December 21, 2023 • 30 mins
Katie and Yves head to the movies to watch American Fiction. Afterward, they discuss the anatomy of the Black Struggle Industrial Complex™ using examples from the movie and Erasure by Percival Everett.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media. You are listening.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
From the page to the screen to the stage. Black
artists have bemoaned the demand for them to perform struggle
for white audiences.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Some call it poverty porn, others call it trauma porn.
You may have heard the phrases misery lit or misery memoirs.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yep, I've definitely heard those terms kicked around, but they
focused on the end product, the movie, the book, the play.
But there's a web of actors and interests that make
sure these products exist in the first place. And that's
why I've coined the term Black struggle industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay, I see the system thinking.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You see it, and I've come to see that many
relationships make up the Black struggle industrial complex, and multiple
parties benefit from it. And while there's a bunch of
examples of stories that have been accused of being trauma
porn or poverty porn, some storytellers break the fourth wall
and show us how they relate to this complex.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Stories like Percival Everett's Erasure, which was recently adapted into
a movie called American Fiction, pull back the curtain on
the black struggle industrial complex and shine a satirical light
on all its moving parts.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I loved Erasure. The novel tells the story of Thelonious
Monk Ellison, a black author and university professor who becomes
frustrated with the expectations and stereotypes associated with the black literature.
In response, he writes the parody of what he sees
as stereotypical ghetto fiction under a pseudonym. To Monk's surprise,
the book becomes a literary sensation and hygiens ensu.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
When an early screening of American Fiction came to Atlanta,
you know, we had to pull up. If they want stereotypes,
I'll give them one. What is this? Nobody's gonna publish this.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I just want to rub their nose, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
We love it?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
What?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You know? We had a lot of thoughts after the
credits rolled.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I guess I want to start by asking you, Katie,
what is your initial gut reaction to the film now
that we finished it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Gut feeling, liked it, thought it was funny, entertained, liked
some of the changes, didn't like other changes.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
My gut reaction is that it was fun like it
seemed very mainstream and that's not kind of how I
imagined the book Erasure to be. The black struggle industrial
complex was real in that movie.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Indeed, it had all the parts.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, go ahead and break it down for us, Katie.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
All right, So the anatomy of the black struggle industrial
complex is well complex are with the most obvious the creator.
And as we saw in Erasure, in American fiction, there
are two types of creators, the ones who chaf against
the demands to present black struggle stories and those who
see it as a ticket for individual material gain.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So the main character interrature and American fiction, Thelnius Monk Ellison,
is clearly the former. And would you say his foil
Juanita May Jenkins, who was renamed Centaur Golden for the movie,
author of the best selling Weeze Lives in the Ghetto,
is an example of the latter.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, I would the movie gave us more insight into
Wanita's mindset than the book, like in the scene where
Monk confronts her about her books perpetuating stereotypes. And by
the way, going for it, I'm going to refer to
her as just Juania, but we mean Juanita in the
book and Cintaa in the movie My Thing is some
people's actual stories are what some would call stereotypes. Stereotypes
(03:53):
don't come out of thin air. Some folks actually live
that life. But one of the major tenets of the
black struggle industrial complay is a pandering to white people's
guilt or their need to be liked or feel cool.
It varies, but the black creator supplies what they need.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Hmm, okay, can you explain more what you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah. So, both Monk's book My Pathology or later renamed Fuck,
and Wanita's book We Lived in the Ghetto are held
as honest, raw a true representation of what it's like
to be black in America. Juanita even says that was
part of her motivation for writing the book.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
What really struck me was that too few books were
about my people. Where are our stories? Where's our representation?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
But both Monks and Janita's books aren't true or representative
of anything they know personally. Monks is completely made up,
and that's the gag. Our Ratio delves into this more
than American fiction. But Fuck My Pathology is about a
deadbeat dad who assaults black women and fantasizes about stabbing
his mom. There really aren't any significant white characters, so
(04:58):
it gives the white audience of heuristic experience. Even the
title my pathology points to all the problems in this
black community being the black people's own backwardness. It never
touches on systemic issues. Denby Dan's rappers crack.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
You said you wanted black stuff. That's black, right. So
white people get this gritty story from the hood without
having to feel guilty about how they may have contributed
to making the conditions of the.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Hood exactly And similarly, we learned from reading A Rasure
that Juanita spent a week in Harlem with her cousins
and wrote her book. Otherwise she's lived a really privileged life,
went to a prestigious school, got a sought after job
upon graduation. Monk is a PhD. Both his siblings are
medical doctors. His father wasn't empty. His family seems extremely
(05:46):
well off. They have two houses, a beach house and
a primary residence, and a living maid, so both of
them are cappin. But they get put on this pedestal
of being the few to speak for millions of black Americans.
And I'm not saying hood shit and trauma shouldn't be
written about. But who gets to write about hoodshit and
trauma is what's interesting to me when it comes to
the black struggle industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Like who gets propped up and puts to the forefront
and what agenda is that serving?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, because on the other hand, works that have been
accused of being trauma porn often have a white savior involved,
so the white audience can identify with being the good guy, like.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Twelve Years a Slave, Freedom, Writers, The Help.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There's so many but works to speak to trauma and
indict white supremacy, capitalism, and fascism as a culprit, those
books get banned. George Jackson's Blood in My Eye would
never be a part of the Black struggle industrial complex
because it's not serving either role of making white people
feel better or pandering to their guilt.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Do you think Wanita and creators like her who play
into the system are cognizant of what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I do think there's some cognitive dissidence going on. Like
to talk about representation, I think is a popular cop out,
like any depiction of black people on the screen is
a good thing, But deep down, I do think they
know what they're doing like.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
In the movie when Monk likens Juanita's writing to a
drug dealer rationalizing selling drugs by saying that he's just
giving folks what they want, and Janit equips, well, I
think drugs should be.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Legal, and I mean, it's a really attractive deal. In
this instance, millions of dollars are on the table for
whoever is willing to make these stories, So I can
see why and how someone would rationalize it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And Monk quickly realizes that too, that no matter how
much he despises it, in order for him to be
a materially successful author, he has to give up all
the Greek mythology writing and embody these stereotypes, even if
he does so under a pen name.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I mean, and even in the book in the movie,
Monk chafed it against it, but then ultimately wrote his
parody and he was saying like, oh, you know, I'm
doing it to stick it to the man, but also like,
you're not dumb because you saw that we lives in
the ghetto, which is essentially the same type of which
(08:00):
you're doing really well. Mentioned Yeah, so you saw that
you needed money to put your mom up in this
assisted living center, so you're against it, but you're like
when push comes to shove money talk and you took
that money, you weren't like now I'm just playing, y'all
are also stupid. I'm gonna be on my moral high ground.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And broke, and that's that on it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
So, as creators ourselves, what has been your experience with
the black struggle industrial complex? Like, have you been tempted?
Have you participated in it?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
It's such a tough question because I don't feel like
I've ever been tempted to amp up my blackness for
any sort of writing that I've ever done. I've also
never been explicitly asked to do so, Like nobody's ever
said you have to add more struggle in here, or
you have to add more trauma in here. But I
am often in a position where I am one of
(08:59):
few black wrins who is working with the publication, and
so I'm working on black assignments that were given to
me because I'm black. But I also choose them because
it's within the realm of things that I write. I
care about blackness and I care about writing about it,
so it's a choice on my end too. So it's
two sides of the coin. Where the editors and the
publications that I'm involved with have power in what they're
(09:21):
assigning me. But I also have my own powered agency
and the things that I choose to either pitch and
or take and continue to write because I care about them.
And I'm fortunate enough to say that I have had
the privilege to be able to choose to write what
I want to write. And I've never been in a
space where for money, I absolutely have to write a thing,
(09:42):
and have to write a thing that I know is
going to be lucrative for me. But I would like
to know your experience with it too. Have you ever
been tempted?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, So there was this time when I was like
pitching my business for like different grants and stuff, and
there was like a competition I was a part of,
and you had to pitch your bit business and you know,
maybe it's like a five minute pitch. And I noticed
that it was like a mix of people. It was
like black people, Latino people, white people, all pitching their businesses.
(10:13):
And so my business a black bookstore. I was talking
about just like how I grew up, how my mom
was like really into like teaching me and my brother
how to read and really loving black literature. And then
I also shared that my grandfather never knew how to read,
and he lived to be eighty two and he never
learned how to read. And I thought that like really
fit into the story. And we would practice the pitches
(10:34):
in front of each other, right, and so then I
would like hear other people's pitches get a little more,
you know, like sob story is and I'm like, wait,
am I doing that? You know? So it wasn't like
anyone saying like, oh, like you really need to like
pull out that struggle, which my grandfather not knowing how
to read. I didn't see it as like something as
like a struggle for me personally, like definitely a struggle
(10:56):
for him. But if anything, it really just emphasized how
much reading was important. So I talk about the cop
in your head, but also the white taste maker in
your head, or like knowing that white people may feel
guilty that my grandfather didn't know how to read because
he grew up in like Jim Crow, Mississippi, and they
had a hand in that. So I think that was
one example where I felt like kind of uncomfortable and
(11:18):
I was like kind of seeing it play out even
I think about that with like the book that I'm
writing now, I'm like, did I get this book deal
just because like black stuff was going on and like
white publishers and editors feel guilty about all the shit
black people were going through in twenty twenty and they're like, Okay,
like you get a book deal now. You know what
I'm saying. And it's not that I'm personally like writing
(11:41):
anything that I think is handering to that, but I'm
writing the book in general that I do think is
a product of that.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Do you feel like your motivation for writing the book
is because you knew that you could capitalize off of
the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I thought it was like very of the moment,
like we need to capture what's going on with the
black bookstores. So yeah, I think I'm thelonious girl.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I think that's going to stretch too far because he
went way into it. He went deep, deep down in
the whole. Girl.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I'm writing my pathology too.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Girl, I don't think that's the case. I think you're
overstating it. I think for me sometimes it happens more
on the end, where the work is already published in
the editorial process, versus it being during the content creation stage,
and I have white audiences inevitably reading the work and
they compliment me on it. Sometimes I question the value
(12:38):
of my work because I'm wondering, do they just like
this just because it gets a peek into a black mind,
the black thought process, you know, Black society, that they
get an insider's view of it all. I wonder, is
this because I'm a great writer, or is it like
they say, like they really enjoyed the work. Is that true?
(13:02):
Or is that because of all the other toppings piled
on top of it that they get to get this
view from a person who they consider thoughtful and conscientious
about black things.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And I think that's like kind of the central issue
that you know, Polonius is battling with because he is
trying to write really like in depth characters who you know,
have like an interior life and like great dialogue in
his books that he likes writing, and nobody likes them,
(13:35):
no one reads them, you know, like they're in the
wrong section of the bookstore. But then when he writes
just kind of like a parody of black life, it
takes off and it makes me think about, like how
much did the author of a racer Percival ever identify
with the main character. Because Percival has written a lot
(13:55):
of books. He's also a professor, and not saying that
his books like we're doing as bad as Thelonious is,
but this book and in the book, you get to
read the entirety of the parody book he wrote. So
this book has that ghetto shit in there. And so
this is the book that gets adapted into a movie.
(14:17):
Right in a.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Way, this is kind of ironic to think about, but
Percival Everett's thoughts in this book are kind of a
stand in for the race because this is something that
we have to do a lot, which is kind of
ironic because part of this whole thing that he's railing
against is like being able to represent the race with
these caricatures and stereotypes and identification with black struggle. So
(14:44):
I think that it's very telling that this is the
book that got an adaptation and got a lot of
big names in it. I think that's worth mentioning too,
because there are Sterling K. Brown's in the movie, Issa
Ray's in the movie, Jeffrey in the movie, Erica Alexander
is in the movie. So there are a lot of
big names in this, So it was clearly something that
(15:06):
the studios thought was going to be a big draw
for people, because they were willing to get people who
are such upstanding actors in it. So yeah, maybe in
a way, this is kind of like representative of what
the author was talking about in the book.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
More parts of the Anatomy of the Black Struggle Industrial
Complex after the break. Since money is a big factor
in the Black struggle industrial complex, let's look at the
(15:46):
next part of the system.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Let me guess the buyer.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
The buyer.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
The buyer has the money, they're funding the whole operation.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yes, the white taste makers wield so much power in
this situation.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
In American fiction, they're portrayed as kind of oblivious.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
If there's already so much buzzy because of the.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Movie deal, Michael B. Jordan is circling.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
We want to put them on the cover and one
of those scarves, I guess you would call them tied
around his head a do rag.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
That's it easily tricked.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Is this based on your actual life?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
You think some bitch ass college boy can come up
with that shit?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
No, no, no, I don't. They're prejudiced, only allowing a
certain black narrative to be mainstream, but they aren't depicted
as overtly racist.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, not at all. The buyers of the Black struggle
industrial Complex product aren't waving Confederate flags or storming the capitol.
And as far as being oblivious, I think that's just
not true. Like they want to come across as oblivious
to deny culpability, but they know what they're doing. As writers,
I think the people we deal with the most are
editors as we're writing for these publications. You see, these
(16:56):
editors can give a yes or no on the stories
that get written and eventually public. They're the tastemakers and
the king makers. If they decide they don't like you
or what you're saying, it's not going to get through them.
And of course you can self publish or find other publications.
But there's a difference between being in the New York
Times in a random blog, and it's so much power.
(17:16):
They're not going to give it up just because you
point out to them that it's unfair. They know, and
they're on the right side of the unfairness sucks for
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The director of American Fiction Court Jefferson, talked about this
in an interview with the BBC, he said, I realized
that people would ask me, do you want to write
about this slave? Do you want to write about this
drug dealer? Do you want to write about this gang member?
And I realized that these kind of rigid restrictions as
to what black life looks like were being placed on me,
(17:46):
even in the world of fiction, which blew my mind.
They're also the middlemen, like the agents.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yes, they're exactly that.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, he knew the plot, but was pushing Monk to
not fumble the.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Bag because ultimately, the agent needs the black struggle stories
to sell in order to get paid, so they're going
to encourage it too.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
They're offering four million dollars for the movie, right, behave
the richer. I get the agent claims to be against
sensationalism over substance, but is he really How can he
be when his livelihood is so tied up in it
and he's not even the creative So he's really just
at the whim of two actors in the black struggle
industrial complex. And I might add that in the book,
(18:32):
there is a part where he says, you're gonna get
three million dollars for this movie. Deal that means I'm
going to get three hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So he is calculated.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yes, he needs to run with it, sir.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
He don't even need that calculator. App he knows what
his cut gonna be. And that brings us to the
final part of the Black struggle industrial complexes anatomy the audience.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Okay, I think most people can identify with being the audience.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, exactly. It's the biggest potential group. So I'm going
to break it down into two sections, the black audience
and the white audience. And I know there's more than
black and white people in the audience, but just go
with me here.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Okay, black folks first, all right, and we can.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Relate to this perspective more too, because before we were creating,
we were consuming. But in terms of the black audience's
role in the Black struggle industrial complex, I think it's twofold.
The black audience is there to one appreciate the representation,
no matter how blackluster or unthoughtful it is. And two,
because white people often just copy black people's taste in
(19:36):
the arts, the black audience is used as a shepherd
for the highly sought after white audience.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And when the black audience pushes back on certain media.
We're accused of tearing each other.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Down crabs in a barrel.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I remember that happened with Queen and Slim.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh my god. I think the black audience is taken
for granted, like we have to support every single representative
movie or book, or even if.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
It sucks, tell us how you really feel.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Okay, not too much, not too much. Let me move
on to the white audience members, who, as we saw
in American fiction, are really coveted and catered to.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes, like the reviewers and the white audience really pushed
black struggle stories to the four. After Wanita read an
excerpt from her book, a white woman is the first
to offer a standing ovation.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Y'all, Sharondon girl, you'd be pregnant again if I is Ray,
Ray is gonna be a real father this time around.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
There's a strategic value behind what the white audience is doing.
Similarly to the buyers, I think the white audience's reaction
to these black struggle stories is treated as quirky or
occurring by happenstance.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Like they don't know any better.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, but literally, the most folesh thing you could do
is underestimate the whites and I think it's easier for
folks to understand that with individual white people like Richard
Nixon are the Koch Brothers. They're supporting a particular black
vision over another one because the one they're supporting is
more useful to them. For example, for example, Nixon supported
(21:11):
black capitalism over socialism. He said in a speech, instead
of government jobs and government housing and government welfare, that
government uses its tax and credit policies to enlist in
this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in
the history of man American private enterprise. During the campaign,
Nixon co opted black powers rhetoric of economic self determination
(21:34):
to call for a segregated black economy. So while generations
of white Americans gained wealth through the same government jobs
and welfare, Nixon was now pointing Black America to the
free market and essentially saying, hey, good luck. And he
did that because it was useful to him. It steered
the conversation away from radical thinking and radical narratives.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And you're saying, why audiences are doing something similar, but
as a.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Mass yes, there's a collective intelligence white audience and says
are exercising in the stories they're elevating, which tend to
be more conservative, more escapist, and, in the case of
a racier and American Fiction, more pathological. It's also a
strategic intervention to steer the conversation away from radicalism, just
like Nixon and the Koch Brothers, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefellers.
(22:18):
So I think when we as creators are talking about
what the black struggle industrial complex does, it's not asking
us to be more black, because we're already black. It's
asking us to be a type of black that absolves
and liberates white audiences from any obligation.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That reminds me of something else. The director of American
Fiction said in that BBC interview. He said basically that
it allows why audience members to say, quote, this depiction
of race does not harm my self image because I'm
not burning across on anybody's lawn, i don't own slaves,
I'm not a racist, yep, wanting to be absolved. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
We'll have more on the other side of this break.
I do think that white audiences could like take away
the wrong thing from the movie American Fiction, the book
(23:19):
a rasure, and even this podcast episode, like they even
be sitting there thinking like, well, since everything I'm doing
is wrong. I'm just not going to support black art
at all since I'm doing it wrong, you know what
I'm saying, which I don't think is the right thing
to do. But if I was in their shoes and like.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
You're giving them the much needed information that they always
be asking for, child, what do I do?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
No? I mean, if I was in their shoes, I
would be like, fuck y'all.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Okay, truly, that's not the answer they want. You're not
giving them the answer they want, you know what I.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mean, Because it's like, Okay, well, y'all said, y'all wanted
us to support black people, and it's floor back of businesses,
and we went and bought this book. And now you're
saying we're doing that wrong. Like now you're saying that
we're supporting this ghetto fiction that supports stereotypes, Like damn.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think the movie didn't focus as much on what
the white people were actually saying about the book. In
the movie, they touched on it a little bit when
they were in the meeting. In the movie, they have
a scene where they're doing these literary book awards and
they have a cohortive people and it's like it's just
Juanita and Thelonius are the only black people in the group,
(24:31):
and it's like five or six people in the group.
And they don't talk about it as much in the movie,
but in the book they give a lot of the
things that the white people are saying about Juanita's book
and about fuck and they talk a little bit about
it in the movie where they talk about the quotes
that were in the magazines and newspaper articles that were
saying Juanita's book is so raw and real and emotional.
(24:58):
So the white people that were in the book, we're
saying things like, this is the best black novel that
I've read in the last however long.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's like it'll be taught in schools in thirty years.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, they were very complimentary of it. They praised it
so highly, but they clearly, in the book and in
the movie, really felt strongly about it being something that
needed to be more widely read and definitely widely read
by white audiences that they were the stand ins for.
(25:33):
So in the end, they were the judges essentially and
the gatekeepers for the images of black people that they
thought should be disseminated widely. And while they were saying
these things. They were completely ignoring what in the book
Monk was saying. But in the movie what both Sintara
aka Janita and Monk were saying. They were like, Oh,
(25:57):
you're a black person with thoughts about how blackness should
be in the book, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So, But I think it goes back to that like
collective intelligence, Like there is an agenda to say that
this poordly written book that was written in like one night,
agree alcohol fueled night should be read by white and
black and every other race students for the next thirty years.
(26:23):
What you try to say about black folks.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, was it one night or was it one week?
I thought it was a week, he said.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I thought he wrote it in one night.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
It might have been different in the movie in the book,
but in the book, I feel like he said he
did it one week to others.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Either way, not very thoughtful. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
But yeah, I think that goes back to like there
is an agenda. And even when like a black person
who you say you respect because they wouldn't have been
on this committee if they weren't respected writers, you say
you respect them and respect their art. In their opinion,
you're like nah, we got this, like we know what
(27:00):
people should be reading, and we know what's the best
black book of the century.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Also, it being a fictional character that they're talking about
allows them distance that somebody, a black person, sitting right
in front of them doesn't allow them. And in a
way for white people who are so used to operating
in that way pretending black people are invisible or and
they truly are if it's not pretending, sometimes black people
really are invisible to them in so many ways. It's
like you operate like that every day in life. I
(27:28):
have definitely had experiences where white people treating me as
invisible in places, so it's not hard for them to
do that in a real room where it's like, in
a way, they have more intimacy with the fictional characters
because they live, breathe literary stuff, they are writers, so
it's like easier for them to be in touch or
in tune or ostensibly those things with this fictional black
(27:51):
character who they could imagine more things upon as reading
it than somebody who's sitting right in front of them,
because they operate within white supremacy, because it's how they're
used to treating black people in real life.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So to recap the anatomy of the black struggle industrial complex,
we got the creators, the ones who push back against
and the ones who lean into it. We have the buyers,
the folks paying the creators and funding these stories, the agents,
the middlemen between the creators and the audience, both black
and white and beyond.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
You got it. And if you're looking for another movie
that breaks the fourth wall on the black struggle industrial complex,
I recommend watching Roda Blanks, the forty year old version.
That's version not virgin. It's on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And with that, it's time for roll credits, the segment
where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
for the week. Katie, what's you given credit to this week?
This week?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I would like to give credit to clothes swapping. I'm
in my not buy as much stuff bag, and it
used to be like, whenever I thought I needed some
piece of clothing, I would go buy it. But now
I just ask somebody else, like do you have this?
(29:15):
Can I wear it for this for this day? And
sometimes I do? What would you like to give credit
to this week?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
This week? I would like to give credit to incense
because Katie, you know I like smells it smells make
me feel really good. So like when I wake up
in the morning, it's a ritual for me to turn
on my essential oil diffusers and like my incense. And
I don't have that many candles, so if anybody wants
(29:46):
to give me any candles, you can. But I love smells,
so they made me feel better. So that's what I
want to give credit to this week.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And with that, we will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Bye y'all, bye. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves
Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It was produced by Tari Harrison and edited in sound
designed by Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also
send us an email at Hello at on Theme dot Show.
You can head to our website on Theme dot Show
to find the show notes for all episodes. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media. You are listening.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
From the page to the screen to the stage. Black
artists have bemoaned the demand for them to perform struggle
for white audiences.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Some call it poverty porn, others call it trauma porn.
You may have heard the phrases misery lit or misery memoirs.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yep, I've definitely heard those terms kicked around, but they
focused on the end product, the movie, the book, the play.
But there's a web of actors and interests that make
sure these products exist in the first place. And that's
why I've coined the term Black struggle industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay, I see the system thinking.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You see it, and I've come to see that many
relationships make up the Black struggle industrial complex, and multiple
parties benefit from it. And while there's a bunch of
examples of stories that have been accused of being trauma
porn or poverty porn, some storytellers break the fourth wall
and show us how they relate to this complex.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Stories like Percival Everett's Erasure, which was recently adapted into
a movie called American Fiction, pull back the curtain on
the black struggle industrial complex and shine a satirical light
on all its moving parts.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I loved Erasure. The novel tells the story of Thelonious
Monk Ellison, a black author and university professor who becomes
frustrated with the expectations and stereotypes associated with the black literature.
In response, he writes the parody of what he sees
as stereotypical ghetto fiction under a pseudonym. To Monk's surprise,
the book becomes a literary sensation and hygiens ensu.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
When an early screening of American Fiction came to Atlanta,
you know, we had to pull up. If they want stereotypes,
I'll give them one. What is this? Nobody's gonna publish this.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I just want to rub their nose, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
We love it?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
What?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You know? We had a lot of thoughts after the
credits rolled.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I guess I want to start by asking you, Katie,
what is your initial gut reaction to the film now
that we finished it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Gut feeling, liked it, thought it was funny, entertained, liked
some of the changes, didn't like other changes.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
My gut reaction is that it was fun like it
seemed very mainstream and that's not kind of how I
imagined the book Erasure to be. The black struggle industrial
complex was real in that movie.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Indeed, it had all the parts.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, go ahead and break it down for us, Katie.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
All right, So the anatomy of the black struggle industrial
complex is well complex are with the most obvious the creator.
And as we saw in Erasure, in American fiction, there
are two types of creators, the ones who chaf against
the demands to present black struggle stories and those who
see it as a ticket for individual material gain.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So the main character interrature and American fiction, Thelnius Monk Ellison,
is clearly the former. And would you say his foil
Juanita May Jenkins, who was renamed Centaur Golden for the movie,
author of the best selling Weeze Lives in the Ghetto,
is an example of the latter.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, I would the movie gave us more insight into
Wanita's mindset than the book, like in the scene where
Monk confronts her about her books perpetuating stereotypes. And by
the way, going for it, I'm going to refer to
her as just Juania, but we mean Juanita in the
book and Cintaa in the movie My Thing is some
people's actual stories are what some would call stereotypes. Stereotypes
(03:53):
don't come out of thin air. Some folks actually live
that life. But one of the major tenets of the
black struggle industrial complay is a pandering to white people's
guilt or their need to be liked or feel cool.
It varies, but the black creator supplies what they need.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Hmm, okay, can you explain more what you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah. So, both Monk's book My Pathology or later renamed Fuck,
and Wanita's book We Lived in the Ghetto are held
as honest, raw a true representation of what it's like
to be black in America. Juanita even says that was
part of her motivation for writing the book.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
What really struck me was that too few books were
about my people. Where are our stories? Where's our representation?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
But both Monks and Janita's books aren't true or representative
of anything they know personally. Monks is completely made up,
and that's the gag. Our Ratio delves into this more
than American fiction. But Fuck My Pathology is about a
deadbeat dad who assaults black women and fantasizes about stabbing
his mom. There really aren't any significant white characters, so
(04:58):
it gives the white audience of heuristic experience. Even the
title my pathology points to all the problems in this
black community being the black people's own backwardness. It never
touches on systemic issues. Denby Dan's rappers crack.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
You said you wanted black stuff. That's black, right. So
white people get this gritty story from the hood without
having to feel guilty about how they may have contributed
to making the conditions of the.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Hood exactly And similarly, we learned from reading A Rasure
that Juanita spent a week in Harlem with her cousins
and wrote her book. Otherwise she's lived a really privileged life,
went to a prestigious school, got a sought after job
upon graduation. Monk is a PhD. Both his siblings are
medical doctors. His father wasn't empty. His family seems extremely
(05:46):
well off. They have two houses, a beach house and
a primary residence, and a living maid, so both of
them are cappin. But they get put on this pedestal
of being the few to speak for millions of black Americans.
And I'm not saying hood shit and trauma shouldn't be
written about. But who gets to write about hoodshit and
trauma is what's interesting to me when it comes to
the black struggle industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Like who gets propped up and puts to the forefront
and what agenda is that serving?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, because on the other hand, works that have been
accused of being trauma porn often have a white savior involved,
so the white audience can identify with being the good guy, like.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Twelve Years a Slave, Freedom, Writers, The Help.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There's so many but works to speak to trauma and
indict white supremacy, capitalism, and fascism as a culprit, those
books get banned. George Jackson's Blood in My Eye would
never be a part of the Black struggle industrial complex
because it's not serving either role of making white people
feel better or pandering to their guilt.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Do you think Wanita and creators like her who play
into the system are cognizant of what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I do think there's some cognitive dissidence going on. Like
to talk about representation, I think is a popular cop out,
like any depiction of black people on the screen is
a good thing, But deep down, I do think they
know what they're doing like.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
In the movie when Monk likens Juanita's writing to a
drug dealer rationalizing selling drugs by saying that he's just
giving folks what they want, and Janit equips, well, I
think drugs should be.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Legal, and I mean, it's a really attractive deal. In
this instance, millions of dollars are on the table for
whoever is willing to make these stories, So I can
see why and how someone would rationalize it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And Monk quickly realizes that too, that no matter how
much he despises it, in order for him to be
a materially successful author, he has to give up all
the Greek mythology writing and embody these stereotypes, even if
he does so under a pen name.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I mean, and even in the book in the movie,
Monk chafed it against it, but then ultimately wrote his
parody and he was saying like, oh, you know, I'm
doing it to stick it to the man, but also like,
you're not dumb because you saw that we lives in
the ghetto, which is essentially the same type of which
(08:00):
you're doing really well. Mentioned Yeah, so you saw that
you needed money to put your mom up in this
assisted living center, so you're against it, but you're like
when push comes to shove money talk and you took
that money, you weren't like now I'm just playing, y'all
are also stupid. I'm gonna be on my moral high ground.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And broke, and that's that on it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
So, as creators ourselves, what has been your experience with
the black struggle industrial complex? Like, have you been tempted?
Have you participated in it?
Speaker 1 (08:36):
It's such a tough question because I don't feel like
I've ever been tempted to amp up my blackness for
any sort of writing that I've ever done. I've also
never been explicitly asked to do so, Like nobody's ever
said you have to add more struggle in here, or
you have to add more trauma in here. But I
am often in a position where I am one of
(08:59):
few black wrins who is working with the publication, and
so I'm working on black assignments that were given to
me because I'm black. But I also choose them because
it's within the realm of things that I write. I
care about blackness and I care about writing about it,
so it's a choice on my end too. So it's
two sides of the coin. Where the editors and the
publications that I'm involved with have power in what they're
(09:21):
assigning me. But I also have my own powered agency
and the things that I choose to either pitch and
or take and continue to write because I care about them.
And I'm fortunate enough to say that I have had
the privilege to be able to choose to write what
I want to write. And I've never been in a
space where for money, I absolutely have to write a thing,
(09:42):
and have to write a thing that I know is
going to be lucrative for me. But I would like
to know your experience with it too. Have you ever
been tempted?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, So there was this time when I was like
pitching my business for like different grants and stuff, and
there was like a competition I was a part of,
and you had to pitch your bit business and you know,
maybe it's like a five minute pitch. And I noticed
that it was like a mix of people. It was
like black people, Latino people, white people, all pitching their businesses.
(10:13):
And so my business a black bookstore. I was talking
about just like how I grew up, how my mom
was like really into like teaching me and my brother
how to read and really loving black literature. And then
I also shared that my grandfather never knew how to read,
and he lived to be eighty two and he never
learned how to read. And I thought that like really
fit into the story. And we would practice the pitches
(10:34):
in front of each other, right, and so then I
would like hear other people's pitches get a little more,
you know, like sob story is and I'm like, wait,
am I doing that? You know? So it wasn't like
anyone saying like, oh, like you really need to like
pull out that struggle, which my grandfather not knowing how
to read. I didn't see it as like something as
like a struggle for me personally, like definitely a struggle
(10:56):
for him. But if anything, it really just emphasized how
much reading was important. So I talk about the cop
in your head, but also the white taste maker in
your head, or like knowing that white people may feel
guilty that my grandfather didn't know how to read because
he grew up in like Jim Crow, Mississippi, and they
had a hand in that. So I think that was
one example where I felt like kind of uncomfortable and
(11:18):
I was like kind of seeing it play out even
I think about that with like the book that I'm
writing now, I'm like, did I get this book deal
just because like black stuff was going on and like
white publishers and editors feel guilty about all the shit
black people were going through in twenty twenty and they're like, Okay,
like you get a book deal now. You know what
I'm saying. And it's not that I'm personally like writing
(11:41):
anything that I think is handering to that, but I'm
writing the book in general that I do think is
a product of that.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Do you feel like your motivation for writing the book
is because you knew that you could capitalize off of
the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I thought it was like very of the moment,
like we need to capture what's going on with the
black bookstores. So yeah, I think I'm thelonious girl.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I think that's going to stretch too far because he
went way into it. He went deep, deep down in
the whole. Girl.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I'm writing my pathology too.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Girl, I don't think that's the case. I think you're
overstating it. I think for me sometimes it happens more
on the end, where the work is already published in
the editorial process, versus it being during the content creation stage,
and I have white audiences inevitably reading the work and
they compliment me on it. Sometimes I question the value
(12:38):
of my work because I'm wondering, do they just like
this just because it gets a peek into a black mind,
the black thought process, you know, Black society, that they
get an insider's view of it all. I wonder, is
this because I'm a great writer, or is it like
they say, like they really enjoyed the work. Is that true?
(13:02):
Or is that because of all the other toppings piled
on top of it that they get to get this
view from a person who they consider thoughtful and conscientious
about black things.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And I think that's like kind of the central issue
that you know, Polonius is battling with because he is
trying to write really like in depth characters who you know,
have like an interior life and like great dialogue in
his books that he likes writing, and nobody likes them,
(13:35):
no one reads them, you know, like they're in the
wrong section of the bookstore. But then when he writes
just kind of like a parody of black life, it
takes off and it makes me think about, like how
much did the author of a racer Percival ever identify
with the main character. Because Percival has written a lot
(13:55):
of books. He's also a professor, and not saying that
his books like we're doing as bad as Thelonious is,
but this book and in the book, you get to
read the entirety of the parody book he wrote. So
this book has that ghetto shit in there. And so
this is the book that gets adapted into a movie.
(14:17):
Right in a.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Way, this is kind of ironic to think about, but
Percival Everett's thoughts in this book are kind of a
stand in for the race because this is something that
we have to do a lot, which is kind of
ironic because part of this whole thing that he's railing
against is like being able to represent the race with
these caricatures and stereotypes and identification with black struggle. So
(14:44):
I think that it's very telling that this is the
book that got an adaptation and got a lot of
big names in it. I think that's worth mentioning too,
because there are Sterling K. Brown's in the movie, Issa
Ray's in the movie, Jeffrey in the movie, Erica Alexander
is in the movie. So there are a lot of
big names in this, So it was clearly something that
(15:06):
the studios thought was going to be a big draw
for people, because they were willing to get people who
are such upstanding actors in it. So yeah, maybe in
a way, this is kind of like representative of what
the author was talking about in the book.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
More parts of the Anatomy of the Black Struggle Industrial
Complex after the break. Since money is a big factor
in the Black struggle industrial complex, let's look at the
(15:46):
next part of the system.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Let me guess the buyer.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
The buyer.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
The buyer has the money, they're funding the whole operation.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yes, the white taste makers wield so much power in
this situation.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
In American fiction, they're portrayed as kind of oblivious.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
If there's already so much buzzy because of the.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Movie deal, Michael B. Jordan is circling.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
We want to put them on the cover and one
of those scarves, I guess you would call them tied
around his head a do rag.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
That's it easily tricked.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Is this based on your actual life?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
You think some bitch ass college boy can come up
with that shit?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
No, no, no, I don't. They're prejudiced, only allowing a
certain black narrative to be mainstream, but they aren't depicted
as overtly racist.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, not at all. The buyers of the Black struggle
industrial Complex product aren't waving Confederate flags or storming the capitol.
And as far as being oblivious, I think that's just
not true. Like they want to come across as oblivious
to deny culpability, but they know what they're doing. As writers,
I think the people we deal with the most are
editors as we're writing for these publications. You see, these
(16:56):
editors can give a yes or no on the stories
that get written and eventually public. They're the tastemakers and
the king makers. If they decide they don't like you
or what you're saying, it's not going to get through them.
And of course you can self publish or find other publications.
But there's a difference between being in the New York
Times in a random blog, and it's so much power.
(17:16):
They're not going to give it up just because you
point out to them that it's unfair. They know, and
they're on the right side of the unfairness sucks for
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The director of American Fiction Court Jefferson, talked about this
in an interview with the BBC, he said, I realized
that people would ask me, do you want to write
about this slave? Do you want to write about this
drug dealer? Do you want to write about this gang member?
And I realized that these kind of rigid restrictions as
to what black life looks like were being placed on me,
(17:46):
even in the world of fiction, which blew my mind.
They're also the middlemen, like the agents.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yes, they're exactly that.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, he knew the plot, but was pushing Monk to
not fumble the.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Bag because ultimately, the agent needs the black struggle stories
to sell in order to get paid, so they're going
to encourage it too.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
They're offering four million dollars for the movie, right, behave
the richer. I get the agent claims to be against
sensationalism over substance, but is he really How can he
be when his livelihood is so tied up in it
and he's not even the creative So he's really just
at the whim of two actors in the black struggle
industrial complex. And I might add that in the book,
(18:32):
there is a part where he says, you're gonna get
three million dollars for this movie. Deal that means I'm
going to get three hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So he is calculated.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yes, he needs to run with it, sir.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
He don't even need that calculator. App he knows what
his cut gonna be. And that brings us to the
final part of the Black struggle industrial complexes anatomy the audience.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Okay, I think most people can identify with being the audience.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, exactly. It's the biggest potential group. So I'm going
to break it down into two sections, the black audience
and the white audience. And I know there's more than
black and white people in the audience, but just go
with me here.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Okay, black folks first, all right, and we can.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Relate to this perspective more too, because before we were creating,
we were consuming. But in terms of the black audience's
role in the Black struggle industrial complex, I think it's twofold.
The black audience is there to one appreciate the representation,
no matter how blackluster or unthoughtful it is. And two,
because white people often just copy black people's taste in
(19:36):
the arts, the black audience is used as a shepherd
for the highly sought after white audience.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And when the black audience pushes back on certain media.
We're accused of tearing each other.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Down crabs in a barrel.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I remember that happened with Queen and Slim.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh my god. I think the black audience is taken
for granted, like we have to support every single representative
movie or book, or even if.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
It sucks, tell us how you really feel.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Okay, not too much, not too much. Let me move
on to the white audience members, who, as we saw
in American fiction, are really coveted and catered to.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes, like the reviewers and the white audience really pushed
black struggle stories to the four. After Wanita read an
excerpt from her book, a white woman is the first
to offer a standing ovation.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Y'all, Sharondon girl, you'd be pregnant again if I is Ray,
Ray is gonna be a real father this time around.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
There's a strategic value behind what the white audience is doing.
Similarly to the buyers, I think the white audience's reaction
to these black struggle stories is treated as quirky or
occurring by happenstance.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Like they don't know any better.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, but literally, the most folesh thing you could do
is underestimate the whites and I think it's easier for
folks to understand that with individual white people like Richard
Nixon are the Koch Brothers. They're supporting a particular black
vision over another one because the one they're supporting is
more useful to them. For example, for example, Nixon supported
(21:11):
black capitalism over socialism. He said in a speech, instead
of government jobs and government housing and government welfare, that
government uses its tax and credit policies to enlist in
this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in
the history of man American private enterprise. During the campaign,
Nixon co opted black powers rhetoric of economic self determination
(21:34):
to call for a segregated black economy. So while generations
of white Americans gained wealth through the same government jobs
and welfare, Nixon was now pointing Black America to the
free market and essentially saying, hey, good luck. And he
did that because it was useful to him. It steered
the conversation away from radical thinking and radical narratives.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And you're saying, why audiences are doing something similar, but
as a.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Mass yes, there's a collective intelligence white audience and says
are exercising in the stories they're elevating, which tend to
be more conservative, more escapist, and, in the case of
a racier and American Fiction, more pathological. It's also a
strategic intervention to steer the conversation away from radicalism, just
like Nixon and the Koch Brothers, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefellers.
(22:18):
So I think when we as creators are talking about
what the black struggle industrial complex does, it's not asking
us to be more black, because we're already black. It's
asking us to be a type of black that absolves
and liberates white audiences from any obligation.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That reminds me of something else. The director of American
Fiction said in that BBC interview. He said basically that
it allows why audience members to say, quote, this depiction
of race does not harm my self image because I'm
not burning across on anybody's lawn, i don't own slaves,
I'm not a racist, yep, wanting to be absolved. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
We'll have more on the other side of this break.
I do think that white audiences could like take away
the wrong thing from the movie American Fiction, the book
(23:19):
a rasure, and even this podcast episode, like they even
be sitting there thinking like, well, since everything I'm doing
is wrong. I'm just not going to support black art
at all since I'm doing it wrong, you know what
I'm saying, which I don't think is the right thing
to do. But if I was in their shoes and like.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
You're giving them the much needed information that they always
be asking for, child, what do I do?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
No? I mean, if I was in their shoes, I
would be like, fuck y'all.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Okay, truly, that's not the answer they want. You're not
giving them the answer they want, you know what I.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Mean, Because it's like, Okay, well, y'all said, y'all wanted
us to support black people, and it's floor back of businesses,
and we went and bought this book. And now you're
saying we're doing that wrong. Like now you're saying that
we're supporting this ghetto fiction that supports stereotypes, Like damn.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think the movie didn't focus as much on what
the white people were actually saying about the book. In
the movie, they touched on it a little bit when
they were in the meeting. In the movie, they have
a scene where they're doing these literary book awards and
they have a cohortive people and it's like it's just
Juanita and Thelonius are the only black people in the group,
(24:31):
and it's like five or six people in the group.
And they don't talk about it as much in the movie,
but in the book they give a lot of the
things that the white people are saying about Juanita's book
and about fuck and they talk a little bit about
it in the movie where they talk about the quotes
that were in the magazines and newspaper articles that were
saying Juanita's book is so raw and real and emotional.
(24:58):
So the white people that were in the book, we're
saying things like, this is the best black novel that
I've read in the last however long.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's like it'll be taught in schools in thirty years.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, they were very complimentary of it. They praised it
so highly, but they clearly, in the book and in
the movie, really felt strongly about it being something that
needed to be more widely read and definitely widely read
by white audiences that they were the stand ins for.
(25:33):
So in the end, they were the judges essentially and
the gatekeepers for the images of black people that they
thought should be disseminated widely. And while they were saying
these things. They were completely ignoring what in the book
Monk was saying. But in the movie what both Sintara
aka Janita and Monk were saying. They were like, Oh,
(25:57):
you're a black person with thoughts about how blackness should
be in the book, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So, But I think it goes back to that like
collective intelligence, Like there is an agenda to say that
this poordly written book that was written in like one night,
agree alcohol fueled night should be read by white and
black and every other race students for the next thirty years.
(26:23):
What you try to say about black folks.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, was it one night or was it one week?
I thought it was a week, he said.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I thought he wrote it in one night.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
It might have been different in the movie in the book,
but in the book, I feel like he said he
did it one week to others.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Either way, not very thoughtful. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
But yeah, I think that goes back to like there
is an agenda. And even when like a black person
who you say you respect because they wouldn't have been
on this committee if they weren't respected writers, you say
you respect them and respect their art. In their opinion,
you're like nah, we got this, like we know what
(27:00):
people should be reading, and we know what's the best
black book of the century.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Also, it being a fictional character that they're talking about
allows them distance that somebody, a black person, sitting right
in front of them doesn't allow them. And in a
way for white people who are so used to operating
in that way pretending black people are invisible or and
they truly are if it's not pretending, sometimes black people
really are invisible to them in so many ways. It's
like you operate like that every day in life. I
(27:28):
have definitely had experiences where white people treating me as
invisible in places, so it's not hard for them to
do that in a real room where it's like, in
a way, they have more intimacy with the fictional characters
because they live, breathe literary stuff, they are writers, so
it's like easier for them to be in touch or
in tune or ostensibly those things with this fictional black
(27:51):
character who they could imagine more things upon as reading
it than somebody who's sitting right in front of them,
because they operate within white supremacy, because it's how they're
used to treating black people in real life.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So to recap the anatomy of the black struggle industrial complex,
we got the creators, the ones who push back against
and the ones who lean into it. We have the buyers,
the folks paying the creators and funding these stories, the agents,
the middlemen between the creators and the audience, both black
and white and beyond.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
You got it. And if you're looking for another movie
that breaks the fourth wall on the black struggle industrial complex,
I recommend watching Roda Blanks, the forty year old version.
That's version not virgin. It's on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And with that, it's time for roll credits, the segment
where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
for the week. Katie, what's you given credit to this week?
This week?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I would like to give credit to clothes swapping. I'm
in my not buy as much stuff bag, and it
used to be like, whenever I thought I needed some
piece of clothing, I would go buy it. But now
I just ask somebody else, like do you have this?
(29:15):
Can I wear it for this for this day? And
sometimes I do? What would you like to give credit
to this week?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
This week? I would like to give credit to incense
because Katie, you know I like smells it smells make
me feel really good. So like when I wake up
in the morning, it's a ritual for me to turn
on my essential oil diffusers and like my incense. And
I don't have that many candles, so if anybody wants
(29:46):
to give me any candles, you can. But I love smells,
so they made me feel better. So that's what I
want to give credit to this week.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And with that, we will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Bye y'all, bye. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves
Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It was produced by Tari Harrison and edited in sound
designed by Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also
send us an email at Hello at on Theme dot Show.
You can head to our website on Theme dot Show
to find the show notes for all episodes. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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