Inevitability and Identity

I’ve been struggling a lot the latter part of this week to put my thoughts regarding Wednesday’s attempted coup into words. And so much keeps happening, so much keeps being revealed this week that its been dizzying to try and keep up. In this process, I hit on two words that have kept repeating throughout the discourse I’ve witnessed over these past four days and ringing through my own head. 

Inevitability and Identity. 

Each relate to unique sentiments expressed in virtually all discussion I observed regarding the events. First, that the events themselves were not a surprise. And second, that they do not represent us. 

The first statement being an acknowledgment of the series of events that led to the insurrection on Wednesday. The second an attempt to assure ourselves that America is better than this. 

One is a truth we must acknowledge, the other a lie, or at least a half-truth, that must be dismantled. 

I’d like to discuss them both in turn. 

Inevitability. 

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln, January 1838

First, inevitability. That the events of Wednesday, January 6, 2021 should not come as a surprise to anyone. They shock the conscience for sure. They are galling. They are horrifying in their implications. And we have valid reasons to be worried about the next several days because of them. But they do not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the past five years. 

The events of the insurrection were the natural result of the narrative that Donald J. Trump spent the last five years finely crafting. The victimhood and persecution of the conservative. His narcissistic personality disorder refusing to acknowledge any situation in which he could fairly lose. Before the 2016 election, he had already started the narrative that any election he lost would have to be rigged against him. Before he was even a proven candidate. 

It’s something we’ve also seen before. Page after page, Trump followed the playbook of the authoritarian and dictatorial regimes that he so often praised. You know, the ones that have led to actual, successful coups.  So, once again, it’s not surprising to see a electoral loss followed by persuasion to strong arm tactics to maintain power, just like those political influences. 

Further, Trump held sway over a fanatical base that was and remains willing to die for him.  He amped up a base that hung on his every word, with the fervor reserved for the most charismatic cult leaders (more on that tomorrow).  And like most cults, this one seems destined to end in a horrible spectacle. 

We don’t even have to look that far back to see the greatest seeds of the sacking of the capital. Just go back to November 2020, following Trump’s projected loss. His calls to fight this to the very end. A refusal to concede or acknowledge defeat. Repeated lies regarding election fraud. Giuliani’s calls for “violence in the streets” and “trial by combat.”  Trump’s day of speech directing his soldiers to march on the capital. To keep the fight going. 

Yes, the seditious attack on the capital was many things, but it was not a surprise. 

Identity. 

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

Which brings us to the second sentiment. That those who perpetrated this heinous act do not represent us. That they are not America. That America is better than this. 

Sorry, but no. That’s not true. Those who perpetrated this act absolutely are America. They are us. 

At least a part of us. America is absolutely the great hope represented by the historic victories in the Georgia senate runoffs. The first African-American senator elected from Georgia.  Astounding that it has taken this long when you realize that Georgia has the third largest African-American population by count and by percentage. 

But we are also the racist, anti-semitic, xenophobic, white nationalistic, anti-intellectual regression represented by storming of the capital. We are in this situation because we continue to try and ignore this part of our National identity instead of dealing with it once and for all.  We’re the infected patient treating the symptom but not the virus. The addict replacing one addiction for another instead of finally kicking the habit. 

What we saw Wednesday is the result of never really dealing with the National sin of slavery. The result of prematurely ending Reconstruction to appease the Southern States directly enabling Jim Crow laws to be enacted and turning a blind eye to them. The result of the one successful coup in American history, in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, the replacement of a biracial governing body with a white supremacist one.  The result of following the landmark Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s with Redlining  

The result of years of terrible history education in the South based on material that the United Daughters of the Confederacy approved as not harmful to the South, propping up years of belief in the Lost Cause.  This leads to the uncovering of of actual history being labeled as revisionism or fabrication.  All because too many people can’t let go of the myth.  Can’t let go do the lie created by a bunch of racists Southern white women.

The result of a country where largely minority peaceful protestors are tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and arrested in droves so the President can take a photo op, while largely white rioters storming the Capital seem to be let in the front door and have a handful arrested in response. 

It’s a result of the perverse mix of religion and politics in America. Particularly within the Evangelical community. A unholy marriage that preys on the Evangelical persecution  complex to make gains for political power. That voice that tells us there is a War on Christmas or that still feels forced prayer in schools is somehow the key to saving America. The voice that tells Christians any minor inconvenience they experience in this country is persecution. The Religious Right accomplishing all the wrong things. 

It’s the result of our cowboy mythology that tells us we don’t need anyone else. That we’re rugged individualists whose ultimate goal is to be free to do what we want. A perversion of the American dream that says that freedom is not being told what to do. And that any voice contrary is an assault on our fundamental freedoms. 

It’s the inherent rebel nature of our country. Constantly in search of a rebellion worth fighting for. We started as scrappy rebels and still see ourselves as such. When we can’t find a just cause, we’ll settle for any cause. 

It’s the result of identity politics that has convinced us that those across the political aisle are the vilest evil scum of the earth.  That thread that believes no Christian can be a Democrat.  That thought that Obama and Hillary were actual demons that smelled like sulfur.  That had bought into the idea that all our political leaders (or more specifically, the ones I don’t agree with) are in an elite pedophilia ring that controls the world.  Maybe it’s time to remember that they are just people, fellow citizens who happen to have different views about how best to improve the country. 

This failed coup represents and will continue to represent America as much as those historic successes do. We are that combination of our millstones and our milestones. Our progressive leaps forward and our many regressive steps backward.

We are what we have always been, a country with the greatest ideals in the world, who most often utterly fails to live up to them. 

Our choice now, is how we proceed. Do we finally address the scabs that Wednesday reveals?  The deep scars and healing that needs to occur?  Do we decide to live up to what America can be? Or do we continue to live in that paradoxical state in between?

That is what will be revealed over these next few days. It’s why there are certain actions that must be taken over the next few days to cement our path forward. 

Republicans and conservatives must own up to the fact that this wasn’t Antifa, but it was a part of their base. The Antifa story was another outright lie and proven fabrication meant to once again mislead millions of Americans.  It was meant to once again provide that shield that this wasn’t us, it can’t be us, it’s someone else. No, it’s time to own up to it and to disavow it. Most have, but there remain several that are still trying to appease and appeal to the worst demons of our nature so they can jockey for position in 2022 and 2024. Enough. 

Trump must be impeached and removed from office. It’s time to show that actions and words have consequences, beyond just being kicked off social media. This step is important to bar him from further office, to prevent his attempt to pardon himself and other co-conspirators, and to deny him the future privileges of his office. When you invite insurrection against the country your are in charge of, you shouldn’t get to continue to benefit from it. 

It’s time to put aside identity politics.  To remember that we are all Americans. That there isn’t one right way to do this. That compromise isn’t always a dirty word, it’s most often how things actually get done. That we need each other to sharpen one another. 

You know, to remember how it’s supposed to work. Who we are supposed to be.  

To remember our ideals and actually strive to live up to them.  Then, maybe then, we can start to heal. It would be inevitable. 

What Is An American?

"What then is this American, this new man?"

J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
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Since before the foundation of our country, this has been the existential question of our time - what is an American?  What does it mean?  How is it defined?  Who qualifies as being an American?

With recent events, I fear we need to ask ourselves this question again.  Now more than ever.

It is a harder question to answer in the affirmative than you would imagine.

We can say for certain what it is not.  American is not a singular race, nor is it a particular people group.

There is not a singular American culture.  There is no one American cuisine, no one dialect, no one American experience.

We are not of a single religion, despite some protestations otherwise.  There is no Church of America.

We are not all one color, one size, one shape.

We share no singular origin.

Further, American is not bound by a specific geographic location.  Not bound to a singular language.  Not bound to a single history.

Instead, we are what we have always been - a diverse group of outcasts held together by a collection of ideals.

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"The chief ideal of the American people is idealism."

President Calvin Coolidge

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We hold tightly to some of the best ideals ever put to paper.  That all men, that all people are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights - by definition, God given rights that cannot be taken away.  Rights to life.  To liberty - to freedom in many senses of the word.  To the pursuit of happiness.

We believe the government is of the people.  That it derives its power and its life from the very people that it governs.  That it is crafted and sustained by the people.  They fill its halls, they make the laws, and they in turn enforce them.  And that ultimately it exists for the people.  Government is for the benefit of the people, not the other way around.

That we have given the government a purpose.  A reason for existing.  To form a more perfect Union.  To establish justice.  To insure domestic tranquility or peace.  To promote a general level of welfare.  To secure the blessings of liberty, not just for ourselves, but for those that will come behind us.

We have not always done a great job in living up to these ideals.  We have struggled with equality for all people.  We have struggled with having the government benefit the governed, not the governors.  We struggle with securing the blessings of liberty for our posterity, and not just being focused on the now, the immediate, the self-centered us.

But, by and large, we as Americans define ourselves by these ideals.  These lofty goals that bind us when we pledge our allegiance to this nation.

The problem with having ideals at the center of a national identity is that they are intangible; they only have the meaning we assign to them.  

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"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't - till I tell you.  I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean a 'nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "Whether you can make words mean different things - that's all."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Through the Looking Glass

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As discussed above, we have struggled in the past because we have tried to change their definitions.  We want to be able to define who qualifies as "men" when we refer to "all men" being created equal, so that we can control exactly who we must acknowledge.  We have excluded based on gender, believing it only referred to men specifically.   We have exclude based on color, believing evil notions of racial superiority.  Even codifying a system in which a darker color would make someone 3/5 of a person.  A contradiction right in our founding documents.

We are at this point again.  We are seeking to control the definitions.

Our president has long been seeking to end birthright citizenship.  The principle of jus soli, or the idea that you are a citizen of the place where you were born.  That you are forever tied to the soil your feet land on.  This week, he ended birthright citizenship for children born overseas to United States service members.  Think through that, we've ended birthright citizenship for the children who for whatever reason are born overseas to the very people defending our country.

We're narrowing our definitions for political gain.  We want to stop "anchor babies."  We want to discourage or outright end most forms of immigration.  We want to pick and choose who can be an American.

As if that were not dangerous enough, it goes even further than that.  When our identity is tied up in our ideals, we can accuse those who do not hold up to our version of those ideals as no longer belonging.  Those on the right can accuse those on the left of being "un-American," and vice versa.  To accuse those who disagree as being disloyal.  To suggest that particular groups should leave.

It's no longer enough to cling to these ideals.  We're requiring an extra claim; a stronger tie.

We're looking to require uniformity where liberty once reigned.

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"It has always been cited as an irrepressible symptom of America's vitality that her people, in fair times and foul, believe in themselves and their institutions."

Alistair Cooke

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We have to recognize that differences and disagreements are part of our national identity.  That we are meant to wrestle with how to proceed as a nation.  It's meant to be hard.  Because when it's hard, when we push through it and reach compromise and consensus, it's worth it.

We have to recognize that there will be times we have to be pushed into progress when we don't want to face it.  We as a nation had to have racial equality thrust upon us for it to take root.  And we are still having to deal with those consequences.

We have to recognize that it is our differences that define us.  That there is a constant pull in this country between experiences.  Between black and white.  Male and female.  North and South.  East and West.  Coastal and fly-over.  City and country.  1st Generation and 3rd/4th/5th generation.  Naturalized and Immigrant.  Religious and not.   Further, we must recognize that it is these differences that make us greater than the sum of our parts.

We have to recognize how we got here.  Who we are.

We are a nation of outcasts and runaways.  There are too few of us who can claim an uninterrupted direct link to the soil of this nation when we trace our full lineage.  For the vast majority of us, we are the products of immigration to this land, and often, we represented the groups our old countries wanted to get rid of.  Those groups they didn't want.

We were the religious heretics, the undesirables, the lower social classes.

The tired.  The poor.  The huddled masses.  The wretched refuse.  The home-less.  Tempest-tossed.

We are a nation of dreamers.  We came together, we sought this land, because we believed in its ideals.  Because we sought freedom.  Liberty.  Equality.  The American Dream.  The eternal promise.  The huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

We are a nation of borrowers.  We have borrowed pieces from every culture, every race, every nation, every tongue, and every tribe to cobble together this country we call America.  We see this in our language, in our food, in our art, and in our principles of government.

This is how our melting pot is formed, in the best sense of the analogy.  From each group that comes to our shores, they contribute the best of themselves.  They join and impact our culture, and we in turn, impact theirs.

We are the ultimate shared experience.  The ultimate neighborhood.  The ultimate village to raise a person.  To better each other.  To love each other.  To share with each other.

Maybe then, we can truly live up to the ideals that we claim.  Maybe then we will be the western pilgrims.

Maybe then we can call ourselves Americans.

"He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.  He has become an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater.  Here individuals of all races are melted into a new race of man, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.  Americans are the western pilgrims."

J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur

What Makes a Movie a Movie?

That is the question that the Academy must answer in the coming days and weeks ahead.

Last week, news broke that Steven Spielberg, Academy Governor of the directors branch, would be supporting changes in the Academy Awards rules at the upcoming post-Oscars meeting, which would increase restrictions on streaming films to be considered for the awards.  According to an Amblin spokesperson, "Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation.  He'll be happy if others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the meeting].  He will see what happens."

This isn't the first time Spielberg has spoke out against streaming movies being considered alongside theatrical releases.  In March 2018, he famously stated "Netflix movies deserve an Emmy, not an Oscar," viewing such films as having more kinship with television than theatrical movies.  Earlier this year, in February 2018, Spielberg doubled down on his remarks at the Cinema Audio Society's CAS Awards.  "I hope all of us really continue to believe that the greatest contributions we can make as filmmakers is to give audiences the motion picture theatrical experience.  I'm a firm believer that movie theaters need to be around forever.  I love television. I love the opportunity. Some of the greatest writing being done today is for television, some of the best directing for television, some of the best performances [are] on television today. The sound is better in homes more than it ever has been in history but there’s nothing like going to a big dark theater with people you’ve never met before and having the experience wash over you. That’s something we all truly believe in."

He's not the only A-list celebrity to voice concern over the current state of cinema.

Francis Ford Coppola:
"That’s why I ended my career: I decided I didn’t want to make what you could call "factory movies" anymore. I would rather just experiment with the form, and see what I could do, and [make things] that came out of my own. And little by little, the commercial film industry went into the superhero business, and everything was on such a scale. The budgets were so big, because they wanted to make the big series of films where they could make two or three parts. I felt I was no longer interested enough to put in the extraordinary effort a film takes [nowadays]."

Jodie Foster:
"Going to the movies has become like a theme park.  Studios making bad content in order to appeal to the masses and shareholders is like fracking - you get the best return right now, but you wreck the earth.  It's ruining the viewing habits of the American population and then ultimately the rest of the world.  I don't want to make $200 million movies about superheroes."

William Friedkin:
"Films used to be rooted in gravity.  They used to be about things."

Those may seem like unrelated complaints, but I would posit that they are all related to a singular root issue.  What the audience is willing to pay to watch a particular type of movie in a particular format.

I think this is seen in Netflix's response to Spielberg's position.

We love cinema. Here are some things we also love:

-Access for people who can't always afford, or live in towns without, theaters
-Letting everyone, everywhere enjoy releases at the same time
-Giving filmmakers more ways to share art

These things are not mutually exclusive.

— Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) March 4, 2019

The movies that are truly moving people into the theaters are the ones that are events.  Where the act of going to the theater is an event in and of itself.  This would explain why the most successful theatrical releases now are the tentpole features and why the most successful movie chains are the dinner-and-a-movie options.  It's why more and more symphonies are offering live score film presentations.  Dallas has four this upcoming season.  The presentation of the film has to be something that draws people out of their homes to need to see a film in the theater.  On the biggest screen possible, with the most effects possible, etc., etc. etc.

For anything else, the theatrical experience is becoming increasingly niche. Because the truth is, for those character driven, emotionally heavy dramas, I can enjoy that just as much if not more at home.  Without having to pay a babysitter for nearly 4 hours of their time, without paying inflated theater prices, without having to drive 20 minutes to an hour to get there.

And the great thing is that cable and streaming is where these types of character driver pieces have moved.  It's why Roma was released by Netflix and why that is a good home for it.  Why Scorcese's The Irishman will be next.  Why they've worked with The Cohen Brothers, Bong Joon-Ho, Noah Baumbach, and Steven Soderbergh.  Why Amazon Studios is now a huge player as well.

It's funny that directors like Coppola and Spielberg used to be the mavericks.  They were the ones writing the rules as they went.  And they are the ones now insisting that others stick to them.  It's further ironic that the films Jodie Foster laments have not been lost, just moved.

I'm a huge proponent of the theatrical movie experience.  In the "if money were no object" column, one dream is to own and run a second-run classic movie house.  To get to program a single-screen theater with all my favorites.

But I can also recognize that a movie doesn't stop being a movie just because it's not shown on the big screen, even in its first instance.  Jamie and I area lucky to make it to the theater now unless it is for a big event movie or to an animated movie that we can take the whole family to.  If we really want to watch the kind of character driven, impactful movies that we love, that's generally going to be at home, on our television, potentially from a streaming platform.  If not, it's from Redbox or a digital rental.

We've already gone through several different existential crisis in cinema.  The introduction of sound, the introduction of color, the changes in aspect-ratio, changes in frame rate, the switch to digital projection.  We'll survive this one too.  So long as we don't get too caught up in the location of the projection.

After all, it's a movie.  It's moving pictures, flickering shadows on a screen, wherever they can be shown.  We've watched them in nickelodeons, on IMAX screens, on our televisions, and on our phones.  From shorts to epics and everything in between.

It's not where it's shown, it's what is shown.

And so long as it's good, I'm there.