Black Girl: A Pathbreaking Film

 

 

BLACK GIRL (1966; restored 2016)

Directed by Ousmane Sembène

New Yorker Video, 55 minutes, Not-rated

In French with subtitles

★★★★★

 

 

 

Black Girl is considered a pioneering work in African cinema. This film by Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène probes the impact of colonialism in just 55 minutes, yet still manages to show how it damaged Africans and Europeans alike.

 

The film’s namesake is idealistic Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), who meets a French husband and wife on temporary assignment in rural Senegal. She is hired by the couple, known only as Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) and Madam (Anne-Marie Jelinek). When the couple return to their home on the Côte d’Azur, they offer to pay for Diouana to come to France and continue her employment. It seems a dream come true for Diouana and she arrives with visions of acquiring sophistication and cultural enrichment. She is so excited that she buys a carved mask at the marketplace in her village that she gifts to the couple.

 

Euphoria gives way to a metaphorical slap in the face. The friendliness she experienced in Senegal gives way to haughtiness and a master-servant arrangement. Diouana has no grasp on European racial dynamics. In Senegal she was treated with respect but in France she is viewed as little more than a trained and caged curiosity. Madame is especially barbed in her commands. Diouana is expected to clean, cook, and take care of the couple’s children and she’s so unprepared for her situation that she wears heels and a tribal dress as she toils around the clock.

 

In one horrifying moment, Diouana is supposed to cook an unspecified African dish for a dinner party at which a male guest embraces her because he wants to know what it’s like to “kiss a black girl.” Diouana is a prisoner in all but name inside the couple’s home, though she does manage to acquire a black boyfriend whose motives are unclear. To say that things do not get better understates how bad things are. At one point Diouana goes on a one-woman strike, though Madam insists that if Diouana refuses to work, she will not be fed. Queue two unfortunate endings, one tragic and the other dangerous and ironic.

 

Despite its age, Black Girl is such a fine film that Sembène is often considered the first African director to attract international acclaim. It should also be noted that it was a timely production. In 1966, Senegal had only been independent for six years, after three and a half centuries of colonial rule, mostly by France, which used it as a center for its foray into the slave trade. It has been a slow and difficult transition. Even today 70 percent of the population lives in poverty, life expectancy is 68 years, and 44 percent of the population is illiterate. It was much worse in 1960, when life expectancy was under 38 and the illiteracy rate was 66 percent.

 

In the 21^st century, Senegal’s legacy of colonialism has fostered resentment toward former masters. We can see the seeds of this in Black Girl. Again, though, part of the brilliance of Sembène’s film is that he shows how erstwhile masters inflicted damage upon themselves as well. We get a palpable sense of how the racist past entrapped Monsieur and Madam, so much so that we draw the conclusion that they left their better selves in Africa. The film’s coda-like second ending powerfully drives home the blindness of Western perspectives.

 

This is a must-see for film buffs. Even if you’re not one, watch Black Girl. It will make you understand what is meant when someone speaks of the cancerous effects of colonialism. Never assume that the past quietly retires to the south of France and simply fades away.

 

Rob Weir  

 

 

School for Scoundrels Dated and Not PC, but Holds Lessons

 

 

SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS  (1960)

Directed by Robert Hamer and Hal E. Chester

Warner-Pathé, 97 minutes, Unrated (sexism)

★★★

 

 

 

If you need a break from political correctness battles, try the 1960 version of School for Scoundrels. It was made before anyone imagined such a term. It’s of middling quality, but it is certainly miles better than the 2006 Todd Phillips box office turkey that posed as an adaptation.

 

Social norms have changed a lot in the past 60 plus years, but most people can still relate to the plight of its main character, Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael). His family owns the London business he heads, but Henry is a dorky milquetoast who gets little respect from the staff or anyone else. That includes Raymond Delauney (Terry-Thomas). Call it the toothy (Palfrey) versus the gap-toothed (Delauney). Henry doesn’t like Raymond very much, but the latter delights in hanging around with Henry because he's better at just about everything than his sad-sack acquaintance: tennis, smart dress, choice of cars, conversation, love…. When Henry manages to get a dinner date with the attractive April Smith (Janette Scott), Raymond steals his date from under his plate.  

 

Such failings are why Henry travels to Yeovil in Somerset to attend the School of Lifemanship. It’s really the film’s namesake, which theater fans might recognize as a riff on a famous comedy of manners penned by Sheridan in the 18^th century. The title is also commentary on a 1947 tongue-in-cheek book by Stephen Potter titled The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, which is why the film’s School of Lifemanship is headed by Dr. Potter (Alastair Sim). The gist is that students are schooled in the art of getting over on others via sleazy but not illegal ways. Tactics include making your opponent overthink situations, diverting his attention span, and suckering him into making intentional mistakes. In other words, be annoying but always one step ahead.

 

Henry learns his lessons well, perhaps too well. That is, under the guise of being outwardly a nice guy, Henry becomes a cad. Watch as Henry is first tricked into buying a belching, temperamental jalopy that only Rube Goldberg could love but uses Potter’s training to parlay it into advantage Palfrey. He becomes so supremely self-confident that he’s able to wreck Raymond’s tennis game, outwit Potter, and win April. In the film’s least PC moment, though one in keeping with the era’s paternalism, he deliberately spills a drink down April’s dress to get her out of her clothing and into his dressing gown. In film logic, his affected thoughtfulness causes April to fall for Henry.

 

I’ve probably made this sound more salacious than it is. School for Scandal is a 1960 British movie and back then, inuendo was okay but graphic depictions were still dicey. (In 1960, by the way, it wasn’t yet the norm for all Brits to own an automobile.) The situations in School for Scoundrels fall into the category of broad comedy, some of which is corny by today’s standards and others evocative of outmoded values. Its gentle ending, though, is an indication that fouls aside, no harm is done and goodness prevails. As noted, the parts that continue to resonate are age-old struggles to build confidence and the way that nice people are prey for the unscrupulous. Terry-Thomas was born to play scoundrels and is at the top of his obnoxious game in this movie.

 

Those familiar with the British Ealing comedies that proliferated between 1947-57 will recognize the similarities between its projects and School for Scoundrels. The latter was not made at Ealing Studios and isn’t as sharp script wise. That could be because its first director, Robert Hamer, was fired during production because of his heavy drinking and the reins were handed over to Hal E. Chester and Cyril Frankel. Frankel didn’t even get a credit, so one assumes he wasn’t entirely happy with the final product.

 

Even it’s not up to Ealing’s format in films such as King Hearts and Coronets or The Ladykillers, School for Scandal has its moments. You should watch it if, for no other reason, you’ll recognize gamesmanship tricks that persist despite social “progress.” Forewarned is forearmed.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Emily the Criminal Unjustly Overlooked

 

 

EMILY THE CRIMINAL (2022)

Directed by John Patton Ford

Roadside Attractions, 93 minutes, R (language, drugs, some violence)

★★★★

 

 

Audience scores for Emily the Criminal were so tepid that it barely recouped its $2 million budget. (If you don’t know, a budget that low is like buying gasoline for 30 cents a gallon.) I have to think that it simply wasn’t marketed very well, because it has a recognizable lead (Aubrey Plaza) and critics liked it. More to the point, it’s a really good film. Maybe the problem is that it was packaged a crime thriller. I can see that, but it’s really more of social commentary than a thriller.

 

Emily Benetto (Plaza) is a young woman failing to make a go of her life in the Los Angeles gig economy. She’s smart and smart alecky, but she’s burdened by crippling student debt and once got into a spot of trouble. Life on the margins + dead-end jobs + a criminal record = unemployable insofar as securing a decent-paying job goes. As her frustration grows, so too does her snarkiness and pessimism. It doesn’t help that her job with a catering service–Gina Gershon plays her boss–doesn’t exactly expose her to La-La Land’s most-polite citizens. And it really doesn’t help when someone she knows pulls strings to get Emily an interview with a magazine, which turns out to be a long unpaid internship that might turn into a paid position if she excels against other interns. She finds that insulting, says so in no uncertain terms, and storms out. (Anyone out there share her view and mine that unpaid internships are a violation of unfair labor practices laws?)

 

The crime part of the movie comes when she finds her way to Youcef Haddad (Theo Rossi) on a tip that he’s looking for someone to be a “dummy shopper.” If you’re thinking she’s helping others, think again. Emily’s obvious intelligence grabs Youcef’s attention in a roomful of other recruits, many of whom are probably undocumented immigrants. The operation is really a credit card scam. “Shoppers” are issued cards Youcef and his cousin Kahlil (Jonathan Agridori) make themselves and bear names and numbers gathered via identity theft. The job is to use the cards to buy high-ticket items and bring them to a predetermined location where they are loaded onto a truck that will take them to be fenced. Illegal? Of course, but $200 a day sounds good to Emily. If the system is going to treat her like garbage, why not get back at the metaphorical haulers?

 

Dangerous? Shoppers are told never to visit the same place over a period of time. It also helps to be issued a taser and receive directions on how to use it. She will have to do exactly that when she’s jumped while dog sitting for her friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke). Youcef plays both a love interest (of sorts) and the good guy role that’s juxtaposed against Kahlil’s surly cold-heartedness.

 

I won’t pretend that Emily the Criminal is the most original film you’ll ever see. Based on the above, you might be able to sketch out most of the directions the script takes. For the record, it also channels the Lawrence Kasdan-directed Body Heat (1981) at one point and this film is certainly not in the same quality category at that one. Nonetheless, Plaza is letter-perfect as a young woman pushed to the edge. She enhances the role by also playing the part physically. She’s clearly an attractive young woman but Plaza plays Emily as rough around the edges, the sort who embodies the phrase “she cleans up well.” In other words, she strikes a balance between downtrodden grit and affected poise, and walks the line between anger and hope.

 

Emily the Criminal did well at the Sundance Festival, so think of this one as one of those so-called “small” independent films whose lack of traction was due more to falling through the cracks rather than its merits. It also helps to muse upon its ironic title. If the proverbial “system” gives no breaks, who is the criminal in the title? Give it a try and decide for yourself.

 

Rob Weir

Everything Everywhere All at Once Worst Best Picture Ever

 

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

Directed by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

A24 Films, 132 minutes, R (language, gross-out humor, drug use, violence)

★

 

 

Oscar Best Picture winners are often mysterious. How did the Academy prefer My Fair Lady over Becket or Dr. Strangelove in 1964, or Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now in 1979? Sometimes the bar is dropped lower to honor such now embarrassing choices such as Rocky (1975), Terms of Endearment (1983), Forest Gump (1994), and Gladiator (2000), offerings that were little more than a decent way to while away a few hours.

 

This brings me to Everything Everywhere All at Once, which holds the dubious honor of being the worst choice ever made by the Academy. I hesitate even to call it a “movie;” it’s little more than a live-action video game as might have been developed by a novice gamer who lucked into a big budget.

 

Let’s get this out of the way. I like Michelle Yeoh a lot and it’s criminal she has had to play so many stereotypical roles. Still, I didn’t like her as a kung fu queen when she was 37 (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and I’m not buying it 23 years later. I also enjoy contemplating other dimensions and time periods in some movies–Donnie Darko, The Matrix, Source Code–and it would be hypocritical for me a Star Trek geek, to criticize science fiction. I even enjoy the Marvel universe in small doses, as in comic books and summer blockbusters.

 

Everything Everywhere doesn’t belong in the same category as any of the above. It has been variously labeled as "comedy drama," "sci-fi,” “fantasy,” “surrealism,” and “adventure.” Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is an older and overwhelmed laundromat owner about to be served divorce papers by her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). As if she needs more grief. She’s taking care of her demanding elderly father Gong Gong (James Hong), has an acrimonious relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hue) about to come out as a lesbian, hates customers like Big Nose,* and her business finances are such a mess that IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) threatens government seizure of her assets.

 

This alone is material for a good movie, but directors Kwan and Scheinert, who inexplicably won Best Director Oscars–mucked up matters with an absurd–as opposed to absurdist–foray into the multiverse. Yeah, yeah, I know this is oh-so-trendy these days. That also makes it overdone enough to invite comparisons. Evelyn is somehow the key to making sure that Jobu Tupaki (Hsu) doesn’t unleash a singularity that might (it’s unclear) destroy all things, including various other dimensions in which the major characters appear in radically different roles. She, akin to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey observations, is reluctant to take on the task. At the speed of a mouse click, she is shown alternative fates–opera singer, Deirdre’s hotdog-fingered lover, corpse, and Kung Fu mistress–at the speed of a mouse click. Some tempt her–shades of Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library–but her reluctance rises when she finds out that Joy is Jobu.

 

And now it’s time to ratchet the silliness quotient. How about another dimension where fingers are shaped like long, limp hotdogs? What if they turn into penises? How about bad guys who get energy to fight by lowering their pants to land upon phallic statues? Characters wear ear buds that activate dimensional shifts after the wearer swallows disgusting things and pushes a green button. (Repeat to supercharge powers as they wane.) Did I mention the Ratatouille spinoff involving a chef who hides his support/advisor raccoon under his toque blanche? Or that Yeoh and Curtis are rocks in one dimension? At some point the entire tenor of the movie changes and green buttons become “Google eyes” as the plot plods toward a Hallmark ending. And, yes, the singularity is actually a giant black bagel with everything? (Get it?)

 

Has American discourse degenerated to such depths that critics can actually say this movie probes issues of nihilism versus existentialism? Let’s be frank. This should be a summer movie that you attend with a few friends. Afterward the debate is between, “What was that mess?” versus “I dunno, I kind of liked it.” All I can think is that it must have looked a whole lot better on a smartphone screen. If this is what we can expect from the “new” Academy–lots of Millennials I gather–you can safely skip the Oscars from now on.

 

Rob Weir

 

* If you saw the film in a theater, “Big Nose” (Jenny Slate) was changed to “Debbie the Dog Mom,” after complaints that Slate’s character stereotyped Jews. It does, but the Academy overlooked that as well.

Lapvona: Brilliant or Distressing?

 

LAPVONA (2022)

By Ottessa Moshfegh

Penguin, 304 pages

★★★★

 

 

Lapvona, the fourth novel of Boston-born novelist Ottessa Moshfegh, is a strange book. Moshfegh has an unapologetic taste for the macabre and unsavory, which means readers will be either thrilled or unnerved.

 

Lapvona references a small fiefdom whose outward setting is medieval, perhaps during the tail end of the Black Death. It’s also, though, a satirical allegory of capitalism and the ways in which corruption and community collide. Moshfegh is on record as saying if the book has a moral, it’s a rejection of the ancient Roman notion that human fate is controlled by Fortuna, the goddess of luck. In her worldview, belief in random fate is a convenient cover for conscious choice.

 

Moshfegh is a skilled stylist, but this doesn’t make her plotlines easy to decipher. She blends plausibility with elements suggestive of magical realism and delves into themes of superstition, dreaming, bewitching, and cannabis use. Lapvona also makes use of extended metaphors of sight versus blindness and the thinness of barriers between life and death and the natural and spirit worlds.

 

Marek is the centerpiece of the novel. He is the son of Jude, the village shepherd, who has mixed feelings about the physically deformed Marek. His ugliness is remarked upon by villagers–until it’s not. His lambs are Jude’s biggest love since his wife disappeared; he is deeply anguished whenever he must sell some of them for meat to mysterious Northerners.

 

Lapvona is controlled by Villiam, a local lord, who is vain, profligate, clueless, and corrupt. His son Jacob is Marek’s opposite: handsome, immaculate in dress, and well-educated. Marek and Jacob are also related despite their social gulf. Villiam really cares only for himself, so when Marek kills (accidently or not!) Jacob, Villiam simply takes Marek as his son. Other major characters include Villiam’s wife Dibra and her horseman lover Luka; Lispeth, who was betrothed to Jacob and becomes Marek’s resentful serving girl; Father Barnabas, a faithless priest interested in luxury and power; Agata, Jude’s ex-wife who reappears after 13 years; and Grigor, a peasant with contempt for the rich. Bandits also play a role, though they are undefined and may actually be in cahoots with Villiam. Finally, there is Ina, a blind old woman (witch?) who has never been pregnant yet has been a wet nurse for decades.

 

Like Monty Python’s Camelot, Lapvona is a land in which the powerful enjoy the fruits of life and the peasants stink from sweat and layers of various varieties of excrement. The book is arranged calendrically, from spring to spring. The first spring finds the land verdant, Jude cuddling his lambs, and Jude’s relief to be rid of Marek.

 

 

 

Summer invites Covid comparisons. A horrible drought parches the land and brings starvation, raids, decimation of pets and livestock, villagers reduced to eating mud, and cannibalism. Dibra and Luka exit, and Ina ends up with the eyes of a horse that restores her vision and causes her to reverse aging. Of course, not everyone starves; Villiam, Barnabas, and Marek eat very well, the later transforming himself into a little tyrant in his own right. (And suddenly no one comments publicly on his deformity!) 

 

Fall sees the return of rain and the impact of Agata’s return. She has been a servant in a nunnery and is now tongueless and pregnant. When she is examined and declared a virgin–she’s assuredly not–Villiam marries her in the superstitious belief that she is bearing the new Christ child and he will become the new Joseph. All that’s crystal clear is that neither Agata nor Jude want anything to do with Marek.

 

Winter sees Marek’s descent into alcoholism, the death of Villiam, the demise of Father Barnabas demise, and the dismantling of the church. The new spring finds Ina increasingly youthful and Marek the lord of the manor, but you should not anticipate happily-ever-after in a book such as this. The ending is ambiguous, but might be the most horrifying thing in the book.

 

Lest you think I’ve given away too much, know that the plot is window dressing for the aforementioned themes that run throughout the book. In other words, it’s the context, more than the narrative, that makes Lavona tick. Moshfegh has both admirers and those who find her work repulsive. I can only assure you Lavona is not cut from threadbare cloth and that you will contemplate the meaning of its cover art.

 

Rob Weir

Banshees of Inisherin: The True Best Picture

 

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022)

Directed and written by Martin McDonagh

Searchlight Pictures, 114 minutes, R (language, violence, brief nudity)

★★★★★

 

 

The Banshees of Inisherin was easily the class of all Oscar-nominated films for Best Picture. It didn’t win any Oscars, but it’s often the case that the Academy fails to honor quality.

 

The Banshees of Inisherin is Irish, stylish, and quiet, even when violent. Call it the kind of film even the reconstituted Academy deems too “European,” whatever that might mean. It is set in 1923 during the Irish Civil War. In brief, today’s Republic of Ireland won a measure of independence from Great Britain in 1921, but aspects of the peace treaty led the Irish to turn on each other. Especially vexsome for the Catholic south was that six Protestant counties that now make up Northern Ireland remained part of Britain.  

 

Other than distant rumbling and artillery flashes on the horizon, the Civil War had little impact on Inisherin. The movie was shot in the Aran Isles off the coast of Galway, though director Martin McDonagh took steps to disguise that. The cinematography is spectacular, but Inisherin is fictional–it translates as “island of Ireland”–because McDonagh’s wished to depict its insularity, not situate it within any broader upheaval. His tale is deeply individualized and psychological, not political. 

 

Inisherin is ruled by patterns. Grasp that, or you’ll not understand how a small spat upends the social balance. Padráic Súilleabhin (Colin Ferrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) customarily meet at a set time to share pints and small talk at the local pub, the village’s only real focal point. One day Colm informs Padráic that he doesn’t want to talk to him again, his explanation being that Padráic is “dull” and too “nice,” and he’d rather devote himself to his music. This strikes Padráic as unsatisfying; everyone in Inisherin is so dull that it’s as if collective depression rolled in with the morning tide. Only the global folk art inside Colm’s house hints of intrusions from the outside world.

 

Padráic has no other friends aside from his live-in sister Siobhán, and his donkey Jenny. The very thought of being abandoned by Colm throws Padráic into a petulant existential crisis. The more he pesters Colm, though, the deeper his resolve to be left alone grows until he, the village’s premier fiddle player, tells Padráic that he will cut off one of his own fingers each time Padráic speaks to him. Alas, Padráic is too despondent to stay silent even after Colm flings the pinky of his fiddle hand at Padráic’s door. And so it goes, though everyone in the village tries to warn Padráic to back off.  

 

The gruesome, symbolic shedding of blood also severs other frayed village norms. With exception of the local publican, everyone in Inisherin is so frozen in place that they echo each other’s remarks. We witness subplots involving Dominic Kearney (Barry Keoghan), a cleanliness-challenged youth who functions as the village “eejit,” though there’s a later revelation involving his swaggering father Peadar (Gary Lydon), a brutal local Garda (policeman). Poor Dominic is so damaged that he dares wonder if Siobhán would be his girlfriend. She too is at wit’s end and applies for a library job on the mainland. Even the local priest is disengaged and operating on autopilot. Stasis is so pervasive that when Padráic loses his temper and announces he’s tired of being nice, Colm announces that Padráic hasn’t been that interesting in years. By then, though, the damage has been done and there’s no turning back.

 

“The Banshees of Inisherin” is the name of the fiddle piece Colm is writing before he loses his digits, so we never actually hear the film’s namesake tune. The overall score by Carter Burwell really enhances the film, but know that in Irish folklore banshees are ominous female spirits that portend death. McDonagh has claimed there are no banshees in the film, but I suspect he was having a joke on reviewers, as Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton) meets all bansee criteria and locals go out of their way to avoid her. Banshees is a film in which metaphors abound and the borders blur between myth and reality. Failure to get that lies behind the complaint of several Irish critics who charged that McDonagh dealt in stereotypes. My advice to them is: Don’t be so bloody literal! The Banshees of Inisherin is unsettling, but take the preceding advice and marvel at this small pot of gold.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do Liberals Feed the Right?

 

Liberal Fallacies

 

 

 

Democracy is imperiled. It saddens me to say it, but liberals are complicit in digging its grave. Too often they are as contemptuous of freedom as the hard right. Some examples:

 

·      The Easthampton school board rescinded its superintendency offer to Vito Perrone because he used the term “ladies” in an email. A woman on the board charged him with a “microaggression,” though how she could infer that from an email is mysterious. (Do I smell sour grapes over the original 4-3 vote?)  Fox News lampooned this and for once its judgment was fair and balanced.

 

·      Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist who infuriates me more than he enlightens, recently argued that working-class voters have left the Democratic Party because it long ago left them. As a labor historian, I’d say there is considerable evidence to that charge.

 

·      College presidents have been attacked for uttering “All lives matter.” One might think that would be a given but in twisted reasoning, only “black lives matter” is politically correct. Red-meat neo-cons counter that such a restrictive position insults the 86 percent that are not black.

 

·      Higher ed is embroiled in disputes over pronouns and (sigh!) microaggressions. Matters have gotten so heated that they are easy pickings for those who coined the term “snowflake.”

           

·      Cancel culture advocates topple monuments and question why they should have to study anything or anybody they find irredeemable. Congratulations! You’ve just ceded the high ground to those who would return us to Thomas Carlyle’s Great Man Theory of history.

 

Democracy and free speech are inextricably linked. As Noam Chomsky noted, unless you affirm the right of someone to say things that you find abhorrent, you do not support free speech. Utterances can be unsettling, but there’s not an iota of difference between banning words and banning books. It is certainly not free speech to declare microaggressions when someone says something that upsets you.

 

I appreciate the fatigue involved for those tasked with constantly explaining their viewpoints, but liberals need to think about framing. Motives they think are pure and clear often sound like special privileges to those carrying their own burdens. When, for example, wage earners feel imperiled and ignored, they listen when the right screams, “special interest groups!” And you can bet they won’t care about anyone’s pronouns. Unless you welcome a war of all against all, messages and policies must be shaped as if all lives–black, brown, red, white, yellow–matter. You’re not “woke” if you don’t get that.

 

Cancel culture is good at anger, but sucks at analysis. In most* cases the rational course is to use controversial ideas, events, people, and things to educate. If that doesn’t persuade, learn from recent history.** Why would anyone assume that weaponized left-leaning ideals will prevail? Prep the soil for the return of Trump or a Trump Lite and you can wave a surrender flag. 

 

There is a world of difference between content and context. Perrone’s intention was politeness. Language evolves so fast that few can keep up. A friend recently pointed out that the term “grooming” is now problematic. I was grateful, as I had no idea; it’s printed on the side of my beard trimmer!

 

It's a good idea to clean your own house before castigating others. I never use certain words, but I have to say that mostly I hear the B-or S-words applied to women from the lips of other women. Black hip hop artists routinely used the N-word. Some claim such words are okay as in-group lingo. Really? I always thought one was supposed to model behavior you’d like others to emulate.

 

Finally, can we learn to distinguish bad actors from those who are mistake-prone and imperfect? (Read: All of humankind.) There’s a recall campaign in Easthampton. I hope it succeeds. A board member that lacks the wisdom to distinguish intention from a benign word, tried to drag another into the debate without her permission, and introduced new complaints after she was called out, has no business making decisions for our oh-so-imperfect commodity: young people.

 

* Reason must prevail. For instance, no person of color should have to pass a monument to a KKK advocate when voting.

 

**Ask Mainers what happened to a Frances Perkins mural under Paul LePage, or someone from Richmond who recalls when an Abraham Lincoln statue was routinely defaced.