Monday, February 13, 2023

Ummm...brella

 VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

© 2023 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com

© 2023 KM Fikes

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.



The following ain't a blog post.  It can't be.  To do so seems to miss the point.  The tone has been set, not for extensive tomes, but simplest gestures of minimal effort.  

Ay, my gentlesoulfolk, I speak of the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show.  And this surprises me more than any other - being no patron, in the least, of the NFL, and benevolently neutral on Rihanna.  But sum'in was clear as revelatory last night.

My personal bent of black feminism is to witness black womanhood as not the 'backbone' of our respective communities but more of the sternum.  I long to see us leave the Democratic Party to save its own donkey ass or leave the additional emotional labor assumed of our existence to those who insidiously extract it.  That, to me, is the real revolution - when self-care is our central domain and we fly thru life as the TSA instructs: "Putting our own mask on first before tending to others".

You may notice there is no photo here.  You can locate the imagery yo'self.  It is intentionally underwhelming anyway.  Rihanna had no costume changes and limited choreography to accommodate her pregnancy.  Perhaps.  Her dancers did all the work.  Cloaked in the shade of what is blank.  She was likely wearing a nursing bra beneath her Scarlet A...nsemble.  To be a black woman is to walk thru society with that damning letter.  Our act of 'adultery' is in the audacity of our existence; our mere being breaks the 'sacred' union of patriarchy and white supremacy.

Rihanna did not give 100 percent.  Her range was 80-85.  According to cell phone experts, that lesser amount is the sweet spot for charging a healthy battery.  Rihanna was cheeky in her 'check' of otherwise acclaimed performances that have recently grappled with the presentation of social justice issues on NFL 'turf'.  How to do so satisfactorily?  How does an engaged agent-of-change express their own ambivalence RE: their presence possibly capitulating to further capitalist oppression?

Rihanna's answer: You don't break a damn sweat.  You show up - right where and how you are.  You let your belly-full-of-baby hang; you don't bother with special guests or even one sequin to titillate the camera angle nor 'expectant' audience at home.  When you know you have nuttin' to prove?  Ya don't.  Rihanna is suggesting sum'in profound that we are each now challenged to ponder: the new 'resistance' may just be to underwhelm, honorably hanging back your best.  For no one else but you.  Her entire posture seemed to put the average, suspected NFL viewer on notice.  Rihanna had been here before.  This was the same women who returned home to Barbados with the sole purpose of bidding British monarchy farewell.  (Then)Prince Charles bowed out as the new affirmed republic officially declared her 'national hero', complete with title, "Right Excellent".  Hence, the most astonishing feat of 'black excellence' may indeed be inhabiting the self-possession to stand on the most hyped world stage.  To yawn.  And then go home, to breastfeed.


 a clever as compassionate critique
on the implausibility 
of POSTness


Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

© 2023 KM Fikes 
© 2023 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com 

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.  


Monday, January 30, 2023

the villainy you teach me

 VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

© 2023 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com

© 2023 KM Fikes

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.

The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.                         Merchant of VeniceIII.i.59-73


Theory of tickle-down economics oppression. Shakespeare, despite deplorable anti-Semitism, still managed some feat in delivering Shylock's insightfulness - peculiarly endemic to the persecuted - thru defining trickle-down oppression.  Over four-hundred years 'removed'.

Alas, we cannot be removed from a continuum chronic in its contamination.  Let us set the timeline yet, pray, know ye first that dire interconnectedness is our impetus of chronicling along said 'line'.  Indeed, a line ties recent events and one worries what becomes of potential evolution when thwarted by untethered reception.  Are 'ends' left to knot themselves - loose or tight?  Are we out on these lines, sometimes 'wired', alone?

public domain image by Rahul Pandit

Jan. 3

Keenan Anderson, a 31-year-old teacher, succumbs to cardiac arrest after repeated police tasering.  Anderson, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullars' cousin, dies hours after the accident-related traffic stop. 

Jan. 7

Tyre Nichols, skilled skate boarder and aspiring photographer, at the age of 29, is beaten to death by five Black officers.

Jan. 18

'Tortuguita', given name, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a medic and community organizer, is dead at age 26.  Police 'intervention' cleared an environmentalist encampment where unidentified gunfire resulted in the death of the queer activist. Their social media posting matched a reputation of demonstrating conscious adherence to non-violent action. They died from several rounds of gunfire by the SWAT team.

Jan. 19

David Crosby, folk-rock musician, indelibly linked - or 'in line' - with the Kent State campus massacre for recording, Ohio, lyrically documenting the injustice, dies from natural causes - at age 81, not 18.

Jan 21

11 are killed at a dance club in Southern California's Monterey Park on Lunar New Year.  The dead suspect was a 72-year-old Asian man.  Suggestions of possible domestic dispute and/or untreated mental distress accompany the investigation - alongside the exhaustively customary calls for stricter gun control statutes.

Jan 23

7 are shot dead on a mushroom farm in Northern California's Half Moon Bay by a fellow farmworker, age 66, also of Asian descent.  

Jan. 26

Georgia Governor Kent Kemp declares a "State of Emergency" which can employ the National Guard to quell peaceful civil disobedience as a response to Tortuquita's killing.

A thread.  Wound in one direction. 

Were we to dare name this timeline?  State Violence.  To be sure.  While ism residue of ilks equally irksome abound, the timeline above is an ominous ode to State Violence.  It must be named and one fears all occurrences listed may be viewed as disparate instead of corresponding.  Oh so to our detriment!  

The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.                                                                       Merchant of Venice,  III.i.59-73

Even cries today, this very hour, before a service can lay Nichols to 'rest', demands - yet seems deficient - of this broader framework.  With this weekend's video release, whether one chooses to view or not, a pointed response will be elicited into our shared ether.  Attention honors Tyre Nichols’ memory, his family, all relational bonds, and wider Memphis.  One hopes this moment  - too fertile, ripe for seeing so much farther or inward and in ‘line’ - is not minimized by a myopic reading.  May there be reverence in insistence upon a knitting-needle analysis where one skilled string guides our collective garment.

About that pulled string?  What is most problematic about policing is its raison d'être.  Slave patrols auto-deputized those who could prove their patriotism thru racialized force.  Extricating an institution from roots so foul would be some fool's errand if not for its implicit danger.  Plucking 'police brutality' from the ruthlessness roundly comprising Da State makes us derelict in duty as a critical citizenry.  Bad apples grow from and fall off the tree of a militarized state.  When we fail to trace the trajectory of rotten 'produce', we wind up with surreal scenes like tanks rolling past Ferguson neighborhood lawns.  Remnants of our 'forever wars' abroad, Homeland Security's response to the World Trade Center collapsing in on itself, once externally hit, and our continued compliant numbing of nuance in supporting an Israeli occupation, make wartime vehicles, armament, but more so, and quite disturbing, military tactical training quotidian interactions jeopardizing community cohesion.  

And that of trees. 

Forest defenders in Atlanta have been protesting the $90 million planned 'Cop City', a law enforcement training facility that would not only be the largest of its kind in the US, but also not incidentally, neighbor communities of color. Like Ferguson before it, 'Cop City' would share tactical expertise with the State of Israel.  Crowd control or indiscriminate dispersal protocols apparently exclude no living entity.  'Cop City' is holistic in its approach to brutality, commencing its construction with deforestation.  The majority of residents surrounding Weelaunee Forest have not supported the facility either.  Ecological concerns are social justice personified.  Here, the seamless merging laments the prospect of vast lost acreage and equally gutted civil acumen. 

Forest protectors in Atlanta, in the unrelenting nook of now, mourn and recalibrate and wade thru swamps of shock for semblance of a substantive reply - any shade of 'green'.  Might there be a more definitive diss to the life of George Floyd or the untold, globally, who filled the streets due to the cause of his death, than this fatal erection of 'Cop City'?  Yes, the diss deepens.  A BIPOC non-binary healer is snuffed out in Georgia like books in schools or libraries to support gender expansiveness, leaving Da State absent a nod towards protest as our right to assemble.  That aborted assemblage reclaims the common sense that State Violence must ignore in 'order' to ignite.

Assemblage of the common needs not only a permit; a soundtrack backs our gathering.  One troubadour is dead and the 'folk' tune that falls silent was historical documentation.  Others - who are ever 'othered' - protest ever - in poetry, its cousin, hip hop, and in labored as rhythmic breathing.  When Da State cannot hear us beg for our last gasp.  But Crosby was white and male and known.  As were or could have been students at Kent State, opposed to the Vietnam War. As were and might have been upper-middle-class babies from Sandy Hook who would have grown to young adulthood, where those engaged begin to develop a world view.  That view varies wide and far, as well it should, benefiting our maturation with respect for that breadth of beliefs - and consequent organizing on those beliefs' behalves.  From and about Southeast Asia to Atlanta and the Middle East to Ferguson, some may or may not find how rarified few is the view solidified for the sake of humanitarian stakes.  Some may or may not learn their world community can stand united, officially condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine as much as Israeli settlements violating international law.  All grasp the risk of that protest song: too high for white activist-entertainers or shot college students or shot babies.  When white celebrities or shot college students or shot babies  -  who are not poor  -  do not move ‘Merica to act, we know we are all in some down deep trouble. Hence, Crosby’s hushed mic counts, if only symbolically in the suspended potentiality of freedom struggles heard more and thereby with better chance for change.

BLM placards on lawns were sinking into mud before California's torrential storms.   Black Lives Matter co-founder, Cullars' - in a three-year span - 'weathered' Da State declaring not Jan. 6 insurrectionists terrorists, but her activism.  A social justice organizer goes from state-declared terrorist to suburban-embraced 'visionary' to personally mourning the very State Violence that founded her movement as resistance to Trayvon Martin's murder in 2012...in the first damn place.  Meanwhile, Floyd's Policing Act of 2021, a promise, is mired in the muck of Congressional gridlock.

The immediate State Violence example of Nichols, not harkening back to George Floyd nor Michael Brown but Rodney King in 1991, is curiously coupled with the persistence of Asian hate.  Two elderly Asian men, in tragedies separated by the span of just two sunsets, acquired arms — as “instructed” Americans “will”.  Following the former administration stoking xenophobic flames via delusions of scapegoats for COVID, gun purchases spiked among Asian-Americans.  When older masculine expression is left ‘loaded’ with only an ‘arm’ to speak its survival of supremacy, a gun — no longer locked — is backed by law never meant for him.

Kemp, backed by law drafted for him, declares a "State of Emergency".  All hell hail!  Bring in Da State.  When the ten tears we weep are the shape of our toes.  Sometimes weeping does not register as a wet cheek.  Weeping can take the form of gathering together, pointing one foot in front of the other, linking arms, and raising signage as our humming-into-shoutingGrief, undistinguished from informative anger, is the trademark of trauma.

Protestors can - legally - be tracked, harassed, charged to be prosecuted, and even murdered by Da State.  All made possible by the impunity of defaulted deference from a public frightened not by losing their freedom of speech, but the threat to their catalytic convertors.  One still does not know exactly what those are or where mine is located on my California-registered vehicle but the theft of them has reached a fevered pitch of-a-crime-epidemic in the Golden 'State'.  Otherwise, California is not merely ‘Merica’s agri-leader but lauded as "the world's breadbasket".

The conditions at a fungi farm, in wealthy Half Moon Bay, but throughout agribusiness - for immigrant farmworkers - may be constructed as their own forms of humanitarian violence.  Violence wears many a mask: in the threat of reports to ICE, and/or in the indignities that lead Californian farmworkers on a 550 mile-month-long march from Delano to Sacramento.  Their aim of blistered, bleeding brown feet in the August heat?  To garner a signature - mere white fingers' swipe of the pen - from vineyard owner/Governor Newsom.  Bill AB 2183, the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, was signed the last day of this past September.  Still, legislation to aid organizing did not prevent the assailant, living in conditions whom officials are calling "deplorable", from anxiety over a $100 bill from his employer to repair a forklift.  As of Jan. 29, investigators have released the suspect's professed disgruntled motive - that most current as reluctant 'Merican pastime: debt.

Jim Crow sharecropping replicated Da State because it too created debt.  Reparation discussions historically mark ‘Merica’s indebtedness to its worst treatment of its labor ‘class’.  Early on as colonies, forced labor of Africans was alongside indentured servitude of poorest Europeans, working off their ‘passage’ to the New World.  In the Old World's twentieth century?  Concentration camps in the Holocaust were oft referred to as ‘labor camps’.  Back on this side of the pond, post-Reconstruction, incarceration’s synonym was ‘hard labor’.  Origins of the labor ‘force’ have always been just that: a violence.  Profit immense; villainy intense.

Not ironically - because that is the way continuums work, Monterey Park seems to suggest the flip, that 'brand' of resilience championed in the myth of 'full' citizenship.  The affluence of Rosewood and Tulsa were decimated overnight by white supremacist massacres.  Confined by segregation, industrious descendants of enslaved ancestry owned businesses and homes, experiencing the sovereignty of societal clout in ‘middle’-class status - sequestered, yet in prosperous enclaves.  Until Da State had its say.  Monterey Park presents as a modern-day community of the marginalized, straddling the 'line' of interior assumed or expected success, professionally as personally.  Was the deceased shooter a Bard "instructed" 'merchant'?  That ambiguity, enmeshed in supremacy's legacy, allegedly - from what can be ascertained thus far - visited a Luner New Year festival. Further, the manipulation of full access or inclusion in the guise of Second Amendment exploitation, granted entrance of Da State thru a presence least recognized as direct agent of Da State yet most familiar with Da State's insidious effect.  

Villainy taught.  Villainy learned.  Villainy executed.  

To describe the media that supports this armed status quo, some prefer the adjective, "cooperate" while others rely upon "mainstream".  The same, really.  One, however, leans towards "dominant" media.  Seems a rather apropos signal towards the majority's 'might' as an actual aggression in conventional thought: how - in discourse as much as physicality - popular journalism outlets - too - suppress thru domination.  Those who have their profession specified in the First Amendment seem content to question the Second Amendment - in the literal 'wake' of mass shootings that they incessantly cover - while failing to ponder the same Constitutional reach in our militarized ethos, our most omnipresent earner.  Perhaps sponsorship of certain news organizations creates these 'strange bedfellows' from the war 'like' foxholes within boardrooms and ringing NY Stock Exchange.  That inescapable straight line.  Eisenhower identified it, coining, "the Military Industrial Complex".  His only error, not so minor, was the date.  A General warned his country in 1961 but First Nations caught 'wind' in 1492 and African descendants would soon concur after 1619.  Chinese immigrants mark the calendar 1882 for their 'exclusion' while 1942 ‘timelines’ Japanese-American internment.  Da State was on a mission then and now while capital has only affirmed this plundered enterprise that is a nation.  Many who read that sentence, blurring the notion of "nation", may focus on words, "capital" or "enterprise".  Key.  Because those nouns are secondary to the adjective, "plundered".  They are not only inextricably linked but entirely reliant upon "plunder", in its verb rotation, for their façade of progress.

Therefore, when Black cops slay a Black body, it should not confound, at least not by consensus.  Five:  the number of fingers folded into a fist.  Two: both fists are in service of Da State.  Any illusion of 'Elderly Asian-on-Asian crime' is inflicted as a reflection of and service for Da State. Whether the boot, itself, becomes a weapon, or a hand pulls the trigger of a Western instrument of annihilation, they are lethal tools - no different than those who picked the cotton to birth the NASDAQ index nor those who pounded nails to lay the Transcontinental Railway.  Those tools extend from the oppressed body in 'order' to articulate Da State's intent.  

Neither five cops nor two assailants are anomalies.  Not holding Da State accountable impedes our evolution.  Da State is incapable of innocuous influence - leaving none innocents.  Whether unarmed students at Kent State in 1970, unarmed Wisconsin protestors shot by a teenage Rittenhouse for whom Da State rooted in 2020, the next unarmed motorist of color whom Da State will inevitably pull from their car to their death during Black History Month in 2023, the death of a non-binary first responder with no violent record, whom in-utero-‘Cop City’s murky account may continue to pervert, the unarmed death of a preteen in Gaza whom the Israeli Defense Force' account will continue to distort...

One cannot type further but only pause for our fate at the mercy of Da State.  The above timeline is just that - a line of our times, thru our time.  To be overwhelmed by State Violence here and then there is to discount the continuum.  This moment is an alarm that we do not heed when we parse the details: this happened here and that, over there. Such practice leaves us discombobulated as media consumers and disempowered as citizens.  We are left floundering, inadvertently elevating Da State - not because of its 'mind' control, but how complicit structures who do not take Da State to task encourage subsequent sensibilities to tear asunder our socio fabric.  That string or line - severed - equates an abdication of our lone true throne: ResponseAbility.   We can accept it or remain.  Strung along.  


a clever as compassionate critique 
on the implausibility 
of POSTness


Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

© 2023 KM Fikes 
© 2023 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com 

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.  



Friday, June 10, 2022

Caregiving TAKING Cover

 VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

© 2022 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com

© 2022 KM Fikes

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.

Rooted. Another word for self-possessed. One’s self-possession advocates for child-free and single narratives that do not foster contention with our parenting and coupled counterparts. One roots for the healthiest coupling and/or child-rearing no less than one roots for our inclusion, which must equate less singles stigmatization. One hopes to simply ‘root’. Or try one’s best to do so — for all — within each of our optimal incarnations. A productive as cohesive society needs to promote supportive relating in all dynamics — be they coupled or single or something less defined. Whether we “come together” or are “all together now”, the UK’s authentically jubilant export, that of Beatles’ lyrics, are platinum advice.

In the interest of the collective, one wonders if we should consider direct contradictions in connotations of ‘selfish’ choices — as a presumed result of our singled or coupled status? One does so only with the intention of demonstrating how conventional procreating coupling makes none immune to ‘selfishness’ and may even, inadvertently, in certain instances, promote it. Again, this is by no means a charge that procreating coupling is ‘selfish’ by comparison. One definitively refutes even the notion of comparison here. Instead, one’s interest is in how attitudes - if not implied auras - around procreating coupling might unwittingly create ‘cover’ for ‘selfish’ behaviors. Meanwhile, singles or partnered child-free can remain assumed ‘selfish’, due to mainstreamed poverty of both empathy and enlightenment, for our chosen-solo life. Further, others’ ‘cover’ might be the loose, frayed threads — tangled into inextricable knots — weaving ‘isms’: racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, marriage fundamentalism, and natalism.

Image by Foundry Co from Pixabay

Speaking of ‘cover’, was one living under a rock? Rather, one should reframe one’s cluelessness, on the following matter, as contentedly living child-free to the extent of a peculiar ignorance. Upon reading of the cause of the 2020 El Dorado Fire, that burned over twenty-two thousand Californian acres from September thru November, one was slack-jawed by the cause: a ‘gender reveal’ party. Forced to type “gender reveal fireworks” into a search engine, one’s ignorance was rudely interrupted by intro to this ‘igniting’ product, sold by various outlets. Yes, it’s a thing. Are ‘gender reveal’ fireworks as commonplace at ‘gender reveal’ fêtes as pink or blue cake frost...ing? Leaves one stumped. There is now actually this adjunct soirée to baby showers of yore. One had no idea of the existence of such affairs and was immediately befuddled. Especially given our calendar year.

Has not the agency of trans, non-binary and/or gender non-confirming space-claiming led to wider awareness? Has cisgendered sensitivity not expanded, beginning to better grasp the harms in the compulsory concept, oppressive gaze, and negatively consequential policies of a gender binary? These pyrotechnic displays — billowing pink or blue smoke — to ‘announce’ gender, seem to express downright regression. This is really happening. No, seriously, it is. Accidental flames are just one way this goes awry.

If the reader needs to gather their common senses, no worries about missing the next sentence. Unlike burning brush, one can pause…

Does take a moment to process: an alleged gender — merely to be assigned at birth, that the new human, themself, has yet to affirm, deny, fuse, or refuse altogether — is actually ‘celebrated’. By way of fire hazard. Signed, sealed, and literally blown up. Should we be more stupefied or horrified at the climate-disastrous entertainment factor? Maybe ‘drought’ regions ain’t just about water. LGBTQIA+ advancement, most unfortunately, can also backfire, as witnessed by twenty states proposing their own version of a Don’t Say Gay bill. Twenty, so far, when there ain’t but fifty. How then, might these oblivious sky rockets — wicks lit upon heteronormative parental ‘anticipation’ — translate to sincere advocacy with/of queer communities?

There is an odd strain of consistency in the practice: homophobic, marriage fundamentalist, natalist. And abuse-enabling. One’s only other reference is the Vatican. They too signal their newest ‘arrival’ thru toxic smoke color. The Sistine Chapel’s chimney releases black smoke while the College of Cardinals vote. When the latest pontiff is elected, the smoke turns ethereal white. Embracing Rome, emerging upon St. Peter's balcony, the fresh Pope waves to his flock. In a frock.

Granted, the unintended El Dorado Fire is a unique example of ‘manifestly-destined’ heteronormative natalism gone every degree of wrong. Predictably as tragically, however, there have been other fires, injuries, and even the rare fatality caused by ‘gender reveal’ stunts. Nonetheless, encouraged parental elation, meeting antiquated as arguably insulting gender assumptions, continues — undeterred. It has spurred an industry that began around 2008 when the originator inspired others. Notably, with increased exposure to gender as a construct, said originator publicly regrets their contribution. Regardless, that fur-singed kitty is outta the Birkin. Presently, ‘expectant’ couples, with successful ‘gender-reveal’ choreographed dynamite, who manage to escape incident — like setting their state ablaze — avoid the ‘selfish’ label auto applied to singles and/or child-free. Contrarily, they are in hyper-procreating bliss, proudly past their senses. Traumatized Labradoodles flee from their explosives detonating as friends and family share the ‘light’ show on their social media platforms. Takes a village. All aglow.

A pyrotechnic village and a racketeering college admissions consultant.

Such was the (prosecuted) case of 2019’s Varsity Blues Scandal, wherein wealthy parents attempted to purchase their kids ‘passage’ into elite universities. The depth of ‘selfishness’ — specifically — though, was not exactly satisfactorily unpacked, for its ‘selfish’ role in rejecting inferred fairness in the college application process. Fair or not, that coveted thick ‘acceptance’ envelope, can place a clear check in the proverbial box, ‘proving’ effective parenting. For those at the edges of our social strata, the accomplishment is one suggestive of sacrifice, discipline, and above all, an ironic ‘exceptionalism’, otherwise denied as inherent to that very ‘edgy’ populous. Was this omission in zeitgeist discourse due to our ether: endemically classist and marriage fundamentalist — in conjunction with natalist? Under the auspices of couples ‘parenting well’, the ripple effects of their ‘selfishness’ can curiously demean the gains of groups on the margins, towards faint allusions to not one but two corresponding institutions: that of upper-middle-class, heteronormative familial structures and that of ivy-leagued higher education.

Trans activism and affirmative action, or some scrap of a hint towards diversity of access — respectively — are nigh dystopically dissed in the above examples of ingratiated family units caught in the act of preserving heteronorms. Both are rather extreme illustrations of the ‘traditional’ nuclear family asserting their privilege to the detriment of the whole. They do lay bare, however, certain ‘perks’ in perception from which ‘other-ed’ communities do not benefit. Heteronormative procreating couples never need consider their ‘natural’ advantage and can take the bias in their favor for granted. Should either exaggerated event— caught grossly exploiting the status quo, on which they unconsciously relied — be excused as anomalies? Or might they be cautionary tales of ‘tradition’ unchecked, hardly balanced, and daresay, lacking ‘critical theorizing’? May shades of this damage - decidedly opaque pink or blue while shading grey - be present in other aspects of heteronormative parenting?

About ‘shades’? Projections. ‘Shade’ in shadows, illusions, myths, story. Engaged as entrenched in serial media humor. How expertly a smile deemed substantive can give ‘cover’. Floating just above. At once, lighter than wafting feathers yet heavier than a sole Sisyphean boulder. We must be holistic in this analysis of the limits of domesticity-denoting-character. None can be spared who would pervert fundamental(ist) beliefs and mores. Eight televised seasons of the fictional Huxtable family (The Cosby Show, 1984–1992), where preceded by an established reputation of child-targeted programming in a popular animation series (Fat Albert, 1972- 1984). Pointedly, best-selling stand-up comedy ruminations surpassed ‘family-friendly’ for family-centered; the primary material was parental musing. Right alongside the creator’s HBCU philanthropy and ardent art patronage, a sitcom became the epitomes symbol for ‘black respectability politics’. The spokesperson for Pudding Pops was known no less than “America’s Dad”. Too preoccupied with misogynoir, the 1965 Moynihan Report, also titled, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, failed to mention how this cushioning of corresponding institutions could became a veritable down-feathered duvet, stuffed full for a systematic predator. 

‘Cover’ spreads far and wide. How many of these ‘troubled’, young mass shooters have two, yes, white parents who were warned and ignored the signs? Why were said signs discarded? Inadvertently, did they rely on their cultural or societal, racial, and economic privilege as evidence that they are not in crisis? Is that not a unique aspect of ‘selfishness’: when one cannot even recognize the state of their family — in peril — because they feel comfortably ‘sanctioned’ by society? If the coverage of ‘sanction’ might amount to some 'order' of social responsibility, how adept are families at reciprocity when these same families leave — at risk — their local elementary schools, houses of worship, movie theatres, garlic festivals, nightclubs, massage parlors, subways, medical offices, and grocery stores in food deserts? 

One eschews answers. Declarative statements tend to give rise to Moynihanesque pathologies. The above flurry of queries is worthy of complex deliberation. Alas, nuanced contemplation is currently aborted for the convenience of censorship. A Greek chorus may assist here but their dramatized thought bubble popped long ago. Likely pierced by an adolescent mass shooter’s stray bullet. The kind of kid recruited on-line by white nationalists - unbeknownst to his 'ideal' household - while seated at a heteronormative dinner table, as the last progeny left to clear his parents’ plate of a second helping of once-fully-feathered…cooked goose.

At the tail end of November, 2021, just as the holiday season dawned, Oxford High School joined the scroll of mass US shootings. After a Michigan teen slaughtered four fellow students, injuring others, his parents were separately charged. Allegedly, unrestricted gun access collided with clear cries for help, demonstrative of mental distress that alarmed his teachers. Such did not seem to register with either: white wife/mother or white husband/father. Days before his rampage, his parents had ‘gifted’ their son in a scene perhaps reminiscent of that most American of holiday classics, A Christmas Story. Swap out the ‘pink’ bunny cuddling his Red Rider BB gun for a semiautomatic pistol. Prior to their unusual arrest, the married couple had to be found. Neither parent was by their detained son’s side but instead, together, the pair reportedly fled the family home, choosing a commercial building. For ‘cover’. 

Lest one cherry pick from the tree which George Washington never actually chopped. Pointedly, these specific occurrences are on the farthest end of the spectrum of parental neglect. What is notable, however, is a culture creating a climate that skews recognition of various forms of neglecting collective concern — by one family unit — who is favored due to social familiarity. Somehow, neglect — or perhaps, selfishness — manages to disguise itself in the excuse of celebrating arbitrary prenatal categories, striving for scholastic attainment — at any cost, and indulgence in or indoctrination of Second Amendment absolutism as a vacuous rearing right. All mentioned maintain the illusion of not only an antiquated order, kept intact, but the necessity of domestic heteronormative compliance and complicity — in order — to do so.

ENTER: {stage left}: throngs of white, middle-class parents

SETTING: school board meetings

What line do the actors recite on cue? “We don’t want Junior to feel bad about himself”. Might they misinterpret the guise of ‘wholesome’ nuclear families as the ‘whole’ of a citizenry — with themselves as the archetype of a civilization’s nucleus or 'center’? Does this allow a self-centeredness — unable to reference the broader reality where truth of our collective history resides? Somehow, their misguided (‘selfish’, maybe) idea of what should comprise Junior’s self-esteem trumps honesty. How is that not ‘selfish’: attempting to protect him from his history — that of family legacy? How else to learn how to grapple with the fraught ambiguities of his lineage and the potential evolution in reconciliation? Canada, Australia, South Africa, Rwanda, plus every other fountain in a park in Berlin, face their difficult past. Informed, they have the option of inviting generations to be more mindful, daresay, self-possessed citizens who might co-create policy for all. Moreover, some of the books being banned in the US directly complicate heteronormativity — as standard — with welcoming narratives of queer care-giving.

When certain change can frighten dominant citizens’ ‘secure’ sense of family, is their very reaction to this ‘threat’ — to their privileged position — not also, possibly, socially immature as culturally ‘selfish’? Can their discomfort be traced to the fear of their ‘straight’ European-descended ethnicity as no longer the default authority, resulting in less inhabitance of false structural power? If so, and sharing power more democratically is somehow threatening, then are they not admitting that dominance is their preference? Were they not our cis married, parenting neighbors, colleagues, politicians, clergy, et cetera — and instead, youth on the playground, clutching marbles, not roots — how could their culturally-coddled paranoia be surmised as anything other than a form of ‘selfishness’ in need of wiser correction?

Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks, though, is accepting what happens once ‘cover’ is lifted. It reveals. Exposure to what lies beneath, inextricably tangled remnants - the ostensible ‘ish’ of an uprooted ‘self’ - prompts our offer of unsettling albeit adult correction to what others hold dire as dear: their own..all theirs…existential protection.



a clever as compassionate critique 
on the implausibility 
of POSTness


Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

© 2022 KM Fikes 
© 2022 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com 

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation. 

Monday, March 28, 2022

watermelironic haunting

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

© 2022 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com

© 2022 KM Fikes

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.


Will Smith...yada, yada...Chris Rock...blah, blah...

Why bother, my good peops?  Because.  This is the second assault on a black body on the Academy Awards stage.  This entire post is dedicated to the first - as it occurred a decade before this blog - committed to all aspects in our culture that may deem to be schemed H2Omeloncholic.  One began to chronicle the quixotic as quotidian 'happenings' of H2Omeloncholy in 2013.  One refers now to the first Oscar assault in 2003.  Arguably, we might consider tonight's assault number three: per inclusion of the egregious offense of the studio, MGM, reportedly drafting the acceptance speech for Hattie McDaniel's Best Supporting Actress 'win' in 1940.  To boot, there is her seating away from from her fellow nominees and co-stars during the ceremony.  As late as WWII, the Academy saw no conflict in placing their award fête at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove Nightclub; the Wilshire Boulevard hotel would remain segregated until 1959 - due only to the 'official' end of Californian racial discrimination.  Math, please?  McDaniel received her 'honor' from a locale that required lawful mandate to integrate nineteen years later.  'Public integration' of the following account from nineteen years ago pays no homage.  Howe'er, let us not parse that holistic hostility or atmospheric violence of such stock socio-abuse.  Instead, one remains with 2003's actual physical altercation.  Alas, 'second' assault, tonight's shall be.  


Image Credit: thereckoningmag.com's empowered editing - Hattie McDaniel, 1940


Gentlesoulfolk, if you traversed the previous paragraph - awaiting clarification?  That is the precise point of penning.  At present.  Altho'?  A haunting is the collision of presence and absence.  If you are hip and thereby haunted enuf to be triggered, I applaud you as much as apologize for even this hint or 'haunt' of reflexive PTSD.  And no, qualifying 'post trauma' is no insensitive exaggeration for this incendiary incident is rife with searing specifics: psychic, ancestral, generational...far past the 2003 assault.  Notably, the Pinkett whole - of a famed hyphenation - is planted in the periphery of this legacy.  Roots rambling...far.  On air.  

Image Credit: oakalleyplantation.org



In soil.  In the wilds of evergreen ruffles upon couture ruffles, our lineage was laid bare along 2022's blood-soaked-red carpet entrance to 'the-of-the' front rows.

Image Credit: Mike Coppola - GETTY, Jada Pinkett-Smith in Jean Paul Gaultier


This spring, from the producers of Patriarchy, and the director of Colonial Project, who brought you Misogynoir *, starring award-winning StruckSure, a story comes to the screen that's been haunting souls:

The last census taken before the Civil War cites just under 4 million enslaved persons in the US. Approximately 450,000 Africans were accosted in the transatlantic slave trade.  The population  -  of perceived chattel - grew exponentially, fueling Northern and Southern economy, no longer requiring the treacherous Middle Passage.  Then again?  Did the new Triangle Trade route take the shape of womb?  Black women were breeders  -  breeding with enslaved others and/or systematically violated by 'owners'.  Their offspring were not considered ‘family’ of slave owners but rather property to exist in forced servitude to their ‘relatives’ or be trafficked away from their birth/blood families, to breed elsewhere on unknown plantations.  The fertility of African and African-descended women was essential to ‘trade’ and thus built America.  Those beings that they begot were not legally fully human. Enslaved fertility, then, translated as that of livestock - to be auctioned and inherited. 

This was not deemed rape.  The profitable result was, daresay, embryonic capitalism.  And true to Merican roots, its most trenchant commodities must become entertainment.  Dispensing structural molestation may prove impossible to bear - upon the oppressor's sanity - unless they trick the mind into implementing the height of cruelty as not just supremacist maintenance.  But sport.  Better still?  Theatre - for that certain dramatic or comedic flare.  Best?  Entitlement meeting amusement.

And so it was in the Antebellum South.  And so it was that fateful night in Hollywood, 2003.

Back to Hattie McDaniel's award for 1939's Gone with the Wind.  Officially stamping her role made too much sense as Mericans need that romantic vision of slavery.  So very much.  Almost the epitome of romance - for some - as plantations are still the chosen backdrop for actual weddings of history-averse Millennials.  One oft wonders if they hold their bridal showers at Auschwitz.  

There are slave narratives of trees growing conveniently close together.  One leg of an enslaved woman is tied to one trunk and the other...you get the nightmare, horror, institutional intimidation, domestic terrorism...ya get the (motion)picture.  This unmitigated hell, like lynchings during Sunday church picnics, was recreation.  As silly for some as searing for others.  White men lined up for their turn and white woman had another enslaved woman draw their drapes closed in the 'ladies' parlor.

Wedding photographers poise young couples under these same 'conjoined' trees now - as the first shot to begin their matrimonial sojourn.  And even if this particular bark did not witness a rape nor was exploited as a death chamber with noose, enslaved generations were psychologically tortured, ever aware that learning the alphabet or attempting to flee could mean this same tree - that gave them seconds of shade - sprouted sharpest twigs for lashings.  Any time they got outta 'order'.

We, watching in 2003, were not there.  We, streaming(consciousness) in 2022, were not under said trees nor tied to em - amongst the wilds of ruffles upon cultivated ruffles of evergreen leaves swaying from volatile bows boughs.  


Image Credit: MS McCarthy, GETTY - Oak Alley Plantation, Louisiana - for wedding rental & film production 


Our DNA was there; it will never forget.  And this, one strongly suspects, is why, when discussing the 2003 Oscars with a plethora of black women, from perspectives refreshingly diverse, the reaction seems an eeriest mirror reflection:  

"My stomach dropped".  

Or:

"I was nauseated". 

And:

"Felt it in the pit of my stomach."

So many - from vast black views.  Yet one fierce lens thru the roof of an observatory.  All voiced to refract a similar line.  Lining that winds round - low, rumbling, growling.  In that organ designed for digestion.  Atop a uterus of fibroids and astroids.  A shared somatic, if not cosmic, reaction.  Across time and space.  A visceral experience of the assault - encased in television.  Scope.  Ours.  Oh, how the assault was so much more than how she was grabbed and a tongue was forced down her throat.  

The assault was - equally - in the applause, in the awkward laughter, and in ultra acceptance of Oscar exemplar.  Those applause turned our insides.  Out.  Collectively, that residue rendered us ill - from lost memory.  But one actor made a perpetrator's choice; reception by his colleagues - as much as hers - concurred.  Hence, their allegiance - and ethics - were as sealed as "the envelope...po-lease".  

Psychically, our nipps, our clits, the lips between our legs, and those upon our face?  They remember you, Great and Great and Great Grandma.  Our lips know.  Our lips know yours rarely had consent.  Like Hattie denied her own words for her own gratitude or Halle aggressively wiping her mouth in a disgust that even though caught on camera?  It was not seen, not heard, acknowledged nor censured.  Berry's assault - which garnered Oscar ovation - was felt.  In our gut.  Trunks, if ye will.

White women rocked in whicker on porches as black women screamed from 'the Mistress' sons gang raping her.  And S. Sarandon cheered.  One recalls that too.  Most unfortunate because the camera panned the celebrity audience and could have landed on any public figure.  The randomness of her rooting - captured - gives one pause to mention.  She is, nevadaless, 'fair' or not, indelible to the 2003 memory.  

Existential as ethereal, our haunting is the impetus of this post.  Further, the crux of that impetus is finally extrapolating how and why a nausea - palpable as popular - was instantaneously induced.   As ignored.  The memory is now nineteen years of age, making it eligible to vote.  Each detail is as pertinent as those in dream analysis.  The most surreal aspects?  Telling.  Therefo', an unwitting flash of a willfully ignorant by-stander can be no candidate for discrete deletion.  

Sarandon is - inextricably - the 1991 portrayer of Louise, an inferred survivor herself, who lethally intervenes, preventing the rape of Thelma.  Scripted roles, of course, are not reality but I was stunned by this one - outspoken, otherwise, on progressive causes.  For them.  And Iraq.  At that particular juncture, she was quite vocal.  About certain types of warfare.  In Sarandon's 'defense', she did not get what was occurring.  My stomach did; it turned.  I was not alone.  In 2003, she could not identify: Halle Berry's assault on stage nor the countless - of color - at home with sickened stomaches.  Sarandon's 'passage' has had at least some privilege, keeping her 'middle' intact.  Eyesight too, perchance, quite respectfully.  Many, like moi, are medically nearsighted while others are farsighted.  Whilst Colonialism may be no ophthalmological condition, might it possibly be hereditary - wherein its heirs can suffer from selective 'gaze'?  Myopia blurs background and thereby, perhaps, broader context.  In Sarandon's 'defense' - which is genuinely extended here?  That 'defense' is too exhausted by the injustices inflicted upon it so declines to indict one obliviously caught in a camera shot.  Past her, a mass indictment must be leveled on this night - if leveling the 'field' surpasses 'playing'. 

For some time after, perhaps up until Hollywood's appropriation of Tarana Burke's #MeToo, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences framed an Academy winner's/member's assault as their annual ceremony's 'coup'.  No warnings of the sensitive nature of said material but instead bookending an assault with perhaps fast food deals or mattress sales.  ABC/Disney played - on a loop - their prize of a commercial to an upbeat soundtrack.  Currently, to the contrary, 'clutched pearls' seek conversion to handcuffs.  Oscar producers give pause none in asserting the legal term, "battery" as LAPD stands by - whilst their 2022 award presenter declines to press charges.  Now.  Then?  For them, a historic Best Actress coronation in 2002, that dissolved into the vestiges of traditional tragedy in 2003, was spectacle as much as 'free' publicity for future Tinsel Town proms.  Sponsor?  Board of Governors.  

Regarding the black female body thus is standard US practice - in a 'joke' RE: hair loss resulting from auto-immunity or underscored in today's disproportionate maternal mortality rates.  When profit from certain procreation wanes, concern for said wombs precipitously plummets.  Those with womb of historical oppression, poised at career pinnacle, arguably redefining their very professions, are named Beyoncé and the real King Richard's daughter, Serena.  Beyoncé opened this year's Oscars in tribute to tennis pioneering phenoms, Venus and Serena Williams.  Their sister, Isha Price, was an executive producer of and central advisor on the work garnering a nomination - too soon asterisked as an infamous award.  Infamy is not always unconscionable, as should be the shared scares of champion, Williams and star, Beyoncé: when giving birth, both iconoclasts were accosted by institutional medical neglect.  

Halle Berry was thrice accosted that night, nigh two decades removed.  The second affront was in systematic neglect.  Neglect - via institution/system - communicates citizen value.  When one's full humanity is considered, the result is humane response.  Ironically, Academy observers have fashioned their own term, "Oscar snub", denoting a meritorious performance that enough consensus agrees earned acknowledgement not extended.  Alas, there exists no amount of distracting regalia to excuse what should have qualified as admissible evidence morphing toute suite into promotional tool.  'Sensibilities' of those hailed for their talent were not rattled in 2003.  Quite the contrast to how riled up they are at present.  Row after 'row' of Hollywood elite were not appalled; they approved.  When the most acclaimed nod in the affirmative, they abet strike three.  As has been.  Since breasts were fondled on the auction block.  Third blow: a proprietary label practically peels off an iconic statuesque bottle as criminality makes 'their' commercial. 



                                                Image Credit: Amazon                          Image Credit: Fair Use Wiki via Oscar.org                      

Indigenous descendants date this Colonial franchise back to 1492 but editors of The NYTimes choose 1619 for criminality as the premier ad campaign of Yet-a-Nation.  Film had not established itself as a verifiable art form until the technical feat of DW Griffith's Birth of Nation in 1915.  At a pace opposite of pancake-syrup ooze, the landmark movie became propaganda for KKK recruitment.  Theme?  Defense of white woman's 'virtue'.  A dramatic tour de force, the plot of Hollywood's 'founding' flick hinged on the specter of assault.  And yet?   In 2003, this same brand of assault, fact-not-fiction, lead an Academy's highlight real reel of treasured moments.  Thru Oscar's 'gaze' - rather than create a cinematic 'threat' to national security - the same assault was a golden advertisement.  "Battery" was construed as welcome spontaneity to which an audience would be treated - if they tuned in to the most glamorous of global telecasts.  Cue a viewership of bellies unbound, free of knots, to enjoy stove-top popcorn, microwaved buffalo soldier...shoulder wings, or defrosted Southern picnic fare.  'Washed' down, maybe, with the latest iteration of boxed, carbonated mint julep.

Twitter will be broken tonight and tomorrow with quips RE: Jada Pinkett-Smith's 'honor' - at the whim of toxic masculine display, aghast at a Fresh Prince's outburst of violence - in front of 'them' - and/or the incessant Merican obsession with the 'modern' comic's Pilates Reformation of the First Amendment.  Thankfully, less than a week ago, NJ Senator Corey Booker exampled evolved chivalry.  In his words - 2.0 gallantry - centering the next Supreme Court Justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "No one's stealing my joy".  Meanwhile, the portrayer of Richard Dove Williams, Jr. apologized addressed Da whole damn Room.  A. Brody will never have to do so.  Nor will GOP neocarpetbaggers: Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, or Graham.  Albeit all are haunted, only chosen tummies are unsettled mummies.  The rest wreck the world.  Thus, why would Brody - imposter arborist - nigh contemplate any pardon for his inadvertent advocacy of the wrecking 'order'?  Inflicting triangularly-targeted injury solidified him beyond any Oscar, to archetypal recipient of 'our' Founding Fathers' honorarium.

Image Credit unknown: 
Halle Berry, in Elie Saab gown, envelope in UNSEEN hand, striding towards the podium, to announce the Best Actor, 2003


* "misogynoir" coined by Dr. Moya Bailey

a clever as compassionate critique 
on the implausibility 
of POSTness


Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

© 2022 KM Fikes 
© 2022 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com 

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.