|  Hollywood Jesus Newsletter #119
Pop Culture from a Spiritual Point of View
July 2, 2005
Greetings from David Bruce, Web Master
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Cinematic Race Relations
2. Narnia Radio Broadcast
****
Cinematic Race Relations
By Mike Gunn
After Eden Forum
I have been traveling quite a bit these past few weeks, and being on the go has afforded me the luxury of watching some films on my mini-DVD player that I haven’t had a chance to see. Two films stood out which came out in the same time period, Clockers (1995) and Get on the Bus (1996). Both of these films remind me of Spike Lee’s genius and Hollywood’s disregard of his work. Why were these films such marketing and box office after-thoughts?
Spike’s creation of dialogue rivals Hitchcock, yet I’ve never heard anyone speak of him in the same breath. The difference between Lee and Hitchcock is that Hitchcock remained culturally neutral, speaking from the majority position, while Lee is audacious and speaks from the margins.
But like Hitchcock, Spike has an amazing ability to create meaningful dialogue, which is most often peppered with controversy, and I believe it is the latter that many Americans may struggle with. Case in point, his movie Bamboozled was no doubt dark, controversial and irreverent, but it did not deserve the poor reviews it garnered.
Spike has created important, meaningful projects (not including He Got Game), but has been pretty much ignored at both the box office and the Oscars. Why is that so? My speculation is that white America still struggles to listen to a black man speak about
the obvious elephants etched in the American psyche. We’re not quite ready to listen to the potential of inherent racism in the post-Cosby generation. Do the Right Thing (1989) was filmed before the LA riots in 1992, but was quite prophetic in that it portrayed the reality of our inner city issues and racism that were vehemently being ignored by statesmen and politicians, and passed off as murmurings of the discontented.
With Bamboozled and Get on the Bus, Spike shows us that he isn’t afraid to attack the problems across our culture on all fronts, white and black; but it is the lack of white boxoffice and respect for these films that ostensibly indicate that “We can’t handle the truth!” Spike’s movies ask long, hard questions of both races, and stares racism and hatred in the face leaving the blame to no one in particular, but everyone in general.
I think we need to listen to Spike. In Do the Right Thing he confronts us with racism in both the brown world and the black world, and reminds us of the cauldron that can boil over any minute due to the fact that we choose to ignore our differences instead of confronting them and ultimately celebrating them. Bamboozled challenges both white and black America in regard to the role TV plays in racism, separation and hatred in America. Get on the Bus is not only a reflection on the “Million Man March” (which by the way went ignored by white America), but a hard look at the issues of prejudice within the black community. It makes us look at what freedom really is, and what kind of price freedom demands.
These are important themes in a country divided by Red and Blue, and every other color in between. We are on a collision course of cultural values that has apocalypse written all over it, yet action flicks and heart-warming stories win our awards and presence. We just don’t seem to want to stop and think with Spike about our nation’s woes, and the solutions that are in front of us.
As After Eden comes to a close, I hope that we can become thinkers with men and women who, like Spike, make us mad, make us think and give us hope. The only way that we have any hope of “getting along” is by centering our lives around that which matters, listening to one another and living to make a difference. It’s easy to get “geeked out” over movies like Star Wars (I know, because I do), but let’s not allow ourselves to be isolated spectators in a world that desperately needs leadership! Let’s get up and “Do the Right Thing!”
Would you like to comment on this article? Please stop in at the After Eden Forum on Hollywood Jesus. Click Here!
****
My first real experience as an actor was in a sixth-grade production of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Our teacher had the brilliant idea of staging it as a radio play, broadcast to the entire school over the intercom system. The day of the production, the school office was transformed into a live-radio broadcast booth, complete with all the requisite sound effects to pull off a convincing audio experience for the student body. For the next two hours, the school was spell-bound. And I was hooked. I've worked in theatre ever since.
Unfortunately, though, I've never again had the pleasure of being part of a Radio Theatre production. It's a unique artform, one that captures the immediacy of a live stage performance and yet the sense of deliberate art direction that we get from film. When I've tried to direct stage productions with a similar kind of evocative auditory design, actors have rebelled. They feel it takes away some of their improvisational liberties. And they're right. It does. Radio Theatre is less about the actors being "in the moment" and more about putting the audience "in the moment."
If you've never experienced Radio Theatre, I highly recommend the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre production of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Despite state-of-the-art sound design and editing (and, in part, due to that very design), this pre-recorded theatre broadcast completely captures the immediacy and power of live Radio Theatre.
One reason is that writer/director Paul McCusker is devoted to the art of Radio Theatre, and has an extensive resume that qualifies him for the task. Another reason is that the British cast, which includes Oscar-winner Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1962) and David Suchet (TV's Hercule Poirot), is mostly well-acquainted with Radio Theatre. This contrasts starkly with American actors, who, by and large, tend to have very little exposure to the art.
The really good news is that McCusker has also taken great pains to present an adaptation that is wholly faithful to the original book. There are the natural failures of radio to fully convey the visual sense of the book, of course, such as the character-defining facial expressions that Lewis describes during Edmund's first encounter with the White Witch. And the necessities of putting into dialog what Lewis glosses in descriptive passages lead to some oddities, such as when Aslan says "Thank you" when Peter hands him his sword for his knighting ceremony.
But these are very small shortcomings. With very few exceptions, McCusker makes sound choices in dividing the story between narration and dialog, and perhaps only steps wrong for family audiences when prolongingly dramatizing Aslan's death. Certainly, this scene is less surprising now than it would have been prior to the release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Still, it may be too gruesome for some children to bear.
In addition, Suchet's vocal characterization of Aslan may strike some as overdone. McCusker explains that Suchet was aiming at an enunciative style that would be consistent with the facial gymnastics necessary for a lion to speak English understandably. From that standpoint, the delivery makes sense, but is still distracting at times.
Nonetheless, this production of The Chronicles of Narnia (at least, based on the one volume I listened to) is well worth your time, particularly if you spend a lot of time with your family in the car. Begun in 1997 and originally completed last year, the series is being given another full run on the radio this summer. Visit the Narnia Radio website for a schedule and list of participating radio stations.
Better yet, buy a copy. If you listen to this series once, I think you'll want to listen to it again.
And if you're leery of this adaption because of the Focus on the Family connection, don't be. McCusker's calling is art, not politics or evangelism.
Comment here
For More Narnia Coverage at Hollywood Jesus:
—News Blog
—Feature Articles
—Overview
—Photos
—Links |
