Former Osage chief says film will force state to come to terms with its troubled past

By: Carmen Forman 

( Florida Phoenix) – OKLAHOMA CITY — Although many Oklahomans were long ignorant about how white settlers systematically murdered members of the Osage Nation for their oil wealth in the 1920s, “Killers of the Flower Moon” will mark a milestone in how the state addresses its complex and painful history.

The Friday release of the film that shines a spotlight on that dark chapter in Oklahoma will force a deeper conversation about the state coming to terms with its past, said former Osage Nation Principal Chief Jim Gray.

“This history’s been buried just like the Black Wall Street massacre,” he said. “There’s a lot of unfortunate events that have happened in Oklahoma’s past that a lot of people, especially people who live in Oklahoma, just do not know. If it wasn’t for this book and this movie, I don’t think anybody would know this story outside of Osage County.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” which will be screened in movie theaters across the world, tells the true story of the Reign of Terror — in which non-Native Oklahomans killed members of the Osage Nation to claim their land and mineral rights that held the key to immense riches.

The Martin Scorsese film is an adaptation of David Grann’s bestselling nonfiction book that taught many Oklahomans about the Osage murders for the first time.

Gray and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, formerly the state’s tourism secretary, drew parallels between the release of the film and the state coming to grips with the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Many Oklahomans didn’t know the full story behind the Tulsa Race Massacre or didn’t talk openly about the incident until the city marked the 100th anniversary of the 1921 tragedy in which a white mob destroyed the affluent Black neighborhood of Greenwood in north Tulsa.

The nation turned its attention to Tulsa in 2021 when the city marked the massacre’s centennial with a series of events that included a visit from President Joe Biden.

The nation will once again turn its attention to Oklahoma upon the release of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The 2023 film “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Lily Gladstone, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio depicts the true events of the Osage Reign of Terror in 1920s Oklahoma. (Photo provided)

Addressing history

Pinnell said he grew up five minutes from the site of the massacre but never learned about the incident in school. Now, Oklahoma is addressing that history head on, he said.

There is a growing cultural tourism movement for civil rights trails and other historical sites that tell the unvarnished truth about the past, he said.

“What you saw with telling the whole story of the race massacre is that it opened up opportunities for the businesses all along Main Street in Black Wall Street and the new Greenwood Rising Museum,” Pinnell said. “It’s not just a mural anymore. It has to be more than that. And with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” I would say it has to be more than just a movie and a book.”

Gray, who led the Osage Nation from 2002 to 2010, is the great grandson of Henry Roan, whose murder is addressed in Grann’s book and depicted in the movie.

The Osage Nation has about 24,000 enrolled members. Roughly half of them live in Oklahoma.

Filmed in parts of northeastern Oklahoma, “Killers of the Flower Moon” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro. At least 24 members of the Osage Nation and their supporters were murdered during the Reign of Terror, although the death toll is presumed to be much higher.

Scorsese and others producing the film worked closely with members of the Osage Nation, including Gray, to tell the story of the serial murders in a culturally sensitive manner.

When the movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer, Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said his people still suffer from the tragedy “to this very day.” But he said working with Scorsese and his team “restored trust” that the director would tell the story appropriately.

Oklahoma Film and Music Office Director Jeanette Stanton praised the director for working closely with members of the tribe to ensure the film’s authenticity.

“Obviously, it’s a story that needs to be told,” she said. “It’s part of our history.”

Gray said it can be difficult to talk about the Reign of Terror when Oklahoma’s 38 other Native American tribes have similarly horrific stories.

Trail of Tears

The federal government forced the Five Tribes to move from their ancestral homelands to Oklahoma before it became a state through a series of arduous marches known as the Trail of Tears.

“We have to make peace with this past of ours and, in some way, move forward with the knowledge that something’s happened that should never be repeated,” Gray said.

Local historian and attorney Bob Burke said allegations of non-Natives breaking the law to steal money from Indigenous Oklahomans in the years after statehood are not new.

Although not taught in schools, Oklahoma’s history is full of stories about the estates of Native American children being stolen and efforts to appoint guardians for Indigenous adults who became wealthy due to oil, he said.

Kate Barnard, Oklahoma’s first commissioner of charities and corrections and the first woman to win statewide elected office, investigated hundreds of cases of wrongdoing involving appointed guardians who stole from the Native children they were supposed to protect, Burke said.

“This part of Oklahoma history is sad and unsettling,” Burke said. “If the movie causes Oklahomans to pause and reflect upon what happened to our fellow citizens a century ago, that is good.”

This story is republished from the Oklahoma Voice, an affiliate, like the Phoenix, of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

 

Carmen Forman

Carmen covers state government, politics and health care from Oklahoma City. A Norman native, she previously worked in Arizona and Virginia before she began reporting on the Oklahoma Capitol.

 

Via Florida Phoenix

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Gaza-based author contemplates creativity beyond the Israeli blockade’s daily misery.

Written byWe Are Not Numbers

 

This story was first published by We Are Not Numbers.  It was written by Dana Besaiso. An edited version is republished here, under a content-sharing agreement. All photos have been shared from Instagram with the permission of the photographer Mohammad Zaanoun.

( Globlvoices.org) – They say misery breeds great art. From John Keats’s powerful poems about his struggle with illness and death, to Vincent van Gogh, who channeled his battle with mental illness into his dramatic and intense paintings, those who suffer can infuse their emotions and experiences into art that holds exceptional power and meaning for the world. The dilemmatic question that comes to mind is: what happens to art when the misery is gone?

Misery as normal

 

For as long as I can remember, my story alongside every other Palestinian’s has been filled with sorrowful events. Even the cheerful and happy ones are, in some way or another, coated with misery.

Whether it’s that girl preparing for her wedding in Gaza, that youth who migrated to secure a better future, or that very old lady sitting on her couch with the key to what was once her home — before the Israeli forces dispossessed her out of it — hanging from her necklace. Her hopes of returning to her house diminish as she watches the repeated Israeli military attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque on her TV.

When my eldest sister, Rasha, graduated with her master’s degree from the United Kingdom, my family and I couldn’t be there to witness her achievement because of the travel restrictions on residents of the Gaza Strip. We had to experience it through photos and videos. Yet, I still considered myself and my family lucky that at least one of us made it!

In the meantime, most of her international friends’ families managed to attend because, for them, it was as easy as booking a ticket and getting on the airplane. We had only dreamed of seeing an airplane, much less flying in one.

Growing up under miserable circumstances

Since I was born, life has been tainted with agony. Growing up in Gaza, we bore witness to destruction, murder, and countless escalations, that we became nicknamed atfal horoob (“children of wars”). We even joke around and say we graduated with a “bachelor’s degree in war,” as we have officially survived four Israeli aggressions, in addition to numerous attacks.

We got so used to moving on after these Israeli escalations that we started believing it was the norm. We carry our losses, sadness, and grief, and keep moving on with our lives. We return to work or school with the heavy baggage of emotions on our backs. Life must go on.

In May 2021, we faced one of the ugliest and most horrifying Israeli aggressions. The 11-day attack resulted in the deaths of 232 Palestinian civilians, including 65 children, over 1,900 injured, and 1,447 housing units in Gaza demolished, leaving countless individuals with no shelter.

I considered myself one of the lucky ones back then. After that escalation, I struggled with survivor’s guilt — a mental response to an event in which someone else experiences loss but you do not.

“Why me?” I would ask myself. “Why did I survive when so many didn’t?” These thoughts haunted me for a while. I had spent each of the 11 nights saying my goodbyes to my family and friends because death was so close.

I considered myself lucky because I didn’t lose someone close to me, didn’t lose my home, or my identity.

And then, life went back to normal — or as normal as it can be.

Misery is part of our daily lives

 

Sad stories are etched in our DNA. I grew up listening to the stories of our grandparents and how they were displaced from their homes during the Nakba of 1948 and Naksa of 1967. I heard about the horrific massacres that happened before I was born, such as the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948, the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, and many more.

These anecdotes are not just part of our history, but rather a part of our daily lives. We face the brutality of the occupation, whether it is the aggression on Gaza or the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, such as in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and Silwan neighborhoods, and others.

I got so used to these stories that I stopped seeing the bigger picture. The continuous and repeated tragedies that affect almost all Palestinians made me lose perspective that this life is not normal.

It is not normal to have an entire family removed from the civil registry because they all died in an Israeli bombing. It is not normal to be denied your childhood because you were locked up in an Israeli prison since you were 13 for a crime you didn’t commit, like Ahmed Manasra.

It is not normal to be traumatized by the sound of a shutting door because it reminds you of the sound of bombing. And it is not normal to lose your four-year-old son, such as Tamim Dawood, because his heart couldn’t handle the sound of F-16s dropping bombs on his neighbors.

What will happen if the misery lifts?

 

I am struggling with the fear that if, inshallah, the Palestinian reality changes for the better, I might lose the inspiration to write. As a person who has lived her life in constant terror, my passion for writing stems from the ongoing struggle to advocate for my fundamental human rights.

So, the question remains: Will I be able to create happy stories that are not rooted in Palestinian misery? Will we ever write cheerful stories? Ones that talk about happiness and success? Ones where people are genuinely happy without mentioning the “in spite of” in the middle of it?

Will I ever write a story about a mother enjoying her son’s wedding without noting that it happened despite the Israeli forces recently demolishing their home before their eyes?

I can only hope that there will come a day when we, Palestinians, no longer have to ask these questions, because we are no longer burdened by misery. We will learn for ourselves whether there is a trade-off in terms of creativity, and whether it is worth it.

 

Featured Image: Palestinian artist Maha Al-Dayya has finished painting artworks of the houses that were destroyed by Israeli planes during the repeated wars on Gaza, July 8, 2023, Gaza Gity. Photo by Mohammad Zaanoun, used with permission.

Via Globlvoices.org

The Bridge features personal essays, commentary, and creative non-fiction that illuminate differences in perception between local and international coverage of news events, from the unique perspective of members of the Global Voices community. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinion of the community as a whole. All Posts

 

Written byWe Are Not Numbers

The dean of the Egyptian archeological establishment, Zahi Hawass, spoke out against what he characterized as the appropriation of Egyptian history by American Afro-centrism, in which African-Americans attempt to claim Pharaonic Egypt as a key part of their heritage. An Egyptian lawyer sued Netflix, apparently for libeling the Egyptian nation, and for a while change.org carried a petition against the series that garnered tens of thousands of signatures before it was dropped. There have been social media wars over the issue.

The problems with this controversy are myriad, but they derive in large part from the unsatisfactory category of “race,” and from imposing contemporary understandings of race on ancients.

There are no biological races in the sense that most people understand the phrase nowadays. Homo Sapiens is only about 200,000 or 300,000 years old and has not had time to diversify very much. Moreover, there has been constant gene exchange and intermarriage across groups. A German essayist in the early 19th century said that Germans were fortunate to be a “pure” race. but there are no such things, and that guy was a jerk. Archeologists working among bones in a quarry of ancient Rome found a skeleton belonging to a Chinese or other East Asian man. If he married locally and had children, I guarantee you all Italians are now descended from him. Outward appearance or phenotype is often focused on for describing race, but that is determined by a very small number of genes and it reflects adaptations to climate and UV ray exposure, and can change in as little as 13,000 years when people move to a new place.

As I have pointed out, Ben Franklin in the 18th century did not consider Germans white.

In the early 20th century there were all kinds of disputes over “whiteness.” Some officials saw Lebanese as “Asiatic” and as part of a “yellow peril,” though the courts ultimately accepted Arabs as “white.” An Indian man sued to be allowed to marry a white woman because he was an Aryan and was turned down by the judge. Some people from Appalachia are from a mixed-race group called Melungeons. I may have a bit of Melungeon in my family tree.

In the United States and Britain there is an unfortunate binary of black and white, which is not true in Brazil, where a spectrum of racial appearances is recognized. People with any African heritage at all, no matter how small, are called Black in the U.S. (Except that at least 5% of self-described “whites” in the Deep South actually have some recent African ancestry.)

In Britain things are even more complex. I was living in London in the 1980s and was shocked when an Indian or Pakistani man on television said, “we Blacks.” In the US South Asians nowadays are typically grouped with East Asians as “Asians” and wouldn’t be called Black.

Zahi Hawass argues that Cleopatra, being a descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals (Ptolemy) was a Macedonian Greek.

Well, she certainly was. But one of her maternal ancestors was Persian and for all we know her grandmother or mother was Egyptian. She was reported to be the only Ptolemy who spoke the Egyptian language, which may well point to an Egyptian mother.

Mustafa Amin laments that Jada Pinkett Smith has made her “black” rather than “white,” and says that since she was Greek she would have been “blonde.” In other words, he has adopted into Egyptian Arabic American racial categories.

Even if Cleopatra’s mother was Egyptian, of course, it would not make her Black.

A recent genetic study of Egyptians in the ancient period in middle Egypt found that in the 2,000 years before Christ, these Egyptians were closely related to Levantines and Anatolians and Europeans and had much less sub-Saharan ancestry than is common in today’s Egypt. The authors admit, though, that things may have been different in Upper Egypt where there was known to be intermarriage with Nubians.

Ironically, during the past 1300 years Egyptians have come to have more sub-Saharan heritage, about 20 percent. My guess is that this is a result of Islam, since West Africans came through Cairo for pilgrimage to Mecca and settled in Cairo for trade and study. There was also household slavery, with some slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, but it was only one factor among many.

If the question is skin color though, if ancient Egyptians were close to Levantines they would have been olive-skinned. The genetic study said they had dark eyes. Moreover, that they had less sub-Saharan African ancestry than was common in the past two millennia does not mean they had none. Would they really have looked very different from Adele James?

So, people should chill out. Egypt is proud of being African and is a major force in the African Union. Egyptians shouldn’t give in to the kind of racism that is now plaguing Tunisia.

In the ancient world, no one looked at Cleopatra through a racial lens. No one cared what race she was, nor did they have a concept exacly like ours. (Ours are anyway mostly wrong.) She was a powerful sovereign over a country that served as the breadbasket of the Mediterranean. Julius Caesar loved her and had a child with her. Marc Antony also wooed her. They were mesmerized by this powerful woman, who they hoped could help them prove victorious in Roman power struggles. Her femininity, her power, her magnetism made her a significant figure in history. She was likely neither black nor white in contemporary American terms. But she was African, and the African continent celebrates here. Why is it so bad if the African diaspora also celebrates her?

Images of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s brutal crackdown have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime to throttle internet access and censor information leaving the country.

One effective method the protesters have hit on has been to use TikTok, the video-sharing app better known for young people posting clips of themselves singing and dancing. The way video clips are shared on the social media platform and the protesters’ clever use of labeling have helped activists circumvent the information blockade of Iran’s tech-savvy security services and reach a wide audience.

As a researcher who studies young people and participatory culture – art and information produced by nonspecialists, including fan fiction and citizen journalism – I believe that TikTok is proving to be an effective tool of political activism in the face of severe repression.

Key to its effectiveness is how TikTok works. Each TikTok video recorded by the user is typically 60 seconds or shorter and loops when finished. Other users can edit or “stitch” someone else’s TikTok video into their own. Users can also create a split screen or “duet” TikTok video, with the original video on one side of the screen and their own on the other.

Stitching and duetting

To use TikTok, a protester in Iran typically uses multihop virtual private networks, meaning VPNs that send internet traffic through multiple servers, to route around government internet blackouts just long enough to post a video to TikTok. There, TikTok users who support the protester “like” the video thousands of times, stitch it into other videos, and duet it to then be liked, stitched and duetted again and again.

In the process, identifying information about the original poster is obscured. Within minutes the protester becomes anonymous even as the message spreads. Even if the video is flagged for violating TikTok’s community guidelines, its sharers like and incorporate its duets too quickly for TikTok to remove the original content from the platform completely.

In one video that has received over 620,000 views, Iranian-American attorney Elica Le Bon urges viewers to share all Iranian content to make sure the world keeps paying attention. In another, TikTok user @gal_lynette directs her 35,000 followers to instantly duet videos made by Iranian women as a form of citizen journalism to “keep their reporting – their story … alive.”

Gaming the algorithms

Elsewhere, TikTok user @m0rr1gu tells her 44,000 followers how to share that content without triggering community guidelines violations. This advice includes using “algospeak,” or code, for bypassing community guidelines violations. For TikTokkers boosting Iranian content, this means altering the word “Iran” in captions, among other tactics.

Gaming TikTok’s algorithm helps ensure that the people most likely to share this content can find it. For example, Iranian-American TikTokker Yeganeh Mafaher tapped a recent celebrity scandal’s virality by titling a video “Adam Levine Also DMd Me,” only to announce “Okay, now that I have your attention, the internet is going to be cut off in Ir@n.”

By removing the word “Iran” but leaving Levine’s name searchable, Yeganeh was gaming the algorithm to help her retain her viewers who were seeking Iranian content while also “hashbaiting” additional users who were following the celebrity scandal. Up to that point, Yeganeh’s most-viewed revolution-related video was a history of hijab laws that garnered nearly 341,000 views. The Levine video exceeded 1.6 million.

Yeganeh’s account had previously recorded her experiences as an Iranian-American citizen and attracted followers interested in Iranian culture. After Amini’s death, she credited her followers with boosting her account to the point that she was interviewed by cable news host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation to discuss the uprising.

Song of a movement

A key element of a TikTok video is its audio track or “sound,” often a song that provides a thematic thread across stitched and duetted videos. The sound of many of the videos depicting the events in Iran, with more than 11.7 million views, is the song “Baraye” by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour.

The song’s lyrics are derived from a string of Farsi tweets that detail Iranians’ reasons for revolution. Hajipour was detained because of the song but was later released. “Baraye” has since become a global protest ballad.

Shervin – Baraye |

Worried for Hajipour’s safety, TikTokkers supporting the uprising united in an effort to shield him from backlash by posting thousands of videos directing users to nominate “Baraye” for the Grammys’ newest special merits award, best song for social change. In October, the song had received 83% of the 115,000 nominations, which increased international attention on Hajipour and the song. Baraye went on to win the social change Grammy on Feb. 5, 2023.

“Baraye” and related hashtags are shared resources that help make TikTok a platform for participatory politics. As the world watches Iran, TikTokkers game the platform’s algorithms to amplify Iranians’ videos beyond the reach of the Iranian government.

There are active TikTok campaigns for everything from Grammy nominations to scripting emails to local representatives and global leaders. Videos teach laypeople to discreetly host Iranian web traffic and direct users to local protests. They share petitions for G-7 leaders to expel Iran’s diplomats and the U.N. to hold the Iranian government accountable for its crimes against international law. As state executions of protesters have begun in Iran, the #StopExecutionsInIran campaign has clocked over 100 million views on TikTok.

Why is Iran’s TikTok generation demanding ‘Women, Life, Freedom’? – BBC News

These interactive tools and the platform’s algorithm for promoting content are what transformed TikTok from teen dance app to powerful global platform for protest and political action. While much is uncertain as Iranians fight for change and their supporters worldwide flood an unlikely platform to boost their voices, one thing seems likely: The revolution may not be televised, but it will be liked, stitched and duetted.

This story has been updated to include the song Baraye’s Grammy win.

Whitney Shylee May, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The move against the enormously popular actress shows how thin-skinned and frightened the Iranian state has become, as widespread protests continue three months after they began. The arrest came the same day that Iran’s petroleum workers announced that they were going on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Some oil workers had already engaged in work stoppages earlier this fall in solidarity with the protests, though this labor action mainly mentioned economic motivations. The workers in Asalyueh did lash out at corruption and ineptitude on the part of Iranian officialdom. Rallies were depicted on social media at “Ahvaz, Kharg, Asalyueh and other oil facilities in the south-western parts of the country” according to BBC Monitoring.

The pro-regime Tasnim news service, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, said that she “has been arrested for her actions in publishing false and distorted content, inciting riots, and supporting anti-Iranian movements.”

Mohsen Shekari, a cafe barista, was hanged on December 9 on charges of waging war on God, of blocking a thoroughfare, and of wounding members of the security forces with a bladed weapon.

Ms. Alidoosti had written on Instagram, ”His name was Mohsen Shekari. Every international organisation who is watching this bloodshed and not taking action, is a disgrace to humanity.”

The government is accused of arresting 18,000 protesters in the past 3 months and of having killed over 500.

A month ago, Alidoosti posted a picture of herself unveiled on social media holding a sign with the slogan of this fall’s protests, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” written in Kurdish. Alidoosti is Persian but was showing solidarity with the martyr of the current protest movement, Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, a Kurdish young woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police, who had arrested her for being insufficiently veiled in public.

Alidoosti starred in 2016’s The Salesman which was voted best Best Foreign Language Film at the the 89th Academy Awards. She, however, boycotted the Oscars that year to protest then-President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban visa policy.

The Salesman, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, tells the story of a married couple involved in a stage production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” An intruder assaults her in their recently-rented apartment, and her husband (played by Shahab Husseini) sets out to get revenge, even though she wants to put the whole thing behind them.

The Salesman streams at Amazon Prime and is included in the subscription.

“‘The Salesman’ Official Trailer (2016)”

( Middle East Monitor) – On 1 December, Netflix began streaming Farha (2021) worldwide, despite immense pressure directed at the platform to prevent its debut. The film is director Darin J. Sallam’s first full-length feature and chronicles the coming-of-age story of its heroine, Farha, a 14-year-old Palestinian teenager who possesses a voracious appetite for books and learning. Farha’s cultural background is that of a villager – her Arabic dialect infused with the authenticity often associated with Palestinian grandparents, particularly the generation born in the decade just before or that of the Nakba itself. Yet, what makes Farha a distinguished heroine isn’t necessarily her linguistic veracity, it is her bravery and her desire to pursue her education at a school in the neighbouring city. At the start of the film, she is seen at one with the land, collecting water from the local spring, eating figs straight from the communal trees and collecting almonds in her satchel, still intact and unpeeled. She goes through the motions of her chores in the village, but her mind often wanders into the literary worlds of the books she reads, novels gifted to her by her best friend Fareeda, who is from a city-dwelling family not far from the village from which Farha hails.

The first scenes of the film show Farha as a dreamer, a girl who urges her father, a man of mayoral standing, to register her in the city’s school. Her father is hesitant as he believes her economic livelihood is best secured through the arrangement of marriage and that the local Quran recitation learning groups provided by the Sheikh are a sufficient education. Still, Farha fights for her desire to learn and secures the support of many an ally in her extended family and community to finally convince her father. On the eve of the Nakba, he signs her enrolment certificate. Throughout the film, there are peripheral present-absent signifiers of just how troubling the situation in Palestine has become. Talk of resistance tactics and meetings between rebels and the officials hint that the historical events of the Nakba and its tragedy are on the cusp of eruption. These more politicised characters weave in and out of frames of the film, infiltrating the scenes with reminders, only to give way to Farha’s experience, which remains at the centre. Slowly but surely, the viewer’s understanding expands organically with Farha’s, and we see that this curious girl, who had very little understanding of the depth of this dire situation, is forced to contend with its brutality as a witness and as a survivor of violence, loss and dispossession. In fact, Farha’s father hides her in a closet where she remains trapped throughout the most violent moments that befall her village, and she is left alone to deal with the aftermath.

The film was produced by TaleBox, a production company co-founded by Sallam and producer Deema Azar. Ayah Jardaneh also served as the producer of the film. The film likewise received support from Laika Film & Television, Chimney, The Jordan Film Fund – Royal Film Commission, the Swedish Film Institute and the Red Sea Film Fund (an initiative of the Red Sea Film Festival). It remains a largely Jordanian-based initiative, highlighting the lived experience of Palestine and Palestinians, with support from European-based organisations. On a political level, Farha has depicted the tragedy of the Nakba for the first time through film and employs what the late Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said, has called the “permission to narrate” the Palestinian experience against many odds.

In response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath, Said penned “Permission to Narrate” for the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1984. In it, he notes: “A disciplinary communications apparatus exists in the West both for overlooking most of the basic things that might present Israel in a bad light and for punishing those who try to tell the truth.” In short, Said’s argument can be summed up as such: despite declassified archives, countless human rights reports, international organisation inquiries and both official and ethnographic accounts of Palestinian plight and dispossession from Nakba to diaspora and from Nakba to military occupation, the Palestinians have been denied the right to narrate their own stories. They have also been denied the privilege of seeing their experience reflected back at them through film and literature and, by extension, preventing them from experiencing the catharsis that comes with artistic acknowledgement and representation. Farha has granted the Palestinian diaspora permission to narrate this story on one of the world’s largest entertainment streaming platforms. More importantly, Farha’s story has been recounted, in numerous iterations and manifestations, 700,000 times by the first generation of the dispossessed. The trauma of that memory remains forever fixed in the minds of the descendants of those who were forcibly displaced – a global diasporic population of nearly six million people and counting – approximately half of the total population of 12 million Palestinians across the historical homeland and outside of it. This population has been classified by the international community, despite its many failures towards it, as ipso facto stateless.

While on the one hand, Farha has been hailed by many viewers as an incredible feat, it comes as no surprise that the film has been targeted by Israeli officials and has caused outrage. Israel’s Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement condemning Netflix, stating his belief that: “It’s crazy that Netflix decided to stream a movie whose whole purpose is to create a false pretence and cite against Israeli soldiers.” Though Farha has been screened globally in many film festivals and series since its debut in 2021, at venues such as Dubai-based Cinema Akil and intentional film festivals, including the Toronto Film Festival, the Red Sea Film Festival and others, it is its recent reincarnation on Netflix and its screening at Saraya, a theatre in Jaffa that has caused the most outrage towards the film. The Israeli government has threatened to act against Saraya and has encouraged a mass exodus of subscribers to Netflix. While many regional and international news networks hail the film for its artistic and historical merits, there is also a cacophony of discordant opinions about it, with publications like Fox News and The Times of Israel labelling the film as “terrible” or as “lies and libels”, whilst other major publishers such as The New York Times tiptoe around the film’s representations, selecting its words carefully to maintain its readership. Sites such as IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes have seen an onslaught of divided reviews: either five-star glowing recommendations from the film’s supporters or comments of rage and disbelief from its detractors.

In all the opinions emerging in the now global conversation surrounding this film, there has been no mention of Sallam’s other smaller work, The Parrot, a 2016 short film she co-directed with Amjad Al-Rasheed. In eighteen powerful minutes, The Parrot follows the story of a Tunisian Jewish family who arrives in Haifa and takes up residence in a home belonging to a Palestinian Greek-Orthodox family. Their clothing, blue-tinted walls and Christian iconography, which borrow heavily from the aesthetic and colour-scape of local churches, are left behind by the displaced family. The breakfast and tea on the table are still hot, and the new occupants, played by Tunisian actress Hend Sabry as Rachel and Palestinian citizen of Israel Ashraf Barhom as Mousa, are haunted by the spectre of the family that once lived there and by the constant echoes of the parrot that was left behind and calls out after the Palestinian boy who owned him asking for a kiss. The parrot also repeats “where are you?” and “why are you looking at me like that” incessantly.

Yet, for viewers who are unaware of the Nakba, this imagery and the story of Palestinian displacement remain subliminal. Instead, what takes centre stage is the othering of Eastern Jews who find themselves in Euro-Israeli modernity, one that they can’t quite figure out. As such, by the end of the short film, many viewers would engage in a conversation about the depiction of an intense encounter between the Tunisian Jewish family and their Ashkenazi neighbours, who look at the architecture and structure of the house in Haifa with envy, bewildered at how Eastern Jews, othered and orientalised, had acquired such luck. The film is as much a critique of ethnic relations among Israelis as it is about the Palestinian exodus, and, like Farha, it tells a tragic tale through beautifully directed cinematography and crafted set and costume designs. The pleasing nature of Sallam’s use of pastels, verdure and white stone almost works as an antidote to the harsh emotional blow to the nerves that her cinematic tales have delivered thus far and will continue to do in the future.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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His Secret Service detail, including agent Bobby Engel, advised Trump that it was too dangerous for him to join the mob, but Trump doesn’t seem to have heard the advice. He was persuaded to get into the presidential limousine, but he was under the impression that he would just be driven up the Mall to the Capitol steps.

Dan Mangan at CNBC quotes Hutchinson’s testimony about what she was told by Tony Ornato, another Trump aide, who was also present in the limousine:

“So once the President had gotten into the vehicle with Bobby, he thought that they were going up to the Capitol, and when Bobby had relayed to him, we’re not you don’t have the assets to do it,” said Hutchinson, who testimony was based on what she soon after was told at White House by another aide, Tony Ornato.

Engel told Trump, ”‘It’s not secure. We’re going back to the West Wing,’ ” Hutchinson said.

“The President had a very strong, very angry response to that. Tony described him as being irate,” she testified.

Trump said something like, ′ I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,′ ” she testified.

When Engel then refused again, Trump “reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing,’ ” Hutchinson said, citing Ornato’s account.

Trump “then used his free hand to lunge toward Bobby Engel,” Hutchinson testified.

When Onato told her this, he motioned his hands toward his clavicle, she said.”

This physical wrangling in the “Beast” strikes me as cinematic, what with the president attempting to grab the steering wheel away from the driver, being pushed away by his own Secret Service protector, and then trying to strangle the agent with his bare hands.

I tried to remember scenes from movies with such struggles in a car, disregarding Harrison Ford in Air Force One, which was in the air. What I came up with is disturbing and not for the faint-hearted, but then neither was the Trump presidency or, indeed, today’s Republican Party in general.

Trump did not, unlike Deadpool, attempt to ram a cigarette lighter down Engel’s throat in the classic inside-the-car fight in Marvel’s most violent movie, but he seemed in a mood to do that sort of thing:

OnlyMovies2000: Deadpool -Car fight HD

Luckily, Trump doesn’t appear to have been armed, though his party seems to think that the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction is the best guide to how we should live as Americans. That film, too, has a famous car scene in which mayhem occurs, though it is both more innocent and more tragic than Trump’s tussle with Engel:

Movie Clips: “I Shot Marvin in the Face – Pulp Fiction (11/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD”

Clint Eastwood’s 1980 Any which Way you Can features the prize fighter Philo Beddoe, who has a pet orangutan named Clyde, who punches people out whenever he hears the phrase “Right turn, Clyde.” Clyde, unlike his orange cousin who was briefly in the White House, is the good guy rather than the villain. But an orange primate fighting in a car is too strong a parallel to be omitted here:

Shmergo: “Right Turn Clyde Compilation”

Then there was the classic scene in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski where Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges, complains to a taxi driver about playing “The Eagles” in the cab. The driver, like Trump, grew irate at the criticism. You know what happened next. Alas, Engel didn’t defenestrate Trump from the presidential limo, but in a way the American people had already done that:

sollryc: “The Big Lebowski – I hate the fuckin’ Eagles”

But the best contrast and comparison to Trump’s horrific attack on Engel and his driver may be to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, where the violence is only psychic. I think Trump is the Rod Steiger character, Charley “the Gent” Malloy, who has his brother, Brando’s Terry Malloy, take a dive in a prize fight. Brando complains in the car as the two argue that if only Malloy had supported him in an upright way, he “could have been a contender.” I think Engel and most of Trump’s staff could have expected to be supported in an upright way by the administration, not dragged into a fixed and phony attempt to fix the political race. So think about Engel as Brando, talking to his brother, Trump. “It was you!”

Movieclips: “I Coulda Been a Contender – On the Waterfront (6/8) Movie CLIP (1954) HD”

H/t to Nick Schager at Esquire.

In the summer of 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the keynote speaker for the 10th-anniversary convention banquet of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Their guest, he said, was his “soul brother.”

“He has carved for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of our nation’s history,” King told the audience of 2,000 delegates. “I consider him a friend. I consider him a great friend of humanity.”

That man was Sidney Poitier.

Poitier, who died at 94 on Jan. 7, 2022, broke the mold of what a Black actor could be in Hollywood. Before the 1950s, Black movie characters generally reflected racist stereotypes such as lazy servants and beefy mammies. Then came Poitier, the only Black man to consistently win leading roles in major films from the late 1950s through the late 1960s. Like King, Poitier projected ideals of respectability and integrity. He attracted not only the loyalty of African Americans, but also the goodwill of white liberals.

In my biography of him, titled “Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon,” I sought to capture his whole life, including his incredible rags-to-riches arc, his sizzling vitality on screen, his personal triumphs and foibles and his quest to live up to the values set forth by his Bahamian parents. But the most fascinating aspect of Poitier’s career, to me, was his political and racial symbolism. In many ways, his screen life intertwined with that of the civil rights movement – and King himself.

An age of protests

In three separate columns in 1957, 1961 and 1962, a New York Daily News columnist named Dorothy Masters marveled that Poitier had the warmth and charisma of a minister. Poitier lent his name and resources to King’s causes, and he participated in demonstrations such as the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage and the 1963 March on Washington. In this era of sit-ins, Freedom Rides and mass marches, activists engaged in nonviolent sacrifice not only to highlight racist oppression, but also to win broader sympathy for the cause of civil rights.

In that same vein, Poitier deliberately chose to portray characters who radiated goodness. They had decent values and helped white characters, and they often sacrificed themselves. He earned his first star billing in 1958, in “The Defiant Ones,” in which he played an escaped prisoner handcuffed to a racist played by Tony Curtis. At the end, with the chain unbound, Poitier jumps off a train to stick with his new white friend. Writer James Baldwin reported seeing the film on Broadway, where white audiences clapped with reassurance, their racial guilt alleviated. When he saw it again in Harlem, members of the predominantly Black audience yelled “Get back on the train, you fool!”

King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In that same year, Poitier won the Oscar for Best Actor for “Lilies of the Field,” in which he played Homer Smith, a traveling handyman who builds a chapel for German nuns out of the goodness of his heart. The sweet, low-budget movie was a surprise hit. In its own way, like the horrifying footage of water hoses and police dogs attacking civil rights activists, it fostered swelling support for racial integration.

A better man

By the time of the actor’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference speech, both King and Poitier seemed to have a slipping grip on the American public. Bloody and destructive riots plagued the nation’s cities, reflecting the enduring discontent of many poor African Americans. The swelling calls for “Black Power” challenged the ideals of nonviolence and racial brotherhood – ideals associated with both King and Poitier.

When Poitier stepped to the lectern that evening, he lamented the “greed, selfishness, indifference to the suffering of others, corruption of our value system, and a moral deterioration that has already scarred our souls irrevocably.” “On my bad days,” he said, “I am guilty of suspecting that there is a national death wish.”

By the late 1960s, both King and Poitier had reached a crossroads. Federal legislation was dismantling Jim Crow in the South, but African Americans still suffered from limited opportunity. King prescribed a “revolution of values,” denounced the Vietnam War, and launched a Poor People’s Campaign. Poitier, in his 1967 speech for the SCLC, said that King, by adhering to his convictions for social justice and human dignity, “has made a better man of me.”

Exceptional characters

Poitier tried to adhere to his own convictions. As long as he was the only Black leading man, he insisted on playing the same kind of hero. But in the era of Black Power, had Poitier’s saintly hero become another stereotype? His rage was repressed, his sexuality stifled. A Black critic, writing in The New York Times, asked “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?”

That critic had a point: As Poitier himself knew, his films created too-perfect characters. Although the films allowed white audiences to appreciate a Black man, they also implied that racial equality depends on such exceptional characters, stripped of any racial baggage. From late 1967 into early 1968, three of Poitier’s movies owned the top spot at the box office, and a poll ranked him the most bankable star in Hollywood.

Each film provided a hero who soothed the liberal center. His mannered schoolteacher in “To Sir, With Love” tames a class of teenage ruffians in London’s East End. His razor-sharp detective in “In the Heat of the Night” helps a crotchety white Southern sheriff solve a murder. His world-renowned doctor in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” marries a white woman, but only after winning the blessing of her parents.

“I try to make movies about the dignity, nobility, the magnificence of human life,” he insisted. Audiences flocked to his films, in part, because he transcended racial division and social despair – even as more African Americans, baby boomers and film critics tired of the old-fashioned do-gooder spirit of these movies.

Intertwined lives

And then, the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sidney Poitier intersected one final time. After King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, Poitier was a stand-in for the ideal that King embodied. When he presented at the Academy Awards, Poitier won a massive ovation. “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” captured most of the major awards. Hollywood again dealt with the nation’s racial upheaval through Poitier movies.

But after King’s violent murder, the Poitier icon no longer captured the national mood. In the 1970s, a generation of “Blaxploitation” films featured violent, sexually charged heroes. They were a reaction against the image of a Black leading man associated with Poitier. Although his career evolved, Poitier was no longer a superstar, and he no longer bore the burden of representing the Black freedom movement. Yet for a generation, he had served as popular culture’s preeminent expression of the ideals of Martin Luther King.

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Aram Goudsouzian, Bizot Family Professor of History, University of Memphis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every disaster movie seems to open with a scientist being ignored. “Don’t Look Up” is no exception – in fact, people ignoring or flat out denying scientific evidence is the point.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who make a literally Earth-shattering discovery and then try to persuade the president to take action to save humanity. It’s a satire that explores how individuals, scientists, the media and politicians respond when faced with scientific facts that are uncomfortable, threatening and inconvenient.

The movie is an allegory for climate change, showing how those with the power to do something about global warming willfully avoid taking action and how those with vested interests can mislead the public. But it also reflects science denial more broadly, including what the world has been seeing with COVID-19.

The most important difference between the film’s premise and humanity’s actual looming crisis is that while individuals may be powerless against a comet, everyone can act decisively to stop fueling climate change.

Knowing the myths that feed science denial can help.

As research psychologists and the authors of “Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It”, we recognize these aspects of science denial all too well.

Myth #1: We can’t act unless the science is 100% certain

The first question President Orlean (Meryl Streep) asks the scientists after they explain that a comet is on a collision course with Earth is, “So how certain is this?” Learning that the certitude is 99.78%, the president’s chief of staff (Jonah Hill) responds with relief: “Oh great, so it’s not 100%!” Government scientist Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) replies, “Scientists never like to say 100%.”

This reluctance to claim 100% certainty is a strength of science. Even when the evidence points clearly in one direction, scientists keep exploring to learn more. At the same time, they recognize overwhelming evidence and act on it. The evidence is overwhelming that Earth’s climate is changing in dangerous ways because of human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, and it has been overwhelming for many years.

When politicians take a “let’s wait and see” attitude toward climate change (or “sit tight and assess,” as the movie puts it), suggesting they need more evidence before taking any action, it’s often a form of science denial.

Myth #2: Disturbing realities as described by scientists are too difficult for the public to accept

The title phrase, “Don’t Look Up,” portrays this psychological assumption and how some politicians conveniently use it as an excuse for inaction while promoting their own interests.

Anxiety is a growing and understandable psychological response to climate change. Research shows there are strategies people can use to effectively cope with climate anxiety, such as becoming better informed and talking about the problem with others. This gives individuals a way to manage anxiety while at the same time taking actions to lower the risks.

A 2021 international study found that 80% of individuals are indeed willing to make changes in how they live and work to help reduce the effects of climate change.

Myth #3: Technology will save us, so we don’t have to act

Often, individuals want to believe in an outcome they prefer, rather than confront reality known to be true, a response that psychologists call motivated reasoning.

For example, belief that a single technological solution, such as carbon capture, will fix the climate crisis without the need for change in policies, lifestyles and practices may be more grounded in hope than reality. Technology can help reduce our impact on the climate; however, research suggests advances are unlikely to come quickly enough.

Hoping for such solutions diverts attention from significant changes needed in the way we work, live and play, and is a form of science denial.

Myth #4: The economy is more important than anything, including impending crises predicted by science

Taking action to slow climate change will be expensive, but not acting has extraordinary costs – in lives lost as well as property.

Consider the costs of recent Western wildfires. Boulder County, Colorado, lost nearly 1,000 homes to a fire on Dec. 30, 2021, after a hot, dry summer and fall and almost no rain or snow. A study of California’s fires in 2018 – another hot, dry year – when the town of Paradise burned, estimated the damage, including health costs and economic disruption, at about $148.5 billion.

When people say we can’t take action because action is expensive, they are in denial of the cost of inaction.

Myth #5: Our actions should always align with our social identity group

In a politically polarized society, individuals may feel pressured to make decisions based on what their social group believes. In the case of beliefs about science, this can have dire consequences – as the world has seen with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the U.S. alone, more than 825,000 people with COVID-19 have died while powerful identity groups actively discourage people from getting vaccines or that could protect them.

Viruses are oblivious to political affiliation, and so is the changing climate. Rising global temperatures, worsening storms and sea level rise will affect everyone in harm’s way, regardless of the person’s social group.

How to combat science denial – and climate change

A comet headed for Earth might leave little for individuals to do, but this is not the case with climate change. People can change their own practices to reduce carbon emissions and, importantly, pressure leaders in government, business and industry to take actions, such as reducing fossil fuel use, converting to cleaner energy and changing agricultural practices to reduce emissions.

In our book, we discuss steps that individuals, educators, science communicators and policymakers can take to confront the science denial that prevents moving forward on this looming issue. For example:

• Individuals can check their own motivations and beliefs about climate change and remain open minded to scientific evidence.

• Educators can teach students how to source scientific information and evaluate it.

• Science communicators can explain not just what scientists know but how they know it.

• Policymakers can make decisions based on scientific evidence.

As scholars who work to help people make sound decisions about complex problems, we encourage people to consume news and science information from sources outside their own identity group. Break out of your social bubble and listen to and talk with others. Look up.

Gale Sinatra, Professor of Education and Psychology, University of Southern California and Barbara K. Hofer, Professor of Psychology Emerita, Middlebury

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.