About My Blogs

I wake up this dormant blog on a day that for me will belong in the annals of political infamy. See what I mean by that at my blog Emily's Other Place, where I have written on concerns related to government, politics, social justice. At this blog, as you can quickly see, I had concentrated primarily on writing and posting movie and book reviews. Then, in 2018, I began making outsider folk art and posting it on my blog Emily's Folk Art. I moved that blog to my Patreon page in June, 2018.

Trishna.    Dir. Michael Winterbottom. With Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed.  British Film Institute/Trishna Films Ltd 2011 and distributed by IFC, 2012.   Loose adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

 

Spoiler alert! Some details describe plot elements!

A poor, lower caste, beautiful young woman (Trishna), living with her family in rural northwestern India, encounters a privileged Brit male traveler (Jay). Back in Jaipur, Jay gets his father to give Trishna a job as a server in one of their hotels. Not the very first, but surely a significant indicator of the classist divide separating Jay and Trishna is the inevitability of Trishna’s father accepting the offer for the wages. Trishna must leave home, where she has been counted on to care for younger siblings, and travel across Rathjanistan alone. She quickly becomes the son’s favorite, and that he will have her seems inevitable, after which she suffers complete devastation. For this rupture extends to a moral code that is the very fiber of her being. She steals away back to her village and family, resumes work there, and soon shames her father with her illegitimate pregnancy. He arranges an abortion, then sends her away to an aunt and uncle to work for them. In time Jay comes after her, takes her to Bombay where cohabitation is less conspicuous and shameful. For a while they live almost as equals. But more or less, he stops her from becoming anything other than his servant. After a move back to Jaipur where he manages another of his father’s hotels and she resumes work as a server, they descend deeper into roles of master and servant.

So this is a downer, yeah. It’s a hard movie. I don’t recommend it for immature viewers or anyone else who can’t see beyond the sexual sadism. Which, by the way, had me questioning whether it’s a mere conceit or an apt allegory for social oppression. Because as it is portrayed in the movie it is a vile form of power and control. That it culminates in more violence is entirely believable. Just a note about plot here. It doesn't really matter there isn't much. This film is less about what happens than why it happens. Besides, the film is overlaid with such elaborate location, cultural authenticity, and sociological complexity that plot is just another element on equal footing. What I found believable I also found disturbing: that Trishna was doomed, that in fact, they were all doomed. I saw little more hope for the young school age sister she kissed goodbye before she climbed to a hilltop with a panoramic view and ended her life in a revolutionary act. I could see other choices, but they did not exist within her social paradigm. She freed herself in the only way she could. Just a movie, or a mirror of reality? The film, directed by British filmmaker Winterbottom, was exotic, convincing, tragic, and so culturally specific it left me wondering how it has been seen and interpreted by Indians.

Response to a Presentation by Dr. Ronald W. Bailey November 7, 2015

Part One

Ronald W. Bailey, who chairs African American studies at the U. of Illinois, recently presented at a local college on African “slav(ery) trade” (the term is Dr. Bailey's). The copious amount of information he surveyed highlighted key phases, events, and concepts of slav(ery) trade history.  Avoiding definitions, interpretation, and conclusions, except in question and answer, he provoked students to think deeply, critically. I like such provocation; so, here is my thinking. First, from a handout accompanying his talk, “Slave Trade” written by Dr. Bailey for the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2^nd ed., I give this extremely condensed understanding of the scope of the tragedy that was the Trans-Atlantic slave trade: Europeans merchants, mainly, shipped 11,062,000 African slaves, with 9.6 million of them landing in the Americas. Half this number were brought from the West African coast. Half this number were destined for what is now Brazil, with other slaves destined variously for British, French, and Spanish America. The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD) holds data from some 34,000 slave trade voyages made from 1519 to 1867.

This gives the term big business a new level of horrific meaning. As Dr. Bailey explains, “slave(ry) trade” produced wealth not only through slave ownership and forced labor in agricultural production but by generating profits in related businesses, including finance, transport, insurance, and manufacturing. That is, slav(ery) trade and slave labor built America, and England and other European nations profited, too.

Part Two

In his presentation Dr. Bailey pointed to the following historical phases of slavery, which I take the liberty of listing in paraphrase here: slave trade and Middle Passage; slave labor; passage of law to abolish slavery; struggle to bring abolition law to bear on social reality; the U.S. Civil War with its 620,000 fatalities; the freeing of slaves and restoration of their human and civil rights; the Civil Rights movement; and afterward an era, in my words, in which African Americans disproportionately face problems not limited to inequitable distribution of wealth and privilege resulting in un- and underemployment, poverty and marginalization, barriers to education, especially higher education; violent crime, not limited to homicide and violence against women; high rates of incarceration, often over drug involvement; and the incalculable deleterious effects, compounded over time, of institutionalized racism. The suffering and consequential loss of personal and collective agency (my words) has relatively recently been described by educators and psychologists as post-traumatic slave syndrome.

I think some of the audience to Dr. Bailey’s presentation may have understood he rejected the concept post-traumatic slave syndrome, but I understood he approaches African studies scholarship and teaching from a different perspective. There is really no disputing that slavery was traumatizing, its history is complex, and its legacy still haunts the collective conscience. I think Dr. Bailey was suggesting the following:

Let us revisit our social memory in a way that helps us move forward. 

Let us consider with care the abundance of detail in slave narratives and in records and artifacts recovered from slav(ery) trade and slavery.

Let us analyze and interpret the historical data reasonably and with care, considering its historical context.

Let us likewise consider the multiple perspectives at work here. Slav(ery) trade and slavery, then and now, as viewed through the lenses of color, class, nationality, morality, academic disciplinary paradigms, and ideological orientations (Dr. Bailey’s list) take on added complexity.

Let us reach into narratives, records, and artifacts of slav(ery) trade and slavery and see there the strength, inventiveness, and resiliency of the African slave ancestors, whose lives, labor, and value are the foundation of American prosperity and power. (The working title of Dr. Bailey's current book project: Those Valuable People, The Africans.)

Part Three 

I grasp onto this thinking with hope. I need this hope to be able to revisit this part of social memory in a way that moves me forward with others. Because in this story, this true story, collective and personal, the African ancestors suffered the worst kinds of human indignities, including captivity, brutality, and death; in life were forced to labor under duress, intimidation, terror. I choose now to see that the story survives, and the story is one of amazing survival. How is that even possible? For it was a virulent massive violence that was wielded; yet, it did not destroy the spiritual power of the African ancestors nor of descendants in whose memory they survive.

I stand at the river of blood and wonder. I see something there I have not seen before—the mingling of blood. I feel grateful. I have known anger, and I will know it again. But today I feel grateful.  For the legacy of spiritual strength in the African story of survival.

Slave Narratives Project at the Library of Congress