WHAT PRICE FOR YOUR LEGACY

ON BULL CONNER'S TANK: I recall the first time I learned of the HUMMER vehicle and that it was available in the UNITED STATES, I knew I had seen that type vehicle in images from South Africa. I then remember the media "black out" that the Apartheid government implemented. When we witness events that speak to us, our conditions as class conscious consumers render us slaves to products that demonstrate our disregard for our own cultural legacies.

As to the media Blackout, ( a subject worthy of study itself) I figured how could that be? The United States had taught me of freedom of the press even as ugly as images are; and I had grown up on television during the Vietnam War ear. Still I was ignorant of the ways mass media can aid in keeping me blind even as they show me images. Aside from that, and thinking of what a African at the hands of SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE meant to me, I once worked for a Jewish Judge who angst I saw over purchasing his first Mercedes-Benz. He knew that the company made German tanks during WWII. He felt he might betray his own cultural legacy. He had always driven FORDS. He ultimate relented to his wife's request. We never discussed why but he did look good in any sedan as he dressed so well. I was happy to work for such a man, despite his shenanigans.

Like my old Judge a Jewish man, African-Americans are guilty of abandoning there own cultural legacy in favor of style. But as you rise and time goes one.. See below BULL CONNER'S TANK AND THINK "WOULD YOU DRIVE ONE IT IT BECAME VOGUE"?

CLOSURE: A FEMINIST MOVIE

In watching CLOSURE I did not know what to expect. I was unfamiliar with both actors. The photo design on the front of case for the Sony release 2007 did suggest to me that the female would be sort of the lead and that assumption was substantiated. In fact I would venture to characterize this as a feminist character. Every thing about Alice says she is an independent woman solely focused on her climb withing the corporate structure. Since I do not fancy the term “chick flick” at the expense of reading as if I abhor feminism, (I do not) I did find such a character more in line with what I think a modern feminist to be.

From the outset, Alice is presented to be superior to Adam. While he complains about a failed date, she is spit polished and clean headed to work in a business suit. Her first words to him are, “you're late”. Then upon her return home we see her sneer at him as a guy would. He is a victim captured in her cage. She spies him lounging on her deck. Cigarette about to burn his fingers. This scene suggest he is a louse. Later we see that he is as he in turn spies on her in a manner that would get any handy man terminated. Yet she is the portrayed as the hunter her. Later when she becomes the victim, it is Adams, whose whimpering we hear as he leans on her in the woods. Notice she does not embrace him then.

One could consider that as shock, yet one month later we see see her returning to work. Adams is impotent and headed down a road of self absorbed pity. Yet Alice has no time to grieve, her father has died and she has more business to attend. She is constantly the leader and the hunter. She knows the gun and upon finding it, (having already been keen enough to follow her rapist home) Adam want to “call the police”. While this is the so-called civilized thing to do, our movie is a revenge movie. Yet it is Alice who reminds Adam “that did not work”. In most movies the genders are assigned the traditional roles and actions are dictated by those genders. When they are flipped as they are here, something else gives rise to that flippancy. LOL What else is there other than to label this as a feminist film?

There is one scene that served to remind us that none of the men in the film are to be liked. The rapist are hunters and they can not even catch a prey that roams around crossing the road repeatedly. Yet in Heffer's home we see ribbons on the wall for some prize catch. Perhaps his daughter owns them. Nonetheless, how shallow all the men are portrayed, Adam while trying to escape Heffer's home attempts to steal a kiss form the daughter, Sophia. While one could argue he is deranged, he is a man his bestiality comes out at the most importuned times. Sophia the only other female character is so traumatized that she can do nothing other than flee. Adam is nothing but another one of her father's friends. We know their intent.

In the final scene (a rather fantastical one) both women are in the car. Sophia asks, “where are we going'? To which Alice answers, “someplace safe”. Someplace is away from all these men. The women are portrayed as nature like the deer. They arise early and go. Meanwhile back in the world of men, Adam is assuming his new role as a MAD MAN. He was unable to control the savagery that Alice was able to reel in. His only saving grace is he did not hear Heffer's tale. Maybe he will.....I doubt it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480011/

JKSTEWART

GOING TO THE FIELDS

I had not heard the term “going to the fields” for a long time. I was fifteen years old and newly transplanted from St Louis to Starkville, Mississippi. There where my aunt born in 1910, still used terms she had learned so long ago. Most Mississippians did. My relatives used it and guys standing about the high school yard used it when telling of their weekend excursions beyond the Starkville city limits. Some would have gone to the fields to pick corn, peanuts or sweet potatoes. Some to till the ground for new crop. The agricultural south had not entirely died. Generations for this or that farmer pulled cousins to the fields still. I was to to learn of the back breaking work that going to the fields was when my cousin a proud farmer to my great old aunt (who was proud to have a son who still farmed) came round to 'fetch us up to help out'.

It was just recently in May of this year that I heard “go to the fields” again. Pearl Black, who was born and raised in Arkansas but who had made Chicago her home since 1952 had come down come to partake in the Pigee's weekend retreat at Lake Nixon. We were sitting around trading great migration stories and in talking about the lack of opportunities for African-Americans in the south “back then”, she mention gong to the fields. Those lack of opportunities are back again. Indeed for me at age 15 it was one of those rare occasions when my cousin Cliff (everybody called him “Uncle Cliff”) would come get every boy regardless of his employment. In harvest season you went or suffered the consequences: you may not eat any of the fresh and oh so sweet vegetables that were “canned” by the women folk and cooked all winter long.

I always suffered a mix bag of anxiety over work details that I did not volunteer for. Having to learn how to walk behind a wagon that trailed behind a combine baling hay was not my idea of a weekend. Nor was digging for peanuts and sweet potatoes. Yet I was often surprised to go and then find myself day dreaming here and there. Something about the unfamiliar smell of freshly tilled earth (some dry clumps to throw at a unsuspecting girl in a row over) and in the distance an older relatives yelling at the younger ones beyond the trees. This all would instilled in me a quietude like none other.

Many years after those days when I would stand before a wide open field or near a gurgling stream, I would recall that in those moments gone to the field it was then that I would wonder where my mother ghost was. I would wonder did she fit in with all this before she migrated north. I would want to respect my cousins Cliff and I would wonder how would she want me to behave. I figured she would want me to, “be a good boy do as you are told'. I graduated. Many years later on the Ole Miss campus, I would remember these day dream sessions again and told my professors. Standing under oaks upon some fraternity row of fine homes, I would find myself romanticizing over the southern landscape and wondering why I could picture confederate soldiers as noble men close to the soil.

Boys from the delta figured me sold. They considered me foolish cause I could feel white guys who would not speak even as we walked on the same soil and streets. I was becoming romantic and could still hear the grinding of my cousin's horses teeth while we plowed the fields. I could still taste the raw unsalted taste of a peanut from the ground. A northern transplant with a camera. Few knew what concrete urine and glass smelled like after the rain. But I pressed my shutters and moved on. Years later I would be out on photography excursion. I would hear rebel yells and feel threatened. I would see the past and feel certain I had caught something urgent and beautiful. From behind the curtain of political struggle, an artists eye remained untroubled.

Today I wondered not why working class southern guys who pledged to the southern cause, fail to realize we all worked the soil when we were young. The drenched ground from Carolina to Arkansas has my folk as well as General Lee or Stone Wall Jackson their southern boys who fell. I wonder still if they ever know how I want to remain as true to my mother's ghost as they do their vanquished cause? My shutter still clicks as my prostate narrows the channels of my youth. Fewer girls no more film and yet the same youthful innocence guides me over here over there. I continued to day dream. I still 'go to the fields' minus the command of my Uncle Cliff and less frightened by rebel yells.