fillums – dogpossum

1970s New York, nunchucks, and radicalism

A friend posted this the other day, and it pinged my radar.

The ban on nunchucks within the New York city limits was instituted in 1974, the year this song was released:

In this USAToday article discussing the changing of legislation, they write

“The ruling went over the history of the ban, and said it “arose out of a concern that, as a result of the rising popularity ‘of ‘Kung Fu’ movies and shows,′ ‘various circles of the state’s youth’ — including ‘muggers and street gangs’ — were ‘widely’ using nunchaku to cause ‘many serious injuries.’”

And in this New York Times article they write that

“New York lawmakers worried that some young people might be using the device nefariously. “

In 1974 ‘muggers and street gangs’ in New York was code for ‘Black kids’. ‘Kung fu’ films, tv, etc was hugely popular with Black kids (you can read more about that here).

The ‘nunchuck’ ban is interesting because it was clearly targeting this segment of the community in a period of economic freefall and city corruption.
I’m fascinated by this period in American history. There’s a really good documentary called Blank City, which looks at the rise of indy cinema in NY at that moment as well (including Lizzie Borden’s radical feminist film Born In Flames).

Why Die Hard is a Christmas Movie

Ok, so it’s my favourite christmas movie subgenre: Adult goes home to family for christmas.

The flight is actually ok, people he meet say useful things that foreshadow later plot points. But it’s when he finally gets to his destination that the fighting begins. Unwelcome guests, drinking, desperate quiet moments alone in the bathroom. More fighting. The highlights are the little kids, and the friend he almost desperately hugs when they finally see each other.

Aside from all that, it’s actually a well plotted film. The tension builds, and every line of dialogue, visual, or character actively develops the story. Classic 80s cinema; you get 1.5 hours to tell a story, then get OUT.
There are some structural elements that are really pleasing. eg the Four Seasons motif that is played by a string quartet on screen, then hummed by various characters, and finally appears as a thematic element in the film’s score; Alan Rickman’s accent(s) are really magic – english sprinkled with the odd German emphasis on a vowel, the ‘American’ accent, etc.

In fact, Rickman makes the film. He perfectly embodies the greedy (aspirational?) crook who longs to have the sort of outrageous fortune that allows him to wear Saville Road suits and not brag about it.

It’s your classic 80s Hollywood film: ‘average joe’ working class white guy from NY overcomes feminism, Japanese workplace culture, financial greed, LA, and all the markers of 80s American bubble economy. All with plucky inventiveness and bravery. If you pay attention (or at least look at the screen occasionally), it is sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-intellectual, and violent.

Why watch something you hate?

I’ve been thinking about this question: ‘why watch things you know you’re going to hate?’
There are lots of personal reasons – boredom, the pleasure of a hate-watch, curiosity, keeping up with trends, I’m not the only person watching the telly in my household, etc etc. But I also try to keep abreast of things that I know I won’t like, so that I have an idea of what’s happening in various media – film, telly, music, books, comics, etc. I also believe that it’s ok to dislike or hate something. And to talk about why we hate or dislike something.

In the case of the Beatles, they’re the epitome of Boomer cred: white person cultural tastes. To even say (as Heidi did) that ‘the Beatles are over-rated’ is almost a taboo. How can they be overrated? They’re the BEATLES!

When we talk about why dislike something that we’re _supposed_ to like (or love), we offer critical engagement with dominant culture. I do often say ‘I hate that!’ without qualification, but if I’m at the point where I want to talk about it on fb (unlike twitter, which is just friends), I usually offer qualification.
Why do I hate this program ‘Get Back’? What is it about it that makes me so uncomfortable? Why watch something I won’t like? What is happening in this text that narks this feminist so much? Why do I dislike it, even though I like the music? That last question is the interesting one: what’s happening in a text like this that lets me both love parts of it (the melodies) and hate other parts of it (the gender and race politics at work in the text and surrounding the text)? This is the best question, I think.

It’s an example of how a text doesn’t carry innate value or meaning. It’s just light and sound. But each time I engage with it, I make meaning, and my meanings change. I can look at this film and ask ‘Where are the women? Why has nothing changed in the music industry?’ And I can ask ‘Where are the poc? Why has nothing changed in the m/s music industry?’ But I can also ask, ‘Is this how a group of white men can negotiate disagreements without violence?’ or ‘Is this how a song gets made, collaboratively?’ The text doesn’t change, but my way of reading and interacting with it does.

This is, of course, the core of concepts like ‘critical race theory’. Why would I read the diary of a slaver who justifies his work as economic necessity, when I know I’m going to hate it? Why not just read things that I love that make me happy?

When you read and watch from a marginalised position (esp as a woman, a poc, etc), there are so few m/s texts that offer uncompromised joy and happiness.

Topic: groove, musicians teaching us to dance.

A student, who is also a musician, just sent me a message. They’re from a rootsy/folk sort of background, and play a lot of gypsy jazz. They’re just discovering other types of swinging jazz.

The message said:

“Surely there is nothing better to lindy hop to than Oscar Peterson. Surely.”

We had a conversation, and at first I was a bit ‘mmm, not necessarily,’ and it spread into stuff about how groovy stuff with a deep pocket was cool in the 2000s, but isn’t necessarily awesome for all sorts of lindy hop.
Then I said something like ‘but that Ella and Louis album features Peterson, and it’s wonderful. Oh, and then there’s this. And this. And this.’
And I have to concede: Oscar Peterson is wonderful.

But.
This sort of jazz has a different groove to a big Webb band in full swing, or Goodman’s small groups, or Slim and Slam.

And it made me think: I don’t want my students to always ‘bounce’ or ‘pulse’ in the same way to every single song. _I_ don’t want to groove in the same way to every song.

Anyhoo, I was listening to a bunch of different types of jazz just now, figuring out how different grooves work in the music and in my body.
Then I watched this video, and noticed how each musician has a different groove in their body, but a shared sense of time, and they’re all listening to each other. And once again, I’m thinking ‘music first: musicians can teach us a lot about dancing.’

The end. By Sam.

Hannah Arendt

This is one of the best films I’ve seen on SBS On Demand. I barely knew anything about Hannah Arendt, so it was a very good watch.
It seems especially relevant now because it’s about a jewish woman, Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) who’d escaped a concentration camp and is now a big name philosopher/academic living in New York. She goes to the trial of a nazi (Adolf Eichmann) in Israel and writes about (spoiler) ‘the banality of evil’. Lots of people really didn’t like the way she framed her arguments.

It’s a really well made film, with great acting, etc etc. And it’s very unusual to see a film about a very intelligent, middle aged woman from a marginalised group writing and speaking cleverly on screen. It’s especially relevant now, because of its questions about how ordinary people can do great evil.

I saw the film ‘The Eichmann Show’ a few years before I saw this film, and that really helped me understand what was happening when Arendt went to the trial. I’d recommend watching that first. It’s difficult to comprehend, now, what it must have been like for survivors of the holocaust to confront a nazi in a public court. It is, of course, disturbing viewing. As it should be. But the difficulty comes from the stories people are telling, and their sheer broken misery, rather than on-screen violence.

I’m not all that familiar with Arendt’s piece, but now I think about it, this idea of the banality of evil seems to best fit the ‘robotdebt’ issue in Australia and the effect of austerity policies in the UK. The gradual dehumanising and eventual deaths of powerless people caught up in bureaucratic knots. Public servants participating in this dehumanising, just by ‘doing their jobs’.

Looking for Langston

Speaking of the black experience in jazz and blues dance…

I haven’t yet ready anything in the blues and lindy hop community about the black queer male body dancing.

There’s been some good work on black women’s bodily experiences in modern jazz dance culture, and a bit about black masculinity. Quite a few too many white men have whitesplained how blues works as a black space, and far too many white women and men have avoided talking about vintage fashion as an ethnicised scene.

Apparently the black queer body in a well cut suit or gorgeous gown is too terrifying even for whispers.

I saw Looking For Langston (an art film by Isaac Julien) last night. The whole project – a film made during the 80s AIDS crisis by a black British man, about a black American man of the Harlem Renaissance – is a meditation on queer desire, jazz aesthetics and the blues. The name (and a lot of the content, including some proto-vogueing) reminds me of Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna, and the queer-eye-on-art. It includes voice work by Stuart Hall and Toni Morrison, Paul Gilroy gets props, Jimmy Somerville plays a cherub (again), and Tongues Untied is referenced. Also there is some cock.

The installation at Rosley Oxley9 Gallery features some beautiful large scale black and white stills from the film, depicting black men dancing in closed embrace. Photos I regularly see linked up on facebook as examples of queer dance in the swing era. Ha.

Liah says it’s good to check out the Mapplethorpe exhibit at the agnsw as well, so you can see how Julien’s work responds to Mapplethorpe (and the white queer gaze on black bodies).

I’ve hooked up this obviously pirated version of Looking for Langston, because it’s a hard one to get to see.

photos:

mise en scene pic from Isaac Julien’s set (source).
Stuart Hall, from his obituary in the Telegraph.
Toni Morrison by Gregg Delman in the Times.
Paul Gilroy (source).
Jimmy Somverville in Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Tongues Untied (source).
My pic from the exhibition.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Two Men Dancing (source).