April 15, 2014

Dream Work and the Mimesis of Carrie Mae Weems

BY CARL HANCOCK RUX

Carrie Mae Weems, In the Mountains of Santiago de Cuba (from Dreaming in Cuba), 2002. Gelatin silver print, 78.7 x 78.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York © Carrie Mae Weems

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So long as it is I who paints my own portrait, nothing daunts me.
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Force of Circumstance: The Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir, 1963

Through selection and cropping, the photographer creates, as the writer Susan Sontag noted in her seminal 1977 book On Photography, a new relationship between image and reality. “The earliest experience of art,” she wrote in an earlier essay, “Against Interpretation,” “must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual.” In the seemingly banal rituals of Carrie Mae Weems’s vernacular photography, one experiences the soft positioning and glower and glare of the subject, whether belonging to past, present, or dystopian future. One sees the female figure, head tilted up, smoke curling from a lit cigarette held between supple fingers. Or that figure appears engaged in the ritual of breathing, of walking, of admiring a reflection of herself. The ordinary existence of an African American female body becomes the framework for circular structure and translation, creating functional beauty from the scraps of everyday life. Who is she gazing at and do we know which “self” is reflected in her mirror? Is she an “ordinary brown braided woman” ready to begin herself? Or is she Correggio’s Jupiter, cloaked in a dark-grey cumulus cloud, walking among the ruins of ancient aqueducts through monumental arches, moving pointedly toward a lectisternium, growing from a humilis cloud form to towering congestus?

In Weems’s work, the dream is the image. The substance of the dream is the character placed within and drawn out of its context: surrealism as mundane practice intersecting boundaries of the commonplace and ancient landscapes. Nothing is ordinary about the image, and nothing can be assumed. The photographs are antirealist, nonlinear, and phantasmagoric as the historic black female body bearing the consequences of being, recognizing herself continuously and bearing the weight of being unrecognizable. The image is the handiwork of a consecrated dream unveiled as female insurrection or independence, both apart from and within the company of other bodies—be the other bodies a suggested representation of maleness, an invisibility of whiteness, or the reflective presence of a prepubescent African American female body.

The writer Simone de Beauvoir, in speaking about the “womanly state” of her work as an existential philosopher, political activist, and social theorist, proclaimed that she wanted to realize herself, noting in her autobiography that she wanted to have her contemporaries “hear and understand me . . . myself in relation to life, to death, to my times, to writing, to love, to friendship, to travel.” This is not the self of autobiography restricted to the complexity of original occurrence, but the self as protagonist of a background, tragic or serene, against which her experiences are drawn, giving them meaning, constituting their unity. Similarly, playwright Adrienne Kennedy, drawing images from dreams and memories, asserted in her 1964 play Funnyhouse of a Negro, “It is my vile dream to live in rooms with European antiques and my statue of Queen Victoria, photographs of Roman ruins, walls of books, a piano and oriental carpets and to eat my meals on a white glass table . . . at the same time appropriating figures from a mythical and historical past.” Both writers pronounced themselves in a passionate exploration of the recesses of the American conscience, psychologizing the act of dreaming the female body into existence, in much the same way that Sontag’s anti-novel, The Benefactor, introduces us to Hippolyte, who has dreamed his way through an ambiguous life with the primary purpose of solitary speculation. Hippolyte lives only on the periphery of other lives, making the great decision to use his life to interpret his dreams as opposed to using his dreams to interpret his life, thus fancying himself self-invented within a fresh dream instead of the exhaustive repetitions of the old ones.

As Descartes asserted in Meditations on First Philosophy, everything we currently believe to be true could be false and generated by a dream. That process is the work of the marginalized body, and the lens through which we must view the images of Carrie Mae Weems.

Carl Hancock Rux...Healthcare is a Basic Human Right!

Personally, I'm kind of tired of these "Repeal Obama Health Care" commercials sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative organization founded by billionaire businessman and conservative/libertarian political activist David Koch (and the Koch brothers) and who are a major force behind the Tea Party movement. Such organizations are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country to steer more than $200 million (potentially much more) to conservative groups ahead of Election Day, in order to promote deregulation, less government spending, increased oil drilling, opposition to the health care law, and efforts to defeat cap-and-trade legislation. BLAH! For many people without health insurance, a key question raised by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act is whether states will decline to participate in the law's big Medicaid expansion. Some people argue this is the best way to go. I say NO. Health is a civil right, like marriage and voter equality. It is a federal right and should have ALWAYS been a part of our national constitution! (Next up on my list is housing for everyone. Yeah I said it, and I'm not talking about those rickety piss stained gunshot riddled places we call housing projects). Anyway, although the court upheld the law's mandate requiring individuals to buy insurance, the justices said the act could not force states to expand Medicaid to millions by threatening to withhold federal funding. Republican leaders of some states already are saying they are inclined to say thanks, but no thanks. (Surprised????? I'm not!) Let's put it this way...we've been through this before. We went through it with the emancipation of slavery. We went through it with manumission. We went through it with civil rights and voter rights. I can just see the mass exodus of the poor from states that refuse to give them health coverage (which is kind of what those states want anyway. Shout out to Texas and Virginia and Montana. The list goes on). More than 46.2 million Americans live in poverty — the highest number in the 52 years for which such estimates have been published, according to census figures released Tuesday. From 2009 to 2010, the nation's poor increased by 2.6 million, and the number of those without health insurance grew by nearly 1 million people.In Florida, 3.8 million people — more than one in five — were without health insurance last year. Nationwide, the number of uninsured was closer to one in six. Of those Americans not working, 28.5 percent were without health-care coverage — the same percentage as part-time workers. But even among those who worked full time, 15 percent were without insurance, the continuation of a trend that began a decade ago with rising insurance rates.Since 2001, the number of Americans with employer-provided insurance has declined from 179.9 million to 169.2 million. In some cases, employers stopped offering such coverage. But there are also employees who decided they could no longer afford the premiums.There are patients whose employers have dropped health-care insurance because the costs are too high."The recession and high unemployment also took a bite out of family income. Median family income in the United States dropped 2.3 percent from 2009 to $49,445. Since the recession began in 2007, median household income has declined by 6.4 percent.How many more have to fall into poverty before we say enough? Our nation's policymakers should acknowledge that increasing poverty is a national crisis instead of allowing it to be a moment in the 24-hour news cycle. And our lawmakers should address it with the same level of urgency, time and resources that they devoted to the extended debate over the debt ceiling. The issues are a focal point in the discussion of President Barack Obama's proposed jobs package and  haggling over the safety net of Medicare and Medicaid. What these numbers tell us is that one in five Floridians still lack health insurance — and that's a real problem. We can't afford cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, the programs that provide health care to people when they need it most. A lot of people are only one job loss away.When it all comes down to it, there may be a lot of holes in the health bill, and it may not cover every illness imaginable, but if we begin with states extending Medicaid coverage to non-elderly individuals with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line, or about $30,700 for a family of four, according to a March 2012 report 16 million people will be covered by 2019, so I say THANK YOU AND ALL PRAISE BE TO THE MOST HIGH and let's stop questioning whether or not we should give the gift of health and start talking about how to make healthcare an even better gift.

http://www.thegreenespace.org/events/thegreenespace/2012/mar/14/literary-salon/

http://www.thegreenespace.org/events/thegreenespace/2012/mar/14/literary-salon/

Carl Hancock Rux blog: (Carl Hancock Rux responds to) The Gentrifier's lament: Black writers talk, new Brooklynite doesn't listen

Carl Hancock Rux blog: (Carl Hancock Rux responds to) The Gentrifier's lament: Black writers talk, new Brooklynite doesn't listen

(Carl Hancock Rux responds to) The Gentrifier's lament: Black writers talk, new Brooklynite doesn't listen

Below is the article originally posted on the New York Daily News blog

Sitting on a little wooden chair in a bookstore located in the increasingly gentrified neighborhood of Fort Greene, I did not understand exactly what the host of the event meant when he looked out across the crowd of twenty or so in attendance, with a slight smile, and said “Welcome to Brooklyn.” “This is going to be great!” I thought, excited to learn more of the rich cultural history of my newly adopted home borough. “This is going to be sick!” I took out my I-pad, and began to take notes in earnest.The event was titled “Black Writers: A History of the Neighborhood,” and the audience in the front room of the Greenlight Bookstore was mixed in race but uniform in urbanity.We sat rapt as black writers Nelson George, Carl Hancock Rux, Martha Southgate and John Lee stood, next to microphones they didn’t need, relating tales of living and working in a hard-scrabble Brooklyn neighborhood which was foreign to my particular experience but positively thrilling to hear tell of. They remarked that the neighborhood is changing. Changing? I thought. I’ll say! For the better! Last week this shabby little bodega next to my apartment was replaced by an unmarked used record store. At first I was troubled, for the old man behind the register at Rodrigo’s Grocery had had such sad eyes, but then I reconsidered. For how can any place that sells LCD Soundsystem vinyls be anything but a boon for the neighborhood? God, LCD Soundsystem is so sick. Anyway, the night wore on. The writers' stories, following the path of the neighborhood itself, seemed to emphasize progression: things getting more generally sick. Fort Greene, I learned, has been home to a number of literary figures, not the least of which was Richard Wright, who wrote most of "Native Son" from a bench in Fort Greene Park. I can relate to this especially, having composed the script to my Off-Broadway one-man-show entirely at a side booth in the DUMBO Starbucks! “Of course, the neighborhood has changed a lot since then,” George said later, smiling slightly again, having just recalled an anecdote from his own life growing up in the Tilden projects in Brownsville. I jotted this down on my I-pad. I felt strangely disconcerted all of a sudden: my ‘pad was running low on battery.Carl Hancock Rux spoke next. His voice was deep and mellow like a late night DJ’s. Rux, a playwright, novelist, actor and product of the New York City foster care system (ohmigod, can you imagine?), spoke of the progression of Fort Greene from an impoverished shanty town to an enclave of the rich and famous in the 1880’s. “Where do the poor go when their neighborhoods are gentrified?” Rux asked us, “All I know is that history is repeating itself.” Reflexively, I frowned. History repeating itself? I thought but did not say. Isn’t that kind of a cliché, Carl? Come on. Meanwhile, my ‘pad completely died. That thing is such a piece of junk. I was growing frustrated. Novelist Martha Southgate then stood up, wearing an old “She’s Gotta Have It” T-shirt. She told a story about buying the shirt from Spike Lee himself as he stood on the street corner hawking merchandise on a hot summer day. Now, let me interject here. I studied Spike Lee in my Introduction to Film Theory class back in college, and I have to say, old Spike has some pretty inflammatory things to say about white people. Annoyed now, and little sick of all this history, I stuffed my decrepit ‘pad into my canvass side-bag and prepared to leave.And then I heard the voice of the last speaker, John Lee, former member of the Masters of Deception computer-hacking gang, as well as an influential video director and Internet activist. He spoke of serving time in prison - of how the neighborhood went on without him like a girl you thought you knew, but really didn't. “You see those little bits of gum on the sidewalk?” he said, his eyes wide behind thick glasses, “Those bits of gum probably have my own blood still left in them. That’s how long I been on these streets.”I clapped politely, but could hardly refrain from rolling my eyes. It was time to go home now. I’d had enough. I walked down the sidewalk back towards the subway home, checking my shoes for blood and bubble-gum.-- Frank Santo

Below is my response

The displacement of the poor is cliche, as in hackneyed or overused? Nothing cliche about the repetition of history, and if you'd rolled your eyes less and refrained from fidgeting with your ipad, you might have paid attention to the fact that the "Rich Man Poor Man" essay I mentioned about the shanty towns and displacement of poor people on Myrtle Avenue in the face of the Victorian era brownstone boom was very much like what's happening in Fort Greene Clinton hill now, not all for the better and not all for the worse. The study and analysis of urban livelihoods and governance shows us little is known about how displaced people negotiate their way in the urban environment, their relationships with host communities and governance institutions and their specific vulnerabilities as compared with other urban poor. Likewise, the role of humanitarian and development actors in supporting these populations, and the strategies and approaches best suited to address the assistance and protection needs of urban people are poorly understood.The phenomenon of rapid and uncontrolled urbanization in developing countries is increasingly threatening the well-being and the development opportunities of millions of city dwellers. The factors influencing dramatic population growth are complex and multi-factored. A prominent feature is forced displacement triggered by economic conflict, situations of political instability, and a slow and sudden combination of these factors. There are also broader ‘push factors’ at play, which include lack of livelihood options and inadequate access to or availability of essential services. Furthermore, it is often the case that, like other migrants, internally displaced persons (IDP) are attracted to urban areas because of the perceived availability and better quality of basic services and livelihood opportunities, the chance to live in proximity to their family members and increased security through anonymity in the urban space. When ethnic or economic assimilation is subtracted from the potential of these people to survive or remain in certain areas, new areas of the displaced impoverished are created with little to no attention paid (by urban developers) as to how disenfranchisement travels and regenerates itself. You can applaud the vanishing of a bodega and the appearance of a store that sells LCD Soundsystem all you want...it appeals to your interest, but not to to the merchant who must now figure out his livelihood and the return on his investment in a community he has served for many years, providing basic goods and services. Yes, it happens. Yes, it reeks of cool...but brother PUH-LEEEEASE take an urban theory class before you roll your eyes at displacement and the vanquishing of the poor. I'm surprised you didn't at least learn something of the overall thesis of Spike Lee films in your film theory class, or understand what Richard Wright was writing about when he wrote "Native Son" to begin with.-- Carl Hancock Rux

Haven't responded to the Don Cornelius suicide for a reason....long before I knew about his demise...while I was on the plane...on my way to an academic conference...I found myself overcome with an overwhelming sadness...a prescient sadness...yes I believe we have the ability to foresee...to foreknow...we have been here before...so I flipped through the magazines...I leaned back...I put my headphones on and l listened to Usher (of all people)...but the tears kept coming...I was thinking about the elders...some with whom I have come in contact lately...who are being evicted from their homes...who are trying to sell their homes because they can no longer afford their homes...who are without homes...who are shut-in their homes...who encountered me on the street and asked for a couple of dollars just to make it through....who are facing debilitating illnesses...who are struggling to survive...who are struggling to maintain their dignity...who are struggling to walk...and these elders have been walking for a long time...they are long walkers...they have been walking all over the world...they are way-makers and thinkers...they are giants...and even though Don Cornelius...suffering the effects of a stroke...of congenital brain surgery...of marital rupture...even though he had sons who loved him...and friends who loved him...even though he lived in a mansion on Mullholland Drive...he took his own life at age 75...and it made me know...he was alone...very alone...and it made me wonder...where are we?

BELIEF & THE INVISIBLE PLAYWRIGHT (PAJ 100 publication) by Carl Hancock Rux

The Invisible Playwright

"Where really lies Americans,’ America’s passion? What does its citizens really hope for?" Harry Belafonte

I first read Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, Jean Genet, and Ed Bullins, while attending a public junior high school in the South Bronx. I didn't think they were (specifically) speaking to me, a twelve year old African American (and I argue nor did they) but I was taught to learn a language, for which I am eternally grateful. I am also grateful for the language of their unapparent heirs, writers whose works are largely considered (by the commercial majority) as non-translatable; vestigial members of a dying breed who embark upon an investigation of a theoretical construct of reality as shared by human experience, in order to cultivate expression as a means of invading one’s own privacy and building a rhetorical pluralism of epistolary narratives. For me, there is no wall dividing reality from the unconscious. Those things considered otherworldly are tangibles. In my own work, often one character is represented as two characters, and introduced as a gradual emerging of characters as it occurs via a sharing of gestures, and a synchronicity in language. Neither time nor space, according to traditional theatre conventions, is important. My characters are split into dualities. Their thoughts come from the conscious and the unconscious, concentrating heavily on the perceived gap between the two. The texts concentrate on bodies and cities in ruin, referencing C. G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis; performance texts combining dance, music, dream theory, and Greek mythology into an American context. If this constitutes an American playwright then Yes, I Am.

Following the broadcast of the 64^th annual Tony awards, Jill Dolan, Annan Professor in English and Theatre at Princeton University, asked a question, “Where are the Women?” (posted in the Huffington Post 6/10/2011). She wrote, “The Tony Awards season confirms what anyone concerned about the status of women in theatre has long come to expect: plays by women are excluded from the nominations once again. When will power brokers and critics realize that until work by women is produced and recognized, Americans will continue to hear only one side of the stories of our lives?” Dolan’s erudite question prompts many questions: What is American theatre, who is it written for, and who are its authors? If the answer to the latter is American playwrights, does that mean, by definition, U.S. writers of plays or U.S.-born writers of performance works? How and why do they differ? Since 2000, of the forty-eight titles nominated by the American Theatre Wing for Best Play only six have been written by women, only three written by a single African American male (August Wilson), only one play written by an African American woman (Suzan- Lori Parks) and only one play written by a gay Latino male (the last two received Pulitzers) and only one written by a French-Jewish-Hungarian of Iranian descent has won, and none written by women or Asians or indigenous peoples or … .

As Dolan points out, no American women playwright have won Best Play since the turn of the twenty-first century. Only 12% of those nominated have been written by women, which begs the questions, do Americans write America? Further, are American theatregoers’ ears no longer attuned to the complexity of, say, Adrienne Kennedy’s fractured psyche? For me, Ms. Kennedy’s plays are an example of an insurgent métier where a bloody Patrice Lumumba and a Black woman's conversion into a screeching owl are tropes of American colonialism, charting the cartography of Ms. Kennedy’s self in cold war America. I have listened as she painfully expressed her disappointment with an abysmal place called “American theatre” where young writers are not trained to defend the illogical structures of dreams according to principles of ritual. Does this mean the creative output of writers like Adrienne Kennedy are just the forgotten musings of a theatre that came to light amidst an era of experimentation when language, protest, music, performance genres, and image clashed about like so much overhead shrapnel? Is this no longer relevant or viable to an American theatre audience? What is the responsibility of those of us who teach theatre in the brutal place called Academe, where—as Ms. Kennedy’s mentor Edward Albee once said to me at a dinner party with Sir David Hare and John Guare— “playwrights are not taught to write, they are taught to RE-write.”

I am often reminded, when reading mainstream theatre criticism, of an absence of real cognitive tools enabling critics to review the non-linear. It seems to me American theatre co-ops the detritus of regurgitated classics, managing to marginalize, oppress, and exclude new living forms. As Professor Dolan points out in her post, old dead white male playwrights remain the relevant majority of the American theatre organism. This tactic of celebrating the old and oppressing the new acts as codified exclusion. The conceit of copy given to American theatre seems all too concerned with the twitter of excitement concerning something monumental coming over the horizon, such as the musical version of Spider-Man. The soup the rest of us are drowning in is a dense mud trying to thin itself out into a pool of discourse. We wade through it as best we can, demanding (perhaps hoping against hope) for the language of mad ramblings that moves us toward a contemporary realm of experience, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is that (I believe) there remains a gulf between what the people want and what critics see.

Admittedly, we all come to the theatre with different intentions. The ones who come to the theatre with the least expectations are the ones who walk out of the theatre with the heaviest load. As an invisible playwright, according to James Baldwin, the responsibility of the writer is to “excavate the experience of the people who produced him (because) we don’t yet exist in the imagination of this century, and we cannot afford to play games; there’s too much at stake.”