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Slavery — A Story Worth Sharing

October 9, 2016
art, civil rights, history
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Movie review: “Birth of a Nation,” Directed by Nate Parker, Written by Nate Parker, Starring Nate Parker. 2 hours

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Everybody in America needs to know about slavery. If right were right, we’d probably be required to attend a showing of Nate Parker’s new movie. Unfortunately, that may be the only way it would get a wide viewing. We don’t necessarily WANT to know what we NEED to know.

Nat Turner was a preacher who led an important slave rebellion in 1831. It led to a panic in the Old South. When white people panic, black people die. The title “Birth of a Nation” is famous in America because a silent movie long ago laid the emotional foundation for a re-birth of the Ku Klux Klan. If a person knew why Parker chose this title, one might also understand why audiences may not like his movie.

I don’t think anybody will complain about the technical aspects. Audiences feel right there with the slaves when they are shot, raped, tortured, humiliated and confined. They won’t complain that the actor wrote and directed himself, because the movie doesn’t fall victim to the self-indulgence of so many artists. But I don’t think people are going to come out of the theater feeling uplifted or enlightened the way they do when they come out of a really great art experience.

I think people will feel that they’ve been through an ordeal. It might be good for us, but so is going to the dentist. I’m not sure why the movie doesn’t make the connection it needs to make. The Pulitzer winning book by William Styron did. It’s possibly because it seems that the filmmaker took the Hollywood route of made-up romances, personal entanglements, and emotions that aren’t likely part of the record.  Maybe viewers couldn’t connect because they felt manipulated?

There were only 6 of us in the theater when we saw a matinee performance. I saw 4 go in for the next showing. I hope it does a lot better than that.

–Gene Lantz

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Compliments for the Radio

October 8, 2016
art, elections, politics, strategy, unions
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A caller on my radio show on KNON.org at 9AM this Saturday morning paid us a great compliment.

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Bonnie Mathias and I are on knon.org, 89.3FM, every Saturday at 9AM Central Time

He said that we were passing on worthwhile knowledge, just a little drop at a time. He compared the “drip drip drip” of our contribution to water eroding away a big hard rock of ignorance.

The “Workers Beat” program has been on KNON since it started in Dallas 30 or so years ago as a part of the ACORN community organizing group. When it had to go independent, and even after the government cut all funding for community talk radio, KNON managed to keep “Workers Beat” on the air.

It is one of three pro-labor radio shows in the entire southern half of the United States! As I put on the KNON web site, “Almost everything you see and hear comes from the bosses, or was approved by them. Employees don’t control the movies, the book publishers, TV, or the radio stations. Bosses do. The outlook and opinions of the bosses are expressed, everywhere and all the time. The outlook and opinions of workers get almost no expression. KNON “Workers Beat” talk show is an exception.”

Should We be Proud?

I guess that Bonnie Mathias and I can be proud that we prepare for the program and show up every Saturday without getting paid, but we can’t take credit for the wisdom in today’s caller’s compliment. The truth is that we don’t say a lot. KNON wants us to run an open mike talk show, not spout off our own opinions.

Even though today’s topic was the way that the City of Dallas is joining in the international game of sacrificing the right to retire, and even though I have very strong feelings about our losing the right to retire, I didn’t actually say “Vote NO on Proposition One on the Dallas ballot.” I just outlined what Proposition One would do and asked the radio audience for their opinions.

Callers were against Proposition One, by the way.

But the point is that the wisdom that working people get from the “Workers Beat” radio program isn’t coming from the hosts. It’s coming from the workers themselves! KNON just provides the forum, and working people call in, each with their own wise observations. Their observations are the “drip drip drip” of knowledge that is eroding away the rock of mass ignorance.

We’re just proud we could help!

–Gene Lantz

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Book Review: “The Goldfinch,” and the Meaning of Life

October 1, 2016
art
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Tartt, Donna, “The Goldfinch.” Little Brown, New York, 2013

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The old story goes that a guy sought the meaning of life. So he had to climb the highest mountain to ask the Great Guru “What is the meaning of life?”

It wasn’t easy climbing the mountain. There were a rock slide, an avalanche, and several mountain lions before, exhausted, he climbed up to the Great Guru. With all the breath he could still muster, he finally got to ask his question, “Oh Great Guru, what is the meaning of life?”

The Guru answered solemnly, “Spinach.”

The guy went berserk. He screamed, “I climbed this high mountain, I faced mountain lions and a rock slide and an avalanche to get up here, and now you tell me that the meaning of life is spinach?”

Distraught, and with tears beginning to form in his old eyes, the Guru said, “You mean it’s not spinach?”

***

“The Goldfinch” comes highly recommended. Wikipedia says it was a big hit when it first came out in Dutch, and the English version took the Pulitzer prize for 2014. In it, Theo Decker ages from 13 to mid-twenties and interprets the meaning of life as he experiences it, particularly from his love of the fine arts. One particular painting, of a small bird chained to its perch, becomes the axis around which the rest of his experiences revolve.

It’s not the same as climbing a mountain, but it seems like a very very long book to try to figure out Theo’s ideas on the meaning of life, especially because there were so many references to the fine points of fine art of which he seems to know just about everything and I know almost nothing.  I had to look up “aesthete”: es-theet or, esp. British, ees-] noun.

1. a person who has or professes to have refined sensitivity toward the beauties of art or nature.

  1. a person who affects great love of art, music, poetry, etc., and indifference to practical matters.

I decided that Theo, or at least author Donna Tartt, may be an aesthete and I’m not.

In my thinking, an aesthete is someone who would go ga-ga over a painting of a bird for decades, but would walk right by a dozen mockingbirds without looking nor listening. Without all the painted beauty that he describes so exquisitely, life would be pretty meaningless, or at least that’s what Theo seems to think.

I like paintings ok, but real birds are terrific, too. What I really like is everyday living. I like fixing oatmeal in the mornings for my wife. I sing a little song sometime, as I slice the apples and pour on the cinnamon, “Fixin’ breakfast for you!”

My wife has never once complained about my oatmeal. She always eats it. When I brag that I have some special talent and refer to myself grandly as the “Oatmeal King of the South,” she never contradicts me. In fact, she’s told other people that I make really good oatmeal.

So “The Goldfinch” book may be a good way to learn how to comment on some of the fine arts, and maybe it will interest people searching for the meaning of life. But it’s a long uphill climb to find out.

It’s like the guy who climbed up the mountain and was disappointed at the end. I could have told him that the meaning of life is not to be found in “The Goldfinch.” It’s not spinach, either.

It’s oatmeal.

–Gene Lantz

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“Les Innocentes,” Has Lessons on Religion

July 17, 2016
art, history, politics
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innocents

Movie Review: “The Innocents,” Directed by Anne Hathaway, 115 minutes. In French and Polish with English subtitles.

We always stay until the last movie credits have rolled. As we left, one of the ushers picking up cups and popcorn sacks asked “How’d you like it?” I told him that we loved the film, but weren’t sure that younger people would, because there was no action. It was pretty much all talking and walking back and forth through the winter bleakness.

You can always tell a really good art experience, because you keep talking about it afterward. The story takes place at the end of World War II at a convent in Poland. A French Red Cross medical assistant decides to help with some of the war’s ongoing tragedies that are complicated by dark and archaic religious secrecy.

Do You Suffer for Religious People?

Do you feel sorry for people who willingly suffer because of their religion? Do you relate to the person who voluntarily dons the torturous hair shirt? Do you anguish along with the flagellant? Is your flesh mortified along with theirs?

Or do you just think they’re nuts and at least partially to blame for causing their own problems?  You’re certain to confront those feelings if you buy a ticket for this one.

Personally, I do suffer for religious people. Not just when they’re undergoing horrible tragedies but all the time. If they weren’t so religious, they’d spend less time looking for their own faults and shortcomings. If they weren’t so religious, they’d have a better idea of what’s happening in the world and how to deal with it. Whether you feel sorry for them or not, there isn’t much you can do.

So it is with the French medical assistant. She’s a materialist and a communist, and she is just as committed, more committed, to making a better world than the nuns in the dilemma. Same as you, same as me, she does what she can.

My movie buddy and I loved the film because it made us think and feel. We wish the same for you.

–Gene Lantz

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Volunteers Make a Difference

July 13, 2016
art, strategy
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The big money and their hired guns are against us. Our side is led mostly by devoted volunteers.

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Station Manager Dave Chaos just before a KNON meeting

Trying to understand and work with volunteers is a major challenge for anybody who hopes for a better future. About twice a year, I get a chance to meet, up close, with some of the most interesting ones.

KNON 89.3 community radio usually holds its meetings at Herman Hall in the Deep Ellum section of East Dallas. The radio station only has 4-5 poorly paid staffers, but 60-70 volunteers keep it on the air 24/7. They present an incredibly eclectic variety of music and a handful of talk shows. Nearly all the “commercials” are public service announcements. The volunteers support the station by holding a steady stream of music concerts and with quarterly on-air fund drives. Community activists call in all the time.

My show “Workers Beat” has been on the station since it was begun by the ACORN community organizers in the 1980s. I was on-again and off again for some time before I took the program over regularly in 2006. There are only 3 pro-worker programs in the entire South; Bonnie Mathias and I are proud to host one of the three.

Station Manager Dave Chaos brought up the police shootings at the July 12 meeting. He said, “Dallas needs KNON, maybe more now than ever!” The station brings people together.

There’s a lot of enthusiasm at KNON. The volunteers love the station and promote it every chance they get. They wear KNON shirts and have KNON bumper stickers; they talk it up on social media and in public activities. Each volunteer has her/his major passion. With some it’s zydeco, some like folk music, some like 60’s pop, some go for soul music or acid rock. They all serve the community, and they all do it out of love.

–Gene Lantz

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Our Culture Undermines Us

July 12, 2016
art, strategy
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In the Q&A last Saturday, a woman asked the exasperating eternal question, “Why do people act and vote against their own interests?” Everybody wants to know that.

The answer is that the entire culture, set up and controlled by the employers, is working against us. They own virtually all the advertising industry, the publishers, the movies, the news sources, the schools, the concert halls — everything that hits us intellectually and emotionally. And it’s constantly!

“Society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood [and womanhood] of each of its members.” — Thoreau

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Artists fight back in coffee houses with limited audiences. They do even better on the internet. There’s a “union song playlist” on YouTube, (click here) for instance.

Democracy has a way of inserting itself even in commercial cultural enterprises. The movies, for example, have to sell tickets, so they can’t constantly preach against everything we believe. I enjoy writing reviews because there are some good things said in movies like “The Free State of Jones” (click here) where the main character explains that his band of Mississippi guerrillas are not exactly fighting for the North in the Civil War. He says they’re fighting against the wealthy, and that’s not the same thing.

Of the world of art and culture, I believe my favorite area is the daily newspaper comics. I can imagine that the cartoonists try hard to stay neutral on the issues, but they have to cultivate an honest audience; consequently democracy sneaks in again. “Dilbert,” which always shows management as idiots, is my favorite of course. Recently, “Non Sequiter” showed St Peter working the handle on a trap door that sent Republican politicians immediately Down Below. “Doonesbury,” of course, punishes greedy politicians mercilessly.

My own radio show, “Workers Beat” on KNON radio (click here) is an exception to the rule. But the rule remains that the bosses control almost everything that influences us.

–Gene Lantz

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Free State of Jones — Great Movie!

June 27, 2016
art, civil rights, elections, history, strategy
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Don’t let the dry lifeless movie critics talk you out of seeing this wonderful film!

freestateofjones

Movie review: “Free State of Jones,” Directed by Gary Ross, 139 minutes

Movies, books, statues, and historical markers all over the country romanticize the Confederacy. The truth is that it was a nasty war fought for nasty reasons. Here and there, southern people resisted the confederacy to the point of armed struggle. It’s incredible but true, though, that local farmers, deserters, and runaway slaves combined to win military victories against Confederate soldiers around Jones County, Mississippi

I read the book some time ago and was really looking forward to this movie. If there was anything at all disappointing, it’s because the film followed the book a bit too closely. The facts for the book were mostly taken from a miscegenation trial in the 1930s involving one of the many descendants of guerrilla leader Newton Knight and his runaway slave wife, Rachel. The people’s uprising in Jones County is the best part of the story, but the book and movie add on a lot of the dismal history of Mississippi afterward.

BTW, the state just closed the case of the murder of civil rights martyrs Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; so ugly history marches on in Mississippi. We just noted the anniversary of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, and it’s extremely relevant to this film.

Movies like the blockbuster success “Gone With the Wind,” are ordinarily more than happy to lie about what really happened. This one doesn’t. Go see it!

Movie review: “Genius,” Directed by Michael Grandage. 104 minutes

People who like a little action and a lot less talking in their movies aren’t going to like “Genius,” but I cried through part of it and thought it was really worthwhile. Fans of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and, especially, Thomas Wolfe, are already aware that their editor, Maxwell Perkins, is given a lot of credit for their books’ successes. This is about Perkins and Wolfe, and it’s almost 100% dialogue.

The movie critics don’t like this one either, because the two men are more or less reduced to stereotypes, or so they say. I say that trying to explain Perkins and Wolfe would be a difficult assignment, but one worth doing. I’d be curious to know if other film makers could have done it better.

If you don’t know or care about Maxwell Perkins or Thomas Wolfe, you wouldn’t like this movie. If you do, though, it’s a fine film.

Movie review: “The Neon Demon,” Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Not sure of length.

If someone is just dying to see Elle Fanning in her skivvies, they might want to see this movie about innocence and high fashion. Oh yes, there’s one really nice shot of a mountain lion. As the wide-eyed protagonist meets savage fashionistas, one begins to realize that something truly terrible is going to happen at the ending. But is it worth sitting through long, boring, unrelated technical movie tricks to get to it?

The only real crime that will cause me to walk out of a movie is that it’s boring. This one is.

–Gene Lantz

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