RE: The Crisis in American Acting.

After recently penning a measured if at times snarky response to this laughable Buzzfeed article about why British actors are so much better, I'm finished being polite, and have to reiterate the following:

We're fucking trained. Stop fucking telling us we're not.

Recently Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Labrecque wrote a hit-piece article asking What Does the Latest British Invasion Say about the State of American Acting?

Let's see if we can't come up with some answers:

Of course, no one’s entitled to a role because of their accent or where they’re born. That’s always been true, even before Vivien Leigh won the role of Scarlett O’Hara. But recently, there’s been a visible surge in the number of British—and the occasional Aussie—actors and actresses winning plum roles in many of Hollywood’s most prestigious films (as well as many of the biggest franchise blockbusters). In 2011, British director Stephen Frears (The Queen) told an interviewer, “There is some sort of crisis in American acting“—and suggested this could be due to a lack of proper training, specifically theater training.

I guess conservatories like Juilliard, Yale, the American Conservatory Theatre, and New York University's Graduate Acting Program should do a better job—they've been around for decades and introduced us to a lot of fine actors, but I guess they fucked it up.

Calling it a ”crisis” might be a bit drastic, but with an English Superman, a British-bred Spider-Man, an English Daisy Buchanan, a British Mad Max, a German-Irish Steve Jobs—to say nothing of the current British invasion that’s raised the quality of American television...

Citation needed. I guess American-born shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, and others (I just started watching The West Wing via Netflix...yet another fine American drama) don't fucking matter. Got it.

...it seems like a good time to at least contemplate whether the roots of this recent trend can be found in how both sides of the Atlantic are prepping its talent for Hollywood casting calls.

I haven't made it through the rest of this article yet, but I have a feeling that this particular statement will be contradicted somewhere down the line, so I'm bookmarking it for now. All I'll say is that there are many American actors who don't make being a movie star their top priority.

For decades, there were two major schools of thought when it came to acting: the Classical, which was best epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and the Method, which revolutionized the art form in America once James Dean and Marlon Brando brought it to the big screen. Classical was more of an outside-in approach, which emphasized a more presentational style associated with the stage. Method, rooted in Constantin Stanislavski’s theories, was more naturalistic, more inside-out. “For many years, there was a schism,” says James Lipton, a pupil of Stella Adler’s teachings and the longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio. “The British stressed training in voice and posture and the physical attributes, whereas the American training is deep rooted in the actor’s emotions."

I understand that for the sake of brevity, you have to simplify and narrow things down to their essentials. But while Sir Larry was very much an “outside-in” actor, he was as praised as he was criticized for “mangling” Shakespeare's verse—in fact, his approach was to make Shakespeare as realistic as he could, directly opposing other fine actors such as Sir John Gielgud, who was ALSO praised and criticized for his more musical delivery. It should be noted that both actors, later in their careers, gave wonderfully naturalistic performances on film. Furthermore, we can love Brando all we want (and I do), but a quick YouTube search reveals that he could also crush it as Marc Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Could it be that a fine actor is a fine actor, and that whatever methods they use to produce affecting work don't matter?

But in 2015, what was once a contentious rivalry is no longer an either/or proposition, as both schools implement elements of the other’s philosophies into their own training. Why then, do the Brits seem to have an edge? ”There is a lot of stage work in a lot of British drama school training, but I think it’s more to do with how we ask them to think about characters, how we ask them to be imaginative, and to change themselves,” says Joanna Read, describing the dramatic skills that current students are taught at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which counts Cumberbatch, Ejiofor, and Oyelowo among its scores of famous alums and where she has been principal since 2010.

While at New York University's Graduate Acting Program, I used Stanislavski's techniques; I did theatre games; I did animal work; I did object work; I did Commedia; I did clown work; I did Michael Chekhov work with none other than Joanna Merlin; and there's a teacher there named Scott Miller who has a number of unconventional ways of approaching character work.

But, like I said before, I guess NYU's just been fucking it up all this time. Maybe if I had trained in London I would have been able to play all those different characters in David Henry Hwang's Kung Fu...

...oh wait, that's right, I fucking crushed it.  Even Mr. Lebrecque's own Entertainment Weekly said so.

“Our training will ask an actor to really play against type at times, to play a role that they wouldn’t necessarily be cast in in the profession, in order to work out and transform how they move towards that character. It’s almost like putting on a second skin." That academic challenge of portraying characters that aren’t obviously suited to an actor might be an essential building block that pays off down the road.”

In my second year of Grad School I played the title character in a play called Hobson's Choice. This is remarkable because Henry Hobson is a late-middle aged alcoholic that lives in Manchester, England in the 19^th century. Right before that I played a 61-year-old former slave named Eli in August Wilson's Gemof the Ocean, and was so unrecognizable that people didn't even know I was IN the fucking show. The year after that I got to play Vershinin in Chekhov's Three Sisters, Paul in Six Degrees of Separation, and one of the mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream (this is after I spent the summer playing Oberon and Theseus in the same play).

But clearly, based on this article, I must be the ONLY American actor that underwent this type of stretching during my training. Why am I not a movie star?

“If you look at these English actors—David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth—they’re accustomed to playing character-actor roles,” says Lipton. “Which is to say, they are very good at playing roles that are quite distant from themselves, physically, even emotionally. They are able to find, in those strangers, a core that resonated with themselves, so they are just as truthful playing that as they would be playing someone just like themselves on screen.”

And here I have to thank directors like Leigh Silverman and Ethan McSweeny, and casting directors such as Tara Rubin, because they know what most other people don't: I'm not just a “romantic leading man”. Maybe if more folks on the other side of the table gave myself and my conservatory-trained colleagues a wider berth, instead of pigeon-holing us, they'd figure that out.

But what do I know? I'm just a shitty American actor.

"Avy Kaufman, the casting director who discovered Andrew Garfield for Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs and recruited Oyelowo to play the eloquent Union soldier who recites the Gettysburg Address to Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, thinks a shrinking world has opened the doors for all sorts of international talent. “It’s not that all these actors are better than the American actors, but I think we’re just opening up to more—and we’re all excited to find something new and different,” she says. “Lincoln was a very American story, but I just felt like I should say, ‘This guy’s the best for this.’ It doesn’t matter that he’s not American. He’s got the accent down. May the best man win.”

This is the sanest thing that anyone has said in any of these (hit-pieces) articles. These are statements I can sympathize with: the world is smaller now than it's ever been, actors can tape their auditions and send them across the globe within minutes, so the talent pool is deeper. Cool.

Too bad that Brits have been getting jobs in Hollywood for decades and decades now; I don't know what's so “new” about that.

But again, I'm just a dumb American actor.

“Nowadays, the best man doesn’t even have to be in Los Angeles to audition. “Instead of meeting an actor or having to see the actor audition in the room, I can audition them via Skype and have nearly the same experience,” says Hicks. “Quality acting is quality acting, and you can recognize that even when you’re thousands of miles away.””

...He forgot to add "unless they're American.  Then fuck 'em."

“Lipton believes, however, that the Brits do enjoy at least one built-in advantage—one that’s also a product of geography. While American actors generally have to chose between going to New York to work in the theater or settling in Los Angeles to find fame on television and the movies, the British dramatic community—film/TV/theater—is mostly centrally located around London. “The English have the advantage of being able to go back and forth, from Downton Abbeyto a stage production,” he says.”

Lipton may have a point about the centralization of English television, film, and theatre, but he seems ignorant about the extensive regional theatre circuit here in the United States. I personally have worked at many of the best theatres around the country—in fact, it's been a necessity, since quality work that pays a livable salary is scarce in New York City.

“But perhaps the biggest factor leading to the perception that American actors are falling behind is that the path to Hollywood fame in this country doesn’t necessarily go through the Actors Studio or Juilliard or the Yale School of Drama. Though Hollywood has its share of Jessica Chastains and Mark Ruffalos, well-trained professionals who studied at revered dramatic institutions, the difference might lie in the other cases, in which actors get a break in Hollywood with limited training or acting background. “I think our culture, in which we take reality-show fame as a measure of success, means that we feel like, ‘Oh, it just happens to you and then you’re famous,” says Hicks.”

What you have here is the author of this piece proposing that American actors may not be as well-trained as their British counterparts, while simultaneously highlighting the fact that many times people without the proper foundational training are given huge breaks in Hollywood. Basically, people that aren't as qualified are given jobs, but it's still our fault for not being good enough.
Seems legit.

This is especially pertinent, given that a colleague of mine was met with disappointment recently, because a role she tested for went to someone else because...

...they were a reality TV “star”.  In a final dose of irony, not only does she have extensive theatrical credits, but she also studied Shakespeare...in London.

“It might be even more subtle and widespread than the reality-show mentality Hicks mentions. In a Hollywood that feeds on young stars—many of which are groomed as kids on television—early success can stunt artistic growth. “The kids that start out as stars when they’re 19 or 20, they never had a chance to learn their craft, and because they become stars, there’s never a chance to catch up,” says Lipton. “They’re not going to knock off for a year and study. They’re going to keep on making movies, as many as they can, as fast as they can. Some learn on the job. Some are geniuses, so they figure it out.”

But for every Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio—instinctual wunderkinds whose talent and work ethic keep them at the top—there is a huge middle class of popular American actors who reach the age of 30 and suddenly find themselves overmatched by more disciplined foreign-educated artists. Actors who spent three years in their early twenties, for example, just learning how to properly speak and move while their American counterparts were auditioning for a Coke commercial and the new fall pilot. Cumberbatch was 30 before anyone in America knew who he was. Tom Hiddleston, a 2005 graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was about the same age when he landed the role of Loki. “The demand for what we’re offering is something that is universally wanted,” says Read. “Their skills are very good technically, so that whether they’re on set, on location, or stage, they’re ready and able to hit the ground running.”In other words, the British are coming… because Hollywood needs them.”

BULLSHIT.

First off, it's unfair to Ms. Lawrence and Mr. DiCaprio to dismiss them as wunderkinds—both of these actors are artists, who work their asses off, and clearly CARE about the work that they do. They took the ball, and they're running with it. Let's stop elevating this nebulous thing called “talent” and start teaching people that what REALLY matters is work ethic and discipline.

Second, I'm 32 years old. As I recounted in a previous blog, I ALSO spent three years learning how to breathe, doing endless speech drills, taking classes such as Shane Ann Younts' “Techniques of Voice and Speech” (which she tells you right upfront is about as “technical” a class as you're ever going to take...and it has helped me immensely), taking voice, speech, and dialect classes from women such as Beverly Wideman and Deborah Hecht, as well as men like Scott Miller. I, and my well-trained colleagues, we DO know how to speak (in fact, on the TV show I worked on last year, one of the sound guys exclaimed "Now THAT guy knows how to talk!" at me as I walked by). We DO know how to move. We put ourselves foolishly into extreme debt just in order to learn how to do so.  And that's before we each beat out thousands of other applicants from around the country just to get offered a spot in the first fucking place.

I was lucky enough to do a shit ton of varied work in 2014. I wouldn't have had the tools to do so had I not spent those several years scratching the surface of my potential. I find it highly, grossly offensive that, in a country where several high-quality conservatories each produce an average of 16-18 new actors every year, and have been doing so for decades, this author acts like there is a shortage of American actors who are completely incompetent in these arenas.

Maybe if people stopped putting Brits and Aussies on a pedestal, and recognized the immense wealth of artistry right under their noses, we would stop seeing ridiculous articles like this one. As it stands, it seems that Americans are in the grip of one of the most horrendous inferiority complexes the world has ever known.

Also read: We're Trained, Stop Telling Us We're Not.

Hypocrisy: Black Lives Matter?

From this article on #BlackBrunchNYC:

"'People who have money and privilege have the leisure to brunch,' Carrie Leilam Love, media liason for the group Black Brunch NYC, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. 'Other people don't.'" 

Spokesperson 4 @BlackBrunchNYC said "privileged people eat brunch". Unlike the poor losers w/ twitter handles & Macbooks crashing brunchers
— Clifton Duncan (@CliftonDuncanIV) January 18, 2015

Side of hash browns, please “@AshAgony: #BlackBrunchNYC singing "Which side are you on?" #ReclaimMLK pic.twitter.com/pP8VYEwTkL”
— Clifton Duncan (@CliftonDuncanIV) January 18, 2015

I stopped paying close attention to the news a long time ago, refusing to trudge through endless stories about government corruption and incompetence, terrorism, senseless acts of violence, and, at least in my arena, marketing and publicity tools disguised as reviews. And although I already had a healthy distrust of the so-called Mainstream Media (MSM), it was the controversy known as GamerGate that really allowed me to see and experience how cultural and societal views can be manufactured by "news" outlets hurtling mightily towards obsolescence, hoping to garner views and clicks and generate ratings by selling narratives and tugging the heartstrings, whipping the masses into outrage via cries of "racism" or "misogyny" or "rape culture" and hoping to maintain at least some shred of visibility and relevance (if not integrity) in the process.

The result is that well-meaning people are stirred to action in order to enact their version of Social Justice, calling attention to what they perceive as grave miscarriages of said justice. One such campaign--which, depressingly, is still ongoing--is the BlackBrunch movement, a branch of the #BlackLivesMatter tree.  While it's heartening to see people engaged and active and looking for some way to make their voices heard, it's also deeply agitating, since such passion is merely selective, and only serves the very same media outlets who now have fodder for more news coverage. Most importantly, it highlights a deep and alarming hypocrisy among those who claim to care about Black lives.

Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot by former police officer Darren Wilson, was portrayed by many media outlets as a gentle giant, bound for college.  According to the way the story was often covered, I was meant to feel pity for Brown and his family for their loss, and rage at Mr. Wilson and the Ferguson Police Department's "obvious" racism.  The fact that there's strong evidence that Brown robbed a convenience store, jay-walked, and then assaulted a police officer means nothing to his supporters, and if you bring up these tidbits or ask questions you are summarily dismissed as thinking Brown "deserved" to die, or even smeared as a "racist".  You can't ask why in a town with a 67% Black population, only a brave few of that demographic actually set out to change the makeup of the force by becoming police officers.  You will be shouted down, and branded a racist if you're white, an Uncle Tom if you're black.

The dominant narrative is that Brown was yet another innocent Black life, cut down by a racist apparatus meant to keep African-Americans down.

In that same vein, Eric Garner, who had a prolific arrest record that made him familiar to the police that confronted him, was painted as an innocent victim of racist police brutality (despite the fact that the highest-ranking officer there was a Black woman).  His law-breaking and prior arrests made no difference to the outraged masses; this was yet another instance of racism rearing its head, and yet another example of how Black people are under constant threat, and are seen as less than human, and are not valued (see also Marissa Alexander, see also Trayvon Martin--both of whom were anointed as angels by the media, despite what questions are unearthed when a little digging is done).

Well, to the left is Mr. James Jones, Jr.

Mr. Jones was a 21-year-old junior at Clark Atlanta University, majoring in chemistry. He was gunned down on Monday, February 9th, by three thugs, after responding to a Craigslist ad offering an iPhone 6 for sale. Jones was unarmed, Jones was in college embarking on a major that would surely lead to a lucrative career, and Jones was, of course, Black. The problem for Jones and his family, unfortunately, is that his assailants were ALSO Black. There was no widespread media outrage, there was no marching, and there was no appearance from Al Sharpton.

Whereas Michael Brown was praised for planning to go to a glorified trade school, Jones was actually IN college, in a field requiring specialized knowledge.  Where as Brown was 6'4" and nearly 300 pounds, and there is evidence that he assaulted the lone officer Darren Wilson, Jones was assaulted by three people, and was also unarmed.

Yet there are no Facebook sharings, Twitter hashtags, protests, or marches for young men like James Jones, Jr.

Alexis Kane, seen here to the right, was brutally beaten and shot multiple times after she met up with some boys via Facebook. She was a 14-year-old student, and she was unarmed. Again, her assailants were Black. And again, there are no Facebook sharings, Twitter hashtags, protests, or marches for this little girl.

We're told that Black Lives Matter, and yet here are two cases of unarmed Black people, one who was merely a child, who were both senselessly murdered, and I've seen NO outrage, next to NO news coverage, NO hashtag campaigns, NO marches, NO protests, from the very same people who expressed rage over the Zimmerman verdict or Darren Wilson's non-indictment. Furthermore, it bears noting that the assailants in each of these cases were Black males, the demographic that supposedly has a target on its back, for no reason, except that they are Black and male.

Nobody is addressing what sociocultural factors, if any, led these boys to commit these heinous crimes, and nobody is addressing the damage they've done to their communities, and nobody is advocating for change on behalf of these innocent victims, because these and countless other cases don't fit the narrative of Whitey Has it Out for Us.  These Black communities are cannibalizing themselves, and yet I'm told by certain Facebook friends that "Black on Black Crime is a myth".  People will organize campaigns to attack those they view as privileged (all while tweeting about it via iPads), yet ignore the poor underbelly contributing to a catastrophic number of black murders.

I leave you with the impassioned words of Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn, during a brief press conference; the whole clip is short and worth listening to, but here's a snippet:

"If some of the people here gave a good God damn about the victimization of people in this community by crime, I'd take some of their invective more seriously. The greatest racial disparity in the city of Milwaukee is getting shot and killed. Hello? 80% of my homicide victims every year are African American. 80% of our aggravated assault victims are African American. 80% of our shooting victims who survive their shooting are African American. Now they know all about the last three people that've been killed by the Milwaukee Police Department over the course of the last several years, there's not one of them that can name one of the last three homicide victims we've had in this city."

This police chief sees the hypocrisy very clearly. Sadly, not many others seem to.

We're Trained. Stop Telling Us We're Not.

I'm no longer one to engage in debates on race in the entertainment industry. Yes, it's glaringly and laughably disingenuousness, slapping a Diversity Disclaimer on a casting breakdown while specifying that the leads MUST be Caucasian, but I also realize that I live in a time where there are more Black, Latino, and Asian faces in the popular consciousness than ever before. And I celebrate that, and find it highly encouraging. So what I'm about to write in response to Kelley L. Carter's hugely problematic article The Rise of the Black British Actor will not focus on that aspect. What it will focus on is Ms. Carter's and Ava DuVernay's disappointing ignorance regarding American actor training in general—an ignorance that white actors have dealt with for decades and is now poisoning the Black artist's well.

On January 5^th, 2015, at 2:11pm, Buzzfeed Reporter Kelley L. Carter posted an article called “The Rise of the Black British Actor”. It is, essentially, a profile of actor David Oyelowo, and a promotional piece for the new film Selma, but it also reads as a paean to British Actor Training; exactly what British Actor Training is is not clearly defined, which leads me to believe that neither Ms. Carter nor Ms. DuVernay really know what they are talking about.

To borrow a British term, let's “take the piss” out of this column, a piece at a time, shall we?

“So seven years ago, [Oyelowo] and his wife Jessica made the decision to head to Los Angeles, with the hope being that he’d find the type of work fitting for his training at the esteemed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.”

We're currently in a Golden Age of Television (mostly cable television), and extraordinary movies do get made, and have been made for quite some time, but I don't know of any actor with elite conservatory training that regards Los Angeles as a mecca for work befitting that training. It sounds condescending, but once you've spent several years working on material written by the greatest writers of the past 500 years, a guest spot on [insert generic episodic show here] seems lacking by comparison. Just saying.

“I’m sorry — they were just really good!” [Ava] DuVernay mock-wailed in defense of her casting British actors during a recent interview with BuzzFeed News. “David is just an extraordinary artist. He is unlike anything I’ve come across in terms of his depth of his preparation, the openness of his heart with this part — totally sinking in and a desire to disappear into this, to give his whole self over to it. That level of commitment is the kind of thing you hear when you read Premiere magazine articles about Daniel Day-Lewis preparing. I would see it happen. And know how important it was to him. And to be a partner with him in this performance was just an honor, and at that point, you could be any nationality.”

Earlier in the article Ms. Carter wrote that Mr. Oyelowo was given the script seven years ago (albeit in a different version). I would certainly hope that, in that span of time, Mr. Oyelowo had deigned to do a bit of homework.

The point here isn't to bash Mr. Oyelowo, whose work and success I actually admire greatly. But this excerpt does begin to show a bias for British actors, as if notorious workhorse actors like Denzel Washington never existed.

"Still, there is something to be said about the technical training that many actors receive in England."

But nothing to be said, apparently, for the technical training that many actors receive at institutions like NYU, Yale, and Juilliard, here in the United States. I'm actually not sure what the term “technical training” even means, and I'm willing to bet that Kelley Carter of Buzzfeed doesn't know what it means, either.

“But it’s more than just the actors navigating across the Atlantic to find great work. They’re winning these roles because many of them are able to utilize their U.K. theater backgrounds and translate them to major Hollywood productions, something that works quite well with the deeply constructed roles many are landing.”

This is confusing. Outside of cultural tastes, I'm not sure what's different about doing theatre in the UK versus doing theatre here in the United States. Also, earlier in the article Ms. Carter suggested that the reason that we're experiencing this Afro-British Actor Boom is because they could not find sufficient meaningful work at home in Britain. So how could these actors have gained a strong grounding in theatre if they couldn't find the work needed to gain a strong grounding in theatre?

And since when does theatre training guarantee success in Hollywood? I and many of my colleagues have extensive New York stage credits and have worked at many of the nation's top theatres. In fact as I write this I'm just about to close a run at Washington, D.C.'s esteemed Shakespeare Theatre Company, where my Caliban has been extraordinarily well-received.

By Ms. Carter's logic, shouldn't I be a movie star by now?

“'I think there’s something about the stage, because they have that stage preparation,' DuVernay said. 'Their work is really steeped in theater. Our system of creating actors is a lot more commercial. … there’s a depth in the character building that’s really wonderful.'”

I moved to New York City from Washington, D.C. on August 26^th, 2006. At first I rented out a shitty little room way up in Washington Heights, before renting out a room way out in Queens.

For the next three years, I would rise at 7 or 7:30am, catch a crowded subway car down to the Tisch School of the Arts at 721 Broadway, and spend 9am to 6pm doing breathing exercises, doing Alexander technique, doing speech drills, doing movement work, crying, singing, working on classical texts, crying some more, working on the likes of Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Shakespeare, Wilson, doing clown work, playing theatre games and improv games, and crying. Then I would get an hour for dinner. Then I would go to rehearsal from 7pm to 11pm. I probably cried at some point during that time.

I would then ride the train home and arrive at some time after midnight and try to work on whatever texts I could for class the next day before passing out and waking up 4 or 5 hours later, wearily jostling for space on the crowded R train. And I would start the whole process over again. Saturday was my day off. During the summers I was lucky enough to work as an actor, even though I made no money and would have to take out more loans in the coming school year. I never got a break.

I think that's as far from “commercial” a system of creating an actor as you can get.

I have colleagues that went to distinguished conservatories such as Yale, Juilliard, and the American Conservatory Theatre, and we've all pretty much gone through the ringer in the same way. And these schools have been around for decades and have been gateways to introducing us to many, many wonderful actors; some are household names, many are not. But this idea that there is a “system” that creates actors “commercially” in this country is simply wrong and reveals an unfortunate ignorance on Ms. DuVernay's part in regards to the high quality training many actors receive in this country.

It seems that, in Ms. DuVernay's mind (and the minds of many, many others who should know better), my being American is what bars me from implementing “depth in character-building”.

The irony in all this is that in Selma she cast two Americans—Colman Domingo and Andre Holland, that have strong theatrical backgrounds: the former broke through on Broadway and has been working in New York (and London!!!) ever since, and the latter is a graduate of the very same conservatory where I received my training.

“There also is a cultural disconnect that allows actors like Oyelowo and Ejogo [who plays Coretta Scott-King in “Selma”] to strip down iconic figures like the Kings and play them with vulnerability and without falling into, say, the fear (and in some cases, the burden) that American actors steeped in historical traditions may have.“I’ve been trying to convince myself that being British has had no bearing on any of this, but actually I think that’s where it served me well,” Ejogo told BuzzFeed News. “I’m not as entrenched in the history so immediately. ... I didn’t know who Coretta was until I played her the first time. And I think I have permission — that’s the definition of the artist, in my opinion — to be a little deviant. It wasn’t as daunting as it might have been for an American actress. An African-American actress … that might have been a bit more of a challenge.”

This is an interesting point, and I wish Ms. Carter had focused more on this aspect: do we, as Black Americans, invest too much in our history? Viola Davis, in an interview with Tavis Smiley, put it brilliantly: “We, as African American artists, are moreconcerned with image and message and not execution”.

Ms. Davis trained at Juilliard, by the way. I mean, it's no London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but I think it's alright.

The following is a quote from Mr. Oyelowo:

“We went to conservatoires to train for three years: We did classical theater; we did modern theater. I think that the reason why we’re having this moment we’re in right now, is because all of that hard work is now butting up against the time whereby a very big discernible appetite.”

Outside of the lack of a proof-reader, the most problematic part of this quote—which almost smacks of arrogance—is the implication that American actors are NOT receiving this type of training.

“I think people recognize with British actors that they do a lot of training, and I think people really respect that a lot of them have gone to places like Rose Bruford [College],” said [Naomi] Harris. “I went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and trained for two years. They respect that we generally start off in theater and have a theater background. Film producers really like that.”

And again, please see above. I, personally, have yet to meet a film (or television) producer that regards my extensive theatrical resume as an asset. To be frank, I think film producers really like that you're British. Not to mention that actors like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson also started out in theatre.

At some point a bit later in the article, which resumes the standard promotional track regarding Selma and portraying Dr. King, Oyelowo says “Even though I’m not an American, I know what inequality feels like.” I'm being a bit unfair and taking this quote out of context, but I find it fitting to include here, since I would argue that inequality could also be an entire industry looking down on you because you are not British.

Ben.

I've been holding this inside all day. But I need to tell you all about a young man named Benjamin Buckley.

I met Ben back in the summer of 2008 when we were apart of the acting company at the Chautauqua Theatre Festival. Whereas most of us had auditioned through our fancy conservatory programs, Ben--who was a struggling actor based in Chicago at the time--was there based on a recommendation. Not too shabby.

Ben and I were very similar; bright dispositions with a dark interior, and I think we understood each other pretty well, and as we found ourselves working together we forged a great bond. "I see you, Clifton, I see you," he once said, knowingly wagging his finger at me, acknowledging that, although I presented myself one way, what was going on underneath was much more complex. And I knew he'd seen it, because I knew that he was the same. That's one of the reasons we got on so well. That and our penchant for laughing at things that only we seemed to find ridiculous and absurd--outsiders with a knack for sniffing out bullshit.

Life took us on different paths after that summer, and we didn't contact each other again. But that didn't stop me from thinking about him from time to time.

I learned today that he threw himself from atop a nine-story building several months ago.

Ben killed himself.

I respect the decision he made. Sometimes you get to a place where you just want the pain to stop. Whatever is raging inside of you becomes overwhelming, and drugs don't work, sex doesn't work, love doesn't work, money doesn't work, work doesn't work, nothing works to fill up that hole inside of you, that void. Nothing soothes that wound, the immensity of it.

I've spent nearly the entire day counterintuitively trying to process all this and trying not to think about what happened. Hasn't worked. I tried to work some of my feelings out via the show tonight, but that didn't really work either.

Then backstage, right before the last scene, I whispered to myself "why did you do that, Ben?" And I choked the tears back and ran on for my final entrance.

When someone dies you often get people coming out of the woodwork saying "he was such a great guy, a great spirit, blah blah blah", and I'm cynical so to me it's all old hat. But it's true. Ben was pretty fucking cool. I'm sorry that he was suffering the way that he was; I'm sorry his family and friends have to pick up the pieces. I'm sorry we didn't keep better tabs on each other.

I don't like what he did, but he did what he felt he had to do, and I respect that.

It's too late to let you know now, but I love ya, Ben. Really do.

Loved.

How #GamerGate Destroyed my Faith in the Media, Part I

A Google search of the term "GamerGate" yields pieces from outlets like Spiked, The Mary Sue,  and Slate, that label the movement with buzzwords such as "misogyny" and "harassment". Previously, respected news outlets such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and the L.A. Times, among others, have published stories and editorials, and conducted interviews centered around the "harassment" that enemies of the movement have received, framing the campaign as one driven by straight white men, frothing at the mouth with sexist hatred against women in gaming such as Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and Zoe Quinn.

The major problem with the vast majority of this coverage is that it's sensationalist and, frankly, false--and even though it's "just video games", the scandal has completely destroyed my already-waning trust in what seems to me now to be a very left-leaning media machine.

Incidentally, the debacle surrounding Rolling Stone magazine and their seemingly unchecked publishing of an horrific story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia provides a perfect example of and context for how the media, in order to sell a narrative (and thus, remain relevant and profitable) will jump on certain stories with little concern for the truth.

Indeed, it seems the narratives become particularly obfuscated if the alleged victims in the story are women or non-whites--and I find that stories that set out to debunk theories set forth in histrionic journalism often get little to no traction, another phenomenon familiar to those that support the #GamerGate movement. Suffice it to say, once I saw (and more importantly experienced) how voices like my own were stifled in order to slander gamers, especially MALE gamers, who have always been scapegoats for society's ills, not only did I learn some stark truths about the media we consume, but my political views shifted dramatically; among my Facebook friends, I now feel like the "right wing crazy".

But more on that later--here's a little about myself.

AN OLD SCHOOL GAMER

I received a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for my sixth birthday in 1988 (before that I was obsessed with Pac-Man on the Commodore 64). I and my friends in Hampton Roads, Virginia enjoyed classic games such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, River City Ransom, Double Dragon II, Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, among many, many others; we'd visit each other, play games, then get bored and go outside and play. On my own, I would try my hand at games such as Final Fantasy and that shitty Ninja Turtles game (I was a boss at the underwater level that has become one of the most infamously difficult levels in games history. And later I would become a master at Battletoads, often considered one of the hardest NES games ever made).

A few years later, I was gifted with a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), which in my opinion is one of the greatest consoles in the history of home gaming. Super Mario World, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Mortal Kombat II, Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Star Fox, Contra III, Turtles in Time, Super Mario RPG, A Link to the Past--these are just SOME of the classic games in my SNES library; and I got a Sega Genesis soon after that, enjoying the Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage series.

Over the span of my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, I would own a Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Sony Playstation and Playstation 2, the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube, and the original Xbox. I also enjoyed great computer games such as Maniac Mansion (and its sequel Day of the Tentacle), and the Monkey Island games, along with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, not to mention the Carmen Sandiego series. I'll probably purchase a 3DS when the new model debuts here next year, and thanks to emulators I've been able to revisit classics such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, one of most incredible games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Hell, I was even a little competitive in Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 5 for a short, short time, and poured countless hours into Tekken 3, and I'm learning the basics of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo right now.

Although I haven't owned any consoles since the PS2 era, I do stay connected to games culture thanks to YouTubers posting footage of fighting game tournaments, posting Let's Plays, and posting reviews and news.

In short, I still feel VERY connected to gaming, even though I don't play as much as I used to. Unlike Anita Sarkeesian, I can speak/write with passion and specificity about video games and I don't need to lie about playing them.

CULTURAL BATTLEGROUND

#GamerGate is confusing if you haven't been following it closely, so I highly recommend checking out this website, and/or at least watching the video that set the conflict in motion (it's a copy of the original, which had over 1 million views before it was taken down by the owner of the account). The video, in particular, was made right after the scandal broke, and provides great context for the conflict that would unfold over the next several months. The allegations levied in the video may not all be factual, however the central point of contention, an intimate and undisclosed relationship between an indie game developer and a journalist who subsequently covered her game, has been verified, and thus the ostensible goal of the movement was born: addressing ethical failures in games journalism.

The movement itself is essentially a wildfire accelerated by The Streisand Effect, as game journalists and a couple of key websites (such as Reddit and 4chan) first sought to ignore the issue, then to censor discussion of the issue (found out more about that by watching this), and then, inexplicably, to disparage and dismiss gamers, the very demographic that the video game journalists should be protecting and serving.

And yet the controversy extends beyond ethics in games journalism; it exists within a larger cultural war, mainly against those mockingly called Social Justice Warriors, or SJWs, for short.  So-called SJWs tend to have their hearts in the right place, fighting for equality across a broad spectrum that of course includes gender, sexuality, and race--but their online tactics, reliance on emotions over reality, and hyper-dogmatism have turned them into one of the scourges of the internet.

In fact, if you click on the previous link, which goes to the Urban Dictionary website, you'll find the conflict encapsulated perfectly: the so-called SJWs are referred to disparagingly and accused of lacking integrity, and the response is quite typical, with blanket accusations of bigotry and hatred (often while being bigots themselves). They'll even venture as far into absurdity as comparing their comrades to Rosa Parks and other progenitors of the Civil Rights Movement in America during the 1950's, likening their escapades on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to real movements of social change that endangered the lives of many involved, and, as one may recall, actually led to the assassinations of people such as Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One last point to make is that so-called SJWs, from what I've seen, are typically left-leaning (many times VERY leftist), while one survey found that Pro-GGers cover a much broader political spectrum, and that will become relevant later. Of particular interest in the conflict is what I'm calling the Radical Feminist Wing of the SJW armada, which includes people like Ms. Sarkeesian and Ms. Quinn, and they are at the very core of the conflict.

In the next part of this blog I'll look at how these women have been portrayed in the mainstream media and how (and possibly why) only their side of the story has been presented to the public, and how the voices of gay, female, and minority gamers have been almost completely ignored in order to weave a false narrative that #GamerGate is fueled by white male "misogynerd" rage.

The Incarceration of Black Artists

The other night The Shakespeare Theatre Company (@shakespeareinDC) held a "Twitter Night", where they encouraged audience members to tweet before the show and during intermission, using the #STCnight hashtag. In a mix of curiosity, vanity, masochism and, above all and most likely, stupidity, I decided to search what people had written. And I found this tweet (the user's handle and page have been edited out):

This user, who, from what I could gather is a young Latino or Black American woman and an aspiring theatre artist, makes a cryptic tweet about the casting of a Black person as Ferdinand--neither expressing discomfort nor seeming to condone the choice. When she's urged to elaborate on her feelings, she replies with "It made me wonder more about what we're saying about race and power given two black men with speaking roles became slaves."

The Twitter exchange reminded me of an interview between Tavis Smiley, Octavia Spencer, and Viola Davis from a couple of years ago. Here's some excerpts from the transcript; the full interview can be found here. The emphasis below is mine:

TAVIS:  You both have done wonderful work and will do more wonderful work, but there’s something that sticks in my craw about celebrating Hattie McDaniel so many years ago for playing a maid. Here we are all these years later, and I want you to win, but I’m ambivalent about what you’re winning for.
...
DAVIS: ...I will say this – that very mind-set that you have and that a lot of African Americans have is absolutely destroying the Black artist. The Black artist cannot live in the place – in a revisionist place. The Black artist can only tell the truth about humanity, and humanity is messy. People are messy.
Caucasian actors know that. They understand that. They understand that when you bring a human being to life, what you want as an artist, to show all the flaws as well as the beauty.
We, as African American artists, are more concerned with image and message and not execution.
....
TAVIS: The point I’m making is that while I celebrate your accomplishment, there is, in fact, a lack of balance in this industry, and it makes me – that’s why I said ambivalent. I’m not upset with you. There’s an ambivalence here that when I see the audience just stand up and cheer and go wild when the characters that we’re celebrating here – they are real. My grandmother, Big Mama, God rest her soul, you’re playing Big Mama.
....
DAVIS: If you would come to me, if you were to come to me and say that you were ambivalence because that you felt the writing was not balanced, that you felt like with Aibileen and Minny and Mae and Constantine, that you didn’t feel that there were a lot of colors to the character, that their humanity was not explored, that you just saw just a blank, flat, unrealistic stereotype, then I would go with you...But if your criticism is that you just don’t want to see the maid or you just don’t want to see Denzel Washington in “Training Day” play the kind of rogue cop, then I have an issue with that. 
...
DAVIS: When I say “multifaceted roles,” they’re roles where I open up a script and the character goes on a journey. Where I see a balance. Where I’m not just always dignified, I know everything, I see everything. I’m just this straight-backed Black woman, friend, all-knowing, seeing, whatever.
I’m talking about a human being, multifaceted human being that actually lives, breathes, all of that, okay? ...Because my whole thing is, do I always have to be noble? 

Frankly I rarely feel fidelity, as a Black American artist, to any sort of "cause". I think that the "Burden of Representation" (where a non-white actor, or a gay actor, or a woman, or whatever, is anointed as a stand-in for that entire group) is completely unfair and ridiculous. I approach my life and my craft as a human being first, as an individual first, NOT as a Black person. I am not naive enough to believe that my blackness has no bearing whatsoever on, at the very least, the way that I'm perceived, but there comes a point when one becomes too busy being "black" and not busy enough living life.

The best I can do is create a fully-realized and compelling character, and let the work speak for itself.  THAT is how you honor the "Black Experience", THAT is how you honor Black people--you show them as multi-dimensional human beings, no matter what, and you KEEP doing it. I try to choose roles based on their complexity and story arc--and that's pretty much it. If anything traffics in negative stereotypes, I attribute that more to limitations of the writers than anything else.

If I sit here and worry about what it looks like if I'm playing a slave, or what it looks like for a black person to be kissing a white man's foot, or what it looks like for me to wear chains, then I'm dead in the water. It's unfair to me as an artist to be beholden to "What Black People Might Think". Can you imagine the cast of HBO's The Wire worrying about what black people would think of their roles and their work? It would have robbed viewers of one of the most complex and compelling television dramas ever produced.

This woman's tweets piss me of because in her zeal to preserve and uphold her highly subjective and racialized worldview, she ignores that Ferdinand is royalty and has a wonderful journey through the play; she ignores Caliban's complexity and poetry and soulfulness; she ignores the hard work that everyone is doing on stage and off (which she should be aware of, being a theatre artist herself), in fact ignores the whole sweep of Shakespeare's play. Rather than celebrate the triumph of having black artists employed at The Shakespeare Theatre Company, furthering their careers, building their resumes, and sharpening their skills, she complains.

Two of the top-rated shows on television feature Black women in the lead, and the producer of both of those hit shows is a black woman; men like Key and Peele, Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejifor, Michael B. Jordan, and David Oyelowo, and women like Shonda Rhimes, Lupita N'yongo, Uzo Aduba, Octavia Spencer and of course Ms. Davis are breaking through and getting their work out there and are CRUSHING it. We are living in a time of abundance and of unprecedented exposure for Black artists in entertainment, and yet it's STILL not enough--people still complain because to them the representations aren't "perfect". The Cosby Show "wasn't an accurate portrayal of Black life" yet Good Times trafficked in stereotypes; some people feel that Black-ish is a "coon show".

People are protesting around the country about overzealous law enforcement and what they view as an oppressive and racist regime that targets Blacks unfairly. In the realm of the arts, or at least entertainment, it seems that at least some oppression comes from other black people.

And I'm tired of it.

#BlackLivesMatter -- But Only in Certain Cases.

I've withheld comment on the situation down in Ferguson until now. I've watched the drama escalate and spiral out of control, I've watched the public outcry, I've seen the responses on social media, and I did my own digging into the matter. All I can say is that this situation and its aftermath has left me disheartened, and I'm deeply, deeply disappointed.

The reasons I feel this way will probably surprise and anger many of you.

But somebody has to say something and cut through all the frenzy because it's extremely unnerving, and even baffling, to watch an entire nation full of well-meaning, intelligent, and deeply compassionate individuals whip themselves into a frenzy without digging just a little bit deeper into the situation, and asking themselves some simple questions. They've accepted what they've been told, and allowed their emotions to govern their actions and responses. Everyone seems to want "justice", but nobody seems to care about the TRUTH.

And worst of all, many reveal themselves to be hypocritical in the extreme, and actually don't care about "Black Lives" as much as they claim.

Michael Brown suffered 9 gunshot wounds. His injuries are inconsistent with narratives that he was either trying to escape, or had his hands up in surrender. Brown was caught on camera robbing a convenience store minutes before his death, which is inconsistent with the "gentle giant" narrative that's been pushed by the media and supports the story that Wilson may have identified Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson as suspects. Brown had THC in his system, which might explain why, if Officer Wilson's story is to be believed, Brown may have been behaving irrationally by walking in the middle of the street (with stolen paraphernalia in hand) and engaging in conflict with a law enforcement official.

There is also gunpowder residue, DNA evidence, and photos of Officer Wilson's injuries that support the narrative that there was indeed a struggle inside of Wilson's car (and I don't buy that Wilson was somehow able to manhandle a 6'4", 279-pound man from the seat of his car). Lastly, in addition to witnesses that claim that Brown was surrendering, there are MANY witnesses who claim that Brown CHARGED at Wilson, "like a football player", to quote a diary entry of one of the witnesses, which is consistent with Wilson's account of the altercation. Some of those witnesses, as I understand it, are Black Americans--and, shrewdly, have kept their identities concealed out of concern for their personal safety.

Sorry to break it to you all, but according to the EVIDENCE available, Brown was NOT an innocent, gentle giant, at least not on that particular day, and Wilson doesn't seem to have a history of racist policing or dishonesty. All it takes is a few Google searches to find autopsy reports, local news reports, official documents, and witness accounts that raise huge, HUGE questions about the sensationalist media's reporting of the story.

We're quick to dismiss Fox News as a propaganda machine, but the fact is that CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, and other outlets--publications that have the trust of a large number of the American public--are just as guilty of spinning stories and skewing narratives. And now people are protesting, businesses businesses and neighborhoods are being destroyed, people are getting hurt, because many BELIEVE what they've been told or what they've read, without questioning it.  They want to be outraged, they want justice, they want answers--facts and evidence be damned.

The irony in all this is that people keeping saying "black lives matter", and saying that our black boys need protection.  I think these statements are both true. The issue is that Black boys--and black people in general--need just as much protection, if not more, from OTHER black boys, than from racists and/or police (Chicago, anyone?). But we aren't protesting over that right now. There's a drug war that most people recognize as a complete failure and waste of resources, and Michelle Alexander argues persuasively that it is a largely RACIST Drug War; but we aren't protesting over that right now. The bi-racial, Nobel Peace Prize-winning president bombs brown people in Africa and the Middle East, but we aren't protesting over that right now, either.

No; we are protesting the death of an 18-year-old kid that got high, robbed a convenience store, and assaulted an officer; I do hate that all this happened, and it's awful that so many people's lives have been destroyed by this incident, but the evidence suggests that his own actions led to his death.  People are being arrested, getting injured, having their businesses and livelihoods destroyed, over this. These aren't the Watts riots, this isn't the aftermath of the killing of Dr. King--this is outrage manufactured by the mainstream media, and many good, good people have bought into it entirely.

I find that deeply troubling.