Category Archives: Television

holding us back.

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I don’t watch a lot of television. In fact, most of my television consumption these days is completely over the internet.  However, I have five shows that I’ve deemed essential: House, Community, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Mad Men. Private Practice is a residual holdover because of my love for Grey’s.  I watch Grey’s regularly and at the conclusion of Season 6, Writer/Producer Shonda Rhimes took the show to a devastating turn. In last year’s double episode season finale, Rhimes unleashes a gunman on the staff of fictional Seattle Grace/Mercy West Hospital, opening with the shooting of one the key characters (Dr. Reid at point blank range in the head) leading to a day of mayhem and domestic terror.

Yes, it makes for great sensational drama, and while some of the extremes in the crisis and dialogue were a bit much, I can’t ignore that conversation that Rhimes and fellow Grey writers are facilitating about terrorism, trauma, gun violence, grief and recovery.

Clark: Five days ago when I bought this gun… Did you know you could buy a gun at a superstore?

I did not. In most states, one can acquire a firearm from a superstore like Wal-Mart, and wait five days for a license. A fact that I often take for granted living in the Republic of Brooklyn.

The 14 episodes between the conclusion of Season 6 through the mid point of Season 7 are deceptively complex. I’m fascinated that one of the most popular dramas on network television is exploring these themes. I had been watching Grey’s for so long, so familiar with the slow unfolding of the character’s personalities that I took the shooting personally. The writers researched gun ownership/control, and while it seems like gun rights and laws are political wedge issues, GA offers it’s viewers the opportunity to experience, if you will, through the lives of their characters the reality of gun ownership, regulation and use. They also present another face of terrorism that we take for granted.

The September 11th parallel is not lost on me. Some may scoff, but the show opens with a series of vignettes, a perfect normal, sunny day in Seattle, not unlike a perfect September day in New York, or perfect July day in London 2005. Katie Herzig’s sweet and haunting soundtrack juxtapose against the brutal images of another main character (McDreamy) shot in the chest at close range.  Additionally, I think about April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City. It was a beautiful day in New York City then. I can’t remember if it was a beautiful day April 20, 1999 when two teenage boys shot up their classmates outside Boulder, Colorado. I do remember it was a Tuesday. Continue reading →

Quote of the…

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Day? Maybe of the week. A friend passed along a recent interview with The Wire creator, David Simon.

It’s one thing to recognize capitalism for the powerful economic tool it is and to acknowledge that, for better or for worse, we’re stuck with it and, hey, thank God we have it. There’s not a lot else that can produce mass wealth with the dexterity that capitalism can. But to mistake it for a social framework is an incredible intellectual corruption and it’s one that the West has accepted as a given since 1980—since Reagan. Human beings—in this country in particular—are worth less and less. When capitalism triumphs unequivocally, labor is diminished. It’s a zero-sum game. People paid a much higher tax rate when Eisenhower was president, a much higher tax rate for the benefit of society, and all of us had more of a sense that we were included….I guess what I’m saying is that the overall theme was: We’ve given ourselves over to the Olympian god that is capitalism and now we’re reaping the whirlwind. This is the America that unencumbered capitalism has built. It’s the America that we deserve because we let it happen. We don’t deserve anything better. The Wire was trying to take the scales from people’s eyes and say, “This is what you’ve built. Take a look at it.” It’s an accurate portrayal of the problems inherent in American cities. Continue reading →

Zombie

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I can’t seem to get away from them either.

The Daily Beast recently unpacked what appears to be a trending topic in our cultural lexicon.

So what is it about zombies? Arguably, they are the perfect interchangeable metaphor for everything from Nazis, to consumerism, to the loss of individuality, to the collapse of civilization, to the impending doom of swine flu, and most recently representing mindless bankers, stumbling around and feeding on whatever fetid bad debt they can, however unsavory it later turns out to be.

Unlike other more glamorous monsters that always come across as a little too cool and a little too chiselled, the zombie is the reassuringly accessible underdog—often vulnerable, powerless and alone, but also blissfully unaware. Theirs is a condition that is far closer to that of the human being than we would like to admit, and it is perhaps for this reason that zombies will always have resonance in times of social and economic upheaval: We start losing our jobs and homes, and before long we’re all completely lost, left to shamble around mindlessly until someone takes pity on us and shoots us in the head.

So this isn’t just coincidence. Insolvent banks are commonly known as zombie banks. And with good reason; practically every Friday, a new bank failure failures. One of them was a beast. I’ve come to expect announcements of bank failures around 4:30 PM -7:00 PM every Friday with a bit of disaffection. I don’t know if that’s good or not. But with the threat of something so familiar in ‘normal’ life as a un-dead flesh eating beast, there isn’t any room for nostalgia. Continue reading →

never dreamed you leave in summer…

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I don’t think we could have ever anticipated that the Summer of 2009 would be marked by the passing of giants and innocents.

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Neda Agah-Soltan
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Farrah Fawcet
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Ed McMahon
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Michael Jackson
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Walter Cronkite
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Shem Walker
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John Hughes
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Eunice Shriver
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Ted Kennedy
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Patrick Swayze

A generational struggle continues in Iran, despite Ahmadinejad’s ‘re-election’. And as that conflict still unfolds in the limited information we’re able to gather from the internets, our own civil society bristles in a debate that’s ostensibly about regulation and values. The racial animus came out of the box swinging, masked in rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of the president’s citizenship.
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While we debated the race/class conundrum surrounding Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates’ arrest in Cambridge, an army veteran in my own neighborhood was shot and killed by undercover police officers at his front door step.

This wasn’t exactly a reprise of the Summer of Love. Perhaps this summer will be remembered as the Summer of Mourning. Mourning the deaths of young dissidents in Iran, mourning the death of cultural giants, lions of the senate, trusted men of journalism, and artists that defined a generation. And in their wake, I wonder how will we fill these shoes they left us.

A Beautiful Mine

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Mad Men Season 3 Premiere is a short but distant two and half weeks away.

AMC’s website has an awesome interactive program that for a fan like me, was irresistible.

The cultural history is layered. It’s doubtful you’d see someone like me, even in my Mad Men avatar, move so freely in that space without it signifying some aspect of the past social contract. But it’s nice to imagine that animated me could be patron in a bar, rather than server. It’s a period of history I’d rather pretend never existed, and skip to the good part, when we got civil rights and I get to experience integration and live in a ‘post racial’ society. However, Weiner’s drama is still compelling. The nuanced day to day interactions of race, gender and class in what we can now refer to as modern America, are so exquisitely rendered that I can’t help but watch the show as if it were a cultural document. For our post-modern, ‘post-racial’ society, it’s an interesting history to watch unfold week to week, a close examination of how far we’ve come in our own narratives, and a reminder of how far we still have to go.

As a writer, I find Don Draper, Betty Draper and Peggy Olson fascinating. I grew up poor, so suburban ennui, unhappy marriages, or inhibited women are fascinating for me. The women in all of these narratives seemed to be silently screaming. The tension was building last season with the women. Over drinks last weekend, three very liberated women (me and my friends) got to discuss the implications of psychotherapy from that era. We were trying to convince our friend that she needed to get caught up on the show; we were talking of the scene where Betty’s psychologist talks to Don about what Betty discussed in therapy earlier. A detail that we found alarming. It was such a common practice, no one questioned it, until 1970. A lawsuit created what we’ve come to accept culturally as doctor-client privilege.

It just makes me want to reread John Cheever and Richard Yates. Maybe Patricia Highsmith, too. It also makes me want to listen to RJD2 on repeat.

Go Mad Men Yo’self.

Canonization

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We danced hard.

We watched him. We studied those moves. We studied those moves like our lives depended on it. We succeeded and failed. I had no rhythm in 1982. Eight year old me struggled to copy those moves. In third grade at Golda Meir Elementary, we had a talent show and a group of us practiced a dance routine to You Wanna Be Startin Something. I was the weakest link. I danced like the Tin Man in the Wiz, even though I always adored the limberness of the Scarecrow.

I remained a fan but kept it closed to the vest.

My late friend Peter had a saying, ‘Sometimes, you just gotta dance out your demons.’ He picked up from watching an episode of Charmed. I used to mock him, but I still accepted the underlying wisdom.

I’ve been watching old videos of Michael like everyone else has over the past few days. A few videos come to mind, Beat It, Jam, Black or White and the seminal work, Thriller. Watching Michael’s dance solo at the end of the Black or White video (beg at 6:32) I can’t help but feel he was dancing out demons. He morphs from panther to man dancing fluid, masculine, and wild, then back to panther.

Michael was Matrix before the Wachowski Brothers dreamed it.

What were those demons? Only time will tell us the full extent. We saw evidence of them over the years, never quite grasping his metamorphosis from black man to indeterminately ethnic. Perhaps it was a hybrid of love and hate for mankind that compelled him to make his body a template to teach us something. That we are one people, beyond artificial lines of color. I did see that. However, I also saw a soul in crisis, sacrificed to us for contempt and ridicule.

I did eventually figure out how to dance. It was in 1991. Shit was pretty bad then for me, but this song may have saved my life. Flexibility and abandon came when I finally let go and surrendered myself to pulse of the music. And the body memory of those moves revealed themselves to me.

Sometimes, you gotta dance it out.

Only now, I realize that I turn to his songs to help me deal. In his voice, the rage at injustice, poverty, racism, all the things that divide us vibrate underneath his songs. I connected to that. It’s the equivalent of a primal scream for me. Growing up in ’80s and ’90s America and being black were challenging times. My family struggled during those times. My parents couldn’t afford to buy me a Thriller jacket. We ate government cheese. I was lucky to score an old copy of Right On to clip pictures and pullout posters of El Debarge, Michael Jackson, and Prince. There were drugs. There was crime. There were senseless deaths. There was hunger.

Things that make you wanna holler. Or scream.

It seems to me Michael came from a musical tradition to give voice to those struggles. Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On begot Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life, begot the Jackson’s Can You Feel It, begot We are the World begot Man in the Mirror, which begot Heal The World.

He was an artist.

He used music to give voice to our shared frustrations, local and global. He also gave us hope. He entertained us. His videos challenged convention and elevated story. He merged forms revolutionized dance as means of communication. He reminded us that there is ecstasy and joy in dance.

He held his crotch because when you have Kundalini energy moving through you, you gotta try to harness it.

Shiva is known also as the cosmic dancer. It is said that Shiva’s dance manifested in two forms, gentle and violent. Shiva dances to destroy, create and build again. Watching Michael, I can’t help but wonder if that was the energy he was trying to manifest in his fluid motions, pirouettes, pops and locks, gravity defying leans and moonwalks. Michael broke down old forms and barriers in everything and birthed something new.

He was a deeper creative spirit than I had originally imagined. It seems clearer to me now as I look back on all those years with adult eyes. Michael was a student of history and culture. It didn’t seem obvious to me growing up, but now, I’m a better student. I’ve studied other cultures and their dances, and I understand now what Michael was trying to show us.

I weep for yet another marker of the end of my childhood. Nothing lasts forever. It sucks that sometimes you have to lose something to realize how much really had.

But I’ll never forget the dance. I’ll shake my body onto the ground as if all of creation depended on it.

Fifty Nifty, United States…

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Do you know that song? Composed by none other than Ray Charles. The other Ray Charles. It goes like this: “Fifty, Nifty, United States from Thirteen Original Colonies…” Imagine singing it to the key of C. Or something. Anyway, a new project has been launched. It seems to only highlight a trend out there in ether.

And I thought it was just me. It seems that photographers, journalists and writers, television networks are all asking the question: What is the character of America?

Vanity Fair in 2004 had an essay contest soliciting a similar query. It challenged entrants to “explain the character of the American people to the world.” I entered that contest, and sadly, I did not win. The exercise did, however, help me. I’m still asking myself that question. I’m not sure I’ll ever settle on answer. Here’s a clip of my essay response:

“We are paradox. Let us begin with that as meditation.
We are hopeful. We are heartbreaking. We defend. We punish. We are arrogant and humble. We are naïve and wise.
Then, there are the photographs.
We are barbarians and humanitarians. We destroy. We rebuild. We hate. We love. We supported and objected the war.
We were born under the sign of Cancer. It is a patriotic sign. Home. Family. Nation. We are collection of people searching for place to call home. Some came by boat, plane, train, car, bus. Some even walked. Home fabricated, stolen, and replaced.
To be an American means to constantly discover and rediscover whom you really are…“

2004 was an interesting time to ask the question, as it was in 2003, when the Whitney Museum exhibited work from international artists for the American Effect show. And it still is an interesting time to ask the question. Our nation is maturing and I’m not just talking about the general population. The meaning of being American is maturing. And America isn’t all one color. And we can’t pat ourselves on the back and say we’re post-racial, post-gay, post-feminist. We’re still trying to figure out what that looks like and how to live it.

So I hope we all continue to search for answers about who we are now and who we hope to become. I’ll be bringing this track along, a perfectly crafted short story and anthem, for our long journey ahead.

photo: “Girl with dollar bill” © Larry Schwarm