Reflections of an Aesthete

2006-07-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

In Praise of Cross-Racial Film Casting: Overcoming the Final Racial Barriers in Film.

Ladies and Gentleman,

Those of you who have read my previous two postings (for which, my eternal gratitude) may have observed that -for me- one of the key concerns of our time consists in imagining what the future will be like in a world free of racial fear, free of the unspoken but insidious Maginot lines of the spirit which, today, sap the life blood of institutions not simply at home but abroad. (It is my privilege as an artist and as a gentleman -the word order implies no intended disrespect to my ancestor Lord Byron- to treat of other matters in time; and I will.) But for now, please permit me to remind the distinguished body gathered here before me in cyber-space today of a comment made by the very man who is often credited with coining (or at least popularizing, depending on your school) the term "WASP" - which is short, of course, for "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant". I allude to the deceased Philadelphia sociologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor of Sociology, E.Digby Baltzell (before the likes of whom even the Thatcher Longstreths of the world must bow). What was his verdict on the cherished life of felicitous WASP-dom that was/is uniquely my own and that of a few others? He stated the following:

"...the central question in the second half of this century may well be whether the white Western world, led by America, will be able to retain its traditional freedoms in an overpopulated world and, at the same time, succeed in sharing the fruits of an industrial scientific civilization with the rising races which make up the rest of mankind. In this process, white Western man must, above all, learn to share the leadership of some sort of new world community with his non-white peers, many of them now educated in the West, before a stable moral establishment with moral authority can be re-created." -E.Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment (1964)

One senses the Platonic/ quasi-Facist urge in the last sentence, for it is in the nature of even the most secure "moral establishments" to be always in flux. But that is an academic concern really. For we get the gist of Baltzell's meaning. Sharing will be necessary, that is, an increased amount of sharing. Sharing of power, sharing of influence, sharing of wealth. And in this -post modern, we might say or "post colonial" (following Edward Said) society- black and white and brown and red and yellow will all be "peers." A peer is an equal so we may say that -in the daily transactions of ordinary life- they will be equals in this our "industrial scientific age". O.k., enough of that.

I should now like us all to turn our attention to the world of films. My mediations for the essay included below were the result of my interest in the opportunities for African-American and other so-called "minority" actors and actresses to gain work and artistic fullfillment in the movie industry. Simply put, actors of "color" are still grossly under-represented in films in every major Western country. And this fact has broad implications for the ways in which our movies both reflect, and subtly underscore, the cultural and educational differences between Black and White in the U.S.. Again, I cannot take complete credit for what follows below. I have participated in forums designed to promote an interest in Shakespeare amongst inner city school children. It was some of their more skeptical questions as to the use of studying our poor Shakespeare (you know, that "dead guy"?) when compared to the better opportunities to be found in attending to the work of a more celebrated genius -to wit, the rapper "Tupac"- that set me off to these humble reflections...

Casting Calls: In Praise of Cross-Racial Film Casting

Several years ago while vacationing in Paris on the Left Bank I happened to see the premier of the film Carrington, based on the life of Lytton Strachey (the Bloomsburyite famous for his irreverent historical accounts of widely respected figures of the Victorian establishment) and his close friend and muse, Dora Carrington. It was and remains a film of considerable charm -with splendid performances by Emma Thompson and Johnathan Pryce. Yet as I sat there in a rather ordinary Parisian movie theater on the Boulevard St. Germain, I had a sudden revelation: that I was one of a handful who attended the presentation that night who would watched the film in its original (upper-class) English without having to look (if only occasionally) at the French subtitles and yet, for many Americans, the world of 1930's Bloomsbury is no less "foreign." Then, I had another revelation of sorts: that there were no black men, women, or children acting in the film itself.

Now I have used the pretentious word “revelation” but I mean that in a rather personal sense. My trivial, every day observation should not come as a surprise to most. We still live in an age where “cross-racial” film casting -even in films based upon plays of long-standing in the Western literary canon or with otherwise impeccable artistic credentials- is extremely rare. Thus, the film The Remains of the Day was based upon a novel written by a British subject of Japanese ancestry, Kazuo Ishiguro. An Indian novelist, Ruth Jhabvala, wrote the screenplay; and it was produced by an Indian of Muslim heritage, Ismail Merchant, who for many years has resided in The United States. An historical “period piece” set in a country house in Great Britain in the late 1930’s -which portrays the well intentioned but disastrous amateur diplomacy of an English landed gentleman trying to keep his country from going to war with the Nazi fascists- it featured not a single actor of non-European descent. Moreover, few African-American actors who have reached movie stardom in recent decades have played “white” men. Indeed, save for Denzel Washington’s performance in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Kenneth Branagh), have there been any others?

There are two reasons for the paucity of black men in “white” film roles. First, the cultural sensibilities of the more “intellectual” African-American actors are often shaped by an interest in black culture, especially its literature. Here, the Harlem Renaissance (c.1920) and the “Negritude” movement (c.1930) of French speaking writers of African ancestry like Aime Cesaire or Leopold Senghor, have had great and lasting influence. Arguably, no cultural movements in the 20th century have done more for black actors than these two; and a lot of good black talent still goes into efforts that are not “mainstream”. Second, Hollywood, and other large film companies in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, have not yet demonstrated a broad willingess to invest in movies which engage in color-blind casting (e.g. where a Black or Asian father plays opposite a white daughter), a step that will have the importance of the introduction of the sound talkie in the 1920’s.

In The United States, it was certainly of cultural significance when, in 1967, a black man played a black doctor who marries a young and intelligent white woman of good family, as Sidney Poitier did in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? . In Germany, Fassbinder and in France, Francis Girod (among many others) have since directed films which treat the phenomena of what Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy terms “interracial intimacies”.(1) Yet, today’s mainstream movies -in terms of their social and racial progressiveness- lag far behind opera, an artistic medium in which, as Herbert Lindenberger noted in his book Opera in History, Jesse Norman, playing Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walkurie, can tell her “blond twin brother” how “closely he resembles her” and no one will bat an eyelash.(2) Lindenberger’s observation is doubtless correct. Yet it reminds us of the struggles of black opera singers in the past-artists such as Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, and George Shirley- to achieve recognition on their own merits.

Unfortunately, the movies of Hollywood and film companies of Europe are more
widely viewed than opera performances. They are seen by a greater number of people
and thus can shape the language, manners, and social mores of those who attend to them. Young children, black and white, learn much about who they are by watching films. They learn much about what they can and cannot aspire to, about what they should and should not be. In most films today, the lofty ideal of cross-racial film casting is commonly sacrificed on an altar of verisimilitude, a convention which says that black actors must play black roles but not white. For (thus runs the logic) any other way would not look “realistic.” Because of such a convention, there has been no noteworthy black man playing the role of Hamlet or (save for James Earl Jones) King Lear on film, no black actor who may be compared with Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud.

This prodigious waste of Black and Asian talent need not continue. Actors, as
Shakespeare’s Hamlet affirmed, are “the abstract and brief chroniclers of the time” (Act II, Sc. 2). In our time, this statement is true not only because what an actor portrays on the stage or screen reflects a society’s values. It is true in a larger sense. For the race, religion, or creed of a professional actor in a dramatic role can be transcended through the power of art and therefore serve as a constant reminder of those truths which we hold to be self-evident but which can only be preserved though our undying vigilance. I look forward to the day when a black man will play Winston Churchill and even to the day when a white man will play Martin Luther King Jr.. Casting decisions should be made not according to the color of a performer’s skin but to the content of his character.

Some Notes:

1) Kennedy, Randall. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, and Adoption,
(New York, Pantheon Books, 2002).

2) Lindenberger, Herbert. Opera in History: From Monteverdi to Cage, (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 227.

Thank you for your valuable time. Any constructive questions, comments, or criticisms are most welcome.

2006-07-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

A Traitor to My Class?

Ladies and Gentleman,

I have sometimes been accused of being a "traitor to my class," if you will forgive the pretentiousness of the phrase, an enigma and troublesome meddler who ought to be content with the portion allotted to him without constantly worrying about why others have not received like benefits. I acknowledge that I may look a little ridiculous as a social registrite, on the one hand, and a social justice advocate, on the other. But surely life is made of contrasts and contradictions! As Emerson once wrote: "Do I contradict myself? Well then I contradict myself. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Thus, while doing some community "outreach" work through my church while summering on Martha's Vineyard some years ago, I had the chance to make the acquaintance of an African-American family who had resided in Martha's Vineyard for many generations. One of the teenage sons of the family was a student at Groton, which I attended in the Paleolithic Age before heading off to Princeton to study "Renaissance Studies" -that is Shakespeare and Milton- instead of heading off to Vietnam. (Domestically speaking, ours is a time far removed from that one of radical conflict and unrest, needless to say).

But -as regards the aforementioned teenager- I could not help but be a little curious as to how he fared at an institution to which my family had been a notable benefactor. He spoke to me of his desire to fit in and yet remain true to his identity. And then he startled me when he pointed out that our society today continues to bias White Americans like myself in ways that are not always acknowledged. As my fourteen year old likes to say: "Duh Dad." But I thought I might put down some reflections on one of the ways in which my son and the boy whom I met while summering in Martha's Vineyard do not quite inherit the same social playing field -even now. This piece is entittled: The Soul Brothers of Brooks Brothers...

The Soul Brothers of Brooks Brothers: or Why Interracial Couples Are Not Depicted in Advertising

The modern history of white supremacy is intricate. In the 1930’s, officials of Nazi Germany made racial “selectivity” part of their political platform of hate and banned all marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans, especially Jews. A Caucasian gentile who married a Jew was open to the charge of committing the crime that Nazi’s called “racial-infamy”.* In the U.S., as Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy notes in his book Interracial Intimacies, many laws preventing the marriage of black and white Americans have only come “off the books” in the last twenty years.(1) The Anglo-American world has long opposed the “racial-infamy” in ways that may not always have led to outright murder or lynching but which were morally no less defensible. Today, the fear of sexual relations between black and white is still discernible underneath a veneer of social tolerance, particularly when looking at the clothing industry and its methods of advertising.

Clothing is a trickier subject than most believe. In the U.S. and Europe, there are different social classes, each with its own habits of dress. And there is a distinct social advantage that accrues to the “well dressed” man. Thus, George Bush Sr., his politics aside, is a well-dressed man. So is Charles, the Prince of Wales. What many don’t realize, of course, is that if you want to adopt the George Bush or Prince of Wales “style,” you can do so. Ambitious “Gatsbys” have simply to go to the right stores or clothing catalogues and work hard at their experiment of self-gentrification. The stores are well-known to “insiders,” and have names like J. Press, Brooks Brothers, Burberrys, Polo Ralph Lauren, Jos. A. Bank, and J. Crew. Whatever your skin color or ethnic origin, if you attempt to order something from a catalogue of one of these companies, or if you walk into one of their retail stores with cash in hand, they will be happy to take your money. That they all will accept the African-American dollar can be deduced from the fact that the clothing companies cited typically use at least one African-American model in their catalogues every time a new edition is put out. This practice smacks of tokenism. But it shows that clothing companies, looking out for their own interests, want to attract
the “black dollar.”

But there is another sense in which the companies are looking out for number one. For if you look carefully you will notice that in all of the clothing stores so beloved by America’s rich, you may see pictures of white families and you may even see those of black families. But you will never see the portrayal of an interracial couple or family. This is a manifestation of “politically correct” incorrectness that is far from being accidental. The unfortunate truth is that wealthy and powerful clothing companies like Brooks Brothers and Polo Ralph Lauren, supported by the largest advertising firms in the country, have made a multi-billion dollar business decision. They have decided to not use subject matter in their advertising that could be construed as controversial or offensive to the sensibilities of their largely white and affluent audience. In other words, they fear that if a magazine add featured a black man wearing a “preppy” seersucker suit and kissing a blond sweetheart in tennis shorts while the bemused couple sauntered about
their summer property on Martha’s Vineyard, sales would plummet. And, in all fairness, those of us who have more “enlightened” views must begin by conceding that clothing companies and advertising firms know well the consumer and how to increase sales.

They know that the men and women who buy their clothing look for snob appeal.
The “classic” Brooks Brothers customer -bedecked in grey pinstriped suit- sits on the board of trustees at prestigious universities all over the country and must look good while pontificating about the agenda of “diversity” that he supposedly supports. He sits on the board of directors of Fortune 100 (“blue-chip”) corporations and wishes to appear successful and yet capable of thinking “outside of the box”. He serves on the vestry of Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in wealthy suburbs all over the country and pretends to be deeply and sincerely concerned about, in Michael Eric Dyson’s phrase, “the material suffering of the ghetto poor.” (2) He is the representative of the people of The United States and has been entrusted with the highest offices in the land. And rarely would he feel entirely comfortable with the idea of his son or daughter dating -much less
marrying- across racial lines.

Despite the fact that Brooks Brothers is now owned by an Italian (Claudio Del
Vecchio) and Ralph Lauren by a Jew, we are living in an age that seeks to perpetuate
nostalgic images of W.A.S.P. dominance. Above all, clothing companies abstain from
advertising interracial couples out of a concern that the very idea of interracial intimacy, “of an old black ram tupping a white ewe” (to quote from Shakespeare’s Othello), will leave customers appalled. We must recognize that clothing companies know very well what they are doing and that what they are doing represents a subtle but racist evil. This taint of evil lies like a foul smell upon any company that sacrifices long term interests to shorter ones, or which acquiesces in a policy of ‘de facto’ segregation in its advertising to spare the feelings of hypocrites.

We should realize that African-Americans, Asians, and Caucasians alike are denigrated by tacitly accepted advertising strictures which forbid the depiction of interracial intimacy or the portrayal of bi-racial families in the name of material gain. And we should (perhaps) imitate the successful boycotts headed by men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960’s and try to persuade those within the black community and others to avoid patronizing all Brooks Brothers stores. If this happens, retailers like Brooks Brothers, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Jos. A. Bank might learn to see the error of their ways.

(In the final analysis, I hope that I will not be perceived to be a "traitor" to my class at all. I just want my son to grow up in a world based upon principles of social and racial equality.)

For those interested here are some notes.

Notes:

1) Kennedy, Randall. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, and Adoption,
(New York, Pantheon Books, 2002).

2) Dyson, Michael Eric. Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993) pg. xiii

• “Racial-infamy” is a translation of the German word: “rasenschande.”

2006-07-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

A Question of Upbringing

Ladies and Gentleman,

It is with no small measure of trepidation that I step up to the cyber-podium to address you today. For as -so to speak- the product of a privileged upbringing, I was early taught two valuable lessons: 1) "an ounce of heredity is worth a pound of merit" and 2) "a gentleman ought never have his name appearing in print" - an attitude that my illustrious ancestor Lord Byron kept so to heart that his boast was always that of being a gentleman first and a poet second. Nor are the illustrious examles of Addison, Swift, or the redoubtable Dr.Johnson enough to make me embrace the calling of the grub street hack, but only a kind of weakness, a spritual zeal and love of the public good, that draws me forth to address you now.

These are pressing times, when the soul of our nation is sick at its very core, sick -above all- by the hideous specter of "de facto" segregation in our public schools (and in our lives) and the moral apathy of those of us who know that our nation will never have its "new birth of freedom" as long as my breathren of the Philadelphia Racket Club or Merion Cricket Club maintain their snobbish and insular ways, so long as life consists between a commute from suburbs to city and back again, while the unwashed proles (as one friend of mine put it) -in their perennial "vulgarity"- are left to "eat their cheesesteak and drink their beer".

We may mock the hoi poloi, but in many ways they -the so-called vulgar- in their comparative lack of race prejudice and hypocrisy are really closer to God than we. To show you how drastically the world must be changed, I shall include here a small article on the need to end de facto segregation in Church worship on the Main Line, an idea whose time has come. It is called -with due deference to the racist rants of Govenor Wallace in the 1960s- Segregation Now, But Forever?

Segregation Now, But Forever?

One’s place of worship often has as much to do with one’s socio-economic background
as religious beliefs. Moreover, in The United States as elsewhere it’s commonplace that different socio-economic groups tend to form "cliques" out of which they rarely venture. As the sociologist Milton M. Gordon observed, "Social classes in America constitute somewhat separate subgroups in American society, each with its cultural attributes of behavior, ideas, and life situations." This habit -of associating exclusively with one’s “own kind” -has particularly unfortunate implications for those born into the African-American working-class community, whose distinctive skin color, speech, and style of life can serve to isolate them from those within the other communities in The United States.

Recently, I decided that I would attend Sunday service at an estimable African-
American Baptist church situated in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. It is a small and (by Main Line standards) unpretentious church, many of whose members are the backbone of the working community. On the day that I was fortunate to visit, I found eighty or so African-Americans at worship. The traditional Baptist hymns sung were jubilant and majestic, and yet retained a distinctively “folk-like” quality -a quality, indeed, which characterizes much of the entire Baptist religious service. There is a beauty to be found in this form of worship as there is in other cultural contributions of African-Americans, such as the music of Jazz.

Yet few men of my Episcopal background could have helped being aware of the
yawning abyss between the service which seemed to echo an era of civil rights and social justice and the more austere, meditative service typically found in the Anglican communion. For the latter seem to hearken to the Age of Queen Victoria in their hymns, liturgy, and sermons. With their formality, self-confidence, and high-decorum, they seem to assure the devout that not simply Waterloo, but many of the greatest spiritual battles in Anglo-American history have been won on the playing fields of wealthy private schools. And, while a high-brow Episcopalian, a “master of the universe,” in Tom Wolfe’s phrase, might want to visit a Baptist church from time to time, surely he would not want to “live” there. His place is in wealthy and powerful houses of worship, where “civilized people” go to pray.

Part of the reason that racial discord persists in America today, I think, is due to the persistent lack of dialogue about cultural differences between African-Americans and their White counterparts. On Philadelphia’s prestigious Main Line, one simply does not find eighty Africans in a book store, fashionable restaurant, or at a college soccer game. It may be time to ask why one finds more African-Americans gathered together in large groups whenever they choose to give thanks to God. What does such a phenomenon (of what Harvard Divinity School professor Cornell West -and others- call “de facto” segregation) say about the Main Line’s receptiveness of, or tolerance for, ordinary working Americans of African descent? I spoke to a few of the church’s members after the service and, naturally, received a welcome at once warm and guarded. When I responded to some of the more curious regarding my origins and religious affiliation, that I belonged to a prominent Episcopal Church in Bryn Mawr (The Church of the Redeemer) only three miles away, I was disappointed. I got the feeling that few of those to whom I spoke knew my church very well. There was a chasm of class and privilege that separated the one institution from the other.

It seems plain to me that the young people of African-American Christian churches in the Philadelphia area should have more choices in terms of where and how they worship. I do not wish to be misunderstood. My experience of the Baptist church in Ardmore, Pa. was such that I feel it is a place where the word of God is nobly preached and the spirit of devotion zealously cultivated. Moreover, the importance of the Baptist church in maintaining a cultural cohesiveness for countless generations of African-Americans against immense odds can hardly be overstated. I realize that many African-Americans living today have vivid memories of the “Jim Crow” laws which prevailed before the civil rights legislation enacted in 1964 and have decades of racism in their bones, so to speak. But I do not wish for the Baptist community to continue to feel segregated from the church life of those of other denominations.

A Main Line WASP, I grew up in Main Line Philadelphia under fairly privilged
circumstances, with the chance to experience a multiplicity of viewpoints. I tried to learn something about, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase, “both Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic.” For me, the increased presence of Protestant African-Americans in the more established (Presbyterian, Episcopalian) churches on the Main Line will be one important indication that the socio-economic divisions within American society are not as sharp, not as insurmountable, as was once supposed. It would be a small step. But it would be truer then than now, I believe, that we would all be able, confidently and without a trace of cynicism, to sing in the words of the old spiritual: “free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.”