The Journal Of The InnKeeper

Bringing me back to my high school theatre days, where I learned tap as a drama geek. Tap is intricately linked to the history and evolution of jazz music, which means that it's also intertwined with the history of swing dancing, a current love of mine.  All dance is related in a twisty, convoluted, branchy evolutionary web much like actual evolutionary biology (although with multiple root points rather than one-ish), and all dance is related to music.

Because tap and jazz were the very first styles of dance that I learned, this is why I say that being a dancer is to be a musician.  We are part of the music, making music, affecting the music.   We weave in and out of the music like any other instrument.

And tap dancing is a study in racism and privilege that parallels the same study in jazz music - first the development by discriminated peoples and the blending of cultures, then cultural appropriation, then being discarded when no longer novel or when too "pure" for the white middle and upper classes to connect to.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Found a couple of new identity words that I like, but I don't think they feel right on me. (All words written in the feminized form because the post is referencing a feminist movement regarding the labels).

I posted back on Cinco de Mayo the differences between certain labels for people of Mexican descent, and how I preferred "chicana" over "Latina", as a reclaimed, formerly derogatory word that emphasizes the dual nature of being of mixed ethnicity and living in the US as well as the association with activism.

A few years ago I learned about "chingona" and "maldita". As far as I can tell, "chingona" derives from the verb "chingar", which is "to fuck" and is considered vulgar - a swear word. But more than just "a fucker", a "chingona" is colloquial for basically "a fucking badass" and is also a derogatory slur that some are attempting to reclaim, particularly the feminine version that I'm referencing in this post.

A "maldita" is a step beyond "fucking badass", somehow. The literal translation is "damned" or "cursed" or "accursed", but the colloquial use as an identity label is like a chingona on steroids? They are kinda like Spanish words for "thug", with similar classist and racist undertones and a similar embracing of the term by some.

These are words that I would have vehemently rejected when I was a teen, back when I also rejected "chicana" because of the class implications of "gangbanger", "thug", "good for nothing", "low class", etc. I wasn't one of *those* Mexican-Americans. I spoke proper English and I had a proper education and I lived in the suburbs and I eschewed gang violence and tattoos (and used words like "eschewed").

I live very far from the gang violence I grew up on the peripheries of back in the '80s today. Now I live in poverty, often in a house that would have fit right in with the ghettos I turned my nose up at. I still eschew gang violence and I still speak with a "blank" American accent (slipping into a Southern drawl every now and then).

But many people have been blurring the lines between "thug" and "activist", and many of them have been reclaiming words that are normally used to condemn and dismiss them. Like "chicana". I feel that my temporal distance from the California gangs of the '80s and my observations of how civil unrest is sometimes deliberately masked by oppressors to resemble general "thuggery" has given me a new perspective and newfound respect for the title "chicana".

With my memories of the gangs and my distance from my Spanish-speaking culture, I don't feel that I can claim "maldita" and "chingona" for myself, nor that I fully understand all the subtle cultural nuances of the terms. But I like that I learned about them and I like that they exist. I think they'll be rolling around in the back of my mind for a while.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170417034346/https://soyxingona.com/about-me/what-is-a-xingona// - "A Xingona is a woman who is on her game. Basically she has skills that no one else has strived for only by first hand experience. Xingonas aren’t brought down by bias, machismo, prides, and over-rated ego. She gets shit done because she can and she will."

https://alvaradofrazier.com/2012/07/14/frida-kahlo-chingona-artist - "The term 'Chingona' is a Spanglish term, slang, for a bad ass, wise woman, powerful, individualist, self-activated, a woman who lives a life for their own approval, self-empowered, a strong woman..."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-i-define-my-chingona-fire_b_5887de69e4b0a53ed60c6a35 - "Chingona: noun. 1. a Spanish slang term meaning 'bad ass woman'. Although the word 'chingona' is a Spanish term, it is not limited to Latinas. A chingona is any woman who chooses to live life on her own terms. PERIOD. She is the scholar AND the hoe. At the same damn time. OR she is neither. The point is: she gets to choose. And whatever choice she makes, is the right one."

When Chuck Berry died in March of 2017, I wrote this post as a memorial both to him and to the ongoing struggle of cultural appropriation and erasure. It would be more fitting to turn it into a blog post in March of any year, on the anniversary of his death, but I know me - if I waited until next March, I would forget to post it.

So I'm sharing it now because I'd rather share this bit of history and pop culture deconstruction at a random time, than to forget it entirely:

Fun Fact: Chuck Berry got famous for his song Johnny B. Goode (among others). He originally wrote it as autobiographical and penned the lyrics to say "Oh my, but that little colored boy could play" as a reference to his own amazing skill as a youth but changed it to "Oh my, but that little country boy could play" so that the song would get air time on the radio.

Another Fun Fact: Berry also wrote it in the key of B-flat, because big band and jazz music that featured horns preferred music in B-flat and E-flat. But in the movie, Back To The Future, when Marty McFly plays the song at the Under The Sea dance, he says "this is a blues riff in B..." The song that we hear in the movie is not actually played in B even though the character says it is, it's played in B-flat. But that's a really unusual key for guitarists in the '80s and for pianists who were the big names and major competitors in the music biz at the time Berry exploded on the scene.

The character of Marty McFly was an '80s guitarist. At that point in time, Rock & Roll had moved away from its jazz and blues influences, and therefore away from songs played in B-flat. So the character wouldn't have been used to playing in that key and would have likely preferred the key of B.

The song Johnny B. Goode is a classic example of the microaggression erasure of the black contribution to the history of Rock & Roll. People like to point to black musicians and say "see? We let them entertain us! We like their music!" but then we have to erase little details.

We're happy to give artists like Chuck Berry credit now, but who among us knew about the original lyrics that had to be whitewashed before anyone would even distribute his music? Everyone knew he was a colored man singing the song, but he couldn't sing about his experience as a colored man, he had to sing about a "country boy" in order to get white audiences to listen, and he had to get white audiences to listen in order to get radio time and record contracts.

And we also conveniently forget that Rock & Roll literally started in the Negro communities with jazz and blues and African rhythms because we whitewashed that too with simple little things such as changing the generally accepted keys for music based on *white* musician's instruments. Even though Berry was a guitarist, he came from a jazz and blues background, so of course he wrote his music from that influence.

But white musicians who favored piano and guitar and who lacked the horns of the big band era wrote music that was more comfortable for their instruments. And so, gradually, songs in the key of B-flat and E-flat lost favor to the point that a white kid in the '80s playing classic Rock & Roll music would have played the songs in the key of B even though it wasn't originally written that way.

This was a deliberate choice that the writers of the screenplay made, and they made it *for these reasons*. The screenwriters weren't necessarily erasing any of this history - they were acknowledging that it had already been erased by making the line of dialog say "blues riff in B" even though it wasn't.

And they taught the actor, Michael J. Fox, how to play the song in the key of B. So, we are not hearing Michael J. Fox's music, we're hearing the studio musicians Mark Campbell singing and Tim May's guitar *in the key of B-flat* because that's what sounds better and more like the original, but when we watch the scene, Fox is really playing the guitar, and he's playing it in the '80s key of B. Because the screenwriters understood the history and evolution of music.

When Florida or other southern natives ask me how I like living here -

Me:  I hate it here.  I hate the weather, I hate the culture, I hate the politics, I hate the income level, and I hate the people.  I have some friends out here who are exceptions to the rule, that's why we're friends, but generally speaking, this place is conservative, intolerant, and backwards.

Them:  How can you say that?  This is Orlando!  We have Disney with all the gay people!  And all kinds of black people and don't forget the Puerto Ricans!

Me:  That's what I'm talking about.  I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, with influences from San Francisco, LA, Portland, and Seattle.   And even *those* places have their problems.  But compared to them, this is a small town with delusions of grandeur, complete with the small-town thinking that goes with it.

People who grow up in truly diverse environments would never think that Disney is "diverse" just because it's OK to be out as gay and employed by them, or think that it's diverse or tolerant just because there are people of color physically present.  That statements like that are uttered are exactly why this place is too backwards for me.

Them:  ...

Them:  Well, I guess if you're from San Francisco...

Me:  Yeah, that's what I mean.

#RealLifeConversationsIHave #Repeatedly

While it's not usually a good idea to hijack a thread talking about oppression of one class for another, this one explicitly asked the question if another class experienced anything similar.  Since oppression is about one group of people benefiting off other classes, the tools of oppression are often similar from one class to another.  A lot of what is done to women to keep us "in our place" is also done to people of color to keep them in "their place".  And intersectionality is when several axis of oppression cross and the tools are used doubly or triply to keep people in "their place" because they belong to multiple classes that all get held down.

Don't tell people to smile (unless you're a photographer and it's your job to get happy pictures).  Nobody exists to look pleasantly at you.  Nobody needs to gain your approval for existing in public or in the space they occupy (unless it's legitimately your personal, private space).

Y'all think you can read emotions on people, but you can't.  There are some great studies out there that show we are absolutely terrible at reading other people's emotions.  Not smiling does not equal "angry" or "sad".  Not smiling is merely an absence of emoting happiness, it is not the *opposite* of happiness.  You need other cues for emoting non-happiness emotions.

But, as atheists have been trying to explain forever, the absence of a thing does not mean the presence of the opposite thing.
 
And even if it did, it's none of your fucking business anyway.

For all that I complain about Bewitched, there is one episode that I really like.

Of course, I still have to watch it in the context of the era, because it does some things that, today, I would not find acceptable.  But the message really does have good intentions.  This episode is actually so important that it was prefaced with a personal message from Elizabeth Montgomery.  She addressed the camera directly at the top of the episode about the importance of the message and how strongly she (and the advertiser) feels about it.

In this episode, Tabitha has a best friend stay the night.  She wishes her best friend was really her sister because she doesn't much care for having a little brother.  So Samantha tells her that having her friend sleep over is like having a temporary sister.  The little girl arrives.  She's black, and her father works with Darrin at the advertising company.  Tabitha gets into it with another girl at the park over whether or not she can be sisters with someone of a different color.

Darrin's company is wooing a new client, who believes in making sure anyone he hires for anything has the type of home-life that he approves of before hiring them.  So this guy shows up at the Stephens' house unannounced and Lisa opens the door.  The client misunderstands who Lisa is, with some help from a child's way of not quite explaining things.  He gets the impression that Darrin is married to a black woman and this is their other daughter (he already knows about Tabitha and Adam).

Later, the two girls talk about how they wish they could be really sisters.  Tabitha accidentally changes Lisa's skin and hair color.  She changes her back, but then changes herself to match Lisa.  So we have literal blackface on this show, which made me very uncomfortable.  But Lisa points out that their parents would be upset if their children are the wrong color, so Tabitha goes back to her own color.  Then both girls are sad that they don't look alike anymore, and therefore can't be sisters.  So Tabitha accidentally gives them contrasting spots - she has black-skin-color spots and Lisa has white-skin-color spots.  And then she can't take them off because, subconsciously, both girls really want to be sisters.

The rules of this universe are that one witch cannot undo any spell that another witch casts (otherwise that would solve all of the show's plot devices before they start).  So Samantha can't get rid of the spots as long as Tabitha really doesn't want to.  So she has to do some digging to find out why Tabitha doesn't want to.

The girls talk about the racism they experienced from the other girl in the park and how they really want to be sisters.  So Samantha tells them:

"Sisters are girls who share something.  Usually the same parents but if you share other things - good feelings, friendship, love, well that makes you sisters in another way."  She insists that they can be sisters if they want to, no matter what skin color they have.

This convinces Tabitha that they can safely get rid of the spots and still have the connection they want.

Meanwhile, the Stephens are hosting the office Christmas party downstairs and Lisa's parents arrive to pick her up from her slumber party the night before (the father had to go out of town to secure another client, so the Stephens were basically babysitting for a couple of days).

Earlier in the day, the client fired the advertising agency because of Darrin's "mixed marriage", but he didn't put it clearly enough for anyone to understand that this was the reason.  Just that he didn't approve of Darrin, and since nobody knew that he had come over and spoke to Lisa, nobody knew what it was he didn't approve of.

In an attempt to woo him back, Darrin's boss invited the client to the Christmas Party at the Stephens' house.  Apparently (this all happened off-screen), the client was "curious" enough to accept.  So he shows up immediately after Lisa's parents do, while Lisa's dad stepped away with their boss to talk about the new contract he just acquired for the company, leaving Lisa's mom standing in the hall with Darrin, when the client rings the doorbell.

Mistaking Lisa's mom for Darrin's wife, he opens his big ol' bigoted mouth to say how brave he thinks they are and how maybe someday what they're doing will become acceptable.  And yes, he phrased it like that, implying not only that it wasn't currently acceptable, but that he didn't think it ought to be, only that maybe someday in the future it might be.

He offers Lisa's mom a little black baby doll for her daughter for Christmas, and Darrin is handed a white baby doll for Tabitha, and then says he didn't know which side of the family that Adam took after so he decided to play it safe with a stuffed ... panda bear.  Yeah, picture that for a moment, if you don't immediately get it.

Then he runs off for eggnog before either parent can react.  Lisa's mom has no idea what just happened, but Darrin (having just been taken off the account at this client's insistence because of being "unsuitable" or whatever) figures out that the client must think that they're married and this is why he was fired from the account.

Meanwhile, Samantha gets the kids straightened out and Darrin's boss, Larry, has a chat with the client.  Now that who is married to whom and which child belongs to whom is understood, the client wants Darrin back on the team.  As it finally dawns on Larry the reason for the client's decisions, he steps back for a moment, while the client puffs up with pride at being such an understanding, forgiving sort of man.

Larry steps back into the conversation and tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't want his account because he doesn't want to work with a man like this.  Overhearing this conversation, and shocked and pleased at Larry's character, Darrin tells Samantha that, in the spirit of Christmas and given the circumstances, if she sees an opening where her witchcraft would help, she has free reign.

Shocked, the client goes on the defensive and even says "but some of my best friends are Negroes!"  So Samantha wiggles her nose, and suddenly the client is seeing everyone at the party with black skin.

So, again, literal blackface that made me uncomfortable, but for a purpose they felt was helpful back in the '60s.

The client freaks out because, well, regardless of anyone's racist beliefs, if everyone around you suddenly changed skin color in front of your eyes, you'd probably freak out too.  So he leaves.

The next morning, the Stephens' and Lisa's family are all opening Christmas presents together around the tree.  The doorbell rings and it's the client.  He asks Darrin to take his account and offers an apology:

"I found out I'm a racist.  Not the obvious, out in the open kind of a racist, not me, no, I was a sneaky racist.  I was so sneaky, I didn't even know it myself."

Usually, particularly in older shows, when they cover the topic of racism, there's only one kind of racist - the mean ones who actively discriminate, but never any real violence.  It's like, on these shows, racists don't lynch people because "we're past that now", but they're visibly angry and say mean things, and usually have some kind of power to prevent people from doing something, like entering a building or patronizing an establishment.

These shows offer a caricature of a racist, to make them easy to identify as racist but not *actually* truly offensive.  And I kinda get it - they have 23 minutes to make a point, so they're going to do it in as clear a way as possible that will get past the very conservative censors.

This is the only episode of any TV show that I can personally recall seeing where they addressed the fact that racism comes in other forms.  They showed a man who believes he is a "good guy" whose racism is more subtle and uses more microaggressions rather than outright violence or hatred.  And they showed him humbled and ashamed as he struggled with the realization that he was not as good a guy as he thought he was.

And the producers and actors thought this was such an important message that they took the time to break the 4th wall and tell the audience how strongly they felt about this message.  Even the advertiser got in on it.  Which is a pretty big deal.  Had they simply showed the episode, boycotts would have been called for whichever commercials were aired at the time, and the producers would have had to do some kind of damage control to keep advertising clients and soothe viewers.

But, instead, Oscar-Meyer put their logo right behind Elizabeth Montgomery in her preface, and her speech included their name among those who felt the subject of their episode was important and who stands behind it.  I'm sure boycotts were probably still called for, but the producers, the network, and the advertiser all got out in front of it and took responsibility for their stance.

So, as someone with light brown skin, which has lightened enough with my years out of the sun that nobody can even tell my chicana heritage by looking, I can't say that the blackface in this episode is justified under the "it was the era" excuse or not.

I will instead say that *if* the blackface can be excused for the era, and *if* the viewer can sit through the discomfort of modern sensibilities seeing it, I am rather proud of the show for making the attempt they did to address racism, and in particular that there are different types of racism and that all types are unacceptable.

I have a love-hate relationship with this show.  I have seen most of the episodes before over the years, but I am watching the entire series now as part of my experiment to compare and contrast TV romantic couples over the decades and moral lessons of their relationships.

Watching this show now, after having developed the particular viewpoint I have on feminism and romantic relationship ethics, I am sitting in a strange place where I still manage to enjoy the show while simultaneously hating every character in it.  As a character-driven media consumer, this is a weird place for me to be in.  But I will say that the show is giving me lots of fodder for rants.

So far, this show is at the bottom of the list for me in ethical romantic partnerships.  I somehow manage to still enjoy watching it, but I don't recommend it.  I think everyone in this show is a terrible example of a person and the lessons learned at the end of each episode are not the lessons I feel should be the takeaways.  People are punished for bad behaviour, but not for the reasons I think they should be.

This episode is the exception.  Darrin doesn't go on any of his anti-witchcraft rants and doesn't try to hamstring Samantha and none of the other relatives jump in to interfere in their relationship and remove anyone's agency.  In this one instance, Darrin is right to be concerned about the effect of witchcraft - namely getting found out and doing harm to someone else with the inexperienced child's wish-craft.

This episode focused entirely on an actual, real harm to society, and both the botched and corrective witchcraft was the solution.  And the harm it highlighted was a subtle, insidious form that is not easily recognized because of the lies and misdirections we are taught about said harm, intended to confuse us and muddy the issue.

So, for once, I applaud Bewitched for going in the right direction.  It could be done so much better today, with a more sophisticated touch on the subject, but given the era, I'm actually kind of surprised at how well it *did* do.

 

 

OK, so you know how Rey in Star Wars is not a Mary Sue because she has exactly as much (if not more) background to justify her connection and skill with the force as Luke did in the first trilogy?  And, like, how NONE of SW really makes a whole lot of sense, it's basically just a spaghetti western in space with literal white-hat good guys and black-hat bad guys and a pretty contrived plot? (Remember, I'm a huge SW fan, I'm just not blind to the flaws in my fandoms)

So you can't think Rey is a Mary Sue unless you think that of pretty much every (male) character in the entire universe, because she is consistent with the utterly fantastical (and by that, I mean "unbelievable) universe that is Star Wars - you can't think that about Rey w/o thinking of that for everyone else without that viewpoint being basically misogyny?

So, yeah, you can't think that the tech in Black Panther is "unbelievable" or "too advanced" unless you think that about the entire MCU, because totally unrealistic tech is completely the MCU's M.O.

To think that it's somehow suddenly unbelievable now that the people whose culture evolved for thousands of years literally around and on top of the super secret super amazing metal were not capable of developing that tech while Captain America in the '40s had fucking death rays can only come from embedded racism.

This doesn't mean you hate black people. It means you have some assumptions about what it means to be black (and African) that were deliberately created and fostered by white slavers and colonizers generations ago to do exactly what these kinds of thoughts just did - think that black people are less advanced, less "evolved" than any other people.