abdifarah

[abdifarah]

The Batman

Falling Bat by Kenny Rivero. 2017.

Nipsey Hustle, government name Ermias Asghedom, was gunned down in front of his store Marathon Clothing in his Crenshaw neighborhood of South Los Angeles by a member of his own gang, the Rollin’ 60’s Crips. Hustle and his business partners had only two months prior purchased the strip mall that included their store, with big plans to revitalize and transform the plaza into an edifying commercial and civic hub for the neighborhood. The murder of a rapper–especially one with gang ties–is unremarkable, but Hustle's death felt particularly tragic. He had made it from the bottom, and instead of reveling in fame and its glittery spoils, he chose to move different. Hustle talked about building communal wealth, business ownership, and financial literacy in his raps and interviews. Him and his partner, the actress Lauren London, could have easily posted up in Beverly Hills or Calabasas with the rest of the beautiful celebrities. Instead they chose to lay down roots and dedicate themselves to South LA and its people. Their good deeds were directly punished. 

The history of black leaders and celebrities being violently taken before seeing the fulfillment of their work is as old as America itself. When I think about the murders of revolutionaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton, or artists like Nipsey Hustle, or the Notorious BIG, I am reminded and mildly comforted by the fact that, while they died grossly premature, they all had children: heirs to their formidable legacy and–in the case of the successful artists–often a significant monetary inheritance. These children, possessing the singular combination of revolutionary pedigree, a DuBoisian double-consciousness, personal trauma, and a trust fund are the only plausible persons capable of embodying a hero as complex as the Batman.

On the occasion of the release of the tenth Batman film, The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, the sixth white man to portray the Dark Knight, I will explore the acutely black aspects of Batman. I will first trouble Batman’s perpetually and pathologically antagonistic relationship to the police and the government at large, in direct contrast to other superheroes that enjoy a problematically close proximity to law enforcement and entrenched systems of power. This leads to an examination of Batman’s doggedly local, yet supra-American purview. A dichotomy exists between Batman and the other titans of the superhero universe. Many of whom either gallivant the globe as unencumbered sovereign citizens or elect to become mascots and dogmatic mouthpieces of American nationalism. 

Additionally, I will examine the actual person and body of Batman. As an artist, I want to formally analyze the body and visage of Batman and the ways in which the equally campy, erotic, and ghoulish semiotics of the Batman persona and costume illustrate Bruce Wayne’s conflicted relationship to his own racial and gender identity. In particular I want to examine Bruce Wayne as the black son of rich and famous parents, torn between the poles of his monetary privilege and marginalized racial identity, and made explicit by Wayne’s bizarre employment of his inherited wealth; his “talented tenth” elitism; and the code-switching double-consciousness inherent in any superhero alter-ego.

This is not a case for the recreational recasting Batman as black for a future Batman property, but an attempt to show that blackness is intrinsic to the character and key to the Dark Knight’s enduring relevance. Public Enemy

Bruce Wayne witnesses the murder of his parents as a young child, which catalyzes him to rid Gotham City of the ills, both particular and systemic, that terrorize the city’s citizens. Through the various Batman properties there is ambivalence as to who actually killed Batman’s parents. In some retellings Batman’s eventual arch-nemesis, the Joker, is the gunman. In others, a nondescript mugger, Joe Chill–emblematic of the pervasive and indiscriminate violence of Gotham. Still, in some instances this Joe Chill is a patsy or hired gun for the mafia, intertwined in every facet of Gotham’s infrastructure and government, bent on ridding Gotham of its do-gooder first family, the Waynes. The inconclusiveness of this central event is reminiscent of the confusion surrounding the killings of Martin Luther King Jr., or Malcolm X, or the still unsolved murders of the Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur. At the heart of all of these events is a suspicion of the government and an unknowability of their knowledge and/or involvement. Imbued with this inherent distrust and seeing the ineptitude and disinterest of Gotham’s government and police to protect its people, and in many cases outright abetting and colluding with organized crime to plunder its own, Batman opts for self-defense.

A perverted synergy often exists between superheroes and law enforcement. Despite not technically being Americans (or even humans), super-powered figures like Superman and Wonder Woman are spokespersons for the USA, and are routinely called on to bail the nation out of international conflicts requiring extraterrestrial might. These thorny superhero/geopolitical entanglements are keenly satirized in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. The Superman-like Dr. Manhattan is called on by a US government at the end of its rope to help put an end to the Vietnam war. Dr. Manhattan, who can control all matter down to an atomic level, savagely vaporizes all the Viet Cong, bringing the conflict to a swift end and becomes a national hero. Unlike other superheroes that are granted this honorary membership amongst the ranks of police and military, or have military/law enforcement  backgrounds themselves (Captain America was literally created by the US government), Batman, despite all the good he performs, is inexplicably, almost pathologically, despised by the police. In the eyes of the state, Batman is a terrorist.

In practice, Batman is a weird amalgam of MLK’s nonviolent pacifism and the fire with fire, self-defense pedagogy of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. To call Batman a pacifist is laughable, but he does operate within a byzantine moral code of distributing violence. The Batcave contains an arsenal of military grade tanks, air and watercraft (the Bat Boat!), weapons, gadgets, chemicals, and technology formidable enough to defend a medium-sized nation. But Batman does not use guns and is zealously against killing. However, he will stomp a foe within an inch of their life. This odd mix–a dogmatic code of virtue and bloody-knuckled brutality–may appear incongruous, unless you grew up a black man amongst black men. To be a black man in America is to confront injustice and brutality daily, and to know that no one, especially not the state, will protect you. It is also to know that you cannot confront that injustice and brutality in kind. Black people in their heart of hearts know that the constitution, and particularly the second amendment, does not fully apply to us. Stand Your Ground statues are not to be trusted in our case. For black folks, carry permits, like birth certificates, are fictitious to the larger white world. See Philando Castille.  

Most summers I lived with my Uncle Frank and Aunt Romaine and my cousins Little Frank and Hugh. My mom insisted that she was sending me to live with my cousins to toughen me up, but really, my single-mom just needed a break after the long school year. I did not mind. I loved those summers spent roaming Baltimore for basketball courts with functional rims; accompanying my cousin Frank on house calls giving people tattoos in their kitchens; nights watching music videos on The Box while drawing X-Men, Spider-man, and characters we’d make up. My Uncle Frank is the calmest, coolest person I know. Only a few times I can recall him getting angry and losing his temper with me and my cousins. Usually, it involved us spoiling our appetites on junk food throughout the day and not being able to finish the dinner he made. One other time I remember vividly was in a dollar store. I reached for a neon orange water gun and asked Uncle Frank to buy it. He snatched the gun out of my hand and said something like, “Never!” His aggression was not towards me, but the gun. The speed with which he placed it back on its display peg with the rest of the toy guns was tinged with fear and danger, as if he was dismantling a bomb. My Uncle Frank had served in the Navy in the time directly after the Vietnam War and hated guns. Between Baltimore and the military, Uncle Frank had witnessed what guns did to those on both sides of the barrel. He also knew that a young black boy with a gun–even a translucent, neon orange, plastic one filled with water–was a target for the wrath of the state. See Tamir Rice. Neighborhood OG

Thinking about my Uncle Frank some more, it is interesting to look at Batman through the lens of a baby-boomer American black man. Born in the mid 50’s, these men were the children of segregation, but witnessed the civil rights era live: its factions, phases and eventual fade. They attempted to justify their Americaness by serving in the military, but found more in common with the marginalized peoples in the various occupied cities where they were stationed. Since the Civil War black folks have opted into the American military-industrial complex as an attempt to assert and win their humanity in the eyes of White America, their patriotism and loyalty rarely requited. Black soldiers helped deliver victory to the North but were sold out by Northern Appeasement and the advent of Jim Crow. Black soldiers returned to the US after defeating facism in Europe only to be excluded from the heralded GI Bill and ghettoized at home. Dramatized in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Vietnamese propaganda radio personality Hannah Hanoi, informed Black soldiers stationed in Vietnam that their hero, Martin Luther King Jr., had been assassinated in Memphis on the morning of April 4, 1968. 

Every black family has that father or uncle that served abroad and is a-little-too-into non-western cultures and political thought; from embracing Islam and other eastern religions to espousing Marxism; somewhat on its individual merits, but more to spite the American capitalism that brought their ancestors west to work against their will. Uncle Frank's multicultural eclecticism is pretty mild, and ranges from listening to obscure world music to practicing Ikebana. Culturally, Batman is this Asiatic, Marxist black man. Batman spent his early adult years in Asia learning martial arts, which he now uses to fight crime in the streets of Gotham. The transcendence of restrictive American blackness through an embrace of eastern culture underlies the blaxploitation kung fu movies of the 70s, a motif later adopted by the Wu Tang Clan and satirized in the Martin character, Dragonfly Jones. Black men realize that they will never be fully American, so they should probably find another national identity. 

Batman, similarly, is a man without a country. He does not have a vaguely patriotic credo like Superman (Truth, Justice, and the American Way), or nods to the red white and blue in his costume like both Superman and Spider-man. Batman is not a national hero. He is local. Ask any black man where he is from and he will rep his city: Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, Buffalo, Detroit. To actually speak of ourselves as Capital-A-American comes first with a hard swallow. Batman, similarly, has a myopic focus on his hometown of Gotham. Many assume Gotham is a stand-in for New York, but the DC comic universe already has a New York doppelganger: Metropolis, the home of Superman. Gotham on the other hand is the quintessential second-city; segregated, rife with inequality, post-industrial, a declining population, witness to rising crime rates, prey to predatory prospectors. 

Embracing this more blue-collar interpretation of Gotham, the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy dispenses with the Art Deco and technicolor production design of the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman films respectively, in which Gotham–complete with its own empire state building–was very much a stand in for New York. In The Dark Knight Rises, the football team, the Gotham Rogues, was modeled after the Pittsburgh Steelers, down to the black and yellow team colors, and even had then Steelers’ players Hines Ward and Ben Rothlesberger playing the Rogues. Personally, the Baltimore Ravens would have been a better model for a Gotham football team as they were named after Poe's famous gothic poem The Raven, and broadly I like to think of Gotham as Baltimore. Its gray skies and gargoyle-covered gothic architecture inspired Billie Holiday's blues, and the city is imbued with the revolutionary spirit of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Thurgood Marshall. A potentially overlooked exchange occurs between Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred, while first exploring the soon-to-be Batcave under Wayne Manor in 2005’s Batman Begins. Alfred informs Bruce that the passages were created by his great-grandfather and used to shelter runaway slaves during the underground railroad. The quick aside reveals the progressive pedigree of Bruce Wayne. Furthermore, what is the Bat Signal if not a constellation along the underground railroad? A symbol, not unlike the drinking gourd, serving as a light of hope in the face of governmental terrorism. Rich Nigga

Batman’s wealth is traditionally foregrounded in the default assumption of Batman as a white man. As much as US economic policy has historically worked to sabotage black wealth, there are in fact rich black people. More precisely, the volatile mixture of blackness and affluence combines to create the particular catalyst necessary for the creation of a Batman. The book of Ecclesiastes frankly states “[M]oney is a shelter.” But in America financial success has never protected black people the way it does other groups, and in many cases carries with it a curse. The Notorious BIG wrote, Mo Money Mo Problems. Successful black people still die disproportionately from treatable or preventable diseases (Chadwick Boseman) or have their potentially fatal pain disregarded (Serena Williams). And, not that being a rich celebrity should shield you, but black celebrities routinely have their civil rights violated by police and other agents of the state like all black people. These individual anecdotes can be place alongside the targeted and unabated massacres of thriving black financial enclaves like Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma or Rosewood, Florida, as well as state supported actions by the FBI to surveil, sabotage, and in some cases murder, black leaders like Martin Luther king Jr., Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. 

Beyond the systemic and structural violence, to be black and rich is also to draw the attention of random evil actors. Quite different from invisible old money wealth, black affluence often comes with the spotlight of being a famous athlete or entertainer, where the specific dollar amounts of one’s fortune are typed in boldface on sports pages or the record sales charts. At a time when he was perhaps the most famous person on the planet, Michael Jordan’s father, James, was murdered by two teenagers at a North Carolina rest stop who carjacked him for his Lexus and dumped his body in a swamp. In tandem with these external threats, the burden of being black and rich exacts an internal toil. Right or wrong, black affluence comes with the burden to “give back”, to “not forget where you came from,” and to make up for the failure of the state to take care of those who look like you. Black billionaires are held to a higher standard and are demonized for participating in the same capitalistic practices that enriched the generations of wealthy whites before them. According to progressive politicians, “every billionaire is a failure of policy.” Conveniently, this chorus came into favor at the exact time when new demographics of persons were just beginning to take advantage of America's admittedly corrupt financial system.

Batman embodies this struggle of violence without and within. Undoubtedly, there is a sado-masochistic heart to the character. A billionaire who spends his nights in the seedy parts of town picking fights. Batman is Bruce Wayne slumming. Batman serves as Gotham's dominatrix; punishing the city for its bad behavior one leather gloved punch at a time. The pain also provides Wayne absolution for the survivor’s remorse he feels for both living through the deadly encounter that took his parents, and the burden of wealth that he carries as a black man. Bruce Wayne pours all of his time and fortune into crafting and maintaining his drag persona of Batman. He puts on eye black so that you can only see the whites of his eyes, adding to his ghoulish visage, but for some reason he does not apply the makeup to the area around his mouth that similarly peaks from under his mask, so avoiding full blackface. The avoidance of full blackface is not a decision of discretion or political correctness. This choice projects Bruce Wayne’s ambivalence. 

He is projecting a hyper-masculine-hyper-blackness but by revealing his pale complexion under his masks he reminds those he encounters that he is not actually the full version of blackness that he is weaponizing. The Joel Schumacher directed films Batman Forever and Batman & Robin from 1995 and 1997 respectively did much establish this bombastically hyper-masculine performance that augments into a queer and racial appropriation. Memes before memes, the shots zooming in on the batsuit’s vacuum formed rubber buttocks, protruding codpiece, and chest of Batman, complete with articulated nipples, were played for comic relief. Val Kilmer and George Clooney were less playing superheroes and more male drag kings. However ludicrous, the ever more anatomically accurate suit made manifest the dangerous proximity of Bruce Wayne’s performance of Batman to black minstrelsy.

The selective utilization and negation of blackness is an age old tactic. The larger world devours black cuisine, fashion, and slang while at the same time denigrating its originators. A young Justin TImberlake parrots black music while simultaneously scavenging and scapegoating the black body of Janet Jackson; all in service of establishing his adult artist bona fides. Unfortunately, this form of parasitism is also equally expressed by black men. Kanye West erected his musical career on raps mining the history and images black slavery as evergreen symbols of black people’s continued oppression. “This grave shift is like a slave ship.” Years into his success–as he personally attempted to assert his post-racial autonomy through self-hating proximity to white supremacist demagoguery–he called slavery a “choice.” This is the dangerous prerogative of black identity construction. Amongst all black people there is a judicious deployment of blackness to both survive and capitalize within a racist society. One might need to turn on stereotypes of black hyper-sexuality while hitting on a woman at the bar, and then immediately dispel with the bluster while negotiating an interaction with the cops during a “routine” traffic stop on the way home. In every scenario there is the need to perform the “right” style of blackness. 

Every one of these performative choices reifies the subjective status of blackness to the dominant culture. In Adrian Piper’s Mythic Being series the artist roams across New York city styled with an afro and thick push-broom mustache picking fights with white men and catcalling white women. The brilliance and continued relevance of Piper’s project lies in its reflexivity. Piper is parodying America’s reductive stereotyping of black men as dangerous and hyper-sexual. But she, as a mixed black woman, is also revealing, admitting, as the designer and performer of this character, that these depictions have been personally internalized. An interesting exchange occurs between Bruce Wayne and Alfred, as Bruce Wayne is first designing his Batman costume, again in 2005’s Batman Begins. Alfred asks the question we’ve all always wanted to ask, “Why bats?” Bruce Wayne insists that he’s terrified of bats and that he aims to embody that fear and project it onto the criminals of Gotham. “The’ll feel my fear.” Alfred appears persuaded, and the movie–feeling justified in its argument–moves on. But I call bullshit. How many grown men, especially ones that grew up in a large metropolitan area have a legitimate and debilitating fear of Bats? In the end, like Piper, it is Batman’s own blackness that he fears most, but also what he understands terrifies the larger society as well. Dark Knight, For Real

The recent adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen on HBO opens with a jolting depiction of the 1929 Tulsa Black Wall Street massacre and a young black boy who is protected by his parents from the holocaust as they themselves are slain in the carnage. In a subsequent episode we find out that this character is the legendary Hooded Justice, the first of the Minutemen, the superheroes of the Watchmen world. A victim himself of Jim Crow era terrorism against black people, Hooded Justice narrowly escapes being lynched and proceeds straightway to thwarting a mugging he stumbles upon during his escape. The burlap sack over his head and noose around his neck–once the barbarous apparatus of his demise–are repurposed into the symbol of vengeance and liberation for the black folks in his neighborhood, as well as the looming comeuppance for the perpetrators of white supremacist terror running and ruining the city. 

This episode of Watchmen, written by Cort Jefferson who won an Emmy for his work, makes it plain: the foundational superhero emerged from a cauldron of racial oppression with a compulsion to fight on behalf of the marginalized. I would contend that this is the case for most, if not all super and everyday heroes broadly. Jurgen Habermas’ theories on the public sphere make an emphatic case that only those excluded from the center of public life have the vantage point to diagnose the inequities within, in addition to the actual impulse to rectify those injustices. Those who benefit from the status quo rarely possess the urgency to undermine their own comfortable station. 

Superheroes, in their most familiar form, are a distinctly American export for better and worse. In many ways their fiction lies less in their superhuman strength, or ability to shapeshift, or bend time, but rather in their implausible goodness. They are moral, kind, selfless, and brave; all things that Americans, feeling ownership over these characters, would hope to project as their own. Which brings us back to the inherent blackness of Batman and the superhero broadly. And why–despite its triviality–it irritates me that these icons and all the good they represent–good most often derived from the resolve and courage necessary to survive exclusion and oppression–are so effortlessly co-opted by the larger white world, that we do not question the ability of a white man to adequately fill the black suit of Batman.

[abdifarah]

Bloody

There was never a time when Spike Lee wasn’t Spike Lee to me. I seem to remember being born with images from his movies pre-installed on my mental harddrive. School Daze, one of the first few VHS’s in our house, was a favorite of my mom, and seemed to always be on in the background. Watching it recently, I had a this is water realization: “This is a musical?!” The movie’s mechanics and construction were so overly familiar as to be invisible. 

I love Spike Lee the way Americans love Jesus. More than any particular film (He Got Game, Do the Right Thing, and Malcolm X are three favs), I love everything Lee represents, has represented, and what I’m sure he will continue to represent. I knew even before instagram was invented that he would be great at it. And I am sure whatever mechanism comes next that facilitates a creator’s connection to their audience, Spike will embrace and master it like a surfer to the waves. Spike is always Spike, which probably facilitates his uncanny ability to appear comfortable in many worlds, from high art auteur filmmaking, to pop culture fare, to sports documentaries to political commentary. He is unapologetically ambitious, unapologetically confident, unapologetically black; a trio that America works hard to keep separate. He believes in the imperative of his movies and will do anything–hawking merch, launching a Kickstarter, starring in Capital One commercials–to get them made. 

Spike’s work is not just black, but majestically black, sophisticatedly black, dangerously black. This man made Bamboozled, a movie about a television exec that makes a modern day minstrel show! There are obviously a small handful of other successful and busy black filmmakers, namely Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels. Their movies do the necessary, but not-that-interesting work of simply putting blackness front and center. But the vision of blackness of Daniels or Perry has always felt like it was for someone other than me; someone either less black or less smart. Spike’s films, while often informative, never preach or pander. They assume a black outlook as a given and not an oddity. His films are challenging and do not often resolve with easy lessons. They incorporate the broad history of film and culture and do very little to catch the audience up. It is his way of showing respect to us as viewers.

Even when I do not like a Spike Lee Joint, I always admire the chutzpah, which for me is higher praise than simply liking or enjoying a work of art. Spike will go down as one of the most prolific filmmakers. He prides himself on his goal of producing a major work annually, as opposed to many of his contemporaries like Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino who move at a more leisurely clip. I wonder if Spike’s breakneck pace emanates from a conscious or subconscious fear of being forgotten, and having the door closed on him; ending up like so many other promising directors of color or women directors that after successful early work find it harder and harder to secure funds and get new projects greenlit. Spike has spoken candidly of the trouble he has getting movies produced, even as a celebrity director. While historically impressed by the amount of output, I now wish Spike Lee felt the freedom and permission to slow down.

Da 5 Bloods has so much in it that I love, and multiple scenes that I found genuinely moving, but this is a mess of a movie. For a film about finding buried treasure, Lee seems to be unaware of how much gold he’s sitting on. The movie undertakes the meaty premise of having four older black Vietnam veterans return to the site that indelibly changed them, mostly for the worse, to find the remains of their inspiring troop leader, Stormin’ Normin’, and a chest of gold bullion boosted from a crashed plane and hidden in the deep jungle. They returned to America after the war broken by what they saw and unable to partake of the freedoms they supposedly fought for, but like all black folks attempted to make the most of this reality. Their meeting in Vietnam is a college reunion of sorts, if you went to college to major war atrocities, and ptsd. Like any good reunion plot, each man has their post-war war stories; divorces, estranged kids, bad breaks, bankruptcies. 

They are different, almost unrecognizable to each other. Delroy Lindo’s, Paul, once a black militant, is a Maga hat wearing Trump supporter, but they are all family still. I could have watched these dialogues amongst black men who lived through civil rights, survived Vietnam, but are still fighting their own private wars all night. I wanted to stay in this movie. But about halfway through the tone of the movie shifts and whatever this movie was supposed to be about tragically steps on a landmine. The movie changes from a subtle portrait of these GI’s, their relationships to each other, and their quest to lay to rest the ghosts of the past, and becomes a gory shoot-em-up and basic-bitch heist movie, albeit with some still compelling scenes dripped in, mostly involving Paul. 

In New Orleans you can often see a big storm rolling in from miles away. The writhing clouds, tinged with the primordial reds and purples of sundown and coursing with whip snaps of lightning, mesmerize to the point where you forget you’re about to get drenched. Delroy Lindo’s performance similarly entrances as he descends like King Lear into paranoia and madness, enroute to self-sabotaging the mission and his relationship with his fellow soldiers and his doting son, who has stowed away on the excursion. Spike Lee’s casting has always indicted the rest of Hollywood, by highlighting the black actors and other actors with looks were deemed too “ethic” or too “this” or too “that”, but who have more chop in one of their nostrils than many on the A-list could muster sitting on each other’s shoulders. Why is Lindo not considered one of our great actors? 

While some of the creative and plot choices can be forgiven as artistic liberty, the depiction of the actual Vietnamese people in the movie is hard to justify. Other than a compelling cinematic portrait of the historical figure Hanoi Hannah whose radio broadcasts entertained and taunted American soldiers during the war, the other Vietnamese characters in the movie are pretty flat at best and ugly stereotypes at the other extreme. One of Lee’s perpetual explorations across all of his movies has been the destructive violence of racial stereotypes. Do the Right Thing ends when Police indiscriminately kill Radio Raheem, perceiving the imposing black man as only a threat and not a beloved community member and human worthy of dignity and protection. Blackkklansman presents us with a black man who is also a cop and all of the complexity that entails. Strangely, Lee regurgitates the worst stereotypes of the Viet-Cong in the group of Vietnamese mercenaries serving at the behest of bloated Jean Reno’s french gangster (and Donald Trump surrogate?) who ambush Da Bloods for their gold, leading to the films Tarantino-esque bloodbath ending. The climactic scene which sees Da Bloods, like retired athletes, reliving their glory days as soldiers by extension glorifies the Vietnam conflict and the killing of the Vietnamese, which is disappointing and sad. For a director that for decades avoided tidy popcorn conclusions, this film and his previous outing, Blackkklansman, basically end in good guy vs. bad guy gunfights. 

Da 5 Bloods should have been Girls Trip but with Vietnam vets; former friends with divergent lives butting heads and ultimately reconnecting; learning from while burying the past. There’s a strange moment in Da 5 Bloods before the movie breaks bad when the gang finds a pistol hidden by Clarke Peter’s character, Otis, the ostensible leader of the adventure. For battle worn vets they seem weirdly squeamish at the thought that one of them is packing. These astute Spike Lee characters, knowledgeable of movie and theater orthodoxy, understand that if a gun appears, at some point it's going to go off. Perhaps they, like me, were lamenting the inevitable end of the more dynamic and challenging first half of the movie. Maybe through them Spike Lee is voicing his own reservations about the pending violence of the film. Either way, Spike, like Otis, shouldn't have brought the gun.

[abdifarah]

Snake Charmer

I grabbed my sneakers and ball from the backseat of my car. As I stepped onto the basketball court, the palm of a stranger’s hand suddenly hit my chest before my foot crossed the threshold of the out-of-bounds line, as if to protect me from stepping into molten lava. It was in fact hallowed ground he was preparing me to enter. “I don’t want to mess up your day, but Kobe Bryant died.” The words did not register. He must have meant to say Bill Russell or Magic Johnson or some other retired player, up in years or immunocompromised. My heart sank as the words did. Seemingly coordinated with the stranger’s preparatory address, my phone began to shriek. I shared basketball, above most else, with my closest friends, and for those of my friends “not into sports,” they knew I was and that I was probably the one person in their lives that could explain why their instagram and twitter timelines had been commandeered by the news of Bryant’s death. I sat on the court and texted friends I hadn’t spoken with in years. I mentally ran through all of the Lakers fans in my life, like someone tallying loved ones near the epicenter of an earthquake or tsunami. 

The surprises continued. My uncle Kenny called me. Kenny, like most of the men in my life, does not make calls. When I see Kenny during the holidays we do not hug or catch up with small talk. Me and Kenny speak solely in sports. “How are the Cowboys doing?” translates to how are you doing? On this occasion Kenny did not resort to code. “Are you okay?” Kenny asked with a tone of genuine concern in his voice. Strangely, I was not. Stepping out of my body momentarily, I watched myself frantically text friends and scour the internet for updates with large tears welling up in my eyes. Importantly, next to me, five or so other guys on the basketball court were doing the exact same thing. I was dumbfounded, and even a little amused that it was Kobe Bryant, of all people, that elicited this reaction from me. As a basketball fan I loved Kobe Bryant as a player, but I didn’t love him. I loved Kobe the way the world loves the Dalai Lama. Kobe was that inhuman child/god/king we watched grow up, do great exploits, and whose often trite proverbs of ostensible wisdom we warily entertained. His sudden and violent death brought into swift focus that, while famous for almost my entire life, I took Kobe for granted.

Kobe Bryant was the first of us to realize: the camera is always on. In the days and weeks following Kobe’s death I found myself pulling up old games on youtube and having them on in the background while I worked. I was surprised how many of the beats–a certain sequence of plays, a specific call by an announcer–I remembered, like I was watching reruns or listening to a throwback radio station. As much as The Fresh Prince or Martin or Seinfeld, Kobe Bryant was TV. Mostly to my frustration, as someone who ineffectually rooted against the Lakers, Kobe Bryant was always on my screen. Undoubtedly, a cloud hangs over everything related to Bryant now in light of his death, but rewatching games from the 2000 finals, in which Bryant’s Lakers bested the Reggie Miller/Jalen Rose led Pacers, I was reminded of how much uneasiness and sadness I felt for Kobe Bryant watching him even as a teenage admirer. After every exceptional defensive play, flashy pass, or difficult made shot, Bryant made sure the camera saw the fiery glint in his eyes, the licking of his lips, the exaggerated clinching of his jaw. 

Even more so than the NBA’s previous generation of celebrities–Bird, Magic, Jordan–Kobe Bryant seemed to be the first superstar to internalize that basketball was a performance: a movie backed by a John Tesh score, or more specifically, a loosely scripted 24-7 reality show complete with story arcs, heroes, villains, close-ups, and backstabbing confessions. Bryant perpetually signalled: to the camera, to the fans, to his haters, to his teammates, that he possessed the most passion, that he outworked everyone, and that he would stop at nothing to be the best. By all accounts this was all true. But we knew it less because it was true and more because Kobe wanted us to know. Even as a youngster I found his thirst obnoxious. 

Kobe was desperate, but he was also just ahead of the curve. Kobe Bryant proudly admitted to not having a social life, and almost a decade before Russell Westbrook said it, Bryant proclaimed that “Spalding was his only friend;” a both sad and sobering admission for any would-be competitors tasked with defeating Bryant on the court. Bryant’s performative work, that now permeates and characterizes most of millennial culture, predated social media. The author Touré in his book, I Would Die 4U, contends that despite being a baby boomer, Prince was the quintessential GenX celebrity, whose music perfectly tapped into that younger generation’s disaffected, countercultural ethos. Born in 1978, Bryant technically resides in GenX. The intense outpouring from all corners of the digital world over Bryant’s death stems from the fact that he was truly the first millennial celebrity. 

For Bryant, fame came before success. As the photogenic rookie for the Lakers, Bryant had cameos on sitcoms, graced the cover of every teen magazine, took Brandy to the prom, put out a rap album, and pitched every soda and sneaker Madison Avenue could throw at him. But like an inflated college application, Bryant’s extracurriculars read as contrivances. Bryant was named a starter in the 1998 All-Star game, an honor voted on by the fans, meanwhile he wasn’t even a starter on his own team. To suspicious observers, Bryant was an industry plant; the antidote to the fearful influx of hyper-black, hip hop culture embodied in players like Allen Iverson or Latrell Spreewell; a basketball and marketing robot with a pearly white smile, that spoke multiple languages, and would pick up where Michael Jordan left off; ushering the NBA to unprecedented commercial heights.

Despite his superficial charm, Kobe Bryant’s lack of genuine personality proved off-putting, almost creepy. Although possessing a similarly shimmering smile, everyone knew that the real Michael Jordan chomped on cigars, pounded tequila, gambled through the night, and did not actually hang out with Bugs Bunny while wearing Hanes tighty-whities. We acknowledged humanity, healthiness even, in this contradiction. For Bryant’s generation of sports superstars, the public and private arrived flattened. A sports prodigy, a la Tiger Woods, Bryant’s lone-gun, misanthropic persona emerged as a defense against the alienation he felt from his teammates and colleagues around the league, those that did not share his cloistered upbringing. Bryant’s longtime teammate and consummate foil, Shaquille O’Neal, had the nickname, Superman. Despite his titanic presence and supernatural physical gifts, O’Neal epitomized the terrestrial; always joking, dancing; embedded in pop culture; a true man of the people. The true Kryptonian was always Bryant.

As an ignorant seventeen year-old, my initial reaction in 2004 to the accusations of rape against Bryant was amused shock. “Kobe Bryant has sex?!” In 2004, I, like many, put Kobe on the shelf. Less out of a desire to proactively make any bold gestures on behalf of women, but more out of petty schadenfreude. As stated before, I respected the talent, but I was not really a Kobe fan. I always rooted for the underdog, and Bryant was anything but. To the contrary, everything about Bryant was an assault on the concept of the underdog, the diamond in the rough, the idea that anyone, despite their humble or downright degraded beginnings, could rise to excellence. Bryant was born and bread to be great. Sadly, I took grim pleasure in seeing the NBA’s posterboy–the prototype of black celebrity respectability–revealed as the actual embodiment of the entitled, toxically masculine, and sexually predatory stereotype of the black athlete. 

Bryant lost endorsements. Nike released the Huarache 2K4, an all-time great basketball shoe originally designed to be Bryant’s first signature release with the brand, as simply a stand-alone product. The Lakers shopped Bryant around for possible trades. Like Sampson sheared and stripped of his powers, Bryant’s hairline appeared to recede, he cut off his signature fro, and he began shaving his head closer and closer. Bryant changed his number from 8 to 24 as one now changes their Instagram or Twitter handle to represent a break from the past. Like a biblical character after a traumatic or transformative event, like Abram becoming Abraham, or Saul becoming Paul, Bryant adopted the moniker of the Black Mamba. He resigned to allow the sorting hat to place him in his rightful house of Slytherin, and embraced the duplicitous snake that many already viewed him to be. Somewhat strangely, the Black Mamba was the assassin code name of the main character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, who in the film is left for dead, and out for revenge. Did Bryant see himself as this woman wronged, or as the titular character, Bill, contently awaiting his deserved day of judgement. Knowing Bryant, he probably saw himself as both.    

In the myth of Hercules (not the Disney version) the famous god-man kills his wife and kids in a fit of hysteria inflicted by a vengeful Hera. If we imagine that the mythical figures of today were really just the celebrities and aristocrats of past millennia who had control over the pen of history and whose carnal tales swelled into sacred gospel; the fits of rage and mania brought on by the devil or hades or a poison arrow, were really the Chappaquiddicks, Vegas hotel rooms, and dog fighting compounds of their time; times when our heroes unequivocally and inexcusably committed evil. If Hercules was in fact a real man of some importance to his time–the son of a dignitary–that unfathomably killed his wife and kids, it follows that instead of being sentenced to death or some other fate reserved for the criminal commoner, that he would be given some lesser sentence and a chance–albeit slim–of redemption. Hercules is banished by the gods to serve an insignificant king and accomplish the arduous good works assigned to him as a means of atonement; the great works–slaying the nine-headed hydra, retrieving cerberus –that ultimately generate his immortal legend.  

Bryant’s post rape case/post Shaquille O’Neal years with the Lakers mirror this herculean restitution. Despite years on center stage, the Lakers, like Bryant, were similarly in their nadir, and would spend the middle of the aughts in basketball purgatory. Bryant was no longer primetime television. What happens to a pop-star when no one is watching? Surprisingly, Kobe Bryant kept performing, and at higher heights. Bryant was doing his best work while no one was watching. I remember walking through the door of my college dorm on a non-descript spring day. My roommate, Bryun, yelled at me with no context, “8 1  P O I N T S !” Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game may lay claim as the first social media sports moment. Less because no other great sports moments had occurred between 2004, when facebook emerged, and his scoring explosion in 2006, but because very few people watched that midseason contest between two mediocre teams live. It arrived to everyone, like myself, after the fact.

During a recent lecture, artist Dave McKenzie, when answering a very banal question during a post lecture q&a, about his long term goals as an artist, answered soberingly, “I’m just trying to get through this life and do the least amount of harm.” While we all hope to navigate this life without hurting others, most, if not all of us, will in some way. While we can and must continue to  interrogate why powerful (or at least useful to the actual powerful) men like Kobe Bryant seemingly evade the full reckoning of their actions, we must acknowledge that Bryant became something of a patron saint to those who for whatever reason found themselves on the wrong side of right. Maybe they were the underprivileged black and brown boys and girls in over-policed neighborhoods of LA where Bryant played for 20 years. Perhaps they were not pure victims but made some questionable choices and found themselves caught in the system. Or maybe it was the newly divorced father attempting to win back the respect of his kids after breaking apart his family due to his own indiscretions. Kobe Bryant in this second half of his career, culminating in back to back championships, provided a picture of how one climbs back from the depths of hell, even if they were the one that put themself there. This explains the irrationality of Kobe fans, who defended him in everything, and straight-faced spoke his name in the same breath as Michael Jordan, despite honestly being in a class below. For them, Kobe was bigger than basketball, and while many fans share a vicarious relationship with their sports heroes or teams, Bryant’s winning was more profoundly linked to his fans’ sense of self-worth.

Precocity embodied, Bryant arrived in the NBA a generation too soon. As the son of a former player, singularly focused on professionalizing at a young age, even foregoing college at a time when that was still a rarity, Bryant was an alien compared to most players of his generation. The trajectory of players today more resembles Bryant’s. Gone are the days of Dennis Rodman or Scottie Pippen or Steve Nash picking up basketball late, or being undiscovered and surreptitiously landing on a small college team, eventually catching the eye of the larger basketball world. Now, professional basketball starts disturbingly early. Prospects like Zion Williamson have millions of Instagram followers in high school. Second generation pros are commonplace – Steph, Klay, Kyrie, Devin Booker, Andrew Wiggins, Domantas Sabonis, Austin Rivers, Tim Hardaway Jr., Glenn Robinson III, and so on. Bryant was the cautionary tale, a sage mentor, and ultimately an icon to the generation of players succeeding Bryant, who like him, entered the spotlight and scrutiny of an increasingly voracious sports machine as children. Thanks in part to witnessing the triumphs and travails of Bryant, today’s young superstars arrive to the league encoded with the understanding that the fans, the media, the sports industry writ large, wait with baited breath for them to fuck up off the court as much as they do a spectacular play in the game. To these various stakeholders, it’s all good entertainment.

[A bit of a tangent] As the coronavirus began to ravage New Orleans, in particular the homeless and already vulnerable of the city, I had a group of friends, more acquaintances, who took it upon themselves to collect donations, buy groceries, prepare and ultimately hand out meals to the large number of homeless people mostly living under the I-10 overpass downtown. As a naturally cynical person, I immediately questioned the motivations. All of those same homeless people were living under the overpass before coronavirus, where was this energy then? One friend involved with this effort confided that she was incredibly anxiety stricken in all of this, and that this “project” was taking her mind off things. I chafed at the phrasing of feeding the homeless as a “project.” Additionally, daily I would scroll through the Instagram feeds of those helping and see pics of cute hipsters in masks and gloves and in grungy, rugged, but still impossibly chic outfits posing in Power Ranger formations in front of their rusted Ford Ranger filled with grocery bags to distribute. A masterclass in virtue signalling, the narcissism of it all polluted the entire endeavor for me. When I asked a trusted voice why this all rubbed me the wrong way, this person replied curtly, “What does it matter why or how they do it? They’re doing a good thing.” 

Kobe did not simply embrace this role of elder-statesman to the succeeding generation, he courted it, campaigned for this mantle as aggressively as he once sought championships. Lacking confidence in the intellect of the public to make their own conjectures of how Bryant resurrected his career, he rebranded himself a self-improvement life-couch, and proselytized his “Mamba Mentality,” even staging a parody Tony Robbins style conference as a Nike commercial. He collected young promising players to mentor like Leonardo DiCaprio collects young blonde models to date. Gossipy whispers swirled every offseason, “Kobes working with Kawhi.” or “Watch out for Jason Tatum this year; he spent the summer training with Kobe.” All of Kobe’s newfound openhandedness seemed spiked with self-aggrandizement. Opting to be the mentor of the next generation ensured that the success of future stars led back to him, and that he would be relevant and sought after long after his retirement. 

Whatever the subconscious or even conscious motivations behind Bryant’s mentorship, his movie Dear Basketball, or his show Detail–in which he broke down the games of basketball players across levels and leagues, treating women’s college basketball standout Sabrina Ionescu with the same care and reverence as NBA star James Harden–the result was education, service, stewardship, and love for the game of basketball. 

I started writing this soon after Bryant’s death but struggled to synthesize an ultimate point. In the end I am not sure I have one, just that Kobe Bryant, much to my surprise was a figure of enough complexity and enduring relevance to require re-interrogation. In hindsight, I needed to watch The Last Dance; the 10 part Michael Jordan re-coronation. In 2009 newly elected President Barack Obama, after stumbling over the oath of office during the freezing January inauguration, retook the oath the next day in a private ceremony just in case any of his political enemies, or the fomenting alt right with its myriad factions–from the conspiratorial to the downright racist–tried to invalidate his presidency. While trivial in comparison, Jordan, with The Last Dance is attempting desperately to reconfirm that he is the greatest basketball player of all-time, something only a few lunatics question. While the actual game footage is a wonder and leaves no doubt of Jordan’s basketball supremacy, the final tally of this hagiographic enterprise may result in a net loss for Jordan. Jordan, like a 19th century robber baron, seems to genuinely believe that his misanthropy, arrogance, condescension, usury, brutality, workaholism, and myopic focus on basketball, and consummate self-centeredness were all justified, required even, to win. To win what? Championships? With sports leagues and public officials debating when and if sports can and should come back amidst a virus with devastating life or death stakes, sports and success within them feel quite trivial and quaint at the moment. 

Having won at everything in life, sitting in his palatial mansion, sipping impossibly overpriced scotch, Jordan does not seem fulfilled. He is Ebenezer Scrooge. Unfortunately, it is not Christmas, and no ghosts of introspection are visiting Jordan, only a camera crew determined to retell the gospel of Jordan with a few non-canonical details sprinkled in for flavor. I am reminded of a line in Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season, an autobiographical account of his college basketball days at The Citadel. After a storied career, Conroy’s senior season is a disaster (hence the title). In it he says no one ever learned anything by winning. The inference is that, while winning is great, the actual growth occurs before, in the losing. Jordan in The Last Dance is the ghastly personification of “never losing. Like Bane before breaking Batman’s back, “Victory has defeated you.” With an unimpeachable resumé, Jordan was never required to question his actions or behaviors towards his teammates and competitors. Worshiped unwaveringly by all, Jordan never felt the need to give anything back to the game or to the communities that supported him. 

While never verbally conceding, Bryant seemed to embrace being the loser. Bryant realized early, perhaps as early as Colorado, that he was never going to be as beloved as Jordan. He began planning early for a life outside of basketball. He started a production company. He braved eye-rolls for the n-teenth time when he proclaimed that he was going to be a “storyteller.” Beyond a cliché adage, Bryant became a “family man,” and focused on this part of his life with the same ferocity that he once attacked the basket. Despite braving turmoil very publicly as a young couple, the bond between Bryant and his wife Vanesa appeared, at least on the outside, genuine. They welcomed their newest daughter, Capri, just 7 months before his death. While no less ambitious or busy in retirement, the Bryant who once wore his insecurity and desperation on his sweaty armband, strangely appeared content, happy. The guy who once proudly proclaimed “Spalding his only friend” relented to a verdant life with others.

While undoubtedly compounded by the tragic and sudden nature of his death, the truly astounding outpouring for Kobe–murals the world over, calf-length tattoos, millions of twitter handle re-namings–stands as an accomplishment, or better said, an acknowledgement that “better” athletes like Jordan or LeBron or Tiger or Brady will probably never receive. He wasn’t the best of us, and in many ways we loved him even more because of that. Before The Last Dance we got a preview of the more candid Michael Jordan during Kobe Bryant’s memorial, where Michael, who unbeknownst to us all was a confidant of Bryant’s, admitted that Kobe made him want to be a better father, a better person. In the end even the GOAT was a disciple of the Mamba. It’s only right that the first millennial superstar gained the biggest following.  

[abdifarah]

Match Made In Zion

Those around Zion Williamson quickly dispelled rumors that he might not play in New Orleans next year. Williamson’s father gave an interview to an ESPN affiliate in Louisiana stating that his son is already looking forward to getting settled in New Orleans, and shrewdly not much more has been said. The quiet may signify nothing. But I secretly hope Zion is meticulously engineering a dramatic escape from the Big Easy, which may come as a surprise since I happily live in New Orleans. Perhaps the basketball gods were caught sleeping when the lottery balls bounced in New Orleans’ favor, or, as I like to believe, the outcome will ultimately prove divine providence by forcing a once-in-a-generation talent like Zion to step into his true destiny, which holds more than simply posterizing defenders. As the messiah of the player empowerment movement, it is Zion’s duty to fight his way out of the basketball purgatory that is the Pelicans. In the beginning there was LeBron, who bore the wrath of the public for The Decision in 2010. We had minor prophets in this narrative: Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Zion’s potential teammate, Anthony Davis, who humbly allowed themselves to be seen as cowards, or ungrateful, or divos, in search of unrealized basketball promised lands. In Zion we have the culmination; a player so significant to the future of the NBA, that he has the power to change how players move throughout the league once and for all. By forcing out of New Orleans Zion will accomplish two things. One, he will force purposeless, mediocre, lukewarm teams like the Pelicans to either gain focus or close up shop for good. And most importantly he will highlight that the draft system, as we know it, is fundamentally immoral.

Despite Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street, New Orleans is a sleepy town. Anthony Davis was rightly criticized this past season for the way he attempted to force his way out of New Orleans. But I understand why a 26 year-old superstar like Anthony Davis, after 7 years in New Orleans, may want a change. And while I personally like living in New Orleans, my heart sank a bit when the city received the the number one pick and the rights to draft Zion Williamson in last month’s draft lottery. As a basketball fan first, Zion, and Anthony Davis for that matter, deserve better. This is less an indictment on the city and more on the team. This is the same franchise that chose to name itself the Pelicans! It is a team inherited by Gayle Benson, the wife of recently deceased Tom Benson, who also owned the much more glamorous Saints, and only half-heartedly agreed to buy the NBA franchise. If James Dolan, Jeanie Buss, and Robert Sarver, the owners of the Knicks, Lakers, and Suns respectively, are any indication, inheriting a team or the money to buy one usually portends terrible ownership. The Pelicans stay under the radar, mostly because of a lack of press, but they have been just as dysfunctional as those more glamorous franchises. Until the recent hire of David Griffin, the team was run by Mickey Loomis who also runs the Saints. I don’t blame Anthony Davis, and other professional basketball players, for not wanting to serve as the red-jerseyed stepchildren to the Saints.

The Pelicans were doomed the day they named themselves the Pelicans. In 2012, I had recently moved to New Orleans for an artist residency in the vibrant and still edgy, and now fully gentrified 8th ward. Television and radio stations spread word that the once-again-nameless New Orleans NBA franchise (formerly the Hornets, formerly the Jazz) was holding a contest to find a new name for the team. I ran immediately to my local coffee shop, The Orange Couch, with sketchbook in hand to brainstorm colors, typefaces, and of course the new name. The concept was simple. New Orleans used to be the Jazz, a top five city/nickname combination. New Orleans is not only the birthplace of jazz but also the home of bounce music; the cacophonous, kaleidoscopic bedrock of so much modern hip hop. Now introducing your New Orleans Bounce! The name pays homage to the bygone Jazz, as well as championing New Orleans’ continued importance to contemporary music culture, and has the double entendre of a bouncing basketball. Without much warning or fanfare news broke that the team had settled on a new name, the Pelicans. Disappointment was expressed by the few die hard basketball fans in the city. Who voted for Pelicans? The name wreaked of Uptown New Orleans: the aristocratic, country club, I have columns in front of my house side of New Orleans, and none of the gritty, flavorful, down-to-earth, downtown charm for which the city is beloved.

A name and subsequent success may be a chicken and egg proposition. What exactly is a Laker? But choosing a bad name reveals an intrinsic laziness by the stewards of the team, and reveals that basketball in New Orleans will forever rank behind the main sports attraction in New Orleans, which is the Saints. Despite producing the second most NBA players per capita, Louisiana will always be a football town. On the New Orleans sports totem pole the Pelicans may be last, behind the beloved Saints, LSU football, LSU Baseball, and perhaps even behind the minor league baseball team, the Babycakes. The Pelicans are the team players come to rehab from injury and rehabilitate their careers. Eric Gordon, who is now thriving on the Houston Rockets, was a shell of his current form in New Orleans. I saw him once at a party in the city. The strangest part of the sighting was how normal he behaved. He and Ryan Anderson, also a former Pelican, awkwardly meandered around the venue like everyone else. In any other city they would have been mobbed by people or sequestered in some roped off VIP section. Similarly, a friend used to own a little lunch spot in a local market. Jrue Holiday and his wife, soccer star Lauren Holiday, would come in and eat. Once again, no one noticed or bothered them. A city where you can make the same millions playing basketball and walk the streets freely like an average joe may entice some. But as much as the money, I believe most athletes hunger for fame. For Zion Williamson, someone who had millions of instagram followers in high school, the level of anonymity that New Orleans offers may be the opposite of what he wants.

More important than the fate of the hapless Pelicans, we need Zion to fix the draft. Recently, NPR ran a story reminding listeners that the Selective Service (the draft) still exists in the US. I, like most modern American men, do not live in dread of the draft, and actually had no idea the draft was still in effect. I know whether or not I am registered like I know my blood type. But for highly prized sports prospects in the major team sports, the draft is less a looming fear and more an inevitability. Further, the hegemony of the sports industry in the lives and minds of athletes makes the draft something that talented prospects are looking forward to, dreaming about even, from a young age. If Zion was a hotshot computer scientist leaving Duke he would have his pick of sexy startups and blue chip firms with whom to join his talents. But as an athlete he has no say. In that same radio interview Zion’s father says, “One thing that Zion has always been taught is that you accept the things that you can’t change.” Historically, most athletes have embodied this passive mentality regarding where they get to play initially, and choose to focus on what they can control on the court or field. But if Zion is truly a transcendent prospect, is it inconceivable that he can transcend even this? Sports conservatives in favor of keeping things consistent will contend that the draft preserves competitive balance. In this recent “Zion” draft lottery the Los Angeles Lakers, which added all-time great LeBron James to their roster last season got the fourth pick, while the Cleveland Cavaliers, which lost said LeBron James and had a significantly worse record, pick after the Lakers. Competitive balance be damned.

As a fan, I will admit that having superstars spread around makes for a more exciting league. A middle ground between competitive balance and more agency for the players must exist. Before the lottery, cameras caught Williamson lingering a little longer around the Atlanta Hawks logo. This choice speaks volumes about Zion. The New York centric media thought it a forgone conclusion that the Knicks were destined to win Zion, and that the attraction to was mutual. But Atlanta presents a truly exciting basketball situation; the chance to run with flashy Rookie of the Year nominee Trae Young within an organization newly acquired by a forward-thinking, new money ownership group within a city that is the epicenter of television (Atlanta), movies (Marvel), and music (Migos, Future, Gucci Mane, Young Thug, Lil Baby...literally too many to name).

When new doctors apply for post-doctoral residencies their exists the National Resident Matching Program and Match Day. A prospective resident makes their list of preferred hospitals, the hospitals similarly make a list of their preferred applicants. The two parties’ lists are processed through an algorithm that makes the final matches. Abolishing the Draft, I propose the NBA Match Program. As opposed to teams possessing all agency and drafting players as they choose, prospects like Zion could submit a ranked list of preferred destinations. Let's say Zion’s list was Atlanta, New York, the Los Angeles Lakers, and so on. Those preferences, as well as the team’s preferences of players−with some weight given to teams with terrible records for the sake of competitive balance−would go into whatever formula and shoot out a match. Zion may not get his first choose, but regardless, he can move into his new workplace knowing he had some say in the result and his future.

In 1999 Steve Francis, a hometown DMV hero of mine, had a look of disgust on draft night after the Vancouver Grizzlies drafted him second overall. He tried giving Vancouver a chance but after an altercation in the Vancouver airport he went about forcing a trade. Francis, a young man who had a tough upbringing in Takoma Park, Maryland, decided, for whatever reason, that he did not want to play in Western Canada. Francis was denounced as difficult, but Francis was not alone in not wanting to play in Western Canada. The Vancouver Grizzlies themselves moved to Memphis two years later in 2001. Billionaire owners are free to uproot a team with players and employees and fans as they see fit, yet a individual player like Francis makes a decision for himself and receives the ire of the public. Zion Williamson may look as intimidating as a real-life Incredible Hulk, but I predict that he will play nice. He will work hard in New Orleans, sign autographs, and kiss babies, all with his megawatt smile. But after some years, like Anthony Davis, he will grow weary and go about making his escape. Better to save time and choose villainy from the start like Francis.

[abdifarah]

Football, Soft As Cream. Being Alive Is the Hard Part.

During the penultimate episode HBO’s Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Cleveland Browns a sideline reporter asks Josh Gordon to share a word with fans in light of all his “ups and downs.” “Love yourself. It’s tough, but try to love yourself.” The message of self-love rings peculiar emerging from the mouth of the physically imposing all-pro football player at the start of a new season; a time often filled with braggadocio and unwarranted optimism. But Gordon is a man in recovery, and getting up to speed on the Browns’ offense and helping the team overcome last season’s 0-16 record are small challenges compared to his lifelong battle with drug addiction. Despite working with Gordon through his prolonged battles and multiple suspensions for breaking the NFL’s substance abuse policies, the Browns ultimately released Gordon two weeks into the 2018 season. When news broke that the venerable New England Patriots had picked up the troubled free-agent, pundits and fans–with a mix of hope and jealousy–predicted that if Gordon was ever going to get his act together and salvage his career it would be within the regimented, no-nonsense perfectionism of the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick's proven system. The Patriots, of all teams–long the villains of the NFL–would reap the benefits of a healthy and focused Josh Gordon.

When Gordon announced towards the end of the regular season that he was leaving the Patriots to “focus on his mental health,” parallel to the NFL suspending Gordon indefinitely for once again violating its drug policy, few were surprised. There was, however, a bit of bewilderment that the Patriot “way” and “system” and “culture” were not able to rescue Gordon from his demons; that if he could not make it there all hope was lost for him in the NFL. But why did we ever think that a team with a decidedly anti-humanist, everyone is expendable, next man up ethos like the New England Patriots would provide any respite for a man whose biggest challenge was not shaking D-backs but overcoming crippling self-loathing and self-destructiveness?

While the Patriots and Bill Belichick’s dispassionate philosophy on human capital is not specifically to blame for Josh Gordon’s mental health and drug abuse issues, they are not wholly unrelated. Belichick in his illustrious career with the Patriots, in which he has won five Super Bowls, has acquired, and revelled in, a reputation for fully embracing the cutthroat nature of professional football, from resorting to questionably legal tactics like spying on opposing teams, to making completely emotionless personnel decisions. Fan favorites and players still in their primes could be cut or traded at a moment’s notice. With a frugality bordering on malevolent, the Patriots refused to pay players their market value, opting instead to call their bluff, insisting that a backup player plugged into their system could produce comparably, and at half the cost. Through all these decisions the message is clear, the white coaches and owners are the kings, the players expendable pawns. And in an NFL where 70 percent of the players are black men, black men are these pawns.

This high level gamesmanship has mostly worked in Belichick and the Patriots’ favor, but recently it has been biting them in their karmic ass. In last year’s Super Bowl, Belichick benched cornerback Malcolm Butler–the hero of Super Bowl XLIX just three years earlier–over a mysterious personal disagreement. The Patriots’ secondary would go on to be torched by the Philadelphia Eagles enroute to losing the big game. Over the offseason, the Patriots traded Brandon Cooks and let go of Danny Amendola–two of the teams best receivers–instead of paying them, leading to an uncharacteristically anemic offense for Tom Brady and Co. to start the season. After an ugly loss to the mediocre (at best) Tennessee Titans, current Titan and former Patriot, Dion Lewis, said of the Patriots, “When you go cheap, you get your ass kicked.” This turn of events led to the Patriots gambling on the erratic receiver Josh Gordon.

That Hard Knocks interview was the first time I had heard Gordon speak, or even seen him without his dehumanizing football helmet and pads. His wisdom and sensitivity was impressive and also a little heartbreaking. Without seeing the man I too fell in the category of people who judged Gordon. Every other year its seemed the NFL suspended Gordon for substance abuse. It got to a point where he had missed more games than he had played. Like many in the media, as well as possessive and entitled fans, I would ponder why he could not just stop doing drugs for a few months out of the year and sit pretty collecting his millions?

Josh Gordon’s nickname is Flash, but at 6’3” and with muscles that look chiseled out of concrete he more resembles Superman. I am sure Gordon remembers when exactly those around him began to view him differently. In his mind he was still that the shy, scrawny poor kid. But friends, family, and community now saw his newly broad shoulders as carrying potential riches and new and better life. In a candid interview for GQ Gordon recounted his history of drug abuse. He spoke of the debilitating anxiety he felt as a young person and his struggles with low self-esteem that lead him to early drug use as middle schooler; habits that would continue and metastasize throughout high school and college. “I didn't want to feel anxiety, I didn't want to feel fear. I didn't plan on living to 18. Day-to-day life, what's gonna happen next? So you self-medicate with Xanax, with marijuana, codeine—to help numb those nerves so you can just function every day.” In the interview Gordon confesses that in his career he never played a game sober. (Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge the morbid wisdom of preemptively numbing oneself before stepping into the violence of the gridiron. How does anyone subject themselves to the impending pain sober? To this end, the NFL does not actually have an anti-drug policy but an anti “your drugs” policy. Players are routinely numbed and anesthetized with tranquilizers and and painkillers. Gordon just preferred the taste of cognac to a Toradol shot.)

Persisting in self-awareness, Gordon admits that he was continually enabled in his drug use–by schools, coaches, teammates–undoubtedly because of his supreme talent and what that talent afforded those around him. Someone as sharp as Gordon understands that without his talent he would probably be in jail, or discarded in some other way. But because he has fly traps for hands and his blurring speed leaves a visible trail in its wake, he is kept around. Like most pro athletes, Gordon lives with the dread of knowing that at any moment, if his 40 time gains a millisecond or two, or his achilles goes Achilles, he can be discarded like the leftovers on the team plane. Additionally, Survivor's remorse lingers: the knowledge that because of luck and arbitrary genetic gifts he has opportunities, second, third and forth chances, that other addicts or black men or black male addicts do not get in America. All of this compounds the sense of depression and self-hatred that fuels addiction. Gordon will probably never play Professional football again. I would not be surprised if he isn’t a little relieved about that.

Sethe, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, chooses to kill her daughter rather than having her suffer the indignities of bondage. Agency through euthanasia, suicide, and self-destructiveness pervades black cultural products. It’s evidenced in Hip hop’s continued glorification of outlaw lifestyles and drug use. In the Ryan Coogler directed Black Panther, Kill Monger chooses to die rather than capitulate to T’Challa and live as a prisoner in Wakanda forever. This football season Le'Veon Bell said nah, to 14.5 million dollars and a short-term deal. In doing, he told Pittsburgh Steelers’ ownership, you don’t own me. Colin Kaepernick and others kneel in protest of police brutality specifically. More potently, they protest against the ownership over black bodies widely; against white supremacist politicians and policies worldwide, and against NFL owners ceasely promulgating their dominion.   

Gordon’s recidivism represents an attempt to forfeit in finality the chance to be enabled in his addiction. For many football fans, the Josh Gordon story ended this season. I am hopeful for his next chapter; one in which Gordon can define himself outside of a codependent relationship to football but rather by loving and healthy relationships. When asked what empowered him through a past relapse Gordon explained, “It wasn't the career, it wasn't money, it wasn't the house, it wasn't cars, it was be[ing] there for the people that matter the most.” Gordon beat the NFL to the punch. He leaves not on a stretcher or having his desperate phone calls ignored by team owners and GM’s, but hopefully in one of his sports cars being driven by a loved one enroute to rehab.

[abdifarah]

Can’t Keep A Good White Man Down

The job was too good to pass up. John’s estranged wife, Holly, took the job and the kids to LA. John stayed behind in New York, unwilling to accept that his wife’s career was on a trajectory as high as the towering Nakatomi Plaza where Holly now works. McClane walks up to the computer directory and says to the guard snidely, “cute toy.” Like his wife’s careerism, the computer age will surely prove to be a fad in the eyes of the luddite McClane. Unable to find Holly in the “M” section, he deflates upon realizing that he must find her under her maiden name, Gennero. McClane takes the elevator to the 30th floor to find Holly at her company’s uproarious Christmas Party. John, a NYPD detective, left a slate of unresolved cases back in the city, but for the Nakatomi company it’s been a champagne year. A tipsy employee plants a sloppy kiss on John’s cheek. Shaking his head, McClane chuckles to himself with tinge of homophobia, “California.” Like Avon Barksdale would say to Stringer Bell, John is looking like a “man without a country.” Left behind by his thriving wife, he visits her in the shiny, technologically superior phallus of the global conglomerate that Holly helps run.

Where does a simple New York City cop fit on an ever-globalizing world economic stage? Flustered by the emasculation of the scenario McClane takes a moment to “freshen up” in Holly’s office bathroom, which looks like a 5 star hotel suite. Looking like Marlon Brando’s ornery Stanley Kowalski, John strips down to his ribbed tank top undershirt, colloquially a “wife-beater.” Apelike, McClane makes “fists with his toes,” bare feet on the plush carpet; a trick that the guy next to him on the plane told him to try to get over the disorientation of air travel. Embracing his primal masculinity, McClane regains himself and sits calmly. He’s ready when he hears the first shots fired. European terrorists (how quaint) have crashed the party and take the guests hostage with goals of robbing the company’s high security vault. Again, what is the place of the blue collar American in the globalizing world? To blow shit up of course when things inevitably get ugly. John springs into action. When Holly is asked by a panicked and skeptical fellow hostage what her husband is doing, she replies confidently and adoringly, “his job.” The outmatched McClane, barefoot and shirtless, proceeds to methodically dismantle the European terrorist cell, with names likes Hans and Karl and dressed in proto H&M cabecord sweaters and tapered slacks, with some good ole American grit, the grit of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, or McClane’s personal favorite, Roy Rogers.

Perhaps culture revolves in 30 year cycles because Die Hard (1988) seems particularly relevant in Trump’s America. McClane is the prototypical disposed white man, stuck in thankless work as city cop, left behind by his wife, skeptical of the promises of globalization, and seemingly proved right by the terrorist cell’s brutal encroachment into the unsuspecting Nakatomi compound. The move to “California” represents the softening of America. Luckily McClane is here to make us hard again. There is a very telling moment early in the terrorist seige. Played by Alan Rickman with an accent that wavers between German and British,The criminal mastermind Hans Gruber attempts to cull out the CEO of the company Joseph Takagi from the anonymous crowd of hostages by listing his accomplishments. “Scholarship student, University of California, 1955; law degree, Stanford, 1962; MBA, Harvard, 1970.” Minutes later upon refusing to divulge the code to the vault Hans dispassionately blows Takagi’s brains across the office carpet as if to confirm that all your hard work, sacrifice, and especially your education are useless in the face of violence.

Die Hard, like conservative America today, asserts that a good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun. At one point John has one of the terrorists at gunpoint. The terrorist, let's call him Franz, calls John’s bluff and quips, “You’re a cop so you’re not supposed to hurt me.” John replies, “Yeah, that’s what my commander keeps telling me.” John McClane is definitely a shoot first, ask questions later kinda cop. Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker! What makes Die Hard infinitely rewatchable 30 years later and not simply a MAGA wet dream is that the movie is fully aware of the holes in its own White Jesus with a Gun premise and spends a good percentage of its second half flipping that construct on its head.

Holly Gennero, is the rare 80’s female character in an action movie that is not helpless or hysterical in the midst of calamity. Now the CEO, since her boss was murdered, she negotiates with the leader of the terrorists, Hans, a man not without reason. With a few measured words Holly secures a couch for a pregnant hostage and bathroom use for the rest of the detained employees, all juxtaposed with John repelling up and down the building like Tarzan and negotiating with the bad guys in his own less diplomatic style. The movie further complicates its good-guy-with-gun>bad-guy-with-gun premise through Reginald VelJohnson’s Sergeant Al Powell character. He serves as the cautionary tale to counter McClane’s fast shooting commando cop ethos. An accident in which Sgt. Powell mistakenly gunned down a 13 year old with a toy gun has left him traumatized and no longer able to pull his gun or work the streets, and relegated by his own conscience to desk duty. His remorse for the incident and atoning decision to hang up his gun seemed reasonable in 1988, but in the ensuing 30 years now glows neon, shaming those of the police fraternity of 2018, who rarely think of admitting culpability in instances of excessive or unwarranted force, and would never deign introspection and the possibility of deeming themselves unfit for duty. Thrust back in the action by answering to the emergency at the Nakatomi Tower, Powell steps in as the critical thinking foil to the hotheaded LAPD and hawkish FBI, and as a pseudo conscience and compass for John, communicating with him via walkie-talkie, as he navigates the crisis.

For a chamber piece with a relatively small cast, Die Hard has three black characters, all with a tinge of the stereotypical, but all embodying distinct expressions of blackness. John’s limo driver Argyle is the most stereotypical: with a nonsense name, in a roll of service, slick talking but somehow still airheaded (is that how they see us, cool but stupid?), but even he has a redeeming final scene, reacting quickly and decisively, and is instrumental in thwarting the terrorists’ last chance at escape. And he doesn’t even sacrifice his life, which black characters are disturbingly prone to do in fiction, even in 2018. A continuation of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the selfless martyr, always looking out for the good of those who couldn’t give a shit. In fact, none of the black characters in Die Hard die. The black characters are even positioned on opposite sides of the moral divide. The wise-cracking and self-assured hacker for the terrorists is a bit too gleeful in his love of criminality, cackling joker-like throughout his overly expressive hacker typing, but he does start the still evergreen trend of the black computer genius at the heart of an action thriller. This mantle passed down to Joe Morton’s skynet inventor in Terminator 2, Ving Rhames’ computer genius, Luther, in the Mission Impossible series, Mos Def’s explosives expert in The Italian Job, and Ludacris’ expert of all things electronic for the Toretto crew in the Fast and Furious franchise. I’m not much for positive depictions of black people in the media being essential for collective uplift, finding them often more limiting than empowering, but I do not mind this black computer genius archetype.

Bruce Willis’ Rambo/Tarzan/Roy Rogers schtick ultimately reaches his end. Bleeding out on the floor of a men’s room, picking shards of glass out of gaping holes on the bottom of his shredded bare feet he radios to Al. Taking stock of his life he tells his new friend to relay a message to Holly. He admits that he was jealous of her success and that he felt left behind. The cathartic admission and Al’s challenge to “tell her yourself” miraculously breathes new life into John. He has an epiphany about the actual intentions of the terrorists, and relying less on brute strength (he still kicks a little ass) he begins to strategically dismantle the plans of Hans and his group. 1988’s message to 2018 is that  Holly will not be going to New York with John, just as coal isn’t coming back. Like the computer, progress is never a fad. You either follow the wife to California or you die a bitter man. And it is only when you forget about the age of Gary Cooper and John Wayne and step out of the shadow of Roy Roger’s 10 gallon hat that you can become John McClane, or whatever new man we need today.

[abdifarah]

This Bud’s For You

Barely off the plane in Austin to celebrate my college roommate, Phil’s pending nuptials with 15 friends from school we are already at the strip club. The gang back together, the slow-motion cascade of ones hitting the ground before our steps as we entered the Yellow Rose felt like the appropriate coronation. We had survived 10 years in the working world. Most of the group already married. School loans paid, houses bought. About five kids born amongst the crew and a few more on the way. Eager to begin the celebration we arrived at the strip club fortuitously early. We were the cavalry on a slow night and the dancers proceeded to show their gratitude. While not naive about the economics of a strip club, the flirtatious looks and close encounters read as strangely genuine and mutually enjoyable on top of the requisite monetary exchanges. Capitalism at its finest. Emphasis on finest.

It was 2009 again and we hadn’t lost a step. Like the tone-deaf colleges students we were, we started calling ourselves H1N1 after the swine-flu strain that ravaged the country that year; we were a pandemic let loose on the streets of Philadelphia. In Austin our 21 year-old livers were magically restored. And for a few hours we were free from demanding domestic responsibilities and high stress jobs that reaped in hair what they gave in money. For a few hours I was free. The liquid courage I steadily funneled down my throat since dragging my suitcase to the first bar directly from the airport allowed me to forget my sometimes crippling germaphobia and quite convoluted relationship to sex. At the Yellow Rose I was embracing the inner sex-positive me. And after having a number of different women’s legs wrapped around my face I was now probably positive in a few other ways as well.

Fast forward 12 hours and the seams of old friendships are beginning to fray like the curling edges of soiled burgundy carpet at the Yellow Rose. After a large breakfast of huevos rancheros and blue raspberry Pedialyte we took a 6 hour boat trip on Lake Travis that saw the once breathless report of airtight relationships devolve into small talk about the weather and disinterested rhetorical inquires about how the wife and kids and mom and dad were doing. Old beefs resurfaced. Revelations that marriages and family life were not all roses. We fill the awkward pauses in conversation with poorly paced alcohol consumption. The iridescent invincibility of the night before had run out. We were rudely reminded that we were washed thirty-somethings, clandestinely vomiting over the side of the boat while no one was looking; balling up on a corner bench for a long nap to recuperate; petty arguments ending with a man getting pushed overboard; and after an evening of making it rain at the strip club, somehow too little cash on hand to scrape together a decent tip for the boat’s crew and bartenders, who suffered us for the day’s voyage.

After showering and finishing the naps we started on the boat we hit the town again. At first we tried for some culture to balance the sloppy boat ride, sitting down at an outdoor cafe for some live music and fancy cocktails. We sipped our cocktails, traded platitudes about the band, and attempted to hold a mature conversation with a bachelorette party nearby, but after proving to ourselves that we could be civilized for at least an hour we were in Ubers on our way back to the Yellow Rose.

As with casinos, one should never return to the strip club for a second night. On second visit your eyes quickly adjust to the dim fluorescent glow of the split level rink-shaped showroom and the cracks begin to reveal themselves. I personally prefer the cracks. Having had a large amount of barbeque before embarking on the evening I was more chemically balanced this time around; not as quick to fast-pitch ones or refill at the ATM with the almost comical $16 surcharge. Without my face smashed in boobs I was able to observe the faces around me. Unlike the night before, tonight the house was packed. A few other bachelor parties and a few loners speckled within the big groups. One group of middle-aged Eastern European dudes and a group of baby-faced Asian guys seemed to be competing for who could spend the most money the fastest.

I walk up to the stage of one of the dancers and began slowly flicking ones in her direction, pacing myself through my modest grip. Seeing right through my tactics she leaned in close and coyly whispered, “I’m going to need all of that honey.” At the Yellow Rose there was no unconditional love, only a direct relationship between money given and affection received. Something about the one to one nature of this exchange I found refreshingly honest. Excuse my cynicism but our doctors do not actually care about our health. Our therapists do not love us. My dentist does not think twice about whether I leave the office and begin flossing regularly as I promised. We pay them and they perform. That stripper was just honest enough to say that plainly.

There is something unsexual about the strip club. The overabundance of naked women cacophonous to the point of becoming noiseless. Capital S, sex ceases to be the payoff, but rather smaller moments in the midst of the spectacle are prized. Locking eyes with a dancer and having them blow you a kiss. A woman puts her arm around your shoulder. Smiling she asks your name and if you’re having a good time. These simple, innocent gestures of acknowledgement feel orgasmic. This basic companionship is what the few older guys here alone, probably regulars, speckled throughout the crowds of rowdy bachelor parties came for. Perhaps acknowledgement was all anyone was ever after, in relationships, jobs, etc. Maybe I do not actually care about being an artist. I just want people to see me. I go to church and do good works because even better than acknowledgement from one's fellow man is the dream that almighty God, the creator of all existence, knows you by name, cares how your day went, is blowing you a kiss.

The night before, in my steroidal exuberance I projected that joy upon the women. They were as happy for me to smack their butts as I was. Tonight I understand that despite the warm expressions there was apathy beneath the mascara and glitter. They were at work. I noticed the girls who looked like it was their first night on the job. A look of oh shit, what have I gotten myself into, painted their faces. It was the same look I had whenever I took on a job just for the money or signed onto a project under false pretenses. I also noticed the pride that the older women took in their work. No longer disappointed by unfulfilled dreams nor under any naive delusions about the glamor of the stripper life, they were free to relish in the simple fact that they were damn good at this. One older lady, probably in her late 40’s, climbed to the top of a 20ft pole and gripped the bar behind her knee hanging upside down. She proceeded to death-defyingly hop down the pole upside down with her arms outstretched by scissoring her legs and switching the grip from behind one knee to the other. For a moment all of the erections in the room subsided and there was a rapturous round of applause, everyone recognizing that we were in the presence of a world class athlete.

I was struck by the diversity of the dancers. Surprisingly, I didn’t see a lot of breast implants or butt injections. Some had long hair, some short. A few of the black women even had natural hair, which is sometimes hard to find even in the real world. Some were lanky and tall, made even more hulking by giant high heels. Some were short enough to move below the surface of the crowd unnoticed. They all seemed confident in this sea of desperate men that they were assuredly somebody's type. There was no segregation. Black dancers chatted jovially with white ones between sets. Asian dancers from both Southeast and Far-east Asia flanked sides of the same stage. In the wake of the World Cup, the soccer field came to mind as the only other venue where I regularly saw this degree of interracial camaraderie. They seemed to respect each other, look out for each other, linked by a profession looked down upon and demonized by both the outside world as well as their often misogynistic patrons. Some women knew they were better dancers and focused on their ground game, while others embraced their athleticism and impressed with acrobatics on the pole. The women with a lot of body to shake moved with the speed of a machine gun, while one particularly skinny girl had mastered slow serpent-like gestures to equally erotic effect. The crew of bouncers were a similarly eclectic cast. One guy was so big as to barely be able to fit through the doorway. I supposed that would come in handy if he had to, say, stop someone from running through the doorway. Another guy, a little person wearing a black dress shirt with a well-tailored black herringbone vest, moved with a confidence and precision that signaled to all that despite his size he was not the one to cross. In this den of scoundrels and outcasts hierarchy had ceased. At the strip club nobody had any footing to place one’s self above another. We were all here together.

At the end of a set each dancer crawls around the stage dispassionately sweeping the cash they’ve earned into a pile and then into an empty beer bucket with their hands. The sides of the buckets read in bold text, THIS BUD’S FOR YOU. One of Budweiser's many banal slogans it did however feel poignant in the moment. This bud’s for you/This rose is for you/This friend is for you. Yellow roses are given as a sign of affection but decidedly unromantic affection. Perhaps you are sending condolences or get well wishes or congratulations. Red roses may appear inappropriate but you still want to send love. Me and my old buddies were not as tight as we used to be, but we loved each other. We might be lying when we swear during our goodbyes that were are going to call and visit more. But for tonight at least we are here for each other, the way the Yellow Rose was there for us both nights of this bachelor party weekend. Never leading us on or pretending the love was anything but conditional, the dancers of the Yellow Rose were good friends to us, provided we kept that cash bucket full.

[abdifarah]

Hotel Pennsylvania

Central Pennsylvania is weird. Homeowners string confederates flags as nonchalantly as Christmas lights. My mom, who moved to Central Pennsylvania against my protests, lives about ten miles from Spring Grove, PA, which we have to drive through whenever we visit my Aunt Darlene and Uncle Kenny right below the Pennsylvania–Maryland line. Spring Grove is a cruel joke of a name as the town perpetually smells of rancid cabbage. The smell emanates from the Glatfelter Paper Mill at the heart of the town. All the shops and services in the town either bear the Glatfelter name or use some corny paper pun in their signage. The old brick row homes that line Main Street have porches but no one sits on them. If you do see someone on the street they have an exhausted expression well beyond their years, perhaps from too many cigarettes, or possibly from years of hopelessly working at the paper mill. A cloud – both literal and spiritual – hangs over Spring Grove.

But there is another kind of small town in Central Pennsylvania. All the companies in this town are higher tech with little pollution to diffuse the sun. Power washed brick houses with immaculately manicured lawns line the small streets of Lititz, Pennsylvania. Voted the Best Small Town in America by AARP, every block has either an ice cream stand, or a guitar shop, or a quaint bed and breakfast. On any summer afternoon the sidewalks and streets are filled with happy people. Kids in their bathing suits weave through older pedestrians on Razor scooters. Fit and fresh faced adults in Tevas and Birkenstocks walk dogs, and still active older couples in Brooks Brothers hold hands while taking an evening stroll. It's the kind of town that takes the Fourth of July very seriously. Year round every house has the same 4 x 6 foot American flag fixed at the same 45 degree angle from a post of the white painted porches that wrap each facade, so as to clear up any confusion with one’s neighbor. “Oh, you’re American? I’m American too! What are the chances?” But around the Fourth somehow more American flags appear. They break out those pleated half-circle numbers with the concentric red, white, and blue ring with the star in the middle, and drape them over their porch railings. Little old ladies plant entire fields of miniature flags in public green spaces, in memory of fallen soldiers. (When exactly did the 4th of July merge with Memorial Day? Let there be no question, Lititz, Pennsylvania loves the troops. In Lititz the 4th alone cannot contain the fireworks, but anytime for about a week before and after you can expect to hear a random boom and see a starburst of red white or blue sparks in the sky.

Unlike Spring Grove, Lititz is thriving, bolstered by a constellation of steady companies offering both good paying blue collar work as well as more tech driven white collar jobs. There is a Rolex factory here. Lititz is what I assume Trump supporters envision when they pray Make America Great Again. Surprisingly, despite the overt patriotism and trappings of Americana, Lititz is not Trump Country. The cute coffee shops and overpriced bistros are populated by salt and pepper haired businessmen pissed that Trump’s steel tariffs are cutting into the bottom line, as well as woke college kids home for summer break shedding genuine tears over the separation of immigrant families at the border. Turns out a lot of white folks despise Trump as much if not more than us various minorities.

Despite the friendly faces and preponderance of liberal allies, my skin still crawls in this still uber-white small town. I am usually the only brown person in sight and while the eyes are kind I do feel all eyes on me wherever I go. I imagine walking into a dark divey bar in depressed Spring Grove and the proverbial record screeches and some grisled bartender asks acerbically, “What are you doing here!?” In Lititz the look on peoples’ faces asks the same “What are you doing here?” without the coldness, but rather with concern or surprise, as if to ask “Are you lost?” “How did you stumble upon our white oasis?” I come to Lititz regularly for work as a subcontractor for one of the big companies fueling the prosperity of Lititz, a company called Tait Towers. Most people will never hear about Tait Towers but they are ubiquitous. If you have gone to a big arena concert in the last 30 years you have seen their work, as they are the foremost supplier of decking and stage equipment for rock and pop concert tours. Anything sleek and shiny and automated that adorned the stage of that last concert you attended was probably Tait.  I get called in when they are working on something a little weirder, handmade, idiosyncratic. Over the years assisting Tait’s in-house Scenic Department, we have built a gold vinyl wrapped tiger and lion for Katy Perry, sculpted a 30 foot jungle Tree for Britney Spears, and created an ice crystal themed stage for Lady Gaga. Turns out the ladies of pop like hand made props to counteract their synthesized sound, for which me and my bank account are grateful. It's not the most avantgarde work, but the pay is decent. They put me up in hotel while I am there. For a while I had Hilton Diamond Status after a particularly long five month stay designing and building an inflatable tree for Cirque du Soleil’s Avatar themed show, Toruk. Strangely, I get asked to make a lot of trees.

This past Saturday I was leaving the local laundromat. My hotel has a washer and dryer but I still jump at any opportunity show my black face in town and mix it up with the townspeople. However awkward, I am a glutton for punishment. As I was turning the corner out of the laundromat parking lot I almost shocked myself into an accident as I witnessed a Chinese family on their porch within a row of houses. Where had these people been during those homogeneous 4th of July celebrations or during those awkward evenings I spent at the bar of the Bull’s Head, a local tavern? I suspected that there was a whole unseen community of minorities in Lititz. I remembered the handful of other black and brown people that worked at Tait. Why had I not seen this more diverse crowd during my daily coffee runs to the local bakery, Dosie Dough, or out walking their dogs or playing with their children in the evening? It seemed that the other people of color went to work, did their job, and immediately jetted home as soon as the day was done. Also, a lot of them probably chose to forego small town living in favor of the more urban Lancaster, Pennsylvania about seven miles south of Lititz.

After a few weeks in Lititz, I too found myself retreating to my hotel room after the work day. Should I go out for dinner for a little more ambiance or grab a drink at the bar with its potential for conversation. The pessimistic belief that I would be the only black person and the sole vessel to absorb the awkward stares proved exhausting. I would instead microwave an Amy’s Mexican casserole bowl for dinner and catch up on the last season of The Americans. At some point myself and the other people of color of Lititz made an unspoken pact with the white people of this sleepy town that we would do our jobs and go home immediately in order to perpetuate the belief that this was one of those ideal small towns, the kind that could be voted Best Small Town in America. When I imagine the best small town in America sadly I do not see a Chinese family, black welders, or even myself.

After years of coming to work with Tait I can confidently say that I hate classic rock. Tait is all about classic rock. The founder, Michael Tait, an Australian expat, got his start building stages for the band Yes in the 60’s. As an independent artist, my short stints with Tait represent my only times working in a real workplace with set hours. For years the shop was haunted by an omnipresent Muzak system that played classic rock incessantly. Everyday at around 4pm the Eagles’ “Hotel California”, a song written by Satan himself, would torment us. Working 10 to 12 to 14 hour days to meet a deadline, 4 o’ clock was our witching hour; too late in the day to bring any new energy or insights to the project, much too early to begin cleaning up for the day. The lyrics, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” taunted me, less because of their spot on description of my current predicament but more because they’re just stupid. Hearing the same “classic” songs day after day I realized the utter mediocrity of classic rock as whole. Just competently melodic enough to be easy to listen to, unlike say punk or metal (both far superior). Lyrically the stories ranged from completely meaningless, to embarrassingly infantile, to undeniably problematic. Somehow we decided that this was the American music, over jazz, blues, funk, and r&b. Classic rock will be playing on the space shuttle we board after we successfully destroy earth and it will be playing on whatever outpost we establish on the faraway planet we colonize.

Currently, I am working on a set of nine sculptures of Elton John that will array the proscenium arch above the stage for his upcoming tour. Overall, I enjoy this work. At least it is not another tree. And as far as pop music goes I dig Elton John’s music more than some of the other pop stars for whom I have made art. However, at the end of a long day sculpting his strange bulbous nose and thin lips for the seventh, eighth or ninth time I begin to sour a bit on Sir Elton. Elton John is 73 years old (probably older since, like most performers, I assume he gave a younger age when he started out) and we are building a stage for him for a projected three year tour that will net him millions of dollars. How many black artists or other musicians of color are still relevant and can sell out arenas into their 60’s and 70’s? Maybe Stevie Wonder? I can easily name 20 white (male) musicians. We already mentioned Elton John; how about Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Sting, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Buffett? I can keep going. Were these giants of rock undeniably better than their female contemporaries or artists of color working at the same time so as to secure an undying career into infinity?

I read in an article years ago detailing some of the financial troubles of T-Boz and Chilli of TLC, that they did not have much money coming in outside of the $1200 royalty check they received monthly. TLC was a group notoriously mistreated and shortchanged by their management and record labels yet they still had $1200 a month in royalties arriving like clockwork. I can barely begin to fathom what a group like the Rolling Stones receives in regular royalties. At any moment a Rolling Stones song plays somewhere on this blue planet. I hypothesize that the proliferation of classic rock around the world may be the biggest form of white welfare. According to the website, Inside Philanthropy, Jimmy Buffett is worth $550 million. He has one terrible song that he has somehow parlayed into a fortune! He is then free to spread that money among various causes or toward organizations like the NRA. Or take rock and roll’s running joke that the Rolling Stones, despite their hard living are somehow, immortal. While humorous and perplexing we all know the reason for these artist’s longevity. Being wanted, having work to do, being asked to perform, and the monetary and emotional support they afford sustains one’s life. I cannot help but feel that the melancholy that we collectively share when a giant of black music dies – Prince a few years back and Aretha Franklin most recently – stems from the understanding that despite their great fame and success their talent deserved more. They deserved Rolling Stones level treatment. Is there a better rock and roll song that Franklin’s “Respect” or “Chain of Fools?” I should have been in Lititz making nine life-size sculptures of Aretha Franklin and not Elton John.

The last time I arrived at Tait to work on a project I noticed the absence of the Muzak system. Every department now controlled their own music. Sometimes someone plays from their Spotify or Apple Music or we just put on the radio. Much to my chagrin and confusion, somehow the Freddy Kruger of classic rock continues to haunt me even with my mostly young coworkers choosing the music. Someone will mindlessly put on the “Beatles Radio” on Pandora, or WXPN, a Philly radio station, will have a “Throwback Thursday” traversing the entire discography of the Rolling Stones. One day during WXPN’s regular offerings (usually a mix of new rock with a few eclectic curve balls thrown every now and then) Childish Gambino AKA Donald Glover’s “This is America” came on (I too am surprised by the ubiquity of this song as I viewed it less as something to casually listen to and more as the multi-level artwork that I was initially presented with through its graphic video. But alas, the song bumps). Almost instinctively, without prompt, fanfare, or commotion one of my coworkers changed the channel. After hours of absorbing banal rock something mysterious sparked a station change. I tried to put this incident out of my mind. Soon after someone put on an Itunes 80’s playlist. Somehow 80’s music has come to mean “White 80’s”; Culture Club, Billy Idol, and all that other Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Say Anything music, completely omitting black acts, save titans like Michael Jackson and Prince. Surprisingly, a Janet Jackson song slipped onto this mostly vanilla playlist, but almost as soon as I started bouncing my shoulders and popping my neck along with Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” someone calmly put down their tools, walked to the computer and skipped to the next song!

I work with genuinely good people. The same liberal minded white people that I would overhear furiously denouncing Trump in the coffee shop. But there was something unconsciously disturbing about a black voice coming out of the office speakers, and conversely something calming and reassuring about A-Ha’s “Take On Me,” which restored the stasis after Janet’s interruption. Was the promulgation of classic rock and other culturally white genres part of some conspiracy to entrench whiteness as the default and everything else an aberration? The truth was probably less insidious and more banal, but no less effective. Sometimes I’ll muster the courage to take over DJ duties and I will attempt to put on a more colorful station or playlist, but even I find myself squirming with embarrassment if a particular black song plays. I am conscious that, unlike those classic rock songs that we all know to the point of no longer hearing them, every word of an unfamiliar song from an unfamiliar voice conspicuously grabs the attention and appears in bold text before ones eyes, complete with a bouncing ball keeping place. This can become awkward when, say, Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” comes on during a 90’s Jams Playlist. I want a freak in the morning/ A freak in the evening, just like me/ I need a roughneck nigga/ That can satisfy me. Why should a song that boldly expresses black female sexuality be awkward for me? I listen to plenty of songs all day that foreground white male sexuality: AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” or Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Or why should a rap song with explicit lyrics put the room in a frenzy? Eric Clapton literally has a song called, “Cocaine.”

White supremacy resides not only within the purview of avowed white supremacists; that resident of Spring Grove or Dover with truck nuts hanging off his gun metal grey Ford Raptor with the giant confederate flag waving. We are all complicit. The MAGA white supremacist is not the only one lying to themselves about America’s past. The liberal resident of Lititz is as well. So am I. Somewhere we all believed the wonderfully illustrative mid-century American propaganda that America was a white family behind a white picket fence and that everyone else is just borrowing space, when in reality people from all ethnic backgrounds have shared this country since day one. And to be more factual there was a time on this land mass before white people; before genocide, theft, and slavery. Us people of color need to combat this as well. We may be mathematical minorities, but we are not new here. We are not the cousin crashing on the couch, lying awake and hungry, afraid to go to the kitchen and make food, so as not to disturb the owners of the house. We need to not be ashamed of our music, our existence. We need to show up and be seen; at those corny 4th of July celebrations and especially at the voting booth, reminding all onlookers that we are just as American. Only then might we all imagine a more diverse picture when we think of the Best Small Town in America, and only then might I be freed from the hell of “Hotel California” playing on my radio into eternity.

[abdifarah]

Beyoncé Gives and Beyoncé Takes. Blessed be the Name of Beyoncé

Years ago I attended this fancy gala in Miami honoring famed Russian dancer and activist Mikhail Baryshnikov. The party boasted a live band fronted by a 50 something blond lady in a blue pants suit (think Hillary Clinton) that performed every top 40 song on the radio at the time. Its was 2005 so think, Lil’ Jon, Usher, Gwen Stefani, and Britney Spears. Contrary to their Ann Taylor/Brooks Brothers appearance, the band killed it, putting to shame the original performers. The lead singer (again, think Hillary Clinton) even spit all the rap verses. And without needing to grade on a curve (generally a given for white rappers), the flow was official. Beyoncé’s shape shifting performances across Everything Is Love reminded me of that party. But like the lady in the pants suit belting out, To the window, to the wall, til the sweat drips down my balls, there is something unsettling about a musical assassin the likes of Beyoncé absorbing and redeploying everyone else’s best moves like a berserking T-1000.

Everything Is Love plays like an immaculately curated jukebox, sifting choice samples and quotes from all of your other favorite artists, and as a bonus you get Beyoncé performing it all. A line here, a turn of phrase or dialect there, Everything Is Love and Lemonade before it lay bare a treasure chest of Beyoncé’s stylistic conquests and acquisitions, gathered throughout years of pop music pillaging. And like the raiders of the artifacts of oceania or King Tutankhamun's tomb that now populate the world’s museums, she didn’t ask. I commiserate with Jacobim Mugatu exasperatedly explaining to the world that Blue Steel and Le Tigre were the same look! I would regularly interject during the radio deluge that was Lemonade in 2016 that the refrain from Beyoncé’s revenge anthem Hold Up was eerily close to Karen O’s on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs classic ballad Maps. Hold up they don’t love you like I love you///Wait, they don’t love you like I love you.

On Friends, Bey smoothly rap/sings, “fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, fuck you,” quoting Kid Cudi. Instantly recognizable from the sacred text, A Kid Named Cudi, the artist’s early mixtape, which remains a charmed relic witnessing Cudi’s as yet unreached potential. Over the past few weeks I have heard a number of people quoting that line, and from the sassy smirk on their faces as they speak the lines I know that they are embodying Beyoncé and not Cudi. In my Shang Tsung voice: the line is now hers. On Apeshit Beyoncé and Jay-Z do Migos better than the Migos, ad-libs and all. To make the stunt even more stuntful, the actual Migos are on the song trying desperately to keep up. I imagine the Atlanta trio in the studio with huge grins tinged with a bit of fear watching Bey mimic their style to perfection while adding a little stank to it for good measure.

Track to track the campaign of conquest continues. Heard About Us is literally a SZA song, down to SZA’s particular pronunciation of the N-word – Nikas. Not to be left out, Jay gets in on the action, quoting Common’s line from Erykah Badu’s Love of My Life, “Y'all know how I met her/ We broke up and got back together/To get her back, I had to sweat her,” not once but on two different songs! In summary, The Carters be stealin’. But it may be impossible for artists as prolific and influential as the Beyoncé and Jay-Z to steal. Beyoncé can make a SZA song, no questions asked, because SZA probably doesn’t exist with Beyoncé. On Nice Bey raps, “I give you life!” Beyoncé, like the God of Job, giveth and taketh freely. The rampant, borderline problematic, appropriation of this peak career Beyoncé and late career – yet still razor sharp – Jay-Z (last year’s 4:44 may be his best album, just saying) is The Carters ultimate flex.

The story goes Marvin Gaye originally wanted to sing the American songbook like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, but save for a few exceptions like Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. black men were not easily granted this venerated position within the music industry: to have your voice so purely appreciated and be so celebrated and accepted for who you are that you had the honor of singing only the standards. Not burdened with the added pressure of writing and arranging, these mavens were liberated to explore and perfect the full artistry of their voice. On Everything is Love The Carters avenge Gaye, subsuming and filtering the whole of pop music into their version of singing the standards. Jay-Z for one has been on a career long mission of righting historical wrongs. One 2001’s Izzo off the seminal The Blueprint, Jay raps, “I’m overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush;” a forerunning hip hop group egregiously exploited by record company executives. The Louvre, the site of the Apeshit video serves as the perfect fortress for the Carter coup. All culture, from high art to trap music, is theirs to do with as they please. The Louvre after all simultaneously represents the best of human artistry as well as serving as the consummate shrine to imperialism. Everything in the building – the Nike, the Venus De Milo, even the Mona Lisa – arrived there through some wresting of power and shift in dominion.

Everything is Love is not about music, though the music is fun. It's a corporate merger bordering on monopoly, and the two principals can not be bothered by human sized questions like originality or who said or did what first. This is enterprise level. Steal the technology, rename it Instagram Stories and bet the consumers will ultimately stay at home with their preferred providers, Bey and Jay, instead of toggling between apps. Even the title Everything is Love sounds like ad copy for some behemoth brand, dogma from a hollywood cult, or the utterance of an actual deity; Mr. Manhattan hovering both over the globe and between every atom, seeing things at such a macro and micro level that birth and death, a summer breeze or nuclear blast, individualist capitalism and collective communist revolt all become one. Identities merge. On Black Effect Jay-Z vaunts, “I’m Malcolm X!” Two verses later Beyoncé proclaims, “I’m Malcolm X!” The transitive property in all its splendor. Beyoncé spanning gender tells the sycophants to “get off my dick.” In the prelude to Black Effect, my favorite song on the album, an older lady with a Caribbean accent expounds on the mysteries of love, concluding that love for all mankind should be the culmination of things. Perhaps this love for all mankind, and not some myopic power move, is the ultimate goal of Beyoncé and Jay-Z and the higher purpose behind all of the stealing, and appropriation, and craven capitalism. Beyoncé doesn’t want to steal from SZA, she thought CTRL was dope and wanted to make some music just as good. Bey likes A Kid Named Cudi just as much as your college roommate did. And while Jay doesn’t casually throw compliments toward other rappers, he regularly reminds that he’s a fan of Common* and even if the world does not think of him in the list of the greats, Jay does. At a time when borders are becoming less malleable, conservatives and liberals must stay in discreet boxes and feign hatred for fear of appearing traitorous, genuine love and enthusiasm gets you labelled a Stan, and the slightest whiff of cultural appropriation is abruptly stamped out, Beyoncé and Jay-Z want everybody to lighten the fuck up. Feel free to try on someone else’s style, root for a country other than your own in the World Cup, vote on behalf of someone else and not just in your own interests, grab your dick and go apeshit while still being a lady, or strap on an apron like Darius and get in touch with your inner auntie by putting your foot in some greens. In the end everything is love.

[abdifarah]

Clumsy Courage

Most of us would not recognize real courage if it looked us in the face, or if it stood up a few rows ahead of us during a college graduation. Three young students stood in the stands of the Superdome just as Tulane University President Mike Fitts entered the conclusion of his remarks to the graduating class of 2018. In call and response fashion they chanted, Black lives matter, Justice for Kenan! Black lives matter, Justice for Jalen! and so on, looping through three or four names. I did not recognize the names. Not the canonical Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner roll call. I immediately felt shamefully out of touch. I intimated they were referencing events of discrimination specific to Tulane this past year and not incidents of national note. They interrupted the charismatic, jovial leader of the school as he encouraged the graduating class of 2018 to be fearless as they used their hard earned (and richly financed) educations to confront the world’s ills. The parents in my section were understandably, yet disproportionally, vexed by the nuisance of the protesters muddying up their big day of celebration. Some grumbled under their breath, more signaled to the ushers or swiveled their necks frantically in hopes of alerting security. They squirmed uncontrollably in their seats as if fire ants had magically manifested in everyone’s Hanes and Jockeys. Middle-aged white folks are allergic to breaks in the norm. One particularly unpleasant man yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” at the youngsters with a violence usually reserved for confronting the murderer of a family member. These parents and loved ones of the graduates gave nodding amens along with President Fitts as he anointed their children the next Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. However, when real, inconvenient civil disobedience stood up, they did not hesitate to squash the unwelcome intruders like cockroaches. After all, these families did not send their children to college to actually save the world, just to be told that one day they would.

I am sitting in the stands during this event – my own graduation – because I am a jaded artist getting his MFA. I could not be bothered to rent the cap and gown and actually participate in the ceremony, but I figured I would at least go and watch. Perhaps naive, or just “unbearably woke,” as me and the other grisled grad students would joke, these undergrad Black Lives Matter protesters were nonetheless heroes. Historical accounts do not convey the terror, bravery and awkwardness of genuine protest. Those students who stood in my section and were straightway mowed down by the parents and Mr. Shut The Fuck Up were not confident, charismatic revolutionaries. Their knees buckled and their voices quivered as they delivered their rehearsed lines. They were uncertain of if and when they made their point and how long to procede, how to hold their hands, and whether to acquiesce to the vitriol of the shouts around them. Through the guilding of time the marches and sit-ins and boycotts of the civil rights era seem like a no-brainer. Of course I would’ve been there, you convince yourself. When we read history we naturally envision ourselves in the place of the protagonists. We read the Bible, and see ourselves, not as the stubborn and timid Israelites or self-righteous pharisees, but rather as God or Christ himself. In real time courage is a divine revelation and dispensation, and not the least bit common.

Similarly, the television screen does not capture the preciousness of genuine courage. When Colin Kaepernick started his protest of the national anthem back in 2016 I was unimpressed. That’s it? What does kneeling do about the real deaths of innocent black men and women? An egregious case of armchair quarterbacking on my part. The gesture seemed too subtle and ineffectual. This assessment changed this past fall when I attended a high school football game between Holy Cross and Archbishop Rummel. I regularly attend high school football games in New Orleans, snapping reference photos of the players and onlookers for an ongoing series of artwork. But for the most part I attend games featuring predominantly black schools. At games featuring black schools both teams will usually have a few players who kneel during the anthem in solidarity, or at least in mimicry of Kaep’. Black football is a safe-space for this political self-expression. This Holy Cross vs. Rummel game was my first foray into the other side of New Orleans high school football; the white, affluent, private, Christian school side. The packed crowd in the colosseum bowl of Tad Gormley Arena thunderously arose at the PA announcers introduction of the national anthem. Hands white on both sides crossed hearts and hats were expediently removed to reveal red and blond and sandy brown hair. Standing on the field with my camera and looking around at the intimidating crowd – thousands of white people piously reciting the lyrics to the national anthem – I got chills at the thought of drawing any attention to myself, let alone purposefully attempting to extinguish the rapturous flames of this collective exercise in patriotism and self aggrandizement. The simple act of positioning one’s black body, forcing White Americans to reckon with what their nationalism (when full grown, a dogmatic faith in white supremacy) has purposefully and indirectly wrought upon other black and brown bodies throughout history became for me a capacious gesture.

Like those trembling Tulane students, Kaepernick expected to be crushed. The roach that instead of scurrying at the flood of light, pauses defiantly in the middle of the kitchen floor, resigned to its explosive execution at the bottom of grandpa’s slipper. Colin Kaepernick knew before everyone that the 2016 NFL season would be his last. Fans of his and his fight held out hope that one of the self-proclaimed “progressive” or “player-centered” franchises like the Seattle Seahawks would pick up Kaepernick, but he had already counted the cost. And like those fresh-faced, white Tulane coeds absorbing aggressive jeers in order to voice the names of their beleaguered black classmates, Kaep’ did not need to do it. He could have contently collected millions for years to come until his body eventually gave out. Instead he condescended and thought it not robbery to be equals with those named and unnamed victims of police violence (as well as the unemployed, the ranks of which he foresaw joining). During that Catholic school football game action paused a handful of times for medical personnel to attend to an injured man on the field. At first sight of a fallen player everybody on the sidelines, on both teams, immediately drops to one knee and bows their head in prayer. Likewise onlookers in the stands bow and pray. Somberly the packed stadium prays that the injury is not catastrophic and that the player will bounce up miraculously and rejoin the huddle as if nothing occured. To these teams and fans the act of kneeling or bowing one's head in prayer joins them with the incapacitated athlete as if to say when you hurt, I hurt. Sadly, the hypocrisy of kneeling in prayer for an injured player while denouncing similar gestures in solidarity with those injured not by helmet to helmet hits or blind-sided tackles but rather by systemic racism sailed over the heads of those conservative crowds of Louisianans at both the graduation and the football game like a terribly overthrown pass.

[abdifarah]

Style of Play

The 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors, with a league record 73 wins, are a transformative team that is forcing all other franchises to reevaluate how they build their rosters and how they play on the court. Every decade or so a team like this emerges that either perfects an existing style or introduces a new way to ball that other other teams must bow down to or adopt.

As an artist this changing of paradigms reminds me of the emergence of movements in art. In art these periods are just as pronounced and as in sports, often cleverly named.

I thought it might be interesting to compare trailblazing teams with revolutionary artistic movements. Hopefully this results in a better understanding of evolution and innovation within any creative endeavor, and how a group of people can literally “change the game.”

The Impressionists <<<>>> The Early Early Celtics

Invention often emerges from failure and poverty. At the close of the 19th century painters, once responsible for immortalizing dignitaries and illustrating history, were out of a job thanks to the invention of the camera and the spread of literacy (damn), which made the need for depicting history and religious stories obsolete. The Impressionists viewed this commercial death sentence as their emancipation. Instead of being forced to paint 8 year old Prince Edward for the twentieth time, artists were now free to paint what they wanted: scenes from everyday life, portraits of family and friends, or just to paint cause they liked slapping paint around a canvas. Modern Art is born!

Likewise the Boston Celtics were a struggling franchise in the 50’s when they were absorbed into the NBA. As a losing franchise they were forced to try new things including drafting the 1st black player, Chuck Cooper, being the 1st team to have an all black starting lineup in 1964, and earlier in their history, taking a risk on Bob Cousy, who was deemed too flashy. Newsflash: black folks can play ball, and creativity and expression is a gift and not a liability.

Dada<<<>>> The Bad Boys

Sometimes in order to advance your craft you gotta piss off your peers and predecessors. While the larger world of modern artists were incrementally expanding the bounds of what art was and was not the Dadaist shot straight to the extremes. Displaying used urinals in galleries, patenting natural phenomena, the Dadaists wanted to offend. If something was deemed taboo or preposterous as art they went there and are almost single handedly responsible for the amorphous, lawless definition of art we uphold today.

The Bad Boy Detroit Pistons of the late 80’s/early 90’s also embraced irritation and instigation as a means to gaining dominance over their opponents. The Bad Boys would fight, argue, foul hard, and shirk sportsmanship until you as their opponent were unsure if you were still in a basketball game or if you had stumbled into a gang fight.

Pop Art <<<>>> Showtime

Sports can become so serious and art can become unbearably pretentious, but both are essentially pastimes for kids. Those practitioners who can remember that the root of sport and art is self expression, fun, and entertainment have an advantage over their no-nonsense peers. The Showtime Lakers had fun playing basketball and their confident joy was both infectious and invigorating to teammates and fans and unnerving to their opponents.

The Pop Artists emerged as a backlash to the self-reliant and self righteous Abstract Expressionists, who believed that the best artists were internally inspired and propelled. Pop, and postmodernism more broadly, embraced the humble fact that artists did not have to be godlike creators who manifested art ex nihilo, but that we all are shaped by the world around us; from the cartoons we watched as a kid, to the colors on the box of cereal we ate this morning. While AbEx became stale and repetitive, the postmodernists were regularly refreshed by pop culture, current events, and embracing new technology en route to making more democratic and less esoteric art.

De Stijl <<<>>> Go Spurs Go

Modernism is simply a return to basics. It is an acknowledgment that an art form or craft is at its most potent when it has been purified of all superfluous action and responsibility. In art that meant ceasing to do anything that another art form could do better. Telling stories? Leave that to literature. Drama and conflict? Theatre can handle that. Where does art’s true power lie? Color, materials, form, line. The De Stijl movement in the Netherlands took this mandate of purification to the fullest. Artists like Piet Mondrian refused to use anything but the primary colors: unmixed, undiluted red, yellow, and blue, and only perfectly vertical or horizontal black lines.

The Spurs organization is beloved by some who see their “make the logical decision” brand of basketball as the embodiment of the beautiful game. Some see them as just boring. But the Spurs, like the early modernists know, that good basketball, like good art, should be simple. Dribble, pass, shoot, hit free throws, limit turnovers, play disciplined defense, win 5 championships.

Futurism <<<>>> 7 Seconds or Less Suns

There have been many iterations of an uptempo offense but none were as dogmatic as the mid 2000’s Phoenix Suns led by Steve Nash and Mike D’Antoni’s windshield wiper offense, coined “7 Seconds Or Less.” Ignoring the balanced efforts of previous champions like the Spurs or Bulls, who emphasized excellence and efficiency on offense and defense, the Suns boldly proclaimed that defense is stupid and the game is measured in points, of which they would score the most.

The Futurists of pre-fascist Italy likewise renounced Italy’s ancient honor and saw it’s storied history as stifling the nation’s progress relative to the rest of the industrial world. Forgetting stagnant icons like the marbles of Michelangelo or the crumbling ruins of the coliseum, the Futurists in their bombastic manifestos proclaimed the need for new Italy to gain inspiration from the automobile and other machines that were speeding up the rate of human development. Their work is explicitly about motion, violence, invention, and revolution often to an unsettling end. Like the Suns, the Futurists saw the mastery of physical time as a means to literally getting to one’s desired goal the fastest.

[abdifarah]

Kobe’s Farewell Tour Belongs to Iverson

Kobe Bryant, along with Tim Duncan, is the most talented and decorated basketball player of this past generation, but the NBA and it's players and fans are lying to themselves if they think he is the most influential or important. These distinctions belongs solely to Allen Iverson. During Kobe's strange “farewell tour” I've been perplexed by the layers of gratitude and respect bestowed upon Kobe by today's All-Stars. The players and the NBA family as a whole seem honest in their need to honor a great predecessor, but seem ultimately uneasy by the fact that that object of their affections is Kobe Bryant: a player that until about 2008 seemed completely uninterested in the surrounding world and who most were convinced was stylistically a robotic clone of Michael Jordan. Thusly, the farewell tour has been awkward at best.

Conversely, Allen Iverson changed the NBA. The players dominating now - Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard, Chris Paul, John Wall, Kyle Lowry - and the overall ball dominant point guard driven League that we see was forged more in the image of Allen Iverson than anyone would like to admit. For guards, Iverson showed that size didn't have to be a liability and that a creative and virtuosic handle was nothing to be hidden or bridled, rather it was a potentially devastating weapon in the hands of the trained (you're welcome Kyrie). From a GM’s perspective Iverson helped shift the league from a big-man first league and gave teams the confidence that a small guard could be the cornerstone of a team (Paul, Lillard).

Allen Iverson attacked defenses and disrupted passing lanes with Kamakazi like abandon. In a league now where players fastidiously manage their minutes and take games off for “rest” Iverson annually led the league in minutes per game and perpetually played through injury. While those who worked with him questioned his work ethic off the court, he was a consummate  professional and showman on the court and genuinely sought to give both home and visiting fans a great performance night in and out.

One Tangent: a defining moment in Allen Iverson’s history, especially as it relates to nba darlings like Kobe, was the 2004 olympics in Athens. In 2004 George W. Bush’s 2nd term appeared inevitable, American moral was at an all-time low, and the best basketball players in the US thought themselves above international play. Iverson on the other hand who was snubbed in 2000 despite being the league’s leading scorer was the lone star that represented the US in the 2004 Olympics. Their bronze medal was seen as a disgrace. The players on that team, led by Iverson, Stephon Marbury, and Lamar Odom (a lead 3 that would struggle to win NBA, let alone Olympic games) should feel proud and all shame should be on the superstars who thought the task beneath them: Bryant, O’Neal, Garnett, Webber, Duncan, Carter, Kidd, McGrady, to name a few. In 2008, when America once again wanted to compete seriously, Kobe and the new class of superstars received all the credit and were deemed patriots, while Iverson was excluded from the team. Someone in USA basketball owes Iverson a Gold Medal.

Despite being nominated to the Hall of Fame, the conspiracy theorist in me believes that Allen Iverson is being systematically written out of the foreground of nba history. The NBA’s desire to marginalize Allen Iverson within its annals seems innocent and understandable on one end. Allen Iverson was a winner but never a champion, unlike Bryant and Duncan who have ten rings between them. Also, in this age of analytics, Iverson never sniffed 50:40:90 or Steph Curry-like PER. In our “only championships matter” world people have forgotten how wonderfully emotional it can be to watch good players just play ball without the constant on-court calculations of the statistical darlings. Tim Duncan is an all-time great but has anyone ever been genuinely moved by a Tim Duncan performance? LeBron James is the best player of his generation but as he has become more savvy and calculating he is now damn-near unwatchable. Sometimes the winners are boring.

There is another reason why Allen Iverson has been more maliciously tucked away and that is because he was the last genuine anti-hero and anti-celebrity. He never fit the NBA’s ideal of the charming, well-rounded celebrity/player. I am personally fatigued by the athlete-as-media darling and business mogul embodied by today's superstars. Don't get me wrong, I'll never knock someone's hustle, especially an athlete with a limited window of commercial relevance. But there is a way in which today's superstar is a yes-man and corporate sellout willing to smile for anyone with a camera and checkbook. The nba loves this new superstar that is as brand conscious as they are, that lives in Beverly Hills in the off-season, and that competes to be the sharpest dressed for pre and post-game interviews.

Allen Iverson didn't give a fuck. He had his wife or mom braid his hair, hung out with his boys in VA in the Summer, got tattoos before they were cool (you’re welcome world), and by just being himself he exposed the nba’s inherent racism and lack of respect for its mostly black workforce, evidenced most visibly by the unctuous “dress code” imposed by former commissioner David Stern. Could you ever imagine a dress code being enforced in one of the non-black pro sports leagues like baseball or hockey? Iverson spoke his mind in press conferences and his provocative points were reduced to memes. This explains why some athletes, like Russell Westbrook or Kevin Durant, express skepticism for the media.

In a documentary about Iverson, former coach and sometime combatant Larry Brown expressed sadness saying “[Iverson] could have been the biggest nba star ever[, even bigger than Jordan.]” Brown seemed disappointed that Iverson didn't go out of his way to grab this golden ticket. For me Allen Iverson continues to be a hero especially because he did not strive to be the most famous person possible. He didn't care if everyone liked him and thusly, unlike Jordan, Kobe, or LeBron, he is absolutely beloved. I am encouraged that the NBA is doing the obvious thing of inducting Iverson into the hall of fame and recognizing a truly significant and unforgettable contributor to the game. My remaining regret is that for most of his playing days he was vilified and legislated against. He certainly did not receive any farewell tour.