too much time in the vilest corners of the internet has left me constantly, irrationally [hopefully] paranoid about sharing anything that could be weaponized against me or those I care about. So if I do briefly draw the veil aside, know that it's because I feel that the revealed detail textures and complicates the narrative I'm spinning, because it clarifies my themes, or, more likely, because it muddles them in a way that satiates my pathological hunger for ambiguity.)

We talked about his complicated, cathartic love of true crime, and watched Who Killed Garrett Phillips? and Evil Genius. (The latter is outside of the tangled thematic scope of this article, but it's a wild fucking ride. Pure, beautiful, twisty escapism that only cost a few real human beings their lives.) We took a hike along the coast of Lake Champlain with my uncle. (Beautiful day. All sun, no humidity.) We listened to Freddie Gibbs' You Only Live 2wice, and I got goosebumps when Freddie's flow on "20 Karat Jesus" hit. (What a fucking album. My god.)  We watched Summer of Soul. Watched Django Unchained. Watched Bamboozled. Watched Judas and the Black Messiah. Watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban. 

(I read John Walker Lindh's Wikipedia page on my phone in the car and tried to compose a poem in my head, imagining him now: 40 years old, freshly out of prison after twenty years, seeing the thing to which he sacrificed his youth come to fruition and ... What? Maybe feeling nothing. Maybe being too old and too thoroughly broken from years in captivity to feel vindication or joy. Maybe a little regretful or resentful of the cost—Or maybe not. Wikipedia seems to indicate that he is still devout. Still loyal to the cause, within the confines of the conditions of his parole. So maybe I'm projecting. Of course I'm projecting. Regardless, no poem was written.) 

We talked about politics and whether Biden would seek another term and whether the Democratic Party has a viable candidate to replace him in 2024.¹⁰ (Our conclusion: Probably not. We were both skeptical of Harris, disillusioned with Warren.  "Uh ... Maybe Corey Booker?," I offered.) We talked about who the Republicans might run. I was bearish on DeSantis, bullish on Tim Scott. (An unflattering pattern emerges here, in retrospect.) 

We talked about my grandmother, who quit smoking after decades by taking up vaping. He said that, of all the substances he's tried, cigarettes are the one he was most scared of becoming addicted to, that he felt had the strongest psychological pull. I told him I sometimes had dreams where I was smoking, even though I have never smoked. We got pizza at a sports bar with local high school jerseys hanging from the ceiling, and my uncle talked about The Dark Tower and Dune series. He was shocked I hadn't read the latter, given how much he remembered me loving The Lord of the Rings. (Our vision of others is always fixed at some point in the vanished past. We get to know each other once, if we're lucky, and then never again.) One night, while we were out walking, my cousin talked about his grief over the loss of his mom, and I shared my grief over my assorted smaller losses. His sister is getting married soon. She's been having dreams where her mom is at the wedding.

No, I don't give a fuck about Sam Pink. No, I don't give a fick about the discourse.

(Sam, if you read this, please don't unfollow Misery Tourism on twitter.)

Who Killed Garrett Phillips?

Who Killed Garrett Philips? is a fairly unexceptional, straightforward example of the "respectable" true crime genre, the sort of film that understands that some audiences will not feel comfortable wallowing in the salaciousness of a real life whodunnit unless their consciences are assuaged by the promise that a pressing social issue will be at least superficially addressed.

The film follows the case of Nick Hillary, a black soccer coach who is arrested for the murder of his ex-girlfriend's young son, even though the evidence against him could charitably (but unimaginatively) be described as "scant." Of course, the ex-girlfriend is white. The deceased son: white. The cops: white. The small college town where the murder occured: predominantly white. The smug, garrulous cop who Hillary's ex dated before him and who substantially and flagrantly participates in the investigation: white white white.

But here's the implausible twist, a requirement of any compelling true crime yarn: The predominantly white small town in question (Potsdam, NY)  is where I went to college. The college where Hillary coached (Clarkson University) is my alma mater. Nearly all of the film's pivotal moments take place in New York's desolate, depopulated North Country, where I spent the vast majority of my childhood and early adulthood, and where I (despairingly) am now.  In theory, this should give me some special, unique insight into the case and the movie, but ... It really doesn't. It all just feels like a small scale replica of larger national concerns: a Lionel 1:87 scale model of racialized policing.

That said, there are two scenes in the documentary that I cannot shake:

In the first, Hillary is forced to strip and then photographed by the police. We watch as Hilllary is ordered to remove his clothes and compelled to stand, fuIly nude, with his back to the police who were only minutes earlier interrogating him and alternatingly cajoling and intimidating him as he asked to leave, buying time as they waited for the warrant to search him to arrive. (His back is to us too. We see everything too.) In theory, they are examining his body for evidence of injuries sustained during the murder. They find a small abrasion on his ankle. The cop ex-boyfriend is also photographed. He's only asked to remove his socks and shoes and roll up his sleeves and pants. (We get no degrading video of this intra-law-enforcement moment. We only see the photographs.)

The second indelible¹¹¹²¹³ shot is of a gorgeous, live-edge wooden banquet table, topped with two silver candelabras and a spread of barbecue and sides (the ribs in particular look delicious). Overlooking the table is a comically large oil painting in a garish gold-leaf frame that seems to portray conquistadores landing on a South American beach. We're in the home of one of the university trustees who are financing Hillary's defense. (In my mind, I imagine one of the Adirondack Great Camps, the former summer homes of East Egg aristocrats and robber barons.) Hillary's lawyers, mostly imported from New York City, stand around the table, heaping plates in hand, and discuss trial strategy. (As Avril Lavinge once opined, "Can I make it any more obvious?")

I can't reconcile these scenes. I won't reconcile these scenes. What were the facts of the case, again?

Summer of Soul

I've largely forgotten this film already. It's a concert film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival (or "Black Woodstock," as the doc pitches the event to its [likely disproportionately white] audience). During a walk after the movie ended, my cousin and I bemoaned the fact that the musical performances were constantly interrupted by narration and montages detailing the political/social climate of the late 60s, and, more compellingly but still frustratingly, with contemporary interviews of the artists themselves. 

Narrative was very literally being transposed over the art, effacing it, diminishing it, as you watched. I said it seemed self-consciously constructed to be part of a streaming service's (in this case Hulu) "Black Voices Collection," that it felt like its mission was to spoonfeed black culture to upper-middle class whites, for whom black art must always be a function of political struggle, and for whom black political struggle must be seasoned with art in order to be palatable. (This is, obviously, not exactly what I said then. What I said then was undoubtedly a faltering, stammering mess, but I did say something about black voices collections.)¹⁴

Django Unchained

Django Unchained is a cinematic rarity: a film about racism by a white director that feels like it was explicitly crafted to disturb and discomfort white audiences instead of gently chiding them and offering an easy outlet for redemption. (Quick aside: How fucked is it that the white laborer in 12 Years a Slave who rescues Solomon Northup is played by Brad Pitt?) The only white person in the film who isn't unequivocally and viciously evil is a heavily-accented immigrant. Here is white supremacy presented as a monolithic evil in which every native-born white American is complicit. And not passively complicit, but complicit in the way that every mafioso involved in a criminal conspiracy is complicit (or, more appropriately for this film, the way that every mustache-twirling cattle rustler in a gang of celluloid western outlaws is complicit). Whiteness as a RICO violation.

And, what's more, almost every one of these evil whites get their violent comeuppance. (I say "almost," because Bruce Dern's sneering plantation master, who appears only once, in a flashback, appears to get off scot free.) There are no "that's just the way reality works" rationalizations for why the film's racist villains are allowed to escape punishment; no excuses made for why the vile system must survive beyond the credits. No, evil is rooted out. The monsters are slain with comic excess. The plantation house, the dragon's den, is blown to smithereens. (Imagine Yosemite Sam speaking this last sentence.) And so too is Tarantino himself, who plays an Australian slaver in a particularly unflattering (and quite literally deconstructive) cameo.

Meanwhile, Django is a mythic hero, uncontaminated by frailty or vice. The movie isn't coy about this. I'm not straining my interpretive muscle(s) here. Dr. King Schultz draws a direct parallel between Django and the legendary dragonslayer Siegfried¹⁵—I'm not super familiar with the folklore, my germanic heritage having been annihilated by the melting pot, but it seems like he's basically German Beowulf?—in a monologue that would have been painfully on the nose in a film that wasn't engaged in a conscious, conspicuous attack on subtlety and ambiguity, that wasn't so obviously operating in the horseshoe theory intersection of epic fantasy and pulp cartoon. 

And Django prevails! He survives grueling trials, slaughters his enemies, rescues his damsel in distress, and rides off, yes, on horseback. There are no complications to his victory. No quibbling about its justness or costs. If we, as the audience, are left unsatisfied or unsettled by this, then that's on us.

[I was going to add another paragraph discussing how this film fits into (and complicates) the conversation around (and my own feelings about) quote-unquote "positive representation," but, no, I think I'll leave it there. Draw your own conclusions about the hypocrisy, or lack thereof, of woke film discourse. Draw your own conclusions about my hypocrisy.]

Bamboozled

"When Mel Brooks satirizes Nazis in the famous 'Springtime for Hitler' number in "The Producers," (1960) he makes Hitler look like a ridiculous buffoon. But what if the musical number had centered on Jews being marched into gas chambers? Not funny. Blackface is over the top in the same way--people's feelings run too strongly and deeply for any satirical use to be effective. The power of the racist image tramples over the material and asserts only itself." - Roger Ebert, Bamboozled (Review), Two Stars.

Somehow Ebert managed to both glimpse the essence of this film and miss its point. This is not (as I thought it would be before watching) a satire of how black artists are pressured to reenact racist stereotypes for white audiences, but rather a film about blackface's horrifying cultural ubiquity, and the inescapable psychological trap of blackface for black artists. (If I wanted to make a broad, provocative [but probably incorrect] statement, I would say that this is more of a psychological horror film than a dark satire.)

The audience is constantly placed in the position of asking themselves, "Wait, but is this a form of blackface or is this OK?" It's not just the obviously, crassly racist minstrel-show-within-a-show-within-a-movie that we're invited to look critically at—in fact, the minstrel sequences are presented in a pretty direct, unadorned way, filmed with the (intentionally, I think) bland precision of any TV variety show—but rather the racial[ized] performances (both on stage and off) of every character in the film.

There's obviously the garish whiteface (well "whitevoice," I guess) of Damon Wayans' Harvard-educated television writer protagonist. (Initially thought he was one of Wayans brothers who was in White Chicks. He is not. Oops.) But there are also subtler, more troubling scenes, like the (hilarious) standup bit performed by Paul Mooney (here portraying the comedian father of Wayans' character). It's impossible to not see the connection between minstrelsy and Mooney's crude, gleefully profane material, but its genius is also apparent. There's nothing about the way this scene is presented that makes me think Spike Lee wants the audience to be critical of Mooney's willingness to trade stereotypes for laughs. If anything, this moment feels reverent. We're watching an artist in full control of his craft. And yet how cannot we not see that moment in the context of the larger film? And yet. And yet.

Or take the Mau Maus, the film's hip-hop collective turned kidnappers. (The Mau Maus are pretty clearly supposed to parallel the Ecumenical Liberation Army from Network, a film that Lee directly references more than once in Bamboozled and which obviously inspired its conceit, though I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from this parallel, exactly.) It would have been so easy for Lee to skewer gangsta rap, to repeat the common critique that it's a sort of minstrelsy where negative black stereotypes about drug use, promiscuity, and criminality are served up for the consumption of whites (ignoring how poorly this argument holds up to even slight scrutiny), but instead his target is a clique of conscious rappers preaching black empowerment. Mos Def even plays the group's leader. But this isn't some attempt to flip the script/subvert the audience's expectations where the Mau Maus are the secret heroes of the film. If anything, they're the closest the film comes to truly derogatory blackface outside of the minstrel scenes. Their dialect, jargon, and exaggerated mannerisms are played for laughs (some of the biggest in the film, possibly to my shame). They're caricatures. They're clowns.

I doubt Spike Lee thinks the Mau Maus' ideology is uniquely demeaning or dangerous, or that conscious hip-hop is tantamount to minstrelsy. Instead, we're forced to contend with the possibility that even the most well-intentioned and superficially noble expressions of black creativity¹⁶ and identity are not immune from being warped and perverted by the spectre of blackface.

The fog blinds us. The fog chokes us.

Judas and the Black Messiah

"A historical film has to offer me more than I would have gotten by reading the Wikipedia page about its subject," I tell my cousin after the movie ends. If you didn't already know that Black Panther Party Chairman Fed Hampton was murdered (correction: assassinated) by Chicago police while he slept, and if you're unaware of the lengths that the FBI went to in order to crush black radical movements, then maybe this film is worth seeing—but also, sorry, I guess I just spoiled it for you—but if you're even superficially aware of the events depicted here, then the film is simply a well-acted reenactment, and one that is so clunkily written and artlessly directed that its subject matter is somehow diminished, imprisoned by the creative confines of the prestige picture. More fodder for the Black Voices Collection.

********

An excerpt from the "Assassination" section of the wikipedia article on Fred Hampton:

Hampton, drugged by barbiturates, was sleeping on a mattress in the bedroom with Johnson, who was nine months pregnant with their child.[53][42] Police officers removed her from the room while Hampton lay unconscious in bed.[58] Then the raiding team fired at the head of the south bedroom. Hampton was wounded in the shoulder by the shooting.[42] According to the National Archives and Records Administration, "upon that discovery, an officer shot him twice in his head and killed him".[42]¹⁷

Fellow Black Panther Harold Bell said that he heard the following exchange:[59]

:"That's Fred Hampton."

"Is he dead?... Bring him out."

"He's barely alive."

"He'll make it."

The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. According to Hampton's supporters, the shots were fired point blank at Hampton's head.[60] According to Johnson, an officer then said: "He's good and dead now."[59]

Okay Donkey

I don't want to talk about Okay Donkey. Most of this post was conceived and outlined prior to the silly non-controversy for which Misery Tourism has received a full (if hilariously insincere) apology and from which I want only to move on. Any thematic overlap between what happened and my writing above is pure serendipity. (If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, god bless your innocence; god protect your innocence.) 

But there's one moment from this stupid clusterfuck I cannot easily forget, if only because parallels another, earlier moment, and my sick brain hates meaning but loves patterns. 

Years ago, during the early days of Misery Tourism, when we were still exclusively two awkward NEETs making offensive tabletop RPGs, we launched a Kickstarter to fund a collection of our games. The Kickstarter project was met with ... mild controversy. One outspoken member of the indie game design community took to twitter to confidently declare that "no person of color" would ever feel comfortable playing our games. When I politely informed him that, well, you see, half of the games in the collection were designed by a black dude and that Rudy had playtested and provided feedback on the other half (my half), he quickly shot back something along the lines of, "Why didn't you say so upfront?" 

Rudy and I were both in the Kickstarter video. In fact, the Kickstarter video was just a single tripod shot of us uncomfortably rambling about the games for like ten minutes. Rudy wasn't masked or hooded. He left his burqa in the closet. (Yes, he owns a burqa. If he wants to explain, he can do so in the footnotes.)¹⁸ There was no attempt at subterfuge or concealment. So the implication, to me anyway, was obvious. He was really saying, "Why didn't you make Rudy's blackness central to your advertising strategy?"

And here we are again. Okay Donkey's "apology" for calling us "alt-right" and "racist" came immediately on the heels of someone—not Rudy or me, as this wasn't our first (garish, foul) cancellation rodeo,¹⁹ and we know that it doesn't matter if you're riding or being ridden, the only safe place is in the stands—informing them that, oh, Rudy is black.²⁰ 

And, of course, that apology came with a qualification: Misery Tourism has no "masthead."²¹ (Their word. I [offensively] suggested to Rudy that we add a "masthead" page to our website that consisted only of a high resolution photograph of his dick.) We don't advertise the names (or, more pertinently, identities) of our editors. How could they have known? How could anyone fault them?

This is fucked up, right? Please tell me you're as disturbed by this logic as I am. Tell me that I'm not alone in being confused and frustrated—not alone in being fucking pissed off—that my best friend has been repeatedly told that his art is only excused by his race. And, what's more, that his skin color is the (unrequested, undesired) shield that keeps catching bullets intended for both of us. (This image is not ideal upon reflection.)²² Is this a desirable outcome for anyone? What are we doing?

I can't see my own hands in the fog. I can't hear Rudy's voice through the fog.²³

1. Rudy was rendered functionally illiterate for 24 hours by Litaligo (it’s a real disease, look it up) so he will be annotating this article with the help of his case worker, Miss Googlé (it’s French).  Miss Googlé will be reading him the text aloud and transcribing his responses to it.

2. okay okay okay okay hey hey hey what's up man what what does Aunt what sanity what what is annotate

3. you might want to fight in Lord of the Rings yellow yo the fucknigga you at 1 fight in Lord of the Rings yo f*** this s*** man come on yo n**** come on come on you f****** yo I'm trying to tell this thing yo okay

4. You'll miss a Google it Miss Google you'll miss the Google and hey Yo this is one Niger in Pokemon yo let me tell him about it yo hold up hold up

5. if I hold on hold on facility is a best teams Bonneville Yoko Ono no no no no I said facility is the best James Bond level Sorry Miss Google a

6. I'm a sweet Niger in an artist and imma hit my target

7. He's not blue I guess she sorry I missed Google

8. Is it when you look this up yo so there's this picture like this f****** dislike Chief or some s*** you know I know it's like is a picture as f****** dude in like the dude what bigger he's like blasting him with the f****** horn Sorry Miss Google no no  I'll pay attention

9. This is not a typo.  This is actually how you use the habitual be.  Google it. [God damn it, Rudy. Now I can’t correct it. This is an act of pure cruelty - Will]

10. Yeezy for Prez 2024

11. No I understand what edible is the ribs are edible they are f****** ribs barbecue 2 yeah

12. You read it twice I'm saying no I'm not saying that it's no I'm not saying that you're wrong I'm just saying it's that's no its ribs ribs are edible it’s meat man

13. f*** itNothing is f***** no this thing is this thing is f***** f*** you miss Google

14. Do you know there's not really any any black mini black niggars there a Google voices see it changed it on me though there was saying there aren't many people there black their Google voices like it doesn't have any black voices you know how I get a Niger to read this

15. Buck yes I'ma f****** anybody up with Siegfried and f****** Soul Calibur

16. might create a child or something maybe finna give them some talk but no dice

17. Citation needed

18. I own a burqa because it’s my dream to be an invisible woman.  Oh hey, I'm temporarily literate again typing this since the discussion has turned to games hahahahhaa.

19. Right a big Bronco item Pig f****** Bako s*** oh yeah oh yeah big f****** butt God damn it I said the buck like a buck Niger

20. Citation needed

21. Mass that is a funny word whatever but it reminds me of that that f****** article about The Decemberists

22.  Yo n**** tuff now till they hear that gun sound

23. But Google can still hear my voice right right Miss Google right Miss Google a hey hey Google