This week has been an interesting one. At the end of August, I danced with some friends for Mastodon’s new video, “The Motherload”. We were stoked about it. Twerking in a metal video?! Unheard of! We came from varying backgrounds, classical dancers, pole dancers, strippers all nervously waiting in the common area wondering how we’d all fit in. Well that was a piece of cake. As soon as the music played, we felt jazzed–in fact, they asked us if we’d prefer to dance to some hip-hop instead and then they’d remove the sound and add their track. We declined. We all waited patiently by our machines for weeks, waiting for the video to drop. It dropped Monday.
Within minutes of the video dropping, there was a serious backlash. While most people seemed to “get” the band’s shout out to their hometown, Atlanta, others called it racist and sexist. Some people even called us dirty niggers and whores. Funny, the most sexist and racist sentiments came not from filming the actual video, but from a subset of metal fans who thought we simply didn’t belong. If anything, the video shoot was welcoming, the band clever and pleasant, and the girls bonded almost the second the music dropped. Much like the band, we weren’t concerned with thin, knee-jerk reactions to asses and twerking.
We came across from different walks of life. Real deal ATL strippers joked with me–I’m a pole dance student with a background in African American literature and cultural theory, while my ballet dancer friend laughed with the other ladies, doing pirouettes in between takes. If you read the interview in which the band says that we were having fun with each other and not for the male gaze, you should know he was totally right. My other friend who is the best conglomeration of every dancer there–pole dancer, stripper, PhD in women’s lit and African American lit focus, and a dance instructor–could be the poster child of what this was. Women having fun with each other. Praising each other. A glimpse into what we do and that we are bigger than what we do.
One of the reasons this video, for me, is garnering so much attention is that truly the women are not just asses–and there are a lot of fantastic asses in the building–but shown as 3D people, which scares folk. Another is the concern for cultural appropriation. From us and from them. The fear of metal being “tainted”, the fear of the band using a dance form associated with black culture for their own gain. These fears boil down into my one response: we all belong. This band made it such that by the time the shoot was over, we all went home and got the track. (I’m playing it on the jukebox at my local bar as I write.) This video wasn’t a spoof or mocking or satire, in my opinion. The guys are ATL homegrown. As much as metal is in their bones, so is trap music, so is Old Fourth Ward, so is Magic City. They repped Georgia not out of exploitation, but because it resonates with them and is a part of them. This video proves that metal can reach out and can be reached out to without parody, without hierarchy, and it is a good thing.
Ask us if it was racist or sexist. We were the ones right there experiencing it. I’ll tell you from my view: no.
I admit, I am an ultimate fan girl of the Rocky franchise. I didn’t think I could love it anymore–then Creed came out. For numerous reasons, cultural representation, beautiful scenes, and the stats of the fighters appearing like watching a true fight, I was completely smitten. Creed is a movie that boxing so desperately needed, as boxing fans are becoming more and more disillusioned with the big ticket fights. It reminded the audience of the thrill of the fight. However, that’s not all. The movie is good for all combat sports. It shows us what happens behind the scenes. It explains the work, the struggle, and the reward of being in this world. Best of all (and poignant too), the movie closes the fight career of Rocky Balboa and begins the rise of Adonis Creed.
The heart of this movie is creating a new legacy–not riding the coattails of your name. For every fighter, every combat sports enthusiast, every black kid who loved and missed Apollo Creed, this movie is for you. The movie reminds us that watching our favorite fighters is more than understanding just what happens in the ring, it’s understanding what led them to the ring. I expect we will see many more movies spawned from Creed, and they will satiate our need to be emotionally invested in our fighters.
I fell in love at first sight. I doubt I can love again. I doubt I can love as I did then. If Mama Oshun is listening, please prove me wrong. Show me it’s still there, because the night is long.
Carve out my heart, torch it. Carve me a new way, illuminate it. Let me build anew, Oya, take the old and destroy it. Lay waste with the promise of new beginnings.
You who have this power. I call on you. Rebuild my heart. Make a new road, Elegba. Every orisha come to my aid. Your daughter calls urgently.
I know this is even more scattered than my last post, but I had to get it out and put some distance before I attempt to hone it down into something more. There’s three different threads I want to follow, but each one is important, each one here.
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I’ve watched Moonlight twice in the theaters in two days–the weekend it was released. Something about it, my chest was tight the whole time. Nothing good can come of this in the sort of black world Chiron lives in. I fear at each moment for Chiron. I want to jump through the screen and hold him. Tell him he is safe and loved because he expects the opposite of that. When he experiences tenderness, the tenderness that shouldn’t be there, I am afraid that it will be snatched away at any moment. Suddenly, it will all go away. That, to me, is the tension of the movie. That the fleeting goodness might disappear.
And yet, every small bit of the movie brought me a fullness. Small moments of joy. One of James Baldwin’s friends once said that Baldwin was like Dostoevsky. “He is not a pessimist. He layers darkness upon darkness, pain, sadness, then he blasts you with light.” Moonlight could be in that company. The blast of light.
That particular blast of light reminded me of another, perhaps more timely, piece. Frank Ocean’s Blond. Frank Ocean helped the writer, Nicholas Britell, visualize the scenes, the script. How? Channel Orange. However, I think Blond is a far better musical representation of Moonlight. In fact, one song could fully represent the movie: Frank Ocean’s “Ivy”:
I thought I was dreaming
When you said you loved me
It started from nothing
I had no chance to prepare
Couldn’t see you coming
And we started from nothing
I could hate you now
It’s alright to hate me now
We both know that deep down
The feeling still deep down is good
I love the quiet intensity of the movie. It kept me tight, wound up, both optimistic and terrified. I’d been thinking about the movie for a bit. It spoke to sexual fluidity, yes, but more to toxic masculinity–specifically toxic black masculinity. This is where, I believe, Frank Ocean, steps in. Our contemporary R&B artists tend to avoid emotion unless the emotion is lust or anger. This is where Frank Ocean stands apart. He sings almost exclusively about vulnerability. No. No. No. Black men do not talk about being young, innocent, and definitely not vulnerable. However, he does so in a way that wrenches the heart. In the same way, Moonlight does. I think it is because I want black men to be vulnerable and true to themselves, but I also fear the backlash for that.
Arm around my shoulder so I could tell how much I meant to you…
meant it sincere back then
We had time to kill back then
You ain’t a kid no more
We’ll never be those kids again
I am saying very little about sexuality in Moonlight because I know many people can dismantle it far better than I can, and this, this, moment of driving down the road listening to Blond brought tears down my cheeks as scenes from the movie flashed in front of me like a trailer.
Layers of darkness. A blast of light. Moonlight is Blond. A blast of light in deep blue-black night. Moments to breathe. I have every intention to chew this over more, say more but for now, I have tears in my eyes and both pain and joy in my heart.
What is it that I feel has not been said about Moonlight? I think it is encapsulated by Mahershala Ali’s short explanation about why Juan resonates with Chiron. To be an outcast. To feel adrift in the world. Juan feels it–albeit in a different way–and when he sees a young black boy, as young as he was when he realized he was an outsider, he can’t help but to step in. God knows, we miss our elder brothers/fathers to walk us through. It is a moment that makes us hold our breath, a father, a father who will love him and protect him from all of the things that destroy little black boys. Yes, Juan is the local drug dealer, but he loves Chiron fiercely (and wants more for him). I was heartbroken that Juan had such a small role, though powerful. He was a spectre behind Chiron, in a way that his biological father that we never hear of is not.
The movie is definitely geared to black men, and I am very willing to play the back. However, it still made me turn inside out as it unfolded. It still made me quiet. I still cannot form words. Maybe it is because I see the pain my cousins and students struggle with all of this and I can’t help. Maybe it is because I want them to step into that blinding light that is self-acceptance. I don’t know.
I’ve been working on this over the last two or three days, revisiting the notes I wrote months ago and feeling woefully ill-prepared to discuss this movie. I knew I was bursting, but no way of explaining it.
Last night, I had a long nightmare, the majority of it operated as my typical nightmares–some type of post apocalyptic world in strange things hunt and devour people. I fell. There was a giant tan and speckled crocodile snapping its jaws at me. I screamed “Daddy, save me!” and he appeared and forced it to retreat. Throughout the dream, the crocodile reappears and every time my daddy saves me. In most of my dreams, I am leading some type of resistance, protecting people, killing creatures, but–here, when I am cornered, I call for him. I don’t call for anyone in my dreams. I take whatever comes and if I cannot beat it, I push past it. But last night, I woke up crying for my father when it seemed, for once in the dream, he wouldn’t come. My close friends know that in my dreams, I take care of it. No help. Nobody. It didn’t help that it is very soon the 20th anniversary of my father’s death.
How is this related? Because Chiron has been going through the world alone. Then there’s Juan. Juan is his first (and perhaps only protector). What I am saying is that Chiron probably relied on Juan in his absence the way I relied on my father. And that is a conversation we’re not having. Being protected. By our fathers. By our big brothers and uncles and cousins.
No, we aren’t talking about this.
This movie is as much about discovering one’s sexuality as it is about discovering one’s need for nurturing. Nurturing and sex overlap, but are not the same thing. Men, especially black men, are told that physical touch only comes through fucking or fighting. And in this contemporary moment, “Netflix and Chill” is code for sex. Not to be physically close to someone, not to cuddle with someone, but to get that nut because to have sex is the only way most people get the physical attention they so desperately need. I was once told that people are starving. Starving to be touched, touch deprived in fact.
Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.
But I am a woman, so they allow it. The thing is, do they do that for their boys? And what is the trauma of not having that from their father?
I asked one of the most nurturing black men I know, and he said as a child, he always wanted to bring joy.
“I was the hugger of the family.
I had to fight back against being bullied as a pansy, but I couldn’t stop. I could see what people needed. When to smile, when to hug. I was naive, but no one hurt me. I just knew I wasn’t acting like the black man I was expected to be.”
My father, my uncle, my cousin, they all touched. They were nurturers, the kind that they say doesn’t exist in black men. My mentor, my baba, I could go to his house when he wasn’t there and sleep in his bed. Get that nurturing I so desperately needed. But then again, I was a girl.
This is why Chiron is so thirsty. He’s thirsty for physical love outside of sex. When Juan holds him in the water, teaching him to float, teaching him to swim, it has power. No one has touched Chiron except to abuse him. When we see Chiron held so tenderly by Juan, that idea of the binary of fighting or fucking explodes. Chiron needs this. He’s silent in his starvation for love–conserve energy, don’t waste it, don’t drink too much water, you’re dehydrated, take it easy, slow now–and ekes by. He knows that maybe sex isn’t what he wants. He wants the feeling of love through nurturing in a way that black men are not allowed to know.
Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.
Moonlight offer resilience and healing for black men. But it comes at a cost. You must eschew all false masculinity to get the necessary healing. This movie is not for the uninitiated. This is thick, frightening, sweet, dangerous, healing. It is asking to hold you, “I got you”, it says. It is Juan holding Chiron in the water, swearing to not let anything bad happen to him. It’s trying to hold us, and god knows we’re so starved, we should let it.
I am struggling with this. This, sadly, is the best I can do.
Hold me. Let me feel you breathe, let me feel warm and safe.
I should have written about this ages ago. I had every intention to do just that. But life gets in the way. However, when I came home last night, the yellow vinyl LP of the Luke Cage soundtrack was resting gently against my door and my heart leapt. I hadn’t forgotten, just hadn’t decided what I wanted to say. In a divine coincidence, my friend messaged me out of the blue, and I saw his response to watching the show. He said quite simply: “This, THIS is how a show that is centered around Communities of Color should be done. Luke Cage is, in my mind, the new gold standard”.
With his words ringing in my ears, I realized. Luke Cage did something rare. It told a very black story. A very non-white story. And it did so without the cliches that non-POCs love. It seemed natural; the way we engage when no one is looking. The lives we lead when white people have forgotten we exist. The show addressed issues that seem–for us–eternal, and gave answers for the new battles we fight. No, it did not solve anything. That wasn’t its purpose. At its heart, it’s just a 70s comic book turned TV show. However, the people involved were wise enough to retool the story to the historical moment.
I heard Method Man’s rap about Luke (yes I feel familiar enough to say Luke), and felt the tears well in my eyes. On the track, Meth said he wished Trayvon had a gun to protect himself. I also hear in his silence that he wished Trayvon was bulletproof. In this moment, in all our moments, we wish our fathers, brothers, friends were bulletproof.
So what of the show? The show reflects something real in the midst of something supernatural. The city devours. Any city. All cities. That shit ain’t new for black folk. However, despite that, despite the despair that plagues us, there’s Luke. The show downplays his powers. He is normalized. Every character is–they seem like folk you see at the barber shop, the hair salon, running through the fire hydrant when we all know that wasn’t supposed to be opened but some smart kid figured it out. And we should chide them, but our childhood (stripped away too soon) comes flooding back, so instead we get soaked and chase children to dash them in the cold, powerful water. That is the show. That is what I feel.
I want to talk about the history. I want to talk about how naturally our icons are dropped in casual conversation in life and in the show–Ralph Ellison, Crispus Attucks, Donald Goines. Stuff we know. Stuff everyone else forgets. Stuff that feeds us. I felt a flood when I saw Invisible Man on Luke’s bed. Right before I binge watched it, I had just taught my World Literature class and the subject was the Caribbean author, Caryl Phillips’s short autobiography “Growing Pains”. He wrote about reading Anna Karenina. ”’My God.’ His stepmother calls him downstairs for dinner. He sits at the table in silence but cannot eat. He stares at his brothers, at his father, at his stepmother. Do they not understand? Anna has thrown herself in front of a train.” I looked at the world like that after Luke Cage and thought, how can you be so calm? This, this thing exists. Do you not know? A bulletproof brotha?! Do you not see? I understand Caryl better now. He was overwhelmed, as we often are not, with visceral emotion. I know this is scattered.
But all I want to end this with is it’s “blackety black and black y’all”.
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