Farai interviews transmedia conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas and art curator, Rujeko Hockley about building an artistic legacy as life partners, and the role public and collaborative art plays in shaping our society. Then on our roundtable, Sippin’ the Political Tea, Farai is joined by Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah and Entertainment Correspondent for Scripps News, Casey Mendoza to discuss the latest in entertainment and pop culture, including Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle’s quest to control their narrative.
Farai Chideya:
Hi folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. We'd also love you to join in financially supporting the show if you're able, you can find out more at ourbodypolitic.com/donate. We are here for you with you and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. This week we're talking to two luminaries in the arts world who are also a married couple. Hank Willis Thomas is an internationally renowned American conceptual artist through photography, sculpture, video, and mixed media. His art explores race, gender, ethnicity, and protest. His most recent public work, the Embrace is installed on the Boston Common. It's a sculpture that pays homage to the work and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Hank's mother is the historian, curator, and photographer Deborah Willis, who was recently awarded the $200,000 Don Tyson Prize by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. We're also joined by Rujeko Hockley, who goes by Ru, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ru is a former assistant curator for the Brooklyn Museum and is also a member of the Whitney's emerging artist working group. Hank and Ru talk about what artists can do during times of change and what art tells us about American and global politics. Welcome, Ru.
Rujeko Hockley:
Thank you, Farai. It's wonderful to be here.
Farai Chideya:
And welcome, Hank.
Hank Willis Thomas:
Thank you, Farai. It's great to be here with you and Ru.
Farai Chideya:
Well, I have spent some wonderful social time with you in New York and just have loved seeing you two flourish individually. You are married and you have two young children, and your kids get an incredible compliment of artists and thinkers in the family, both of you. Hank's mother, the curator and artist, Deborah Willis, his father, who's a musician and scientist. And Ru, I understand you lived all over the world as a child, starting your life in Zimbabwe where your mother is from, which is also where my dad is from. And so you have a interracial, international family, an international background. What do you bring, Ru, to the table for your kids as they're starting their lives with this incredible family?
Rujeko Hockley:
I think one of the greatest gifts that my parents and that my upbringing has given me, I have always felt that there's no room that I can't enter. There's no conversation I can't be a part of. There's no space that is not for me. I was a product of an interracial, intercultural, international partnership and family, and thus just in my regular life, I was navigating a lot of different spaces, a lot of different people, a lot of different conversations, and I was made to feel like that was normal. I think that is something that has served me so well in my life and I really think it is one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me that I really hope to impart to our children. Just this a sense of belonging, a sense of self-assuredness, a sense of deep confidence in yourself that carries you through the world.
Farai Chideya:
And Hank, I remember meeting you when you were quite a young man with your mother who I met first, and she's obviously a force in the art world. How do you see your line with your mother and father, and your connection to your kids as well and what you're teaching them about the world?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Well, primarily I think that the greatest gift that I was given was unconditional love and faith in my humaneness. I got a lot of that from my mother's mother, my grandmother, Ruth Willis, who just passed away at 100 years old. She was a quiet, graceful, loving, powerful person. My father's mother was also very powerful, but very forceful. The biggest consistency in our parents, I would say is an independent streak. And that independent streak is something that we see already in our daughters and that we can't help but to impart on them. And I also think growing up with parents who were chasing their dreams, you actually are also given the responsibility of doing that in your own life.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. I wanted to start with the word that you used humaneness. You bring so much of that, Hank, to your work. What does that word humaneness mean to you in terms of how you approach your practice?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Well, I think it's important to distinguish humaneness from humanness because humans are complicated, they are often destructive and not self-aware. And I believe that humaneness is an appeal to the sweeter side, the softer side, the more compassionate side, the more love and collective oriented side of the human experience. And that humaneness is something that I think is not highlighted that much in public life, or if it is, it's somewhat dismissed. I really see a lot of celebration of violence, of abuse, and of exploitation in our entertainment, in our news, and most things we see in the world. So I find it an incredible creative opportunity to explore humaneness in my practice.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. You have a brand new work in Boston, in the Boston Common, prime real estate. So can you tell us about this most recent installation, and also what does public work do for you in terms of how you engage with the world?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Great. Well, thank you for asking. Most of the art we see in our society is either on our devices, our TV screens, or on billboards and bus stops. So public space primarily when it comes to creative expression is devoted towards commerce. I spent a lot of time exploring commerce and critiquing commerce, and of course just being immersed in commerce. But I feel like it's important to highlight and make more public space that is dedicated to expansion of thought, community consideration, memorial, and monumentalizing not only people, but also ideals that our society should hold dear. Having gone to high school in D.C. where there actually are more public monuments probably than anywhere else in the country, I became super familiar with the monuments to the fallen of the Vietnam War and to the celebration of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, all of whom are primarily celebrated or memorialized because of their relationship to violence in war.
Hank Willis Thomas:
And I think that we reap what we sow when we celebrate violence and commemorate violence. We create more space for that to be our orientation in society. And I have been excited to bring monuments that are oriented towards unity and optimism and love. We know about civil rights, but we don't know much about civic joy or civic love. And this idea that Cornel West put into the world that I think justice is what love looks like in public. That's almost an artist's statement for me when I think about public art. What does love in public look like? And so this brand new Embrace monument that is a commemoration to Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, this is very much inspired by a photograph on the day that he received the Nobel Peace Prize. And we don't really see a lot of pictures of the kings as human beings.
Hank Willis Thomas:
There's a glee on his face and a pride on her face in this moment of just celebration and community and teamwork. And I felt like I wanted to highlight this idea that they were a partnership, they were a collaboration for a lot of reasons from patriarchy to this idea of hero worship. I feel like her stature as an equal partner in everything that he did has not been highlighted. But in this picture, you see the weight of his body on her shoulders. You see her holding him up. I feel like when I really think about his legacy, she's the one who carried it on. She continued the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and the activists of her generation for decades while also raising children.
Hank Willis Thomas:
And I can't imagine that level of strength, that level of care and grace that she exhibited. And the way that they embraced each other they were able to really touch almost everyone in the world through compassion, care, commitment, nonviolence, and community oriented engagement. And the fact that any two people through embracing one another can have a ripple effect for generations is something that I wanted to highlight.
Farai Chideya:
It's a really amazing design. It's got incredible architecture of the form of the arms and the positioning of it and strength. Congratulations on that. And Ru, what's giving you life right now? I mean, you are so accomplished. You've done so many things in the art world. I loved something that you said, and I can't remember where it was, where you were like, "Everybody thinks I created my career overnight. Curating things can take years." So what's giving you life right now? What are you working on right now?
Rujeko Hockley:
Well, I don't know when I said that, but correct. That is true. I think one of the things that's giving me life the most right now is actually returning in a meaningful and regular way to the space of my office. I think that though I have, I deeply appreciate a hybrid schedule, especially with two young children. I underestimated actually how much it means to me to be in the physical space of the museum, to be in the galleries. This is something that I think Hank and I have in common is a real love of people and a real love of the public. There's a lot of complications around museums and working in institutional spaces, but the thing that I continuously come back to is the public. So right now I'm working on a collection show based on the Whitney's collection, which will open in this summer of 2023.
Rujeko Hockley:
The Whitney is a hundred years, give or take, old. The show that I'm working on is not focusing on the entirety of the collection, but is looking at maybe the last 50 years, let's say. And looking at the idea of inheritance and how inheritance, whether that be genetic, familial, ancestral, or ideological, just the ways in which something is passed from the past or from the back to the front, if you will. But yeah, I have to say it's giving me life to be around my colleagues and to be in the museum with the public. And it's an incredible thing to see people really flocking to the museum in a way that I haven't seen them in years, literally years.
Farai Chideya:
Both of you obviously being so deeply embedded in the art world, do you still enjoy just randomly seeing art?
Rujeko Hockley:
I do, but ask my kids if they do. Because I think one of the things that the way we balance our time, it's so deep now, and so whereas in the past, I used to go to galleries on the weekends, now they want to go to the playground. Or I took our older daughter to see the Brooklyn Nutcracker at King's Theater last weekend, and that's a whole afternoon. So it's interesting the way to find the space to fit in the galleries. It's like during the week, honestly, during the work week as opposed to this leisurely Saturday activity with friends and colleagues that it used to be.
Farai Chideya:
No, I can only imagine that. Reality is that little humans have their own agenda and they don't always find it stimulating to stand in one place, staring at something indefinitely. Coming back to you, Hank, a lot of the work that you've done has the ability to have complex messages and do it in ways that can be rendered symbolically and readable. Everything from the Nike Swoosh that you embedded into one of your artworks to your public artwork. How do you try to combine complexity and readability in your art?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Someone once said that my work at its best is minimal, maximal or maximal, minimal, that there's a very profoundness, but also something that is relatively simple. Maybe that's just how I see the world where I can be in awe of the spectacle, but also find something really powerful and resonant and deep. And I can literally find something metaphoric and hopefully pretty deep in watching a Disney cartoon, or as much as just looking at several trees on a street. I find the world to be such a fascinating landscape that it is our world, or maybe each of us in a sense is a universe. And so I'm constantly exploring the universe and having been trained originally as a photographer, we capture moments. We look at the complex world and attempt to tell a story about it within two dimensional plane and four sighted frame in the split second of time and what we can capture with our camera. And so I think what I attempt to bring to my broader art practice is this photographer's view on sculpture, or video art, or public art, or painting, or printmaking, which is really about wonder and resonance.
Farai Chideya:
And then you're also doing For Freedoms. You're a co-founder of that with Eric Gottesman, and you have done a bunch of really interesting creative collaborations with the 50-State Initiative, billboards in 50 states ahead of the 2018 midterms and town halls. And it makes me so happy to see this way of combining an awareness of society and politics with art. And obviously you are the co-founder, Hank, but Ru, I've seen you at many of these events. For both of you, what does it mean to have this space to really think about how creative collaborations can function in a civic space?
Rujeko Hockley:
Well, I always say that For Freedoms lives in our house so that our first child definitely founded in our house and it has residents still in our home. One of the greatest things about For Freedoms, which of course is only the most recent of Hank's many collaborations. To me, one of the most interesting things and most important things about Hank's practice as an artist, which is of course me as his wife saying that, but also me as a professional curator, what he does in terms of collaboration is singular. His long-standing commitment to working in collaboration across time, across genre, across medium, across concept is really unique. So I think what I learn from my forays into that space of collaboration, I'm an Aquarian, so this is not always our special forte. We like to do things on our own, in our way. But what I have learned and continue to learn, both from observing the collaboration and the ups and downs and ins and outs, and the very, very, very highs and sometimes the very, very, very lows of working in that way is there's just so much potential.
Rujeko Hockley:
The most recent project the For Freedoms worked on Roosevelt Island here in New York that was looking at eyes on Iran in the lead up to the UN's vote to remove Iran from the International Council on Women. It was really amazing to see it come together so quickly, so generously, so dynamically, and then see the intense impact that it had. So I think what I've really learned from watching Hank work is how much is possible when we do collaborate and how much bigger, not only our vision and impact can be, but our experience and actually what we as individuals take from it.
Rujeko Hockley:
So I try to bring that to my own practice and to my own work, and to think about the work that I do as inherently collaborative. Also, I mean, being an institutional curator, you work across the museum, but I've learned a lot about how to collaborate, how to bring people in, how to really listen to your collaborators, to your colleagues, and how to actually enable and encourage people to then do that same, to work in that same way as they move forward. And so seeing that ripple move out to the world.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And Hank, I've been to a few of the different gatherings you hold. There was the big event in Washington Square Park, and there's just so much energy. And you have a lot of different branches of how you manifest in public. What does that give you and the world you think to have this part of your practice?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Well, I think a lot about Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and the famous line somewhere in the midst of it where he says, "Do I contradict to myself? Very well then, I contain multitudes." And I think as well, I know as an African American man whose humanity has often both through society but also within our community and our peers and in ourselves is often reduced and even dismissed. Having a diverse practice for me is a way to see my own reflection, to see myself in the multitudes. And I have really been dedicated to, I am the world that I see like, who I am is all that I interact with. And so when I collaborate with another artist or another person or a person who doesn't see themselves as an artist, I actually am in greater connection with myself. And we don't realize that everything that we do in our life is a creative practice. Like from the moment we get up and walk out of our houses, we are performing.
The clothes we put on is our costume. The way that we walk, the way that we talk, who we do say hello to, who we don't say hello to, how we do it. It's all a collaboration, right? And the more conscious we are about the fact that life is a creative venture at the end of the day. We're not robot plots, we're organic and inherently creative beings the better off we all are. And so with a lot of the work that Ru has done with her show long ago Crossing Brooklyn where she highlighted, artist collectives, or We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women. The fact that there were all these Black female artists who were working both individually but also collectively towards a much larger mission is what I am attempting to do just more clearly with my collaborations like For Freedoms and the Wide Awakes. And it is incredible to think that within the context of Woman, Life, Freedom, and Eyes on Iran, that our project was seen by a billion people either in person or online, it's pretty incredible to think that-
Farai Chideya:
That's amazing.
Hank Willis Thomas:
Yeah. It's the fact that the United Nations Commission for the Status of Women, the idea of having Iran removed was not something that was even seen as feasible or possible at the time we started our project. White Papers can only do so much to tell a story, and activists are critical, but what artists bring is a challenge to the mind and to the heart to imagine the impossible and then make it actual real.
Farai Chideya:
Both of you are just such incredible innovators and clearly people who also enjoy each other and enjoy life. I'm sure that you have your tortured artist and tortured curator moments, but you also seem to actually be enjoying the path that you are on in life with all of its challenges. Do you feel that way?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Tortured?
Rujeko Hockley:
Yeah. I do feel that way. No. Me, not tortured. Hank has his tortured artist moments. I mean, of course. No, I have my tortured moments as well. Again, Aquarius, as I said. But no, I think that is to return to your first question, I think that is actually another one of the great gifts both of our sets of parents really gave us is a real sense of a joie de vivre, and a real sense of life is for living, and you only get to do it once. I think that's something that we both come by honest and I'm very grateful for. And we have a great time and we get to do something that most people, as Hank said, our life is all creativity, everyone's life. But I think to get to do that as your official calling is really special.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Well, I could talk to you both all day, but is there anything else that I haven't asked about that you'd want to reference? I mean, your bodies of work are so expansive. I want to give you the chance to bring up anything that we haven't talked about.
Rujeko Hockley:
I think one of the things that we see when we engage with artists in scale, which I've had the great opportunity and privilege to do on a couple of different occasions, most recently the 2019 Whitney Biennial, which I co-curated with Jane Panetta. I think one of the things that most blew us away about the experience of doing the Biennial was how much it meant to people. The Biennial is the longest running survey of American art. I think that we see so much about art and the market, about auction results, about all of these things that are true and valid and that the Biennial absolutely feeds into. But what I took away from the Biennial and what I took away from working with artists for two years is just how deeply invested they are. Hank says often that artists are one of the only segments of the population that will pay other people to do their work, whether that be through studio, rent, or buying materials and on and on, or just not being able to make a living, but still doing it. I think we wanted a revolution.
Rujeko Hockley:
The other show that I worked on at the Brooklyn Museum, I was working with these artists who were sometimes in their 80s, in their 90s. Betye Saar was in her 90s when we did that show, and she had impeccable records that she had kept of all of her own sales from the 1950s. And we were able to find a piece, we were reading a magazine, feminist magazine from the '70s saw an incredible, a title of a piece, another iteration of her Aunt Jemima series, and we were able to actually find the piece because she had records of who she'd sold it to. She traded it to her lawyer in exchange for legal services in the 1970s.
Farai Chideya:
Oh my gosh.
Rujeko Hockley:
And the lawyer had passed, and his widow had the piece in her home in SoHo. And was in the exhibition, and it subsequently entered the Brooklyn Museum's collection. And it was only possible because Betye Saar believed so deeply in herself, had such a sense of trust in the future, and this knowledge that somewhere out there, somebody's going to care about what I do, I'm going to keep these records. To me, it's so incredible and such an incredible gift that artists give us is this ability to just persist and believe in yourself, which I think it's a lesson for, I think everybody. It's not only about having a creative practice in that sense, but I think it's about persistence and how we move and make change in the world.
Rujeko Hockley:
The things that we're doing right now, we don't know how they will impact the future. We don't know who is looking. We may not be alive to see them. And that applies whether in our personal lives, with our families, with our friends. It applies in our professional lives. It applies in our macro, the person we see on the street and how we interact with them and how we make them feel. We don't know where that's going to go and where that's going to take them, and what impact they will have on another person. And so I try to just stay grounded in that longevity and in that belief in the future and in the potential of the future.
Farai Chideya:
I love that. And I love the example of Betye Saar, and she's obviously so incredible, but also had that vision about the worth of her work and of herself and the worth.
Rujeko Hockley:
It's really herself, because I don't think any artists of that generation expected to make a living and make a solid living. So it's interesting to see that expectation shift also, which I'm all for. Artists should make more than a living.
Farai Chideya:
Absolutely. And Hank, do you have anything else you want to add?
Hank Willis Thomas:
Sure. Well, this is a time for optimism if there ever was one. Our society is often painted as being on the verge of coming to an end or having conflict destroy us. And these are times where positive thinking, positive action, creativity, creative action, collaboration, belief that repair is possible, healing is possible. Other people have something incredible and positive to offer to our lives will be the bridge between these two potential polarities, I guess, whether or not, what I think a lot about is the last lines of Martin Luther King's book, Where Do We Go From Here? Where he says mankind has a choice between violent co-annihilation or non-violent coexistence. So do we choose chaos or community? And I think this is that inflection point where we really do have an opportunity to choose community. And that's what I'm betting on and that's what I'm rooting for.
Farai Chideya:
Well, I say yes to all of that, and I say yes to both of you. You have brought me joy just by watching the work that you've curated and produced and how you navigate the world. So Ru and Hank, thank you so much for spending time with us.
Rujeko Hockley:
Thank you so much for having us, Farai.
Hank Willis Thomas:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
That was American conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas and art curator Rujeko Hockley. You can find Thomas's latest public installation, the Embrace at the Boston Common Public Park and Eyes on Iran originally installed at the Franklin D. Roosevelt For Freedom State Park can be seen on Instagram at For freedoms. That is F-O-R Freedoms. Each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sippin' the Political Tea. Joining me this week is Karen Attiah, Washington Post columnist and a contributor here at Our Body Politic. Welcome back, Karen.
Karen Attiah:
Hey, Farai. Happy New Year.
Farai Chideya:
Yes, happy New Year. 2023 I'm already buckling my seatbelt. I don't know about you. And another of our contributors that we also have joining us is Entertainment correspondent for Scripps News. Casey Mendoza. Welcome back, Casey.
Casey Mendoza:
Hey, Farai. So excited to be back.
Farai Chideya:
Yep. Always love having you. And so this week we are diving into pop culture. So I have been listening on audiobook to Spare, the memoir by Prince Harry. And I have to say, among other things, it's given me some more perspective on what it's like to be an Apache helicopter pilot. One of my cousins was an Apache pilot in Afghanistan. Prince Harry was a Apache pilot in Afghanistan. And it's one of many fascinating details, though perhaps not the main reason people are tuning in. So the royal family is everywhere. You've got Netflix's Harry and Meghan, you've got Spare. You've got the firewall of the royal family saying, "We're not going to say anything to Harry ever again for his whole life." That's the implication. So Karen, you wrote about the importance of Meghan's story in a recent column. What was your reaction to the documentary?
Karen Attiah:
I think a lot of things. I mean, I think they were trying to do a lot with the documentary, especially for Harry. I feel like you could feel that through the documentary for Harry to really take on the British tabloid media and its incestuous relationship with the palace. And in so many of the interviews that he's given, and even for me, I'm old enough to remember when Princess Diana died. And even I remember back then they were saying that Harry in particular was struggling with his mother's death and how he hated the media after that.
Farai Chideya:
It certainly comes through in the memoir.
Karen Attiah:
Yeah. Right. And in their decision to sue over the inappropriate sharing and acquisition of the letter that Meghan wrote to her father. So I think that base of Harry's long standing contempt for the media was actually a pretty good education, I think for us here in the U.S. And I would say that the audience, I think is more so for a U.S. audience than British, I would think, was a really good media critique and a really good look at, and frankly what is corruption, institutional corruption between the palace and the firm, which happens to be his family, and the media and the economics of all of that and the price, the human toll of all that.
Farai Chideya:
Let me get Casey in any thoughts, Casey, on the kind of rollout of the Meghan and Harry media projects or specifically the doc?
Casey Mendoza:
Yeah. I mean, for both, I agree with Karen. I really see it as them taking narrative control, which because of their profile, I would be scared for them if they didn't have the level of control they had. I'm thinking about, of course, Princess Diana and her untimely death. But I'm also thinking about a slew of the other biopics and documentaries that came out from the controversy of Blonde to still the fandom over the Crown, or Pam and Tommy inventing Anna, et cetera. And Netflix just released its trailer for Pamela Anderson's documentary, Pamela, a Love Story, which is in response to the lack of narrative control she had both after her sex tape was stolen and distributed on the internet, but also after Hulu debuted Pam and Tommy, which she did not have any narrative control over.
Farai Chideya:
Karen, I have really been watching this whole question of the complicated space that Meghan occupies, and did you see that Politico put her on a list of narcissists that included former President Trump, and people came out hard. People were like, "I'm canceling my subscription to Politico." I rather like Politico, I rely on it for a lot of news, but I thought that was a complete foul ball. I was just like, "Oh, so you needed diversity in your narcissist panel." I mean, what's going on?
Karen Attiah:
I don't know why Meghan triggers the psychosis in so many people around the world. And look, and I said this in my piece, and it was mentioned in the documentary, and I feel it's something that's been under the surface that so much of the online abuse for Meghan has come from frankly white women. And it specifically mentions this in the documentary and the Politico author of that piece, also a white woman. And I think it lends itself to the debate or to the conversation about so-called feminism and allyship between women of color and Black women and white women, right? And you just see some of the most fervent defenders of this hereditary monarchy that is so outdated and so patriarchal, and tells the women in the family that their role is to be quiet and produce babies to continue the bloodline. Fiercely defending this dangerous and outdated and misogynist institution.
Karen Attiah:
And I think with Meghan as well, there's obviously a lot of discussion about her, especially from Black women. We were writing hard for her. Look, I was too, you can search my Google history. I was like, "Yeah. Black Princess. Yeah. Look at the wedding they got a Black gospel choir." This is going to modernize or just revive interest in this institution that depends so heavily on being popular. And to see how they were basically shoot up and spit out by this white institution. I mean, there are a lot of people who are saying, "Well, what did she expect? She literally married into the colonialists of all colonialists," right? Should we feel sorry for her that she basically moved through most of her life with not being shielded from anti-Blackness. She said she didn't feel like she was treated like a Black woman until she married into this family.
Karen Attiah:
All that is ripe for discussion. But I think what we all can agree on is that Meghan and Harry by extension really served as a proxy symbol for a lot of us that have had to navigate white institutions that hopes wanted to be able to participate in them and ended up being chewed up and sped out, of course, they're rich and famous. But it does speak to the real trauma of when this happens and the abuse particularly that Black women face in a lot of these spaces. So I still think that is why her story holds so much power for women of color and Black women around the world.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And I will say that Harry has been very clear about the emotional damage that he feels he has sustained from his family not accepting his wife. I will grant it to the royal family that in 2011 they decided that gender would not be a barrier to taking the throne. So had William's first child been a girl, then she would've been the next monarch. But in Spare, Prince Harry's book, he really talks about the othering that he felt from his family in general, but also regarding his wife. But I have a lot of black female friends who have faced moments with their husband's families that have been soul crushing. And sometimes the husband's will step up and sometimes they won't. And that's painful. And one of the things I see here is that Prince Harry was like, "If I have to choose, I choose you, Boo." And that it's made a very clear choice.
Karen Attiah:
It has, I think, been inspiring to watch him make that very, very, very bold choice. And hopefully he inspires other men, white men, frankly, who find themselves in interracial relationships to do similar, do the same thing.
Farai Chideya:
I want to switch to an entirely different topic. TikTok is a platform. There's recently been some revelations about how TikTok has some security issues. It apparently surveilled a number of journalists, not a large number, but any number is not good using keystroke logging. And the question now is some people are really saying, "Look, TikTok is an incredible platform for getting your message out, but it may not be secure." Karen, how do you think about, frankly, our team at Our Body Politic just had a discussion the other day about whether or not we should use TikTok based on security concerns. And I was like, "We can only use TikTok on socials if we firewall our TikTok account from our news accounts," because we do cover things like extremism and I'm not going to have keystroke logging on our devices. So how do you deal with the fullness of being a digital communicator, which you are?
Karen Attiah:
A digital communicator is also a geriatric millennial. I am at the point where I feel I'm the type to pass off my phone or the remote to the kids be like, "Help me figure this out." But for me, when it comes to TikTok as a journalist, I think that the power that it's had to be able to not only move conversations, but frankly even for the music industry. For instance, the musicians who were coming out I think last year and saying that they were under pressure from their labels to go viral before they could release music. And I think from a journalistic perspective, it's just intriguing to see how TikTok and its algorithm has changed the calculations for so many industries that are conservative, I guess by nature, and want to see proof of success before taking a risk.
Farai Chideya:
Let me loop to something you said, Karen, to Casey. Karen was talking about how there's this pressure on artists to be viral first. Now, a lot of the artists I know, they are jamming with people in their bedroom on devices. How do you think that shapes the creative process?
Casey Mendoza:
Yeah. It's actually a bit of a two-sided thing, and it goes beyond TikTok. It goes into the nature of Spotify too and how "easy" it is to put music on that platform. Because on the one hand, I can with a simple laptop or my smartphone just create a little song I can jam that with my friends in a bedroom, that's actually a genre now, bedroom pop, or they're just making it at home. But while it is easier to make that music and easier to put it on a platform like TikTok or Spotify or YouTube, it is so much harder now because there's so much out there to get the ears, to get the listeners to find that engagement. And so the musicians that succeed or find viral content, oftentimes they have help. TikTok, they have deals and partnerships with major labels. There's this one song that came out recently or in the past two years called abcdefu.
And it's hilarious because the song was written by a musician who told her fans, "Give me an idea for a song." And someone commented, "Write a song based off the alphabet," I think, I don't remember exactly, but it was based off of a comment. But someone found out that the person that commented that actually also worked for the label. The song did go viral. It's very popular. It's stuck in my head right now, unfortunately. But going back to, Karen, what you said about artists needing to be viral on TikTok in order to put out new projects, that's so real for them. And there's so much pressure to go viral and engage with fans and develop those audiences. But it's so difficult, again, for new and emerging artists who don't have production help.
Farai Chideya:
And let's move on to another trend in pop culture, the return of live concerts. So Casey, even with the latest strain of COVID, with inflation, with layoffs, people are ready to jam. So what are you hearing from fans and musical artists?
Casey Mendoza:
Well, from the past year 2022, some of the biggest highlights were Bad Bunny becoming the highest grossing touring musician in Billboard history. Elton John continuing his farewell tour globally, Taylor Swift announcing her upcoming concert, which was a huge fiasco for Ticketmaster causing that company major legal trouble. But last year saw a huge full force return to live music and concerts. Again though, it was a big success for established musicians who had the fan base, who could afford to tour, who were signed with major labels. For Indian musicians, for smaller local talent and artists, it's still really hard to tour because of the pandemic, because it takes so much more resources and so much time and so much existing partnerships and relationships with venues who are also, especially indie venues, still navigating the post pandemic world. So we're still seeing that divide between very established artists versus new indie upcoming talent.
Farai Chideya:
And so finally, let's talk a little bit about all these biopics and historical dramas. There's the film Blonde about Marilyn Monroe. There was Elvis, which came out a little while ago. And Till, based on Mamie Till-Mobley and her pursuit for justice after her son Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. What has drawn viewers to these historic figures? And what do you make of the films that have been made about them?
Casey Mendoza:
I think studios are drawn to trauma porn now, because that's what all of these are. Even Elvis, even though it was fun, it was so focused on his, obviously the difficulties of his drug addiction. Blonde, even though it's my job to watch films, I couldn't finish that just because it was so surrealist to trauma porn, it wasn't entertaining or uplifting or gave her any sense of storytelling agency at all. And Till follows this long line of Black trauma films as well, which one of my favorite film critics, Robert Daniels wrote about the context of Till in these lines of traumatic films and what that actually helps audiences learn from that.
Farai Chideya:
And Karen, did you get to see any of these?
Karen Attiah:
Yeah. I tried to watch Blonde. I could not get through it. And Casey is absolutely right, just trauma porn. And also this was coming off of the heels of Kim Kardashian, like wearing Marilyn Monroe's dress, right? Or allegedly damaging it. And it's just like, we know she was exploited in her lifetime and it just seems that we're still feeding off of her symbolic flesh all these years after her death. And in ways that, especially with Blonde, it just felt so gratuitous. And it feels like Hollywood is trying to substitute trauma and porn for brilliance and creativity. It is not the same. And I'm not saying that every biopic needs to be rosy and all of that, but it's just becoming unwatchable and boring to an extent.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks again, Karen, for joining us on Sippin' the Political Tea.
Karen Attiah:
Thanks, Farai. Always good to be here.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you so much, Casey.
Casey Mendoza:
Thanks so much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
That was Our Body Politic contributors, Casey Mendoza, entertainment correspondent for Scripps News, and Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I’m host and executive producer, Farai Chideya. Jonathan Blakely is our executive producer. Nina Spensley is also executive producer. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Steve Lack and Anoa Changa are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Kelsey Kudak is our fact checker.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Harry Evans and Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
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