Frederick Douglass and Kendrick Lamar
After the Gold Rush
I usually keep my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors writing Substack and my After the Gold Rush history Substack separate. But this week, the obvious posts I had to write for each newsletter converged so perfectly and urgently that I have to put them together.
Today, February 14, is American hero Frederick Douglass’s birthday. That is, it’s the birth date he chose for himself, as he chose his surname. Born enslaved in Maryland, the son of an enslaved woman and a white man who was possibly, as so often, the master of the plantation, there was no record of his birth— only that it was February. probably 1817.
Douglass broke his own chains when he escaped from slavery in 1837 — and then went on to break the chains of millions of others through his brilliant oratory, books, three autobiographies, and the political activism which made him the leading abolitionist and Civil Rights leader of the United States’ Civil War and Reconstruction years. In the mid-to-late 1800s he was the most famous Black man in the U.S, possibly in the world.
He used that position of power — his platform, as it were — to demonstrate to Black millions what was possible — and to show millions of whites the humanity and the nobility of the race they had monstrously enslaved.
His speeches and letters are some of the most famous and powerful and revolutionary in U.S. history (click through for quotes).
Douglass challenged and persuaded not just with words, but with image and essence: he deliberately let himself be photographed in elegant clothes, in drawing rooms and government halls, to imprint those images of a Black man — a superman —on the world.
This is the reality of history that an authoritarian government made up of the least competent is trying to erase.
These days Douglass speaks just as powerfully… to the educated. But U.S. literacy has been in rapid decline for decades. Republican leaders —like their rapist, racist figurehead —love the uneducated and are doing their damndest to gut education so that the US stays as dumb as the figurehead.
So in a post-literate world, how to effect the same revolution today?
I think that’s a hugely important, urgent question for artists to be asking ourselves.
And that brings us to Kendrick Lamar, and that incendiary, revolutionary masterwork that Pulitzer Prize-winning artist created for —
The Superbowl halftime show.
It lit up the internet. By the next day the entire country and most of the world was talking about it. And from the same tired corners came a whole flood of the same tired arguments that conservatives always use to try to silence political speech:
“Stay in your lane.” “Writers shouldn’t talk about politics.” “Leave it off the field.” “Shut up and dribble.”
And to me, the funniest complaint:
“I didn’t get it.”
Oh, they got it.
What’s not to get about a stage full of Black performers playing to an audience with a significant percentage of radicalized whites up in arms about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion?
You could just hear the gears slowly turning and the synapses exploding as they realized…But there are no white people!
Right. And how does that make you feel?
The whole show worked on so many levels.
It was highly anticipated as a continuation of the Kendrick Lamar/Drake rap feud. But I’ll let Nadine Matheson speak to that - check out her analysis on The Pivot!
But since one of the complaints I’ve heard about the show is:
“The Superbowl is no place to indulge in a beef with a rival.”
I’ll just say I DO NOT CARE about the “beef” between Lamar and Drake. But I’m for sure on the side of the one who uses his platform to call out an accused groomer and sexual predator. Especially when he does it in front of the convicted sexual predator who spent 15 MILLION of taxpayer money to go to half of the Super Bowl. Let both predators begone to Cellblock 1.
And I don’t know much about it, but it sounds like Lamar also has beef with Drake for being a musical sellout, too, which was a theme running through the halftime piece. I do know that Lamar has history of very rightly calling out the music industry for taking Black art for its own profit and selling out Black artists all the while.
I also saw Lamar’s putting himself on the line to say, again, that Drake is a groomer - even though Drake is suing him - as a kind of courage that we’re all going to have to find in ourselves as the US sinks deeper into authoritarianism.
And then there was Serena Williams. I’ve heard people saying she was just there as a diss to Drake. But more obviously, she was there to do the Crip walk she did when she won Olympic gold - as one reporter put it: “The American girl being crowned at the All-England Club as the queen of tennis — Crip-Walking all over the most lily-white place in the world.”
There is so much to unpack in just that moment, and one of them is the staggering talent that has come out of this tiny little part of Los Angeles - Lamar and Williams are both from Compton. Check out “famous people from Compton” if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s its own, modern Harlem Renaissance.
For me, throughout, the macro level of U.S. history was just stupendous.
I think just about everyone by now has talked or read about the brilliance of putting Samuel L. Jackson up there as Uncle Sam, narrating the piece like a Greek Chorus or the Emcee from Cabaret, or Dolmodes in Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, starting off with that delicious line reading: “I’m your Uncle… Sam.” (Take that, Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott.) Jackson’s continuous "Stay in your lane, too ghetto” commentary was literally giving voice to what a large chunk of white audience was thinking. I’m not going to talk about that movie by that director I can’t stand, but the reference was hard hitting.
Also I have to love that Samuel L. Jackson is every insecure white man’s worst nightmare.
I could also see Lamar using the Uncle Sam character to give voice to his own artistic trepidation — taking such a huge, gutsy, potentially career-ending move. Lamar is twenty-seven. This was an act of enormous courage.
But what else are the naysayers naysaying?
“It was sooo booooring.”
Yeah, as a high school teacher, I heard this from a lot of —kids. About just about every great piece of literature or music I introduced to them. My job as a teacher and a writer was to teach them HOW to read, how to listen, how to process the meaning of theme in imagery, not just words. There are still few things more exciting to me than seeing the lightbulb moment when someone finally GETS that art requires work from the viewer— and pays off for the rest of your life once you do get it.
As I keep telling the adults who are complaining, or overlooking it - You're missing a whole lot by dismissing this piece.
“The sound quality was so bad I couldn’t understand the lyrics.”
Well, might I suggest YouTube? There are other recordings of it that don’t have bad sound quality!
Also, you don’t have to speak Italian to be moved by opera. (But some people are so moved by Italian opera that they study Italian.) There’s a lot more to it than lyrics.
How about this? How about going back and watching the whole performance once WITHOUT sound, to really get a feel for the incredible story that was going on visually?
This is an exercise often given to film students— watch a movie without sound to teach yourself visual storytelling. I always urge authors to do the same.
So take a look at this image:
Dancers forming an American flag made on the backs of Black people — is about as powerful and true a metaphor for this country as I’ve ever seen.
At the Superbowl halftime!
The red, white, and blue is the US, of course.
Reds and Blues are obviously our political parties — rivals who, under the felon’s unremitting, narcissistic hate, have become mortal enemies, every bit as much as they were in Civil War days. But what really makes this symbolism uncannily accurate is that there’s an ominous third, separate group of whites — standing for the ascension of white christian nationalists, of course dressed in white like the robes of the KKK.
How much more accurate could that be about the horrifying political situation we find ourself in?
Then there was a micro level that hit me hard as an Angeleno.
Before I sold my first screenplay I taught in the L.A. County Juvenile Court system, in the Conservation Camp schools. My students were incarcerated boys from age 13-19, Most of the kids in my classes were Crips (street color blue) or Bloods (street color red)— mortal street enemies. Mix it up! was the school policy — the teachers and guards had to be on the alert that not just races, but gang affiliations weren’t separating off into blocks, because that could turn into a massive, dangerous fight faster than you could believe possible.
Watching the halftime show, as soon as I saw all those reds and all those blues, distinctly, deliberately separated, I had a visceral reaction I haven’t had in decades.
So there was a whole level of meaning for me, and I imagine for anyone who’s been in contact with US prison culture, in those reds and blues starting out rigidly separate from each other —and then the exhilaration of them coming together in dance as the piece progressed!
But in the context of the piece, this was also a huge a callback to Kendrick Lamar’s bringing together of Crips and Bloods on stage in Inglewood. His urging the community to come together - and fight the power, not each other. Because those boys I taught — they for sure weren’t each other’s enemies.
Lamar isn’t the first musical artist to use these huge stages to blend entertainment with advocacy. Beyonce’s shows, the spectacle, symbolism and choreography are rich in US history and social commentary.
Now Kendrick Lamar continues to show us the way, with a masterwork that resonates for our time on all kinds of levels. However you get there, once you’re there, those messages are working on you - for good.
As Nadine Matheson says:
“Music and books are more than about story. They call people to action. And that’s what governments are afraid of, that people will be called to action.”
Exactly.
So here’s a template for artists who want to call their audience to action:
Lure them in with the rap battle.
Then hit them with the revolution.
—Alexandra Sokoloff:
I’m a bestselling feminist crime and thriller author, but I also have a commitment and a platform to write about history that isn’t often talked about in the generalizations and most often outright whitewashing and male-washing of history textbooks.
Under this regime, working to counteract the whitewashing and suppression of history is going to be more important than ever.
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“I hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . .
The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages. The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves.”
―Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
Alexandra Sokoloff, You helped me to see what I had missed in the recent Superbowl half-time show with Kendrick Lamar, and company. I am truly grateful. I feel like "Mr Jones" in Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man": "...You know there's somethin' goin' on around here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones..." I intend to seek it out on Youtube, to watch it again, in the light you have shown upon it. As a writer, of sorts, I have thought that I should be paying more attention to you. Thank You, again, for writing.