Today is the release of the rebooted Footlose. Wah wah. As a big fan of the original, I'm on the fence about the remake. Especially considering the orginal was, by some measures, a Chicano film. In any case, here are some thoughts I had concerning the Kevin Bacon classic:
Last night in a bar I heard someone made a passing reference to the 1984 movie Footloose, not so much pointing out the film's politically radical theme of youth organizing themselves to fight the strictures of intolerant authority and small-town repression, but admiration, instead, for Kevin Bacon's hip and skinny ties. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Me, for instance, I always liked the part where glitter inexplicably falls down like rain during the joyous dance sequence at the end. Fellini meets fake John Hughes. Art house in the metroplex. Elements of fantasy as whimsical coda in an otherwise realistic teen movie. Very badass.
A quick revisit to said dance scene via the insta-analysis of YouTube, and I'm freaking at how Absolutely White the movie was -- with nary a suspicious person-of-color dancing about. They even managed to find probably the only two blond guys in the Greater Los Angeles Area capable of the dazzling Michael Jackson-inspired moonwalking and popping moves. Now that's some hardcore reverse affirmative action going on.
Which leads me to this recent New Yorker article, A Paler Shade of White, about how indie rock these days is pretty much a white-boy thing, a ho hum music genre devoid, lately, of black-inspired rhythm, blues, and stage presence. In other words "boring." Now, set aside the fact that almost any U.S. cultural phenom can, upon cherry picking scrutiny and agenda-driven reduction, be conveniently simplified into a white-boy thing, the thesis merits consideration.
When a friend sent me the link to the piece, I envisioned a Greg Tate-like discourse on race and rock music. Instead I got 3000 words on how "the drummer and the bassist rarely played syncopated patterns or lingered in the low registers." I will let others more musically qualified debate those finer points, these kinds of technical discussions beyond my layman's understanding (in High School I was always the guy taking pictures of the band, never the guy strumming the Telecaster). What interested me, however, was how this smart, informed, well-researched article in a national magazine was at the end of the day just another example of the simplistic Black/White paradigm that informs discussion of race in this country. The Ken Burns reading of American history and culture.
As we speak there's an exhibit in Seattle at the Experience Music Project called American Sabor. Curated by Marisol Berrios-Miranda, Shannon Dudley, and Michelle Habell-Pallan, the exhibit tells the little known story of Latinos in U.S. popular music, not just how raza may have been influenced by, say, do wop -- but how brown people in fact contributed to do wop. And punk rock. And country and western. And, yes, on occasion, indie rock. 5000 square feet of exhibition space, amazing photos, films, and artifacts, with listening kiosks breaking down the story and its focus on New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Miami as epicenters of this musical exchange. Go here for a link to an article on the exhibit with a link to one of the narrations.
And one last word on the New Yorker article: The metrics I choose in assessing the "whiteness" of indie rock are not beats per minute or how many Willie Dixon riffs you may or may not spot in an Artic Monkey song, but a focus on the scene, the fans, the bands, and how they all interact. Check out Club 101 in El Paso. Sam's in San Antonio. Emo's in Austin. Ok. Not Emo's in Austin. That's pretty much all gringo. But you get my point. The diversity's there. And usually away from the so-called cultural capitals of America. The picture heading this post comes from a Savior Daughters show in San Antonio. Mexicans for days.
And, finally, back to the beginning: Footloose. A quick Google search for witty blog ending movie trivia and I found this Variety story reporting High School Musical I and II director Kenny Ortega is helming a remake of the original. What more can I say: Footloose transformed into a Chicano movie. Take that indie white boys.
Chicano art collective Asco makes the cover of Artforum. Very badass.
Inside the mag is a must-read discussion of Los Angeles art, the scene, the work, the history, and, suprisingly, critiques of L.A.'s sometimes Anti-Mexican sentiment as well as a reference to the killing of Ruben Salazar by LA County Sheriff Deputies in 1970. What tha--?!
Now how did a mention of the Chicano Moritorium make it in an art conversation about “center/periphery” and the "conceptual grasp of the mass entertainment"? Because one of the roundtable contributors was Acso co-founder Harry Gamboa Jr., who can throw down and contextualize with the best of them:
The term radical was an official governmental epithet under COINTELPRO that effectively neutralized dissent and creative acts during the ’60s and ’70s and into the ’80s. My late-twentieth-century experiences with Asco in East LA were in the eye of that storm. Performing in the streets was interspersed with threats of official violence and other punitive actions.
Decoy Gang War Victim is an Asco image that I photographed in 1974. It shows a young man stretched out, seemingly lifeless, across an East LA street lighted by road flares emitting reddish sparks and by the bluish hue of mercury vapor lamps. The resulting 35-mm color slide was delivered to various local TV stations and accompanied by the notice that the “last gang member” had been killed, thereby ending violence in the barrio. The image was televised by at least two TV stations. The project was a response to the incendiary tabloid-style journalism of the two major Los Angeles newspapers, which often listed the names, addresses, workplaces, and gang affiliations of victims or their family members in an effort to maintain high levels of reciprocal gang violence, thus selling more newspapers. The desired effect of Decoy Gang War Victim was to generate a pause in the violence in order to rob the newspapers of their daily list of victims.
Art and politics and Chicano. Cheeky, que no?
The New Republic asks “do Latinos like Marco Rubio?” Apparently the first-term Florida senator is on many insiders short list of politically attractive GOP vice presidential nominees. The thinking goes that the all-important Latino vote, once solidly pro Obama but now supposedly wavering because of the President’s perceived lack of movement on immigration reform, will vote Republican in 2012 because there’s now a Brown guy on the ticket who can actually pronounce the word Popocatepetl.
Not that Rubio would actually know about Popocatepetl and the Aztec warrior’s lasting presence on the free calendars of countless Mexican taco joints all across Aztlan. Homeboy Rubio, after all, is Cuban, more familiar with plaintains and Gloria Estefan than, say, carne guisade and Los Tigres del Norte. And there’s the rub. The real question the article asks is will Latinos, 95 per cent of us Other Than Cuban, vote for Rubio.
The consensus seems to be no. Not so much because we hate Cubans, but because this particular Cuban seems to hate Mexicans. Even Ruben Navarrette Jr. -- who’s never met a GOP talking point he couldn’t sneak into one of his columns -- questions Rubio’s barrio street cred with fellow raza. As Junior points out, Rubio supported the Arizona anti-immigrant law, co-sponsored a bill to promote E-Verifying of workers, and came out against the Dream Act. Marco Rubio, the proud son of immigrants.
No word yet on whether Rubio also wants draw mustaches on Virgen de Guadalupe murals, but if these are his positions on Latino issues adding homeboy to a Republican presidential ticket is not going to make the difference come 2012.
Besides, according to some, Rubio may not even be a “natural born citizen.” Seems Rubio’s parents were not naturalized citizens when little Marco was born in Miami. According to the constitutional interpretation of certain crazies birthers, this means Rubio is not a “natural born citizen,” and thus ineligible for the office. First Obama and now Rubio. Or as Joey Ramone says, second verse, same as the first. Only now in Spanish.
And while most right-wing pundits are not comfortable with the potentially adverse political implications of knee-capping one of their few rising Brown political stars, they are trying to put as good a spin as possible on the chorus of dissenting voices. From the Daily Caller: “The good news here, of course, is that the rise of Rubio birthers proves that birthers are not merely partisan hypocrites who solely attack Democrats like Obama. They are, instead, either consistent racists — or consistently misguided adherents to the Constitution.”
I vote that they are both.
And while I admit those questioning Rubio’s eligibility are, for now, truly a crackpot fringe, the real test is to see what happens if the questioning continues and grows: Will the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh Republican echo chamber pick up and carry the Rubio citizenship argument with the same 24/7 fervor they did when questioning Obama’s supposed Kenyan birth?
I’m guessing they won’t. They need to win Florida. About the only place left in the browning of America that a Cuban politician who wants to send kids back to Mexico can still be guaranteed to win the Latino vote.
Hogwild Records. San Antonio, Texas. 2009
From the very fine photo series by Simone Lueck of TV sets in Cuban living rooms.
The incomparable Eddie Hernandez.
West side, San Antonio, Texas.
The Department of Homeland Security had an idea to build a "virtual fence" along the US Mexico border to keep out the illegals. The space-age barrier was to be built among the most hostile desert environments known to man. The high-tech towers were to include state-of-the art long-range cameras, radar devices, broadband wireless access points, thermal imaging capabilities, and highly sensitive vibration sensors, all working in a complex tandem of techonology and design.
It didn't work. Costs skyrocketed. Boeing, the company given the contract to oversee the design of the fence, missed deadlines. Homeland Security has given Boeing the heave-ho. According to the LA Times, "after an investment of more than $1 billion, [it] may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border." Anyone who's seen a Rooba Vacuuming Robot in comical inaction could have told you the virtural fence in the middle of nowhere was a bad idea.
The hapless virtual fence project would be funny except for two reasons: 1) the total waste of money, and 2) how this failure will still not debunk the fanciful notion of securing our borders.
Critics of comprehensive immigration reform always say change can't happen until the border is secure. Guess what? It never will be. At best border security is a nebulous goal where "success" is open to interpretation. At worst it continues as it was always designed: a never-to-be-achieved benchmark forever preventing a rational discussion of how to fix immigration.
Today's Wet Burrito Award winner: the Department of Homeland Security.
Driving through Alabama yesterday while on tour, Texas indie rock band Girl in a Coma got pulled over by la Migra. Their crime: Driving While Brown. Seems the Border Patrol agents stopped the band because they saw two Latinas in the front seats, the van had Texas plates, and was "full of luggage." It was one in the morning. The agent asked them for their papers.
Apparently la migra can stop anyone within 100 miles of the U.S. Border, including both coasts, and the Gulf of Mexico.This means anyone in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Houston, among many others, can be stopped. In fact, 2/3 of American citizens live in this "constitution free zone." 197.4 million people. Some states such as Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and others, lie completly within this zone. No warrant or probable cause is needed for what the government calls a "routine search."
Girl in a Coma, driving twelve miles outside of Mobile, Alabama, were deep in the "constitution free zone." Apparently if you're Brown and have guitar cases piled in the back of your citizenship is questionable.
No other details except according to bass player Jenn Alva they were listening to Elvis Presley on their iPod.
I had no plans to blog about TV so soon but last Friday's episode of Outlaw gave me no choice. You remember Outlaw? From NBC? The lone prime-time show in all of TV land with a Latino lead? Jimmy Smits as Cyrus Garza, unrepentant womanizer, gambler, self-retired from the US Supreme Court? I wrote about it here. And do so again today.
The episode in question opens with Judge Garza canoodling in a Vegas hot tub with a naked blonde. Justice Samuel Alito, we are reminded in this risque scene, Garza is not. The phone rings mid-canoodle and Garza's got a new case. In Arizona. Yeah, that Arizona, home of phantom beheadings, Sheriff Joe, and the draconian anti-immigrant bill. In this ripped-from-the-headlines, made-for-TV case, a white cop has shot a Mexican. Bad enough, race-relations wise, but it gets worse: shot Latino turns out to be a legal citizen. A taxpayer. Speaks English and everything. Uh oh. White cop is in big trouble.
As the facts of the case unfold, turns out the Latino guy was loitering on a street corner, minding his own business. But since said street corner was "two miles from the border," and it was night, that was enough probable cause for the cop to stop and ask for some papers. Homeboy, of course, gets pissed (wouldn't you?), a scuffle ensues, and next thing you know the white cop shoots the dude. Three times. Once in the back. Judge Garza to the rescue as he flies to Arizona to take up the timely case. (Unclear, at this point, what happened to the naked blonde. Just sayin'...)
If ever there was a clear example dramatizing how racial profiling can spin out of control, this scenario was it. And on prime-time TV no less. Grist for civic minded, water cooler discussions on the complexity of illegal immigration. Practically a public service broadcast. Will the cop go to jail? Were the civil rights of the guy violated? And, hey, doesn't the Latino actor look a lot like Richard Montoya from Culture Clash? In any case, heady issues to tackle in a TV show. Props to the NBC network whose usual contribution to the public interest are healthy diet tips on The Biggest Loser.
As a Professional-Latino-Who-Cares-About-Such-Things, I fast forwarded my TiVo to see what would happen next.
And wouldn't you know it, things get even more interesting. A major plot twist. The ol' second act reversal. And in the first three minutes. Garza, the Latino lawyer, the Mexican American, the Brown guy, doesn't automatically side with his fellow wronged Raza. ¡N'ombre! That would be too obvious. Instead, Garza chooses -- that's right, CHOOSES -- to represent the White cop. Become his advocate. Vigorously defend his gringo client, the cop who shot the Chicano. What tha--? Wow! Badass twist. Did not see that coming! I sat up in my chair, eager to see how this would play out.
A Brown guy representing a white cop who shot a Latino US citizen who the cop assumed was an illegal because the guy was Brown all in the context of a controversial law legally sanctioning racial profiling? What kinds of insights regarding racial profiling, the law, and it's fair application to illegal immigrants, I wondered, would these topsy turvy dramatic elements lend themselves to exploring? Well, it turns out, not many. What started out so promising became, as the story plodded on, muddled, confusing, and, finally, problematic.
The basic defense of the crew-cutted cop was not that he hates Mexicans, but that he was only following the law. He had no choice to stop him. And so when the Latino guy resisted the cop, again, had no choice but to shoot the unarmed man. And did I mention three times. Once in the back. Hm. Sounds to me like a bit of an over reaction: U.S. citizen doesn’t want to show his passport when standing on a street corner, cop shoots him. But no one seemed to address that issue. Other arguments took center stage...
Garza, it turns out, is a big proponent of States’ rights, he actually says it right before the second commercial. States rights, as we all know, is -- and has been -- code for all kinds of racial shenanigans, primarily by Southern states trying to deny various civil rights of its Black citizens. What this has to do with the Arizona case is not made clear by the TV writers. That’s the muddled part. The problematic part happens at the closing arguments.
(PLEASE NOTE: I have, admittedly, skipped over all kinds of plot business. Mainly because the story beats seemed only to be red herrings existing solely to waste time between the ads for new cars. I’m talking scenes like the Latino guy is a hot head, so maybe he deserves to get his ass kicked by the cop. Another where the cop is recorded saying racist comments, and then Garza proves they were taken out of context. One where Garza and his Black Guy Best Friend drink a couple of beers while parked at the foot of the 20 ft steel border wall with Mexico (yeah, I know, it makes no sense) and a cop harasses them. Another where the comely legal assistant who has a crush on Garza and so may or may not appear at the Judge's door that night in slinky lingerie bought at the hotel gift shop. And of course a scene where angry Chicano protesters almost flip over vendido Garza’s car. Blah blah blah. Like I said, plotty business stuff to get us the final act.)
In any case, CUT TO end of the show and the Cop on the stand: Would you have stopped the Latino guy if he was white, the prosecutor finally asks him? Dramatic pause as everyone waits for his answer. No, the cop finally admits, I wouldn’t have. The courtroom gasps. The cop is toast. That is until Cyrus Garza steps up for his closing argument, and stands before the jury:
It is irrelevant to this case, Garza tells them, whether the Arizona law is just or not. What matters, he argues, is that we don’t send good men to prison to make a point about a law. That would be un-American. Nobody should be sacrificed so politicians can send a message. For that reason, he concludes, the cop must be acquitted.
And of course they do. Not guilty. And to add insult to injury, the jury foreman reading the verdict is a Latino. And they made a special point to have the actor correctly roll his rrrr’s when pronouncing the shot dude’s Mexican name. I guess that’s their version of dramatic irony.
But what bothered me about the show wasn’t so much the sloppy ending, or the way an interesting premise and a twist on character expectations was not fullfilled. What set me off was Garza’s sanctimonious argument about how un-American is was to “sacrifice a man for political expediency, to send a message.” What tha--? Talk about a one-sided argument.
What do you think, I would ask Garza, what do you think the whole point of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signing the anti-immigrant law is if not to send a message at the expense of not one guy, but millions of Latinos? People who look just like you. Every half-baked proposal to build a wall or ban Spanish or get rid of Ethnic studies is nothing more than Republican politicians sending a message to their right wing base that they are indeed tough on immigrants. To vote for them in the primary. All on the backs of Latinos, illegal and otherwise. Not that is un-American.
Anyway, didn’t mean to rant so long. This is, at the end of the day, a network TV show and not a Spike Lee movie. Still, I was really hoping for some kind of profound and transcendent resolution to the ideas, legal and moral, that the show purported to explore.
Didn’t get it.
And the comely legal assistant who was contemplating showing up in the Judges room in slinky lingerie? They failed to deliver on that too. Oh well, there’s always next week. Or maybe not. Ratings for the show have been pretty bad. And as much as this week's episode annoyed me it at least got me thinking. And writing. Not only that, but with the loss of Outlaw the entire American TV landscape will once again be absent a TV show featuring a Latino in the lead.
"Do you want some horchata?"And thus began Season 2 of Parenthood, the NBC drama about an upper class white family in the Bay Area. Typing this, I realize saying a TV family is White is way redundant. But I emphasize the point because of the incongruous nature of the tasty Mexican rice drink smack dab in a gringo kitchen. I mean, a buck-fifty street corner drink whirring about in a fancy blender amongst the Pottery Barn decor? Crazy. What, were the Bravermans out of wheat germ for their morning smoothies?
Still, the Horchata line was, from my perspective, a bizarre and gratifying moment. Wonderfully strange because of the aforementioned discordant presence of Mexican drink in a Norman Rockwell household: cheeky; gratifying in its suggestion that Latino culture is seeping, slowly -- horchata glass by horchata glass -- into the so-called mainstream of America. Well, at least into its one-hour drama scripts. Which, again, from my perspective, is not a bad thing at all. I love television. All of which is an admittedly long-winded intro to theme of this week's episode of Connect the Dots: the fall TV season has begun. And lots of Phantom sightings of Brown people among the pilots, second season repeats, and sitcoms.
First up, famed African American actor Blair Underwood plays a Cuban on NBC's The Event. Billed as 24 meets Lost, the intentionally puzzling show is under scrutiny because of it's unintentionally puzzling casting decision: Underwood plays a Latino. An Afro-Cuban to be precise. A color-blind casting choice which has left more than a few Latinos-Who-Care-About-Such-Things angry, because, well...probably because Blair Underwood isn't Latino. Nor is he Cuban (Afro or otherwise). He's not Dominican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Venezuelan, Brazilian, or even from South Central. Jose Vasconcelos' utopian theory of La Raza Cosmica notwithstanding, I'm going to have to side with the angry Raza on this one. Not so much because it's the same old story of Latinos not getting a chance to actually play a Latino (which it is), but Blair Underwood as a Cuban? Puh-lease. Check out the Latino debate here. And the Latina mag story, glossing over the controversy, here.
Two new judges picked for American Idol. Simon Cowell out, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and Selena impersonator Jennifer Lopez in. I am a big Aerosmith fan from waaaay back in the day. And I'm not talking the corny "Crazy" 90s era Aerosmith, with the Alicia Silverstone jailbait videos, I'm talking "Dream On," "Toys in the Attic" badass early 70s Aerosmith. Not sure, though, how I feel about J-Lo's legitimacy as a judge for a singing competition. At least one in which contestants actually have to sing and not have their voices layered, over produced and digitally processed to hit certain notes. Go here for an unadulterated version of what Lopez sounds like before the sonic magic of Pro Tools. Be forewarned. It ain't pretty.
Speaking of judges, the one new TV show with an actual Latino in the lead is Jimmy Smit's Outlaw, also on NBC. Smits plays Cyrus Garza, a conservative Supreme Court Justice who in made up TV world was appointed by George Bush. (I'm guessing Will Smith was not available to play the Mexican American character.) The right-wing Garza's got daddy issues since his lefty Chicano father was buddies with Cesar Chavez and RFK back in the radical 60s. A quick scene of Garza watching Papi and his 60's New Left amigos on YouTube and ten minutes into Episode 1 the now remorseful Garza quits the Supreme court over a death penalty case. Great. The first Latino Supreme Court Justice on prime time TV and the vato quits before the first commercial break. How's that for a role model right at the start of High-spanic Heritage month? Oh, and did I mention homeboy's depicted as a playboy and degenerate gambler? Big deal. So the producers got some stuff right. Thankfully, in the real world, we've got salsa loving Sonia Sotomayor for our heroes. She's a badass. And probably would have made a better American Idol judge than Jenny from the Block.
"Do you want some horchata?"
Did I mention the words were spoken by actress Sarah Ramos (picture above), who plays the eldest Braverman kid? Apparently Miss Ramos is Latina. I didn't know that. She's featured this week among the young Raza celebrities in Latina mag's 25 Brightest Latino Stars Under 25. I would have probably guessed wrong on the Latinoness of many on the list. Sara Paxton? Jake T. Austin? Ni modo. These actors, and others of the Bright 25, claim their Raza bonafides by having one parent Mexican, or Argentinian, or Spanish, or a mixture of all of the above. And who am I to disagree. Talk about the future is Meztizo. La Raza Cosmica indeed. Still, one name on the list stirred the rabid cultural nationalist in me: Levi Johnson? Latino? C'mon, we have to set some kind of
standard here.
Finally, the Senate Republicans in one fell filibustering swoop prevent the Defense Authorization Act from making it to the Senate floor. That's right, they didn't vote against it. They voted to not even let it be debated and voted upon. Amongst the casualties in the bill's failure are Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Dream Act, amendments added to the bill. Both measures affect millions, and both are significant to America's future. DADT deals with a wide section swath of U.S. citizens spanning all economic groups, a lot of them rich, organized, and politically connected. The Dream Act deals with a bunch of non-voting, illegal Brown kids wanting to go to college. How does this news fit our TV theme post? No surprise which group affected by the rejection of the Senate bill got the media's attention the next day. On Rachel Maddow's cable show, for instance, nearly 4/5ths of her progressive show dealt with DADT. The Dream Act? Two brief mentions totally about 15 seconds in the 60 minute show. A quick glimpse of the headlines in papers across the country reflected the same invisibility. Tavis Smiley, at least, addressed this very issue. Props to him. But the discussion took place on his radio show. And so who did Tavis feature that same night on his popular nationally broadcast PBS TV show? Ken Burns.
Do you want some horchata? Yes, please, with a shot of Tequila in it...
Make it a double.
Really liking Las Robertas, a band straight outta Costa Rica. Yeah, that Costa Rica. The Central American country. Unsure exactly how the band crossed over to the States, avoiding not only the sometimes limiting and reductive rock and español label, but landing straight onto the pages of uber hip indie music blogs (Gorilla vs. Bear entry here), and ultra hip alt labels (go here).
But I'll save that inquiry for another day. All I know is I so wanna make a music video for them.
For now, enjoy the warm and fuzzy stylings of Las Robertas at their MySpace page. Their new LP comes out October 12 on Art Fag Recordings -- CD, vinyl, and, not surprisingly, in trendy "limited edition cassette." Hipster culture, it seems, knows no borders. Ni modo. Las Robertas are pretty badass. Facebook page here. And for an inside baseball, navel-gazing analysis of what the band means in contemporary hipsterdom go here.