Sign your name on the blacklist / and know this / it’s American history… – Donnie
I wasn’t able to watch the documentary “The Black List: Vol. 1″ when it originally aired on HBO on August 25th but I managed to catch about 45 minutes of it last night. It’s a series of living portraits of black people of note in a variety of professions, describing their experiences and hopefully shedding some light on what it means to be black in America. The book of the same name is set for release on September 16th.
I didn’t watch the entire thing so I can’t offer up a comprehensive analysis, but it was certainly more engaging and insightful than CNN’s “Black in America” mess from about a month ago.
Anyway, what I *did* see I enjoyed, and I’ll be making an effort to view it in full soon. I was particularly drawn to the contributions of Chris Rock, Suzan Lori Parks, Bill T. Jones and Richard Parsons.
Chris Rock talked about wanting the “permission to suck like a white person”, reflecting upon the fact that he is one of 4 black people in his neighbourhood. One of those black people is Mary J. Blige, the other is Patrick Ewing. His closest white neighbour is…a dentist. Not being able to succeed, but being able to *fail* and come back, without value judgments being made about black people as a whole, may be the benchmark of true equality.
Richard Parsons ( CEO Time Warner) also speaks about the raised stakes of failure and success as a black person, and the concept of being “a credit to your race”.
Suzan Lori Parks (playwright) critiques the notion of black people being absorbed with their “blackness” every moment of the day, citing that we must work to explore our *human* experiences along with the particulars of our race.
Similarly Bill T. Jones (choreographer) refutes the idea of being “black enough” and speaks about the struggle to define the self as human and as artist in a world that wants to define you by your race. He spoke passionately about the anger and fear that comes from cultivating a double -consciousness, trying to convince white people of your intelligence and “harmlessness” while retaining a hold on your “inheritance” as black.
I don’t know about it succeeding in “redefining the traditional pejorative notion of a blacklist” but it *was* interesting. What it *does* succeed in doing, which CNN’s feature did not, is looking forward. Give it a look and tell me what you think.
I haven’t seen the CNN jawn yet, but feedback so far has been on some “Bleh”.
I have no way of checking the HBO jawn, but I’m guessing it might go a little deeper. Then again… both networks are Time-Warner. It’s like expecting MTV to pick up where BET fails us.
*smh*
I would like to see something like this on YouTube, produced by the people, FOR the people… and unfiltered.
There are some snippets of unused footage on YouTube. Chris Rock has a nice anecdote about what he talked about in the documentary that would have really hammered home his point. I also did not see “Black In America”, but from reading the critiques and seeing “The Black List” I can agree, that Elvis Mitchell did a better job than Soledad O’Brien. The range of people involved giving their stories and insights was a bit more optimistic and warming.
Grump: I saw the footage. The anecdote about the boxing match was really apt. He touches on it again in the actual doc saying that his father would always say “you can’t beat white people” – that you can have 6 and the white guy has 5…but the white guy wins. Sad…but true a lot of the time.
I’m sorry, I’m still stuck on the fact that Slash from Guns & Roses is black. After he spoke I think I blacked out or something, because I didn’t really hear anything else after him. People were on the screen & talking, but it was a Charlie Brown’s teacher situation. All I heard was “waaa, waaa, waaa . . . waaawaaawaaa”. I’m still stuck on it, frankly. lol
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[...] universeexpanding. Cross-posted from Entropy, Inc. In response to my post about the HBO documentary “The Blacklist” a friend of mine commented on how shocked he was that Slash of Guns n’ Roses is half black. Like [...]