Month: April 2020

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When the Center Doesn’t Hold

One thing that stuck with me from this week was when Heaney quoted Yeats in his piece for The Listener. That’s not the first time I’ve seen that particular Yeats poem, The Second Coming, used to describe periods of extreme change. Joan Didion’s book Slouching Towards Bethlehem uses it to frame the disenchanted, lost youth of ‘the 67 Summer of Love and I believe it also informed the title of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I think the resonances of a second coming – the feelings of imminent, uncontrollable, violent change – frame our discussions of political protest both during the Troubles and the American Civil Rights movement very well.  There is a sense of confusion and loss and sadness that came with the change and seems to haunt that era and Uptight as well.  As we noted in class, 1968 felt like a fracturing of every effort towards change that activists had made up till then. The center was not holding and people were left with unredeemable circumstances and violence. I think that’s why Tank dies without redemption, unlike Gypo.  That isn’t to say that the circumstances Gypo encounters within The Informer aren’t violent too, but that attitudes had changed about activism and violent protest when Uptight was made.  Redemption was important for the audiences of the earlier film and is restorative, but backgrounded by the chaos of ‘68 and the world it seems to create, redemption is not possible and is potentially irreconcilable to the creators of Uptight – it’s the more accurate reflection of the state of their world.

We discussed in class how these two films have very different tenors and I think part of that is a result of who was making the films.  The Informer was made by an Irish American about the Irish whereas Uptight was made by Black activists about Black activism. It makes Tank’s character really interesting. Gypo can easily be read as a caricature, like the stage Irishman from the days of Synge.  I wonder how we are to read Tank then.  His desperation and subsequent turn to alcohol compounds throughout the movie as each new tragedy or misfortune befalls him, beginning with Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. Does his descent, like his death, say something about the desperation and frustration of the time itself? Or does it seek to present a critique of the caricature Gypo posed in the original film?

As an aside, over the weekend I started watching Self Made, the Netflix show based on the life of  Madam C.J. Walker. The first episode details the beginnings of her company and a dramatization of some of the driving forces behind her ventures.  It really seemed to highlight some of the themes we were talking about with Color Struck about community, image, and belonging and made me think hard about how I phrased my question on colorism for class last Wednesday.  I think the show focuses a lot on the pain associated with colorism and its violent history, but with a main character that is less self-defeating than Hurston’s Emma.  If anyone gets the chance to watch (I haven’t watched much more, but it seems interesting), I’d be curious to know your thoughts on the way these themes are represented in the show, particularly after our discussion about drama and preservation.  

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“Sufficient Ground for Understanding and Absolution:” Thinking about Violence in Light of Our Reading This Week

This week, we’ve talked about a lot of violence. We read Heaney’s poetic descriptions of the bog bodies and witnessed death at the hands of the state and at the hands of the revolutionaries in The Informer and Uptight. We’ve also learned about The Troubles and three Bloody Sundays, two in Ireland and one in America. For anyone interested, Wikipedia acknowledges twenty “Bloody Sundays” around the world in the last century and a half.

This week, we also encountered Ciaran Carson’s reading of Heaney’s bog body poems, where he says, “It is as if he is saying suffering like this is natural; these things have always happened; they happened then, they happen now, and that is sufficient ground for understanding and absolution. It is as if there never were and never will be any political consequences of such acts.” At the very least, the assertion that “these things have always happened” seems to make sense in light of what we’ve seen.

Additionally, in her post on Uptight this week, Professor Kinyon highlighted two cases in 1963 where African-Americans were murdered and justice was not handed out until decades later. The INCORE article similarly noted that, in an attempt to heal the wounds still open from the Troubles, the police force in Ulster created a team in 2005 to investigate many unsolved murders from the time period. While justice was eventually served out in both the African-American and Irish contexts, the tremendous delay justifies Heaney’s perspective that there never would be any political consequences of violence and suffering.

Thus, the only question remaining to determine whether Heaney’s perspective, specifically in Punishment, is correct is whether the continuity of suffering and violence and the low consequences for it are sufficient grounds for understanding the side of the perpetrator and absolving them. Is the idea that violence just happens enough for us to understand and then absolve people from it?

I would disagree with this idea: the continuity of violence does not justify it. At some point, Heaney did not agree with this assertion either. In his article in the Listener, he castigates the Black Panthers for their openly violent rhetoric. To Heaney, it is grotesque and uncivil; the Black Panthers’ violence is not understood or absolved. Plainly, he sees it as wrong.

While the difference between his characterization of violence in The Troubles and violence in the later stages of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States could be explained by an outsider’s view of the Black Panthers, I would argue that the difference, instead, shows a lack of understanding of revolution. Revolution is based on the idea that the suffering and violence afflicted on the oppressed are not natural or justifiable. While the IRA and Black Panthers may have believed that the path to ending this suffering was inflicting suffering on the opposition, the core of any civil rights movement is an understanding that violence is not natural and understanding violence is not a reason to absolve the enemy, but rather to seek to end that suffering. While “these things have always happened,” the continuity of violence does not excuse the crime.

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Uptight: Details

Please take a moment to read Roger Ebert’s entire review.

Here’s an early contract for the film

Some points to consider:
-What are King’s words that are being played? The I’ve been to the Mountaintop speech. Free at Last. Free at Last. Thank God almighty I’m Free at Last.

-King’s legacy is discussed immediately. What does Tank say? How do Johnny, his sister, and BG portray MLK (Booker!)? What does Johnny say in regards to King’s death: He was a big man…but he was holding us back. Memphis proves the answer is guns and more guns

-What else is happening? The streets are filled with people. Can you explain the various positions of the people who have taken to the streets?
– Complete social unrest; out of work, angry, frustrated=disenfranchised.
– Bible thumpers
– Black men who have gone into armed forces. Most likely experienced racism in the army are also excluded from black social groups at home.
– Representatives of non-violent direct action (MLKs primary form of action)
– Continual references to being on one’s knees. This was a complaint in Ireland as well. Explain the tension between someone who prays for salvation and someone who takes up arms.

-The militants steal arms as a way to prepare for what they are characterizing as a revolution?
– Revolt: rise in rebellion: the insurgents revolted and had to be suppressed; refuse to acknowledge someone or something as having authority: voters may revolt when they realize the cost of the measures.
– Rebellion: an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler; the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention: an act of teenage rebellion.
– Insurrection: a violent uprising against an authority or government: the insurrection was savagely put down | opposition to the new regime led to armed insurrection.
– Riot: a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd; an uproar; an outburst of uncontrolled feelings: a riot of emotions raged through Frances.
– Uprising: an act of resistance or rebellion; a revolt: an armed uprising.

When the stumping starts talking about machines and being obsolete, he looks directly at Tank. How has Tank become obsolete? What is significant about Tank being killed/assassinated at the mill he worked at for over twenty years by a black man? The mill is empty and he lost his job there for standing up for other black workers.

(Tank is a middle-aged, unemployed alcoholic who supported King’s non-violent approach, which the others have rejected in favor of violent revolution. It is later revealed that Tank lost his longtime job at the steel mill when he attacked a white co-worker who harassed the black mill workers. As a result, Tank was sent to prison and since being released, has been unable to find work.)

-How is the welfare system portrayed? The good, the bad, and the undermining of a community due to how social welfare is administered in the US.

– Teddy says: You can’t do it alone. Without me you cannot win. And he is proven to be right. When he tries calling to warn the group about the police coming to get Johnny they hang up on him. What do you make of that interaction? King’s mourners are primarily black, but it is very much an integrated audience. Dassin is white, a blacklisted American director who was forced to live in Europe, is making this film with a primarily black cast and co-written by Ruby Dee.

-Yet Corbin says, we have to do it ourselves. We have to develop our own knowhow.
-What do you make of this interaction? Both sides seem to make convincing arguments and treat each other as they do not like or want to be treated.

-Mentioned at the meeting: Medgar Evers (1963, applied to law school and rejected b/c he was black). Shot down in his drive way. In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith, was convicted for Evers’ murder. Also in 63, four girls were killed in a church by a bomb. Again, it wasn’t until years later, 1977, 2000, and 2001, that people were convicted for this crime.

-Mentioned at the meeting: Fascism and Camps. The reality of what happened in Germany is present and there is real belief that black citizens think they are going to be picked up and thrown into camps. BG says this is already happening. Can the prison industrial complex system be seen as a form of camps?

-Talk about the fun house scene. 1:01:58 /44:17 left. This idea that all of black America is in agreement with each other when the film shows, in this small section of Cleveland has depicted many many different points of view. Tank in many ways describes his experience as a black man in America. No water, no money, and exclusion from mainstream society.

-Money. What is the significance of money in this film? In Ford’s Informer he contrasts the reward with a opportunity to go back to America, start over. New life. What is happening here?

-Homosexuality. Clarence/ Daisy is immediately used as a scapegoat by Tank. What do you make of the depiction of homosexuality by Roscoe Lee Browne and his date, Claude.

-Options for tank getting money: hitting a number OR selling blood. Can you imagine the desperation to sell your blood for money so you can eat?

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The Informer: Details

Some points to consider:

There are a number of brilliant scenes in the film that help capture not only the battle between ideals and weakness, but also the immorality Gypo feels for being an Informer.

One) The blind man. If justice is blind then the Gypo is sentenced to death from the moment he walks out of the police station. Upon seeing the blind man, Gypo intends to make yet another sacrifice of his morality to save his own skin, but when he realizes the man is blind gypo gives the man a quid and goes on way.

Two) The camera consistently shifts to clocks after Gypo has taken the reward money. Literally he’s running out of time. While Gypo might race from one section of Dublin to the next, his movements are followed and soon everyone will see his shame.

Three) The court scene. The nature of the party’s court is underground and secret. Not only does this court convene at 1:00 am, the justice being doled out is not in a proper courtroom of elected officials, but in the courtroom of the ordinary people.

Finally, the constant focus on the money. Whether it is the from the beginning of the film and the reference to Judas or the way the camera follows the bills and change Gypo carries, Ford wants the viewer to realize that principles aren’t free. Money is precious in this Ireland, even coins, the viewer can understand why Gypo goes after the reward money. He wants out of this dark world, he wants his girl to be respectable, he wants to start a new life. And perhaps, it is through the focus on money that Ford highlights one of the key aspects of film: The corruption of the American Dream.

While The Informer is not set in America, the American dream is very much present in this film. The reason behind Gypo’s deceit is the desire to go to America. For Gypo and Katie, America promises freedom from oppression, freedom from strife, and most importantly, freedom from their past. But similar to black Americans who arrived on America’s shores via slave ship’s and then upon winning their freedom from slavery are weighted down by Jim Crow in the South and ghettoizing in the North, America’s promise of freedom is not available to all who desire it.

In fact, without even stepping onto American soil, Gypo and Katie learn an essential fact of American life, that money is the root of all evil.

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4/1 Discussion

I find I have a similar question about these two movies as I did about the comparison of the song Strange Fruit and Heaney’s poem Strange Fruit. In this instance, however, what started out as an Irish tale was adapted in similar circumstances to mean the same thing for an African American tale. I think the question still stands – is this an acceptable comparison to make? Is it more acceptable than the use by Heaney of Strange Fruit’s meaning? If so, what makes it this way?

 

Another question I have is what does it suggest to make a homosexual black man the “root” of the evil action that Tank takes? Instead of coming to the action himself, Tank is coerced into doing it by a gay man. There is also the added incentive to get his own police record erased. Why was this change made? What does this say about the difference between the Irish and black communities, and about the gay community as well?

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4/1 Discussion Question

  1. How does placing the movie The Informer side by side with Uptight compare to placing poetry side by side like the two poems titles Strange Fruit. Can we get more out of one than the other?
  2. Is Gypo redeemed at the end when he is forgiven by Frankie’s mother? Calling into mind the reference to Judas at the beginning of the movie, how is Gypo remembered? How does this compare to the ending of Uptight – is Tank redeemed or forgiven? Why is this significant?
  3. When both Tank and Gypo are caught for being the informer, they say “I didn’t know what I was doing”. What is the importance of this line? What does this tell us about the larger ramifications of the death of Frankie and Johnny?
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4/1 Discussion Questions

In both films the informer is a sort of fool, on the outs with their organizations/institutions. How is this fool represented differently in each movie/ with the two different communities? Once instance that comes to mind particularly is in Uptight, as Tank is wandering around drunk,  two women walk by and say “that’s part of our trouble,” suggesting Tank’s behavior reflects poorly on more than just him.  Does Gypo’s behavior carry the same weight?

As a related question, how does alcohol factor into each movie and what is its role?

Hunger is used as a motivator in both films as well, as an indicator of poverty. In Uptight, however, hunger is specifically referent to welfare and that particular structure – and its strictures.  Does this hunger as poverty idea demonstrate a comparison between the Black and the Green or do its different manifestations highlight the fundamental differences we’ve been discussing?