I See White People

It seems that the Advertising World is looking into the future, and so far Hollywood is refusing to go along.

Watch commercial here.

This Dodge commercial caught my eye recently, as it features a handsome young white man flirting with his sister's pretty black friend in the back seat of his car.  Great George Wallace's ghost!

And if you look elsewhere in TV commercials and magazine ads, you will see an increasing number of mixed couples.  Meanwhile, prime time television series and even those on "edgy" premium channels such HBO remain rather segregated.  (I know there are exceptions, such as the married couple played by Eliza Coupe and Damon Wayans Jr. on Happy Endings.  And I know past shows, such as Scrubs, have had diverse casts.)

The new HBO series Girls got a lot of press when it debuted, and it also caught some flak.  One of the guests on the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour (which still has not asked me to be on the show!) put it well when she noted that the part of New York City in which Girls is set had been "ruthlessly whitewashed."

You could argue that the show is simply following in the Manolo Blohnik-steps of Sex and the City, which also perceived NYC to be less like a Big Apple and more like a Hostess Snoball.

Look around the most popular television shows and you will see this whitewashing is fairly common.  For instance, of ALL the women Ted has dated on How I Met Your Mother, how many were not white?  None that had speaking roles (at least that I can recall).  Yet it is set in the same city as Girls.  As far as Hollywood is concerned, New York City is as ethnically diverse as Marshall's beloved Minnesota. 

Yet we live in a nation that becomes increasingly more diverse each year.  The number of interracial marriages is on the rise, and white newborn babies were outnumbered by their non-white nursery mates in 2011.

I do not expect network television to start looking like a Benetton ad, but some more meaningful diversity would be appreciated.  By "meaningful" I am thinking of something other than the one "black best friend" in a cast.

However, I realize I may be idealistic here.  Perhaps America is not as diverse or unsegregated as I imagine.  Many Americans work or attend school in diverse groups but go home at night to segregated communities.  It would be nice if all of those communities were reflected on television, and, for me at least, it would be nicer if those communities were seen interacting on the same show.

Ta-Nehisi Coates  discussed this topic recently for The Atlantic, lamenting the lack of diversity within shows and in TV lineups in general: "It is not so wrong to craft an exclusively white world--certainly a significant portion of America lives in one. What is wrong is for power-brokers to pretend that no other worlds exists."

Emily Nussbaum discusses race on prime time in a New Yorker article on Scandal, a show with something rarely seen on television: a black female lead.  She cites a show on CW called The L.A. Complex and a scene in which a white female character auditions for a "best friend" role.  However, the actress is told a black woman will be cast to "really reflect reality" -- “I mean, who has a black best friend, right? Like, in real life, if you’re trying to be all authentic?” She turns to the room full of unsmiling black actresses and asks, “Do any of you have a white best friend? No? Right.”

Is it funny because it's true?

I hope not.  In the mean time I hope Hollywood follows the lead of Madison Avenue.

Signs of ImagiNATION

2009

I saw this image last week after a couple of items circulated in blogosphere about the woman pictured in the feathered war bonnet.  She is identified as Queen Chief Warhorse and as Ms. Elwin Gillum. 

When I saw the image of her in that Plains-style bonnet, I thought about Tea Party demonstrators who wear tricornered hats.  I thought about how group identities, such as ethnic and political identities, are products of fantasy and imagination – even when the group or a person’s claim to membership is legitimate.

Gillum spoke at the recent Healing for Democracy conference in New Orleans, and the discussions that followed tended to involve whether she was or was not an American Indian.  They concerned the question of who gets to speak for American Indians.  They concerned whether the group she represented had a legitimate claim to tribal status.  They concerned whether questioning another person’s identity was legitimate.  And they concerned the implications that fraudulent claims to tribal status presented to federally recognized tribes and those groups seeking that status.

Indian Country is a complicated place.

I don’t have room here to address all of the issues raised by the blogosphere’s reaction to Gillum.   If you are interested, read about some of those reactions at the blog of my friend Debbie Reese.  What I did want to consider for a moment was Gillum’s “Indian name,” her feathered headdress, and the man standing next to her in neon colors.  What do those things mean?

N. Scott Momaday is a Kiowa writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969, and he wrote an essay famous in American Indian Studies titled “The Man Made of Words.”  In that essay he poses the question, “What is an Indian?”  He answers it by saying “an Indian is an idea which a given man has of himself.”  Later he asks about a human’s “the relationship between what he is, and what he thinks he is.”  Momaday suggests they are inseparable, that a human’s identity is produced by his or her imagination.

For some people, this seems like a recipe for chaos.  Anyone can be anything he wants to be, anything he imagines himself to be.  Regardless of a person’s lived experiences, she can claim any identity.  

   

I don’t think that is what Momaday intended.  In the essay he describes the importance of imagining experiences one may not have first-hand access to.  For instance, he discusses the importance of a person’s relationship to the land, but not just the land here-and-now; it is important to imagine the land before you arrived and the land after you have gone.  It is important to imagine the land you cannot see from your current place.  Similarly, he writes that it is important to imagine those ancestors who came before you.  It is important to imagine their sacrifices and successes that made your existence possible.  It is important to imagine them fully, in their complexity and humanity.

More than personal identity relies upon imagination.  In his book titled Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson writes that nations are built upon imagination.  Nations are built of many local communities, and the greater the distance between these communities the less their members will have in common.  But having a belief, trait, or experience in common is so important for creating a nation that humans will create it if they need to.  And if even if they do not make it up, they still must imagine it.  Anderson describes the importance of the newspaper in creating a nation: people in distant parts of the nation can easily imagine their countrymen reading about the same events and sharing something of a common perspective on them.  “Remember the Maine!”  American Idol results.  Etc.

This act of imagination is so fundamental to nations that Anderson writes: “Communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.”

That brings me back to Gillum’s feathered bonnet.  It is initially puzzling because it seems out of place.  She represents a group calling itself the Tchefuncta Nation of the Chahta Tribe.  Chahta is a variation of Choctaw, a tribe of the Southeast United States, and the Tchefuncta River runs into Lake Ponchatrain just north of New Orleans.  Historically, the Choctaw did not wear bonnets like that.  Those were a Plains thing.  So why is she wearing it?   

Is she wearing it because she does not know much about Choctaw history and culture?  Is she participating in a kind of “redface minstrelry”?   Or perhaps she is truly the descendant of Choctaws, but the United States government’s effort to erase Choctaw culture and communities was so successful that she is left to recreate her Choctaw identity out of the bits and pieces she can glean from … wherever.  Including Hollywood.  

If you have read my blog before, you know that I like to entertain the notion of signs – the ways in which humans communicate to themselves and to each other.  I think her feathers could signify “the partial erasure of Indianness” as much as they signify “Indianness.”

However, that bonnet could signal a cultural heritage connected to New Orleans and Mardi Gras traditions rather than to centuries-old Choctaw traditions.  That man standing next to her is dressed as a Mardi Gras Indian.  He possibly is a member of a “krewe” or “tribe” that dances and parades at Mardi Gras celebrations.  These groups elect a “chief” and a “queen.”  When I searched online, I found images of such chiefs and queens, and some of them wore headdresses like Gillum’s. 

The Mardi Gras Indians have their origin in African slave communities in and around New Orleans before it became part of the United States.  Those groups had important links to the region’s Indian communities – through personal and romantic relationships and through a kindred feeling of oppression and resistance.  Their signature flamboyant costumes seem to be an influence of carnival traditions brought by people from the Caribbean.  

Some of the bloggers commented on her name of “Queen” and how this is not a rank bestowed by American Indian tribes.  It was bestowed by Europeans who did not understand how Indian politics and diplomacy worked, who assumed that North America worked as Europe did (or mostly didn’t – Europe was really a mess).  However, Mardi Gras Indians have “queens.”

So, is Gillum imagining herself as an Indian when she wears that feathered bonnet?  Is she imagining herself as “only” an Indian, or is she imagining herself as an amalgamation of African and Indian ancestries and cultures?  The latter makes sense, but when she addressed the group in New Orleans, she emphasized only her Indian identity and ancestry, and she spoke of representing those who were, one could say, Americans before there was an America – but the Africans did not arrive as slaves until after there was an America.

What do her feathers mean?  The answer to that question could be very complicated.

Ding! Ding!

As I said earlier, her bonnet makes me think of the Tea Party demonstrators who wear tricornered hats.  This is their way of signaling their own imagined nationhood.  They see themselves as connected to those Americans who fought against Great Britain in the Revolution – regardless of whether they are truly descended from those people.  Who knows when their ancestors came to the United States?  Whether he is or isn’t descended from some brave Minuteman is not as important as his act of imagining himself to be.  

This connection of the imagination and the past is especially evident with someone like Thomas Jefferson.  Those who argue that the United States is somehow a Christian nation insist upon Jefferson’s implicit Christian leanings, while those who argue for a separation of church and state cite his written sentiments supporting their position.  Each side fights over his ghost, in a sense, trying to imagine themselves as his legitimate ancestor.  It seems hard for humans to imagine themselves in entirely new communities.  They seem to insist on looking for connections to the past, whether real or imagined.

This is not to say that all national identities are merely the stuff of imagination and have no claims of legitimacy.  But all national identities are imagined, and that process of imagining a national identity is intriguing.

My Word of the Decade: Monetize

The American Dialect Society designates a Word of the Year.  In 2011, that word was "occupy."

In 2010: "app."

In 2009: "tweet."

The group also designates a Word of the Decade, and for 2000-2009, that word was "google."  That is google as a verb rather than a noun -- to search for something on the Internet.  Much the same way Xerox went from being a brand of photocopier to the word for photocopying.

I would like to suggest a different Word of the Decade.  And it might turn out to be the word for the current decade as well.  I hope it does not become the Word of the Century.  It is a suggestion based not on its pervasive use, although it is a word that has been in increasing use in the past few years.  No, it is a suggestion based upon the pervasive influence of the concept the word designates.

That word is "monetize."  It means converting an object, service, or idea into currency.

I saw the word recently in a New Yorker story about developments in high school football, especially in large, successful programs.  The most successful teams are starting to play teams from other states.  Tickets for such games are pricey, and the promoters can sell the broadcast rights.  The article, "The Jersey Game: Will High School Football Become a Big-Money Sport?", included statements from a man who "is monetizing a high-school pastime."

No, I thought immediately.  No.  We do not need to monetize high school football.  We do not need to convert everything, absolutely everything into money.  There must be some things that are off-limits to being monetized.

I realize that it is probably too late.  High school football is probably well on its way down the perditious path of commodification.  But still...

"Blah blah money blah blah."

"Monetize" is a word I had not heard of before 2000.  After that, after the explosion of business news with the popularity of media outlets such as CNBC and Bloomberg, it gained circulation.  And then with the financial crisis, it was a word that we not only heard frequently, it was a word that impacted our lives in very real and powerful ways.

As U.S. legislation in the 1990s and 2000s deregulated a host of industries, the financiers began to monetize everything they could.  Until finally they were monetizing the monetization of other things.  Collateralized Debt Obligations?  Credit Default Swaps?  They are methods of buying and selling the buying and selling of things.  And that hasn't worked out so well.

Uncontrolled monetization is like cancer.  Cancer cells are very successful and they spread rapidly.  Although cancer is an illness, you could say cancer cells are not sick; they are quite robust.  They outgrow regular, healthy cells, replacing them with cells that do not conduct the originally intended functions -- until at last they kill their host.  Victims of their own success.  Sounds like Wall Street.

Monetize and metastasize.  Too close for comfort.

Like those cancer cells that spread quickly and supplant the function of the cells they replace, money will take over high school football.  Its existence as a commodity will supplant its existence as a sport that builds individual character and a sense of community.  (I love football, by the way, and lament the damage money has done to the college game.)

Too often in the United States, commodity trumps community.  It does this when our drinking water is sacrificed so others can make money.  It does this when the quality of our air is sacrificed so others can make money.  It does this when the safety of our homes, workplaces, vehicles, medicines, etc., are sacrificed in the name of profitability.

It is not that I am against all forms of capitalism.  My brokerage account and my IRA would tell you that.  But I am against unregulated capitalism.  I am a believer that many things should be protected from commodification and commercialization.  Not everything should be for sale.

Louise Erdrich (by Bettina Strauss)

As I stewed, in vain, about this corrupting force in high school athletics, my thoughts quickly turned to a poem by Louise Erdrich, "Dear John Wayne."

In that poem, which I teach each semester, a group of American Indians are watching a cowboy-and-Indian movie at a drive-in theater.  They are experiencing a moment of cultural alienation: the actors portraying their ancestors are the bad guys; they know they are intended to cheer the victory of the cowboys and the U.S. cavalry, although this would mean cheering their own defeat and dispossession.

John Wayne (1907-1979)

Erdrich describes a moment when John Wayne's face fills the drive-in theater screen.  In that moment he represents a monstrous desire for land, signifying "Everything we see belongs to us."  The poem concludes a few lines later, comparing the desire for land John Wayne represented on the screen with the cancer that would take his life off the screen, suggesting a kind of national sickness:

Even his disease was the idea of taking everything.
Those cells, burning, doubling, splitting out of their own skins.

Perhaps the desire for land will not kill us, but the desire to turn everything into money just might be the cancer that does.

Sanford, Florida -- Gunfighter Nation

Choose one:
A. Life imitates art.
B. Art imitates life.

Humans learn from experience, and stories (art) are often drawn from our experiences.  So one might think the answer is B.

But think about how young you were when people started telling you stories.  Think about the books that were read to you by your parents.  Think about the television programs and commercials you saw.

Most of those stories involved things you had not experienced yet -- journeys to far away lands, the experiences of children older than you, etc.  Many of those stories involved things you would never experience -- talking bears, trips to the Moon, magical chocolate factories.

In ways big and small, those stories shaped your expectations of the experiences that would come later.  You expected your "real world" experiences to match your "story book" experiences.  Many times they did, and so you were comforted and well-prepared.  Many times they didn't, and so you discarded the "story book" lessons and revised your expectations of the "real world."

And some times, when the "real world" didn't match your "story book" expectations, you discarded the "real world" and maintained your belief in the "story book."  Or you re-imagined your experience with the "real world" so that it somehow matched or confirmed your "story book" expectations.

Some stories are so powerful they are hard to resist and hard to eradicate, even when they have outlived their usefulness.  Those stories that are particularly powerful, especially for an entire culture or nation, can be called "myths."  These are stories that have more power than fact.  Their veracity is not nearly as important as their ability to influence and motivate groups of people.  Because they are so powerful, it is important for us to understand them.

I know this most clearly from my experience teaching American literature and from my experience with American Indian Studies.  The American Indian most commonly found in American literature has little or no relationship to any actual, living, breathing Indian.  This started with Columbus and continued for hundreds of years.  It still goes on.

Like someone pounding a square peg into a round hole, the Europeans who came to the Americas forced Indians to fit into the categories and expectations they already had in place.  Many of the Europeans based their "real world" interactions with the Indians on their "story book" expectations.  And American Indians paid the price for that.  They still do.

But the power of narratives to influence behavior and belief can be seen in almost every aspect of human life.  From politics to love to family relationships to international diplomacy.  And politicians are no less susceptible to this influence than other people.  In fact, many times they get elected based upon their ability to evoke narratives, regardless of their truth or usefulness.

The Florida legislators and Gov. Jeb Bush seemed to have had a "story book" in their heads when they passed their state's "Stand Your Ground" law in 2006.  They seemed to understand their "real world" of 21st century life in Florida through the filter of a Wild West "story book."  Theirs was a world where bad guys roam the streets, like Jack Palance in Shane, terrorizing decent, church-going folks.  Theirs was a world where a man should have the right arm himself against such brazen attacks upon his person and property.  In fact, theirs was a world imagined as being so threatening and dangerous that a man needed the right to bear arms no matter where he went; a man should be able to protect himself with deadly force regardless of where he was.

Richard Slotkin wrote a book about the power of such Wild West narratives in American culture, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America.  He states the frontier myth is a "vein of latent ideological power."  It speaks very deeply to mainstream America's beliefs about itself, confirming its self-image as a nation of rugged individuals, heroes in an epic tale of people civilizing a savage wilderness.  It is a myth cited often by politicians because it is a powerful tool for "explaining and justifying the use of political power."

Never mind that Florida was not part of the Wild West.  Never mind that the "frontier" phase of American history ended more than 100 years ago.  The Florida legislators were forcing the "real world" to match the narrative that was in their heads.  By allowing private citizens to protect themselves with deadly force, they were holding back the forces of chaos (often times in the shape of ethnic minorities and immigrants).

They were not alone.  Other states have similar laws.  This notion of the frontier also shapes other issues in the nation.  The illusion of radical independence and self-reliance shapes everything from debates about education to health care. 

So on the night of Feb. 26 in Sanford, George Zimmerman probably had a story in his head, a story similar to that in the head of the legislators who passed the law that has kept the local police from arresting him.  In that story, he was a good guy.  In that story, young men with dark skin were likely to be bad guys.  In that story, the bad guys didn't wear black hats, like Palance did; they wore hoodies.  In that story, bad guys were willing to attack good guys and do them harm, so good guys were justified in shooting first.  So long as they claimed it was in self-defense, their actions were legal.

We can only guess what story Trayvon Martin had in his head.

I believe in karma.  I don't mean the kind of karma that involves reincarnation.  I mean its more basic definition of "cause and effect."  I believe that generally we experience the consequences of our actions, and generally they are in line with each other.  I often times say, "You have to own your karma."  By that I mean you must accept the consequences of your actions.  I am not saying Trayvon Martin somehow brought this upon himself.  Karma does not eliminate tragedy or injustice.  But his death is part of the karma the state legislature must  own.  When you make it easier for people to legally carry handguns, and when you make it easier for people to legally shoot other people, this will almost guarantee that more innocent people will get killed.

State legislators who opposed the "Stand Your Ground" law said as much. When the bill was being debated, Sen. Arthenia Joyner said, "When you give a person the right to use deadly force anywhere they’re lawfully supposed to be, then we open Pandora’s Box, and inside the box will be death for some persons."

Although I am an "English teacher," I prefer to describe myself as a Story Teacher.  More than talking about grammar and writing, I spend more time talking about stories -- how we tell them, why we tell them, how we change them, and how they change us.

Stories are powerful.  They can have serious consequences.  Ask George Zimmerman.  Ask Trayvon Martin's family.

The Big Bitch Theory

Kurt Vonnegut was known as a fiction writer.  It seems he may have been a bit of a prophet.

In one of his futuristic short stories, he described a United States where barriers against foul language in public had been dropped: "This was a period of great permissiveness in matters of language, so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody’s feeling threatened or taking offense. It was perfectly OK."

I know things haven't gotten that bad, but I have noticed the  pervasiveness of the word "bitch" lately.  It seems every few years a new word breaks the language barrier for television and public discourse.  Before "bitch" the hot word was "douche."  That went from a word not even used in commercials for one to a cheap laugh on sitcoms, from How I Met Your Mother to Cougartown.  (A blogger noted the douche-phenomenon in 2010.)

I am no prude when it comes to language.  I learned to curse in a news room, after all.  But there is a time and a place for everything, and it seems that "bitch" has become the curse du jour -- it is everywhere these days.  There is Bitch wine and Skinny Bitch cookbooks.  Internet memes of "Bitch please" (yes, usually  missing the appropriate punctuation) have become passe -- even those depicting the epitome of wholesomeness, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Perhaps an early sign of the word's impending invasion was in 2007.  That is when a character as unvulgar and untimidating as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory used the word.  In an episode titled "The Big Bran Hypothesis" he says, "Ah, gravity.  Thou art a heartless bitch." 

The word has even made its way into the names of two TV series: GCB (Good Christian Bitches) and Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

I should say "bitch" is implied in both titles, but I have heard that the original titles spelled the word out.  Oddly enough, both shows are on ABC.  I always thought that B stood for Broadcasting.  I guess not.

But the word is used in ways other than to refer to bad-tempered women.  For instance, Wolowitz and Raj, again from The Big Bang Theory, have both referred to their male friends this way.  In "The Hofstadter Isotope" Raj says, "Let's roll, bitches."  In "The Luminous Fish Effect" Wolowitz says, "What up, science bitches?"

The comedy results from the disjunction between their personas as nerdy guys from Cal Tech and the "street" use of "bitches."  Raj is probably saying it ironically, knowing it sounds funny, but Wolowitz, in this instance, is trying act tough and cool to his friends in order to impress a woman.  The use of "bitches" here implies he is the leader of the gang and they are his subordinates.

Even when bitches refers to men, it still carries its misogynistic meanings.  In the distant past, the word had meant only a "bad-tempered woman."  However, thanks to rap lyrics (and prison jargon), it now carries a host of other meanings -- all pejorative and all misogynistic.

In an academic study titled "Misogyny in Rap Music," the authors, Ronald Weitzer and Charis Kubrin, state the masculinity espoused by popular media representations of men "glorify men's use of physical force, a daring demeanor, virility, and emotional distance." Rap lyrics exaggerate those tendencies into caricatures, but those caricatures can have powerful influences on audiences.

We can see why the writers of The Big Bang Theory would make comedy of their man-child characters taking hypermasculine poses.

This masculine ideal conveyed in rap lyrics many times depends upon the domination, exploitation, and degradation of women -- and of other men, who, since they can be dominated, are associated with women.  That is to say, the word perpetuates the destructive idea that female = bad.  Women are sex objects.  Women are weak.  Women are inferior.  Dominating women (and men who are like them) is socially acceptable.

So, when "bitch" gains such widespread -- even laughing -- acceptance, I get worried that its misogynistic implications also are gaining that acceptance.  Some people might argue that frequently using the word robs it of its power and somehow weakens the values it conveys.   But I am not convinced this is true.

I hate to produce a grand narrative that sound like conspiracy theories, but the wide acceptance of "bitch" could be part of the larger cultural battles being waged elsewhere -- in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, in the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke, in the debates on contraception being covered by health insurance plans, and in the various efforts by state legislatures to dictate how women can interact with their doctors.