photo by Dan Epstein
Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion isn’t just for symphonies and jazz. Downtown Sound’s New Music Mondays just finished its second successful summer, bringing something a little different to Millennium Park. The series, sponsored by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, brought a new and younger audience to concerts in the park with bands like The Books, Konono No.1 and The Thermals. CHIRP reporters Erin Wethern and Erica Schwanke bring us the sound of New Music Mondays.
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It’s long been said that perception becomes reality, and for much of our nation’s history, mass media has not been kind to minorities — in particular, the African-American community. From Birth of a Nation (where the Ku Klux Klan were portrayed as crusading heroes) to the bumbling, shiftless TV characters of Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit, early film and television did much to portray black America as an underclass deserving of pity and ridicule. But images were also used as weapons to advance the cause of civil rights, as evidenced by the power of photos of the horrifically-beaten Emmit Till to news coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech in D.C.
We’ll be talking about landmark TV shows and films that have inspired discussions on race — from All in the Family to The Cosby Show to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled — as well as look at how race has been used in the political arena.
My guest is Maurice Berger, senior research scholar at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and senior fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of The New School. He’s also the author and curator of the new book and exhibit titled For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. You can access the online portion of the exhibit here.
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Most of you know that I’m fascinated by culture, media, and politics… but I’m also intrigued by the subject of race. As a Colombian/Irish kid growing up in a majority African-American school system, I never thought much about race during my formative years. (With a couple of notable exceptions… such as after winning a Black History Month essay competition one year, and getting selected for a “Minorities in Engineering” program during another — an experience which should’ve been a Red Flag that perhaps a career in science was not to be my destiny.) I had friends of all different nationalities, and thought it rather odd when kids from outside my town would look at me funny when I told them where I lived.
Then I got to college, and there I saw segregation — self-segregation — for the first time. Black students sat together in the lunchroom. As did Asian students. And white students. People of various backgrounds didn’t seem to mingle much at all, and the interaction that did take place appeared rather stilted. (It was also something of a culture shock for yours truly, since, to be honest, I’d never been around large numbers of white folks before.)
Most of my classmates had hailed from populations that were quite homogenous, and while it seems obvious now, it hadn’t really dawned on me that folks of different ethnicities would often have vastly different cultural tastes. Ever take a look at historical Nielsen TV ratings by race? Seinfeld was nowhere on black America’s radar in the ’90s, and neither was The Simpsons. Musicially, the differences among college students were even more pronounced, and outside of your occassional white rap fan (like my friend Chris, who mainly kept this sort of thing to himself, having not wanted to be identified with the other Caucasian hip-hop listeners he’d encountered in high school), you might as well have been looking at the Balkans.
Where am I going with this? Well, for large chunks of white America, how they’ve felt and what they’ve thought about African-Americans have stemmed primarily from the mass media they’ve ingested over the years. If you don’t encounter a particular group of people on an everyday basis, you’re going to take your cues from what you witness on television and in film. Chuck Klosterman has a great essay in his latest book, Killing the Dinosaur, where he asks readers to imagine various scenarios, such as “Eskimos in an Alaskan village.” I don’t know any Eskimos, and chances are you don’t either, but you’re still able to conjure up an image, right? How are you able to do this? Because of mass media. You’re drawing upon what you’ve seen on a screen.
So on top of the fact that African-Americans in this country had to deal with the legacy of slavery and segregation, but they also had to combat a Hollywood that, for decades, depicted the black community as a population of servants, loafers… or worse. Sometimes much worse. (see: Birth of a Nation) If your knowledge of the black community began and ended with the weekly Amos n’ Andy programs that were aired on your radio or television, you probably weren’t going to have an incredibly enlightened attitude regarding minorities or civil rights issues.
Images matter.
[By the way, it’s ironic — and painful to many — that while white America has grown at least a bit more sensitive about its depictions of minorities in recent years, various negative stereotypes are now being perpetuated by members of the African-American community… through everything from gangster rap to the comic stylings of one Tyler Perry. Here is an interview with Spike Lee where he equates Perry’s caricatures to the unflattering, shuffling personas of Mantan Moreland and Sleep n’ Eat. And here’s a dated but insightful look at the depictions of blacks on television throughout the years: Part 1 and Part 2 .]
For more information on Split Reel, visit www.kevinfullam.net.
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How has Generation X been defined in film over the past few decades, from the landmark John Hughes films of the ’80s through the “slacker” movies of the ’90s and beyond? What distinct qualities do Gen X films possess which differentiate them from those of previous (and later) generations? My guest is Christina Lee, lecturer at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, and the author of the recent book Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema.
For more information on Split Reel, visit www.kevinfullam.net.
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On June 19th, Scotland Yard Gospel Choir will be performing for their Comeback Show at Subterranean, 2011 W. North Ave. This is a rescheduling of their record release show, which was to happen in the fall of 2009. Right after leaving Chicago for tour in support of their latest album …And The Horse You Rode In On, on Bloodshot Records, the rear tire of their van blew out in Northeast Indiana, and the ensuing accident left the three main members with severe injuries. I sat down with Elia Einhorn, Mary Ralph and Mark Yoshizumi to reflect on the near-death experience, their recovery, how life-threatening injuries have changed their lives.
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Mi Ami Interview • 06/15
Before a recent show at The Hideout, CHIRP’s Patrick Masterson spoke with Mi Ami’s singer and guitarist Daniel Martin-McCormick about the San Francisco trio’s origins, their style and recording techniques during their latest album Steal Your Face, plus what the future holds.
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Xiu Xiu Interview • 06/06
Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo
CHIRP DJ Erik Roldan interviewed Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo of Xiu Xiu before their recent show at Lincoln Hall. Touring in support of their ninth album, Dear God, I Hate Myself the record falls in line with Xiu Xiu’s trademark blend of noise, synth beats and images of despair. They talked about Stewart’s obsession with drum programming, the appropriation of subcultures, Lady Gaga, and human trafficking.
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Welcome to the inaugural edition of Split Reel, CHIRP’s new show on popular culture and societal attitudes.
What were the “flash points” which signified the “War on Terror” was having a concrete impact on popular culture? If the Hollywood norm over the past decade has been to showcase films that highlight the failures of American policy rather than champion it… then how does this fit within the framework of rah-rah patriotism that erupted in the wake of 9/11? And what sort of impact will the new strain of anti-government movements have in the wake of the Obama White House administration?
Host Kevin Fullam is joined by Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill, co-editors of the recent book The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond. For more information on Split Reel, visit www.kevinfullam.net.
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Hello everybody — I’ll be supplementing the podcasts with additional information, movie capsules, etc. relating to each discussion. Check back here soon for additional notes. — Kevin (who apologizes for the clunky links)
24 (2001-present) — Super counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer foils a series of increasingly-outlandish terrorism plots, each of which are enacted and foiled within 24-hour periods. Mr. Bauer’s profile has risen to the point where the character was frequently referenced during the 2008 GOP presidential debates regarding issues of torture (and specifically waterboarding). Check out this story (http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=5898 — originally published in the Chicago Tribune) about how a group supporting the renewal of the Patriot Act placed their commercial within an episode of 24 back in 2006 — talk about product placement! There’s another article here (http://www.slate.com/id/2195864/?from=rss) in Slate about how Bauer is “the most influential legal thinker in the development of modern interrogation policy.”
V for Vendetta (2005) — Dystopian film about a masked rabble-rouser who commits acts of insurrection against a totalitarian government (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter, of course). Original story was written as a graphic novel by noted curmudgeon Alan Moore, who was bent out of shape that the cinematic adaptation was set in jolly ol’ England and not America.
Batman Begins (2005) — Gotham City’s favorite crimefighter is first trained by mysterious Ra’s al Ghul, and then combats him when Batman learns that Ghul’s plan for societal “cleansing” involves burning Gotham down to cinders.
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photo by alexcore on flickr.
Indie rockers Tegan and Sara tell us what it’s like to make young queer fans insanely happy, and which rock stars would have made them spazz out when they were teenagers. These progressive, brought-up-on socialized health care Canadians share their views on health care reform in the U.S., and address a common misconception about health care in their homeland. Tegan and Sara’s latest album on Sire records is called Sainthood. They spoke with CHIRP volunteer Sarah Lu before their recent show at the Aragon Ballroom.
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England’s Kieran Hebdan is known for his electronic recording project Four Tet and as a member of the post-rock group Fridge. There Is Love In You is his most recent record under the Four Tet moniker. Hebden talks about performing stateside, riot grrrl music as an early teenage influence, and how There Is Love In You was informed by his recent collaboration with jazz drummer Steve Reid. Hebden spoke with CHIRP volunteer Nick White shortly before a recent appearance at the Empty Bottle.
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