Lindell's Gospel

Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton

“LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton” is a startling documentary film. I love ‘docs’ and if I could, I would be working on three at a time. The first time I watched “LaLee’s Kin” I came in about 1/3 of the way through the film. Naively, I thought the film was a historical piece about Mississippi sharecropping, circa 1940s. I dropped my cup upon realized this film was about something going on today (that was in 2002.) LaLee Wallace is a 62-year old grandmother living in West Tallahatchie County, one the poorest areas in the U.S.

 Mississippi has a dark and desolate past—a placed haunted by the ghosts of senseless murders, lynching and sadness. There are no lynchings and murder in LaLee’s Kin, but there’s a lot of sadness. What happened to LaLee’s ‘American dream?” Where along the way did she end up living a sharecropper’s life in 2002 that was thematically identical to a sharecropper’s life in 1902? LaLee’s Kin – to a U.S. audience—causes people to ask: “Is this really the United States?” Well, it is—for many people. The stardust left by the American dream is sawdust for many who live in poverty. 

Thanksgiving

16  years ago Dan Soliday and LaVerne Blanton--of a local Nazarene church --  asked Pete Stephenson and I to make a documentary film expressing  their vision for working with gang members, homeless and the working poor in east Fort Worth. This film entitled, "Iron Sharpens Iron," evolved into a tradition of serving Thanksgiving meals that lasts until this day. 

None Dare Call this Healing: The Innocent Women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Listening as my mother described being raped, though heartbreaking, was not as traumatic as watching the HBO Documentary, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. It's my belief that the director, documentary filmmaker Lisa Jackson (herself a victim of a gang rape), felt similarly while listening to the Congolese women tell their stories. Such is the power of untethered emotion laid bare on the altar of abject disregard and abandonment by civil society.

My interest in the Congo tracks to the first time I saw Casablanca. For you non-cineastes, that’s where Louis and Rick escaped to after ditching Ilsa and Victor to ‘embark on their own beautiful friendship.’ I remember thinking, “Ok, so where is Brazzaville?” For many years, I have kept an article by the amazing and talented Helene Cooper in the space above my Macintosh. The headline from the New York Times article read thusly: “In Congo, Trolling through the Lives of Those Too Wretched to Merit Aid.” This article lives close as a reminder that the people in Walungu province are suffering a tragedy that defies description. Of course, just like most people, I don’t do anything…except look at the article once or twice a week. Empathy, but not action.

Because of Ms. Cooper’s article, I counted the days until the documentary debuted. If my TIVO had been functioning, however, I would have stopped watching it twenty minutes in. I am not given to squeamishness. I’ve seen teenagers shot with handguns and rifles. I’ve watched my Grandfather put a ring in a bulls’ nose. I’ve watched people in Hong Kong do things to cats, dogs and other live animals that would drive PETA into shock. And, when I was a young man, I spent four years working at a busy airport. For those who have never had this experience, allow me to say that one encounters nearly every possible experience along the human continuum while working at an airport. Airports are a microcosm of mankind’s evolutionary pattern. Babies born in elevators- old men dying on jet bridges.

Nothing, however, prepared me for Ms. Jackson’s documentary. There were no reenactments, no hidden video of actual rapes—no dramatic mise-en-scene-- just beautiful dark-skinned human beings describing their observations and experiences in chilling monotone. And, that they told the self-lacerating stories in their proper native French created an atmosphere ever more nightmarish.

Rwanda’s genocide left me speechless. I don’t understand it – nor, do I understand the current events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I assert it is the true nature of evil—no empathy for ones fellow man, no interest in anything but oneself. It is what spawned Hitler’s final solution—the absence of all goodness. It is a snapshot of a world without God.

A OB-GYN doctor at Panzi Hospital in the DRC—one of the few locales providing aftercare to rape victims—described how several of his patients were so viciously raped with wooden instruments that the ladies' uterus, bladder and vaginal walls were punctured. Surviving, of course, equates to a lifetime of perpetual incontinence. Stop and ponder such humiliation.

But the worst lay just around the bend. One woman, from the parish of Bunyakyjer, was pregnant when captured by rebel soldiers. After being repeatedly raped by the soldiers, her children were made to ‘jump up and down’ on her belly until she aborted her fetus. Or, there is Sofie’s story—this smooth-skinned kid of 11 looks like she should be starting at forward on the 7th grade basketball team. Of course, this beguiling possibility doesn't exist because she was raped by soldiers and now has a son. The Interhawahine soldiers saw no distinction in age—they raped girls as young as five and women well past 70 years. One soldier described his passion for the septuagenarian: Well, she is not too old for me.”

A U.N. Peacekeeper and veteran of many missions framed these events with courageous events: “I have not seen, in my experience as a soldier, anything like this—as a human being, I am not comfortable talking about what I have seen.”

A police officer and mother of four named Honorine has become a “Law and Order: SVU” for the DRCs small police department. Miss Honorine goes deep into the bush to find victims and take police reports. She is relentless in these efforts. She and her team of volunteers prepare statements using manual typewriters. Honorine promises to help usher in “the rule of law” by bringing perpetrators to justice.

Long ago, I abandoned the naïve belief that ‘people are basically good.’ I’ve seen too much on the journey. Human beings, I believe, are raw material for evil. It is only by the ubiquitous presence of God’s grace that any goodness manifests around humankind.

Life is getting tougher in America—the oppressive weight of despair is encroaching into the lives of small towners and big-city dwellers. But conversely, I know a guy selling Ferrari’s and Vipers who tells me, “He can’t keep ‘em on the lot.” The chasm between those who 'have' and those who ‘have not’ widens like a curse— in times past, this chasm was bridged by a pale veneer of hope…a brittle possibility that ‘someday, I, too, can have opportunity.”

But not if you’re living in Bukava…no, not at all. There are few things that we, who are so far away from the DRC, can do to alleviate such suffering-- or at least ease the pain. So like most Americans, blindsided by gasoline at $4.00 a gallon, and spatially disoriented at the rising tide of recession creeping toward us, I just stare-- sometimes catatonically-- and wonder how I ended up here and not in the DRC. And of course, I do nothing to help the Congolese women because all conceivable actions seem pedestrian. I don’t know where to begin. Thus, I place my lamp beneath a barrel and write words about their plight instead of getting up and doing something real.

Notwithstanding, tonight, in Bukava, someone old enough to be my grandmother Celia or young enough to be my granddaughter Kaiyah will be raped by a soldier. And I, of course, I sit alone, wine glass in hand, fretting about whether the Lakers can achieve the best record in the Western Conference. I guess that says more about me than anything else I’ve written.

Machetes only cost a Dime

My mother-in-law (or I guess she is my ex mother-in-law…I can’t figure out whether she is still an in-law since I’m no longer married to her daughter) is pretty cool. Ethel is originally from Jamaica, although now living in the States. She arrived in Los Angeles as an immigrant in 1967 and is now a true Southern California real estate mogul. She had a keen business sense—I learned a lot from her (although, not much about being a successful entrepreneur, I’d still rather give everything away rather than charge a price.) Ethel had a machete that she’d used to cut sugar cane. The first time I saw the machete, I remember thinking: "Damn, this is a dangerous weapon, you can chop off your foot if you’re not careful." The last time I saw a machete was in 1980…that is, until last night.

In my life, three movies have penetrated my soul. Here they are in no hierarchical order: Mississippi Burning, Schindler's List, and Mississippi Masala. (Strange how Mississippi appears in two of the three titles… I never noticed that before). Now there is a fourth; Hotel Rwanda. If you are a living, breathing soul, with care and hopefulness in your heart, Hotel Rwanda will unleash a torrent of tears and blistering emotions that’ll leave you perplexed.

In feature films, one can count on the truth to be more intense than what is presented on film or a lot less intense—it’s never on point. It is my hope-- though I doubt it-- that the truth of what happened in April, 1994 is less painful than its’ dramatization in Hotel Rwanda. If it was more painful, then God help us all as human beings.

I’ve tried to remember where I was in 1994 that I missed this. What the hell could I have been doing to have not known about Rwanda?

Let me recap: The massacres began in early April,1994 and 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. Allow that to wash over you for a moment: 800,000 people killed in 100 days. I feel a profound sense of guilt and responsibility not only for failing to doing anything about it, but also for not having more than a passing knowledge of the events.)

I vaguely remember something on CNN about a few Africans called Hutus being mad at other Africans called Tutsis (or, was it the other way around) and a few people got shot. Cut To: Damn, that’s messed up…and, continuing on with the rest of my life.

Here is a little backstory, my friends.

The good Germans originally colonized Rwanda in the 1850s and 1860s with some help from newly created Belgium. After WWII, when everyone was mad at Germany, the United Nations gave Belgium complete control over the country with a direct assignment to bring democratic reform. You know, liberate the Rwandan people from an oppressive regime.

There were three primary tribes that comprised Rwanda: The Twa, Hutu and Tutsi. Now the Twa traced their roots back to Pygmies and, being short and sqaut, you can guess what their lot in life was; servitude, cleaning toilets, scrubbing sewers. The next group up the social food chain were the Hutu. Primarily, they were the cattle herders and farmers—think: blue collar and rural. The last group, the Tutsis, became the elite, educated class.

Tutsis, for the most part, were taller and had more European features. Still, though, one couldn’t always tell the difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi. The Belgians arrived at an utterly brilliant scheme to establish a key difference between Hutus and Tutsis: They measured noses. If you’ve got a narrow, pointed nose, queue up in the Tutsi line. If you’ve got a wide, flat nose, you’re a Hutu. That bit of ethnic bad science wedged a foundation of division that would culminate in the death of 800,000 people, the displacement into refugee status of two million more, and the orphaning of 95,000 children under the age of 14.

And, I’m not making any of this up. It really happened.

I remember thinking: How do you tell the difference between a Hutu and Tutsi? In many instances, you can’t. It is simply either, a.) left to what’s on your identity card or, b.) somebody rats you out (to get your house, car, bike, or your new Adidas.)

I think the death total in the Tsunami event is about 160,000. A true tragedy—unthinkable and unimaginable.

But everywhere I go, I see people collecting for Tsunami relief. I even got involved—this past weekend I instructed at a basketball camp where all the proceeds went to Tsunami relief.

Was there a Rwandan Relief scheme that I missed? Were their people going door-to-door collecting for Rwandan orphans? Or, what about telethons? Was there a "Live-Aid" or "Farm-Aid" for Rwanda?

I was teaching a history class once and we were discussing the 1967 Six-Day war between Israel and Egypt. One of the students said, "I think I was on vacation that week, I just don’t remember it."

I must’ve been on some mental vacation during this time in 1994. And you know what, I am embarrassed that I knew nothing, did nothing, and thought nothing about this. Wow, just another ethnocentric, xenophobic American oblivious to the plight of suffering people in the world as long as gas is less than $2.00 a gallon and shelves at the local Kroger are filled.

What is worse, the massacre of people who happened to have long noses, or those who chose to be silent, ignorant and unconcerned about their plight?

Hutus had a term for Tutsis: Cockroaches. In a way, that term is more descriptive of those who did nothing. The lights comes on and the little terrified creatures get back in their Hummers and scurry back to their protected, suburban world of shining new concrete Home Depots and HGTV.

The essence of evil is not singularly present in the evildoer, but lives, also, in the man who sees evil and responds by doing nothing.

On the day of Judgement—the day, rest assured, when each one of us will give account for every word and deed—who will receive the greater punishment? The guy who sliced off the arm with the Chinese-made machete that cost ten cents, or the guy who ignored the cries for help because he had to clean the pool.

I wonder.

History Written With Lightning

A fellow seeker of truth is more than a friend-- he is a brother.
- Dan Brown
Henry Ealy, a professor at Los Angeles City College, is one of the most learned men I ever met. He changed my view of the world by illuminating history for me. I thank him for many things--and, one of the most important was introducing me to the film, "Birth of Nation." This dramatic work, released in 1915 and directed by D.W. Griffith ushered in a new era of cinema. Lillian Gish, in the title role of Elsie Stoneman, portrayed the essence of Southern womanhood, and the central prize in the erstwhile class and race miasma that the film portrayed.

"Birth of a Nation" also ushered in another change in our country: Cinema as I.E.D. (I.E.D. is a term I learned from the Iraqi war-it stands for Improvised Explosive Device). The movie demonized blacks and
fostered a climate of intolerance, cruelty, and lynching that continued into the 1950s culminating with the murder of Mr. Emmett Till.

This move, writ large across the fledgling silver screens in United States, angered whites and crushed the sliver of gains in self-esteem that blacks earned after slavery and through Reconstruction.
I believe that the race riots of 1920 and 1921--in East St. Louis, Illinois and Tulsa, Oklahoma, are directly and causally linked to a climate fomented by "Birth of a Nation." Such is the power of the medium.

There is a firestorm of discussing around Fahrenheit 911. I've read scathing reviews. Even the erudite and gifted Armond White found fault with the movie. That one surprised me.

But the review that saddened me most was from "Christianity Today" (http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/reviews/fahrenheit911.html) One would think that this publication, as the 'house organ' for evangelical Christianity in America, would offer a more balanced view...something, shall we say, a bit more congruent with Christian values.

But, I guess that my fellow Christians at "Christianity Today" are too interested in maintaining an alignment with the current Administration than offering a genuine perspective that's an outgrowth of Christian philosophic thought.

It all got me thinking: What kind of review would "Christianity Today" have given "Birth of a Nation?" I shudder to think at how they would have fawned over B.O.A.N., encouraging every good citizen to see this movie that is 'a dawn of a new era-- resplendent with the dream of the Old South." I'm sure the review would have focused on the cutting edge ideas like 'advanced ticket sales' (never done before B.O.A.N.) and an intermission (first time in cinema history.)

I'm always hoping that Christians take the high ground on issues of humanity-- especially when it relates to the cultural zeitgeist.

Although Christianity, as I understand it, is more about a'change in ones heart' than a 'change in ones behavior,' there are behavioral changes that happen as ones heart is changed. At least I hope so.

The guy who founded Christianity lived, died, and was resurrected on Day 3. Truly, a miracle life. A lot of guys who've founded religions have said a lot of things. He said, "Hey fellaz, nobody on your crew is taking my life, I lay it down... and, I'll be back in three days." Then, he really did come back. It got my attention. And, it got the attention of three thousand people from all over North Africa on the day of Pentecost.

The writers who recorded what He said left us a road map-- a philosophical roadmap to living that should emanate from a two-pronged approach of loving God and loving one's fellow man. It seems pretty simple when you lay it out.

If one chooses to follow Christianity, at least as articulated by the founder, he should at least try to live life in opposition to fear, greed, lying, pride, and ill-treatment of others.

I can't imagine the guy who founded Christianity supporting such activities.

"Christianity Today" criticizes the film as [my paraphrase] one-sided 'Bush-bashing' and for what it leaves out-- e.g., "Why didn't Moore explore the issues like the blacks who were allegedly disenfranchised in Florida?" Allegedly disenfranchised? Whoa. I think that it's intellectually disingenuous to not consider the possibility that the votes of blacks in Florida weren't counted. Doesn't it at least require a discussion or an official investigation? But, the person who is in charge of the 'official vote count' is linked to the campaign, and has a vested interest in the outcome.

If this happened in, oh let's say, Burkina Faso, we would be wringing our hands in disgust at the behavior of dictators in 'these backwater African republics saying democracy was it risk.' It happens in the Sunshine State and it's barely questioned. I would think that disenfranchising folks in a democracy would fit nicely under the heading of greed and ill-treatment of others.

Fahrenheit 411 raises questions that should be raised. If there are answers other than the ones presented in the film, shouldn't we see them? At least shouldn't the 991 families from around the world who've lost offspring in Iraq get to see the answers?

"Christianity Today's" review didn't go down this path.

Which brings me back to my original question. How would this magazine have reviewed B.O.A.N.?,
Would they have ripped into the film's racist ideology and content or just soft-pedaled things, focusing on the cinematic advancements pioneered by Griffith? After all, the political climate in our nation in 1915 saw a great deal of support for B.O.A.N. President Woodrow Wilson gave one of the best string quotes ever, "It is like history written with lightning." A director and producer can't buy that kind of publicity!

Would "Christianity Today" have been courageous enough to write a review of B.O.A.N. that ran contrarily to Woodrow Wilson's ringing, heartfelt endorsement. (If President Wilson loved B.O.A.N, I am thankful that I, nor my sons, were alive during his administration)

I wish I knew the answer to my question because a magazine with the name "Christianity" in its title could better serve humanity in this millenium by re-visiting what Christianity is about. Then, maybe they could do a better job with their movie reviews.

Uncle Tom Meets Uncle Roland

I remember the prosaic style of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' My post-modern sensibilities were startled at the looping elegance and passion of the language. Harriet Beecher Stowe was on a puritanical mission from God--to educate the world about the creeping, insidious evil of slavery.

I had an Uncle Tom's Cabin moment as I watched The Day After Tomorrow. If German filmmaker Roland Emmerich had been alive in the 1850's, he would have certainly optioned Stowe's novel. Think how many lives would have been saved. Who knows, the Civil War might have been averted if the institution of slavery would have gotten a comparable screen treatment to the Empire State building.

I would have relished the digital recreations of cotton
fields and the twisted beauty of plantations standing like 16th century
citadels protecting a dying way of life.

The politicos of the 1850's took Miss Stowe to task over her book.
(I can only imagine the comments tossed her way as she did the
talk-show circuit.)

"Surely, this can't be an accurate description of slavery, Miss Stowe.
Why everytime I see the darkies, they're just a-smiling and look so
happy."

"Twenty pounds of cotton in a day. Why that's not too much for a slave to pick. After all, we give them one day off every week. Think about, one full day. We feed 'em and clothe him."

"Introduce Christianity to the slaves. I don't think so, Harriet. I
understand that we must be concerned for their souls because they are living human beings, but let us be honest: slavery is a profitable business on which our economy and our livelihoods firmly rests. We can't change slavery without changing our way of life."

All this brings me to The Day After Tomorrow and the really strange political comments that it's engendered: "Look at how the President and Vice-prez are portrayed." Or, my favorite: "This movie is an affront to all good Republicans."

Well, I guess that Beecher Stowe's book was an affront to all good
slave masters.

I become really strange when politicians use mainstream movies as an expression of a political agenda. Any good PR person can spin a yarn explaining there are metaphorical meanings contained in Gone with the Wind that forewarn us of alien visitations in Roswell, New Mexico.

Movies, originally, were created to entertain us and uplift us--if
a little education occurred along the way, then, as my Granddad would say, "that's just a little molasses on top of the biscuit."

The problem with my little theory,though, is that when you place 300
people in the dark, in front of a seventy-foot screen with digital surround sound and richly colored, immaculate cinematography, each of their five sense gates will be titillated. And, they will feel something. When they feel, they become susceptible to believing what they are seeing and accepting it as reality-and, as we know, trouble occurs when we forget that reality and truth are often not bedfellows.

I know just enough about the "Greenhouse Effect" and the "Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation" scheme to be dangerous.

Movies are often cautionary tales. We extract from them whatever truths we choose. Fatal Attraction forced a decrease in extra-marital liaisons (and, most probably, rabbits as households pets.) American Beauty made us think differently about the wounded facade of suburban life. Hoosiers caused every underdog to believe that 'anything is possible.'

Even the most vigorous opponents of the "Greenhouse Effect" and the Kyoto Protocol will agree
that the Earth's temperature is steadily rising. Maybe it has been steadily rising for 6,000 years, who knows? What we do know is that our environment is like a beautiful hand-blown glass figurine. It should be handled with a lot more care than it is currently getting.

If the balance is upset, all forecast models constructed by the most brilliant nerds at MIT and Caltech can't predict what life will be like when we know the end is upon us.

I wish these models could predict how humankind will respond with the end is calculated in months instead of millennia.

I'd be willing to bet that if Harriet Beecher Stowe could have one more wish, it would be that she published 'Uncle Tom's Cabin a lot sooner than she did, and that more regular American folks connected with her message.

But then, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was just a novel and The Day After Tomorrow is just another summer blockbuster.