Old Friends: A Storybook for Former Children

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Burgoyne Diller, American abstractionist (1906-1965)

Burgoyne Diller, American abstractionist (1906-1965)

Surviving as an artist during the Great Depression: 

"I thought I was terribly fortunate because I had a scholarship. Then I got a scholarship job at the League, and I sold paints in the little store for a few years there. It was only an afternoon job but, you know, that was money. It wasn't much, but believe me, it was a lot compared to most of the artists that I was friendly with at the time. So it was a question of most of us just pitching in together, and sometimes we'd have one pot of soup for ten. Sometimes hardly enough for one. It's crazy, but it was wonderful." 

~ Smithsonian Institution oral history 

Knowing Your Triggers V

 

Some years back, drugstore chains would run newspaper ads that Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen would be on sale during February in observance of Black History Month. 

That's always struck me as a measly attempt at creating goodwill and was glad when retailers dropped the practice -- at least for hair-care products. Walmart still hawks Nike's special line of Black History Month sneakers. Nothing says African American culture like basketball shoes, right? 

Marking down a popular commodity 20 percent or draping a product in kinte and pitching it as a celebration are uniquely devices -- but then so is a quasi-restitutional holiday. 

We're a nation that's all about commerce. Get over the sentiment about enslavement and disenfranchisement. Let's focus on dollars and cents.

And one way to move along the discussion of "full" restitution for Blacks would be to include the provision that whatever is given to African Americans would be managed by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Turning restitution for centuries of exploitation and manipulation into a transaction would surely grease the skids.

Economic justice and equality brought to you by Well Fargo!

Keep Stepping

 

When Covid shut everything down, I started going to the research park at Farrow and Parklane more often to get my steps in. 

I would pull into a visitor's space outside of South University's main building and do a mile or two, walking around the campus and through the parking lots of neighboring companies -- most of which were ghost towns. 

I hadn't been over there in a while, so yesterday I decided to restart that routine. I like the campus -- it's quiet and, even now, is usually not busy with foot or vehicular traffic. The geese who feed and nest there are pretty docile.

When I returned to my car, the security guard came out of the building and called me.

"Excuse me, sir. The dean wanted me to tell you the next time you want to stroll could you park in the big lots over there (pointing behind me) or over there (pointing behind him). The dean says you parking here is kind of odd since this is visitor parking." 

I smiled, thought for a minute, fought the Wiggins tendency to launch into a discussion about definitions and said, "And that would be alright?"

"Yes, sir," he said. "That would be alright."

"OK. Thank you for your courtesy," I said. 

He nodded, thanked me and turned to leave.

I congratulated myself on the "self-check" and thought as I pulled away what's truly "odd" is how often I feel the urge to defend a hill that is not worth the time or attention.

Life is too short. Keep stepping.

Alex Murdaugh and Justice

 

Seeing this photo chills me a bit because it gets me thinking how right and wrong for some these days is not about moral certitudes but affidavits and documents and expert witnesses and counter-arguments and wrangling and objections and motions and this and that and the third.

An accused double-murderer enters the courtroom ladened with folders and binders that, presumably, contain some evidence that he did NOT shoot his wife and son in the summer of 2021. That he has NOT been playing grieving husband and father for nearly two years. 

What is it like to be in the presence of someone who might have shot his family members in the head and concocted a story to exonerate himself, who passively sits in a courtroom day-after-day as testimony mounts pointing to his guilt?

What is it like to see this man have many days in court when those much less powerful can be beaten to death in the street for "resisting arrest" and observers tut-tutting and saying "he shouldn't have tried to run"?

Ludwig Sander, American painter of the New York School (1906-1975)

 

Ludwig Sander, American painter of the New York School (1906-1975)

"And we (downtown art club) did sort of make sort of common laws that there were to be no pictures on the walls, there were to be no manifestos, it was not an aesthetic grouping but merely a social grouping. Because people painted like anything you wanted to look at. And nobody took a strong stand or was defending himself, his ideas. Nothing had any name. There was nothing called abstract expressionism."

Knowing Your Triggers IV

 

   

I recently watched Kamau Bell's 2022 documentary on Bill Cosby, which is every bit as dispiriting as I'd imagined. It contains peculiar passages of classism and status-consciousness that while not altogether surprising were disappointing to hear. All while being oddly mute on Cosby's apparent predilection for white women as victims. 

During a section of the documentary on Cosby's educational bona fides, some of those interviewed questioned the legitimacy of the doctorate awarded to him by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Some questioned if he'd actually written his dissertation, the subject of which was his animated television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. 

While those are legitimate questions -- particularly in light of the claims by some former Cosby staffers that they did the work on his thesis -- I thought the commenters' relegating the doctor of education degree, which Cosby holds, to a tier below the Ph.D. was petty and self-serving, in that both interviewees had earned the Ph.D. 

One commenter compared holding the Ph.D. to playing in the NBA, and the Ed.D. to the G. League. And another took umbrage when Cosby, who had taken offense at something the Temple University professor had written about Cosby, refused to call him "doctor" while addressing him. Pulling at each other like crabs in a bucket.

For his part, Cosby, who is depicted in the film as a vile narcissist, is shown in one section belittling a reporter who had been covering the allegations of sexual assault filed against Cosby. He demeaned the reporter as only making "700 dollars a week" while he, himself, was making $60 million a year.  "He's jealous," Cosby said of the reporter. It's a despicable display. 

That Bell and Cosby's critics do not probe more thoroughly why two-thirds to three-fourths of the women who accused him of drugging and assaulting them were white women is strange to me. Some of those on camera dismissed the disparity as unimportant because Black women were among those victimized, too. But what does it say when most of those accusing him of rape are white or fair-skinned Black women? Wouldn't it lend greater credence to the claims and suggest that his predation was calculated? That he had a type?

Perhaps that line of inquiry was rejected because of this country's history of casting Black men as threats to white women. I can see that and can imagine the backlash. 

Still one of Cosby's accusers made a comment that struck me as echoing popular prejudices about Black bodies. She said she was surprised by how soft his skin was. 

John Marin, American watercolorist (1870-1953)

 John Marin, American watercolorist (1870-1953)

Don't everlastingly read messages into paintings - there's the Daisy - you don't rave over or read messages into it - you just look at that bully little flower - isn't that enough?

Talking About Revolution (1970)

 

In September of 1970, the Black Panthers convened a meeting of revolutionaries in Philadelphia to begin work on drafting and ratifying a new U.S. Constitution on election day later that year. 

During that spring, the BPP distributed these registration forms through the underground press. According to a report in the Cornell Daily Sun, about 6,000 people were packed into Temple University's gymnasium, which held only 4,500.  Attendees who represented racial justice, women's, gay and lesbian groups, workers and peace organizations split into 17 workshop sections, each meeting for six hours to piece together the document. 

According to the Daily Sun, "The workshops were on such topics as self-determination for national minorities, for women, and for 'street people,' control and use of the military, the means of production the educational and legal systems and the land. Other workshops dealth (sic) with health and drugs. 

"Among the principles the participants wanted included in a new Constitution were community control of police and education, guaranteeed (sic) free medical care including birth control, abortion and sterilization upon request, a part time militia to replace the standing army, no conscription, no production of genocical (sic) weapons, no United States troops on foreign soil, free advanced education, and the replacement of present boundaries with an indeterminate number of self-governing communities."

The actual convention in Washington, D.C. never happened as the Panthers were shut out of multiple venues and internal coordination fell apart. Huey Newton promised the Panthers would try again but they never did.

Knock at the Cabin

 

M. Night Shyamalan's films strike me as more inspired notions than fully formed projects, and yet they never fail to intrigue. 

I might be responding to the absence of sturdy connective tissue between elements in many of his films. I often don't have a complete understanding of the mythology (or science) behind all of the weirdness that Shyamalan likes to explore. This is very much the case with his latest picture -- Knock at the Cabin.

Jonathan Goff and Ben Aldridge play Eric and Andrew, respectively, parents of the precocious Wen (Kristen Cui). While collecting grasshoppers near the family's vacation cabin, Wen meets the towering but soft-spoken Leonard (David Bautista). Leonard and his three friends (Rubert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Abby Quinn) say they have come to the cabin after seeing horrifying apocalyptic visions containing orders to execute a plan to save the world. 

Eric and Andrew mistake this intrusion for a home invasion, in many ways it is, and greet the four messengers with distrust and derision. The four say they have been chosen to see that the cabin family sacrifice one of their own to save the world. It's an absurd conceit and one that the cast is only partly successful in conveying, but, again, this is Shyamalan's territory, and he handles absurdity with ease.

Audience members who are imbedded in loving families will no doubt respond with virulence like Wen's two dads, who suspect, additionally, that the visitors have targeted them because the family is headed by gay men. Flashbacks to a hateful attack in a bar offer a bit of insight into the couple's suspicions. Other scenes are not as meaningful and seem to have been tossed in for color and not context -- Eric and Andrew getting baby Wen, Eric meeting Andrew's parents. 

Shyamalan's fans looking for his famous last-reel reveals might be surprised that Knock at the Cabin contains no plot twists or big "ah-ha" moments. Despite the incredulity expressed by Eric and Andrew, this is indeed a Doomsday rumination with all of the dread and misery that portends and with a message about duty and sacrifice that is murky, at best.

Knowing Your Triggers III

 

I suppose I get especially exasperated with folks who fixate on symbols to the exclusion of more pressing material matters as they relate to race.

I remember talking with a Black psychologist many years ago who offered that Black folks' focus on the battle flag showed an unhealthy reliance on other people's views and opinions rather than a healthy and rational assessment -- a clear-eyed view -- of one's own.

"If somebody says you're a rat does that make you a rat? No."

I've held on to that lesson over the years, and while I supported efforts to take down the flag from the State Capitol, I never lost sight that the flag did nothing to define me. 

I pushed because I believed it materially was retarding state growth and was being used by the powerful to divert attention away from their chicanery by promoting divisive ruckus.

I know many are committed to the galvanizing power of symbols -- and I don't believe there's any doubting that. But I prefer substance over signage. 

Franz Kline, American action painter (1910-1962)

 Franz Kline, American action painter (1910-1962)

Half the world wants to be like Thoreau worrying about the noise of traffic on the way up to Boston; the other half use up their lives being part of that noise. I like the second half.

RIP Melinda Dillon

Street Fighters Manual

 

This page from a 1970 issue of the Berkeley (California) Barb offers tips on hand-to-hand combat and how to give first aid to victims of chest and head wounds. Shit was real back in the day, yo.

Become an Ordained Minister

This ad ran in the Berkeley Barb from 1970 and it might be the most honest depiction of the paid-clergy profession that I've seen. It's totally bogus credentialing that's more about signifiers than substance with an eye on the money to be made. It's not clear what one would be getting for the 20 bucks other than a certificate, some Bible lessons and instructions on baptizing and burying.

Hedda Sterne

 Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter (1910-2011)

"In our time, artists are inclined to believe that art is like honey, the product of their own subconsciouses, their own minds, and I do not. I see myself as a well-working lens, a perceiver of something that exists independently of me: don’t look at me, look at what I’ve found." Patterns of Thought: Hedda Sterne – ARTnews.com

The Fabelmans

 

Master film craftsman Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans is as well-constructed as one might expect from Hollywood's most-bankable director, who gets an assist on the screenplay from award-winning stage and film writer Tony Kushner.

In The Fabelmans, Spielberg recounts the times when he discovered his fascination for motion picture spectacle (the train crash scene in The Greatest Show on Earth) and, later, the mystery of the relationship between his parents -- his mother Mitzi, the artistic free spirit (played with abundant grace by Michelle Williams) and his father Burt, the engineering tactician (Paul Dano, who is a studied match for Willliams' exuberance). 

Playing Spielberg's alter ego, Sam, as a schoolboy is wide-eyed Mateo Zoryan (who has an expressive face made for the movies) and as a conflicted teen, the young Canadian-American actor Gabriel LaBelle. They each capably express the movie-maker's aching guardedness, seemingly rooted in the subtle tension between his mismatched parents, a troubled pairing that seems to be embodied in the person of "Uncle" Bennie (Seth Rogen), a family friend who has been riding Burt's coat tails for years. The popular comic actor Seth Rogen is wonderful as the lovable schlub with a peculiar attachment to the Fabelmans.

Both of young Sam's big discoveries are related and offer context for Spielberg's affinity for stories that either merge the fantastic with the homespun (E.T., Close Encounters, A.I., War of the Worlds) or that blend cinematic artistry with technical precision (notably Jaws, The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln).

My screening mate and I agree The Fabelmans is not a great motion picture (based on Spielberg's own standards), but it feels honest and is, unsurprisingly, simply beautiful to watch, affecting and often quite funny.

It was especially gratifying for me to see Judd Hirsch perform a brilliantly crafted scene with young Mr. LaBelle in which Hirsch's character Uncle Boris, the former circus lion tamer, explains, painfully, that an artist must suffer for his art. It's a wonderful moment, what folks used to call a "star turn," and handled by a true pro. Bravo.

Law and Order in the Ghetto

 From the underground press's Berkeley Barb, January 1970 ....

The Cos

 

A friend who counsels individuals and couples told me he'd just finished watching Kamau Bell's 2022 documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby. He highly recommended it, knowing my interest in popular culture, human relations and social dynamics.

Bell's film, streaming on Hulu, slipped by me when it was released last year but I double-backed to it because I'll be showing two episodes from Cosby's '69 TV sitcom, The Bill Cosby Show, in my class on sports in entertainment narratives. In the series, Cosby played an L.A. high school teacher and coach who has quiet, relatable adventures in his school and neighborhood. The show ran for two seasons on NBC, despite Cosby's winning demeanor and enormous on-camera charm.

I was conflicted at one point about including the episodes because of accusations by about 60 women of being sexually assaulted by Cosby. Would showing the material be a tacit endorsement of Cosby's behavior off-screen? Did I want to send a message to the students that I winked at criminality and sexual assault? 

Of course not. I see this as an opportunity to engage in a valuable exchange with students who are studying how sports have been incorporated into television and film to explore other aspects of the human condition. We'll discuss some of the matters that lie at the heart of Bell's film, namely, how does one who has harbored a positive view of the entertainment respond to reports of Cosby's assaults? 

Must we set aside his large body of life-affirming work on television and in film and on recordings because beneath the surface they reek of hypocrisy? 

Is the storied "cancel culture" warranted in this case?

I look forward to hearing from the young minds in the class.

Knowing Your Triggers II

 

American culture seems to be all about the sell - whether it's cars, cosmetics or candidates. Turning a buck is the dominant ethos. But that's not news.

In talking with a long-time friend the other day, I mentioned my ambivalence with what I see as the commodification of pain and protest. A whole sector of the economy seems to exist for the propagation of advocacy for those who want to air grievances, to set things right -- I call it the social movement industry. 

These folks who give paid counsel on branding and messaging and coordinate rallies and demonstrations are quite different from the grassroots organizers who met in community centers and church basements, raised money through donations and bake sales, who used phone trees to mobilize, may have even printed manifestos using hand-cranked mimeographs or spray-painted messages on bedsheets. Those ways and means seem somehow purer to me. 

Today's social movements need more sophisticated tools to reach their goals. Organizations like The Bridgespan Group and Purpose offer services to non-profits, charities and advocates around the world. Individual website builders and market researchers are in demand by groups seeking legitimacy and fund-raising through the internet and targeted appeals.

This evolution strikes me as both important and regrettable, reflecting my overall disappointment that fighting for fairness is still so needed -- but now is so much more expensive.

Inflation?

Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy, French Fauvist

1877-1953

"I don't follow any system. 

All the laws you can lay down are only so many props

 to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives."

 

Knowing Your Triggers

 

Black History Month is a time for me to reflect on my racial triggers, those lingering annoyances that I can't seem to let go of or resolve -- though not for lack of trying. 

Pretty close to the top of the list is the Black nanny trope in popular culture.

Oddly, I have less of a problem with Hattie McDaniel's Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1940) than I do with Nell Carter's housekeeper / nanny Nell Harper, 40 years later in the Reagan-era sitcom Gimme a Break! 

Maybe I'm applying Maya Angelou's dictum here: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Network television should have known better by 1981, had they been paying attention to Norman Lear's troubles with Good Times (1974-1979)

Depending on the frame you use, Nell Carter's mouthy domestic could be viewed as an empowered Black woman who was standing up to "The Man" on the regular or as an updated version of the classic Sapphire stereotype -- a bossy, difficult Black woman, without children or a man of her own, who exists to serve white folks and intimidate. My view is the latter.

Nell Carter's career seemed on the verge of blossoming into something big but that never happened. Her early acclaim for her work in the Broadway ensemble review Ain't Miss Behavin' (1978) didn't seem to open doors to bigger and better things on the stage right away. Her casting in Gimme a Break! was timely and no doubt needed, so I don't begrudge her for going for a paying job. But the character was stale and stock, IMO. Even so, it garnered Carter notoriety -- a couple of Emmy nominations over the years.

Carter, who died in 2003 at age 55 of complications from diabetes, may or may not have been sensitive to this casting. I couldn't find anything suggesting otherwise.

Still, portrayals of childless Black women -- angry or not -- who nurture the children of white employers is pretty close to the bone of America's racial past and perhaps need not be a part of its racial present.