VIDEO, RADIO, PERFORMING ARTS, AND FILM

Alive and Kicking: Patricia Smith in Professional Suicide
Michele Gouveia is a freelance writer and an editor at Careers Magazines and Abafazi: The Simmons College Journal of Women of African Descent.

Patricia Smith. A year ago her name was synonymous with lying. Forced to resign after it was discovered that she had invented some sources in her Boston Globe column, she was subjected to a public raking over the coals for her actions. Smith survived the scandal and has returned in full force with a performance piece, Professional Suicide.

Professional Suicide--an ever-evolving collection of stories, poems, and reflections--chronicles Smith's fall from grace and subsequent survival. Accompanied by the Jeff Robinson Trio, she recites poems, sings snatches of lyrics, and comments on her performance to the audience in what she has labeled "a highly personal look inward." Smith holds nothing back, speaking vividly of her murdered father, the emotional turmoil she went through following her resignation from the Globe, and the suicidal thoughts she entertained in the darkest days. Smith, whose skill with language has never been in doubt, is also a gifted performer. Her voice soars loud and strong in some of her angrier poems only to sink quickly into a whisper to hit a point. The use of music in her performance enhances the lyrical cadence of her words.

At both the beginning and the end of the performance, Smith recites the children's rhyme "Miss Mary Mack," in which the last word or syllable of each line is repeated twice; as the poem finishes with the line, "on the Fourth of July," she emphasizes the ending "lie" as she repeats it. Smith's downfall is alluded to in all of the pieces of the performance. From earliest childhood recollections, she references incidences that led her to "bend the back of one of the words, then you hear the music of the sentence." Language and how to use it was important in Smith's household. In one piece, she describes how her mother made her learn how to "pronounce things right." Her mother, who wanted her to act like a white girl, would also pinch her nose in an attempt to make it narrow. Speaking of her adored father in what are the most moving pieces in her show, she says that he was the one who encouraged her to become a writer and who also taught her "how to cheat, how to get around the corners."

Smith often angered the establishment with her rally cries for the communities that are ignored: the poor, people of color, the homeless, gays. While her journalism, as we now know, was not always honest, the passion behind the words was. Perhaps her professional suicide was a result of her inability to ignore the causes important to her, even when she did not have a real example to substantiate them.

Smith's forced resignation from the Globe is not debatable; she broke a cardinal rule of journalism by blurring the line between fact and fiction, and lost her job. What is questionable is the double standard that seemed to exist for Smith's white fellow columnist Mike Barnicle, who shortly after Smith's resignation was discovered to have plagiarized material. As many observed, the Globe seemed eager to let Smith go but reluctant to cut its ties with Barnicle.

The treatment Patricia Smith received in the wake of her resignation illustrates one of the uglier aspects of our society: the relishing of failure. The public's interest in Smith's story seemed sometimes to lie not in the effects of her actions on journalism, but in how much humiliation she could endure. We do not want a person to just fail, we want him or her to hit rock bottom. It is a way for everyone to feel just a lttle bit better about him or herself. For some of Smith's detractors, her failure also served as a justification of their opinions on race and gender. A few even used her as an example of problems created by affirmative action, as if race and lying have any correlation.

The bulk of Professional Suicide deals directly with the aftermath of the resignation. Smith, who felt most betrayed by fellow journalists, says she felt like the black person who had been invited to dinner and just would not leave. "We're sewing your feet to the woodwork--can't hide what you've done. It was in all the papers...now we can only hold our heads up long enough to hold yours down." The woman accused of bringing down American journalism could not be hounded enough. In one disturbing piece, she tells the audience about the gun she hid in her house and the struggle she went through not to use it.

Nowhere in her performance does Smith ask for pity, only understanding. She is also not all doom and gloom. Humor is laced throughout Professional Suicide. In one piece, she touts the "I Got Caught Making Up Stuff Was Hounded Relentlessly by the Media and Lost More Weight than I Ever Imagined I Could High Stress Diet!" In another, she reads the headlines her opponents would love to see: "Ousted Disgraced Columnist Found Working at Estee Lauder Counter with Janet Cook." (Cook, a journalist for the Washington Post, won a Pulitzer in 1981 for a story about an 11-year-old heroin addict whom she later admitted to having invented.)

Smith says that people stop her on the street and tell her they miss her. Although her column has been replaced in the Globe, her voice has not. She spoke for the silent minority in her column and, with Professional Suicide, she is once again giving voice to her passions. The power of language has never wavered for Smith--it is a constant that has helped her survive and find salvation. Hopefully, she will now be able to continue to fight for her causes, but this time, by using the power of poetry.

Besieged
Andrew Millington is a filmmaker who teaches in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston.

Bernardo Bertolucci, veteran filmmaker and at one time darling of progressive thinkers, with films like "The Conformist" and "1900," and at another their enemy with "The Last Emperor" and "Sheltering Sky," provides a mature, thought-provoking approach to the issue of the political refugee in "Besieged." The film provides a breath of air fresh enough to combat the hot air blast of ghastly Hollywood fare served up this summer ("Austin Powers" and "The Phantom Menace"). Bertolucci's work reveals the bankruptcy of Hollywood producers who seem incapable of producing socially relevant films, instead churning out the irreverent and escapist fare they have long contented themselves with.

Set in Rome, "Beseiged" centers around the inhabitants of an old but elegant house bequeathed to a middle-aged British pianist, Mr. Kinsky, played by David Thewlis, who employs actress Thandie Newton's Shandurai, a young international student fleeing a poverty-ridden and politically oppressive African state. The film's opening points to the harsh reality of day-to-day existence in countries terrorized by self-serving brutal dictators. For his resistance to such behavior, Shandurai's husband is beaten and detained by his country's armed forces. To his credit, the filmmaker refuses to exploit the violence of the act, choosing instead to identify with the young woman's suffering. We witness Shandurai curled in pain after the abduction, and even as we expect the heavens to reverberate with her cries, we instead experience it in silence, almost as if we, the audience, dare not attempt to appropriate this young woman's space to express her pain.

It is to Italy that Shandurai must escape and it is here she meets the English gentleman, a musician eloquent in his rendering of Bach, Mozart, and other classics on the piano. Where we have become accustomed to the stereotypical white-meets-black, European/African, master/slave confrontations, again Bertolucci defies these expectations. Shandurai performs her household duties, failing to make any sense or make any connection to the music performed. It's difficult to know exactly when Mr. Kinsky becomes intrigued with the young woman, but his elusiveness emphasizes contradictions; his seduction by small gifts betrays his intentions even as they are complicated by his hesitancy. When Shandurai interprets his use of her shelf--it clearly was once a means of moving articles from servant quarters to higher elevations--as a battle over turf, we are amused by his clumsiness along side of his ability to restrain himself from acting the insistent, domineering male. In fact, we sympathize with his response, awkward but human, to the rejection of his advances.

Thandie Newton is strong in her role as a sensitive and intelligent woman struggling to retain a sense of her own identity in a western world that is all too hostile to people of African descent--the images of fascist imperialist ventures into Ethiopia and Italy's subsequent defeats reverberated in my mind. The character's resilience and determination never falter as she faces each obstacle in her quest to attain a medical degree. Such intellectual pursuits are not her primary problem however. At the climax of her emotional turmoil she throws out a challenge to her suitor--that he may only gain her heart by winning the liberation of her husband, imprisoned in her homeland.

Whether Shandurai was serious in this challenge we are not sure, but the effect it has on the unsuspecting musician is poignant. Both he and the audience are forced to question the context in which we view desire. Shandurai in her resistance combats the Western perception of woman (in this case an African woman) as mere object of sexual desire, reframes it and insists on a definition that includes political desire, perhaps more legitimate terrain for viewing desire. Beyond an act of pleasure, an act of love conveys a deeper meaning which we must be challenged to discover and embrace. Failure to do so only makes a mockery of experience.

As the musician responds by seeking answers in his work, the nature and character of his music undergo a change of which Shandurai takes notice, although in her view his music still does not rival her own African rhythms which she plays in her private quarters. But this is not the only thing she observes. In her daily chores she realizes that objects of great value which she has been in the habit of cleaning suddenly begin to disappear, until even the piano is put up for sale. We are never consciously aware of our musician's designs: the change in his music we attribute to visits to a local immigrant church--a consequence of his growing curiosity about a culture about which he is ignorant, and his desire to experience it. No wonder his music undergoes such a joyous transformation.

Finally, the mystery is revealed through the sale of the piano, his prized possession, and Shandurai's discovery that he has been corresponding with her homeland. Mr. Kinsky, having learned the quality of selflessness, now divests himself of worldly possessions for the higher cause of achieving freedom--saving the life and securing the release from prison of the husband of an African woman whom he loves. Even if we have suspicions about his motives, this character is never shown as patriarchal. When Shandurai's husband is released from prison, the musician remains resolute despite the fact that he may never realize his love. He neither gloats in his success nor forces her to honor her side of the bargain. At the film's climax, Shandurai's guilt and her recognition of her suitor's selflessness lead her to express her gratitude. Before the arrival of her husband and their anti-climactic meeting at the door of the house (that race built?) she offers herself. Love is discovered in places where one seldom expects it and in the war-strewn context of the film occurs in the most unpredictable of ways.

It is the filmmaker's ability to depict the tension which failure to act on one's desires engenders that most impresses. For what holds us in its grasp throughout is the suppression of will, motivated by pure sexual desire. Even if our moral sense resists the last scene of the film, we are at least satisfied that the psychological conflict is resolved. Represented stylistically by a moving camera, time-lapse cinematography, and the depth of character multidimensionality, the conflict remains true to the dignity of human struggle. In the face of all too prevalent societal crises, it nurtures sacred desires.

Women Speak in South Africa
Louise Dunlap, a writer and teacher of writing, has taught in South Africa. She traveled there this summer as part of the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage.

We talk about a grassroots movement for change, but few of us know what it's like to be part of one. That's why a new book from South Africa is important. Women Speak: Reflections on Our Struggles 1982-1997, edited and complied by Shamim Meer (Kwela Books, 1998, $15.95), brings to life the voices of women in the struggle to topple apartheid. In the early '80s when labor and community groups were growing stronger after an intense period of repression, a women's group in Durban started SPEAK, a local newsletter which would grow into a national magazine. The idea was to raise issues of women's liberation as part of the broader struggle and to encourage women's activism at all levels. First published in English and Zulu, SPEAK bridged apartheid-enforced separation by color, class, and ethnicity and helped women see what they had in common and how to organize in their communities and unions. Although popular and much-loved, the magazine ceased publication when the ANC government was voted in and funding dynamics changed dramatically in the country.

Women Speak brings together stories from SPEAK magazine and interviews with contemporary women leaders in the ongoing struggle to maintain grassroots organizations and gain real change under South Africa's new institutions. It also gives a vivid, readable history of the culminating years of the struggle against apartheid. Chapters focus on issues like "Women Workers," "Fighting Violence Against Women," and "Women in Government"; they take up controversies such as whether feminism pertains to the African situation or is just a Western construct.

Reading this book we are touched by the poems concluding each chapter, by the stirring graphics for which the anti-apartheid movement is famous, and most of all by the voices of women constantly on the front lines. We hear how women organized for housing and child care and clinics and places to bury their dead and freedom from sexual abuse and better wages. We hear a Carnation Foods worker explain how domestic duties conflict with union activism: "We must still organize our husbands." We hear Nomboniso Gaza's admiration for comrade Thenjiwe Mtintso who broke with tradition at the memorial to her long-time lover. Although left out of the official pamphlet, there she spoke openly of her relationship with this freedom fighter and encouraged women to view "the personal as political." Women at the vast gathering "looked at her with pride, sadness, and joy." We are inspired by Frene Ginwala's words on the Women's Charter in 1992: "We must grow big ears. We must listen to women everywhere--in rural and urban areas, factory women, women in big mansions, and bring all their demands together." Ginwala later became speaker of the new parliament where, thanks to women's organizing, 106 out of 400 members elected were women--bringing South Africa from 141st to 7th among nations with women in parliament

You probably won't find this book in your bookstore yet, but you can get it through Oxfam Great Britain, which is distributing it to foster greater awareness of global equity and poverty reduction. Contact: Stylus Publishing, PO Box 605, Herndon, VA 29172-0605; 703/661-1581; fax 703/661-1501; <styluspub@aol.com>

Summer Viewing
Paul Shannon runs the AFSC Film Library and also contributes to its New England Peace and Economic Security Program.

You've heard about a summer reading list. Well, how about making up a summer video viewing list? Here are three different strategies you might consider:

1) Maybe you want to catch up on some of the burning social issues of 1999 by looking at new videos just coming out. For instance, "It's Elementary" is a special 35 minute version of the excellent and very controversial film on dealing with gay issues in schools that just aired on those PBS stations that were willing to buck right wing pressure. "The Ad and the Ego" is getting rave reviews for its piercing analysis of our consumer society and how we're being shaped by it. The best way to understand the depth of our country's housing crisis in just 6 minutes is to watch "The End of the Line." Filmed in New Bedford, MA, this film shows the diversity of people in our society who desperately need fast disappearing affordable housing.

"The Farm" is a full length documentary about the struggle for dignity by prisoners in the Angola Prison down south. Filmed by one of the inmates at this former slave plantation converted into America's most infamous prison, it's a "must see." Given the current ongoing attack on low income women and their children, it might be a good time to watch "Women of Strength: Four Stories from the Welfare Debate" or "Poverty Outlaw." "Out at Work" is a unique film on discrimination against gays in the workplace and the support they are starting to get from labor unions. "Power" is the inside story of the Cree native peoples' successful effort to stop the James Bay hydroelectric project. "Never Too Thin" is an absolutely unique investigation of images of beauty in America, the pain those images cause women, and the courage of some women to take on our country's hatred of fat people. "Where Can I Live" is one of the most inspiring community organizing films you'll ever see as Black and Latina women band together to fight gentrification in New York.

2) Perhaps instead you might want to look at some films that probe in some depth the meaning of vital issues in the post-World War II era. "Panama Deception" is the best record and critique of US intervention produced in the 1990's. It's an Academy Award winner that is about far more than the 1989 invasion of Panama. "Holding Ground" is the story of the decline and rise of the Dudley Street area of Roxbury, MA and the inspiring work of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. To examine the role that the US threat to use nuclear weapons has played in that history of US intervention, there's nothing better than "The Last Empire." "Abortion: Stories North and South" is a richly textured cross-cultural production that lets us get inside the skin of women around the world who face -- often all alone -- the often terrifying predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. For an in-depth study of the history and cultural/racial attitudes underlying the Israeli- Palestinian conflict be sure to view "Courage Along the Divide." And it's always appropriate to commemorate the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by viewing the original US military footage of the horror of those bombings called "Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945."

The history and meaning of the US movement against the war (and the broader movements of the '60s) is powerfully portrayed in the feature length documentaries, "Berkeley in the '60s," "The War at Home," and "Citizen Soldier: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War." (What's that? US combat troops actually led the peace movement when they came home? You won't learn about that in school!) "Berkeley in the '60s" overlays contemporary interviews with amazing footage from the movement of the '60s in a way that captures the heart and commitment of the movement's participants. But the best anti-war film ever made is the PBS documentary, "Remember My Lai."

Excellent programs on race include "True Colors," on the impact of race on everyday situations, and "Babakiueria," a spoof on racial stereotypes using reversal of the roles of whites and minorities. "Weapons of the Spirit" is the inspiring story of the thousands of French people who sheltered Jews from Nazi extermination. "Living Under the Cloud: Chernobyl Today" explores the implications of the world's worst nuclear accident. You can find out about the biggest terrorist training camp in the world (at Fort Benning, GA) in "School of Assassins." "Common Man, Uncommon Vision" is the story of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement for worker and racial dignity. "Smoke in the Eye" is a profound analysis of what corporate media does to the news, using reporting on big tobacco as a case study. "No Time to Lose" is a knock-you-over short film on kids and poverty in New York. Then there's always Henry Hampton's amazing video series on all aspects of the Civil Rights movement, "Eyes on the Prize." Get the true story of our policy toward Haiti in "Haiti: Killing the Dream." And you'll never be able to fool yourself again about what we are really up to in the world once you've seen the PBS production, "Guns, Drugs and the CIA."

Maybe you'd want to have your very own Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn film festival. Videos of their lectures on numerous topics are available (thanks primarily to the work of Radio Free Maine). You can always count on these giants of intellect and compassion to remind us that we have to know our history so we can change the world. In six hours of Zinn and Chomsky you'll get an education the likes of which you won't get anywhere else. (It's not recommended that you drive immediately after watching Chomsky. You may have to settle down first.)

3) Still another approach is to go with the classics. How long has it been since you've seen "The Battle of Algiers"? -- or "Atomic Cafe"; "Missing"; "Hearts and Minds"; "Roger and Me"; "Night and Fog"; "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk"; Frankovich's "On Company Business" and "The Houses Are Full of Smoke"; "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; or (with your kids this time) "Free to Be You and Me"?

And perhaps you've never seen other classics like "Harlan Country USA" (the classic portrayal of the life and courage of coal miners fighting for their rights); "Bitter Cane" (the story of Haiti under US occupation and under the Duvaliers); "Controlling Interest" (best film ever made of how US intervention abroad is based on the needs of multinational corporations); and "Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia" (John Pilger's crucial piece on the beginnings of the US-Khmer Rouge collaboration to prevent Cambodia's recovery).

Now I know what you're saying: "Sure that's a great idea. But how am I going to get a hold of such great videos. My video store doesn't even carry these kinds of programs." Well, amazingly enough, these videos are all in one place just waiting for you. They're all part of the video collection at the AFSC Video Library here on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. All the videos listed above can be borrowed--as can hundreds of others just like them. All we ask is a $2 per day donation--and the whole weekend only counts as one day. (We ask slightly larger donations for group and public showings.)

Yes, I can hear you in Tucson, Arizona and Brattleboro, Vermont: "What difference does your video collection mean to me? Do you really expect me to drive all the way to Cambridge just to pick up a good program?" Nope, because we'll ship whatever program you want directly to you. We'd ask a $5 donation for a couple of days viewing period and charge you the shipping cost.

So get busy putting together your summer video list. Give us a call at 617/497-5273 and we'll start shipping these unique programs out to you or set up a time for you to pick them up at our office. (Note: we keep about 40 of these videos out in our reception area at all times, so you can just come by anytime and browse till you find a video you want).

Radio Free Maine
Radio Free Maine audio and video tapes, recorded by the dogged left/progressive media icon Roger Leisner, are a primer on basic social justice issues. They call into question the myths about capitalism, democracy, and freedom in the US, and expertly describe the things Leisner is against--corporate power, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction--and those he's for--a real health care system, greater social supports for women and children, and a society actively seeking to understand and create change. This (abridged)review is by Vincent Romano, a freelance writer and peace activist living in White Plains, NY.

I listened to the Brian Willson tape ("From the Belly of the Beast--Aren't We Lucky to Live Here?" 9/13/98, Maine Labor Solidarity Day) with five friends while driving from New York to Georgia in November, 1998, on our way to attend a gathering of which Mr. Willson would approve: the annual protest to close the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The issues bound in that struggle are similar to ones he tackled in his talk. The American way of life is a delusion, Willson asserts; this society cannot sustain itself because it is built on institutionalized exploitation. These are explosive charges. Willson's epiphany occurred in Vietnam. An honor student, all-conference athlete, Boy Scout, and born-again Christian, he was more than happy to "kill a Commie for Jesus" when he was called to serve his country. One day, his platoon entered a village to mop up after a bombing; he looked at a woman burned by napalm and started crying. "I feel like these could be my sisters and my children," he said. His commanding officer laughed, "They're just communists."

Willson's personal journey has taken him many places since then. He was in a small Chiapas town when the Mexican military arrived. The low­intensity war that has been prosecuted since the Zapatista uprising of January, 1994, helps to sustain what Willson sees as the "mother of all structural problems": 4.5% of the world's population consuming over 30% of the world's resources.

In September, 1987, while Willson was sitting on the railroad tracks of the Naval Weapons Station in Concord, CA, to protest the shipment of arms to the Nicaraguan contras, he was run over by a munitions train--many say deliberately--and lost both his legs. Skeptics ask if he accomplished anything by this action, or by fasting for forty­seven days on the Capitol steps to protest the US proxy war in Nicaragua. "I don't know," he says, "I was just expressing myself in the most honest way possible." Brian Willson is a hero in an age when they are hard to come by; his stress on his all-American background reveals that we can all go down this road if we are willing.

Also on the Willson tape is some of Richard Cambridge's poetry, accompanied by Patino Vasquez' guitar. Cambridge's verse satirizes the brutal history of the US--including its 100 invasions of Latin America in this century alone. "You are King Herod putting to death every revolution under two years old," he recites, likening the Cuban embargo to a king who persecuted a small farmer near his castle, enraged at the peasant's joy at his tiny bounty, demanding tribute and employing wizards to convince his subjects that it is really the farmer who puts the king in danger. This is good stuff.

[The tape's only defect is the abrasive wailing of the microphone caused by Willson positioning himself at the podium, while leaning on a barrel, during the first two minutes of his talk.]

Radio Free Maine (www.radiofreemaine.com)
ordering information:

Prices generally are as follows: audiotapes @ $11; four or more @ $10; Canada & Mexico, add $1 for postage; all other countries, add $2. Each video @ $20; four or more @ $19; Canada & Mexico, add $2 for postage; all other countries, add $3. For catalogue, send a self-addressed envelope with $1 postage to Roger Leisner, Radio Free Maine, PO Box 2705, Augusta, ME 04338; 207/622-6629

Leisner offers an important list of progressive voices, well worth checking out. He writes of recent reordings: "My personal favorites are Brian Willson, Howard Zinn, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Jackson Katz, Daniel Maguire, Stephanie Coontz, Richard Levins, Noam Chomsky, the Symposium on Affirmative Action, and some of the panels from this year's Socialist Scholar's Conference." Other recordings feature Jonathan Schell, Brian Tokar, Howard Zinn, Andrew Weil, Carolyn Chute, Mary Daly, Barbara Ehrenreich, Staughton Lynd, Manning Marable, among a host of others.