So, people went nuts today online about the new Brad Paisley/LL Cool J collaboration “Accidental Racist.” I was flying and didn’t get to listen to it until quite late in the day. I hadn’t intended on commenting, but now I have to.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of the song, both for its social commentary and for its creative qualities, but I’d like to focus in on what the song is really saying at its heart.

It portrays white Brad Paisley walking into a Starbucks and then apologizing to the barista (not sure if he’s meant to be black) because the Confederate flag on his Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt suggest that its wearer might be racist.

This is the “accidental racism” of the song. “i wear the Confederate flag to express Southern pride,” some say, “not to be racist.”

And if that was that, we might have a different discussion about the agreement of the meaning of symbols. But the song goes on.

The singer is a “proud rebel son” and a white man who is proud of where he’s from. I find it very difficult to interpret that phrase “proud rebel son” as being anything other than an expression of support for the Confederacy. What other rebellion are you the son of?

Then the song gets into the wishy-washy expression of blamelessness. We can’t rewrite history. What’s done is done. “Our generation didn’t start this nation,” but we’re “walking over eggshells,” which sounds a lot like tiptoeing around political correctness.

Historians will surely enjoy the description of the Reconstruction as a period where the nation “fixed the buildings, dried some tears.” I’m not even going to tear into that one.

Because the really great part comes when LL Cool J comes in. Let’s face it. If you’re white country singer Brad Paisley and you want to delve into race relations, you’re better off having a very urban black guy on your side to testify to your good intentions.

But what LL suggests is that both sides are indulging in the same stereotyping. Southern white folks are looking at black folks’ gold chains and do-rags and drawing wrong conclusions. If they stop doing that, then black folks will overlook the iron chains of slavery and the symbolism of the Confederate flag.

Look at stop-and-frisk in New York City. Stereotyping against African Americans has lead to actual harm. Prison, difficulty in getting mortgages, employment. LL judging you by your white cowboy hat leads to… what? Hurt feelings?

LL Cool J almost apologizes for the destruction of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea. There you go. He apologized for the wrong done to the South. Racism solved!

The Antebellum South was a society whose economy was based on the inhuman subjugation of black human beings. They fought in armed rebellion to preserve that system. The Confederate flag is a symbol of that revolt. You can choose to see the flag as something else, but that’s literally what it is.

You might call the invasion of Iraq a “mistake.” (I might argue with you.) You might call the Japanese American internment in War Relocation Camps during the Forties a mistake. I’m not sure you can casually brush off two-and-a-half centuries of slavery as a “mistake.”

The whole song is a perfect distillation of the notion that racism happened a long time ago, so we should all just forget about it and move on. I’m just a white man and I’m proud of where I came and don’t you think there’s been misjudgments on both sides?

Bygones.

At the same time, it’s also one of his most controversial works, as it focuses on slavery in the Antebellum South. It’s received some very fair criticism about how accurately it portrays its era (the film is set two years before the Civil War began — a time when dynamite, shown in the film, had not yet been invented).

Even so, with all the criticism and analysis of Django Unchained for what it says about the realities of slavery, when I saw it, I was not surprised to discover that it says nothing of importance about that topic at all. Much like Inglourious Basterds (and, for that matter, Kill Bill), Django is a movie about movies – films like Mandingo, Django (the original 1966 Italian-made Western), Nevada Smith, The Legend of Nigger Charley, The Birth of a Nation.

This makes sense. Tarantino is a white guy and a film buff, so it makes sense that his movie is primarily about those two points-of-view.

A Movie About Movies

From his very first movie, Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has primarily made movies about movies — meta-cinema, if you will. It’s mostly tropes and stock characters, never grounded in real life. (The single possible exception is Jackie Brown, which is also Tarantino’s only adaptation and his most mature work. Make of that what you will.)

I’m not arguing against this approach, as I love his movies. There was a famous video from Mike White, in which White goes on at great length to demonstrate how Reservoir Dogs took much of its content straight from the 1987 Hong Kong action film City on Fire. I think the only thing that even made this a story is that Tarantino denied it. Otherwise, the charge is immaterial, because even with all the similarities, the two movies are completely different in execution and effect.

However, there are consequences to this approach. When you borrow from a movie, you’re typically recontextualizing elements, which necessarily means you’re removing them from their original context. When Tarantino is mimicking spaghetti westerns in Django Unchained, like those of Sergio Corbucci, he’s portraying a violent landscape that was initially created by people who had emerged from Mussolini’s fascism. It’s second-hand politics.

Similarly, Tarantino has described how the plantation Candyland is meant to evoke a kingdom, with DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie as an evil king, Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda as the kidnapped princess and Sam Jackson’s Stephen in the Basil Rathbone role as the wicked aide to the king. Knowing that this is how Tarantino views the metaphor, it seems silly to focus how accurate a portrayal Stephen is of house slaves in real life.

Most mainstream movies bear little resemblance to reality. It’s mostly fairytales and wish fulfillment. At the same time, they’re very meaningful to us in our actual lives. That’s because they function as myths that give meaning to day-to-day existence.

(As Richard Slotkin writes in his book Gunfighter Nation, “When history is translated into myth, the complexities of social and historical experiences are simplified and compressed into the action of representative individuals or ‘heroes.’ The hero’s inner life… reduces to personal motive the complex and contradictory mixture of ideological imperatives that shape a society’s response to a crucial event.”)

Tarantino says he was partly inspired for Django Unchained by a critique he’d written of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith’s movie was a false portrayal of historical events, as an attempt to write a mythic version of the Old South. Tarantino is countering nonsense with nonsense, creating a countermyth, made up of other myths (the cowboy, the victim seeking revenge).

(Ta-Nehisi Coates argues this approach is flawed and unhelpful.)

Another thing about the movies-about-movies framing is the difficulty movies have always had of addressing historical events from a modern perspective. For example, there is a key question contemporary people ask of oppressed people from the past, which is to wonder that no one resisted or rose up. And so we get movies like Defiance, about the Jews that fought back.

But this is a double-edged sword. Don’t show resistance, and the uninformed may feel that the victims deserved or wanted their punishment. Show resistance and you create the impression that the real-life victims should have fought back as well.

All through Django Unchained, we have other slaves who seem to accept their fate or at least don’t fight back. Django is referred to as a “one-in-ten-thousand” person. But individualism and exceptionalism are extremely common in movies. Films rarely show group resistance to injustice; they’re all about the lone hero.

But here’s where we get to the other thing Tarantino does in this movie.

The Illogical Nature of Racism

Race is a construct. It doesn’t actually exist. So, it’s especially mind-blowing to look back at the lengths that the white majority went to in order to justify racism.

One can imagine a racist stating his credo: “I’m white and I hate black people.” In the Antebellum South, it wasn’t mindless racism (racism born of inborn hatred), but an entire economic system based on the subjugation of others. And we can’t talk about that, so people went to great lengths to show how science proved that whites were superior to blacks.

In Django Unchained, Tarantino does an interesting thing, maybe the only intellectually interesting thing in the movie. Plantation owner Calvin Candie has a monologue about the nature of black slaves where he asks, “Why didn’t they kill us?” The question hangs in the air, as Django responds with silence. Then, Candie saws open the skull of Ben, a long-dead slave, and starts pointing out “three distinct dimples” that he says reside in the area of the skull most associated with civility. He refers to Ben, who tended to him as a child, as someone “unburdened by genius.” Candie uses phrenology to explain Ben’s subservience.

In an earlier scene, bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz and Django (masquerading as his valet) travel to the plantation run by Spencer “Big Daddy” Bennett. Schultz insists that Django, as a freed man and his personal valet, must be treated as an extension of Schultz by Big Daddy’s people. The order is given, but the slave it is given to is confused. Does that mean Django is to be treated as a white person? A conundrum ensues. Southern hospitality means they must be courteous to a guest, but Southern tradition means that a black person must never be treated as an equal. The solution is that Django is to be treated at the level of the handyman who comes to do repairs.

In a later scene, Tarantino has a comic routine reminiscent of Blazing Saddles, wherein a group of Regulators (precursors to the Klan) bicker about the holes in their “hoods.” Tarantino is flat-out mocking racists here.

It brings to mind a scene from Inglourious Basterds, as some Nazis are playing a game that requires them to identify a person. One participant figures out that he’s trying to guess the identity of someone who was a jungle native who ended up going to America on a journey that was not fortuitous, bound in chains and displayed in chains. “Am I the story of the Negro in America?” the Nazi finally guesses. He is not. “Well, then I’m obviously King Kong.” There are two jokes here, one about racism and one about movies.

A Few Thoughts on the Characters

Django does have his own evolution, his character arc from slave to badass action hero, but it’s Dr. King Schultz who goes through the biggest change. He’s an outsider, a stranger in a strange land. He’s German, but also intelligent. “I wish to parley,” he says to the Speck Brothers and gets the barked response, “Speak English!”

Schultz doesn’t like slavery, but he seems to view it from a superior position, as a barbaric practice of crude Americans. He doesn’t feel it personally as the evil it is.

He becomes intrigued by Django as a Siegfried figure, rescuing his  Brünnhilde, and shifts from bounty hunter (profit-motive) to hero. In the course of the quest, he comes into contact with Calvin Candie and the ugly realities of slavery. (In point of fact. Candyland is not accurate. There was no such thing as Mandingo fighting, which was invented for the 1957 novel Mandingo. Slaves were much too valuable a commodity to fight them to the death.) But the brutality is real. Slaves were treated in inhuman ways.

Schultz, whose main weapons are clever speech and subterfuge, begins to be shaken by what he sees. It gets worse when he sees the slave D’Artagnan torn apart by dogs. And the end of the quest, Schultz and Django barely manage to negotiate the release of Hildy. But Schultz can’t stop brooding over the situation. He pokes at Candie, telling the Francophile that Alexandre Dumas would not approve, not because he was French, but because the author was black, the grandson of a French nobleman and a slave.

Candie rises to the bait and then insists that Schultz must seal the deal with a handshake. All Schultz must do in order to walk away, is treat Candie like a gentleman of honor and shake his hand. And he can’t do it. He knows it seals his doom, and endangers Django and Hildy, but as he says, he can’t help himself. He won’t give Candie that small measure of respect.

I must say a final word about the character of Stephen. There is understandably the most controversy about this character of the house slave, overseeing other slaves and acting in cooperation with the master. As Jelani Cobb put it in the New Yorker, “The central conflict is not between an ex-slave and a slaver but between two archetypes—the militant and the sellout.” Cobb describes Jackson’s performance as deploying “overblown insouciance and anachronistic mf-bombs to great comedic effect,” and concludes “…this is an instance in which a white director holds an obsequious black slave up for ridicule.”

However problematic the character is, it seems a complete misreading to see Stephen as buffoonish and not serious. Stephen is the only one who sees through Schultz’s scheme. He cuts a comic figure in front of white folks, but when he summons Calvin Candie to the library, he’s all business. The bowing and scraping disappear and Stephen is revealed as the power behind the throne. At the very end, in his final confrontation with Django, Stephen throws away his cane, suggesting that even that was a mask. You can certainly argue that putting a black-against-black conflict is wrong, but don’t mistake Stephen as a cartoon.

The more serious problem, in my estimation, is Broomhilda, whose character is essentially non-existent. It’s too bad that she didn’t play a more active role in the film’s conclusion. I’d almost like to see a sequel, just to have her play a more central role.

I’ve read complaints that Jamie Foxx’s Django is too passive and submissive. Again, I find this to be an agenda-driven misreading of the film. Django is the hero, in the classical meaning of the word, on a quest. As we meet him, he is in a humble position. He meets his mentor, who takes him under his wing and trains him. We learn of his quest to rescue his bride. He becomes more skilled, as he and his mentor have a series of smaller adventures. The two embark on their final journey together. Now, they are entering ground that is unfamiliar for the mentor, but that is very familiar for our hero. Things go awry and our hero seems to be sent to his doom. Now we see an explosion of skill, a display of all that he has learned from his mentor.

A black slave, bound and destined for the mines, is able to talk three white men into freeing him and handing him a gun. He rides back to rescue his bride and slays all of his enemies. They ride off, triumphant and victorious.

Admittedly, this earns poor marks for historical accuracy. But as storytelling, it is merely typical.

UPDATE: See this earlier post on the name of the band Lady Antebellum for more on the myths of the Old South.

This year has brought some family deaths, sicknesses and heartache, troubles and regrets. But I also got a beautiful new granddaughter. I got a great new job. There have been things, but there have been other things.

I typically will say something about how the New Year brings an opportunity for renewal and reinvention. No matter how bad things have been, we take this night to hope for things to get better. Today, I feel that more than ever.

So, you get Dan Wilson’s “What a Year For a New Year,” which was released a decade ago and which I’m now posting for the 8th time. It’s a great song, full of regret and hope. But I’m also posting a peppy number from the Los Angeles band The Rescues, taken from their forthcoming self-financed album Blah Blah Love and War. I do believe in the message of this song: “Everything’s Gonna Be Better Next Year.”

I hope everything is better for you, too.

Dan Wilson – What a Year For a New Year — BUY

The Rescues – Everything’s Gonna Be Better Next Year — BUY

For background information on the songs, browse back through the previous posts. (Did I remember to do Hanukkah this year? Yes, I did and those songs are here. It’s only a pair; I usually try to do more and I pledge to do better next year.)

Butterfly Boucher – Cinnamon & Chocolate — BUY

Hello Saferide – iPod Xmas

Family Force 5 – Carol of the Bells — BUY

Family Force 5 – The Baby — BUY

John Kirby Sextet – Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy – BUY

Duke Ellington – Sugar Rum Cherry — BUY

Joe Williams – Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – BUY

Lou Rawls – Christmas Will Really Be Christmas — BUY

Heike Has The Giggles – All I Want for Christmas Is You

Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (So So Def Remix) — BUY

Deep Sea Diver – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Deep Sea Diver – It’s Christmas Time (and I’m still alive)

The Higher Elevations – All These Winter Nights — BUY

Robbers on High Street – Season’s Greetings — BUY

Barry Gordon with Art Mooney & His Orchestra – Nuttin’ for Christmas — BUY

Barry Gordon with Art Mooney & His Orchestra – I Like Christmas (I Like It, I Like It)

Shade Tree – Christmas Peace

Amo Joy – Fall Into Christmas

Over the Rhine – Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming)  — BUY

Owl City – Peppermint Winter — BUY

Paper Route – In the Bleak Midwinter  — DOWNLOAD

Sam Airey – In The Bleak Midwinter/Lonely This Christmas — BUY

Little Bruts – It Came Upon the Midnight Clear — DOWNLOAD

Little & Ashley – Winter Night — BUY

Normally, I would listen primarily to my ow holiday music, which isolates me from the typical Christmas music listening experience. But this year, thanks to XM and the PA system at my new job, I’ve been listening to the sort of stuff that the general population listen to, which means a lot of Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams and Celine Dion and suchlike.

So, I’ve tried to offer something different, primarily focused on artists and songs you’re not likely to hear. I hope I’ve made my point that there’s a better Christmas music experience. If XM gave me a channel to program, I could do so in a way that would deliver something very different from what you’re used to. I think it’s also better, but that’s up to you to decide.

Little Bruts is the “LA based indie-pop duo” of Rachael Cantu and Harlan Silverman. From their holiday EP, here is their performance of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” a carol from the mid 19th century, just to show that you can do a traditional song in a way that’s simple and direct, but not dull.

Then, here’s Little & Ashley, the “Los Angeles based indie pop duo” (it’s a theme!) of Annie Little and Marcus Ashley, who are partners in life as well as music. Their holiday EP Winter Night offers a title track dedicated to the season.

Little Bruts – It Came Upon the Midnight Clear — DOWNLOAD

Little & Ashley – Winter Night — BUY

Then I thought of one of my favorite hymns, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” It always seems to be like it should be really old, like the “Coventry Carol,” which goes back to the 16th century. But “In the Bleak Midwinter” is not that old.

It’s lyrics are taken from a poem written by Christina Georgina Rossetti in 1872. It was first set to music by Gustav Holst in 1906.

The whole setting is obviously not historically accurate. It was in the 4th century that the birth of Jesus was set on December 25th, which is not “midwinter.” But Rossetti paints a vivid portrait.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

It’s a very serious and somber song, but it’s important that performances of it don’t plod along.

Nashville’s Paper Route is one of those bands that aren’t Christian rock bands, but the members are openly Christian and they sometimes write about God. They provide a nice arrangement, which manages to be contemporary and respectful at the same time.

Welsh folk singer Sam Airey then provides a more delicate version, into which he has inserted a few verses of a song called “If You Get Lonely This Christmas.” You can also see a video of him performing this song, which I have embedded below.

Paper Route – In the Bleak Midwinter  — DOWNLOAD

Sam Airey – In The Bleak Midwinter/Lonely This Christmas   — BUY

UPDATE: I neglected to discuss the setting of this song, which is your typical Nativity deal, with the baby and the manger and whatnot. On a recent edition of the excellent WhippleWerff Christmas podcast, co-host Amy Whipple said that the Advent season is about “waiting and darkness.” Quite true.

In the 4th century, we start seeing Christians converting pagan festivals into Christian holidays (and turning pagan temples in churches). It is around this time that the birth of Christ was placed on December 25. That aside, it’s emotionally resonant as well to take place on that date. As winter approaches, it gets cold and dark. The birth of Christ shines out like a spark, giving hope. Then the Advent season is followed a few months later by Easter, as Spring arrives and brings new life.

Anthologies (26) Christmas 2011 | Sam Airey from Anthologies on Vimeo.

I like to think that Christmas is big enough to encompass all these meanings.

But I really don’t care for Christmas songs that are sappy and sentimental.

But it is possible to create Christmas music that is honest and true.

Over the Rhine is the husband-and-wife team of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Karin Bergquist. They’re named after the Cincinnati neighborhood known as Over-the-Rhine.

Owl City is an indie pop/electronica outfit from Owatonna, Minnesota, the product of singer-songwriter Adam Young.

Over the Rhine – Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming)  — BUY

Owl City – Peppermint Winter   — BUY

At the same time, most of our modern traditions, from Christmas cards to Christmas trees, appeared in the Victorian era, as do a lot of the most popular Christmas carols. (The commercialization of Christmas in America started in the mid 19th century.)

There are generally four categories of songs that fall into the Christmas music genre:

• Carols (“Silent Night”)
• Standards (“White Christmas”)
• Pop originals (“Little Saint Nick”)
• Winter (“Jingle Bells”)

I’ve mentioned I tend to be a traditionalist in my Christmas music preferences, but I get as burned out as anyone on hearing the same songs over and over, so I’m very fond of new original holiday songs. They’re not done all that often and they’re less frequently of high quality.

Here are two songs that hit on a couple of key points: They’re originals and they’re about the emotional mood of Christmas. It can be a joyful time and a difficult time — sometimes simultaneously.

Here’s Shade Tree, an indie pop band from Gothenburg, Sweden. And also Amo Joy, an indie pop group from Indianapolis, Indiana. Two songs brimming with bittersweet loveliness.

Shade Tree – Christmas Peace

Amo Joy – Fall Into Christmas

He’s taught politics, hosted talk radio and was the longest-serving president of the Screen Actors Guild.

This is a long and diverse career. But I’ve left something out.

When Barry Gordon was seven years old, he had a hit record: “Nuttin’ for Christmas.”

I guess Gordon was actually six when he recorded the record with Art Mooney & His Orchestra, since he was born on December 21. Anyway, even though four other versions of the song were released that year, it was Gordon’s that was most successful, reaching #6 on the chart in December 1955 and selling over 2 million copies. I believe he has been the youngest performer ever to hit the Billboard charts.

The following year, Gordon and Mooney tried again with “I Like Christmas (I Like It, I Like It),” with “Zoomah, The Santa Claus From Mars” on the B-side (The flip of “Nuttin” was “”Santa Looks Just Like Daddy”).

So, on top of all of Barry Gordon’s other achievements, he also belongs with Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand in the pantheon of Jewish performers with Christmas records.

Barry Gordon with Art Mooney & His Orchestra – Nuttin’ for Christmas — BUY

Barry Gordon with Art Mooney & His Orchestra – I Like Christmas (I Like It, I Like It)

And just to round things out, here is the story of how Senator Orrin Hatch came to write a Hanukkah song. That’s the same Orrin Hatch that is the the senior senator from Utah and a famous Mormon. The song isn’t too bad!

Mêlée – (When Is) Hanukkah This Year? — BUY

Orrin Hatch and Madeline Stone – Eight Days of Hanukkah