When
I wrote about the election of the first woman president in the United States in
my last post it was with more than hope, it was with conviction. There was a worm
of a doubt buried deep in my gut that she might not win, but it was of the kind
that makes us think about the sudden occurrence of a tsunami when we don’t even
live near the ocean, or the thought of an endless darkness in death. It just
couldn’t happen. Now, as in some Stanley Kubrick-like science fiction movie, we
are faced with the reality that a considerable part of the America that voted wants
to be the old, white, decaying man in the Kubrick movie, or are the apes screaming
and scratching their heads at the monolith they’ve come upon, which is the
present day America most of the rest of us inhabit.
It
was with a lead-filled heart that I read about the 53% of white women that
voted for a man who considers them no more than a hunk of meat and treats them
worse than that. A woman abuser. A misogynist who even worded expressions of
lust towards his own daughter. I guess, like the movies about women presidents
(see post Down the Rabbit Hole…and Into
the White House) women that voted for this man, in their subordinated mind,
can also only conceive a woman as president of the United States as science
fiction or comedy.
As
the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir wrote so well: “When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is
that he does become inferior." To have voted for someone who sullies the
very essence of who we are as women is to have internalized inferiority.
Could
that also apply to the people who did not vote? Fewer than 26% of eligible
American voters cast their vote. What a waste of such an important right and
responsibility! And the majority of voters behind the man who won were white,
dreaming of making America that place where racism allowed them to use their
privilege as oppression; so not so great a time to go back to if you were a
woman, disabled, gay, or belonged to a racial / ethnic minority. How hard it is
for the privileged to give up the illusion of the righteousness of their privilege!
How difficult to embrace difference and equality! I must admit that in a nation
that holds up its modernity as a badge of honor I did not expect to see, in the
21st century, a desire to take this country back to its darkest days
of bigotry, inequality and hatred.
I
begin this post with two photographs, one from a movie released in 1915 and one
released this year; both share a title: The
Birth of a Nation. The first movie was originally titled The Clansman, like the book on which it
was based, and was directed by Kentucky native D.W. Griffith. This movie is a
glorification of the Klu Klux Klan. Enough said. One hundred years later, a
black director, Nate Parker, has made a movie with the same title, but this
time to honor the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1830. The movie made by
Griffith was part of the hate-filled, bigoted campaign to maintain racist views
and subjugation, a philosophy of hate that has been at the basis of the plight of
people of color ever since, as is vividly depicted in another movie released
this year, a documentary this time, brilliantly directed by Ava DuVernay: “13th”.
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| "13th" Documentary by Director Ava DuVernay |
Griffith’s
movie helped support a philosophy of hate, and thankfully we’ve moved away from
that as a society. The movies of the 21st century have moved in the
opposite direction, towards laying the ground for understanding, unity and
progress. Many, like 12 Years a Slave,
the new Birth of a Nation, Selma, Race, return to those dark times as a reminder of the horror of
what it was. As we read about the endorsement of the KKK for the new president,
and about white supremacists, nationalists and anti-immigrants being appointed
to positions of power in the new administration, people who would divide this
nation once again, we should turn to these movies and remember what it would be
like to have another “Ku Klux influx” (borrowing a term from the amazing novel,
The Sellout, by the first American
author to win the Man Booker literary award this year).
It
is certainly one of the greatest ironies of life that the KKK uses a Christian
symbol when theirs is a philosophy of division and hate, the diametrical
opposite of what Jesus Christ predicated: “Whoever fails to love does not know
God, because God is love.” (John, 4:8). It was also Christ that first spoke about
the evils of a house divided (Mathew 12:25), which Abraham Lincoln, speaking
against slavery, then took upon himself to remind the people of the United
States about: “A house divided against itself cannot stand."
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| Moonlight, Directed by Barry Jenkins |
Movies
like Fruitvale Station, Straight out of Compton, or Moonlight, clearly one of the best
movies of 2016, remind us of how far we still have to go to reach that point
where our humanity, everyone’s humanity, is recognized, respected and allowed
to thrive. We’ve been held back by bigotry, which now wants to raise its unbearable
head once again.
But
let’s never forget that the first woman to run for President of the United States,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, won the popular vote. She lost the Electoral College vote
(the second time this happens in this century), but most of the Americans who
voted, voted for her and for the future she stood for, one of progress and not
regression. This is one house that can no longer be divided because many women,
people of color, the LGBT community, people with a disability, and all those
people of good will who want a better, more humane tomorrow for everyone, know
that there is no going back.
