September 2, 2025 • 79 mins
This week Joseph is joined by The Lion to their Dorothy and their sibling in the name of Love, Candace Simpson as they count their blessings, cut their losses, and follow the yellow brick road discussing the legacy of the super soul musical THE WIZ. You can follow Candace on IG @fishsandwichheaven. The link to Joseph's write up by GLAAD is here - https://glaad.org/glaads-darian-aaron-talks-faith-race-and-family-in-iheartradio-interview/. Find Joseph on IG/X/Threads @josephtheythem and on Buesky @josephtheythem.bsky.social. Email your praise reports and prayer requests to josephreaves@iheartmedia.com so we can shout you out on the show! HELLA BLACK, HELLA QUEER, HELLA CHRISTIAN is an iHeart podcast apart of the Outspoken! Network which seeks to amplify LGBTQ voice in podcasting. Please Like, Comment, Share, Rate and Subscribe!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Black, Hello, Queer, Hello. Christian is a production of
iHeart podcast on the Outspoken Network, which seeks to amplify
LGBTQ voices in podcasting.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Lose it, Lose it.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I don't even know the first thing about what they're feeling?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
What am I afraid of? Don't know what I'm made of?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Can I go.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
On not knowing?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Feeling?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Feeling?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Something tells me that it's more than I can deal with?
Though I never knew the song, some words still catch on,
like caring.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And shaerin being together?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
No matter, can I go that? No way?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Don't know what I'm made of?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
What am I afraid of? Feeling? Feeling? If I dare
to take a chance? Put someone leave? Hello and Welcome
(02:10):
to another episode of Hella Black, Hello, Queer, Hello Question,
a fully black, fully queer, fully human, fully divine podcast
around society, culture, and other fresh fried niggashit I feel
like talking about with my dope ass friends. It is me,
your host, Joseph Frieze pronounced are they them? And I
(02:32):
am so excited to be with you for another episode.
So some church announcements, some praise reports that we have today,
So Hella Black, Hello, Queer, Hello, Christian has gotten its
first piece of press. Shout out to Jacob Rays of
(02:54):
Glad who did a write up on the podcast. We
talked about the podcast in general, but then we also
focused on the if not for the blog, is for
your episode that I was so fortunate to have Darien
Aaron on for and thank you Darien for setting that
(03:14):
interview up for me. We greatly appreciate it. And then
of course I will put the link to that article
in the show notes in the program bulletin, so make
sure you check out those show notes so you can
see the link, because as always, you never know what
I will have for you in the show description. And
then we do have a rest of peak arrest in
(03:37):
two rest in peace announcements that we have to honor today.
So the first rip that we're going to do is
going to be for poet cultural activist Pulit surprise nominated
author and the woman who literally gave us both Felicia
(03:58):
Rashad and Allan Vivian ayres Alan. She passed away late
last night early this morning as of this recording, and
she passed away at the age of.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
One hundred and two.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
She is now with the ancestors, so we're gonna take
So she was one hundred and two years old, so
we're just gonna pause, and we're gonna take a minute
and forty two seconds in silence for her and for
her life starting now. Amen, mother Airs Allen, and have
(05:46):
a safe journey and enjoy the other side. Let us
know how it is over there. As I was thinking
about it during the moment of silence, I do also
want to I mean, it of course affects Felicia and
Debbie both because she was mother to them both. But
definitely thinking of Miss Rashad because she's losing her physical
(06:09):
biological mother and it and as of today today August
the twenty first actually marks the months since we lost
her TV son, Malcolm Jamal Warner unexpectedly. So this is
this is a lot of grief for her to handle.
And Miss Rashad, we're thinking of you as well as
(06:32):
Miss Allen. You don't silence makes you think about time,
and we definitely believe in sacred pauses over here at
Hella Black, Hello career, Hello Christians, So just touch your
nigh and say neighbor, oh, neighbor. Silence is good for you.
And then our last praise report rest in hell to
(06:53):
James Dobson. For those of you who do not know
who James Dobson was, James was the founder of right
wing extremists Christian Nationalists think tank Focus on the Family,
and through his diabolical work with Focus on the Family,
(07:15):
he rose to notoriety and infamy by dedicating his life
to making life hell for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and
queer folks in this country. So slip on a banana
peel on your way down to hell. And while you
(07:35):
are tumbling down into hades, may you look up and
seeing all of the black and brown lesbian, gay, bisexual,
queer and trans folks that you damn to hell during
your life and that are now enjoying glory. We're going
to pause for a second, but don't go too far
(07:55):
more of this conversation. When we come back, you're listening
to Hella black, Hella queer, hella Christian. I see that
someone that I have been waiting to visit the congregation
for a while is now in the vestibule. So we
(08:19):
are going to have them come in share a little
bit about themselves, going to have them share their pronouns,
and then if you could answer this icebreaker question. If
a tornado could carry you anywhere, where would it carry you?
And what or who would you land on? And what? Oh,
who would greet you?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Hi? This is Candice Simpson?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Are you she?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
They pronouns. I am based in Evanston, Illinois, where I'm
in school, but I am from Brooklyn, New York. You
can never take that from me. If I could be
carried away, I want to land in another dimension. I
(09:04):
would like it to be the kind of transit that
moved me to another time in space, a whole another realm.
And in this realm it would look a lot like
this one. I would have all my people there. All
that makes me happy would be there, All that delights
(09:25):
me would be there. But we would not, in that
time or space be using money or credit scores in
order to exchange goods and services. I would love to
see a world like that. What I would land on
(09:45):
I would like to land on On that note, my
student loan balance. I would like to just bang, like
as soon as the house comes down, the student loan
balance and everyone who is responsible for keeping me accountable
(10:06):
to those numbers, those would be the people that I
would like that. That's where the house will come down
in that world.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Me and can this have known each other? Four nineteen?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Oh my god, it can't be nineteen. How old am I?
I'm thirty four? What's thirty four?
Speaker 4 (10:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's about right? Because when when did you come to Concord?
I was like two thousand and six or so.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I came to Concord the fall of two thousand and seven. Okay,
I came. I came to I came to Concord that
year right before I came here, came to d c
for Howard, and you know in that, you know I joined.
(11:10):
So when we say Concord, we're talking about the Concord
Baptist Church of Christ, which sits on the corner of
Marcy and matt Marsy, between Madison and Putnam and bet
Sty in the Bechstine neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, US.
Concordians know it as eight thirty three gardener see tailor boulevard.
(11:33):
I joined Concord where I had the privilege and the
blessing of sitting under Candace's father and mother, the reverend
doctors Gary Vee and am A. Jordan Simpson, and then
through that just got to know candas just as a
(11:54):
sister and a friend. And this can lead us into
the main conversation because one of the main things that
we have bonded together over and what is going to
be the topic of our conversation today is the super
soul musical known as The Wiz, which first debuted in
(12:17):
nineteen seventy five, started in Baltimore and through a rather
tumultuous test run. It was not a runaway hit, but
did make it make it too Broadway, starring a young
girl from Brooklyn by the name of Stephanie Mills who
came out of the Cornerstone Baptist Church, which is the
(12:40):
sister church to our church, Concord Baptist Church. That's right, archivist,
you know, we don't connect the dots today. And then
even as we talk about that, really the communal power
and the financial power of the Black Church, because really
The Wiz would not be what it was, what it
(13:01):
has come to be known as if the mothers did
not pile into the church van and say we're gonna
buy tickets and we're gonna go support. They called a
cookie and made sure and they made sure that they
supported Stephanie in that run of The Wiz. Which is
(13:23):
of course an adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz, which of course was an iconic nineteen
thirty nine films starring Judy Garland. But because it was
that iconic piece of Americana, White Americana, the reception on
Broadway to the Wiz at first was definitely very cold.
(13:45):
So in a very real way, it is the Black
Church that saved the Wiz. So we're gonna talk about
the Wiz in its various iterations and what it has
meant to us. So, Candice, when were you first introduced
to the Wiz? Is there a character or characters that
(14:06):
have resonated with you? And songs a song or songs
that have resonated with you?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You know, of all of my all of my professional
work up until this point, I think this is the
first time I am intentionally talking about the Wiz. So
thank you so much for inviting me, because I really
it has such a special place in my heart, and
(14:35):
I appreciate you for connecting the dots between Black church
community and the powerful reception among black folks with the Wiz.
Because the person who introduced me to the Wiz was
Shahara Jackson, who is a member of our home church,
(14:58):
and when it's she's more than a member of our
home shirt. She was my one of my first babysitters.
She was my first grade teacher, and then when I
started teaching, she became my teaching mentor. She's now doctor
Shahara C. Jackson. She is also my soular, my spash.
(15:20):
So every time I hear The Whiz, I think about her.
I think about, you know, her babysitting us at the
basement and she would sing home, like to wake us
up in the morning, like if she was watching us
over a weekend or something. She was saying that in
riy shine, give God the glory. She you know, she
(15:44):
just she has a very silly way about her that
was it always made me think of delight. And so
she took us to see The Whiz. I think we
saw like somebody was doing a version of it. But
by this point I had already seen the movie a
bunch of times with her and then with other folks.
(16:07):
And when I think of The Whiz, I really think
about all of the space and time that had to
be created to make that program, like all of the
takes and the turns and the twists that had to
be you know, I like this word adaptation, like the
way that it has to live in a whole new way.
I really love Love All of the Whiz. So at
(16:31):
this stage of my life, I think the song that
resonates most with me is the feeling that we have
because it's a song about conflict and it's a song
about family, and it is teaching me to reflect back
on you know, maybe a tiff I might have had
with someone that like the relationship that we build with
(16:52):
people should be strong enough to hold any kind of
you know, like confrontation that is done in good faith,
so like it's not being family with someone is not
an excuse to be unkind to them. And when you
are in relationship with someone and you want to have
(17:13):
difficult conversations, relationship makes that possible. So I think that's
the song that's really resonating with me in this season
of my life. When I first was coming out to myself,
and I think that was an ongoing process in you know,
high school, college, it was brand new day because it's
(17:39):
such a like it's you know, Lion is such a
butch queen, like she's you know, it's just she Lion
especially is also one of my favorite characters, and I
think I resonate with Lyon because both of us for
(18:04):
the work that we do and the things that we're
called to. You know, he has to protect the library
and sit there, so he has to project this image
of like he's he's strong, he's impenetrable, he's you know,
nothing bothers him but the smallest things do. Like he's
afraid of Toto, he's he has he has no courage
(18:29):
in the sense that like he can't you know, he's
just so tender. He's so hanging you hear me and like,
and I see that as a defense mechanism, like he's
trying to actually protect this very tender part inside of himself.
(18:54):
And he is very brave. I think he's He does
things throughout the movie that are very very brave, but
for some reason, he's been in his literal shell doing
his work. So I love Lyon mostly because of his
ad libs during Brand New Day, because he is very
(19:16):
clearly a queer icon and just that feeling of you know,
this is the person that I am on an outside,
this is the person I'm in I am on an inside.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So much like you I was first introduced to The
Whiz through the nineteen seventy eight film, and for me
as a Ross fanatic ever since i've been I do
want to take a moment in this episode to actually
talk about the trial what I call the Ross Trilogy,
(19:52):
because I really don't think we talk enough about that
run of films that Diana Ross had in the seventy
starting with Lady Sings the Blues, which she and she
should have tied with Sicily Tyson for that Oscar Love You, Liza,
but you got that because you were Judy's daughter and
(20:13):
she had just died three years earlier. So started with
Lady Sings the Blues, and then we get Mahogany and
then with that Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany combo.
I really don't think we talk enough about, like Diana
Ross and Billy d Williams as an iconic black couple
in cinema. And then it rounds out with The Wiz,
which is my favorite out of the three, because you know,
(20:39):
The Wizard of Oz is really one of the definitive
films and movies of my life. So you have a
story that I'm already familiar with dipped in chocolate, and
it has my favorite diva in the role as Dorothy.
I have always despite the derision and the criticism that
she got for playing Dorothy, some can say it's fair,
(21:05):
as some could say it's not fair, because I mean,
I think she really got criticized for age in some
ways that weren't fair because Dorothy was a okay.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In L.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Frank Baum's original adaptation, Darcy was a twelve year old girl.
So even with Judy Garland, Judy Garland was older than
Darcy was in the book, and they initially wanted Shirley
Temple to be Dorothy in The Wisdom Member. And then
even if you want to look at Stephanie, yes, she
(21:42):
started as a girl, but she played Dorothy in revivals
well into her thirties and nobody said anything. So so
I think Diana got a hard way to go just
because people have a vested interest in disliking Diana, and
there's just this narrative around Diana Ross and particularly you know,
(22:06):
being older at this point, being in my forties, the role,
her interpretation of Darcy even resonates with me more and
more as someone you know, this DC chapter has definitely
been an os like chapter for me, someone who is older,
who has has a couple of years on them and
(22:27):
life definitely has not panned out the way he thought
it would. But you still there's still this innocence and
there's still this optimism that that really causes her role
to her her to resonate with me as a character.
Of course, always loved Eason down the Road, always loved
(22:48):
be a lion, both from the film and from the
movie the Emerald City sequence, specifically the gold part. So
like the ending of it, I really love because it's
it's just classic gospel disco of course brand New Day.
And then once again I'm a stand for it. I
(23:10):
love what Diana Ross, what Diana Ross did with Home.
And then before we move on to the next question,
I really we cannot emphasize enough the genius of Michael
Jackson in The Whiz And really, how when you talk
about the movie for many years Michael Jackson was it
(23:35):
saving grace within mainstream culture because it kind of got
buoyed as kind of like this moment of Michael Jackson
right before he launched into the superstardom of Off the
Wall and Thriller, and he was just good in it,
so definitely want to highlight him. And then I will say,
(23:57):
next question, when did the Wiz become real to you
as a black queer person and what is the what
do you think is the legacy of the Wiz for
black queer people.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
I think you're right about the Emerald City sequence. I
think when the Wiz live like twenty fifteen, they reimagined
it as a ballroom scene if I'm remembering.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
That, yep. And even even in the Broadway revival that
happened like last year summer, it was it was very ballroom.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Right, And so I mean there's there's the obvious stuff
I think that is that points towards even like houses
had people think of queer and trans black people, like
the the obvious cultural offerings that make that make the
Wiz magical, like and it's magical because it takes the
(24:56):
thinking of black, queer and trans people to put all together.
I think for me, when I consider really, like I mean,
once you come out to yourself, you consent to a
(25:17):
lifetime of epiphanies about yourself and you realize that, like
you know, at different stages of my life, I have
used different terms and different labels to describe who I am,
what I am? I mean, truly, I have been all
of the letters I've identified as lesbian, bisexual, gay. I
(25:44):
am a non binary fean who sometimes cosplays as a
black woman. And that's a story for another day maybe
or maybe this is the right day for that story.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Because you're talking to a non binary person who also
still cosplays as a black man.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, it's all. I like the word cosplay because there's
there is some joy and delight and creativity in it.
Like there are times when I was recently somewhere and
I was at a I was visiting a super at
least to me, it felt like a super conservative church,
(26:24):
and it was so funny to like kind of pretend
to be a woman there. He was just it really
tickled me, Like it just tickled me. And so yeah,
I think the song that has been most affirming to
me as a queer person is the Brand New Day,
(26:47):
like and particularly because on the soundtrack you can hear
Luther Vandros and his not just his voice, but you
also hear his pen and I think you also hear
his art, Like there's there's so much in Luther Vandros's
like discography that tells us that Luthor was like banging
(27:14):
on the inside of a glass wall, like trying to
be seen, trying to be understood down to like, you know,
being very creative with pronouns in love songs, like really
getting to the heart of what a love song is about,
such that like a man could listen to it and
(27:35):
be moved, a woman could listen to it and be moved.
Any person could listen to it and be moved. Like
there's something about brand new day that felt to me
like you don't have to pretend to be something that
you're not. Like even the scene as they're like unzipping
(27:56):
themselves out of their suits to me is like I
know that feeling. I know that feeling coming home from
a day of work or like a day of being
out in the world, and like I have put on
this face that that protects me, that like that keeps
(28:18):
me from being bothered. But then I come home and
I take that spiritual brawl off, and I'm just free,
you know, like I'm no longer like and even if
your home is the only place where you can do that,
or even not your whole home, but like just your room,
(28:42):
and maybe not just your room, like the bathroom between
the hours of two and three am, where you can
just be yourself, like sing the songs you want to sing,
imagine the things you want to imagine. I think that
is the for me. I think that's where I am
(29:02):
in my own queerness and in my own gender journey.
It's just, yeah, sometimes we do live one way in
the world because frankly, the social protections for people like
us do not exist. And even cos playing, even even
living refusing to even with the mask, even with the
(29:28):
like this is who I am today, we still like
you can't win, you cannot break, even you cannot again
you hear me. So it's like, well, then let's just
have fun while we're doing this, Like let's be whimsical,
let's be unhinged, let's be glittery. Like my favorite scenes
(29:52):
in the movie are and so I did see I
saw a stage production when I was a child with Shahara,
and then I saw The Whiz in its revival here
in Chicago, and like, you know how much glitter and
makeup and like sequence, it's just so much now like
(30:18):
we get to have, you know, the chaos of it.
I know these people's dressing rooms is a hot mess,
like it's makeup brushes, edgebrushes, glitter foundation all over the place.
So that's great.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
And then to keep the scarecrow motif going, sometimes you
just have to look at people and say, you just
a straw paper dummy. And then for me, when I
think about that question, of course, my first thought was,
and we've already talked about it. Ted Ross's portrayal of
the Lion is one of the classic depictions of a
(30:59):
butcher queen in cinema, especially in the movie where he
had his own Diana Ross blowout for a wig, as
as the cowardly lion Fleetwood Coop Deville. And as I
was thinking about ted Ross's portrayal and even as it
(31:22):
connects to the brother that revived the role of Lion
on Broadway and the bundles that he had to where
I mean that portrayal was kind of like the most
blatant portrayal of quad of Lion, as like a butcher
queen or as like a black queer male that we've seen,
and how it was just accepted and embraced. But really,
(31:43):
even if we want to go back all the way
back to Bert Laar in like the nineteen thirty nine
film The Lion has always been Coke, has always been
incredibly queer coded. Yeah, the Lion has always been holded
as like this effeminine, flamboyant gay man. Right. And I
(32:06):
even think about kind of like the conversation that has
been having in pop culture around how especially kind of
like in the fifties and the sixties, a lot of
villains would be queer coded, and a lot of villains
would kind of like be portrayed as kind of like
these homosexual men. And it's almost like it kind of
got me to thinking of how in some of like
(32:29):
maybe the even though we see it as brilliant and
fierce and gorgeous, kind of like the nefarious and phobic
ways that the quote unquote cowardly Lion is portrayed, you know,
for lack of a terma, as like this sissy. Right.
And then if we talk about the black real legacy
(32:51):
of the Wiz, I'm inges in a very real nuts
and bolts way, it was written and scored by black
game of black game. Man. It was you know, it
was staged and many of the dancers you know, were
black and gay men, right. And it becomes particularly poignant
(33:13):
for me in the brand new day scene from the film,
because The Wiz came out seventy seven, seventy eight, and
I just always kind of have this really bittersweet moment
where it's like, five ten years later after this movie
(33:43):
was released, how many of these young vibrant men weren't
even here with us anymore because of the HIV h epidemic,
because of the crack epidemic, because of the war on drugs.
How many of them, you know, just weren't here here
with us anymore. And then even Andre Deshields, you know,
(34:07):
of HIV positive black gay man, who was the original Wiz.
So that's what I that's what I think of, you know,
when I think of the legacy of the Wiz for
black queer people and then even for me. So July
(34:27):
twenty twenty four, for my thirty ninth birthday, I took
a day trip up to New York from DC to
catch the revival of The Wiz. And I wore this
striped like this blue and white striped dress from Old Navy,
(34:53):
some chucks, and then I had on some purple socks
and the purple socks said, I love drag.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I remember this picture, yeah, And it was.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
A definition of courage for me, because this isn't like, oh,
I'm aware this and I'm just going down the block
or I'm staying in DC. So more or less, if
it gets too hot in the kitchen, I can run
home and change. No, I'm leaving the state and I'm
(35:26):
crossing multiple states, you know, to express myself in this way.
And I mean, of course, just because of the world
that we live in and because people are weird, you
have some focus that said things. But more or less,
my courage was met with love and I'll just always
(35:46):
remember that.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Thanks for sticking with Hella Black, Hella Queer. Hello Christian, So.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
For you, how does the Wiz connect to the Wizard
of Oz and now Wicked.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I'm so glad you asked this question because when I
tell you, my will to live is held by the
fact that Wicked is coming out in less than one
hundred days. When I's the second part when I tell you, like,
one of the things that we do is we look
(36:50):
forward to things like, oh, you know, like my brother
and his wife are expecting. I want to be around
for that, Like there's wonderful things happening in the world,
and on that list, I need to see Wicked, you
don't like, I need to see it because the second
(37:12):
act is so important to me, because I think it
kind of gives more context to why a lot of
people did not like Wicked, especially people who don't know
the story in general, Like I think, folks, well, we
won't go that direction, because I could go on a
whole tangent about that. But when I think of The
(37:33):
Whiz as an interpretation, really it all starts with the book,
the book that's written by L. Frank Baum, which turns
into a movie Wizard of Oz that we get in
nineteen thirty nine, which is turned into a musical and
(37:53):
then movie in the form of The Wiz, and then
those addedations have their own spin, and then Wicked is
like the last kind of iteration. Although there are other
I think there's another series or there's another movie there's
but there's like this whole Wicked Wizard of Oz universe
(38:17):
that L. Frank Baum could not have imagined other people
would pick up and run with. There's no way that
that child of God could have imagined the yellow bikinis
on black people in the like celebration scene, because that
celebration scene doesn't exist even in the nineteen thirty nine movie.
(38:39):
And I think what this phenomenon of like all these
adaptations is teaching us is that people want to be
understood in their own self. They want to make sense
of what it means to be human in their own experience.
But there is something very human about the plot of
the original text itself, Like you got people, like all
(39:05):
of us across the globe struggle with courage, we all
struggle with love, we all struggle with not feeling smart enough.
And then you cannot talk about like any of these
movies without addressing the concept of home, addressing the concept
of family. Like it's such a deeply human work like
(39:29):
narrative that no matter what context it is performed in,
it resonates with people because we're even if you just
find yourself in the mob, Like even if you just
find yourself as like when miss One is singing he's
the wizard and you're just doing your little hula hoop,
(39:53):
like that's something that you might connect to. Those are
my people, the people in munskill Land. So like I think,
to me, it also reminds me that there are multiple
truths and there's different pathways to get to those truths,
and that's like the human creativity of it all. I'm
(40:15):
so excited to see this second Wicked. I have long said,
and there are Facebook receipts even before Cynthia Erivo was
named as Alphaba, I've been said that Alphaba is black.
I've been said that, like what happens to Alphaba in
(40:36):
Wicked and in the Wizard of Oz. I'm like, that's
a black girl. I do wonder like, since we're talking
about like these adaptations, it is strange to see, or
rather not strange, I think we should just name it directly.
The just the position of like Eveline being this fat black,
(41:01):
dark skinned woman and Glinda being Lena Horne. I think
with the Wiz Live, I know Uzzo Aduba was Glinda,
and I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Who was Mary J.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Blige was Evelin, right, so like it was not as Shark,
it was not as Stark, a contrast of like these
two actresses in the Wiz movie. But like I think
also as we're reading all of.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
These, but no, Eveline has traditionally been cast as a
dark skinned.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Right fact more or less mammy right, right, and like.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
And Glinda is always kind of like this slainty, right
or fair skinned? I think another one, I mean this
didn't get the mainstream recognition, but I think another one
that kind of troubles the notion of Eveline is you
did have to to Sheena Arnold play Eveline in a
(42:13):
revival of I believe the revival of the Wiz that
had a Shanty as Dorothy. So that so that troubles it, yep,
because it's forgettable, oh say that, But I do think
it troubles it a little bit. But even with to Sheena,
(42:34):
there's still the notion of dark of dark skin, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Right right? And I think that's why, Like, to me,
it makes me think about my work as a preacher,
like what are the shorthands that we're relying on, Like
what what are the the phrases that themselves need to
be unpacked or the images that we use carelessly that
(43:01):
have potential to do real harm. And some of that
you see in the casting choices with certainly like the
Whiz movie and other casting choices in its whole lifetime.
I think it calls us to think about what are
we what's the story that we think we're telling, and
(43:22):
then what's the story that we actually are telling like
what because this is a movie that children or this
is a piece of art that children will interact with,
Like how will they come to make connections in their
own brains about what is evil, what is good, what
is lovely, what is ugly? Like all of these things.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Or even in Wicked what you see around the hair
and how when Alphaba and Glinda kind of form this alliance,
Glinda kind of tries to show her how to whip
her hair in a way where Alpha Buzz's hair is
never gonna be able to be whipped back and forth
(44:11):
in the way that Glinda's hair is whipped back and forth.
And I mean, even if we go back to like
Margaret Hamilton's version, and I don't think we talk enough
about how her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the
Western the nineteen thirty nine movie is kind of like
one of the greatest horror characters of all time, without
any type of real gore or without you ever really
(44:31):
seeing her do any real harm to anybody or even
really touch anybody. You know, just how she for like generations,
she has just striped terror into people. But like, even
if you want to go back to like her portrayal.
The only woman of color in the film, sees her
sister is murdered by this foreigner. She tries to get
(44:56):
the family heirloom which rightfully belongs to her, which is
the slippers, and they get stolen by her nemesis and
given to the woman that murdered her. System.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Look unpack it, because I would be pissed too. I
would read I mean, she's well within her right to
become a villain. Like she's well and if we take
I mean, this is like the time travel of like
all these adaptations coming when they come. If we take
seriously that, like Glinda and Alphaba have beef and they've
(45:31):
got long standing beef. That scene in the nineteen thirty
nine movie where you know, Glinda says something like only
bad witches are ugly or something to that effect. You know,
you start to see, like, ooh, this girl is not nice.
She's she's not nice. She's not a nice person, but
(45:56):
she's not kind, right, that's it. Because but she's wearing pink,
she's white, she's thin, she's blonde, and she's dainty and like,
so we just accept that she's a good witch because
she told us she came down in a bubble, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And then I mean even in the interaction between the
Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, to where the
Wicked Witch of the West says, stay out of this, Glinda,
or I'll fix you as well. That can even speak
to kind of like a pre existing beef, and then
Glinda's says, be gone before somebody drops a house on you.
(46:37):
And it's like, bitch, do you want to squabble up
like right, like if you're feeling frog elap like my
sister just got I just watched my sister's toes curl
up under this house. And now you want to say
be careful before somebody drops a house on you. But
(47:01):
ain't nothing else to say? Ain't nothing else to say?
And then I will say, if you think about it,
the Wiz stays true to L. Frank Baum's book in
ways that the Wizard of Oz does. It even stay
true to it, because I think about how in the
Wiz the slippers are silver, like the slip slippers were
(47:24):
silver in.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
L.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Frank Baumb's book. In L. Frank BAM's book, the slippers
were not ruby. But MGM did that because they felt
that ruby slippers would show up better and give a
little bit more of a dramatic effect. So like particularly
like in the Broadway version, like the socadas that like
(47:49):
attack the group before they get to the poppies. That's
also something that you also see in the L. Frank
Bomb book. And then I was gonna say next question,
and then I'll say we got about see more questions
before we go into our rapid fire benediction. I would say,
for you, how does the Wiz fit into the legacy
of afrofuturism.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
I mean, again, like the obvious thing is the costumes.
They're very otherworldly, and it's not just that like afrofuturism
is like black people in space. Like I think that's
a superficial reading of what afrofuturism is. But we get
(48:31):
a conjured it's only through the fashions that you take
seriously that we are in a different world, different time,
a different space. I think it fits into the legacy
of afrofuturism because afrofuturism takes seriously the deep wells of
(48:54):
Black and Afro diasporic cosmologies and religions and ways of life,
ways of knowing that our counter to what the United
States is trying to teach us in schools, like I
think so much of afrofuturism is the reliance on spiritual
(49:17):
technologies that help us to combat the powers and principalities
in high places, and so it requires that we have
visitation with elders in the great beyond. So I think
(49:39):
something that is worthwhile to me about the Whiz is
that so much of this happens in another realm, Like
in the movie, at least we don't get the same
the house picked up and moved like it doesn't exactly
that's not exactly the tech achnology that brings Dorothy to
(50:03):
Oz and she sees I mean so much of like
again talk about set design, like so much of where
the munchkins are they're cursed and they're leaning against the
wall as graffiti, Like what a compelling way to make
a statement about like what would have been the curse
(50:27):
for black people? Like that you are stuck in your
place and like you cannot move outside of someone else's
drawing of you.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
And then even with that, it's this alternate reality that
is still this tribute to nineteen seventies New York City
talk about it that the Wiz was filmed in at
that time, so it's kind of like you have the
Munchkins portrayed as like these street kids. We didn't know
(50:57):
it as such then, but really you had the munch
Is portrayed as those young black and brown folks that
were giving birth to what would be hip hop, right,
and they were being they were so they were tagging
the walls in munchkin Land, which was ever means jurisdiction,
(51:17):
so ever means the wicked Witch of the East, because
she was the park's commissioner for munchkin Land and ours right,
So she sees them, she sees them spray painting the walls,
and then she curses them to be praffiti forever during
this time, during this time where like hip hop is
(51:38):
coming to be and hip hop is being criminalized for
the way that braffiti artists were tagging the New York
City subways. So we have the Wiz and we have
the Munchkins as these street kids as like the Bronxes
is burning, right. So I also think that's interesting. And
(51:59):
I was gonna say because and this kind of even
tached to like the mysticism and the magic and the
superstition of afrofuturism, and because the law of ours and
hence the law of the Wiz, deals with like witches
and magic and things of that nature. Have you ever,
(52:24):
as someone who identifies as a Christian, have you ever
come up against someone who opposed you enjoying the Wiz
or called your Christian identity into question because you enjoyed
the Wiz, which is this thing that has witches and
(52:44):
witches are quote unquote the mindic Hm.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
That's such a good question because you know it in
a word known, But only because there's a big asterisk
on that. I think, because you know, as you talked
about earlier, I am the quintessential church kid, a double
p K, and now a pastor myself, I think there
(53:10):
are some ways that I'm insulated from people saying something
like that to me directly. However, there are things in
the Whiz that really pull to me, like like that
ending scene where Lena Horne is singing, if you believe
(53:32):
in yourself and you've got like the black babies, kind
of in my own language, I see them as like cherubs,
like they're kind of dotting the sky, and they're like
beautiful black babies. I think for me part of my
(53:53):
work as a religious educator is to translate texts so
that people can find meaning and divinity and power in
any text that like, you could watch Wicked and shout,
because when Alphabus said to the whiz you have no
power here the first time I that what you're doing
(54:16):
right now, the hands up in the air, That's exactly
what I did the first time I heard that. Because
is that not the whole story of oppressed people's throughout
the Bible, that like Nebukaannezzar has no power, he has
no power. That's why he has to create power by
making people sing at a certain time of day and
(54:38):
bow down to the statue and creating these like these,
these rituals where the people bow down to him rather
than to the god that they know. So you can
go any direction, I think if you're if you're playing
around enough. But I have seen conversation where people didn't
(55:02):
want to I mean, I remember there are a couple
of tiktoks. People didn't want to take their kids to
see Wicked because it was so many witches and like witchcraft,
And I'm like, did you not see the trailer? Are
we not using like people walking out of the movie
because because it's it's demonic, like.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
This isn't a story that has been around for eighty
plus years.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, And to be truthful in my own practice of Christianity,
I do keep witches around I do. I keep witches
around me. I keep Wodo's around me, I keep conjure
women around me. I keep Taro readers around me. And
(55:44):
and those are the people that are not in the
standard you know, when we do it interfaith action, these
people are remembered. I've got you saying, you.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Doing something because we have a Muslim and agu.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Hello, you see what I'm saying, And everybody shows up
in their like religious garb, so that the pictures reflect,
you know, some interfaith posture. But similarly, like I think
engaging with like Muslim texts, Jewish texts, which we already
do as Christians, We already engage those texts. We just
(56:21):
call them different names, and the stories are different or
at least, you know, where various traditions go varies. I
just think it's important to not be bogged down by
these traditions. I think the best way to practice of
(56:42):
faith is to is that it makes you more human,
it makes you more open, it makes you more curious.
It forces you to ask different questions of yourself and others,
and I would hope it helps us to have the
courage to stand up for things in our world when
it's necessary, and in these times, it's always necessary. So
(57:06):
you know, I think it's weird now. The sidebar is
people should feel a way about Harry Potter these days,
and they should only feel a way about Harry Potter
because of JK. Rowling and her being a transphobic jerk.
But that's, you know, the only reason why Harry Potter
has banned in my household, because she's a jerk.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
And then okay, and then even when you said how
Alpha Us spoke to the Wig, to the Wizard and
Wicked and said you have no power, that even has
me thinking about when Dorothy finds the Wiz as the
killing Evlien and it's.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Like, holdy, you nothing but lies.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
No one lies. And then I mean, and then that
even kind of like goes back to the initial question
of of the black queer legacy of the Wiz and
how Richard Pryor's interpretation of the Wiz could definitely be
looked at as like this closeted gay.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Man literally behind the curtain.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Especially considering how it has come out that Richard Pryor
had his own dalliances and experimentations during that time, and
Sherman Hemsley was also a gay man, so Richard Pryor
and George Jefferson both had connections to the community. And
(58:35):
then the last question for this main segment of our
show before we go into the rapid fire, benediction, if
you could reboot and recast The Wiz today, what medium
would you use? Who would you cast?
Speaker 2 (58:48):
You know, in terms of medium, I actually want to
see a TV show because I think a TV show
could take us further into the story. Even a mini
series would be great. But I don't know exactly who.
But I kind of want to see a Whiz in
(59:12):
which so we've already done an all black cast, why
not do an all black queer cast or an all
black femme cast or both. I think what's what's also
powerful about this movie or this series is there's no
(59:32):
like love story, no romantic love story like and a
lot of for it to be such a long lasting story,
and there is no like. And he gets the girl
and she gets the guy. Even in Wicked, like the
relationship between Glinda and Fierro is so background to the
(59:59):
relationship that for and Glinda have with each other. Like
he's just a guy, He's just there. So I think,
having seen Wicked, that's what's on my mind, Like I
would love to see yeah, just like more more of
(01:00:21):
a of an exploration into a black queer casting in
a miniseries format, so we could see it every Thursday
night at nine pm and go back to the olden
days when we used to watch scandal together appointment television.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yes, yes, yes, funny that I pose this question considering
the aversion that I have to this oversaturation of reboot
culture where it seems like everything is a reboot, and
if we want to really center it within black pop culture,
(01:01:03):
it seems like everything is a reboot from something from
the nineties. I am not looking forward to this different
World reboot. Ye, sorry not, because one, we already got
the different World reboot when we got Grownish, So there's that.
(01:01:24):
And one of the things that made a Different World
so great and why it's still so great is because
it was original fucking programming. How about you try coming
up with something new instead of trying to reboot and
rehash everything, and also Dwane and Whitley's child. Okay, is
(01:01:45):
this supposed to be the child that Whitney was pregnant
with at the end of the original series, Because if so,
this child is in her thirties.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Right, unless we're back in time, unless it's set.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Unless it unless it's set maybe in like the early
two when that child would have been going to college,
or they're going to take her and kind of like
do a Jalisa spind with her where she's like an
older student going back to college. But anyway, we digress,
because if I could reboot it, I would do it
(01:02:18):
as a film, and I'm kind of picking up what
you're putting down around making it black and queer, because
I've always said two of my dream roles if I
could play any two roles, if I could recreate any
two roles, I would want to recreate Dorothy and The Wiz.
I'd want to start as Dorothy in an adaptation of
The Wiz. And I would want to start as doctor
(01:02:39):
Frankenfurd in an adaptation of Rocky harm But I'll say
that to say I would cast Alex Newell as Dorothy. Yes,
there was a time where I would have said Chris
Brown as Scarecrow, but I'm actually gonna say Jeremy Pope
as Scarecrow. He was one of the temptations in that
Broadway I would do Usher as the tent Man.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
I could see the Usher as the Usher. I can
see Usher as the Wiz.
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Okay, I don't want to get to ahead of myself,
but I have somebody in else in mine for the Wiz.
I would do Usher as the tent Man because because
Usher is now forty five, so he is he does
kind of like have that elder state statesman vibe that
(01:03:28):
Nipsey Russell Bot brought to I can see that. And
then James Monroe Inglehart, so the gentleman who played the
Genie and Aladdin and won the Tony four it. I
would have him be the Lion. Yes, I would have
David and Tambala Man as aunt Em and Uncle Henry Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
But you know what, let's talk about the black churches
that would show up.
Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Yeah, yeah, I would have Key Key Palmer as miss
One screaming. I would have Felicia Rashad come back and
be Glinda as like a tie in to the original
Broadway play. I would have Jennifer Lewis b Eveley. And
then because I believe he can bring in like the
(01:04:12):
vocal chops of Andre Deshields and the comedic time and
of the comedic and dramatic time, and of Richard Pryor,
I would have Jamie Fox be the wiz.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
I could see that well because you know, with any
role that Jamie Fox gets, he plays it because he
really thinks he is that person. Do you know how
long I was watching Jamie Fox in the Jamie Fox Show,
Like I was watching that after Ray came out, like
it was in syndication at that point, I'm like, man,
(01:04:43):
Ray Charles, Like every time I see Jamie Fox, I
think about Ray Charles. So he could, he would, he
would eat.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Thanks for sticking with Hella Black, Hello Queer, Hello Christian.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
So that brings the main set to the point. So
now we're gonna go into our rapid fire benediction and
it's just gonna be one two feet about eight quick
questions and I'm gonna ask them and which you can
go first because you're the guest, and then I'll tag it.
But we're just gonna say whatever comes to mind. Okay,
what are you looking forward to?
Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
I'm getting married soon, so I'm really looking forward to that.
Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
What am I looking forward to? I'm looking forward to
choir rehearsal tonight. That'll be fun. What is one thing
you like about yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I like my softness. I like them that I'm a
gooey person.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
I like that I'm a bookworm. Where are you a
year from today.
Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
In a new apartment and I will be writing a dissertation.
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
New apartment, hopefully back in school at Howard and wrapping
up that chapter of my life. And I'm getting ready
to go to Dayfest in Atlanta. Shout out to my
friends at the faith community Christian A. Smith. What are
you thankful.
Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
For a reasonable portion of health and strength? Reasonable reasonable?
Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Because my skin broke out, and of course I did
the thing that you never do, and you go to
the internet. So of course the internet had me thinking
I had skin cancer.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
But we just gonna get you some motion, So start there.
Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
I got me some ointment, I got as some calamine lotion,
and then I'm thankful for the summer, and I am
thankful for and I really want to take some time
to appreciate the fact that I can go outside without
being bundled up, because before you know we will be
back in the time of year where you do need
(01:07:00):
to be bundled up to go outside. So I want
to be thankful for and to appreciate some of while
it's here. What are you proud of.
Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
I'm proud of my capacity to love even despite heartbreak.
And I'm proud of my friends, including you. I'm so
proud of you.
Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Oh, thank you. I'm proud of the way that people
in my community of Columbia Heights have been resisting the
occupation of ice in the National Guard. What is a
thorn for you?
Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
I don't like being considered a know it all. That's
a thorn being considered a know it all or like, oh,
you know, there she goes talking about that thing again,
whatever the thing is, that's a thorn.
Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
That's kind of not fair, where it's like you're just
trying to help people be better and you're just first
you're sharing yourself because you're sharing something that you're passionate
about and and that you're being vulnerable, and then to
have people tag you as a know it all, and
then I'm sure the fact that people see you as
(01:08:23):
like this child of these two prominent pastors probably also
plays it to that as well. I've gotten caught up
in this cycle of like the cash advance apps, so
like Ernon and Dave, so trying to like break out
of that, Like that's a thorn for me. What has
(01:08:43):
given you joy?
Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
The young people at the church I serve ask really
good questions. And we had an event last week and
I asked the group, does anyone want to say grace?
And this boy running to the pizza line said.
Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Grace And that was it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
And you know what, exactly, grace.
Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
Gospel music is given me joy because so today, like
for my shower, because like I'll find a song that
speaks to me and I'll create a station off and
I'll tell either Apple or podcasts or title to create
a station. And today I had Apple create a station
(01:09:35):
off of the song Meantime by BB and CC minus.
So of course all the of this other like gospel
music starts playing. And I'm not one of those Christians
that thinks that if it's not gospel, it's the devil's music.
But for me that there is just a specific way
that gospel music shifts the atmosphere for me, Yeah, that
(01:09:57):
really gives me joy. What he is giving you.
Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Hope honestly, the history books. The history books haunt me,
but they also give me hope because whatever we are
witnessing now, it is not the first time. It's the
first time it's been iterated like this, but it's not
(01:10:21):
the first time. And we have blueprints. Doesn't mean that
like they were perfect, but we actually are. We are
never starting from the beginning, We're never starting from scratch.
And so the hope comes from history books, elders, ancestors,
(01:10:41):
and that prayer closet of seeking discernment of how to
make all that make sense for me today.
Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
That there is nothing new under the sun.
Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Hello, that's Bible.
Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
And even Trump and his crony are under the sun,
so there's nothing new about them. I will say the
way I the way I saw the Mayor of Boston
stand up this week and just say, no, you know,
we will not make this concession, even though you're threatening
(01:11:19):
to take away our federal funding. And then I will
say Governor Wes Moore of Maryland has giving me hopeful
the way he has even said, you know, if we
get the request, Maryland will not send our national Guard.
And I am the commander in chief of Maryland's National Guard,
as the governor of Maryland, because for me, I can
(01:11:42):
put my hope. I can if I'm going to cape
for a politician, I'm going to cape for a Wes
Moore or someone who is the mayor of Boston as
opposed to a Gavin Newsom who has been buddying up
with these rights extremists and who has thrown trans people
(01:12:03):
under the bus in some real ways. So that is
the end of our benediction. And usually I lead us
in prayer, but since I have my sister who is clergy,
I'm going to ask if she doesn't mind, if she
would close us out in prayer. As always, I'm going
(01:12:23):
to say, listeners, if you have a prayer request, please
feel free to reach out to me. You can reach
out to me on Instagram. I'm at Joseph they Them.
You can also find me on X and Threads at
Joseph they Them. You can find me on Blue Sky
at Joseph They Them. You can also find me at
Joseph Reeves at iHeartMedia dot com. So if you have
a prayer request, or even if you have a praise report,
(01:12:46):
please reach out to me and you just might get
a shout out on the show. But since I'm gonna
ask that you lead us in prayer not just as
you know, a pastor and a minister, but also as
someone who is an educate both within and outside of
the church. And my prayer request I was just gonna ask,
my prayer request really has to do it. Pray for
(01:13:10):
DC and also pray for the kids of DC as
school starts in the midst of all this craziness next
Tuesday for them, and you have kids that are scared
to go to school. You have parents that are scared
to take their children to school. Yeah, and for me,
just pray for the show. Pray for me to get
out these cash advances, and pray for doors for me
(01:13:33):
to open up to get back into school. And also
just wrap up this chapter of my life because I'm
ready mm hmm. And then, however, however el spirit leads you,
we're definitely open to it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Let's pray there is a place we'll go where there
is mostly quiet, flowers and butterflies, a rainbow lives beside it,
and from a velvet sky a summer storm. You can
feel the coolness in the air, but you're still warm.
(01:14:14):
If on courage we must call, we will keep trying.
We are lyons in our own way. Eternal God, we
thank you for another day, that you have given us
another morning to rise, another afternoon to get sleepy, another
(01:14:36):
evening to wonder about what to eat. God, we thank
you for the opportunity to reflect. And we ask that
you would bless all those who are listening in their
various locations, that this prayer would meet each person at
the very point of their need. God, we have specific
(01:14:59):
prayer requests for the people, particularly the young people of DC,
but those who are being targeted, whose tents have been raided,
who have been thrust all about because for so long,
even us, even we have allowed people to not care
(01:15:22):
about those without homes, even we have moved subway cars,
even we have said we don't have any money. Today,
even we and God, we asked that you would particularly
spend time and intervene in DC. That you would cover
(01:15:47):
those who are seeking safety and sheltered. That you would
be with children who have to see their tax dollars
everywhere but their classroom. That you would be with each
person who has to make a morning commute that feels
like a war zone. And may this God help us
(01:16:08):
to empathize with people all over the globe who are
under military occupation, people all over the globe who see
us military uniforms and think of danger. God, we asked
that you would convict those of us who are involved,
(01:16:31):
Convict those of us who are apathetic, Convict those of
us who could do something but don't yet have the courage,
Help us to be better people in this world. Got
I ask a special blessing from my friend Joseph Reeves.
Meet them at the very point of their need, encourage them.
(01:16:54):
We celebrate them for doing something so bold as to
start a podcast where they are interviewing and talking with
and chopping it up with folks who are offering great
things to the body not just of Christ, but of
the entire globe. God, we asked that you would cause
(01:17:14):
us to be still, cause us to reflect prick something
within us in this conversation that might make us curious
about our neighbors, about ourselves, about our families, about our ancestors,
and about generations to come, and for all those things
we haven't named we might be too afraid to say
(01:17:36):
with our lips. We know that you know, and so
we ask that you would need us even there, and
Your holy roster of names, we say, and.
Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Then hey man, thank you so much for that, Candice,
And that wraps up another episode of Hello Black, Hello Queer,
Hello Christian. Thank you all so much for joining us today.
And if this show touched you in anyway, If this
podcast touches you in any way, please like, please comment
(01:18:08):
so I can know how the show is impacting you.
Please share, please subscribe, and please rate. Until the next
time we say, take care of yourselves and take care
of each other. See you next time. Hello Black, Hello Queer,
Hello Christian is a production of iHeartMedia on the Outspoken Slate,
(01:18:31):
which seeks to amplify LGBTQ voices in podcasting. I am
your host and executive creative producer Joseph Freese, along with
Gabrielle Collins, who also serves as executive producer. Dylan you
Are is a producer. Trevor is our lead producer and editor.
Hello, Black, Hello, Queer, Hello. Christian is a production of
iHeart podcast on the Outspoken Network, which seeks to amplify
LGBTQ voices in podcasting.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Lose it, Lose it.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I don't even know the first thing about what they're feeling?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
What am I afraid of? Don't know what I'm made of?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Can I go.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
On not knowing?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Feeling?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Feeling?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Something tells me that it's more than I can deal with?
Though I never knew the song, some words still catch on,
like caring.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And shaerin being together?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
No matter, can I go that? No way?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Don't know what I'm made of?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
What am I afraid of? Feeling? Feeling? If I dare
to take a chance? Put someone leave? Hello and Welcome
(02:10):
to another episode of Hella Black, Hello, Queer, Hello Question,
a fully black, fully queer, fully human, fully divine podcast
around society, culture, and other fresh fried niggashit I feel
like talking about with my dope ass friends. It is me,
your host, Joseph Frieze pronounced are they them? And I
(02:32):
am so excited to be with you for another episode.
So some church announcements, some praise reports that we have today,
So Hella Black, Hello, Queer, Hello, Christian has gotten its
first piece of press. Shout out to Jacob Rays of
(02:54):
Glad who did a write up on the podcast. We
talked about the podcast in general, but then we also
focused on the if not for the blog, is for
your episode that I was so fortunate to have Darien
Aaron on for and thank you Darien for setting that
(03:14):
interview up for me. We greatly appreciate it. And then
of course I will put the link to that article
in the show notes in the program bulletin, so make
sure you check out those show notes so you can
see the link, because as always, you never know what
I will have for you in the show description. And
then we do have a rest of peak arrest in
(03:37):
two rest in peace announcements that we have to honor today.
So the first rip that we're going to do is
going to be for poet cultural activist Pulit surprise nominated
author and the woman who literally gave us both Felicia
(03:58):
Rashad and Allan Vivian ayres Alan. She passed away late
last night early this morning as of this recording, and
she passed away at the age of.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
One hundred and two.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
She is now with the ancestors, so we're gonna take
So she was one hundred and two years old, so
we're just gonna pause, and we're gonna take a minute
and forty two seconds in silence for her and for
her life starting now. Amen, mother Airs Allen, and have
(05:46):
a safe journey and enjoy the other side. Let us
know how it is over there. As I was thinking
about it during the moment of silence, I do also
want to I mean, it of course affects Felicia and
Debbie both because she was mother to them both. But
definitely thinking of Miss Rashad because she's losing her physical
(06:09):
biological mother and it and as of today today August
the twenty first actually marks the months since we lost
her TV son, Malcolm Jamal Warner unexpectedly. So this is
this is a lot of grief for her to handle.
And Miss Rashad, we're thinking of you as well as
(06:32):
Miss Allen. You don't silence makes you think about time,
and we definitely believe in sacred pauses over here at
Hella Black, Hello career, Hello Christians, So just touch your
nigh and say neighbor, oh, neighbor. Silence is good for you.
And then our last praise report rest in hell to
(06:53):
James Dobson. For those of you who do not know
who James Dobson was, James was the founder of right
wing extremists Christian Nationalists think tank Focus on the Family,
and through his diabolical work with Focus on the Family,
(07:15):
he rose to notoriety and infamy by dedicating his life
to making life hell for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and
queer folks in this country. So slip on a banana
peel on your way down to hell. And while you
(07:35):
are tumbling down into hades, may you look up and
seeing all of the black and brown lesbian, gay, bisexual,
queer and trans folks that you damn to hell during
your life and that are now enjoying glory. We're going
to pause for a second, but don't go too far
(07:55):
more of this conversation. When we come back, you're listening
to Hella black, Hella queer, hella Christian. I see that
someone that I have been waiting to visit the congregation
for a while is now in the vestibule. So we
(08:19):
are going to have them come in share a little
bit about themselves, going to have them share their pronouns,
and then if you could answer this icebreaker question. If
a tornado could carry you anywhere, where would it carry you?
And what or who would you land on? And what? Oh,
who would greet you?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Hi? This is Candice Simpson?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Are you she?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
They pronouns. I am based in Evanston, Illinois, where I'm
in school, but I am from Brooklyn, New York. You
can never take that from me. If I could be
carried away, I want to land in another dimension. I
(09:04):
would like it to be the kind of transit that
moved me to another time in space, a whole another realm.
And in this realm it would look a lot like
this one. I would have all my people there. All
that makes me happy would be there, All that delights
(09:25):
me would be there. But we would not, in that
time or space be using money or credit scores in
order to exchange goods and services. I would love to
see a world like that. What I would land on
(09:45):
I would like to land on On that note, my
student loan balance. I would like to just bang, like
as soon as the house comes down, the student loan
balance and everyone who is responsible for keeping me accountable
(10:06):
to those numbers, those would be the people that I
would like that. That's where the house will come down
in that world.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Me and can this have known each other? Four nineteen?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Oh my god, it can't be nineteen. How old am I?
I'm thirty four? What's thirty four?
Speaker 4 (10:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's about right? Because when when did you come to Concord?
I was like two thousand and six or so.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I came to Concord the fall of two thousand and seven. Okay,
I came. I came to I came to Concord that
year right before I came here, came to d c
for Howard, and you know in that, you know I joined.
(11:10):
So when we say Concord, we're talking about the Concord
Baptist Church of Christ, which sits on the corner of
Marcy and matt Marsy, between Madison and Putnam and bet
Sty in the Bechstine neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, US.
Concordians know it as eight thirty three gardener see tailor boulevard.
(11:33):
I joined Concord where I had the privilege and the
blessing of sitting under Candace's father and mother, the reverend
doctors Gary Vee and am A. Jordan Simpson, and then
through that just got to know candas just as a
(11:54):
sister and a friend. And this can lead us into
the main conversation because one of the main things that
we have bonded together over and what is going to
be the topic of our conversation today is the super
soul musical known as The Wiz, which first debuted in
(12:17):
nineteen seventy five, started in Baltimore and through a rather
tumultuous test run. It was not a runaway hit, but
did make it make it too Broadway, starring a young
girl from Brooklyn by the name of Stephanie Mills who
came out of the Cornerstone Baptist Church, which is the
(12:40):
sister church to our church, Concord Baptist Church. That's right, archivist,
you know, we don't connect the dots today. And then
even as we talk about that, really the communal power
and the financial power of the Black Church, because really
The Wiz would not be what it was, what it
(13:01):
has come to be known as if the mothers did
not pile into the church van and say we're gonna
buy tickets and we're gonna go support. They called a
cookie and made sure and they made sure that they
supported Stephanie in that run of The Wiz. Which is
(13:23):
of course an adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz, which of course was an iconic nineteen
thirty nine films starring Judy Garland. But because it was
that iconic piece of Americana, White Americana, the reception on
Broadway to the Wiz at first was definitely very cold.
(13:45):
So in a very real way, it is the Black
Church that saved the Wiz. So we're gonna talk about
the Wiz in its various iterations and what it has
meant to us. So, Candice, when were you first introduced
to the Wiz? Is there a character or characters that
(14:06):
have resonated with you? And songs a song or songs
that have resonated with you?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You know, of all of my all of my professional
work up until this point, I think this is the
first time I am intentionally talking about the Wiz. So
thank you so much for inviting me, because I really
it has such a special place in my heart, and
(14:35):
I appreciate you for connecting the dots between Black church
community and the powerful reception among black folks with the Wiz.
Because the person who introduced me to the Wiz was
Shahara Jackson, who is a member of our home church,
(14:58):
and when it's she's more than a member of our
home shirt. She was my one of my first babysitters.
She was my first grade teacher, and then when I
started teaching, she became my teaching mentor. She's now doctor
Shahara C. Jackson. She is also my soular, my spash.
(15:20):
So every time I hear The Whiz, I think about her.
I think about, you know, her babysitting us at the
basement and she would sing home, like to wake us
up in the morning, like if she was watching us
over a weekend or something. She was saying that in
riy shine, give God the glory. She you know, she
(15:44):
just she has a very silly way about her that
was it always made me think of delight. And so
she took us to see The Whiz. I think we
saw like somebody was doing a version of it. But
by this point I had already seen the movie a
bunch of times with her and then with other folks.
(16:07):
And when I think of The Whiz, I really think
about all of the space and time that had to
be created to make that program, like all of the
takes and the turns and the twists that had to
be you know, I like this word adaptation, like the
way that it has to live in a whole new way.
I really love Love All of the Whiz. So at
(16:31):
this stage of my life, I think the song that
resonates most with me is the feeling that we have
because it's a song about conflict and it's a song
about family, and it is teaching me to reflect back
on you know, maybe a tiff I might have had
with someone that like the relationship that we build with
(16:52):
people should be strong enough to hold any kind of
you know, like confrontation that is done in good faith,
so like it's not being family with someone is not
an excuse to be unkind to them. And when you
are in relationship with someone and you want to have
(17:13):
difficult conversations, relationship makes that possible. So I think that's
the song that's really resonating with me in this season
of my life. When I first was coming out to myself,
and I think that was an ongoing process in you know,
high school, college, it was brand new day because it's
(17:39):
such a like it's you know, Lion is such a
butch queen, like she's you know, it's just she Lion
especially is also one of my favorite characters, and I
think I resonate with Lyon because both of us for
(18:04):
the work that we do and the things that we're
called to. You know, he has to protect the library
and sit there, so he has to project this image
of like he's he's strong, he's impenetrable, he's you know,
nothing bothers him but the smallest things do. Like he's
afraid of Toto, he's he has he has no courage
(18:29):
in the sense that like he can't you know, he's
just so tender. He's so hanging you hear me and like,
and I see that as a defense mechanism, like he's
trying to actually protect this very tender part inside of himself.
(18:54):
And he is very brave. I think he's He does
things throughout the movie that are very very brave, but
for some reason, he's been in his literal shell doing
his work. So I love Lyon mostly because of his
ad libs during Brand New Day, because he is very
(19:16):
clearly a queer icon and just that feeling of you know,
this is the person that I am on an outside,
this is the person I'm in I am on an inside.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So much like you I was first introduced to The
Whiz through the nineteen seventy eight film, and for me
as a Ross fanatic ever since i've been I do
want to take a moment in this episode to actually
talk about the trial what I call the Ross Trilogy,
(19:52):
because I really don't think we talk enough about that
run of films that Diana Ross had in the seventy
starting with Lady Sings the Blues, which she and she
should have tied with Sicily Tyson for that Oscar Love You, Liza,
but you got that because you were Judy's daughter and
(20:13):
she had just died three years earlier. So started with
Lady Sings the Blues, and then we get Mahogany and
then with that Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany combo.
I really don't think we talk enough about, like Diana
Ross and Billy d Williams as an iconic black couple
in cinema. And then it rounds out with The Wiz,
which is my favorite out of the three, because you know,
(20:39):
The Wizard of Oz is really one of the definitive
films and movies of my life. So you have a
story that I'm already familiar with dipped in chocolate, and
it has my favorite diva in the role as Dorothy.
I have always despite the derision and the criticism that
she got for playing Dorothy, some can say it's fair,
(21:05):
as some could say it's not fair, because I mean,
I think she really got criticized for age in some
ways that weren't fair because Dorothy was a okay.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In L.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Frank Baum's original adaptation, Darcy was a twelve year old girl.
So even with Judy Garland, Judy Garland was older than
Darcy was in the book, and they initially wanted Shirley
Temple to be Dorothy in The Wisdom Member. And then
even if you want to look at Stephanie, yes, she
(21:42):
started as a girl, but she played Dorothy in revivals
well into her thirties and nobody said anything. So so
I think Diana got a hard way to go just
because people have a vested interest in disliking Diana, and
there's just this narrative around Diana Ross and particularly you know,
(22:06):
being older at this point, being in my forties, the role,
her interpretation of Darcy even resonates with me more and
more as someone you know, this DC chapter has definitely
been an os like chapter for me, someone who is older,
who has has a couple of years on them and
(22:27):
life definitely has not panned out the way he thought
it would. But you still there's still this innocence and
there's still this optimism that that really causes her role
to her her to resonate with me as a character.
Of course, always loved Eason down the Road, always loved
(22:48):
be a lion, both from the film and from the
movie the Emerald City sequence, specifically the gold part. So
like the ending of it, I really love because it's
it's just classic gospel disco of course brand New Day.
And then once again I'm a stand for it. I
(23:10):
love what Diana Ross, what Diana Ross did with Home.
And then before we move on to the next question,
I really we cannot emphasize enough the genius of Michael
Jackson in The Whiz And really, how when you talk
about the movie for many years Michael Jackson was it
(23:35):
saving grace within mainstream culture because it kind of got
buoyed as kind of like this moment of Michael Jackson
right before he launched into the superstardom of Off the
Wall and Thriller, and he was just good in it,
so definitely want to highlight him. And then I will say,
(23:57):
next question, when did the Wiz become real to you
as a black queer person and what is the what
do you think is the legacy of the Wiz for
black queer people.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
I think you're right about the Emerald City sequence. I
think when the Wiz live like twenty fifteen, they reimagined
it as a ballroom scene if I'm remembering.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
That, yep. And even even in the Broadway revival that
happened like last year summer, it was it was very ballroom.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Right, And so I mean there's there's the obvious stuff
I think that is that points towards even like houses
had people think of queer and trans black people, like
the the obvious cultural offerings that make that make the
Wiz magical, like and it's magical because it takes the
(24:56):
thinking of black, queer and trans people to put all together.
I think for me, when I consider really, like I mean,
once you come out to yourself, you consent to a
(25:17):
lifetime of epiphanies about yourself and you realize that, like
you know, at different stages of my life, I have
used different terms and different labels to describe who I am,
what I am? I mean, truly, I have been all
of the letters I've identified as lesbian, bisexual, gay. I
(25:44):
am a non binary fean who sometimes cosplays as a
black woman. And that's a story for another day maybe
or maybe this is the right day for that story.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Because you're talking to a non binary person who also
still cosplays as a black man.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, it's all. I like the word cosplay because there's
there is some joy and delight and creativity in it.
Like there are times when I was recently somewhere and
I was at a I was visiting a super at
least to me, it felt like a super conservative church,
(26:24):
and it was so funny to like kind of pretend
to be a woman there. He was just it really
tickled me, Like it just tickled me. And so yeah,
I think the song that has been most affirming to
me as a queer person is the Brand New Day,
(26:47):
like and particularly because on the soundtrack you can hear
Luther Vandros and his not just his voice, but you
also hear his pen and I think you also hear
his art, Like there's there's so much in Luther Vandros's
like discography that tells us that Luthor was like banging
(27:14):
on the inside of a glass wall, like trying to
be seen, trying to be understood down to like, you know,
being very creative with pronouns in love songs, like really
getting to the heart of what a love song is about,
such that like a man could listen to it and
(27:35):
be moved, a woman could listen to it and be moved.
Any person could listen to it and be moved. Like
there's something about brand new day that felt to me
like you don't have to pretend to be something that
you're not. Like even the scene as they're like unzipping
(27:56):
themselves out of their suits to me is like I
know that feeling. I know that feeling coming home from
a day of work or like a day of being
out in the world, and like I have put on
this face that that protects me, that like that keeps
(28:18):
me from being bothered. But then I come home and
I take that spiritual brawl off, and I'm just free,
you know, like I'm no longer like and even if
your home is the only place where you can do that,
or even not your whole home, but like just your room,
(28:42):
and maybe not just your room, like the bathroom between
the hours of two and three am, where you can
just be yourself, like sing the songs you want to sing,
imagine the things you want to imagine. I think that
is the for me. I think that's where I am
(29:02):
in my own queerness and in my own gender journey.
It's just, yeah, sometimes we do live one way in
the world because frankly, the social protections for people like
us do not exist. And even cos playing, even even
living refusing to even with the mask, even with the
(29:28):
like this is who I am today, we still like
you can't win, you cannot break, even you cannot again
you hear me. So it's like, well, then let's just
have fun while we're doing this, Like let's be whimsical,
let's be unhinged, let's be glittery. Like my favorite scenes
(29:52):
in the movie are and so I did see I
saw a stage production when I was a child with Shahara,
and then I saw The Whiz in its revival here
in Chicago, and like, you know how much glitter and
makeup and like sequence, it's just so much now like
(30:18):
we get to have, you know, the chaos of it.
I know these people's dressing rooms is a hot mess,
like it's makeup brushes, edgebrushes, glitter foundation all over the place.
So that's great.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
And then to keep the scarecrow motif going, sometimes you
just have to look at people and say, you just
a straw paper dummy. And then for me, when I
think about that question, of course, my first thought was,
and we've already talked about it. Ted Ross's portrayal of
the Lion is one of the classic depictions of a
(30:59):
butcher queen in cinema, especially in the movie where he
had his own Diana Ross blowout for a wig, as
as the cowardly lion Fleetwood Coop Deville. And as I
was thinking about ted Ross's portrayal and even as it
(31:22):
connects to the brother that revived the role of Lion
on Broadway and the bundles that he had to where
I mean that portrayal was kind of like the most
blatant portrayal of quad of Lion, as like a butcher
queen or as like a black queer male that we've seen,
and how it was just accepted and embraced. But really,
(31:43):
even if we want to go back all the way
back to Bert Laar in like the nineteen thirty nine
film The Lion has always been Coke, has always been
incredibly queer coded. Yeah, the Lion has always been holded
as like this effeminine, flamboyant gay man. Right. And I
(32:06):
even think about kind of like the conversation that has
been having in pop culture around how especially kind of
like in the fifties and the sixties, a lot of
villains would be queer coded, and a lot of villains
would kind of like be portrayed as kind of like
these homosexual men. And it's almost like it kind of
got me to thinking of how in some of like
(32:29):
maybe the even though we see it as brilliant and
fierce and gorgeous, kind of like the nefarious and phobic
ways that the quote unquote cowardly Lion is portrayed, you know,
for lack of a terma, as like this sissy. Right.
And then if we talk about the black real legacy
(32:51):
of the Wiz, I'm inges in a very real nuts
and bolts way, it was written and scored by black
game of black game. Man. It was you know, it
was staged and many of the dancers you know, were
black and gay men, right. And it becomes particularly poignant
(33:13):
for me in the brand new day scene from the film,
because The Wiz came out seventy seven, seventy eight, and
I just always kind of have this really bittersweet moment
where it's like, five ten years later after this movie
(33:43):
was released, how many of these young vibrant men weren't
even here with us anymore because of the HIV h epidemic,
because of the crack epidemic, because of the war on drugs.
How many of them, you know, just weren't here here
with us anymore. And then even Andre Deshields, you know,
(34:07):
of HIV positive black gay man, who was the original Wiz.
So that's what I that's what I think of, you know,
when I think of the legacy of the Wiz for
black queer people and then even for me. So July
(34:27):
twenty twenty four, for my thirty ninth birthday, I took
a day trip up to New York from DC to
catch the revival of The Wiz. And I wore this
striped like this blue and white striped dress from Old Navy,
(34:53):
some chucks, and then I had on some purple socks
and the purple socks said, I love drag.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I remember this picture, yeah, And it was.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
A definition of courage for me, because this isn't like, oh,
I'm aware this and I'm just going down the block
or I'm staying in DC. So more or less, if
it gets too hot in the kitchen, I can run
home and change. No, I'm leaving the state and I'm
(35:26):
crossing multiple states, you know, to express myself in this way.
And I mean, of course, just because of the world
that we live in and because people are weird, you
have some focus that said things. But more or less,
my courage was met with love and I'll just always
(35:46):
remember that.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Thanks for sticking with Hella Black, Hella Queer. Hello Christian, So.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
For you, how does the Wiz connect to the Wizard
of Oz and now Wicked.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I'm so glad you asked this question because when I
tell you, my will to live is held by the
fact that Wicked is coming out in less than one
hundred days. When I's the second part when I tell you, like,
one of the things that we do is we look
(36:50):
forward to things like, oh, you know, like my brother
and his wife are expecting. I want to be around
for that, Like there's wonderful things happening in the world,
and on that list, I need to see Wicked, you
don't like, I need to see it because the second
(37:12):
act is so important to me, because I think it
kind of gives more context to why a lot of
people did not like Wicked, especially people who don't know
the story in general, Like I think, folks, well, we
won't go that direction, because I could go on a
whole tangent about that. But when I think of The
(37:33):
Whiz as an interpretation, really it all starts with the book,
the book that's written by L. Frank Baum, which turns
into a movie Wizard of Oz that we get in
nineteen thirty nine, which is turned into a musical and
(37:53):
then movie in the form of The Wiz, and then
those addedations have their own spin, and then Wicked is
like the last kind of iteration. Although there are other
I think there's another series or there's another movie there's
but there's like this whole Wicked Wizard of Oz universe
(38:17):
that L. Frank Baum could not have imagined other people
would pick up and run with. There's no way that
that child of God could have imagined the yellow bikinis
on black people in the like celebration scene, because that
celebration scene doesn't exist even in the nineteen thirty nine movie.
(38:39):
And I think what this phenomenon of like all these
adaptations is teaching us is that people want to be
understood in their own self. They want to make sense
of what it means to be human in their own experience.
But there is something very human about the plot of
the original text itself, Like you got people, like all
(39:05):
of us across the globe struggle with courage, we all
struggle with love, we all struggle with not feeling smart enough.
And then you cannot talk about like any of these
movies without addressing the concept of home, addressing the concept
of family. Like it's such a deeply human work like
(39:29):
narrative that no matter what context it is performed in,
it resonates with people because we're even if you just
find yourself in the mob, Like even if you just
find yourself as like when miss One is singing he's
the wizard and you're just doing your little hula hoop,
(39:53):
like that's something that you might connect to. Those are
my people, the people in munskill Land. So like I think,
to me, it also reminds me that there are multiple
truths and there's different pathways to get to those truths,
and that's like the human creativity of it all. I'm
(40:15):
so excited to see this second Wicked. I have long said,
and there are Facebook receipts even before Cynthia Erivo was
named as Alphaba, I've been said that Alphaba is black.
I've been said that, like what happens to Alphaba in
(40:36):
Wicked and in the Wizard of Oz. I'm like, that's
a black girl. I do wonder like, since we're talking
about like these adaptations, it is strange to see, or
rather not strange, I think we should just name it directly.
The just the position of like Eveline being this fat black,
(41:01):
dark skinned woman and Glinda being Lena Horne. I think
with the Wiz Live, I know Uzzo Aduba was Glinda,
and I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Who was Mary J.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Blige was Evelin, right, so like it was not as Shark,
it was not as Stark, a contrast of like these
two actresses in the Wiz movie. But like I think
also as we're reading all of.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
These, but no, Eveline has traditionally been cast as a
dark skinned.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Right fact more or less mammy right, right, and like.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
And Glinda is always kind of like this slainty, right
or fair skinned? I think another one, I mean this
didn't get the mainstream recognition, but I think another one
that kind of troubles the notion of Eveline is you
did have to to Sheena Arnold play Eveline in a
(42:13):
revival of I believe the revival of the Wiz that
had a Shanty as Dorothy. So that so that troubles it, yep,
because it's forgettable, oh say that, But I do think
it troubles it a little bit. But even with to Sheena,
(42:34):
there's still the notion of dark of dark skin, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Right right? And I think that's why, Like, to me,
it makes me think about my work as a preacher,
like what are the shorthands that we're relying on, Like
what what are the the phrases that themselves need to
be unpacked or the images that we use carelessly that
(43:01):
have potential to do real harm. And some of that
you see in the casting choices with certainly like the
Whiz movie and other casting choices in its whole lifetime.
I think it calls us to think about what are
we what's the story that we think we're telling, and
(43:22):
then what's the story that we actually are telling like
what because this is a movie that children or this
is a piece of art that children will interact with,
Like how will they come to make connections in their
own brains about what is evil, what is good, what
is lovely, what is ugly? Like all of these things.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Or even in Wicked what you see around the hair
and how when Alphaba and Glinda kind of form this alliance,
Glinda kind of tries to show her how to whip
her hair in a way where Alpha Buzz's hair is
never gonna be able to be whipped back and forth
(44:11):
in the way that Glinda's hair is whipped back and forth.
And I mean, even if we go back to like
Margaret Hamilton's version, and I don't think we talk enough
about how her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the
Western the nineteen thirty nine movie is kind of like
one of the greatest horror characters of all time, without
any type of real gore or without you ever really
(44:31):
seeing her do any real harm to anybody or even
really touch anybody. You know, just how she for like generations,
she has just striped terror into people. But like, even
if you want to go back to like her portrayal.
The only woman of color in the film, sees her
sister is murdered by this foreigner. She tries to get
(44:56):
the family heirloom which rightfully belongs to her, which is
the slippers, and they get stolen by her nemesis and
given to the woman that murdered her. System.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Look unpack it, because I would be pissed too. I
would read I mean, she's well within her right to
become a villain. Like she's well and if we take
I mean, this is like the time travel of like
all these adaptations coming when they come. If we take
seriously that, like Glinda and Alphaba have beef and they've
(45:31):
got long standing beef. That scene in the nineteen thirty
nine movie where you know, Glinda says something like only
bad witches are ugly or something to that effect. You know,
you start to see, like, ooh, this girl is not nice.
She's she's not nice. She's not a nice person, but
(45:56):
she's not kind, right, that's it. Because but she's wearing pink,
she's white, she's thin, she's blonde, and she's dainty and like,
so we just accept that she's a good witch because
she told us she came down in a bubble, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
And then I mean even in the interaction between the
Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, to where the
Wicked Witch of the West says, stay out of this, Glinda,
or I'll fix you as well. That can even speak
to kind of like a pre existing beef, and then
Glinda's says, be gone before somebody drops a house on you.
(46:37):
And it's like, bitch, do you want to squabble up
like right, like if you're feeling frog elap like my
sister just got I just watched my sister's toes curl
up under this house. And now you want to say
be careful before somebody drops a house on you. But
(47:01):
ain't nothing else to say? Ain't nothing else to say?
And then I will say, if you think about it,
the Wiz stays true to L. Frank Baum's book in
ways that the Wizard of Oz does. It even stay
true to it, because I think about how in the
Wiz the slippers are silver, like the slip slippers were
(47:24):
silver in.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
L.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Frank Baumb's book. In L. Frank BAM's book, the slippers
were not ruby. But MGM did that because they felt
that ruby slippers would show up better and give a
little bit more of a dramatic effect. So like particularly
like in the Broadway version, like the socadas that like
(47:49):
attack the group before they get to the poppies. That's
also something that you also see in the L. Frank
Bomb book. And then I was gonna say next question,
and then I'll say we got about see more questions
before we go into our rapid fire benediction. I would say,
for you, how does the Wiz fit into the legacy
of afrofuturism.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
I mean, again, like the obvious thing is the costumes.
They're very otherworldly, and it's not just that like afrofuturism
is like black people in space. Like I think that's
a superficial reading of what afrofuturism is. But we get
(48:31):
a conjured it's only through the fashions that you take
seriously that we are in a different world, different time,
a different space. I think it fits into the legacy
of afrofuturism because afrofuturism takes seriously the deep wells of
(48:54):
Black and Afro diasporic cosmologies and religions and ways of life,
ways of knowing that our counter to what the United
States is trying to teach us in schools, like I
think so much of afrofuturism is the reliance on spiritual
(49:17):
technologies that help us to combat the powers and principalities
in high places, and so it requires that we have
visitation with elders in the great beyond. So I think
(49:39):
something that is worthwhile to me about the Whiz is
that so much of this happens in another realm, Like
in the movie, at least we don't get the same
the house picked up and moved like it doesn't exactly
that's not exactly the tech achnology that brings Dorothy to
(50:03):
Oz and she sees I mean so much of like
again talk about set design, like so much of where
the munchkins are they're cursed and they're leaning against the
wall as graffiti, Like what a compelling way to make
a statement about like what would have been the curse
(50:27):
for black people? Like that you are stuck in your
place and like you cannot move outside of someone else's
drawing of you.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
And then even with that, it's this alternate reality that
is still this tribute to nineteen seventies New York City
talk about it that the Wiz was filmed in at
that time, so it's kind of like you have the
Munchkins portrayed as like these street kids. We didn't know
(50:57):
it as such then, but really you had the munch
Is portrayed as those young black and brown folks that
were giving birth to what would be hip hop, right,
and they were being they were so they were tagging
the walls in munchkin Land, which was ever means jurisdiction,
(51:17):
so ever means the wicked Witch of the East, because
she was the park's commissioner for munchkin Land and ours right,
So she sees them, she sees them spray painting the walls,
and then she curses them to be praffiti forever during
this time, during this time where like hip hop is
(51:38):
coming to be and hip hop is being criminalized for
the way that braffiti artists were tagging the New York
City subways. So we have the Wiz and we have
the Munchkins as these street kids as like the Bronxes
is burning, right. So I also think that's interesting. And
(51:59):
I was gonna say because and this kind of even
tached to like the mysticism and the magic and the
superstition of afrofuturism, and because the law of ours and
hence the law of the Wiz, deals with like witches
and magic and things of that nature. Have you ever,
(52:24):
as someone who identifies as a Christian, have you ever
come up against someone who opposed you enjoying the Wiz
or called your Christian identity into question because you enjoyed
the Wiz, which is this thing that has witches and
(52:44):
witches are quote unquote the mindic Hm.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
That's such a good question because you know it in
a word known, But only because there's a big asterisk
on that. I think, because you know, as you talked
about earlier, I am the quintessential church kid, a double
p K, and now a pastor myself, I think there
(53:10):
are some ways that I'm insulated from people saying something
like that to me directly. However, there are things in
the Whiz that really pull to me, like like that
ending scene where Lena Horne is singing, if you believe
(53:32):
in yourself and you've got like the black babies, kind
of in my own language, I see them as like cherubs,
like they're kind of dotting the sky, and they're like
beautiful black babies. I think for me part of my
(53:53):
work as a religious educator is to translate texts so
that people can find meaning and divinity and power in
any text that like, you could watch Wicked and shout,
because when Alphabus said to the whiz you have no
power here the first time I that what you're doing
(54:16):
right now, the hands up in the air, That's exactly
what I did the first time I heard that. Because
is that not the whole story of oppressed people's throughout
the Bible, that like Nebukaannezzar has no power, he has
no power. That's why he has to create power by
making people sing at a certain time of day and
(54:38):
bow down to the statue and creating these like these,
these rituals where the people bow down to him rather
than to the god that they know. So you can
go any direction, I think if you're if you're playing
around enough. But I have seen conversation where people didn't
(55:02):
want to I mean, I remember there are a couple
of tiktoks. People didn't want to take their kids to
see Wicked because it was so many witches and like witchcraft,
And I'm like, did you not see the trailer? Are
we not using like people walking out of the movie
because because it's it's demonic, like.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
This isn't a story that has been around for eighty
plus years.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, And to be truthful in my own practice of Christianity,
I do keep witches around I do. I keep witches
around me. I keep Wodo's around me, I keep conjure
women around me. I keep Taro readers around me. And
(55:44):
and those are the people that are not in the
standard you know, when we do it interfaith action, these
people are remembered. I've got you saying, you.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Doing something because we have a Muslim and agu.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Hello, you see what I'm saying, And everybody shows up
in their like religious garb, so that the pictures reflect,
you know, some interfaith posture. But similarly, like I think
engaging with like Muslim texts, Jewish texts, which we already
do as Christians, We already engage those texts. We just
(56:21):
call them different names, and the stories are different or
at least, you know, where various traditions go varies. I
just think it's important to not be bogged down by
these traditions. I think the best way to practice of
(56:42):
faith is to is that it makes you more human,
it makes you more open, it makes you more curious.
It forces you to ask different questions of yourself and others,
and I would hope it helps us to have the
courage to stand up for things in our world when
it's necessary, and in these times, it's always necessary. So
(57:06):
you know, I think it's weird now. The sidebar is
people should feel a way about Harry Potter these days,
and they should only feel a way about Harry Potter
because of JK. Rowling and her being a transphobic jerk.
But that's, you know, the only reason why Harry Potter
has banned in my household, because she's a jerk.
Speaker 3 (57:26):
And then okay, and then even when you said how
Alpha Us spoke to the Wig, to the Wizard and
Wicked and said you have no power, that even has
me thinking about when Dorothy finds the Wiz as the
killing Evlien and it's.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Like, holdy, you nothing but lies.
Speaker 3 (57:51):
No one lies. And then I mean, and then that
even kind of like goes back to the initial question
of of the black queer legacy of the Wiz and
how Richard Pryor's interpretation of the Wiz could definitely be
looked at as like this closeted gay.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Man literally behind the curtain.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Especially considering how it has come out that Richard Pryor
had his own dalliances and experimentations during that time, and
Sherman Hemsley was also a gay man, so Richard Pryor
and George Jefferson both had connections to the community. And
(58:35):
then the last question for this main segment of our
show before we go into the rapid fire, benediction, if
you could reboot and recast The Wiz today, what medium
would you use? Who would you cast?
Speaker 2 (58:48):
You know, in terms of medium, I actually want to
see a TV show because I think a TV show
could take us further into the story. Even a mini
series would be great. But I don't know exactly who.
But I kind of want to see a Whiz in
(59:12):
which so we've already done an all black cast, why
not do an all black queer cast or an all
black femme cast or both. I think what's what's also
powerful about this movie or this series is there's no
(59:32):
like love story, no romantic love story like and a
lot of for it to be such a long lasting story,
and there is no like. And he gets the girl
and she gets the guy. Even in Wicked, like the
relationship between Glinda and Fierro is so background to the
(59:59):
relationship that for and Glinda have with each other. Like
he's just a guy, He's just there. So I think,
having seen Wicked, that's what's on my mind, Like I
would love to see yeah, just like more more of
(01:00:21):
a of an exploration into a black queer casting in
a miniseries format, so we could see it every Thursday
night at nine pm and go back to the olden
days when we used to watch scandal together appointment television.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yes, yes, yes, funny that I pose this question considering
the aversion that I have to this oversaturation of reboot
culture where it seems like everything is a reboot, and
if we want to really center it within black pop culture,
(01:01:03):
it seems like everything is a reboot from something from
the nineties. I am not looking forward to this different
World reboot. Ye, sorry not, because one, we already got
the different World reboot when we got Grownish, So there's that.
(01:01:24):
And one of the things that made a Different World
so great and why it's still so great is because
it was original fucking programming. How about you try coming
up with something new instead of trying to reboot and
rehash everything, and also Dwane and Whitley's child. Okay, is
(01:01:45):
this supposed to be the child that Whitney was pregnant
with at the end of the original series, Because if so,
this child is in her thirties.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Right, unless we're back in time, unless it's set.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Unless it unless it's set maybe in like the early
two when that child would have been going to college,
or they're going to take her and kind of like
do a Jalisa spind with her where she's like an
older student going back to college. But anyway, we digress,
because if I could reboot it, I would do it
(01:02:18):
as a film, and I'm kind of picking up what
you're putting down around making it black and queer, because
I've always said two of my dream roles if I
could play any two roles, if I could recreate any
two roles, I would want to recreate Dorothy and The Wiz.
I'd want to start as Dorothy in an adaptation of
The Wiz. And I would want to start as doctor
(01:02:39):
Frankenfurd in an adaptation of Rocky harm But I'll say
that to say I would cast Alex Newell as Dorothy. Yes,
there was a time where I would have said Chris
Brown as Scarecrow, but I'm actually gonna say Jeremy Pope
as Scarecrow. He was one of the temptations in that
Broadway I would do Usher as the tent Man.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
I could see the Usher as the Usher. I can
see Usher as the Wiz.
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Okay, I don't want to get to ahead of myself,
but I have somebody in else in mine for the Wiz.
I would do Usher as the tent Man because because
Usher is now forty five, so he is he does
kind of like have that elder state statesman vibe that
(01:03:28):
Nipsey Russell Bot brought to I can see that. And
then James Monroe Inglehart, so the gentleman who played the
Genie and Aladdin and won the Tony four it. I
would have him be the Lion. Yes, I would have
David and Tambala Man as aunt Em and Uncle Henry Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
But you know what, let's talk about the black churches
that would show up.
Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Yeah, yeah, I would have Key Key Palmer as miss
One screaming. I would have Felicia Rashad come back and
be Glinda as like a tie in to the original
Broadway play. I would have Jennifer Lewis b Eveley. And
then because I believe he can bring in like the
(01:04:12):
vocal chops of Andre Deshields and the comedic time and
of the comedic and dramatic time, and of Richard Pryor,
I would have Jamie Fox be the wiz.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
I could see that well because you know, with any
role that Jamie Fox gets, he plays it because he
really thinks he is that person. Do you know how
long I was watching Jamie Fox in the Jamie Fox Show,
Like I was watching that after Ray came out, like
it was in syndication at that point, I'm like, man,
(01:04:43):
Ray Charles, Like every time I see Jamie Fox, I
think about Ray Charles. So he could, he would, he
would eat.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Thanks for sticking with Hella Black, Hello Queer, Hello Christian.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
So that brings the main set to the point. So
now we're gonna go into our rapid fire benediction and
it's just gonna be one two feet about eight quick
questions and I'm gonna ask them and which you can
go first because you're the guest, and then I'll tag it.
But we're just gonna say whatever comes to mind. Okay,
what are you looking forward to?
Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
I'm getting married soon, so I'm really looking forward to that.
Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
What am I looking forward to? I'm looking forward to
choir rehearsal tonight. That'll be fun. What is one thing
you like about yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I like my softness. I like them that I'm a
gooey person.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
I like that I'm a bookworm. Where are you a
year from today.
Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
In a new apartment and I will be writing a dissertation.
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
New apartment, hopefully back in school at Howard and wrapping
up that chapter of my life. And I'm getting ready
to go to Dayfest in Atlanta. Shout out to my
friends at the faith community Christian A. Smith. What are
you thankful.
Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
For a reasonable portion of health and strength? Reasonable reasonable?
Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Because my skin broke out, and of course I did
the thing that you never do, and you go to
the internet. So of course the internet had me thinking
I had skin cancer.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
But we just gonna get you some motion, So start there.
Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
I got me some ointment, I got as some calamine lotion,
and then I'm thankful for the summer, and I am
thankful for and I really want to take some time
to appreciate the fact that I can go outside without
being bundled up, because before you know we will be
back in the time of year where you do need
(01:07:00):
to be bundled up to go outside. So I want
to be thankful for and to appreciate some of while
it's here. What are you proud of.
Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
I'm proud of my capacity to love even despite heartbreak.
And I'm proud of my friends, including you. I'm so
proud of you.
Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Oh, thank you. I'm proud of the way that people
in my community of Columbia Heights have been resisting the
occupation of ice in the National Guard. What is a
thorn for you?
Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
I don't like being considered a know it all. That's
a thorn being considered a know it all or like, oh,
you know, there she goes talking about that thing again,
whatever the thing is, that's a thorn.
Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
That's kind of not fair, where it's like you're just
trying to help people be better and you're just first
you're sharing yourself because you're sharing something that you're passionate
about and and that you're being vulnerable, and then to
have people tag you as a know it all, and
then I'm sure the fact that people see you as
(01:08:23):
like this child of these two prominent pastors probably also
plays it to that as well. I've gotten caught up
in this cycle of like the cash advance apps, so
like Ernon and Dave, so trying to like break out
of that, Like that's a thorn for me. What has
(01:08:43):
given you joy?
Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
The young people at the church I serve ask really
good questions. And we had an event last week and
I asked the group, does anyone want to say grace?
And this boy running to the pizza line said.
Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Grace And that was it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
And you know what, exactly, grace.
Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
Gospel music is given me joy because so today, like
for my shower, because like I'll find a song that
speaks to me and I'll create a station off and
I'll tell either Apple or podcasts or title to create
a station. And today I had Apple create a station
(01:09:35):
off of the song Meantime by BB and CC minus.
So of course all the of this other like gospel
music starts playing. And I'm not one of those Christians
that thinks that if it's not gospel, it's the devil's music.
But for me that there is just a specific way
that gospel music shifts the atmosphere for me, Yeah, that
(01:09:57):
really gives me joy. What he is giving you.
Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Hope honestly, the history books. The history books haunt me,
but they also give me hope because whatever we are
witnessing now, it is not the first time. It's the
first time it's been iterated like this, but it's not
(01:10:21):
the first time. And we have blueprints. Doesn't mean that
like they were perfect, but we actually are. We are
never starting from the beginning, We're never starting from scratch.
And so the hope comes from history books, elders, ancestors,
(01:10:41):
and that prayer closet of seeking discernment of how to
make all that make sense for me today.
Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
That there is nothing new under the sun.
Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Hello, that's Bible.
Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
And even Trump and his crony are under the sun,
so there's nothing new about them. I will say the
way I the way I saw the Mayor of Boston
stand up this week and just say, no, you know,
we will not make this concession, even though you're threatening
(01:11:19):
to take away our federal funding. And then I will
say Governor Wes Moore of Maryland has giving me hopeful
the way he has even said, you know, if we
get the request, Maryland will not send our national Guard.
And I am the commander in chief of Maryland's National Guard,
as the governor of Maryland, because for me, I can
(01:11:42):
put my hope. I can if I'm going to cape
for a politician, I'm going to cape for a Wes
Moore or someone who is the mayor of Boston as
opposed to a Gavin Newsom who has been buddying up
with these rights extremists and who has thrown trans people
(01:12:03):
under the bus in some real ways. So that is
the end of our benediction. And usually I lead us
in prayer, but since I have my sister who is clergy,
I'm going to ask if she doesn't mind, if she
would close us out in prayer. As always, I'm going
(01:12:23):
to say, listeners, if you have a prayer request, please
feel free to reach out to me. You can reach
out to me on Instagram. I'm at Joseph they Them.
You can also find me on X and Threads at
Joseph they Them. You can find me on Blue Sky
at Joseph They Them. You can also find me at
Joseph Reeves at iHeartMedia dot com. So if you have
a prayer request, or even if you have a praise report,
(01:12:46):
please reach out to me and you just might get
a shout out on the show. But since I'm gonna
ask that you lead us in prayer not just as
you know, a pastor and a minister, but also as
someone who is an educate both within and outside of
the church. And my prayer request I was just gonna ask,
my prayer request really has to do it. Pray for
(01:13:10):
DC and also pray for the kids of DC as
school starts in the midst of all this craziness next
Tuesday for them, and you have kids that are scared
to go to school. You have parents that are scared
to take their children to school. Yeah, and for me,
just pray for the show. Pray for me to get
out these cash advances, and pray for doors for me
(01:13:33):
to open up to get back into school. And also
just wrap up this chapter of my life because I'm
ready mm hmm. And then, however, however el spirit leads you,
we're definitely open to it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Let's pray there is a place we'll go where there
is mostly quiet, flowers and butterflies, a rainbow lives beside it,
and from a velvet sky a summer storm. You can
feel the coolness in the air, but you're still warm.
(01:14:14):
If on courage we must call, we will keep trying.
We are lyons in our own way. Eternal God, we
thank you for another day, that you have given us
another morning to rise, another afternoon to get sleepy, another
(01:14:36):
evening to wonder about what to eat. God, we thank
you for the opportunity to reflect. And we ask that
you would bless all those who are listening in their
various locations, that this prayer would meet each person at
the very point of their need. God, we have specific
(01:14:59):
prayer requests for the people, particularly the young people of DC,
but those who are being targeted, whose tents have been raided,
who have been thrust all about because for so long,
even us, even we have allowed people to not care
(01:15:22):
about those without homes, even we have moved subway cars,
even we have said we don't have any money. Today,
even we and God, we asked that you would particularly
spend time and intervene in DC. That you would cover
(01:15:47):
those who are seeking safety and sheltered. That you would
be with children who have to see their tax dollars
everywhere but their classroom. That you would be with each
person who has to make a morning commute that feels
like a war zone. And may this God help us
(01:16:08):
to empathize with people all over the globe who are
under military occupation, people all over the globe who see
us military uniforms and think of danger. God, we asked
that you would convict those of us who are involved,
(01:16:31):
Convict those of us who are apathetic, Convict those of
us who could do something but don't yet have the courage,
Help us to be better people in this world. Got
I ask a special blessing from my friend Joseph Reeves.
Meet them at the very point of their need, encourage them.
(01:16:54):
We celebrate them for doing something so bold as to
start a podcast where they are interviewing and talking with
and chopping it up with folks who are offering great
things to the body not just of Christ, but of
the entire globe. God, we asked that you would cause
(01:17:14):
us to be still, cause us to reflect prick something
within us in this conversation that might make us curious
about our neighbors, about ourselves, about our families, about our ancestors,
and about generations to come, and for all those things
we haven't named we might be too afraid to say
(01:17:36):
with our lips. We know that you know, and so
we ask that you would need us even there, and
Your holy roster of names, we say, and.
Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Then hey man, thank you so much for that, Candice,
And that wraps up another episode of Hello Black, Hello Queer,
Hello Christian. Thank you all so much for joining us today.
And if this show touched you in anyway, If this
podcast touches you in any way, please like, please comment
(01:18:08):
so I can know how the show is impacting you.
Please share, please subscribe, and please rate. Until the next
time we say, take care of yourselves and take care
of each other. See you next time. Hello Black, Hello Queer,
Hello Christian is a production of iHeartMedia on the Outspoken Slate,
(01:18:31):
which seeks to amplify LGBTQ voices in podcasting. I am
your host and executive creative producer Joseph Freese, along with
Gabrielle Collins, who also serves as executive producer. Dylan you
Are is a producer. Trevor is our lead producer and editor.
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