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Blog Post 6 Sunken Place: On Black Magic

In class this week, we watched a few short films inspired by the movie Wake, which follows a woman who conjures up a husband after her father passes. However, as the film notes, you cannot conjure with unclean hands. The man whom the woman conjures has something—off—about him, and she ends up needing to kill him. When she hits his corpse with her ax, he returns to dirt. Seeing the theme of voodoo/conjuring come up in so many of my peers' short films made me want to explore the idea of rituals in Black Horror more, as this is a common trope in both Black-director made horror films, as well as stereotypical portrayals of Black people in horror. For instance, the trope of the “magical negro” is a common stereotype which holds that the only Black character in a film be some sort of high-voodoo priest or priestess. We can see elements of this throughout films studied for this course, namely, Love, Ouanga. The horror element in Ouanga comes mainly from Fredi Washington’s character (Clelie) exerting her power over the white characters in the film. The movie was clearly not made for Black audiences—the only Black characters were either the typical simple servants or the cartoonishly evil voodoo priestess. This fear of “Black magic” can also be seen in films like Ganja and Hess, where we see a mix of longing for Africa while also implying that Africa is the source of evil in the film. In Ganja and Hess, Hess is stabbed with a knife originally belonging to an African tribe. After this, he becomes overcome with an insatiable thirst for blood. Throughout the film, we see cuts to Hess walking through open fields in seemingly traditional African garments. While this would imply a sort of longing for Africa, Africa is also presented as the reason for Hess’ morphing into a vampire and his inevitable death. Furthermore, the concept of Africa in Ganja and Hess is seemingly pitted against traditional Christianity—the religion which “shakes” Hess out of his vampiric desires and causes him to commit suicide. Here, we see a strange metaphorical fight between good and evil, where Christianity is good, and Africa is, again, tied to the concept of “evil.” Though often problematic, many Black horror creators have been able to use voodoo/ritual magic in Black Horror while still respecting the origins and complex religious background of these rituals. There is nothing wrong with using themes of voodoo in Black Horror, but it must be regarded with the same nuance and complexity as any other religion while doing so, rather than being used as an element of horror in itself.

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Blog Post 5 Sunken Place: On Blacula

The movie Blacula came out in the midst of the “Blaxploitation” era, a time where Black people were being cast in movies, but in ways that perpetuated horrific stereotypes. For a majority of film history thus far, Black characters were used either to overtly perpetuate violently racist stereotypes or as props who died within minutes of a film. This is best exemplified by movies like Birth of a Nation, in which actors in blackface were used to create an image of the Black man as a vile beast lusting after white women. Later in film history, Black characters were used as tropes, like the sacrificial or magical negro. In these films, Black characters existed as a form of representation, only to be the first to die or the one to sacrifice their life for the white protagonist. For instance, The Shining had the only Black character sacrifice his life for the white family. During the Blaxploitation era, depictions of Black characters went from maids and servants to “pimps and h—s” (Horror Noire). Black characters were no longer being completely ignored in film, however, representation of Black characters was used in order to perpetuate a stereotypical notion of what Black people were—the Blaxploitation era was, in large, made by white people and for white people. Out of this era, however, came Blacula—a film with a Black lead and a Black director. As cheesy as I believe the name Blacula is, it is hugely impactful to think about this film in the context of its time: Blacula was not portrayed as a gangster/ pimp, as so often occurred in Blaxploitation films, but rather as a well educated diplomat who was portrayed at dinner with a white count during the 1700s. In nearly all other films of this time period, Black characters in this time frame are portrayed as slaves or ignored entirely out of a fear of acknowledging the world’s dark and brutal history of slavery. Here, we see a well-educated Black man challenging a white count on the issue of slavery, referring to it as a brutal institution. Later in the film, Blacula takes down a white police officer. Imagery like this is what makes Blacula so impactful: in an era of using Black individuals as film tropes and stereotypes, we see a Black male lead asserting power over his surroundings. He does not embody stereotypes, rather, he is a unique and nuanced villain who is able to depict often avoided film themes such as Black love, reclaiming Africa, and power against the police.

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Blog Post 4: On Eve's Bayou

Kasi Lemmons’ film Eye’s Bayou follows Eve, a ten-year-old girl, and her journey watching her family and spiritual life unfold before her eyes. In the film, we are introduced to Eve as a cheerful young girl, who within minutes of the film, discovers her father cheating on her mother. Her father, Louis, was a respected doctor in the community, and immediately sat Eve down to calmly talk to her. Rather than portraying Louis as a drunken man abrasively cheating on his wife, Lemmons portrays Louis in this moment as a kind and loving father. Immediately after the incident, Eve is not concerned with asking him to explain what she just saw, but rather immediately asks, “do you still love me? Do you still love mama?” Eve worships her father so dearly that she is more concerned with what her father thinks of her than what she just witnessed. However, when Eve learns that her father may have behaved inappropriately with her sister, Cecily, she begins to hate him so much that she wishes him dead—eventually attempting to set a curse on him. Eve’s emotional journey is one of the true horrors of the film: as viewers, we watch a bright-eyed young girl who adores her father begin to see the casual monstrosity with which he operates, and we literally see her love and adoration turn to hate. I would argue that Lemmons’ true genius is showcased in the way in which film walks the line between what we know and what we think we know. Most notably, this comes in with the issue of what really happened with Louis and Cecily. While I believe that Kasi Lemmons maintained the uncertainty of the situation purposefully, I would argue that it does not matter who initiated the kiss—what matters is everything leading up to that moment. In terms of Cecily, she spends a majority of the film acting far older than her age. She acts as a mother to the other children, taking it upon herself to protect Eve from the knowledge of her father’s infidelity, even when it clearly breaks her heart. She waits up for her father each night, as would a patient wife, and when he returns she immediately goes to fix him a drink. She even gets her hair done like her mother and barges into the home with a full face of makeup. As she stares into her mother’s face, it is clear that Lemmons intentionally depicts Cecily as attempting to become her mother, perhaps because she feared that she would lose her father to infidelity if she did not step in. However, even with this, I believe that the most important aspect of this narrative is the actions and dynamics of Louis which caused Cecily to behave in this way. In the beginning of the film, it is immediately revealed that Louis tends to favor Cecily for dancing—always picking her over Eve. When he returns to see Cecily waiting up for him, he does not reprimand her. Instead, he begins to banter with her in the same manner that he speaks to the women whom he commits adultery with. Louis caused Cecily to believe that love means being constantly sexually fulfilled through his numerous mistresses. He normalized her acting like an adult while she was still a young girl, and as an adult, he knew the dynamics of the household he was building. Even if Cecily leaned in for the kiss, she did so because she was groomed to by her father’s monstrous behaviors. I believe that this is the point that Lemmons is making through her maintenance of the nuance within the scene.

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Blog Post 3 Sunken Place: On Candym*n

I first watched Nia DaCosta’s 2020 Candyman a few years ago, when it originally came out. While I loved the movie as a horror fan, I could not truly understand the power of DaCosta’s Candyman until I watched the 1992 original film this past week. The 1992 Candyman follows a white graduate student, Helen, who is doing a research project on urban legends and becomes fascinated by the story of Candyman. Helen soon becomes targeted by Candyman as she refuses to believe in him, and he ends up destroying her life. In the film, Candyman’s backstory is explained as a former slave who painted portraits for wealthy whites. He fell in love with a white woman, and she eventually became pregnant. In response, he was brutally lynched—his hand was cut off and he was covered in honey next to a beehive. Notably, in the original story written by Clive Barker, Candyman was not even black. The 1992 film added the element of race, but did so in a highly problematic way.

The brutalization of black bodies is the first notable aspect that makes the 1992 Candyman problematic. Though Candyman was supposedly a former slave, in the 1992 film, he targets the black neighborhood of Cabrini-Green rather than enacting any sort of revenge for his horrific death. In addition, although Bernadette does not say Candyman’s name five times, she was the one killed by him at first. In addition, black actors in Candyman are portrayed more so as props than as people. Stereotypes are rampant in the 1992 film: Bernadette as the black best friend, the black thugs who beat up Helen, Anne-Marie as a black single mother. Moreover, even the dialogue from black characters seems to be used only in two ways: to perpetuate black stereotypes or to use their blackness as a protection against underlying racist dialogue. For instance, when Bernadette and Helen are exploring the housing project, Bernadette speaks about how it “smells” and how she is scared by the people living there. Though she is a black character, the dialogue was written by wealthy white men—men who were likely using Kasi Lemmons’ blackness as a cover for racist dialogue/tropes. Moreover, there is the problematically cartoon-ish nature of Cabrini-Green in itself. In an interview, the producers of the original film spoke about how they had to bring in trash to make the housing project look worse. In the bathroom scene, “sweets to the sweet” was literally written in feces, and no black character bats an eye. The highly problematic nature of the original film, however, does not take away from the impact of the relevance of Candyman to the horror world—especially with DaCosta’s new film in 2020.

DaCosta’s Candyman, unlike the original, is truly a black horror film. Rather than filming yet another racist movie portraying black monstrosity, the 2020 film portrays Candyman as an avenger. No black bodies are hurt (at least on screen) by Candyman, who instead seeks retribution/ redemption for the racial violence of his past. The movie ends with the infamous line, “TELL EVERYONE,” an homage to Candyman as more than a “monster” —rather, an avenging angel. DaCosta’s 2002 film was able to create dread without retraumatizing her audience, and is a true representation of iconic Black horror.

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Blog Post 2: On Us

In rewatching Jordan Peele’s Us, I focused on two major motifs that I hadn’t analyzed in depth in my past viewings. Firstly, I watched the film with the goal of fully understanding the truth of the tethered and the twist with Adelaide and Red. At the end of the movie, it is revealed that the woman we know as “Adelaide” is actually one of the tethered—she had kidnapped the real Adelaide and locked her in the underground. In my most recent viewing, I noticed that “Red” was the only member of the tethered that could speak. While I originally assumed that this was simply to signify her status as the leader of the tethered, I would now argue that this is because she is the only member of the tethered that was born in the real world/ with a soul. As the tethered were created to be shadows of the real world people, they had no reason to learn to speak. Their actions were determined by the overground people—they moved as drones, mindlessly mimicking the above-ground world while trapped in the tunnels below. As Red mentions in her speech to Adelaide’s family, although Adelaide got to choose her husband, it did not matter what Red wanted. She simply had to follow the actions of the person to which she was tethered. However, since Red was actually born above ground, she maintained her ability to speak, although her voice was damaged from years of unuse and Adelaide choking her as a child. This further ties into why Adelaide was mute after the “incident” as a child. The opening of the movie shows Adelaide’s parents taking her to a child psychologist, who tells them that Adelaide is experiencing some sort of hysterical muteness due to the trauma of her brief disappearance. However, I would argue that Adelaide was mute because she simply did not know how to speak. In the underground, no one needed to speak; so it was not her distrust of her new parents/trauma of the incident that caused her muteness, but rather her genuine inability to speak as a result of being one of the tethered. 

The second major motif that I had not examined prior to this rewatch was that of Jason and his possible neurodivergence. Throughout the film, Jason shows several signs of some sort of developmental condition: he exhibits repetitive movements, inappropriate/delayed speech, and social stagnation. Importantly, he was also the first in his family to notice the tethered, and was the only one who was able to control his doppleganger. This brings up the notion that perhaps Jason’s neurodivergence allowed him to connect to the tethered in a way that neurotypical people cannot. I found that this was most noticeable when Jason led Pluto into the fire—something that he was able to do without even speaking. Every interaction that Jason has with Pluto is nonverbal—something that is unique with respect to the rest of the family. Although none of the dopplegangers speak except for Red, every other character almost instinctively talks to their tethered other. Whether out of fear or reflex, the above-ground characters tend to speak/ yell at their attackers—with the exception of Jason. In both scenes with Jason and Pluto, Jason does not speak, but rather finds some form of nonverbal communication in which he is able to relate to Pluto and control him. This becomes even more significant when taking into account the relevance of nonverbal communication to Autism—most, if not all, people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience some sort of speech delay or abnormality. Many ASD individuals do not have the ability to speak at all, and instead choose to communicate nonverbally. Jason is able to communicate nonverbally with Pluto almost immediately, possibly because of his ASD/ neurodivergence, and arguably saves his family by doing so.

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Blog Post 1 Sunken Place: On Get Out

Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a film I was more than happy to rewatch for the third time recently, and it is a film that I often feel I gain more from each time I watch it. Upon my most recent viewing of the film, I focused on the minor details in the beginning of the film that acted as thematic ties throughout. For instance, it was only my most recent rewatch that allowed me to tie together the scene of the deer dying slowly on the side of the road to Chris’ mothers death. Peele spoke in an interview about how horror films have around 20 minutes to establish the horror aspect: around this point of the movie, the audience begins to wonder where/when the horror will begin. Before the deer accident, Get Out follows Chris and Rose’s peaceful coexistence, with the most tension coming from Chris finding out that Rose did not mention to her parents that he is black. The accident not only adds a jumpscare element, catching the viewer off guard, but also shows Chris’ vulnerability in the context of seeing something which reminds him of his mother. As Chris hears the deer’s dying groans, he inches towards it—even unsure of his own behaviors. Although we do not know it yet, Chris’ face in this scene parallels his face as he enters the Sunken Place and begins thinking about his mother. The deer scene serves to set the “horror” tone of the movie while also setting up the vulnerability and fragility of Chris’ mental state around the topic of death. 

Similarly, Rose’s father’s character had a huge amount of foreshadowing that I did not pick up on until I rewatched the film. Although his microaggressions are obvious— “I would have voted for Obama a third term if I could” —some of his comments are more subtle, yet exponentially more insidious in the context of the film. For instance, when Rose and Chris are describing the deer accident, Rose’s father states that the deer are “an infestation.” He refers to them as “black mold,” an undoubtedly intentional choice by Peele to reveal the underlying hostility within the father’s “woke” persona. 

Another aspect which I noticed upon my most recent rewatch was the strength of Georgina’s character. The past two times I saw Get Out, I thought of Georgina as a character designed to be unsettling—her tearful laugh and primal screeching in Chris’ car at the end of the movie were two of the most fear-inducing scenes throughout the film. However, upon hearing Peele himself speak about how Georgina was the strongest person stuck in the Sunken place, I viewed her character in a new light. The first time we meet Georgina, she pours iced tea for Chris, spilling all over the table. Later, Georgina begins crying uncontrollably while maintaining a smile on her face. Georgina is the only Sunken character who is able to communicate with Chris in any way. This is especially impressive under the light that Georgina may be the first person ever put into the Sunken place—as Chris is going through Rose’s photo albums, he comes across the picture of her and Georgina last, meaning she was likely one of the first people Rose brought home. Georgina’s strength is easy to miss, but once noticed, it adds a new layer of depth to the film.

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Blog Post 6: On Mentality

Physical and mental ability are key themes in N.K Jemisin Waking Awake, and these themes are seen throughout Afrofuturist works. Waking Awake surrounds a society in which parasitic beings have gained control, and are using human bodies as vessels. Here, the physical ability of the human bodies/vessels surpasses all else. At one point, a parasite choses a 10 year old girl as her new vessel—knowing that the girl may not even survive the procedure—solely because the girl had a talent for athleticism and dance. However, it is the mental ability of the protagonist that ends up mattering the most, as she is able to communicate with the spirits of those whose bodies were taken over by the parasites and gain the knowledge necessary to rebel. This dichotomy between mental and physical ability transcends Waking Awake and can be seen in a variety of Afrofuturist work. For example, Olamina in Parable of the Sower suffered from hyperempathy syndrome, causing her to literally feel the pain of others. In her dystopia, this was a huge risk for both herself and others—not only was she vulnerable as a woman hyperempath to be sold into a sex trafficking ring, she was also constantly at risk of losing consciousness in a fight for her life. However, it was Olamina’s mental strength that allowed her to survive for so long and to found Earthseed. Olamina was constantly at the whim of her own thoughts—unsure of where her Earthseed passages were coming from. She described herself as a scribe, writing down the messages she received—a sort of prophet for her own religion. Whether or not Olamina was literally being spoken to by a divine being, I would still argue that Earthseed is a testament to her mental ability. Olamina, unlike any others in Robledo, was cursed with a boundless desire to know and to understand. She spent her life trying to make sense of her world and trying to understand how and why she needed to survive. Although inflicted by an essentially terminal condition in her world, Olamina was able to survive because of her mental capabilities. More than that, Olamina only wanted to survive because of her mental capabilities. While still in Robledo, Lauren spoke drearily of the life that awaited her within the walls—marrying a man, ignoring the outside world, and bringing even more children into an overpopulated dystopia. Her mental strength allowed her to see the meaning in a meaningless world through her recognition that everything would one day change. Afrofuturist works utilize this dichotomy, likely because of its relevance to our modern day dystopia. People of color still face oppression, and if the systems of power remain the way they currently stand, this oppression will remain as well. However, as much as our physical capabilities may be outwardly limited by these systems, our mental capabilities will never waiver. This, in itself, is the reason why Afrofuturism as a genre is so powerful.

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Blog Post 5: On District 9

There is a wrong way to write Afrofuturism, and Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 achieved exactly that—if a film with zero black protagonists could even be considered Afrofuturism. In a shallow attempt to create a social commentary about xenophobia and otherism, Blomkamp somehow found a way to demonize Black individuals and blackness as a whole. Some of the most obvious depictions of Black individuals as inhuman come from the portrayal of Nigerians in the film. We are introduced to the Nigerian population of District 9 early in the film as a criminal group that relies on scamming the aliens and prostitution to sustain their lifestyle. Nigerians are immediately portrayed as barbaric criminals who jump at the chance to exploit the aliens through selling them cat food at exorbitant prices. Rather than even attempting to provide a reason for why the Nigerian community interacts with the aliens, Blomkamp made the decision to portray these individuals as literal beasts—practicing cannibalism and preying on the aliens who don’t know any better. District 9 attempts to tackle the issue of xenophobia—fearing or hating an outside group simply because they seem different from you—yet in doing so, relied on xenophobic stereotypes against Nigerian people. Scenes with the Nigerians take up very little of the film’s running time, and yet every scene depicts them engaging in acts of barbarism: from eating alien flesh to prostituting themselves to the prawns. In an attempt to spread a message about not demonizing the other, Blomkamp did not hesitate to demonize Nigerian people. Moreover, although scenes with the Nigerians are limited, they are some of the few actual Black characters in the film. The protagonist of the film is a White man, and the Black soldier portrayed holds only a menial role, subservient to Wikus. The message projected by this imagery is clear: the White man is civilized, and the Black man can be reduced to nothing more than criminals, servants, and beasts. 

In response to this critique, those involved with the film’s production have argued that as a science fiction movie, they meant no offense or harm to any real life country or individual. In my opinion, this is the most pathetic excuse for xenophobia I have ever heard from such a large budget film. “District 9”, quite obviously, symbolizes District 6, the inner-city section of Cape Town, South Africa where 60,000 non-White individuals were forcibly segregated during apartheid. The entire film is a thinly-veiled (at most) reference to the xenophobia and racial friction still present in South Africa, characterized by demonization of the other. Yet, in order to make this point, Blomkamp chooses to reinforce dehumanizing stereotypes of Nigerians and blackness as a whole.

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Blog Post 4: On Like Daughter

Tananarive Due’s Like Daughter surrounds a woman (Denise) who is having a mental breakdown after her husband leaves her. However, as the main character of the story comes to realize, Denise’s distress does not stem from the collapse of her marriage. It stems from her daughter—Denise must witness her daughter, a literal clone of herself, go through her first trauma as her father leaves her. This story stuck out to me as it surrounds the ethicality of cloning. In this universe, scientists have discovered how to clone any living thing. The Supreme Court subsequently bans the production of “copycat babies,” reasoning that humankind should not be in the business of recreating souls. I found it most interesting that, in this universe, after discovering cloning, 240 people immediately signed up to be cloned and have copycat babies. For Denise, this was so that she could attempt to relive her life without the horrific abuse and trauma she endured to see if she could have turned out better. The narrator brings up that she does not know why anyone else would want to go through with the procedure, and suggests narcissism or nostalgia as two possible explanations. This struck me more than anything else in the piece. Humans have dubbed ourselves as the most advanced species, citing anything from skyscapers to cerebral cortices to support this statement. I did not find it surprising that hundreds of people signed up to clone themselves; rather, I found it surprising that more people did not. 

Even in a world plagued by overpopulation, we convince ourselves that we are unique—that we are special. As a psychology major, I have studied some of the biases that lead us to this kind of thinking. For instance, we tend to believe in the just world hypothesis: good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. This is the same attributional bias that leads us to believe that when we cut someone off on the road, it's because we are busy, but when anyone else does it, they are bad drivers. We want to believe that we are perfect, and that our only flaws come from our environment—the way our parents raised us, our relationships with others, the hardships we faced in childhood. It is far easier to believe that we would have been perfect if not for our baggage than to admit that we are born flawed, and that some of our flaws just become more salient under duress. I believe that in a world where people could clone themselves, more than just a few hundred would. So many of today’s parents already try to live out their own shortcomings through their children; I find it difficult to imagine a world in which people wouldn’t jump at this perceived opportunity for a second chance. 

By no means do I think that the “copycat children” are a good thing. The only true aspects which separate human life from things like AI are our innate ability to be unarguably conscious (which, some would argue, AI is beginning to develop) and the knowledge we must hold that one day, we will be gone. The only reason we have to find meaning in our traumas is that we only have this one life—we must either find meaning in our past or continue to ruminate on what might have been. Like Daughter is a clear depiction of what happens when someone is allowed to do the latter. Denise becomes obsessed with the idea that she can create a perfect life for her daughter—a perfect life for herself—in a feeble attempt to erase her own trauma. As Denise learned, we cannot erase our past, but we can use it to grow. 

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Blog Post #3: On Brother From Another Planet

Community is a theme in a variety of Afrofuturist works, and for good reason. From Parable of the Sower to Brother From Another Planet, the notion of community serves to be a driving factor in many key aspects of Afrofuturism. In John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet, the alien being from another planet must rely on his surroundings to keep him safe. He spends the film being pursued by two agents/ slave dealers who come from his home planet. Eventually, the community steps in to save the “brother” from those who are trying to capture him. Even without speaking, the alien finds a place in Harlem. Though he had inhuman abilities and features (like his three toes), the sense of friendship he found with the men at the bar and the love that can be seen to develop with the woman singing at the club (Malverne) both represent his distinctly human connections with those around him. This sense of community can be found in a variety of Afrofuturist works, such as through the community that Olamina built with Earthseed in Parable or the community of workers and Equisapiens fighting together in Sorry to Bother You. The community depicted in Brother From Another Planet had its flaws, but when the time came, they fought to protect the “brother” who needed help. Because the alien does not speak throughout the film, his interactions with the community are dictated by others’ perception of him. One especially interesting aspect is that no one in the community seems to care that the brother has the power to manipulate/fix technology with his hands, so long as this power is used to their benefit. The alien’s lack of speech leads us to focus on how the humans in Harlem view him, both as an outsider with otherworldly traits and as a Black-presententing character. Throughout the film, characters interacting with the brother tend to drone on about themselves, at times unknowing if the “brother” can even understand what they are saying. I thought that this was especially notable—half the time, in modern conversations, it feels as though everyone is waiting for an opportunity to talk about themselves. Those interacting with the brother were able to ramble about themselves even though the brother was literally incapable of responding, speaking to the narcissism innate in human nature. This, in congruence with the community’s apathetic reaction to the brother’s ability to fix technology without even touching it, further speaks to human tendency to view others in terms of what they can do for us. This is another theme that is brought up consistently in Afrofuturist work. For instance, in Space Traders, the corporate elite worried about losing the Black population solely because of the potential loss of the economic and political purposes that Black communities serve. In Rusties, the traffic robots were created with the purpose of solving issues that humans no longer wanted to deal with. Although Brother From Another Planet focuses less on the exploitation of marginalized communities, I thought that the way that the people in Harlem interacted with the brother was definitely notable.

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Blog Post 2: On Earthseed

The first real-life issue that would make it necessary to create my Earthseed community is one that is also at play within Olamina’s world—climate change. As a climate justice activist, climate change has been at the forefront of my mind for as long as I can remember, and every year we are seeing more tangible effects from it. Just as Olamina’s world is filled with people who are unprepared and unaware of the true state of the world due to pure denial, the United States currently is one of the only developed nations that still faces a great deal of misinformation and unawareness about the causes and impacts of climate change. Climate change is currently affecting people in nations around the world, and it is causing damage at huge rates in countries like Chad and Somalia. Though the effects seen in the United States are less extreme than in other nations, many climate scientists agree that we have less than 10 years before the damaging effects of climate change become irreversible. The second pressing issue that I would be seeking shelter from is gun violence. Growing up in Chicago, I saw the effects of gun violence firsthand. The violence in the city seems to worsen every year, and has spread into the north side of the city as well. When reading Parable of the Sower, I couldn’t help but think of the senseless violence in areas of my own hometown that are too dangerous to even drive through anymore. 

“All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

I would use this passage in my Earthseed community in order to reinforce the power of hope. The Earth is ever changing, both naturally and anthropomorphically. Accepting the power of Change would allow my community to understand that by creating a new haven, we would not be fleeing—rather, changing into something different. Something better. Change is the only constant in our universe, and my Earthseed community would be a tiny blip compared to the vast contents of time and space. Acknowledging our own insignificance is key to accepting life for the way it is—constantly changing, never stagnant.

“When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying external or internal forces.”

I would use this passage in my Earthseed community to emphasize the importance of active social change. The government is, at its core, was created by the people, for the people. However, as our country has progressed, the only unifying sentiment among our polarized nation is an overwhelming distrust and disapproval of our government. My Earthseed community must understand that once a governing body begins to act against the will of the people or becomes secretive, it is failing to accomplish its intended purpose of service and, in turn, must change. This is true both for the beginning of my Earthseed community as for the inevitable end—if and when my community fails to serve, it must change or be changed. 

I want to create my Earthseed community near a fresh body of water, away from cities or large places. Additionally, I would like my Earthseed community to be within the central area of the United States, as central areas are less likely to suffer the most damaging effects of climate change. As I am biased to the Midwest, I would start my Earthseed community in Wisconsin or Michigan, off the coast of Lake Superior.

In order to join my Earthseed community, people must have empathy (not the hyperempathy syndrome from Parable of the Sower). I consider my empathy towards others to be one of my greatest strengths, as it allows me to understand how others feel or their perspectives in conflicts. I would not want my Earthseed community to be all like-minded individuals, as diversity of thought is necessary for a community to flourish. However, I would require every member of my community to have empathy for others in order to ensure that people would be willing to give a little in order to help others. Although I value diversity of thought, I would not allow anyone with hateful beliefs to join my community. The hate ingrained in all forms of bigotry, from racism to homophobia to sexism etc., is deep-rooted and difficult to cleanse oneself of. I will not accept any form of hatred, including hatred towards people in power or politicians. Hate is too strong of an emotion to risk fostering within my community. 

The leadership model for my community will be fairly democratic. I do not think any one person should be in power, but rather each individual can have a role within the community that they are in charge of. There can be managerial/executive roles, closer to that of the typical presidential role, as well as skill based roles. For instance, I would not want to be in charge of money related decisions, as this is an area I lack confidence in. Instead, I would prefer to be in charge of organizational decisions, like making shifts for lookout or for chores. 

The technology which I would create would be a more cost-effective and energy-effective way to turn seawater into freshwater (desalination). Currently, desalination is widely used but not able to be used on a large scale due to massive cost and energy expenditures. The novel desalination technology I am proposing would be able to function on renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, and would be portable/widely accessible. This would allow our community to take advantage of rising sea levels and attempt to reverse some of the effects of climate change on a small scale. In addition, it would make clean water easier to access.

Our Earthseed community will survive similar to the way Olamina’s community survived in Parable of the Sower. We will likely need to resort to violence occasionally, but we will use it sparingly and only ever kill to prevent more suffering. Ideally, I would want to foster my community on tenants of nonviolence, however, as the state of our nation lurches closer and closer to the dystopian world portrayed in Butler’s novel, I doubt that any community improperly equipped to deal with crime will survive. However, our community will at maximum have two guns, and they will only be used by trained individuals. Everyone else will be trained in self-defense and how to hide and relocate quickly. 

Our Earthseed community will create a better future through using all resources gained to help others and the greater community. My community will be one that is actively seeking out new members who can join and be helped. In return, each member must give something back to the Earth and community. We will plant trees in every location we can. We will compost our food scraps in order to enrich our soil and only plant what we need—nothing more. My community will only create and consume enough to sustain ourselves, and with everything we take from the Earth, we will give something back (through planting trees or repurposing old single-use materials). In addition, our Earthseed community will build a better future through attempting to use our resources to help those in need. With our community, we will create schools that are free to attend. These schools will not only promote literacy and higher education, but will also attempt to discourage violence and generate awareness for climate change. This would allow for the tenants of our Earthseed community to become widespread and have impacts greater than any one person could achieve.

[harderrain-sweetersun]

Blog Post 1: On Space Traders

I am not sure that anything could have prepared me for the far too realistic world portrayed in Derrick Bell’s Space Traders. The film depicts a universe in which the United States is approached by an alien nation who promises to solve all the environmental and economic crises that the nation is facing at one cost—the entirety of the Black population. 

One phrase continuously rang through my mind as I watched this film—“America, even if you weren’t Black where you came from, you are here.” Throughout the film, multiple Black characters (Gleason Golightly, the religious leader, Gleason’s family) are shown to have conflicting viewpoints on the correct course of action to take. Regardless, all people seen as “Black” would end up being exiled to the alien nation. It did not matter that Gleason was a prominent member of the conservative cabinet. It did not matter that the Church he visited was filled with people who disagreed with his viewpoints and identity as a whole. To the alien nation, they were all Black. I find this to be an eerie reference to America itself. A country built on diversity—founded by immigrants—and yet we seem to have two races: White or Other. As a person of color who grew up in a White, conservative town, my ethnic origins did not matter beyond the color of my skin. It did not matter that my parents immigrated from different parts of India; that my mother, a practicing Catholic, went against cultural norms and married my atheistic Jainist father; that I was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up doing the same things as my white peers, oblivious to the difference in our skin color until those differences were thrown back at me. Nothing mattered beyond the fact that my skin was dark, and everyone else’s was light. Similarly, the idea of “Blackness” is flawed. As referenced by Gleason’s struggle to unite Black folk from different walks of life during the five day decision period, there is no one Black community to unite. Angela Davis referenced this in her Meaning of Freedom lectures, where she spoke about “the fiction of Black unity.” Davis referenced how anyone in power can be conscripted into positions of violence against others—regardless of what minority group the person in power is a part of, and thus, there is no point in pretending that all Black people will agree on any given issue based solely on the color of their skin. In addition, Space Traders brought up an interesting critique of the disparities between rich and poor minority groups. When debating the consequences of exiling the Black population into outer space, a delegate brought up that poor White Americans would not like being the “bottom of the totem pole.” I found this to be an extremely interesting, though brief, statement. Michelle Alexander, in her The New Jim Crow, brought up the idea of a racial bribe: extending special privileges to a small fraction of a minority group to further divide them. Conservative politicians did exactly that through appealing to poor White voters by virtue of their skin color—thus turning them against the population that they had the most in common with (poor Black voters). This comment by the delegate in Space Traders references this racial bribe in that without a Black population to demonize, conservative politicians would have no way of appealing to poor white voters and convincing them to vote against their own best interests.