Fictional rapist sparks row on author responsibility
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THE NEXT CHAPTER
...what's coming up in hip hop activism
By Damien Jackson
If rap is to stand as not only the most significant cultural movement
of our time but one of historys most salient (and I believe it will)
hip hop generationers both inside and outside of the rap music industry
must rise to the challenge. All the components for a mass political movement
in our lifetime are in place and functioning but separate. Do we
dare join them together?
Hearing his own words read aloud, Bakari Kitwana flashes a brilliant smile
that momentarily belies his bespectacled, professorial visage. Those
are the final lines from the last chapter, acknowledges Kitwana,
author of the briskly-selling The Hip Hop Generation and a former
political editor for hip hop magazine, The Source. On break from speaking
engagements, the 36-year-old writer sits at a table with folded hands
in a room at Chicagos Third World Press, where he once worked.
Kitwanas eyes narrow. We have a good deal of local activism
going on around the country, he says, noting an emerging group
of moneyed athletes, political figures and entertainers partial to hip
hop culture exemplified by such individuals as NBA star Allen Iversen,
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and producer/artist Sean P. Diddy
Combs who could serve as a financial influence by contributing
to political campaigns in much the same way that the Hollywood industry
has been effective in years past. Unfortunately for now, says Kitwana,
these components are all separate.
Kitwanas invitation to Americas black youth his generation
roughly refers to those born between 1965 and 1984, inside and outside
of the hip hop industry effectively sets the tone for the next
chapter in hip hop activism. Its a chapter already being written.
In New York, a media boycott labeled the Turn Off the Radio
campaign is underway. Chuck D of Public Enemy, rap duo Dead Prez and the
New York-based National Leadership Alliance have joined with several artists
and community leaders to target media entities that allegedly disparage
blacks. Each Thursday, for a 12-hour block, participants refrain from
listening to radio and TV stations that broadcast a disproportionate share
of offensive material.
Also in New York, top artists gathered at a Hip Hop State of Emergency
forum to address negative media portrayals and draw attention to an increase
in FBI surveillance measures and police investigations of artists. (For
more on this, see Salim Muwakkils Hip Hop Hysteria in
the Jan. 20 issue of In These Times, and The Source magazines March
issue titled Hip Hop Under Attack.)
In Californias Bay Area, radio station KMEL-FM a former local
vehicle gobbled up by the massive Clear Channel Communications network
found itself the target of a recent study conducted by the Youth
Media Council, a group promoting accountability in media. According to
the study, which monitored three weeks of programming at the station,
KMELs non-music content was dominated by crime, drugs and violence
that blamed youths while locking local youth leaders and their perspectives
out. Talks between the station and the Community Coalition for Media Accountability
a larger group that includes the Youth Media Council are
ongoing. Folks usually dont relate to hip hop as a medium
for challenging media, says Malkia Cyril, the Councils director.
But I think weve played a significant role in instituting
this practice.
Theres been a proliferation of college forums discussing the intersection
of hip hop and activism, including the recent week-long Global Flows
conference at Duke University, which brought together such figures as
Davey D, a DJ and journalist, and Minister Paul Scott, an outspoken critic
of the violence, materialism and misogyny in commercial hip hop. In March,
the Bay Area was the setting for Constant Elevation, a forum
devoted to aligning hip hop activists and causes with potential philanthropic
supporters. One of the more established forums includes the annual Hip
Hop as a Movement Conference held last month at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison.
In Philadelphia, 30-year-old Will Mega a local activist and a former
member of the New Black Panther Party who, four years ago, made national
news as a contestant on the reality show Big Brother
is attempting to galvanize that citys hip hop generation around
his bid for a seat on the city council.
A number of national speaking tours are underway as well, including the
Speak Truth to Power Tour, which touts such figures as rap
artist Boots Riley of The Coup and writer and radio personality Rosa Clemente.
The tour is addressing issues ranging from the war on terror
to reparations for slavery.
During the conflict with Iraq, anti-war sentiment was plentiful, although
the mainstream media steered clear of the numerous anti-war songs, poems,
concerts and messages of such artists as Mos Def, Saul Williams, Michael
Franti, Paris and KRS One.
Historically, all movements have developed from the youth,
says T.J. Crawford, head of the Chicago Hip Hop Political Action Committee
and city manager of Rolling Out UrbanStyle Weekly, an African-American
magazine serving 19 cities across the nation. Nowadays, hip hop
is the culture were celebrating, so it naturally becomes the latest
vehicle for youth empowerment.
It was mostly young people that made up the civil rights movement,
agrees Clemente, who promotes hip hop culture as a tool of resistance.
The New York-based activist devised the Speak Truth to Power Tour
as a vehicle for young voices of color to oppose war, highlight the plight
of domestic political prisoners, and promote self-determination.
But as Clemente and Crawford both know, mass movements also have historically
developed out of an emerging collective consciousness. The question for
the hip hop generation is whether it has attained a level of consciousness
that will demand and facilitate economic and political empowerment on
a national level. I think the key thing to remember when it comes
to politicizing the hip hop generation, is that this generation, by nature,
is already political, says Kitwana. Theyve been politicized
by the public policies of the 80s and 90s. You dont
have to tell a hip hop kid that police brutality is an issue when hes
probably gotten knocked upside the head by a cop before.
Activism is why hip hop came about, says Davey D. For the
past eight years, the Oakland-based DJ has operated one of the largest
web sites on hip hop and politics in the nation, Davey Ds Hip Hop
Corner (www.daveyd.com). He explains that the culture was a reaction
to the economic and social conditions of the 70s, and that
many of its pioneers had an activist mindset. He cites the
example of legendary artist Afrika Bambaataa, who used hip hop culture
as a way of stemming gang violence in his Bronx neighborhood.
For almost three decades, hip hoppers have steered attention and money
to causes both local and national. While local efforts like Bambaataas
anti-gang violence mission, and even the much-maligned MC Hammers
work with finding jobs for ex-inmates have often flown under the
radar, several national efforts have received significant press.
Rush Communications CEO and hip hop mogul Russell Simmons convened Rap
the Vote 2000, an initiative geared at increasing the electoral participation
and civic activism of the hip hop community. Though poorly planned and
less than successful, it did not deter Simmons newfound penchant
for politics. In 2001, he brought together rap artists, music executives
and a host of community leaders, activists and political figures for a
hip hop summit in New York City. From this forum emerged the Hip Hop Summit
Action Network (HSAN) which immediately gained prominence by joining with
the United Federation of Teachers and the Alliance for Quality Education
to protest proposed cuts to the citys education budget. A number
of prominent artists including P. Diddy, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, Chuck D and
Alicia Keys took to the streets with more than 100,000 students, parents
and teachers to successfully oppose $1.2 billion in cuts to an already
inadequate schools budget.
In February, Simmons and HSAN officially joined the anti-war movement
by throwing its support behind Musicians United To Win Without War, an
all-star segment of the national Win Without War coalition. And in April,
HSAN and the NAACP drew 15,000 people to Detroit to take part in a hip
hop summit that pledged to register 20 million new voters over the next
five years.
Combined with steadily-increasing youth activism in communities across
the country, these notable developments have further fed awareness of
and among the hip hop generation.
Groups like Black August Hip Hop Collective, the Third Eye Movement and
LISTEN are tackling an array of issues like the prison-industrial complex,
police brutality, and the erosion of civil liberties. Multi-issue activists
like Tamara Jones organize youth in several cities and through a number
of organizations around AIDS awareness, police brutality and gay and lesbian
rights. In Kitwanas The Hip Hop Generation, Jones challenges
single-minded, sexist and homophobic representations in hip hop and its
corresponding politics by emphasizing that many in the post-civil
rights era recognize the limits of a race-only politics and realize that
we cant talk about black liberation without race, class, gender,
sexual identity or immigrant issues.
Given this active environment, it appears to be a ripe time for this generation
to rise to the national challenge. But for Davey D, the challenge is not
necessarily to organize on a national level, but to remain active locally
while communicating these efforts to counterparts in other regions. All
hip hop is local, he says. Each community has its own collective
psychology.
While agreeing that links between local communities need to increase,
Kitwana sees it differently. Because we live in this high-tech information
age, what is considered to be the public square has changed. He
identifies this square as the means by which information gets communicated
and becomes a part of national culture, while clarifying that
unlike the previous role of local black churches and other civil rights-era
institutions culture is now transmitted through media. If
a hip hop political movement remains local, its not going to have
the same effect. Kitwana insists that further activism is spurred
when people feel they are part of something larger. If its
seen as a national movement, the possibilities for change are endless.
T.J. Crawford gives merit to both views. Across the country, we
are struggling with a lot of the same issues, he says. But
the only way we can connect these efforts nationally is through the strength
of our local communities. You cant put out a national call without
having firm local foundations that allow for the call to be heard and
the effort sustained.
But whether local or national, Kitwana, Crawford and Davey D all agree
that empowering the hip hop generation is a necessary and ongoing chapter
in a story far from finished. We are living in an exciting and historical
moment, says Rosa Clemente. Our children will judge us by
how we partake in it.
Source: In These Times
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Fictional rapist sparks row on author responsibility
By Tito Drago
Madrid, Spain, June 7 (IPS) The book Todas Putas
(All Whores) has created a storm of debate on feminism and on the
responsibilities of creators of fiction, drawing into the melee matters
of discrimination against women, abuse, rape and pedophilia.
The author of Todas Putas, Hernán Migoya, internationally famed
filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, and other artists reject the notion
that authors should be held responsible for what they have their characters
do or say in their stories, novels, or films.
But womens groups and the two leading parties of the political opposition,
the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the United Left (IU), demanded
and won the removal of Todas Putas from bookshop shelves.
They are also seeking the resignation of Miriam Tey, director of the governmental
Womens Institute and co-owner of the books publisher, El Cobre.
Migoya came under fire for two of his books 15 short stories, titled
El Violador (The Rapist) and Porno del Bueno (The Good Porno).
Almodóvar was also the target of criticism because, according to
a study published by the psychology department of Ramón Llul University
in Barcelona, drug consumption is portrayed in 14 percent of screen-time
of his overall film production.
Migoyas El Violador is written in first person and begins:
Now that all blacks are good and all gays are very nice guys, lets
see if society gets together and decides once and for all that we rapists
are not all bad people.
After recounting some personal stories, the character says, It will
always be better to rape a woman and let her live than not to rape her
and but kill her.
I wouldnt be capable of killing a woman. I wouldnt have
the stomach for it. But rape them, I assure you that it causes me no remorse.
In the other controversial story by Migoya a man picks up his daughter
from school, rapes her and, through tears, tells her: Dont
tell Mommy, honey.
Gloria Escudero, president of the Aid Association for Sexual Assault Victims,
says, It is reprehensible that a justification is being made against
the human rights of women and children. The author confuses open and consensual
sexuality with violence, which constitutes an attack against sexual freedom.
The Womens Council of Madrid, which comprises 84 feminist groups,
and the Network of Feminist Organizations against Gender Violence say
Migoyas book constitutes a defense of the crimes it portrays. As
such, they are calling for the resignations of publisher Tey and of Labor
Minister Eduardo Zaplana.
The demand that Tey step down came in spite of the fact that the book
was published before Mar. 13, when she took over the public post as director
of the Womens Institute, an agency of the Labor Ministry.
The president of the Association of Progressive Women, Enriqueta Chicano,
also a feminist and PSOE member, joined the protests saying that the
content of the book is absolutely unacceptable and an offense against
all defendable values, given that it is a clear justification of rape.
When asked to what extent he thinks like the protagonist in El Violador,
Migoya responds, not at all. He stresses that nobody
is interested in what I think. The story is fiction and if I had wanted
to defend rape I would have written and signed a manifesto.
Furthermore, the author does acknowledge that the story is a justification
for rape, but only from the point of view of the protagonist, who
fortunately is not me.
Migoya says that the entire book is about the monsters that all humans
have inside and, for precisely this reason, is a manner of condemning
such moral aberrations.
He also claims he is more feminist than many feminists, and
underlined that his goal in writing Todas Putas was to pull out
all the crap involved in untouchable issues and allow people to laugh
at themselves and to discover the hypocrisy that we all carry inside.
A group of literati, including two members of the Spanish
Royal Academy (of language), Antonio Muñoz Molina and Pere Gimferrer,
publicly rejected the notion that Migoyas book is a defense of any
kind of violence and described the controversy surrounding it as artificial.
Predicting that the outcry against the book is the seed of a witch-hunt
in the most purely fascist style, in a communiqué the group
announced that it would uphold freedom of expression and of the
dissemination of creative works.
A leading personality from Spains publishing world, José
Manuel Lara Bosch, head of Grupo Planeta, one of the most powerful publishing
houses in the Spanish language, said, even if they are scandalous,
it is always good that books are published so that there is talk about
these issues.
If an editor removes what he doesnt like from the books he
edits, that is censorship, and that is not the editors job,
added Lara Bosch.
A Barcelona-based organization of young writers and journalists, La Gancho
Divine, expressed solidarity with Migoya and Tey, saying that the author
has sought to stir up moral indignation and civic responsibility
against those who in reality act like his much-criticized characters.
Almodóvar, after learning of the report on drug use in his films,
wrote in the Spanish daily El Mundo that he felt the same Kafkian
sensation, a mix of fear, disgust, stupor, fury and indignation as in
1991 when the US censors categorized as pornographic Atame (Tie Me
Up, Tie Me Down the film that launched him to international
fame).
According to the filmmaker, the fact that this would occur in Spain
in 2003 does nothing but aggravate the situation.
He noted, If in the films by US director Martin Scorsese one takes
into account that more than 60 percent of his characters are gangsters
or criminals, possess weapons and use them, we would have to denounce
him as a member of organized crime.
The author should not judge his characters, but rather understand
them, as monstrous as they might be, and show their humanity and complexity,
creating them in complete liberty, states Almodóvar.
In reactions to the book appearing on the El Mundo website, one reader
asks with irony, Have you tried reading (Marquis de) Sade, (Francisco)
Quevedo, Dostoyevski, Céline? We should ban them too, no?
Those caught up in the controversy surrounding Todas Putas have not reached
an agreement as to whether or not the book is misogynist or whether or
not it was correct to withdraw it from the market.
But everyone, including the author and Tey, agree in condemning all types
of gender discrimination, and particularly rape and other sex crimes.
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