In the above video, Nordette Adams recites Aberjhani's poem "And Then the Rain God Screamed for Love" with original music composed by Mark "Rahkyt" Rockeymoore.
Kathleen Thomas is the photographer who took the picture of Aberjhani you see in this post.
Is this controversy with boycott the same as objections to The Last Airbender casting? As Rosanna Rosanna Danna would say, "It's always something!"
I just read at The Root and the U.K. Guardian that a white supremacist group in the U.S.A. is boycotting the superhero movie Thor because British black actor Idris Elba has been cast as the Norse god Heimdall. Wikipedia says Heimdall is called "the white god." An older Guardian article describes Heimdall in Thor as "guardian of the burning rainbow bridge between the world of men and the world of gods."
I must add here that if that designation is in spiritual language, the description "white" most likely signifies a non-physical, positive nature and character, but we can't escape that Vikings are generally white. This website constructed by a University of Idaho class discusses the role of Odin worship or Norse mythology among some white supremacist groups:
"The page is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of all modern Odin worship beliefs and practices (see that here). Nor is it an examination of current understandings on Norse mythology. Its focus is on how Odin worship in understood, manipulated, and employed by modern white supremacist groups, both in America and in the United Kingdom. Germany will also be included, since that is where much of the white power music scene started. I also want to make it clear that plenty of Odinists are not white supremacists. There are a number of people who truly want to return to their ancestors’ religious beliefs without any political agenda. This is a distinction that seems blurred in much of the current research. ... Why is this topic important? First, understanding the views of those in the white supremacy movement is vital to putting a stop to it. And we cannot understand their views without understanding the reasoning behind them."
British director Kenneth Branagh cast Elba in the role most likely because the actor has name recognition and is talented. Readers will remember him from HBO's The Wire, the husband in Obsessed which also starred Beyoncé, the father role in Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls, as the soon-to-die Tango in American Gangster with Denzel Washington, and from guest appearances on Showtime's The Big C as the main character (Laura Linney) Cathy's love interest. I thought he was pretty hot in The Reaping in 2007 with Hillary Swank as well. In addition, he's the star of a British detective show, Luther. So, we're not talking light-weight nobody here.
Nevertheless, the Council of Conservative Citizens belittles Elba's work, ignoring his acting career and only referencing his DJ experience. The group also calls Marvel Comics, creators of the superhero comic book Thor, an advocate of leftwing ideologies that has attacked the Tea Party (Does the Tea Party welcome their support right now? In 2009 the Roanoke Tea Party disavowed the CCC.). And it's not just the CCC that's unhappy with Elba as Heimdall. Baddass Nerd says that when news spread that Elba had been cast as a Norse god, quite a few geeks had fits.
The writer at The Root says of the CCC:
"We guess they're really pissed that Jewish Natalie Portman is playing love interest Jane Foster. Too bad she and Elba won't be kissing. That would probably send the white supremacists into a frenzy."
Ah, echoes of the infamous "near" kissing scene between Captain James T. Kirk and Uhura in the original Star Trek. Many television stations in the integration-resistant American South refused to air the episode in 1968.
I think The Root writer, speaking of Jane Foster, means Thor's love interest. In the movie, by the way, Portman's character will not be a nurse, as Foster is in the original comic book, but she'll play a doctor instead. I don't think anyone's protesting that change.
The very Aryan-looking Chris Hemsworth stars as Thor; so, there's something the CCC and Geeks can rejoice about. The Marvel website says:
"The epic adventure "Thor" spans the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard.At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor, a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth."
"There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?" he told TV Times. "Hang about, Thor's mythical, right? Thor has a hammer that flies to him when he clicks his fingers. That's OK, but the colour of my skin is wrong?
"I was cast in Thor and I'm cast as a Nordic god," he said. "If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good."
In that same Guardian article, comic book fans are reported to have said:
"This PC crap has gone too far!" wailed one. (Another said) "At the risk of sounding like a bigot, I think this is nuts! ... Asgard is home to the Norse Gods!!! Not too many un-fair complexion types roaming the frigid waste lands up there. I wouldn't expect to see many Brad Pitt types walking around in the [first mainstream black superhero] Black Panther's Wakanda Palace!""
The question that's ripping through my mind is this: How is this protests and boycott different or similar to the ones against M. Knight Shymalan's casting of The Last Airbender? Shymalan cast white actors in roles the series creator had written as people of color, and he said he did it for marketing purposes.
I've got my own answer to the question, but it's very long with scholarly documentation and history notes, and so, I'll leave it to others to say what they think about this topic with more passion. For the record, to me the The Last Airbender and the Thor issues are not quite the same thing when we consider prevailing hegemony and power distribution in movies and reality over the years. It's sad that some white men, given all the power that white males have amassed and still have, continue to to feel supremely insecure and easily threatened.
My son, 20, who can't wait to see this movie in May 2011, says he can see how his fellow superhero geeks could arrive at this objection (he won't even address the white supremacists thinking) but also says, "It's Norse mythology. I don't care."
Below an injured Elba's interviewed on a British talk show, Jonathan Ross. He talks about the difficulty with doing the American accent, his role on Luther, his time as a D.J., and in Part 2, he discusses Thor.
Part 2: Ross says Elba is so good looking that Ross considers kissing a black man.
The Talented Tenth in Pictures To counter the negative images of African Americans in the late 19th century, W.E.B. Du Bois displayed portraits of middle-class blacks at the Paris Exposition of 1900. The Root has published some images from this act of defiance.
The photos are courtesy of the prints and photographs division of the Library of Congress, and you may search the entire collection there as well as Du Bois's other works.
The slide show narrative that goes with the picture above reads:
At the original 1900 exhibit, both sitters and photographers were presented anonymously. It has since been established that Thomas Askew, a prominent African-American photographer in Atlanta, made many of the photographs for Du Bois' Georgia Negro studies. In the Library of Congress catalog, a typical image caption would read, "African American woman, half-length portrait, facing right, with left hand under chin." Some sitters have since been identified, including Du Bois' students at Atlanta University.
These photos made me think of one of Prof. Kim Pearson's comments on my old post about self-mythology. Posting a picture of Du Bois of a child, the one that I've added below, she said:
"The stories we are told about ourselves, and the stories we tell about ourselves are critical to the ways in which we think about our opportunities. This is part of my fascination with the life of WEB Du Bois, whose mother was single, disabled and working class descendant of black freeman, and whose father was a Civil War deserter and the illegitimate son of a mixed race New England merchant. Despite his poverty and birth into circumstances that would have been considered shameful in that Victorian post-bellum era, his mother had a portrait made of him when he was four:"
Professor Kim has been researching how the stories we tell about ourselves connect to the stories others tell about themselves and how these stories when matched well may later result in beneficial networking. She seems particularly interested in how the telling of such stories through digital media can influence and improve opportunities for minority students.
When I see Du Bois's Paris exhibition, I think about how he sought to change the flat narrative of African-Americans written by the dominant culture's gatekeepers in his day, an inaccurate narrative that reached beyond America and left in the minds of others negative stereotypes of American black people.
See the slide show at TheRoot.com, which is only a small part of the whole collection.
Under cover of scars crissrossing the torso, purple-blue etchings mesh into one nest stubborn spirits of slurs escaped from inept exorcisms, hiding an impostor's beat. This metronome times the rise of withering supplications.
Alone, she skates figure eights, the eternal curve. If only she could swerve off the deepening groove to sail a new arc high through air, she could retire her blades, rend the mask, reveal the straight lip, the damp eye, the brow wrinkled as a mother's when children fail and fail again.
She's prayed this pain projecting from her back, through the shrink of cleansing organs, means wings budding, that God is closing windows to open the door wide for her soft, feathered, coverless journey.
... while I've adopted Job as part of my mythology, I am drawn back to the Metis myth, the story of a goddess, Zeus's first wife, whom he swallowed because he believed a prophecy that said Metis's children would surpass him in greatness. I see in the Metis myth the desire of the controlling male to prevent the female he fears may be his superior from reaching her full potential. If you know this myth, then you know that after Zeus swallowed Metis, he developed a tormenting headache, and later the goddess of wisdom, Athena, sprang fully-grown from his head dressed in full armor.
Given some very personal experiences that I will not share here, I think there's a lesson my subconscious is trying to teach me through the Metis myth. (Read full post)
I wrote the post in June of 2009, but reread today after someone left a comment on it, and I decided the post still speaks to something people want to understand and need to learn. Kicking off 2010, I wrote at BlogHer.com, "Should You Change Your Self-Mythology in 2010." It seemed people connected to this topic then as well.
The artwork in this post is by Thalia Took. It's a drawing of the Yoruban goddess Oshun.
The following is an excerpt from my post at BlogHer.com on Nadya Suleman's Oprah appearance. While I never felt a desire to have more children to fill a void in my life, I did once realize I was overly-invested in a child's life and using that child's experiences to compensate for something else.
To me ... it's possible for a woman to be overly-invested in raising children.
I left college to get married and didn't finish my degree until 16 years later, and while I have children whom I love and for whom I would do almost anything, I recall a period in my life when it occurred to me I was too enmeshed in my daughter's academic achievement. I was living vicariously through her school life.
When my daughter was in the fourth grade, she had an awful teacher who did not challenge students' skill levels. I still say, "Yes, an awful teacher." While I kept my anger in check in public, I developed a seething rage toward this teacher and questioned that emotion. I realized something must be missing in my personal life separate from whatever fulfillment I found in being a wife and mother, and I needed to address that hole. I decided the root of my rage was regret that I had not completed college. So, I went back to school, finishing my degree at age 36.
Yes, we should be good mothers, but motherhood does not annihilate self. Mother is a role with heavy responsibility and duties that should be executed with love. It's not a sole purpose for a woman's living, however, in my opinion. I know there are plenty of women who disagree, but I can't say motherhood is a woman's sole purpose for living because that would mean I was saying women who aren't mothers have no purpose. That would be a lie.
Maybe it's the 2008 election with its big campaign slogan, "Change you can believe in" and its mantra "Yes, we can!" which we all know traveled with us into 2009 that's got me on this positivity bandwagon, a place I've avoided. That's strange, however, because I never chanted any of that with the masses. I lean toward cynicism, and that's something that needs to change in me because it's impacting my personal self-mythology.
And now that this country may be sliding into utter disbelief because it went overboard with expectations for one man, I may need to shore up my meager positive reserves so I don't slide into the pit of negativity around the corner. Yes, I've been watching. It seems some Americans are coming down from the great "Change" high of the Obama campaign.
I'm here to tell you, however, that it was never about him. It was always about you, which I feel like he actually said someplace. I'm pretty sure he said that. He would have been stupid not to say that because he's a politician and a good politician never lets the ball stay in his or her court.
No this, post will not be about Obama. I'm just laying a little groundwork here for the state of mass consciousness impacting personal consciousness in positive thinking. WOW! I'm shocking myself here with my own spiritual, psychobabble double-speak.
Feel the tone of my opening. You've probably guessed by now that I am not the world's most positive person. I never bought into Obama's whole change mythology beyond the symbolism because I resist placing faith in one man to change a nation at least not in the elbow grease, concrete way some have believed. You know you are. You're the people currently fuming because he's sending troops to Afghanistan and didn't beat Congress over the head with a public option for Health Care.
I was always of a mind that if he gets all the stuff he's promised done, then way to go miracle worker! If he gets hardly any of it done, then he's still changed the world. That's another post entirely. Believe me.
Now, I know his opponents who may read this, the ones who applauded "I hope Obama fails" at the beginning of this year, are giddy in their seats because they are misreading what I'm saying here already. They're already forming their lips to say, "See, we told you so. Obama couldn't really change anything. He couldn't take this country anywhere."
Hold your horses, naysayers, because that's not what this post is about. Ironically, you don't believe that anyway. If you really believed Obama couldn't change something very fundamental about this country, you wouldn't be throwing those tea parties. You do believe he can change this nation. You just don't like the ways in which he might change it. In some ways, you believe Obama has more power than I do.
And that's what this post is about. Belief. What do you believe about this life? I'm not asking about your formal beliefs or what your priest believes, what your rabbi believes? I'm not even asking about the core beliefs of your blood clan? Neither am I asking what you believe about this country and the president. I'm asking what do you believe about your life specifically and how is what you believe about you shaping your personal life?
Read more at BlogHer.com when I put up the link here.
If you were raised as I was, the old school, American South way, meaning Sunday School on Sundays and heavy doses of "home training" anytime, anyplace, then you may know why an assignment to write about "five things you're proud of from 2009" shook me up a bit. I can only think of one moment in my personal history where saying "I am proud," was cool with the folks, and the props go to the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, for that.
Otherwise, "the subject 'I' with the predicate 'am proud' should be avoided if at all possible," is what I hear in my head with admonishments such as "Nobody likes a braggart" and "Pride goeth before a fall." I have to balance this kind of upbringing and emotional baggage with the trendy "evolved" lessons of later years on building self-esteem or ... Please continue reading the full post at BlogHer.com.
I say brave because it's always scary to put your voice out there, even if it's simply speaking and not singing. In this day of high powered spoken word artist, a lowly poet reciting his or her work should tremble. But I did manage to walk up at 17 Poets! earlier this year and read.
Call this posting a blast from the past, 2006. We had hoped to get it up on CD Baby, the whole poetry CD, but ran into technical issues and as always, no advance without finance.
Anyway, here is Rain God, a mystical romance. Kind of fitting since I'm writing this novel with gods and goddesses in our modern world, and I'm procrastinating writing more of that novel as I type this. However, I do have more than the words posted at NanoWriMo.
For the text of Aberjahni's poem, click here. For one of my old goddess poems, click this link.
Looking at the news today I see more death and destruction in Asia, a tsunami, an earthquake, flooding from a typhoon--all in Asia. The news causes me to meditate on the blessing that for the first time in a while, America's Gulf Coast and Florida didn't faced a hurricane disaster this year. I thought about this reality briefly yesterday when I was on the phone with a man who said, "Boy, I bet you're glad about this hurricane season."
"Oh, yes. I'm so glad that I didn't have to evacuate this summer," I said.
Having to evacuate as a hurricane descends is one my least favorite things about living down here in New Orleans, and I was not here in the New Orleans area for Hurricane Katrina. However, I was here for Ike and Gustav, and my family evacuated for Gustav. It's scary having to consider that you may return to a house of mold and memorabilia washed away and worse, that anyone who stayed behind may be dead.
In 2005, when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, it was the hurricane season from hell. It seemed every other week a storm was slamming Florida, or the Islands, and finally the Gulf Coast. Up until this year, it seemed each summer for a time was one to watch the Gulf warily. This year as we watched, however, I was relieved often to hear words from the weather reporter like, "No need to worry about this one. She's disorganized and will probably dissipate."
Yes, Atlanta saw some flooding, and some folks here had more damage from brief floods than anyone would like to have, but this summer has been a walk in the park compared to some others.
Strange how nature takes us through cycles of terror, and that's what it looks like now on the other side of the world: Mother Nature's cycle of terror is busily spinning.
CNN reports at least 111 people dead after a tsunami in Samoa, which was trigged by a "deadly earthquake"; the death toll following a quake in Indonesia is at 75; and Typhoon Kestana now claims more than 300.
Hearing of such devastation all at once--storms, floods, earthquakes bearing down to take hundreds of lives in such a short period of time--I can see how ancient humans developed mythologies and gods with personalities to explain natural disasters. It does seem sometimes like an entity is angry with one area of the world more than another. In some ways it's more soothing to think some god like Zeus sends down his thunderbolts because he is displeased or that we have made a goddess like Kali angry than it is to declare death and destruction are random.
If we can link disasters to some entity's logic or emotional distress, then we can convince ourselves we have some control, that if we behave a certain way or make specific sacrifices, we can control our destinies, stop some mad god from wreaking havoc in our worlds. But life is not that simple.
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I saw this video posted at My Brown Eyed View, Colin Mutcheler's "Language of My Reality," and I decided to post the spoken word piece here for reference. I'm working on self-mythology, despite my last post on the topic not having one soul drop by and share his or her own.
Well, I'll keep on working on it and the importance of self "story." "Self-Mythology: What Myths Do You Tell You About You" was posted the day Michael Jackson died, before the news broke, and like so many other pieces that day not about Michael Jackson, went into a hole. It's a kernel of thought on something larger.
We need stories, stories about others, stories about things smaller and bigger than we, and stories about ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can help us reach goals and live the best life possible or they can keep us locked in fear and self-defeating behaviors. In our stories are the seeds of faith for our futures. What story are you telling you about you?
Are you the tragic victim or damsel in distress in your life's tale, waiting for the white knight who may never come, or are you the heroine who will save herself? Are you the person who is least likely to have anything amazing happen to her or him who believes that dullness is your destiny based on past life experience? Listen to your thoughts, the ones that play on loop when you're busy with daily chores. What gossip do you spread to yourself about you, what's your self-mythology?
We need not shun myth when it engages and inspires, but when a myth keeps us trapped and on the path to negative self-fulfilling prophecies, we have to let it go. One myth that I think I've told myself about myself without being consciously aware that I tell myself this story is that I am Job. Well, at least I'm half of the Job myth, the first half in which Job has boatloads of tribulation.
For no reasons other than to test me, goes the embedded thought, God's going to look down and let evil forces rip my life apart to see what I'm made of, and I believe this despite knowing I am not righteous like Job is said to have been. I've adopted the scarier side of the Judaeo-Christian God as my God partly. What does this do for me but set me up to expect the worst and by doing so I possibly do not perform at the highest level because I think I've got this Job cloud, limitations to my success? Why aim for the sky if you're only due valleys? (For those who read literally, I'm not telling you that Job is a myth. I am using the word "myth" to mean a great story that contains truth.)
However, while I've adopted Job as part of my mythology, I am drawn back to the Metis myth, the story of a goddess, Zeus's first wife, whom he swallowed because he believed a prophecy that said Metis's children would surpass him in greatness. I see in the Metis myth the desire of the controlling male to prevent the female he fears may be his superior from reaching her full potential. If you know this myth, then you know that after Zeus swallowed Metis, he developed a tormenting headache, and later the goddess of wisdom, Athena, sprang fully-grown from his head dressed in full armor.
Given some very personal experiences that I will not share here, I think there's a lesson my subconscious is trying to teach me through the Metis myth. If I embrace it, then I will have triumphed over the Job myth that haunts my mind and accept that no matter what befalls me, my dreams will bear fruit. In other words, my subconscious begs me to embrace a personal hope, not for what may happen in the afterlife, but what will happen in the physical life. A now hope.
Self-mythology, like world mythology, is rarely based on fact but suspected truths. That you are smart may be a fact. That you can achieve great goals may only be a feeling you have that motivates you to keep going, belief in a suspected truth. Have you noticed that some people take a notion to do a great thing, something others would not believe they could achieve, and they just do it? What kinds of stories do you think such people believe about themselves?
Yes, I now this will sound kind of far out and mystical to some readers, but it's as much about psychology as it is about spirituality. Others will recognize my line of thinking as not new but ancient.
In the comments section below, if you're comfortable enough to do so, please share a self-myth that you suspect holds you back. Sometimes telling our fears and the negative stories we tell ourselves about ourselves frees us to walk in clearer self-knowledge. I would be equally pleased to hear the self-mythology that has helped you to be a success.
In the above video, Nordette Adams recites Aberjhani's poem "And Then the Rain God Screamed for Love" with original music composed by Mark "Rahkyt" Rockeymoore.
I'm not writing anything new on this today because I'm working on my novel, which in many ways relates to this paragraph from my old post, "Self-mythology: What Myths Do You Tell About You?"
The following is an excerpt from my post at BlogHer.com on Nadya Suleman's Oprah appearance. While I never felt a desire to have more children to fill a void in my life, I did once realize I was overly-invested in a child's life and using that child's experiences to compensate for something else.
Maybe it's the 2008 election with its big campaign slogan, "Change you can believe in" and its mantra "Yes, we can!" which we all know traveled with us into 2009 that's got me on this positivity bandwagon, a place I've avoided. That's strange, however, because I never chanted any of that with the masses. I lean toward cynicism, and that's something that needs to change in me because it's impacting my personal self-mythology.
I joined Blip.fm so I could share music easily on Twitter and was brave enough to upload "And then the Rain God Screamed for Love" with me on spoken word vocal, words by Aberjhani, and music by Rahkyt after seeing my old friend William F. Devault was uploading his. 
We need stories, stories about others, stories about things smaller and bigger than we, and stories about ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can help us reach goals and live the best life possible or they can keep us locked in fear and self-defeating behaviors. In our stories are the seeds of faith for our futures. What story are you telling you about you?
