It’s Not the Name They Call You, It’s the Name You Answer To
I’m usually willing to give artistic expression, and many things quite a bit of latitude, but I’m going to go ahead and be grumpy about something today.
I’m not going to see American Gangster. I like Denzel Washington’s work. I loved his directorial debut Antwone Fisher, and of course there is the well-known portrayal of Malcolm X; and the lesser vaunted, but equally wonderful performance as Creasy in Man on Fire, the story of a burned out ex CIA operative and assassin who finds redemption in the process of saving the life of a little girl, whom he has grown to love as his own. The Hurricane, in which Washington starred as the embattled boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, is a topic for another blog entry altogether, as there is deep controversy over the facts surrounding the story of Carter’s life. But I loved Washington’s Oscar-worthy performance all the same.
But I don’t want to contribute one thin dime to American Gangster. I fail to see why I should care to know the details of the life of a person who did nothing but cause misery and destruction. Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas was a criminal. He destroyed everything and contributed nothing.
In the trailers, Lucas is made out to be some kind of urban hero. Washington as Lucas, looking fly in his Seventies chic suits, defies The Man: “This is my home, my country. Frank Lucas don’t run from nobody,” he says. “This is America.” A white detective gets all testy when told that Lucas is even above the mafia. “No black man has accomplished what the American Mafia hasn’t, not in a hundred years!” he shouts, as if Lucas had found the cure for cancer and it was too inconceivable a thought for the white detective to even think. And it makes me wince to see Ruby Dee, who plays Lucas’s mom, clap her hands in delight when she sees the new house her son has bought for her—the house that heroin built.
Add to all of this the fact that 93-year-old Mayme Johnson, the widow of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, (described in a pr sheet I received a day or two ago as “the original American gangster who ruled Harlem in the early twentieth century”) is coming out with a book about her husband called Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. I know just as little about Johnson as Lucas, but it appears that he basically worked as an enforcer for the Mafia (another group that receives way too much hero-worship, and I say this despite having been a loyal Sopranos fan. Hypocritical? Yes. Nobody's perfect, and in my defense, The Sopranos was fiction; American Gangster is based on a true story) to protect their interests in Harlem from other black gangsters. Mrs. Johnson says that she wrote the book because she wants to dispel the legends, myths, and rumors about her husband. She has every right to, and I’m sure he must have had some fine qualities (that’s spoken by a true optimist) and she has some great memories of him, but I have to say right here, in the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive in response to Harrison Ford shouting that he did not kill his wife, a one-armed man did: I. Don’t. Care. I stopped being interested in Bumpy Johnson when I heard the man was a criminal. As far as I’m concerned he was, as Malcolm X said, “part of the problem” and nowhere near part of the solution.
And speaking of contributing nothing, shame on Viacom-owned Black Entertainment Television for the documentary series American Gangster, just another opportunity to parade the worst black people they can find for all to see, so people can tsk tsk and confirm how superior they all are. There are no history lessons here.
I understand the attraction of the gangster in folklore. Stagger Lee’s legend endures because of our need to believe in a bad-ass Negro archetype (heck, I've written about him). But when thugs push out every other black person on the silver screen and TV, in the print and electronic media, I can’t help feel like certain non-colored individuals aren’t once again telling black people who they think
they are supposed to be. But as someone wise once said, “it’s not the name they call you, it’s the one you answer to.”
Now to give Denzel Washington his due, he is involved with another project that I can endorse. The movie, in theaters on Christmas day, is called The Great Debaters, and tells of Melvin B. Tolson, a poet, columnist, politician, who in the 1930s was an English professor at all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. There he formed a crack debate team that beat not only USC, but Harvard in 1935. I first knew of Tolson because of a story of the same name as the movie, published in American Legacy in Spring of 1997. It was written by a man named Tony Scherman. Scherman was contacted when Washington, who is directing and starring in the film and Oprah Winfrey, who is producing it through her company Harpo Productions, decided the project was a go. I’ve gotten bits of pieces of news about its progress along the way, as Harpo Productions, a friend who is working on a companion book, a publicity person from something called the Weinstein Company, and members of the Tolson family have all called up for copies of the magazine (of which I have only my archive copy), and the article itself. I’ve talked to Tony Scherman, too, who has been paid, but unfortunately doesn’t get a credit, although it’s clear that the article has been relied upon in one way or another as a source. Still, it’s a great, great tale and I urge people to see it.
You can see the trailer here.
UPDATE: Tony Scherman does get a credit in the movie, large enough for everyone to see. Hooray!
I’m not going to see American Gangster. I like Denzel Washington’s work. I loved his directorial debut Antwone Fisher, and of course there is the well-known portrayal of Malcolm X; and the lesser vaunted, but equally wonderful performance as Creasy in Man on Fire, the story of a burned out ex CIA operative and assassin who finds redemption in the process of saving the life of a little girl, whom he has grown to love as his own. The Hurricane, in which Washington starred as the embattled boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, is a topic for another blog entry altogether, as there is deep controversy over the facts surrounding the story of Carter’s life. But I loved Washington’s Oscar-worthy performance all the same.
But I don’t want to contribute one thin dime to American Gangster. I fail to see why I should care to know the details of the life of a person who did nothing but cause misery and destruction. Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas was a criminal. He destroyed everything and contributed nothing.
In the trailers, Lucas is made out to be some kind of urban hero. Washington as Lucas, looking fly in his Seventies chic suits, defies The Man: “This is my home, my country. Frank Lucas don’t run from nobody,” he says. “This is America.” A white detective gets all testy when told that Lucas is even above the mafia. “No black man has accomplished what the American Mafia hasn’t, not in a hundred years!” he shouts, as if Lucas had found the cure for cancer and it was too inconceivable a thought for the white detective to even think. And it makes me wince to see Ruby Dee, who plays Lucas’s mom, clap her hands in delight when she sees the new house her son has bought for her—the house that heroin built.
Add to all of this the fact that 93-year-old Mayme Johnson, the widow of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, (described in a pr sheet I received a day or two ago as “the original American gangster who ruled Harlem in the early twentieth century”) is coming out with a book about her husband called Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. I know just as little about Johnson as Lucas, but it appears that he basically worked as an enforcer for the Mafia (another group that receives way too much hero-worship, and I say this despite having been a loyal Sopranos fan. Hypocritical? Yes. Nobody's perfect, and in my defense, The Sopranos was fiction; American Gangster is based on a true story) to protect their interests in Harlem from other black gangsters. Mrs. Johnson says that she wrote the book because she wants to dispel the legends, myths, and rumors about her husband. She has every right to, and I’m sure he must have had some fine qualities (that’s spoken by a true optimist) and she has some great memories of him, but I have to say right here, in the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive in response to Harrison Ford shouting that he did not kill his wife, a one-armed man did: I. Don’t. Care. I stopped being interested in Bumpy Johnson when I heard the man was a criminal. As far as I’m concerned he was, as Malcolm X said, “part of the problem” and nowhere near part of the solution.
And speaking of contributing nothing, shame on Viacom-owned Black Entertainment Television for the documentary series American Gangster, just another opportunity to parade the worst black people they can find for all to see, so people can tsk tsk and confirm how superior they all are. There are no history lessons here.
I understand the attraction of the gangster in folklore. Stagger Lee’s legend endures because of our need to believe in a bad-ass Negro archetype (heck, I've written about him). But when thugs push out every other black person on the silver screen and TV, in the print and electronic media, I can’t help feel like certain non-colored individuals aren’t once again telling black people who they think
they are supposed to be. But as someone wise once said, “it’s not the name they call you, it’s the one you answer to.”Now to give Denzel Washington his due, he is involved with another project that I can endorse. The movie, in theaters on Christmas day, is called The Great Debaters, and tells of Melvin B. Tolson, a poet, columnist, politician, who in the 1930s was an English professor at all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. There he formed a crack debate team that beat not only USC, but Harvard in 1935. I first knew of Tolson because of a story of the same name as the movie, published in American Legacy in Spring of 1997. It was written by a man named Tony Scherman. Scherman was contacted when Washington, who is directing and starring in the film and Oprah Winfrey, who is producing it through her company Harpo Productions, decided the project was a go. I’ve gotten bits of pieces of news about its progress along the way, as Harpo Productions, a friend who is working on a companion book, a publicity person from something called the Weinstein Company, and members of the Tolson family have all called up for copies of the magazine (of which I have only my archive copy), and the article itself. I’ve talked to Tony Scherman, too, who has been paid, but unfortunately doesn’t get a credit, although it’s clear that the article has been relied upon in one way or another as a source. Still, it’s a great, great tale and I urge people to see it.
You can see the trailer here.
UPDATE: Tony Scherman does get a credit in the movie, large enough for everyone to see. Hooray!
Comments
However, for the sheer purpose of playing devil's advocate, I pose this question: while it's well within your rights to decide not to see this movie because to do so would somehow contribute to the "estate" of a despicable person, don't you think that to say his lifestory should not be part of Hollywood fare is contradictory to the idea of having a better understanding of black history? Even despite the fact that for so long, what has been spread around about Black people is the bad and the ugly, does this mean that now we must only show the good? Is it somewhat like affirmative action, where we have to take such an extreme measure in order to correct a serious imbalance, or rather should we strive for balance right now, and in doing so make a commitment to show more good, certainly, but not shy away from the negative?
I ask this not so much of this movie but of film and our history in general. I think this film will do much to glorify a detestable person and therefore I don't know how much it is serving "history" except by making Lucas' name known to a new generation of people. Perhaps it is that aspect of it that has raised your ire, and if he were portrayed with more attention to the destruction he wrought upon his own people, you'd feel less as you do?