Pop culture amnesia

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Stephen Worth, an animation producer of note, has been guest-blogging on BoingBoing for a few weeks, and has been unearthing all kinds of vintage animation, film, and sensible ideas about the forgotten richness of American pop culture. This particular post struck a chord with me for two reasons. First, it's a pretty concise summary of the current state of corporate popular culture and its victims who, for example, like "all kinds of music" as long as it's something they can hear played in stress rotation on a Sirius XM channel targeted to their particular consumer demographic. Second, it reminds me how my own tastes as a youth were molded by giant entertainment corporations which gleefully convinced me that, prima facie, the past sucked, so I would be well primed buy their product.

The video embedded in the BoingBoing post is the grand finale from the 1943 musical "Stormy Weather." I'm struck by how different it looks to me now versus how I imagine I would have reacted to it as a late-night TV movie 35 years ago. It would have been unthinkable for twentysomething Baby Boomers to find anything to admire in it. Tap dancing? Shit --- that's what we were forced to sit through every Sunday night while Selig and DoubleE stared at The Ed Sullivan Show with us as collateral damage. The counterculture had no use for tap dancing because purveyors of Revolution like Capitol Records, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and all their groovy subsidiaries convinced us that we were too hip for it. And the funny thing about it: I do believe it was a more innocent time. For awhile, at least, entertainment corporations were content to throw money at freaks and impresarios, stand back, and let them create both innovative music and bales of cash.

So what changed? Why is the product of today's entertainment conglomerates so much more odious than it was 40 or 45 years ago? My guess: the marketing focus group as a social engineering tool --- a tool that, today, is probably less successful at funding the cocaine habits of entertainment tycoons than at trapping the American mind in an endlessly recursive matrix of multimedia cross references, taglines, brand names, and virtual reality.

Tap dancing? It's all about dudes and babes playing jump-jazz percussion using castanets bolted to the soles of their shoes, while bounding across tabletops, grand pianos, and what-have-you. The Nicholas Brothers must have had adductors with the proportionate strength of piranha jaws. So if you have 10 minutes to spare, click through to the YouTube video clip embedded in the BoingBoing post. There are more dancing zoot suiters, foxy babes, and African-American GIs than you can shake a stick at, plus Cab Calloway keeping the tempo and Lena Horne dolling up the joint.

Some advice for white folks

If you're a white person some of whose best friends are black, I will use the news hook of African American History Month to offer some advice. Starting now, try to actually get to know at least one of your black friends. I mean really, personally. Find an opportunity to have a candid discussion about something important to him or her. By "discussion," I mean that, mostly, you need to listen and let your friend talk. Avoid the temptation to blurt out what you think, and certainly avoid the stupidity of telling your black friend what he or she "should" think. Or what they "really have to understand" about white people.

This is not a short-term task, or anything along the lines of gallantly celebrating Take A Negro To Lunch Day. For one thing, your friend may not want to let you in. Or you may feel punked as soon as you hear something that you'd prefer not to think about. This endeavor is not one in which you call the shots. But I strongly suggest that you try it anyway. Shut up, listen, and learn.

Why? Not simply to be noble or to become a better person. But because you need to, Caucasoid. It is of the utmost importance to your future. You have a lot to learn. Because of this. Click on the link. Read the article. Then read it again. And again. Until you really understand it. Then click through the links in the post and read those, too.

Here's the issue: if the Congress doesn't start jailing Executive Branch criminals for Contempt of Congress soon, and start impeachment proceedings against any senior Justice Department appointee who refuses to impartially enforce the laws of this land, then you and I no longer live in a democracy. The U.S. Constitution no longer means anything insofar as your civil liberties (i.e., Civil Rights) are concerned. You have none, if that's what the Justice Department, or its private-sector designee, decrees. Of course, this has pretty much always been Standard Operating Procedure for the application of laws to African Americans, so they have "institutional expertise" that the rest of us don't have a clue about.

White people do not understand this, though. We deny it. Very few white people, psychologically, can afford to even contemplate the oppression of blacks too deeply. Directly and indirectly, white people in America always have been beneficiaries of that oppression. But now, whether you believe it or not, your lily white complexion guarantees you no protection against arbitrary execution of the law. No white person will ever know what it is like to be a "nigger," but every one of us could benefit from earnestly trying to understand what it must be like. Because that is exactly what we all are now in the eyes of the Executive Branch. And your African American friend may see fit to share some insights on the subject with you, if you're lucky. And if she does, you'd better listen.