Saturday, February 26, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Mooz-lum': New film tries to bridge faith and fear
Mooz-Lum is an independent film that debuted late last year to standing-room-only audiences and well-earned praise at last year's Urbanworld Film Festival. Making its wide-release debut today after an aggressive grassroots push to elevate its profile sufficiently to get it into theaters, this thoughtful picture arrives at an auspicious time. Culture-watchers are embroiled in a vigorous debate about an apparent dearth of quality roles for black actors, which a few weeks ago resulted in a shutout of Oscar nominations. At the same time, instances of Islamic extremism continue to occupy headlines worldwide, even as the memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still percolate in the minds of many nearly ten years later.
Part coming-of-age drama, part religious exegesis, Mooz-lum strives to be the latest cinematic effort to spark cross-cultural dialogue. In fact, the title is a deliberate mispronunciation of the Muslim, meant to evoke the idea of misunderstanding. At a January screening in New York City, Novice filmmaker Qasim "Q" Basir describes the film as semi-autobiographical, and an attempt to cultivate a better mainstream understanding of the Islamic faith. "When terrorist acts happen, Muslims are affected to. Not only are Muslims affected by the violence of terrorists, but [they are] being associated with terrorists," Basir told a room of viewers. "This is not for the Tyler Perry audience," he joked. And in many ways, he's absolutely correct.
All of which means that Mooz-lum, despite its earnestness and gripping performances, walks something of a tightrope between moralizing and well-meaning, yet ultimately insufficient, attempts to educate. The movie has at its core a compelling though flawed premise, even as it gingerly sidesteps the director's central objective: trying to distinguish the beliefs of peace-loving Muslims from the radical interpretation of Islam that birthed the September 11 plots, and continues to fuel extremism worldwide.
Evan Ross anchors the movie with a brilliant and often mesmerizing performance as Tariq Mahdi, a college-bound African-American who finds himself torn between a devout and disciplinarian Muslim father Hassan (played by the criminally underrated Roger Guenveur Smith), and his doting yet fiercely independent mother (portrayed by Nia Long, another woefully underestimated actor). In a series of jarring flashbacks and flash-forwards, viewers learn that Tariq's seminal religious experience was being enrolled briefly in an Islamic religious school as a young boy, where a series of traumatic events cause him to reject his strict religious upbringing.
Once he enrolls in college, Tariq battles against an encroaching sense of alienation from his peers, distancing himself from his religion and many of those around him. The cast is rounded out by a comparatively brief appearance by Danny Glover, who hovers over the movie malevolently as the college's antagonistic dean.
While Tariq clearly doesn't identify with the strictures of Islam, at various points during the movie he demonstrates a deft understanding of the Qu'ran and speaking Arabic. His religious upbringing leads to some awkward interactions and make adjusting to college life difficult for him. Still, Tariq manages to keep his religion and his observant Muslim roommate at arms length, even as culture wars continually erupt around him.
The traumatic event of Sept. 11 becomes a plot device that propels the narrative into hyperdrive, and it is at this point where Mooz-lum's flaws become most glaring. The immediate aftermath of the attack leads to mass confusion, fear and bigotry on campus, as non-Muslim students inevitably clash with their Islam-following peers. Given the horrifying events of that fateful day, some degree of fear and loathing was an understandable, if irrational, response to the crisis. But as terror sweeps the campus and Tariq's friends are caught in the middle, the movie misses an opportunity to discuss how ordinary Muslims differ from those who are inspired by violent extremism. Rather than fostering understanding, non-Muslims are depicted in semi-caricature fashion as xenophobic, marauding bigots. Motivated by vengeance, they blindly lash out at anyone who isn't like them.
Granted, Mooz-lum is an independent movie with a limited budget, and one that the director forthrightly states was a vehicle for his own personal self-examination. But Mooz-lum's core values seem to be redemption and understanding, its unstated promise to clarify the distinctions between ordinary and radical Muslims ultimately evaporates. Whether by design or accident, the movie actually does more to highlight many of the cultural and relationship conflicts adherence to Islam can provoke. Tariq's parents, who have differing interpretations of what it means to be a good Muslim, are ultimately torn apart by a religion to which they both adhere. The movie only mentions in passing the reasons why, and almost never delves deeply into the reasons why conflict and tension seems to pulsate when the movie's Muslims interact with non-Muslims -- and even when they deal with other Muslims.
In 2006, HBO debuted Big Love, a drama about a fundamentalist Mormon with three wives, to much media fanfare. As someone who was curious about the Mormon faith and mainstream references to its belief in polygamy, I tuned in hoping to be enlightened by Mormonism. After watching the first few episodes -- which were bogged down with interpersonal dynamics and politics and hierarchy between the wives -- I quickly lost interest. It struck me that Mooz-lum, though thought-provoking and gripping in its own way, was weighted by a similar fundamental problem that prevented me from enjoying Big Love: too much emphasis on the dramatic, coupled with underwhelming exposition.
Movies about religion are invariably fraught with controversy, but they should make you think. While it is worth seeing for the dramatic performances alone, Mooz-lum falls short in its effort to promote religious understanding. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't break new ground in illuminating the pressing question of why ordinary Muslims, who are ostensibly eager to avoid being lumped in with extremists, often remain reticent in the face of Islamic-inspired violence.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR 'MOOZ-LUM'
MOOZ-lum Theatrical Trailer from Qasim Basir on Vimeo.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Houston Texas racist history
Torres' only act of resistance was in taking a step away from the officers because he could not understand them. And yet, still, the officers involved were no billed for their actions. I could go on and on regarding such cases but will resolve to just listing the names of a few victims who have fallen victim to what can be perceived as similar circumstances since the 1970s: Ida Lee Delaney, Pedro Oregon, Byron Gillum, Tyrone Henry, Samuel Padilla, Juan Carlos Espinosa and Carl Hamilton.
On a broader scale, these incidents are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg in the Houston area. A study conducted by investigative journalists from the Houston Chronicle and the Detroit Free Press in 2001 found that, when combined, the Harris County Sheriff's Department and the Houston Police Department killed more "alleged" suspects than any other law enforcement agency in the entire U.S. This suggests that Houston has been the nation's deadliest city with regards to police brutality. A vast majority of these victims were either black or Latino and have already been "in custody" at the time of their death. Prior to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Houston was making headlines for this social disease in other ways.
The Houston Race Riot of 1917 represents one of the most violent and enduring clashes between African-Americans and white police officers in U.S. history, as blacks in Freedman's Town took up arms against police officers that felt were terrorizing them on a daily basis. This incident took place at a time when Houston was experiencing a black population boom and were also empowered by the presence of black soldiers stationed near Houston.
As Latinos experienced their first population boom in the late 1970s, they were faced with similar conditions. In 1977, Houston police officers beat "Jose Torres Campos"a Latino and Vietnam War veteran, to death and dumped his body in Buffalo Bayou. A Harris County judge punished those officers with the fine of $1 for their actions. The next year Latinos launched violent protests against police terror near Moody Park on Houston's north-side. The violence lasted for days and counts as what is remembered as one of the most militant and violent protests in 20th century U.S. history.
These historical incidents offer us much insight into what continues to haunt us. But we should not diagnose the subjectivity, opinions, or psyches of the officers involved. I predict that the court hearings regarding this case will do just that. There will be a debate regarding the character and personality of the officers. Defense attorneys will describe how they have a racially or ethnically diverse family, how they might be in bi-racial marriages or relationships, how they have a diverse group of friends, how they might have once volunteered at a black or Latino event in schools or neighborhoods. All of these facts will be mentioned as a way to make them seem incapable of anti-black prejudices.
But what matters most in these conversations is that those officers are a reflection of the social environment and historical climate within which they work, and were possibly reared. In this sense, I see them too as victims, albeit certainly not to the extent of the boy they beat. Their own hearts have been made cold by societal forces that have been normalized as the status quo. They have been convinced to see young black men as a dangerous enemy, rather than as a population they are sworn to protect and serve. Somewhere in time, that relationship has been plagued, and it is hard to point the figure at black men for blame.
I was just reminded of this upon a visit to Houston this past weekend where I was astonished to see so many visible signs celebrating a rather violent form of anti-black racism. Confederate flags adorned vehicles about the town and neighborhoods seemed prolifically segregated along racial and class lines. As a native of the Houston area, I drove by the high school and community college that I attended and that was named after a confederate war hero, and had to pause to remind myself that this was rather normal in my home region.
An animosity towards blacks in particular seems to be engrained as a defining characteristic of the Houston area's social climate as evident in not only its legacy of anti-black injustices, but also in the ways that it celebrates the "old south" in much of its civic iconography. Our school population is predominantly black and Latino and working class and, yet, these same children are faced daily with visible reminders of how they and their ancestors are valued in the eyes and minds of those persons in charge of educating them and shaping their futures. Those mixed messages produce confusion and often have tragic results. Black and Latino children seem to normalize oppression and lose regard for not only the lives of others, but also their own. In communities that communicate to children that their futures or well being are not held in very high regard, those children become numb, violent, and often criminal.
After visiting my old neighborhood, I walked into a tavern in downtown Houston to grab a cold beer only to find a large picture adorning the wall that glorified and depicted an old map of Houston drawn to commemorate a lynching incident there. It was a haunting reminder of where I was. Guns and violent weaponry are celebrated throughout the Houston area as an emblem of local culture. But much of the community seems to be convinced that they are due to experience an enemy invasion of sorts. To borrow a term from the political theorist Slavoj Žižek, it seems as if white men, in particular in Houston, suffer from some form of symbolic castration anxiety in the sense that they are armed and mobilized to defend themselves against an assortment of social forces that, in reality, represent no tangible threat to their existence or happiness.
The apparent fears of black and Latino criminals that seems to prevail in the minds of many police officers, seem to be as much a reflection of desire as it is of empirical reality. It must be, in each of the cases I've mentioned, never has an officer been attacked or threatened. The threat of attack represented by a black youth laying face down with his hands over his head, as was Holley, is therefore a symbolic truth that forces them to act out violently.
Houston seems to be a city that glorifies a particular form of racial violence as part of its "tradition," and yet that has no clear idea of how to make sense of that history when it seems manifest in incidents such as the Holley beating. If one considers the ways that Houston's history has transpired and has been commemorated, then there does not seem to be a clear way to refute the argument that Holley was beaten because he is a young, black male and because he resides in a region where violence towards persons like him has been normalized a just and necessary mechanism of social control.
Cities like Houston must find better ways to reconcile their historical contradictions. Ignoring or manipulating historical facts is bad medicine. It exacerbates social disease and thwarts any community's ability to grow into a safer, more egalitarian, and more peaceful environment for families to live in. Somewhere along the line, we must learn to love one another in a deeper and truer way.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Nun falsely accuse a black man of rape
A Brooklyn nun from a fringe Christian sect has confessed to an unholy lie: telling cops she was sexually attacked and left unconscious in a snowbank, sources said Monday.
After a police search for a hulking black man was launched, the 26-year-old white woman from the Apostles of Infinite Love convent in East Flatbush recanted, the sources said.
She told cops she made up the story in an attempt to cover up a consensual sex romp with a bodega worker inside the Glenwood Ave. residence.
A woman in religious garb who answered the door at the convent said the nun, identified as Mary Turcotte, suffered an "emotional break" and made everything up - even her excuse.
"Nothing happened, none of it," said the woman, who declined to give her name.
"It was all proven to be false. It wasn't her fault. She is going to move out and we are going to get her some help."
The convent appears to be linked to a Canadian-based religious order founded in the 1960s by a defrocked Catholic priest who ordained himself Pope.
Turcotte claimed she was headed there the night of Jan. 22 when a thug ambushed her, choked her until she passed out and dragged her - in her habit - eight blocks.
She said she awoke in the snow with her underwear down and her breasts exposed. She said she was treated at a hospital and sought counsel from her Mother Superior.
Police were informed of the rape last Thursday, and put out an alert asking for the public's help in finding a suspect - described as black, 40 to 50 years old, 6-feet-4 and up to 250 pounds.
Cops released a sketch, but they were skeptical someone could have dragged or carried a woman in nun's gear through the streets without drawing notice.
When a penitent Turcotte recanted, her excuse was that she needed a story to cover up a real sexual encounter: bedding a shop worker she sneaked into the convent through the back door, sources said.
Police have not charged her with any crime.
No one at the convent would discuss the order's affiliation, but the Apostles of Infinite Love sect based in Quebec has been described as a cultlike group that has successfully fended off sex abuse allegations.
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