RAY is a great movie
alejandro de tacobell
truth about the man but then what biopic does? for one thing, the
movie minimizes charles's womanizing though there still alot of it. i
mean the man was a degenerate animal when it came to banging chicks and
begatting illegitimate chillun. in this sense, he was no better than
some negro trash who be littering the world with neglected single
mother raised kids. on the other hand, the man was blind so let's give
him a break.
in this day and age, can a movie be both conventional and great? we
welcome the new, the bold, the revolutionary. what kids deem great are
the latest CGI fests. critics deem great art films purporting to
subvert our expectations of the cinematic experience. from this
perspective, ray would only be considered good or very good but not
great.
but, i say it is great. as a piece of filmmaking and ensemble acting
and storytelling, it is nearly flawless. also, it gives us a sense of
the man beneath the public image. it makes us reconsider the myth of
ray charles and the whole showbiz culture and black experience.
for a conventional movie, it has alot of fresh elements.
for one, there is no reliance on CGI that has permeated into historical
films as well as into sci-fi spectacles. instead of giving us
digitalized past, ray intermittently shows old footages of bygone
times; they convey a grittier and more authentic sense of history than
perfectly assembled gigabytes. by going against the new trend, it seem
all the more singular and different. it also works well with ray
charles music which was recorded before the studios were saddled with
every gimcrack gizmo that has turned popular music into audio
equivalent of CGI. charles's music have a raw vitality missing in the
overly slick and polished recordings since the 70s. charles has soul
rooted in soil than slicked up with oil.
also, the cinematography for the most part eschews the varnished look
of nostalgic yellowed colors that have become the staple of biopics and
period films. from the opening scene where young ray waits to get on
the bus, it looks like the real world, not some lost golden era.
ray is also a breakthrough in terms of racial complexities.
recently, bill cosby criticized the problems in the black community,
and some blacks ostracized cosby for hanging black dirty laundry in
public. of course, cosby did no such thing; he merely pointed out that
much of black culture is just dirty laundry hanging out in public and
needs a good wash.
black people and guilt-ridden liberals have felt it necessary to
present a bogus dichotomy of simply good negroes vs simply bad whites.
even today, consider the films of robert redford such as bagger vance
where the negro is the just kindest, bravest, wonderful human being in
the whole wide world. it is both gushywushy with admiration and
condescending in the ole uncle tom tradition.
but, ray goes beyond that. charles's mom is presented as a
hardworking tough woman but she's no saint. we see the often twisted
relations among blacks themselves in regard to money, sexual relations,
friendship and betrayal. the great thing is the movie has no easy
villains. everyone has his story, his own justifications, his version
of events. everyone is partly betrayed and partly a betrayer.
the movie also makes us think about blackness and crippleness. to be a
black man was to be socially and politically crippled during much of
american history. black culture was often about making do with severe
limitations. and, one can say this about ray and his blindness. but,
cripplehood can also be used as kind of advantage. no one looks upon a
crippled person as threatening, and charles may have seemed less
threatening to whites than chuck berry or little richard.
crippleness can also win sympathies. how we go out of our ways to open
a door to someone in a wheelchair. how liberals have this gushywushy
fetish for the poor noble black man done wrong by fate. in the opening
tense but funny scene, a white bus driver doesn't like the look of this
blind negro wanting to ride his bus to seattle. but, when charles says
he lost his eyesight in the war, the bullneck whitey softens up to the
noble negro--he aint only blind but lost his sight in the war. of
course, charles's story is a lie, but it says how blacks often had to
lie to get ahead with whitey. indeed, it kills me how blacks still
bulljive and whiteys fall for that shi* in their need to prop up the
myth of the noble negro heroically trying to overcome the crippling
scars of history... though i wonder, if 300 yrs of history can have
such lasting impact, wouldn't 300,000 yrs of history back in africa
have greater impact? if 300 yrs can overturn 300,000 yrs of supposedly
proud and noble history, couldn't 30 yrs of equality overturn 300 yrs
of degradation? but, that's another issue.
the movie also gives us a fuller glimpse into the music industry than
we've been getting from populist hollywood. the populist myth is that
of noble artists being stabbed in the back by greedy businessmen. ray
shows us much greater depth and subtleties. we see businessmen who are
just as passionate--even occasionally creative--about the music as
about money. we also see artists who are greedy for dough for
themselves and will stab their friends in the back to get theirs--this
is true of both ray and his friends.
we also see how despite the cold machinations of business, close
personal bonds do develop between artist and businessman; it causes
both anguish but also understanding and forgiveness as when ray dumps
one record label for another.
also, the movie will not have the noble black man being exploited by
evil whites scenario. when it comes to greed in music business, whites
are no more evil than blacks or vice versa. everyone is in it for
themselves but what brings them together is their shared passion for
the music.
in the 90s, with the advent of hiphop culture, malcolm x fetishism, and
new black consciousness--encouraged by pussyboy guilt-ridden white
liberalism--it has been fashionable for blacks to say whites stole
everything from negroes, the fountain of all things creative. this
canard reached its apotheosis in the theories of leonard jeffries who
said blacks were the sun people with creative energy whereas whites
were ice people with cold calculationing rationality. another variant
of this view was the resurgence of old black nationalist idea that
greeks stole everything from the egyptians; of course, we know
egyptians were not black, and egyptian influence was not crucial to
development of greek culture, but that's another story. whites, afraid
of being labeled 'racist', has mostly remained mum on this issue(except
for mary lefkowicz). so, alot of blacks now think greeks were thieves,
whites would have no music if not for black people(i guess bach,
mozart, beethoven, brahms, mahler, etc don't count), and rock music is
nothing but white people playing black music and getting rich off it.
but, of course the story is far more complex. blacks owe as much to
whites as vice versa in the development of american music. if blacks
could it do all alone, how come africans didn't have blues and jazz?
they had the raw elements of those forms but they needed to be
crossbred with european influences to produce what we know today as
(african)american music. with no european tradition to work with,
from, and against, there would be no american black music. of course,
it goes the other way too. no blacks, and american music would probably
have been more strongly rooted in the classical tradition. maybe,
america would have a produced a shostakovich instead of elvis presley.
anyway, ray presents the rich tapestry that is american music.
we see ray fusing various elements of black and white tradition. he
records songs written by whites inspired by blacks. this complexity is
welcome in an era when so much of racial history has been politicized
with blacks making wild brazen charges and pantswetting pussyboy white
liberals cowering in the corner and nodding to every black demand.
the special thing about ray was he was both eclectic and had a soulful
center. it's fashionable among many musical artists to
be into everything and mix-n-match styles from all over the world. they
pride themselves as ultra-inclusive open-minded artists, but this is no
way to create art. you have alot of styles with no substance. consider
david byrne whose globetrekking is nothing but music as a travel guide.
music grows richer by taking in other influences, but all music needs
a core, a center, connection to its root source. or, it must be
birthed fully into something new, like what beatles and dylan did from
various sources, thereby creating rock out of rock n roll and folk
elements. charles had a root center. he didn't abandon his essential
artistic personality and style to jump on the wagon of the latest
trends. if anything, he was the creator of new trends all the while
remaining true to the music that he grew up with. whether he sang
jazz, blues, country, pop; whether he was backed up by a small jazz
band or a large string orchestra, he was unmistakably ray charles.
the appeal of artistic biographies a rather strange thing. we find
meaning in details that we normally would not in most people. indeed,
minus the art, and the stories of most artists is very much that of
any other human being. you have childhood problems, bad relationships,
betrayals, successes, failures, good times and bad times. yet, because
of their art, we tend to find meaning in all their mundane life
matters. perhaps, what we seek in the artist in the validation of our
own lives. it's with the artist that everything--his feelings,
thoughts, experiences--come together, coalescing into some kind of
meaningful expression or statement. with a musical artist of ray's
caliber, all the messy details of life found shape, form, beauty,
perfection in the encapsulated form of a song. when we hear the song,
it sounds so accessible, so simple, so easy, so meaningful and true.
yet, when we consider all the effort, all the pain, all the luck, and
so on that went into the creation of the song, we are reminded of life
itself. and, if the mundane matters of an artist can be the source and
springboard for such sublime musical expression, doesn't it say
something about our mundane lives as well? after all, when lovers
dance to a song, the dude feels like he's expressing his emotions to
the ho' and the ho' feels the music is meant for her and emanating from
her partner.
indeed, art has power to make us feel empowered. we feel the artist
has given form and sculpted meaning of our all our collective
consciousness. no wonder that dylan was called the voice of his
generation.
now, most of us don't have the gifts, opporunity, the happy luck of
events/accidents that lead us toward successful artistic careers. but,
as we watch 'ray' and take notice of how so much that is ordinary,
depressing, everyday, and lame in ray's life strangely intersect at
those odd magical moments to inspire to new heights of musical
greatness, we begin to understand the strange connection between life
and art.
while much of 'ray' is hardly extraordinary--much of it dwells on
business, family, and relationship matters common to us all--of course
ray charles's blindness did make him special. indeed, it would be
impossible to separate charles the musician from his blindness. would
charles have been a great musician had he not been blind? probably,
but he would have been a different artist.
when we think of race relations, we think foremost of skin color. but,
charles, having lost his sight at the age of seven, experienced racial
identity and limitations with greater subtlety. he couldn't see white
or black. his blackness has to be internal, emotional, soulful. also,
being blind enabled him to cross barriers that existed for those with
vision. a white man seeing a black man saw barriers and vice versa.
but, charles had to judge the world according to sound thru his
internal and infinite darkness. in a way, ray had x-ray eyes that
peered into people's souls. so to him, country music wasn't
necessarily white man's music. he didn't have this image of a honkey
singing hillbilly music. instead, it was music that simply existed and
entered into ray's ears. the irony was ray was able to access and
cross through barriers that emotionally restricted those who could see.
seeing means gaining access but it's also reading 'no trespassing'
everywhere.
this may also be the reason why charles didn't find soul music's
secularization of gospel blasphemous. for him, music was the cathedral
and existed independent of the visible institutions it was supposed to
serve. for devoutly religious blacks, charles had taken music out of
the church, but charles couldn't see no church. inside or outside the
church, only thing he could see was darkness. as for the music, it was
wonderful whereever you took it, however you shaped it.
anyway, the movie is a fresh departure from liberal history in regards
to resistance to charles's music. the orthodox liberal canard is that
the only people who were outraged by black or black-influenced popular
music were rednecks, but in fact, many people resented the rise of
rhythm/blues, soul, and later rock n roll. leftists saw much of it as
exploitative capitalist music to lull kids away from noble values.
jazz musicians saw it as schlock and simpleminded pop and not really
music. educated elites--liberal as well as conserative--disdained it
as trivial entertainment. and, as the movie shows, religious black
people saw it as devil music. now, though i'm not religious myself, i
must agree partly with the assessment that it is devil music--at least
according to christian morality. of course, the more objective term
would be 'pagan', but paganism is deemed as satanic by judaism,
christianity, and islam. a medicine woman of prehistoric europe would
have been labeled a satanic witch by christians. a indian sorcerer
would be considered a devil possessed lunatic. and, african culture is
centered around the groin with alot of bumping/grinding stuff.
christianity is about transcending the animal drives of the flesh and
is highly suspicious of raw instincts. the negro spiritual was
genuinely spiritual but with black gospel, the pagan animalistic
african bugaboo elements crept in. it was more fun and blacks could
dance and holler and jump and shake their booties inside the church.
but, truth be told, it had more to do with sexuality than jesus. and,
charles was honest enough to understand and express that. gospel
doesn't strive toward the transcendental but celebrates the primal
energies of the flesh.
yet, there is more to the gospel than asswiggling. there is also the
sense of longing, of desperation, of need for a helping and guiding
hand, of redemption and cleansing and purification. and, you sense
this in charles's life and art as well. his kid brother died in a
washtub and it became internalized into his guilt conscience. his
mother was a washing lady. charles wanted to baptize himself of sin but
was afraid of the psychological washtub. he tried to find renewal and
redemption thru the rush of drugs, thru new women, thru art, and even
thru his surprising political stance, but, he sank deeper and deeper
into a private cesspool. unable to see, he could reach the highest
heaven with his music but also can fall into the deepest hell in times
of fear and sorrow. the scenes of his rehabilitation from heroin are
powerful stuff. the only visual memory he has--from childhood--should
be special and tinged with golden nostalgia but is haunted by the image
of his brother's death and the blame that fell upon him. charles's
relationship to his ma is ambiguous. she seems both strong and
supportive in her own way, but also mean and neglectful. when she
sends charles away to deaf/blind school, how much of is it for his own
good and how much is it because she's tired to taking care of a
cripple? understandably, charles's relationship to his ma is typical of
many black males' relationship to theirs.
perhaps, music served a different function to charles than it does to
us. we turn on music to get sound, to turn off the silence. in
charles's case, he may have needed music to turn off the sound.
people who can see sense the world primarily thru vision. we don't
notice most of the sounds around us whether it's birds chirping,
refrigerator humming, or footsteps in the distance. but, charles's
hearing had to serve as his eyes and his ears were always busy, always
picking up all kinds of sounds. he must have never had a silent
moment, a moment of total peace what with his ears 'seeing' all the
time. so, music must have been almost like silence to charles because
it turned off all the buzzing and tickytacking of daily life.
the finest scene in the movie is when charles, blinded at 7, learns to
rely on his hearing. this is an art movie moment in a hollywood
movie(and how many hollywood movies tune us away from noise?), and it's
worthy of tarkovsky. the seemingly helpless kid starts picking up
sounds he had normally ingored, and he gradually takes the first tiny
but giant steps into a new terrain. with his heightened senses, he
notices his ma's in the room though she'd been silent, suppressing her
desire to lend a hand. that charles was a womanizer was mainly cuz he
was a horny bastard. but, his childhood may offer a psychological
explanation for his obsession, perhaps a need to know there is a loving
female guiding principle always near him, though i must say, his ma
struck me as the kinda woman who'd never hesistate to whack a kid
upside his head.
jamie foxx is very good but his performance is mostly a faithful
impersonation of charles physical mannerisms. but, the supporting
players are great to a man and woman. the black female characters in
the movie have been developed and performed with more depth,
complexity, and nuance than in just about any black folk movie since
'the inkwell'.
and, the musical performances are splendid. it has the grand fullness
of old musicals than the kind of choppy stuff dominating today's music
video culture.
how...@brazee.net
On 22-May-2005, "alejandro de tacobell" <fatsg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> ray is a very conventional biopic. and, i doubt it really tells the
> truth about the man but then what biopic does? for one thing, the
> movie minimizes charles's womanizing though there still a lot of it
The movie was Ray Charles project and said what he wanted to see.
I haven't seen the DvD which apparently has a long version of the movie
which goes into much more detail the more sordid parts of his life.
Richard Schultz
: The movie was Ray Charles project and said what he wanted to see.
Okay, I realize that he's no longer with us, and hence not in much of a
position to be offended, but don't you think that you could have phrased
that a bit more delicately?
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."
jon
movie and thought it was very accurate.
Bob Roman
(Richard Schultz) wrote:
>In rec.arts.movies.past-films how...@brazee.net wrote:
>
>: The movie was Ray Charles project and said what he wanted to see.
>
>Okay, I realize that he's no longer with us, and hence not in much of a
>position to be offended, but don't you think that you could have phrased
>that a bit more delicately?
You're offended by that, but not by the klansman who started the
thread?
Bob Roman
Thumper
No it doesn't.
thumper
Richard Schultz
:>: The movie was Ray Charles project and said what he wanted to see.
:>
:>Okay, I realize that he's no longer with us, and hence not in much of a
:>position to be offended, but don't you think that you could have phrased
:>that a bit more delicately?
:
: You're offended by that, but not by the klansman who started the thread?
Ah say, now ah say, it's a joke, son.
(FWIW, I've been posting to usenet for nigh on twenty years, and in all
that time, only two people have succeeded in offending me.)
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
The gardener plants an evergreen whilst trampling on a flower. . .
RickNBarbInSD
Fuck!! I'm glad to finally see I'm not the only one disgusted by this
bigoted racist bastard!!!!
alejandro de tacobell
Steve Carras
shut up
:)
exalted simian league of the golden cloud cathedral brotherhood
so let's have the lyrics to 'shut up on this rainy night, jack'.