Carl Sagan Tells Johnny Carson What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chauvinism in It” (1978)

in Film, Sci Fi, Science, Television | July 14th, 2021

Is Star Wars sci­ence fic­tion or fan­ta­sy? Dif­fer­ent fans make dif­fer­ent argu­ments, some even opt­ing for a third way, claim­ing that the ever-mul­ti­ply­ing sto­ries of its ever-expand­ing fic­tion­al uni­verse belong to nei­ther genre. Back in 1978, the year after the release of the orig­i­nal Star Wars film (which no one then called “A New Hope,” let alone “Episode Four”), the ques­tion was approached by no less a pop­u­lar sci­en­tif­ic per­son­al­i­ty than Carl Sagan. It hap­pened on nation­al tele­vi­sion, as the astronomer, cos­mol­o­gist, writer, and tele­vi­sion host in his own right sat oppo­site John­ny Car­son. “The eleven-year-old in me loved them,” Sagan says in the clip above of Star Wars, Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, and oth­er then-recent space-themed block­busters. “But they could’ve made a bet­ter effort to do things right.”

Every­one remem­bers how Star Wars sets its stage: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” But right there, Sagan has a prob­lem. Despite its remote­ness from us, this galaxy hap­pens also to be pop­u­lat­ed by human beings, “the result of a unique evo­lu­tion­ary sequence, based upon so many indi­vid­u­al­ly unlike­ly, ran­dom events on the Earth.”

So Homo sapi­ens could­n’t have evolved on any oth­er plan­et, Car­son asks, let alone one in anoth­er galaxy? “It’s extreme­ly unlike­ly that there would be crea­tures as sim­i­lar to us as the dom­i­nant ones in Star Wars.” He goes on to make a more spe­cif­ic cri­tique, one pub­li­cized again in recent years as ahead of its time: “They’re all white.” That is, in the skins of most of the movie’s char­ac­ters, “not even the oth­er col­ors rep­re­sent­ed on the Earth are present, much less greens and blues and pur­ples and oranges.”

Car­son responds, as any­one would, by bring­ing up Star Wars’ can­ti­na scene, with its rogue’s gallery of var­i­ous­ly non-humanoid habitués. “But none of them seemed to be in charge of the galaxy,” Sagan points out. “Every­body in charge of the galaxy seemed to look like us. I thought there was a large amount of human chau­vin­ism in it.” That no medal is bestowed upon Chew­bac­ca, despite his hero­ics, Sagan declares an exam­ple of “anti-Wook­iee dis­crim­i­na­tion” — with tongue in cheek, grant­ed, but point­ing up how much more inter­est­ing sci­ence fic­tion could be if it relied a lit­tle less on human con­ven­tions and drew a lit­tle more from sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies. Not that Star Wars is nec­es­sar­i­ly sci­ence fic­tion. “It was a shootout, was­n’t it?” Car­son asks. “A West­ern in out­er space.” John­ny nev­er did hes­i­tate to call ’em as he saw ’em.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan on the Impor­tance of Choos­ing Wise­ly What You Read (Even If You Read a Book a Week)

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

Storytelling and Race in Captain America — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #98

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 6th, 2021

What is it for a super-hero to rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Though the char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by in 1941 may have been a way to cap­i­tal­ize on WWII patri­o­tism, it has since been used to ask ques­tions about what it real­ly means to be patri­ot­ic and how Amer­i­ca’s ideals and its real­i­ty may con­flict. We’re of course talk­ing about race, a theme explored by Sam Wil­son, for­mer­ly Cap’s side-kick, pick­ing up the shield in the comics and now on TV (and in the forth­com­ing film).

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by com­ic super-fan Antho­ny LeBlanc (return­ing from our ep.  56 on black nerds) to dis­cuss the recent com­ic runs by Ta-Nehishi Coates and Nick Spencer and espe­cial­ly Truth: Red, White and Black, Mar­vel’s 2003 comics mini-series by Robert Morales and Kyle Bak­er that tells the sto­ry of Amer­i­can super-sol­dier exper­i­ments on unknow­ing black men (rem­i­nis­cent of the real-life Tuskegee Syphilis Study). This was the source of the “first black Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” char­ac­ter Isa­iah Bradley fea­tured in The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier Dis­ney+ show, which we also dis­cuss.

Here are a few arti­cles that fed into our dis­cus­sion:

The final issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is com­ing July 7.

We rec­om­mend the Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Com­ic Book Fans pod­cast for more infor­ma­tion. Their recent inter­view with long­time edi­tor Tom Brevoort was illu­mi­nat­ing, and they spent eps.  33 and 34 walk­ing through Truth: Red, White & Black.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Considering Mare of Easttown — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #97

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 1st, 2021

Inso­far as some­thing is a TV hit at all these days, the small-town Penn­syl­va­nia mur­der mys­tery star­ring Kate Winslet seems to qual­i­fy, but what dis­tin­guish­es it from the many many oth­er crime dra­mas on TV? Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt dis­cuss the plot struc­ture, cast­ing, and oth­er cre­ative choic­es and try to fig­ure out how the show relates to Broad­church, The Undo­ing, etc. Should there be a sea­son two?

Here are a few of the arti­cles that fed the dis­cus­sion:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A First Look at How Tony Soprano Became Tony Soprano: Watch the New Trailer for The Many Saints of Newark

in Film, Television | June 30th, 2021

When The Sopra­nos drew to a close four­teen years ago, its ambigu­ous yet some­how defin­i­tive final scene hard­ly promised a con­tin­u­a­tion of the New Jer­sey mafia saga. Since then, fans have had to make do with reflec­tions, his­to­ries, and exege­ses, up to and includ­ing re-watch pod­casts host­ed by the actors them­selves. As time has passed the show has only drawn high­er and high­er acclaim, which can’t be said about every prod­uct of the ongo­ing “gold­en age of tele­vi­sion dra­ma” The Sopra­nos got start­ed. A return to the well was per­haps inevitable, and indeed has just been announced: The Many Saints of Newark, a pre­quel film co-writ­ten by David Chase, the cre­ator cred­it­ed with con­tribut­ing to the orig­i­nal series a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its genius.

Onscreen, The Sopra­nos drew its pow­er from one Sopra­no above all: local mob boss Tony Sopra­no, as por­trayed by James Gan­dolfi­ni in what has been ranked among the great­est screen act­ing achieve­ments of all time. Whether or not Tony sur­vived that final scene, Gan­dolfi­ni died in 2013, and ever since it has been impos­si­ble to imag­ine any oth­er actor por­tray­ing the char­ac­ter — or at least por­tray­ing the char­ac­ter in a mod­ern-day set­ting.

Telling the sto­ry of a Tony Sopra­no in his youth, with a young actor nec­es­sar­i­ly play­ing him, has remained a viable propo­si­tion. Into that role, for the 1960s and 70s-set The Many Saints of Newark, has stepped Gan­dolfini’s real-life son Michael.

For the then-20-year-old Michael Gan­dolfi­ni, tak­ing over his father’s role had to be a daunt­ing prospect, espe­cial­ly since he’d nev­er seen The Sopra­nos before. At least one binge-watch of the series (among oth­er rig­or­ous forms of prepa­ra­tion) lat­er, he deliv­ered the per­for­mance of which you can take a first look in The Many Saints of Newark’s new trail­er above. “As rival gangs try to wrest con­trol from the DiMeo crime fam­i­ly in the race-torn city of Newark,” Con­se­quence Film’s Ben Kaye writes of its sto­ry, the young Antho­ny Sopra­no, a promis­ing but indif­fer­ent stu­dent with an eye on col­lege, “gets swept up in the vio­lence and crime by his uncle Dick­ie Molti­san­ti.” As Sopra­nos fans know full well, “Antho­ny becomes the feared mob head Tony Sopra­no and treats Dickie’s son, Christo­pher, as his pro­tégé.” Evi­dent­ly, an anti­hero of Tony’s stature is made, not born.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopra­nos with the Talk­ing Sopra­nos Pod­cast, Host­ed by Michael Impe­ri­oli & Steve Schirri­pa

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

Why James Gandolfini’s Tony Sopra­no Is “the Great­est Act­ing Achieve­ment Ever Com­mit­ted to the Screen”: A Video Essay

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

James Gan­dolfi­ni Shows Kinder, Soft­er, Gen­tler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

David Bowie on Why It’s Crazy to Make Art–and We Do It Anyway (1998)

in Art, Music, Television | June 22nd, 2021

Art is use­less, Oscar Wilde declared. Yet faced with, say, a paint­ing by Kandin­sky, film by Mal­ick, or great work by David Bowie, we may feel it “impos­si­ble to escape the impres­sion,” as Sig­mund Freud wrote, “that peo­ple com­mon­ly use false stan­dards of mea­sure­ment — that they seek pow­er, suc­cess and wealth for them­selves and admire them in oth­ers, and that they under­es­ti­mate what is of true val­ue in life.” How­ev­er ambigu­ous­ly, art can move us beyond the self­ish bound­aries of the ego to con­nect with intan­gi­bles beyond ideas of use and use­less­ness.

That expe­ri­ence of con­nect­ed­ness, what Freud called the “ocean­ic,” stim­u­lat­ed by a work of art can mir­ror the sub­lime feel­ings awak­ened by nature. “A work of art is use­less as a flower is use­less,” Wilde clar­i­fied in a let­ter to a per­plexed read­er. “A flower blooms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by look­ing at it. That is all that is to be said about our rela­tions to flow­ers.” It’s an imper­fect anal­o­gy. The flower serves quite anoth­er pur­pose for the bee, and for the plant.  “All of this is I fear very obscure,” Wilde admits.

The point being, from the point of view of bare sur­vival, art makes no sense. “It’s a loony kind of thing to want to do,” says Bowie him­self, in the inter­view clip above from a 1998 appear­ance on The Char­lie Rose Show. “I think the san­er and ratio­nal approach to life is to sur­vive stead­fast­ly and cre­ate a pro­tec­tive home and cre­ate a warm lov­ing envi­ron­ment for one’s fam­i­ly and get food for them. That’s about it. Any­thing else is extra. All cul­ture is extra…. It’s unnec­es­sary and it’s a sign of the irra­tional part of man. We should just be con­tent with pick­ing nuts.”

Why are we not con­tent with pick­ing nuts? Per­haps most of us are. Per­haps “being an artist,” Bowie won­ders “is a sign of a cer­tain kind of dys­func­tion, of social dys­func­tion­al­ism any­way. It’s an extra­or­di­nary thing to do, to express your­self in such… in such rar­i­fied terms.” It’s a Wildean obser­va­tion, but one Bowie does not make to stig­ma­tize indi­vid­u­als. As Rose remarks, he has “always resist­ed the idea that this cre­ativ­i­ty that you have comes from any form of dys­func­tion or… mad­ness.” Per­haps instead it is the mar­ket that is dys­func­tion­al, Bowie sug­gests in a 1996 inter­view, just above, with Rose and Julian Schn­abel.

Art may serve no prac­ti­cal pur­pose in an ordi­nary sense, but it is not only the prove­nance of sin­gu­lar genius­es. “Once it falls into the hands of the pro­le­tari­at,” says Bowie, “that the abil­i­ty to make art is inher­ent in all of us, that demol­ish­es the idea of art and com­merce, and that’s no good for busi­ness.” Wilde also saw art and com­merce in fun­da­men­tal ten­sion. “Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it use­ful to him,” he wrote. “But this has noth­ing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is acci­den­tal. It is a mis­use,” an arti­fi­cial ele­va­tion and enclo­sure, says Bowie, of expres­sions that belong to every­one.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

British Actor Bob Hoskins Helped Thousands Learn to Read in On the Move, a 1970s “Sesame Street for Adults”

in Education, Television | June 22nd, 2021

British char­ac­ter actor Bob Hoskins has been remem­bered for “play­ing Amer­i­cans bet­ter than Amer­i­cans,” as USA Today wrote when Hoskins passed away in 2014. Char­ac­ters like Who Framed Roger Rab­bit?’s Eddie Valiant, Nixon’s J. Edgar Hoover, and The Cot­ton Club’s Owney Mad­den stand out as some of his best per­for­mances in Hol­ly­wood. But he began his career in British film and tele­vi­sion, play­ing cops and gang­sters. Helen Mir­ren, who starred oppo­site him in his first major role, The Long Good Fri­day, and onstage in The Duchess of Mal­fi, penned a glow­ing trib­ute for The Guardian. “Lon­don,” she wrote, “will miss one of her best and most lov­ing sons, and Britain will miss a man to be proud of.”

Mirren’s sen­ti­ments were echoed by British actors every­where. Shane Mead­ows called him “the most gen­er­ous actor I have ever worked with.” Stephen Wool­ley described Hoskins as a work­ing-class hero. “With his tal­ent, Bob gate­crashed the world of celebri­ty, and made all of us ordi­nary peo­ple feel a lit­tle bet­ter about our­selves.” It was a role he was seem­ing­ly born to play, despite his range. Hoskins was “a great actor,” writes Wool­ley, “yet unlike many actors he was first and fore­most a cour­te­ous, sweet and car­ing human being. He could make mon­sters human and wring a smile out of any sit­u­a­tion with­out a whisker of embar­rass­ment.”

Those are the very qual­i­ties that endeared view­ers to Hoskins’ first break­out char­ac­ter, Alf Hunt, a fur­ni­ture removal man who strug­gled with read­ing and writ­ing in On the Move, a kind of “Sesame Street for adults” that ran in 1976 on the BBC. The 10-minute shorts ran on Sun­day after­noons “as part of the BBC’s adult edu­ca­tion remit,” Mark Law­son writes at The Guardian. Hoskins’ per­for­mance brought to life for view­ers “a proud man who has des­per­ate­ly dis­guised his learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.” It met a seri­ous need among the nation’s pop­u­lace.

“The show attract­ed 17 mil­lion view­ers a week, (way beyond the size of its tar­get audi­ence),” notes a MetaFil­ter user. On the Move “helped make Hoskins famous. It was also respon­si­ble for per­suad­ing 70,000 peo­ple to sign up for adult lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes.” Hoskins trea­sured the let­ters he received from view­ers who decid­ed to change their lives after see­ing the show. They may well have done so because he gave his all to the char­ac­ter, as Law­son writes:

Hand­ed a work­ing-class stereo­type (not for the last time in his career), Hoskins gave Alf a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and poignan­cy far beyond the require­ments of a pub­lic infor­ma­tion short. Apart from its intend­ed audi­ence of adults strug­gling with read­ing and writ­ing, On the Move gained a large sec­ondary fol­low­ing among lit­er­ate view­ers because, even then, Hoskins’ expres­sive face and grow­ly voice made you want to watch and lis­ten.

In each episode, Alf revealed his strug­gles to his friend Bert, played by Don­ald Gee. The show also fea­tured inspir­ing inter­views with adults who had tak­en adult lit­er­a­cy class­es and appear­ances by spe­cial guest stars like Patri­cia Hayes and Mar­tin Shaw (who both appear in the episode at the top). While oth­er famous actors may dis­own ear­ly tele­vi­sion work, Hoskins nev­er did. On the Move “shared the qual­i­ties of his best stuff. Where­as most footage in Before They Were Famous type shows is cal­cu­lat­ed to be bathet­ic or embar­rass­ing,” Hoskins’ ear­li­est work does quite the oppo­site, explain­ing why he “went on to become the star he did.”

On the Move may also have earned Hoskins anoth­er title, one he might have cher­ished as much as any act­ing plau­dit. George Auck­land, who lat­er direct­ed the BBC’s adult edu­ca­tion pro­gram, called him “the best edu­ca­tor Britain has pro­duced” because of his wide reach among adults strug­gling with lit­er­a­cy in 1970s Britain. See an episode of On the Move at the top of the post and hear what com­menters call “the catchi­est theme song ever” just above.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

Grow­ing Up Sur­round­ed by Books Has a Last­ing Pos­i­tive Effect on the Brain, Says a New Sci­en­tif­ic Study

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Igor Stravinsky Appears on American Network TV & Tells Stories About His Unconventional Musical Life (1957)

in Music, Television | June 21st, 2021

One evening in 1957, view­ers all across Amer­i­ca tuned in to see Stravin­sky. The broad­cast was­n’t a per­for­mance of Stravin­sky’s music, although those would con­tin­ue to draw tele­vi­sion audi­ences well into the fol­low­ing decade. It was a con­ver­sa­tion with the man him­self, Igor Fyo­dor­ovich Stravin­sky, who even when he was still alive had become an insti­tu­tion by virtue of his indus­try and inno­va­tion. “For half a cen­tu­ry, Stravin­sky’s musi­cal explo­rations have dom­i­nat­ed mod­ern music,” says the pro­gram’s nar­ra­tor. “His near­ly 100 works — bal­lets, sym­phonies, reli­gious music, even jazz — have often out­raged audi­ences at first hear­ing.”

The famous­ly “riotous” audi­ence reac­tion to the Paris debut of Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring had hap­pened 44 years ear­li­er, back when the Russ­ian-born com­pos­er was ris­ing to inter­na­tion­al fame. But by 1957 he’d been an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen for years, and it’s in his Hol­ly­wood home — and on the eve of his 75th birth­day — that NBC’s crew shot this episode of Wis­dom.

Hav­ing debuted just that year, Wis­dom would con­tin­ue to run until 1965, broad­cast­ing long-form inter­views with fig­ures like Mar­cel Duchamp, Pearl S. Buck, Robert Frost, Som­er­set Maugh­am, and Eleanor Roo­sevelt. Here Stravin­sky speaks with his young pro­tégé, the Amer­i­can con­duc­tor Robert Craft, who asks him to remem­ber var­i­ous chap­ters of his long musi­cal life, which includ­ed encoun­ters with the likes of Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov, Dylan Thomas, and Pablo Picas­so.

The sto­ry begins with Stravin­sky’s first impro­vi­sa­tions at the piano dur­ing his child­hood in Rus­sia (and his first lessons, taught by a woman of nine­teen: “for me that was an old maid, but of course I was in love with this old maid”). All through­out, we see flash­es of the inven­tion-above-con­ven­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty that made Stravin­sky more a Homo faber, as he liked to say, than a Homo sapi­ens. “Who invent­ed the scale?” he asks, rhetor­i­cal­ly. “Some­body invent­ed the scale. If some­body invent­ed the scale, I can change some­thing in the scale and invent some­thing else.” And why is it, Craft asks, that every new work of yours arous­es protests in the pub­lic? “Each time I have new prob­lems, and this new prob­lem requires a new approach,” Stravin­sky explains, and but for the pub­lic, “the idea of a new approach, of a new prob­lem, does­n’t come to their mind.” So you’re ahead of the pub­lic – includ­ing, implic­it­ly, the Amer­i­can pub­lic view­ing at home? “Inevitably.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Igor Stravin­sky Remem­bers the “Riotous” Pre­miere of His Rite of Spring in 1913: “They Were Very Shocked. They Were Naive and Stu­pid Peo­ple.”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Hear Igor Stravinsky’s Sym­phonies & Bal­lets in a Com­plete, 32-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch a Never-Aired TV Profile of James Baldwin (1979)

in Literature, Politics, Television | June 14th, 2021

In 1979, just a cou­ple of months into his stint with 20/20, ABC’s fledg­ling tele­vi­sion news mag­a­zine, pro­duc­er and doc­u­men­tar­i­an Joseph Lovett was “beyond thrilled” to be assigned an inter­view with author James Bald­win, whose work he had dis­cov­ered as a teen.

Know­ing that Bald­win liked to break out the bour­bon in the after­noon, Lovett arranged for his crew to arrive ear­ly in the morn­ing to set up light­ing and have break­fast wait­ing before Bald­win awak­ened:

He hadn’t had a drop to drink and he was bril­liant, utter­ly bril­liant. We couldn’t have been hap­pi­er.

Pio­neer­ing jour­nal­ist Sylvia Chase con­duct­ed the inter­view. The seg­ment also includ­ed stops at Lin­coln Cen­ter for a rehearsal of Baldwin’s play, The Amen Cor­ner, and the Police Ath­let­ic League’s Harlem Cen­ter where Bald­win (and per­haps the cam­era) seems to unnerve a teen reporter, cup­ping his chin at length while answer­ing his ques­tion about a Black writer’s chances:

There nev­er was a chance for a Black writer.  Lis­ten, a writer, Black or white, doesn’t have much of a chance. Right? Nobody wants a writer until he’s dead. But to answer your ques­tion, there’s a greater chance for a Black writer today than there ever has been.

In the Man­hat­tan build­ing Bald­win bought to house a num­ber of his close-knit fam­i­ly, Chase cor­ners his moth­er in the kitchen to ask if she’d had any inkling her son would become such a suc­cess.

“No, I didn’t think that,” Mrs. Bald­win cuts her off. “But I knew he had to write.”

Bald­win speaks frankly about out­ing him­self to the gen­er­al pub­lic with his 1956 nov­el Giovanni’s Room and about what it means to live as a Black man in a nation that has always favored its white cit­i­zens:

The Amer­i­can sense of real­i­ty is dic­tat­ed by what Amer­i­cans are try­ing to avoid. And if you’re try­ing to avoid real­i­ty, how can you face it?

Near­ly 35 years before Black Lives Matter’s for­ma­tion, he tack­les the issue of white fragili­ty by telling Chase, “Look, I don’t mean it to you per­son­al­ly. I don’t even know you. I have noth­ing against you. I don’t know you per­son­al­ly, but I know you his­tor­i­cal­ly. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t swear to the free­dom of all mankind and put me in chains.”

The fin­ished piece is a superb, 60 Min­utes-style pro­file that cov­ers a lot of ground, and yet, 20/20 chose not to air it.

After the show ran Chase’s inter­view with Michael Jack­son, pro­duc­er Lovett inquired as to the delay and was told that no one would be inter­est­ed in a “queer, Black has-been”:

I was stunned, I was absolute­ly stunned, because in my mind James Bald­win was no has-been. He was a clas­sic Amer­i­can writer, trans­lat­ed into every lan­guage in the world, and would live on for­ev­er, and indeed he has. His courage and his elo­quence con­tin­ue to inspire us today.

On June 24, Joseph Lovett will mod­er­ate James Bald­win: Race, Media, and Psy­cho­analy­sis, a free vir­tu­al pan­el dis­cus­sion cen­ter­ing on his 20/20 pro­file of James Bald­win, with psy­cho­an­a­lysts Vic­tor P. Bon­fil­io and Annie Lee Jones, and Baldwin’s niece, author Aisha Kare­fa-Smart. Reg­is­ter here.

H/T to author Sarah Schul­man

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why James Baldwin’s Writ­ing Stays Pow­er­ful: An Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Author of Notes of a Native Son

Watch the Famous James Bald­win-William F. Buck­ley Debate in Full, With Restored Audio (1965)

James Baldwin’s One & Only, Delight­ful­ly-Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book, Lit­tle Man Lit­tle Man: A Sto­ry of Child­hood (1976)

Lis­ten to James Baldwin’s Record Col­lec­tion in a 478-track, 32-Hour Spo­ti­fy Playlist

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast