.: So Say We All!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

So Say We All!

I've been around awhile and seen many things. In the midst of the banality that is television and I have seen something new. Last night was the series finale for Battlestar Galactica and before you role your eyes and issue your nerd alert, stop. If you haven't seen the show then you should, more importantly you need to see the show from beginning to the end so that you can fully appreciate what it has accomplished in just four years.

Watching from day one I could tell that the show as going to be different, significant in some way. More than a cultural phenomenon like Star Trek though it told the stories of today in a similar metaphorical way. Galactica made its points with the blunt force trauma realism of Cinéma vérité. In 2006 the show won a Peabody Award for Electronic Media Production. Peabody Award recipients stand as hallmarks of excellence in news, documentary, comedy, drama, education and public service. Battlestar treated contemporary issues from an angle that really make you think about those issues, issues of race, gender, all those things are dealt with in that context of a dramatic narrative.

This is not the Galactica of the 1980's

This Battlestar Galactica tells the story of the last survivors of an Earth-like planetary system destroyed in a nuclear holocaust orchestrated by the Cylons, synthetic humans and robots who live amongst them. The 50,000 survivors wander the space desert and are alternately captors and captives, executing enemies for treason but also using suicide bombers when it suits their political motives. Battlestar Galactica has addressed the issues of the paranoid post-9/11 world without flinching. Already it’s hard to remember how courageous this was back in 2003 when the show was first aired. If every generation gets the TV show it deserves, then Battlestar Galactica captures the ethical bankruptcy needed to wage a war on an undefinable enemy. “We are continually committing crimes to convince ourselves that we are right,” said Mary McDonnell, who plays President Laura Roslin, who alternately orders waterboarding of opponents but draws the line at Galactica soldiers serving as suicide bombers.

These remarks were made earlier in the week when the cast and producers were asked to speak on a panel at the United Nations. A singular honor for a broadcast television show that has portrayed humanity at its best and at its worst.

The event was organized by Human Rights Deputy Director Craig Mokhiber who lamented that even the Utopian ideal the United Nations was formed around was considered, by some, science fiction. "We look at it in a different way," Mokhiber explained. "It's true that we are an idealistic organization... but we are focused on international law and diplomacy to settle disputes. We don't see it as utopian, we see it as the only reasonable alternative to what inevitably would be a horrific dystopian society."

The presentation was Moderated by Whoopi Goldberg and topics ranging from torture to women's rights to the pitfalls of technology. When one of the UN's representatives talked about how part of their mandate was to safeguard the human rights of everyone, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and station, Olmos got a little heated. "You never should've invited me here," he said, before blasting the UN for continuing to use race as a term of separation, of division among peoples. His voice rose, steadily, as if years of social activism was coming to a head on this night. Then, directing his attention to the high schoolers in the room: "Adults will never be able to stop using the word 'race' as a cultural determinant....

There is only one race: the human race. SO SAY WE ALL!"

I swear to you, everyone in that chamber shouted it right back at him. Because Admiral Adama had asked us to. Mary McDonnell leaned over and gently wiped a tear from Olmos' cheek.

Tears were a theme last night watching the final episode with my best friend both of us crying (I'm not even kidding) This could have been the finest 2 hours of TV I have ever seen. All of the fears, hopes, and dreams for humanity were packed tightly into the conclusion in a way that was not just satisfying as a viewer of the show but somehow connecting with the post Obama election hope of today.

In true Ron Moore fashion, it didn't end the way we though it would, in fact this show has never been predictable, never fallen into SciFi genre cliche. This ending was better.

So say we all!

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The Dance Through Life Project

Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

Order your copy today by clicking on the books above!

Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

FIERCE! Being Black, Being Gay in America

"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

The importance of Fierce is paramount: all men are created equal, and share a space on earth. These portraits of men have to be recognized as God’s beauty and not His damnation. Time will thank those who were strong and dared enough to express themselves for all to see and appreciate in a manner that’s loving and creative. Time will also thank us for not living in a paranoid state of mind, and afraid of our own shadows. Remember, this cluster of work isn’t Robert Mappelthope’s approach to black imagery, but the approach of documenting men as they wanted to be seen: with and without sexual stimulation, for shock value."

Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com