The People Speak! Except for the ones Hollywood doesn’t care about, of course
The History Channel. Well, yes. If you love the apocalypse and Nazis, then you probably watch it a lot. Oh, and there’s also Pawn Stars. This weekend however they did something which had nothing to do with Nostradamus or death camps: they broadcast a weird, Beatnik-y concert performance entitled ‘The People Speak’, based on readings from Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States.
I’ve never read Zinn’s book although I hear it’s sold a lot of copies. Apparently it’s a history of America that gives voice to the voiceless, chronicling the struggle of the common man against the oppressor, allowing him to speak in his own voice. Theoretically that’s a very interesting project, the sort of thing I might enjoy. And yet I have to say, the film was utter crap — embarrassing even.
Let us count the strands of crapnis:
CRAPNIS #1: It was MC’d by a mumbling old duffer. Gradually I realized that this was actually the legendary Zinn himself. Of course, this means that he is directly implicated in the film and can’t make the usual excuse that his work was distorted.
CRAPNIS #2: Zinn’s thesis was essentially a crude Marxoid conspiracist reworking of the ancient myth of the Golden Age. In the beginning were the noble democratic ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and all God’s children were happy in the Garden of America. Then came the Fall, when the property owning elite drafted the constitution to keep the common man in his place (i.e. under the heel of the elite). Cast out from the Garden all history since then has been a saga of the noble oppressed classes’ struggle to attain the lost, true democracy represented by the Declaration of Independence.
Thus, as Tuco doesn’t say in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (he’s much more sophisticated a thinker): “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who oppress and those who fight oppression.”
CRAPNIS #3: To ‘prove’ his thesis Zinn would set up straw men — ‘Schools/films don’t tell you this!’ Before telling us something we all learned in school or saw in a film.
Of course a Manichaean interpretation of history which reduces the complex and chaotic mess of reality to a simple morality play has obvious appeal; which leads us to:
CRAPNIS#4: The participation of sundry Hollywood simpletons who performed the words of ‘the People’. I saw Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, a totally f*cked looking Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei (keeping her tits in this time), the dude who does Time Warner Cable ads, and lots of people I didn’t recognize, all emoting the words of ‘the People’ at the camera. I don’t think we need to dwell long on the heavy irony of a film dedicated to ‘the People’ turning out to be an example of naked celebrity worship, or indeed of individuals who usually encounter ‘the People’ as hookers, cooks, gardeners and indentured serfs suddenly getting down with the plebs, indulging in a spot of the old moral exhibitionism. You could see them enjoying it, that sense of moral weight and heft. Good for them, I hope they had a nice time.
CRAPNIS#5: There were also some terrible MTV unplugged style interpretations of old songs, which I wrote about here.
Thus far the show (and I do mean show) was tedious but mostly harmless. Armchair radical Zinn was clearly digging the company of his celeb pals, and they felt all big and serious next to him, so the film was essentially a giant wankathon, that is to say an orgy of onanistic self-congratulation. Nothing to get worked up about, just switch over if you don’t like it. I wouldn’t even have taken the time to write about it were it not for one detail.
Let us assume for a minute that Zinn is correct and that history really can be reduced to a moral fable of oppressed vs. oppressors. If that is the case, and you are telling the history of America then which oppressed people do you think you should include in your film? Slaves? Check. Women? Check. Factory workers? Check. OK, but isn’t there somebody else in there, another group we’ve forgotten, damn, who can it be?…. ah wait… I’ve got it: American Indians!
Last year I was out in West Texas and I got chatting with a chap whose neck was of the deepest crimson hue. He kindly listed for me the many minorities he wasn’t very keen on, but when it came to the Indians he held fire. Even he felt a bit guilty. But Zinn and his Hollywood pals? Apparently they don’t give a shit. They flashed a photograph of a dude in a headdress on screen for five seconds, and then moved swiftly on. No mention of broken treaties, of the Indian wars, or the massacre at Wounded Knee, or Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull or Tecumseh or any of it. Apparently some of that is in Zinn’s book, but when it came to the big screen adaptation — well, I guess that shit just had to go.
Well OK — I suppose they did have to leave enough room for the ads. I mean you’ve got to sell the Swiffer WetJet, don’t you? Sorry Indians, maybe next time. Hell, they don’t even have TVs on the reservations do they?
I think if you made a film about injustice in America and skipped slavery, questions could rightly be raised about the sincerity of your commitment to giving voice to the voiceless. And it is a dark irony indeed that by this editorial (or commercial?) decision Zinn and his celebrity buddies erased an entire people from the historical record. In doing so, they echoed the acts of the very oppressors they affect to despise.
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That’s funny.
I tried to read Zinn’s book a couple of months back, and I got disgusted with it and quit reading while he was still talking about the horrible Christopher Columbus, who, to hear Zinn tell it, must have been the Anti-Christ.
What a horrible book.
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Daniel,
Of course Zinn’s show wouldn’t include the American Indians. They’re all living on Government run Reservations now. They have achieved Howie’s ultimate dream– a society that’s completely run by an elite group of bureaucrats who know what’s best for those pesky common people.
Actually, it did mention Columbus, Indians,land grabs,Chief Joseph,the trail of tears and Indian resistance.
Actress Q’Orianka Kilcher read a speech by Chief Joseph on ‘The People Speak’,right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOglIQGJy8g
So that renders the whole point of your column null and void. What else you got?
Who’s next?
Yah! Indians were hippies living in communes before bad ole whitey christians came along! No warfare, no slavery, no raping or raiding or pillaging, yah, all that came along with the brutal efficiency of superior white folk (nod to Darwin) and their ridiculous things like civil courts, crime & punishment, civilization, industry, iphones, and hybrids… HOW DARE WHITEY!!!
Just another pinko-commie with a keyboard and a publisher. Zinn, like Obama, their philosophy borders on that of a traitor – aid and comfort to the enemies of liberty and the constitution. The traitor in chief still has 45 days to screw with us and then begins the 2010 elections – they can’t go fast enough.
Hollywoodron,
I’m curious about your post. So, in your opinion, it was a good thing that Europeans slaughtered the people who already living here in order to take their land? I guess then it will be ok for other people to come here right now and do the same thing?
By the way, the only people who ever say “whitey” are conservatives who claim to be “color blind” or some such.
“So, in your opinion, it was a good thing that Europeans slaughtered the people who already living here in order to take their land? I guess then it will be ok for other people to come here right now and do the same thing?”
Can you point out where Kalder said any such thing? Even a paraphrase? On, and you please tell me about your knowledge of the Native Americans and their peace-loving ways (don’t forget their own versions of torture, slavery, et. al.). You see, my liberal friend, you set up noble victims that, at least in the case of Native Americans, weren’t, for lack of a better term, “lily white.”
Finally, the use of “whitey” was sarcastic hyperbole. As usual, liberals don’t understand anything. At all. Ever. Period.
Your friend,
Whitey. Actually, that’s Mr. Whitey to you.
Zinn, if he’s a good Marxist, will not care a wit for the natives. They are pre-feudal savages in Marxist theory. They are two stages behind in terms of historical consciousness from the glorious industrial workers. He should applaud the U.S. government for extinguishing their miserable, regressive existence. Genocide has a funny way of being progressive in Marxism. Damn, doesn’t anyone understand Marx anymore? It is not that complicated. Brutal, for sure, but not complicated.
How about the Japanese who had their property confiscated and were sent to internment camps by that old socialist F.D.R.? ” ain’t they Americans”
“How about the Japanese who had their property confiscated and were sent to internment camps by that old socialist F.D.R.? ” ain’t they Americans”
Not if they were Japanese.
If they were American citizens, legal and law abiding, then it is a problem.
We’ve gotta stop with the hyphenated names. Let the melting pot boil.
Oh lord. Howard Zinn. I had to read a Zinn book in college back in the 70’s. The professor was honest enough to use it as an example of ‘point of view historical writing’. Never thought he was all that enlightening.
When Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he came upon Indian huts. “In some huts nearby they found a cake of wax and a man’s skull in two baskets hanging from a post.” (The Life of Christopher Columbus by his son Ferdinand p. 75)
On the Island of Guadalupe, “(T)hese women begged the sailors to take them aboard, indicating by signs that the people of that island ate men and were holding them captives” p 113.
When he went ashore he saw “skulls hung from the ceiling and baskets full of men’s bones.”
Of four men and a woman in a canoe who picked up their bows and wounded two, “These men had had their virile members cut off, for the Caribs capture them on the other islands and castrate them, as we do to fatten capons, to improve their taste.” p 117.
Upon reaching the land to one day become Venezuela, “The women cover nothing, not even their genitals.” p 185.
The Indians wore gold mirrors about their necks, which they said, “came from other islands to the west, inhabited by cannibals.” p 185.
Let’s face it, the whole liberal cabal is more or less entirely composed of congenital cannibal races!!!
Libs hate Columbus as much as they hate anyone who actually dares speak the TRUTH about them.
PS
Chrisopher Columbus didn’t have to kill anyone. 90% of the Indians died of natural causes.
He got his gold the old fashioned way, by taxing the Indians.
Don’t liberals believe that taxation is the ultimate good???
In fact, it is the men of Columbus that were slaughtered.
Columbus informs the Indian king that he has lost the Santa Maria “on a reef a league and half from his town.” p. 82.
“Therefore he resolved to build a fort with the timbers and planking of that ship.” Furthermore, “to Pedro Gutierrez, and to Rodrigo de Escobedo, he intrusted the government of the fortress and its garrison of thirty-six men.”
Columbus returned to Spain. Upon his return a year later, “a shore party discovered two dead men on the banks of a river. One seemed young; the other, who seemed older, had a rope of esparto grass tied about his neck, his arms extended, and his hands tied to a piece of wood in the form of a cross.”
Upon reaching the garrison they find it is “burned to the ground. Nothing remains of the houses except some smashed chests and such other wreckage as one sees in a land that has been devastated and put to the sack.”
The Indians promised to pay tribute to the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella as follows: “In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of fourteen years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk’s bell of gold dust; all others were to pay twenty-five pounds of cotton.” p 149.
Taxation! Taxation, the ulitmate good that all liberals preach praise of, that leaves them in moral superiority to any god. How the liberals must be weeping for joy right about now, Columbus was one of them :)
90% of the Indians died of natural causes.
What does this really mean???
Columbus, being an enlightned liberal of the sort whose brain is swelled larger than the universe due to his high mindedness, had a 90% progressive death tax, and rightfully gained title to all the land – knowing full well that this same land would be used, one day, to fund free medical care for all the poor of the poor.
Oh boo hoo, my eyes are filled with endless drops of joy now that I know that Columbus merely had a 90% death tax.
Yes, The people speaks. It just that Hollywood is clueless.
And so ten thousand years of ceaseless inter-tribal warfare hits the memory hole.
That’s a nice hat. They sell men’s clothes where you bought that hat?