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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

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Seventh-day Adventist Creativity Takes a Hit: Save The Record Keeper

Jason Hill as Larus, an angel in The Record Keeper
Dennis Hill as Larus, an angel in The Record Keeper (2013)

UPDATE: The Record Keeper‘s official Facebook page has posted a statement from the General Conference Communications Director Williams Costa: The GC is “stepping back” from the series’ planned February 2014 release date; no new release date has been announced. Read the GC’s statement (Friday, January 24). See also this extended feature on The Record Keeper: the director Jason Satterlund and co-producer Garrett Caldwell discuss their motivations and the General Conference review process. Caldwell is quoted in the original post below.

ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS:
The Record Keeper is one of the latest efforts by Adventist creatives to create, to tell a visual story, and to do so accessibly and effectively.

We hope to provide people with a fresh perspective on stories that may be familiar to some, but in a way they may never have thought of before. —Garrett Caldwell, executive producer and associate director of communication, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The 11-part web series

It has already won film festival awards and has been promoted by the Adventist News Network and other Adventist news sources.

After premiering in October 2013, release was then delayed until this February. I haven’t seen it yet. I want to.

But now it’s at risk of being shut down. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists owns the rights to the series and so is free to block its distribution before it starts or edit it into a shadow of itself.

Save The Record Keeper 

If you value the arts and support #Adventist creativity, encourage the General Conference to release this project so the youthful, visually discerning, and media savvy demographic it was designed for can see and share it with others. 

Williams Costa, executive director of the General Conference communications department, is collecting letters of support for The Record Keeper. Email him at: costaw@gc.adventist.org

Don’t let The Record Keeper become another Rise of the Minions, a promising visual project from the mid 2000s that never saw daylight due to lack of support. It was written by an Oakwood graduate and its trailer voiced by Wintley Phipps. That wasn’t enough.

Spread the word about The Record Keeper by sharing this post or any of the linked articles or Facebook pages about it.

Support creatives. Share quality media. Save The Record Keeper.

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Media: Trailers and Tribalism

Trailers

These films are due out this year:

  • Anita, a documentary about Anita Hill and her “trial” as a sexual harassment witness during Clarence Thomas’ nomination to SCOTUS in 1994. I have some memories of this period, memories shaped by the 1990s writing boom, narratives about Black American women and their nation, and publications like Ebony and Essence Magazines. Anita is on the film festival circuit right now.

  • Divergent, a YA book-to-movie dystopian thriller-drama I don’t have solid preconceptions about because I’ve not read the series. I’m seeing some “young adult” tropes even in the trailer, but hope it won’t be too cloying. Will be looking out for other trailers closer to release date.

The Movie That Won’t Be Made

As much as I love a good story and might have shared these trailers anyway, I was really prompted to share by this series of tweets from director-producer Oliver Stone. I’ve had some reservations about the tenor of Stone’s past work but he knows how to make vivid biographical films: that’s his strength.

From a publicity perspective, the week before MLK day is a great time for Stone to make this kind of statement about King and the hedge that’s sprung up around his public memory. Like others, I hope he can find a way to salvage his work on the script: I don’t think the world needs even one more tame remembrance of King or the 1950s-1960s movement or the backs on which it was built.

Tribalism

Each of these projects takes a different approach to the question of how forms of tribalism influence our relationships with those we define as Other to us.

Anita Hill suffered when the political class buffered its own and defined her out. At the same time, then-Judge Clarence Thomas’ “high-tech lynching” defense exemplified a fracture that’s still baked into that class, that excluded Hill outright and both shielded and marginalized her former supervisor.

Divergent‘s society marks off five exclusive character traits and discourages members from integrating those traits within themselves. (I have nascent thoughts about how the Christian scriptural metaphors about the members of the body and their distinct spiritual gifts functions similarly in some Christian groups and congregations.)

Caesar’s simian peers were only experimented on to begin with because human scientists and businessmen defined them as non-human. Once defined as Other, the simian population were not covered by the same ethical care and practice metrics we usually offer our species peers. And their battle for physical autonomy and control of space exploded from there.

I’m not sure why this year’s zeitgeist is bringing us these reflections on the Self and the Other or what we might collectively make of it, but I’m looking forward to the articles that will be written about them.

Which 2014 feature-length projects you’re looking forward to? Tell me below.

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Videos: Gabrielle Union & Dustin Hoffman

1.

At the 2013 Essence Magazine Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon this February, Gabrielle Union received the Fierce and Fearless Award. Her acceptance speech is remarkable. (It starts at about 1:03 of 11:32.)

Gabrielle Union at the 2013 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon | via OWN
Gabrielle Union at the 2013 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon | via OWN

“We live in a town that rewards pretending and I have been pretending to be fierce and fearless for a very long time. I was a victim masquerading as a survivor. I stayed when I should have run. I was quiet when I should have spoken up, and I turned a blind eye to injustice instead of having the courage to stand up for what’s right…

“Being fearless is simply doing the work. It’s doing the work that it takes to recognize you no longer want to function in dysfunction and misery and that you would actually like to be happy and not just say you’re happy.” —Gabrielle Union

2.

This AFI clip of Dustin Huffman discussing his process with the character Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie has made the rounds today. He began with the question, “How would you be different if you’d been born a woman?” and asked his make-up team to help make him “beautiful.”

“I said [to my wife] ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said ‘Why?’ I said ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself onscreen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out… There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I’ve have been brainwashed.’ [Tootsie] was never a comedy for me.” —Dustin Hoffman

Hoffman’s comments about wanting to “pass” as a woman and avoid double-takes when walking down the street made me uncomfortable, but I’m glad he had the insights he did. What if we lived in a world where our social categories didn’t make anyone vulnerable to street harassment, and where “beauty” wasn’t so restrictive that it made “interesting” people invisible?

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Orson Scott Card and Art Boycotts

Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card is in the news again hoping the Ender’s Game movie won’t be boycotted. But his call for “tolerance” doesn’t read like a desire for mutual civility. It’s not even a discussion of his views or their merit. He’s all about the money, snarking about others’ right not to pay into his product, and driving the canard that people working against demographic discrimination are oppressive haters who shouldn’t be trusted when the power tables ever turn. The logic: “I can lobby against your marriage and civic standing & that’s not intolerant. But you organizing against my profits—that’s intolerant.”

No. No, no, no.

Card is a private citizen and entitled to his personal and religious beliefs. He’s not providing a public service so he’s under no mandate to offer his work to everyone. He may be hired by whoever wishes to hire him; and no one is obliged to patronize him. This is the essence of market trading: producers aren’t entitled to consumers. Producers earn consumers via product resonance, price, quality, and great experiences, and so smart producers will cultivate their brand to increase resonance and improve their product, its image, and client relationships. This being so, I wonder what the strategy sessions at Summit Entertainment  look like this week!

The Artist’s Outsized Influence

There’s another issue beyond market strategy. As well as being a private producer, Card is also an artist. One doesn’t have to agree with an artist’s politics or endorse their psychology to engage works derived from the artist’s art. Students of literature and music often learn to trace artists’ psychology, politics, and life experiences in their work, and some of us use that assessment to determine what we do and don’t want to consume.

Centuries ago, Shelley wrote that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I’ve always agreed with this, not just in relation to poets but also re. other artists and cultural creators. Card has an outsized public influence among a range of readers because of his art and the worlds he creates in that art. He’s also developed influence among religious-political lobbyists because of his willingness to speak beyond his art. How does he not grasp that because of his outsized influence he’ll receive outsized praise and scrutiny when members of the public—his audience—affirm or challenge his contributions?

Boycotting as Freedom: The Right to Opt Out

Unlike those harmed by his political lobbying and the climate he contributes to through his writing and speech, Card is not at risk for harm. There’ll be no referendum on his opinions as there’ve been referendums on other citizens’ rights, relationships, and families. Though he, NOM, and his church have promoted diminished civil rights for LGBT people, they are at no risk of diminished rights themselves.

The freedom of expression that Card enjoys as a citizen and an artist has never included freedom from criticism, and anyone may boycott his work if they wish as an expression of their rights. Economic boycotts are native aspects of American politics. They’re not “monstrous” or inherently “intolerant”; they’re an instance of liberty. They are sometimes based on un-reflective groupthink; they often channel consumer ire at local franchises rather than at corporate owners and policy-makers, and so they can be ineffective change-agents—but these are deployment issues, not essential characteristics.

A boycott is a symbol of the right to opt out, the liberty not to buy, the freedom to consume consciously and at will. It’s a tool, not an end, and sometimes it’s warranted.

Hailee Steinfeld and Asa Butterfield in Ender's Game | (c) Summit Entertainment (Lionsgate)
Hailee Steinfeld and Asa Butterfield in Ender’s Game | (c) Summit Entertainment (Lionsgate)

I’d like to see Summit Entertainment’s Ender’s Game eventually though I’ve never read Card’s series: I’m a fan of Asa Butterfield and expect him to shine in this role. I also have some empathy for the cast and crew involved in this production: it looks solid and they’re not responsible for the source writer’s work or personality. Orson Scott Card is responsible for that. I don’t yet have any info on how much he will earn from the Summit film; early rumors are that the studio isn’t including him in pre-screening publicity—yet clearly the marginalization approach isn’t helping them and they may need to be more direct about their relationship.

There are lots of other films to see this year; I may save my pennies and watch the film a few months late with a free Redbox code. In the meantime, all the best to people convicted otherwise: buy or boycott as you will.

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Fundraising and Culture

Great post on overwriting cultural messaging from Latina producer and fundraiser Alisa Valdes:

How to Ask for Money When You Grew Up Poor

It’s no easier for me now than it was then, and it’s no easier for me to ask for things than it is for anyone else, but I’m forcing myself to do the right thing because it must be done. I envy people who grew up in a different sort of culture, a culture of prosperity and entitlement. How different the world of business must be for them!