Dear Aaron Sorkin, It's 2020, Make Yourself Useful!
Day one, Oct 24th 2020:
Aside note: My mentor, Prof. Thomas Adler, would be upset if he knew that I did not follow his advice to let time decant my reactions, especially since in my case I do trap myself in my own impulsiveness. But I am 45. Maybe that counts.
“The whole world is watching” is the last we hear in The Trial of the Chicago 7 as well as throughout the movie for which, sadly (?), I felt nothing. The REAL world did go out to protest in solidarity to yet again another senseless crime, that time with the name of George Floyd. They went outside despite the pandemic. The world has been on our side. Three of my friends originally from Romania, one living there, two in other European countries, liked the movie so much considering it a triumph. I found it OK-ish, maybe because it felt formulaic, maybe because there will be other people put on trials for having done nothing but protest for their ideas and ideals. Of course, I do question how much this year has made me reevaluate my relationship with the arts and to life here (Another aside note: I can’t breathe and I have had this feeling for quite some time, long before this was an immoral way to sell T-shirts.) The only part that truly made me feel something (anger) was the gagging of the Black man and the list of the soldiers who died in Vietnam. Otherwise, the movie did not advance the discussion more than we already know and it was just ill-timed given the pandemic, the deaths, the jobs lost, the Presidential election coming soon, the halted talks re: defunding the police ... etc... etc... etc... Give me a break, Sorkin!
Day two, Oct 25th 2020:
It was very late at night when I posted my original thoughts on a mediocre movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7. Now that I drank coffee, tea, and water, I know why those two brief moments in the movie resonated with me producing one emotion: ANGER. When the black man was gagged, that was beyond painful to watch because we are not in the '60's, we are in 2020. After George Floyd was killed by having his airways blocked off violently, other crimes followed. When I was working on my first book, I came across this saying in my second mother tongue, "... and counting." That was in re: AIDS victims. Sadly, it can be used for victims of police brutality. Also, it's the same year when white supremacy is not officially condemned. The second moment, towards the end, was a postmortem recognition of lives lost in senseless wars. To me that was also a reminder of veterans who come back bringing the horror of war with them. But we are not in the '60's, to repeat myself, we are in 2020. Having worked with veterans at Pace University, I was exposed to their nightmare and the government's lack of recognition of their need for PSTD, constant evaluation and treatment. Maybe Sorkin's formula worked for his previous movies, but in 2020 we are a different type of audience, or at least I am. So, no, the movie is similar to what victims and their families are still exposed to relive. Maybe Sorkin should have worked with more writers on the script and, thus, MORALLY factor in WHOSE PAIN SUCH MOVIES EXPLOIT. Instead of more blood to come physically and symbolically, let's read this poem by Audre Lorde until we realize that violence is part of our behavior, but we have not yet apologized to those whose bodies and minds we abused. For people like Sorkin with influence and great financial resources, dude, use this pandemic year to look around and see what kind of art we need right now and in the years following C-19.
Afterimages
I
However the image enters/ its force remains within/ my eyes/ rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve/ wild for life, relentless and acquisitive/learning to survive/where there is no food/my eyes are always hungry/and remembering/however the image enters/its force remains./A white woman stands bereft and empty/a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson/recalled in me forever/like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep/etched into my visions/food for dragonfish that learn/to live upon whatever they must eat/fused images beneath my pain.
II
The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson/A Mississippi summer televised./Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain/a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat/her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney/now awash/tearless and no longer young, she holds/a tattered baby's blanket in her arms./In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain/a microphone/thrust up against her flat bewildered words/ “we jest come from the bank yestiddy/borrowing money to pay the income tax/now everything's gone. I never knew/it could be so hard.”/ Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud caked around the edges/her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation/unanswered/she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed/“hard, but not this hard.”/Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her/hanging upon her coat like mirrors/until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside/snarling “She ain't got nothing more to say!”/and that lie hangs in his mouth/like a shred of rotting meat.
III
I inherited Jackson, Mississippi./For my majority it gave me Emmett Till/his 15 years puffed out like bruises/on plump boy-cheeks/his only Mississippi summer/whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie/as a white girl passed him in the street/and he was baptized my son forever/in the midnight waters of the Pearl./His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year/when I walked through a northern summer/my eyes averted/from each corner's photographies/newspapers protest posters magazines/Police Story, Confidential, True/the avid insistence of detail/pretending insight or information/the length of gash across the dead boy's loins/his grieving mother's lamentation/the severed lips, how many burns/his gouged out eyes/sewed shut upon the screaming covers/louder than life/all over/the veiled warning, the secret relish/of a black child's mutilated body/fingered by street-corner eyes/bruise upon livid bruise/and wherever I looked that summer/I learned to be at home with children's blood/with savored violence/with pictures of black broken flesh/used, crumpled, and discarded/lying amid the sidewalk refuse/like a raped woman's face./A black boy from Chicago/whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi/testing what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do/his teachers/ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue/and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone/in the name of white womanhood/they took their aroused honor/back to Jackson/and celebrated in a whorehouse/the double ritual of white manhood/confirmed.
IV
“If earth and air and water do not judge them who are/we to refuse a crust of bread?”/Emmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling/24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a raped woman/and a white girl has grown older in costly honor/(what did she pay to never know its price?)/now the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment/and I can withhold my pity and my bread./ “Hard, but not this hard.”/Her face is flat with resignation and despair/with ancient and familiar sorrows/a woman surveying her crumpled future/as the white girl besmirched by Emmett's whistle/never allowed her own tongue/without power or conclusion/unvoiced/she stands adrift in the ruins of her honor/and a man with an executioner's face/pulls her away./Within my eyes/the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain/a woman wrings her hands/beneath the weight of agonies remembered/I wade through summer ghosts/betrayed by vision/hers and my own/becoming dragonfish to survive/the horrors we are living/with tortured lungs/adapting to breathe blood./A woman measures her life's damage/my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock/tied to the ghost of a black boy/whistling/crying and frightened/her tow-headed children cluster/like little mirrors of despair/their father's hands upon them/and soundlessly/a woman begins to weep.
PS: I posted about violence a few weeks ago (above).
PPS: Here's something Casey and I worked two, maybe three summers ago (above, yep, keep looking up to see the long history of our past horrors).