In an interview with Film Comment, Julie Dash was asked about her decision to structure her film Daughters of the Dust as a non-linear narrative. She explained how “in the culture, we’re not binary, we speak in rhythms and sensibilities, we’re circular.” In the same interview she resists the categorization of historical document, and describes the film as “a meditation – it’s a cinema of ideas and what-ifs and how-sos. It’s a conversation.”
We can feel the truth of this in the movie’s abundance of ideas and dream-like composition and pacing; languid, somewhat disassociated scenes that intermingle stories and identities and eras, yet always return to a shared history. The film centers the Gullah culture, which while unfamiliar to many people remains a quintessential American story. The pain of slavery as well as the perseverence of the spirit are present and immediate in this snapshot of Gullah life at the turn of the 20th century; woven into their cuisine and crafts, soaked into the very soil itself.
The tension of the story revolves around questions of identity, tradition and change – how to honor the past but survive the present. The opening scene finds two family members, Viola and Yellow Mary, returning home to Ibo Landing by boat. Each brings along a visitor who in some way represents the more modern world. Mary, the free spirit and outcast, is returning from the “big city” with her lesbian lover Trula. Viola is accompanied by the photographer Mr. Snead, a well-dressed man who wishes to document this Gullah alcove before the family leaves it behind. Snead is the director’s stand-in, the documentarian seeking to save a vanishing history. The movie is deeply personal for Julie Dash, and this is felt in its themes, its questions, the sensitivity of the photography and performances.
During the boat trip Mr. Snead introduces Mary and Trula to a new optical gadget – the kaleidoscope. “Kalos – beautiful. Eidos – form. Skopein – to view. If an object is placed between two mirrors, inclined at right angles, an image is formed in each mirror. Then, these mirror images are in turn reflected in the other mirror.”
Like a kaleidoscope, Daughters of the Dust contrasts a variety of angles against each other to create a beautiful whole. Like objects between two mirrors, all the characters reflect a past and a future, while also being part of a connected tapestry. The beautiful imagery of the film allows this tapestry to unfurl in an organic yet mythical way, creating an atmosphere of weighty peace and fatalism even as conflicts arise. Dash explains her intention as such: “I wanted to take the African-American experience and rephrase it in such a way that, whether or not you understood the film on the first screening, the visuals would be so haunting it would break through with a freshness about what we already know.” (Brouwer 1995) This is a movie about understanding who you are – a pursuit that feels more and more desperate and essential as society becomes more modern and detached.
Works:
Brouwer, Joel R. “Repositioning: center and margin in Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust.’.” African American Review, vol. 29, no. 1, spring 1995, pp. 5+.
da Costa, Cassie. “Interview: Julie Dash.” Film Comment, 29 February 2016, https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-julie-dash/.Daughters of the Dust. Directed by Julie Dash, Kino International, 1991.
Whether he knows it or not, Sean Baker is one of our most deeply intelligent humanists. He has a singular ability to excavate the complexity and the mundane (self-inflicted) tragedy of modern human life. His protagonists are deeply troubled and problematic people, opportunists and narcissists and survivors, and somehow no matter how badly they behave, there is some small part of you that roots for them, anticipates a redemption that never comes.
Mikey (played by Simon Rex) is terrible, predatory, parasitic – and there are hints that he knows it, and there is that fleeting spark of possibility that maybe this time will be different. And of course, it never is. I think the most telling relationship in the film is between Mikey and Lonnie, that destructive trajectory as Mikey exploits Lonnie then easily abandons him at the first sign of trouble. The palpable hypocrisy when Mikey criticizes Lonnie for a scam that is vastly less malicious than his own behavior.
This is a person who – through whatever untold history – has lost all sense of ethical or empathetic behavior. And yet through charisma and luck and plain harassment, he manages to get his way to a large extent. And this is where the movie’s politics are hiding, the reason that Trump is a motif in the background; another figure who is objectively terrible yet manages to “succeed” through a pattern of lying and exploitation.
As usual with Baker’s movies the cinematography is beautiful: stretches of marsh, deserted streets, even the donut shop parking lot with the refinery in the near distance somehow has a glow, an aliveness. Rex is fantastic, inhabiting all the terribleness of Mikey while letting those hints of humanity and self-doubt barely squeak through. Suzanna Son is also very good, and provides the most tension in terms of where things may be heading. Overall an excellent film from an excellent filmmaker.
Wunmi Mosaku’s strong, evocative performance helps to drive the film’s complex themes
It is very, very hard to make a horror film that balances originality, immersion, genuine terror and a compelling message. His House, from first-time director Remi Weekes, is not a perfect movie, but it pulls off this balance while offering the genre an entirely new vision. The film follows a Sudanese husband and wife who seek asylum in London. Right there we begin with a modern, relevant, and provocative premise. The immigrant couple struggles to navigate this new world while also contending with a sinister force haunting their new home. The atmospheres are effective and there is an absolutely brilliant layer of meaning to the entire film, which we won’t go into here but delivers an ending that will generate plenty of thoughtful discussion. This is also one of the first movies I’ve seen in a long time that surprised me with a plot twist! Like I said, making good horror is not easy, and Weekes deserves plenty of praise.
Horror is all about placing characters in tense, dangerous, unpredictable situations, and often this is done by planting them in an unfamiliar environment. This “fish out of water” motif is well-trodden: think of classics like Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wicker Man, or the more recent Get Out and Midsommar. Part of the horror is being in a new place where the characters don’t know what to expect. Now transfer that motif to a loaded and important contemporary topic like immigration, especially refugee immigration, and you hit upon a truly original and highly sympathetic premise. But don’t misunderstand me: this is not a ‘political’ film, per se. It’s simply a human film. It’s about the obstacles we never expected, the choices we make, and the baggage we carry with us, forever.
To watch Chantal Akerman’s meditative urban study News From Home (1977) is to witness a uniquely personal experimentation of cinema. Akerman deftly subverts common narrative in favor of a combination of sound and visuals that evokes longing, banality, isolation, struggle, movement. She is able to create something profoundly personal without characters or plot, bringing us into a place and a relationship that is grounded in lived experience while feeling like an abstract stream of conscious.
Structurally the film offers an hour and a half of prosaic, mostly street-level footage that is obliquely contextualized by an epistolary voice-over connecting mother and daughter. Time is movement – some scenes are slow, some are fast, some are static, depending on how the camera moves through space, just as our own movements through the city have varying times and speeds depending on our transport. The camera organically inhabits this space, creating a documentarian reflection of New York that somewhat recalls the “city symphonies” of the 20s and 30s.
But this is more than a record of urban life and architecture; Akerman’s New York is omnipresent and interwoven with her displaced identity. The absence of her physical form on the screen has the effect of enmeshing her experience into the fabric of the city itself – anonymous but part of a larger whole. Her voice channels a mother’s worry as she navigates its “murky canyons” (Barker), disembodied and anonymous yet entrenched in the grit of daily life. The soundtrack is plotless and seemingly disconnected from the images that pass on screen, yet these images are “grounded in the human body and its resonance with the body of the city,” (Barker) as Akerman’s camera flows namelessly through these spaces. The camera settles for long moments on people living through their lives – anonymous too, but captured with hyper-realist attention, as if to remind us of the many untold stories swirling around us.
Akerman is “present” as the voice and presumably as the POV, but she avoids letting herself be the object. Despite being a deeply personal film, the mother in those letters could be any of our mothers, and the sense of busy isolation as the camera moves through urban space feels familiar. The combination of her physical disembodiment and the shifting focus of different bodies throughout the city creates a ground-level perspective that’s easily inhabited by the audience. There is also a class consciousness in how the camera moves among the typically unseen, lived-in struggles of daily urban life. There is absolutely nothing forced or artificial here, just the real-world bodies of people going to or from work, caring for children, etc. This is not the glamorous New York of On the Town, or even the heightened world of intrigue of Rear Window or Naked City. It’s a blunt and unadorned shared reality.
We are not given much detail of either the mother or the daughter; only what we can discern through letters recited between them. In a way this lack of information puts us right in the mother’s shoes, who constantly requests more communication and details about her daughter’s life in this big city and its perceived perils. It’s unclear to us whether the daughter is thriving or flailing in her life. The scenes evoke a lonely anonymity and perhaps a homesickness, particularly the last, silent shot of the receding skyline taken from the Staten Island ferry. Throughout the film, this interplay of city scenes and Akerman’s voice (or lack of) creates a resonance and sympathy with both “characters,” one far away in an idyllic and familial home, the other adrift in an urban sea.
Works Cited:
Barker, Jennifer M. (2003). The feminine side of New York: travelogue, autobiography and architecture in ‘News from home’. Gwendolyn Audrey (ed.), Identity and memory: the Films of Chantal Akerman (pp. 41-58). Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
News From Home. Dir. Chantal Akerman. Criterion, 2010. Film.
"May you live in interesting times."- ancient Chinese curse, supposedly
For generations of us growing up with the constant presence of digital communication technology, “interesting” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Our near-limitless access to information is a boon that our ancestors could have never dreamed possible. And while this deluge of data has revolutionized how we share ideas, it has also created a “wild west” of uncertainty when it comes to online sources. Anyone can pretty much publish anything, and discerning good sources from bad can get tough.
Don’t get me wrong, the democratization of the digital age is overall a great thing, but it resists the sort of gatekeeping that might otherwise bolster the validity of content. In other words, no one’s filtering the info – the “bad” and the “good” float along the digital current with the same visibility. It becomes the user’s job to judge what’s true, and for writers and researchers, it adds a new layer to information gathering.
Digital Information Literacy: How do you know what you know?
“Literacy” basically means a competency in communication, and it is a transformative power for individuals and for societies. The ability to wield contemporary media can ignite revolutions and topple empires.
Anonymous portrait of Gutenberg dated 1440; quote taken from (Pearson 1871)
Take Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, for example – a huge technological leap for literacy, and one that religious contemporaries like Martin Luther were smart enough to exploit. The Protestant Revolution in 16th century Europe was made possible by the printing press. It brought the written word to the masses, generated a common literacy, and disrupted centuries of religious authority. (Haile, 1976) Like the internet, it altered the nature of public knowledge and forever changed the dynamics of the control and access of information.
Gutenberg’s press made Martin Luther one of the first “influencers” of western history. Luther recognized the power of a new media modality to build his following – basically the PewDiePie or Kylie Jenner of his time. If the consumption of mass media brings knowledge, the creation of it brings powerful levels of influence. And if Spiderman comics taught us anything, it’s that with great power comes great responsibility!
Literacy = liberated knowledge, decentralized influence, and empowered individuals. Pretty good stuff. And our concept of what literacy means is something that changes alongside society, culture, and technology. To utilize language and media in the age of smartphones and globalized networks thus requires new “literacies” as we leap ahead of Gutenberg in terms of mass communication. Our informational context has exploded, and the requirements to navigate it have become increasingly complex.
Where does that leave us? Increasingly, scholars are concerned about the learner’s and researcher’s ability to parse data in a way that serves professional and academic interests. Let’s be real, most people know that the internet cannot be readily trusted, however this understanding doesn’t automatically translate to good research habits. Kevin Arms in the video here discusses a few examples of students failing to recognize “fake news.” Librarians like Arms are well-familiar with the importance of information literacy, and have been at the forefront of this issue.
Kevin Arms’ presentation on information literacy (TEDx, 2017)
In a survey study from 2012, teachers reported that 94 percent of their students were “very likely” to use an internet search engine in their research, and a chief concern was over the “difficulty many students have judging the quality of online information” (Purcell et al, 2012). Most students grew up with the internet and social media, so they adapt easily to these platforms – AKA, they have strong digital literacy. They also know not to trust everything they see. When Project Information Literacy surveyed students on their views of online algorithms, they cited “shaping content,” “reinforcing inequalities,” and “not seeing the same reality” as major concerns (Head et al, 2020).
This understanding of algorithmic bias in our online activities is one starting point for thinking about informational reliability. It reminds us to think twice about data we come across both in targeted research and in incidental use. Many familiar digital platforms are, in a sense, literally designed to confirm what we already think, which “is the reason many people use them in the first place” (Seneca, 2020).
Algorithms aren’t the only thing to worry about. The proliferation of bad info (or “fake news”) has changed the entire information landscape. It can range from shallow conspiracies to misleading biases to fully choreographed disinformation campaigns. And it has proven to be a potent and insidious force. In one MIT study, researchers found that “falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude” (Dizikes, 2018). In other words, “fake news” has a unique power and reach on social media, like one big game of telephone, taking us farther and farther from the truth the more the story spreads.
These researchers were looking at Twitter, but YouTube is another common research source plagued by crappy content. For example, pseudo-science has shown a potential to spread easily on the site. One investigational report found that YouTube’s algorithms were driving millions of viewers to videos about climate change denial (AVAAZ, 2020), and it’s not always easy to discern good and bad sources solely based on their appearances.
Who do you trust?
In this formal, academic setting, economist Thomas Sowell sounds authoritative in his argument that climate scientists are “making up” the climate crisis. (Fora.tv, 2010)
This contrasting video comes from a less-professional YouTuber with no credentials. However he references multiple authoritative sources while debunking common “climate skeptic” myths – including the idea that scientists have an ulterior agenda. (Joe Scott, 2018)
To reiterate, when we’re talking about the ability to gather and understand ideas and data, we’re talking about “information literacy.” This is one of the vital components to any kind of research, and it takes on a special importance when it comes to the digital realm.
Information literacy empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. It is a basic human right in a digital world and promotes social inclusion in all nations.” (UNESCO, N.D.)
A “human right” perhaps, but not always an easy skill, even as we all grow accustomed to the daily presence of these media. Digital literacy may now be second nature to us, but a problem still lies in a gap in critical thinking, as argued by library science professor Jamie Gregory. She suggests a dedicated education on subjects like online conspiracy theories and other stories that seem authoritative, but have in fact been debunked or retracted. (2019). This may be an extra challenge for educators, but it can help teach students better approaches to research.
High school teacher JoAnn Gage tackles the problem by adding a digital media literacy component to essay assignments, and by quizzing students on their ability to identify varieties of online misinformation that she also demonstrates in class (2018). How well would you do on such a quiz? Can you tell which of the stories below are real, and which are not?
Ultimately the big question is this: how good are we at differentiating fact and fiction on the web? What is the skillset? A behavioral science study tried to measure the ability of participants to recognize “fake news” in four different literacy contexts: media literacy, information literacy, news literacy, and digital literacy. Data was collected via online survey, using different questions to measure participants’ grasp on each literacy type. At the conclusion, information literacy was the only type of literacy to demonstrate a clear correlation with an ability to discern real or fake information (Jones-Jang, 2019). The significance here is that simply knowing how to use technology (digital literacy) or understanding different types of outlets (media literacy) is not enough.
Students and researchers exist in a complex information environment, and this complexity will affect not only the quality of their writing but also the nature of their interests. While educators do their best to nurture good habits, part of the problem here may be that students are taught information literacy in a highly controlled environment, rather than one that represents real life. “In this bubble, students may be asked to engage with intellectually stimulating topics and might even emerge ready for college classwork, but they are often unprepared for the nonfiction demands of adult life,” argues an article published in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. (Kohnen, 2018). Rethinking educational approaches and giving people effective tools for navigating digital space is one way to nurture critical research habits.
Damaso Reyes of the News Literacy Project on becoming a “digital detective.” (Quartz, 2018)
Teaching the ethical standards of reporting can be another approach to helping writers and communicators understand the values to look for in content writing, such as accuracy, neutrality, accountability, and transparency (SPJ, 2014). In this fragmented era where “fake news” has come to mean any source that is disagreeable, it’s important to not only develop empirical tools but also a value-set – what makes “news” news? By bridging the gap between media trust and media transparency, we can reaffirm standards that separate fact from fiction, and encourage outlets to hold accountability for what they put out into the world.
It may often feel like this brave new online world is hopelessly muddled, but these are just the growing pains of an evolving modality. We won’t find all the answers right away, but we can start by becoming better equipped to navigate the messy minefield of online information and passing those skills on at every opportunity. ~~~
REFERENCES
AVAAZ. (2020, January 16). Why is YouTube Broadcasting Climate Misinformation to Millions. https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/youtube_climate_misinformation/
Dizikes, P. (2018, March 8). Study: On Twitter, False News Travels Faster Than True Stories. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308.
Gage, J. (2018, November 3). Rethinking the Persuasive Research Paper: Combating Fake News, Media Bias and Polarization of Ideas Through Teaching Media Literacy and Researching Opposing Sides. Iowa Council of Teachers of English. https://iowaenglishteachers.org/2323/teacherwritings/rethinking-thepersuasive-research-paper-combating-fake-news-media-bias-and-polarization-of-ideas-throughteaching-media-literacy-and-researching-opposing-sides/.
Gregory, J. (2019, November 6). Teaching Disinformation Literacy. The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association. https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=19111.
Fora.tv. (2010, 25 January). Thomas Sowell: Global Warming Manufactured by Intellectuals? . https://youtube/rweblFwt-BM.
Head, A.J., Fister,B., & MacMillan, M. (2020, January 15). Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms. Project Information Literacy. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED605109.pdf.
Joe Scott. (2018, April 23). Busting Climate Change Myths | Answers With Joe. . https://youtube/sZB1YtQtHjE.
Jones-Jang, S. M., Mortensen, T., & Liu, J. (2019, August 28). Does Media Literacy Help Identification of Fake News? Information Literacy Helps, but Other Literacies Don’t. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869406.
Kohnen, A.M., & Saul, E.W. (2018). Information Literacy in the Internet Age: Making Space for Students’ Intentional and Incidental Knowledge. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61( 6), 671– 679. https://doi-org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/10.1002/jaal.734
Pearson, E.C. (1871). Gutenberg and the Art of Printing. Boston, Noyes, Holmes, and company. pp. 8-9.
Perdew, L. (2016). Information Literacy in the Digital Age. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com.
Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Buchanan, J., Friedrich, L., Jacklin, A., Chen, C., & Zickuhr, K. (2012, November 1). How Teens Do Research in the Digital World. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2012/11/01/how-teens-do-research-in-the-digital-world/.
Quartz. (2018, January 15). Five Ways to Spot Fake News. . https://youtube/y7eCB2F89K8.
Seneca, C. (2020, September 17). How to Break Out of Your Social Media Echo Chamber. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-twitter-echo-chamber-confirmation-bias/.
Society of Professional Journalists [SPJ]. (2014, September 6). SPJ Code of Ethics. https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
TEDx Talks. (2017, November 28). Information Literacy | Kevin Arms | TEDxLSSC. . https://youtube/3BAfs_oDevw.
UNESCO. (N.D.) Information Literacy. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/information-literacy/.
Rain pelts down through a gray chill sky: the tiny bursts of each drop crackle together and hum, and drum.
On the walkway worms are dying, washed-out strands of earth trapped and drowned on treacherous brick.
A big one wriggles and moves its head in something like confusion. I return it to the grass, which glistens and shudders like a shrunken hurricane; the callous blows of fate.
