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      America Has a Problem

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      Listen and follow ‘Still Processing’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWesley Morris and Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and “We’re in deeply vile territory, and I can’t make intellectual sense of that,” Wesley Morris says about the rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.In 2004, when Ye released his album “College Dropout,” he seemed to be challenging Black orthodoxy in ways that felt exciting and risky. But over the years, his expression of “freedom” has felt anything but free. His embrace of anti-Black, antisemitic and white supremacist language “comes at the expense of other people’s safety,” their humanity and their dignity, J Wortham says.Today: The undoing of Kanye West — and what it means to divest from someone whose art, for two decades, had awed, challenged and excited you.Kanye West in 2016.Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesAdditional resources:In “The Long Emancipation,” Rinaldo Walcott distinguishes between emancipation and freedom, and argues that we are still living in a period of emancipation.Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explores the enduring power of “Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America,” Saidiya Hartman’s book from 1997.In “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination,” Robin D.G. Kelley examines how Black artists and activists of the 20th century turned to imagination to envision a better future.Wesley and J previously discussed Ye and all his controversies in this episode from 2018.Hosted by: Wesley Morris and J WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina DjossaEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrSpecial thanks: Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Eslah Attar and Julia Moburg. More

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      For Ghana’s Only Openly Transgender Musician, ‘Every Day Is Dangerous’

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      Maxine Angel Opoku has found a new audience for her music with songs opposing a proposed law that would make it illegal to identify as gay, transgender or queer.ACCRA, Ghana — When Maxine Angel Opoku was still an upstart musician, relatively unknown and struggling to stand out in Ghana’s competitive music scene, she sang about love, romance and being sexy.Then, in August 2021, lawmakers in the country’s Parliament introduced a bill that would imprison people who identify as transgender, as Ms. Opoku does, and her art urgently turned to advocacy. Her music began to attract both legions of new fans as well as powerful adversaries.“Dear Mr. Politician, fix the country right now. The people who voted for you, are disappointed in you,” Ms. Opoku sings in one of her latest songs. “Kill it, kill it, kill the bill.”The subject of the song is the “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill,” which, if passed, would make identifying as gay, transgender or queer a crime punishable with a maximum prison sentence of five years.As Ghana’s only openly transgender musician, Ms. Opoku, who is known on stage as Angel Maxine, is one of the most visible targets of the proposed legislation in a country where the gay and transgender community is largely closeted.Ms. Opoku, preparing for the day last month in Accra, Ghana.Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times“Music is the tool for my advocacy,” Ms. Opoku said in an interview in Accra, the capital of Ghana. “This is the only way my voice can reach the politicians, the president, the homophobes, the layperson.”Same-sex sexual acts are already criminalized in Ghana, in part because of a British colonial-era law, but it is currently not a crime to publicly identify as gay, transgender or queer.In response to the proposed legislation, Ms. Opoku released a song called “Kill the Bill” and, shortly before that, another song, “Wo Fie,” which means “in your home,” in the Akan language, one of the most widely spoken in Ghana.“Wo Fie” talks about how L.G.B.T.Q. people may be part of every family, and calls for tolerance and respect. In the lyrics, Ms. Opoku sings about being unapologetically herself.Ms. Opoku, the oldest of five children, was born in Accra on Sept. 3, 1985, to a fashion designer mother and a civil servant father.“Everybody that saw her would say: ‘Hey, you have a beautiful girl,’” her mother, Faustina Araba Forson, 60, recalled. “Then I would say: ‘No, it’s a boy.’”“She loved wearing girls’ dresses, playing with the girls,” her mother added. “She was a girl trapped in a male body.”Still, it took Ms. Forson many years to accept her daughter’s identity. Ms. Opoku recalled that mother and child would frequent churches to hear pastors, including the controversial Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua, seeking to “cast the gay out.”“One day I was praying, and I heard God say, ‘I created her in my own image and I love her,’” Ms. Forson said.Ms. Opoku started out singing at home during morning devotional prayers with her family, and as a teenager shadowed members of a now defunct girl group. She began performing music as a woman in 2008 while studying hospitality management in Koforidua, a city north of Accra. It was a dangerous endeavor. Once, during a set, a bottle was thrown from the audience, striking her in the head, she said.With no label to back her or to sponsor recording sessions, she put her music — whose sound is a fusion of Afropop, dance hall and the increasingly popular Afrobeats — on hold and instead moved between jobs in the hospitality sector as a cook and waitress, where she faced issues such as misgendering.Ms. Opoku and her mother, Faustina Araba Forson.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesEven before the threat of prison in the impending legislation, to be openly gay or transgender in Ghana was extraordinarily risky, with those identifying — or perceived to be — as such facing acts of violence from both strangers and their own families. Employment and housing discrimination is common.“Some get forced into marriages, get thrown out of their homes; some of them drop out of school because they no more have support,” said Leila Yahya, executive director of One Love Sisters, Ghana, an advocacy organization for L.G.B.T.Q. Muslims, and a friend of Ms. Opoku.Ms. Opoku returned to music in 2018, and while defiance has won her followers online at home and abroad, it has also marked her out. Her home was ransacked and looted by a mob last year, forcing her to scale back on public appearances. Ms. Opoku was not at home when the mob attacked.“They could have taken me to the police station, maybe I could have even died,” said Ms. Opoku, who now performs rarely, and only in private. “I could have been lynched.”After Ms. Opoku’s home was attacked, the maverick musician Wanlov the Kubolor and his sister, known as Sister Deborah, helped her find a safe space and began a professional and personal relationship. The siblings, long viewed as social contrarians in Ghana’s music industry, are featured on both “Kill the Bill” and “Wo Fie.”“It blew me away, the stuff she was living with from day to day: financially, psychologically, physically,” said Wanlov the Kubolor. “I don’t think I could have survived that life.”Ms. Opoku said she also wants to be known for music unrelated to her activism. But that has been an unrealized ambition, so far. A completed mini-album of non-advocacy songs remains unreleased because of a lack of sponsorship, she said.Ms. Forson with a picture of Ms. Opoku as a child next to her aunt.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesFor Wanlov the Kubolor, the recent rise in Ms. Opoku’s public stature has been equal parts joyful and painful.“It is painful because she could have bloomed much earlier, because she has a super talent, and she could have been a world star already,” he said.Recently, the song “Wo Fie” went viral on TikTok outside Ghana, and he believes Ms. Opoku’s increasing international visibility — although fraught with safety risks — could also serve as a protective factor for her.But Ms. Opoku isn’t so sure. “Every day is dangerous for me,” she said. “I cannot walk on the street as a normal person.”Taking a bus is out of the question, she said, as is going to the market. “I cannot do a lot of things,” she said.Her daughter’s safety is front of mind for Ms. Forson, too. “I fear for my daughter a lot,” she said. “She is a vociferous person and so she is a target, and I always pray that God should protect her.”If passed, the bill would criminalize positive portrayals of queer life in the media, codify the widely discredited pseudoscience of conversion therapy and compel the families and neighbors of L.G.B.T.Q. people to report them to the authorities.Those who are arrested can avoid prison by undergoing psychiatric and endocrinological treatment “to overcome their vulnerabilities.” The bill also states that allies who give any form of assistance to L.G.B.T.Q. people, such as housing, could be sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison.Ms. Opoku, with friends, at a hotel before a workshop she facilitated for people in Ghana who identify as transgender.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesThe proposed legislation is backed by the country’s powerful religious leaders, politicians from the two leading parties and large sections of the local media. It also has broad popular support in a country where a 2019 survey found that 93 percent of Ghanaians would dislike having a homosexual neighbor.The bill has also galvanized outspoken opposition from a small but influential coalition of local academics, lawyers and rights activists.Last month the Speaker of Parliament, who has previously expressed support for the legislation, said it was a priority and would be passed before the next elections in 2024.Thanks in part to the L.G.B.T.Q. antipathy fomenting around the bill, Ms. Opoku said it was difficult to see a future for herself in Ghana. It’s nearly impossible for her to perform freely in public now; the bill would make it legally impossible.“I don’t see a life here for me,” she said. “If I cannot come out openly, go on the streets to move about my daily life, if I cannot get a job, how do I sustain myself? This is no life.”Despite the difficulties, she remains resolute about speaking up for Ghana’s L.G.B.T.Q. community in the face of this rising hostility.Her next song, she said, will encourage at-risk people to sign up for the H.I.V. prevention pill PrEP.“I feel like it is a responsibility,” Ms. Opoku said. “If I win, people like me will also win.”She added, “People like me will also be happier, people like me will also feel free.”Ms. Opoku, at home.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesReporting for this story was supported in part by the Pulitzer Center. More

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      After Hollywood’s #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear It Was Only Short-Lived

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      Harvey Weinstein’s second sex crimes trial began Monday in Los Angeles. “She Said,” about the journalistic investigation that took him down and helped ignite the #MeToo movement, arrives in theaters on Nov. 18. “The Woman King” opened to strong ticket sales last month, with Viola Davis saying she thought about the man who sexually assaulted her to power her visceral performance as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors.The convergence is a reminder of just how earthshaking #MeToo was for Hollywood.It helped touch off a broader reckoning in the entertainment industry around diversity, equity and inclusion on both sides of the camera — who gets to make movies, who gets to be the subject of them. Activists say that studios and sets have been permanently changed for the better. Zero tolerance for workplace sexual harassment and discrimination is real.In recent months, however, Hollywood’s business culture has started to regress in subtle ways.New problems — widespread cost-cutting as the box office continues to struggle, coming union contract negotiations that producers worry will result in a filming shutdown — have become a higher priority. Fearing blowback, media companies that were vocal about #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have been quieter on more recent political debates over cultural issues.Diversity, equity and inclusion executives say they are exhausted by an old-boy network that is continuously trying to reconstitute itself: Women who were hired for big jobs and held up as triumphant examples of a new era have been pushed aside, while some of the men who were sidelined by misconduct accusations are working again.“The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors, opened to strong ticket sales last month.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesIf asked to speak on the record about their continued dedication to change, Hollywood executives refuse or scramble in terror toward the “we remain staunchly committed” talking points written by publicists. But what they say privately is a different story. Some revert to sexist and racist language. Certainly, much of the fervor is gone.This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen industry leaders — including top studio executives, agents, activists, marketers and producers — who spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the current state of the entertainment business. They varied in age, race, ethnicity and gender.“For three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color,” said a senior film executive, who like many leaders in the industry is a white male. He added that he did not think some of them were able to do the jobs they got.In hushed conversations over lunch at Toscana Brentwood and cocktails at the San Vicente Inn, some powerful producers and agents have started to question the commercial viability of inclusion-minded films and shows.They point to terrible ticket sales for films like “Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, and “Easter Sunday,” a comedy positioned as a watershed moment for Filipino representation. “Ms. Marvel,” a critically adored Disney+ series about a teenage Muslim superhero, was lightly viewed, according to Nielsen’s measurements.“There was an overcorrection,” one studio head said.At another major studio, a top production executive pointed to the implosion of Time’s Up, the anti-harassment organization founded by influential Hollywood women, as a turning point. “For a while, we all lived in complete fear,” he said. “That fear remains, but it has lessened. There is more room for gray and more benefit of the doubt and a bit of cringing about the rush-to-judgment that went on at the height of #MeToo.”“Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, had disappointing box office results.Nicole Rivelli/Universal PicturesIs this a pendulum swing back to the bad old days?“Amazing progress has been made that is not going away, and that should not be discounted or overlooked,” said Amy Baer, a producer, former studio executive and the board president of Women in Film, an advocacy organization. “But there is fatigue. It is hard to maintain momentum.”Entertainment companies are not backing off the tough sexual harassment policies that have been introduced in recent years, in part because board members are worried they will face shareholder lawsuits. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently recommitted to its diversification campaign. Despite years of aggressive efforts to invite women and people of color to become members, the academy is currently 66 percent male and 81 percent white..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Studios remain focused on inclusive casting, most notably Disney, which has a live-action “Little Mermaid” movie on the way with a Black actress playing the title role, and a “Snow White” movie in production with a Latina lead.The moment is nonetheless unnerving, said Sarah Ann Masse, an actress who appears in “She Said” — which is based on a book by The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey — and who serves on two sexual harassment prevention committees for SAG-AFTRA, the omnipotent actors union. In 2017, Ms. Masse accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2008. He has denied wrongdoing.“I’m not naïve enough to think that a system that is unequal and oftentimes oppressive — yes, still, very much so — is going to change overnight,” Ms. Masse said. “At the same time, I find it incredibly frustrating. People at the top of the food chain, in particular, seem to have gotten distracted by new concerns.”In August, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved “Batgirl,” a nearly finished movie starring a Latina actress, featuring a transgender actress in a supporting role, written by a woman, produced by women and directed by two Muslim men. Warner Bros. Discovery never publicly explained its decision, but signaled that it found “Batgirl” to be creatively lacking.Dan Lin, a producer whose credits include “Aladdin” (2019) and “The Lego Movie,” was among those who inferred something else.“It’s no longer about optics,” Mr. Lin said. “A recession is coming, budgets are tightening and I’m really worried that diversity is going to be the first thing that goes.”The producer Dan Lin recently started a nonprofit that aims to help budding minority filmmakers and writers.Todd Williamson/Invision, via APLast week, Warner Bros. Television, as part of wider cost cutting, shut down “new voices” programs for emerging writers and directors, prompting a fiery reaction from the Directors Guild of America. “The D.G.A. will not stand idly by while WB/Discovery seeks to roll back decades of advancement for women and directors of color,” the guild said in a statement.Within a day, Warner Bros. Discovery had scrambled to clarify that, while the “new voices” programs would indeed end, it had planned all along to expand talent pipeline programs in its diversity, equity and inclusion department.“The resolve is still there to have more women and people of color in writers’ rooms and directing and up on the screen” Mr. Lin said. “The problem is that there is so little training and support. Those things cost money.” To help, Mr. Lin recently started a nonprofit accelerator called Rideback Rise that focuses on budding minority filmmakers and writers.There is no longer across-the-board banishment for men who have been accused of misconduct. Johnny Depp is directing a film, having largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence. John Lasseter, the animation titan at Disney and Pixar, was toppled in 2018 by allegations about his behavior and unwanted hugging and apologized for “missteps” that made some staff members feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.” He is now making big-budget films for Apple TV+. James Franco’s acting career imploded in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Four years later, after a $2.2 million settlement in which he admitted no wrongdoing, he has at least three movies lined up.Johnny Depp largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence.Craig Hudson/Associated PressStudios have also started to take more risks with content — backing scripts, for instance, that would have been radioactive in 2018, at the height of #MeToo, or in 2020, when Black Lives Matter was at the forefront of the culture.Examples include “Blonde,” the Netflix drama about Marilyn Monroe that has been derided by critics as exploitative and misogynistic. (It features an aborted fetus that talks.) Paramount Pictures is working on a live-action musical comedy about slave trade reparations; it comes from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the politically incorrect creative forces behind “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon.”Two ride-along reality shows that glorified the police, “Cops” and “Live PD,” and were canceled in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in police custody have both been reconstituted. “Cops” was picked up by Fox Nation, a streaming service from Fox News, and “On Patrol: Live,” a thinly disguised copy of “Live PD,” debuted over the summer on Reelz, a cable network.At the same time, some movies and shows that overtly showcase diversity and inclusion have either struggled in the marketplace or failed to get off the runway. The takeaway, at least to some agents and studio executives: We tried — these “woke” projects don’t work.Of course, most of what Hollywood makes struggles to get noticed, and almost never for a single reason; nobody looks at poor ticket sales for a Brad Pitt movie and concludes that no one wants to see older white men onscreen. But entertainment is a reactive business — chase whatever worked over the weekend — and there is a risk that “go woke, go broke” jokes could calcify into conventional Hollywood wisdom.“When the real question should be whether comedies generally can succeed at the box office, my concern is that the question is becoming ‘can a Filipino comedy work’ or ‘can a gay comedy work,’” said Mr. Lin, who produced “Easter Sunday,” which starred Jo Koy and collected $13 million in theaters before stalling out. “If you are a woman or a minority, you still do not get repeated chances.” More

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      Two Black Comedians Sue Police Over Search at Atlanta Airport

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      Eric André and Clayton English said they were two of hundreds of Black travelers who have been stopped and questioned by officers just as they were about to board flights.Eric André cleared security at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, gave the gate agent his boarding pass and was moments away from stepping onto a plane when he was stopped by officers with the Clayton County Police Department.The officers questioned Mr. André, who is Black, about whether he was selling drugs and what drugs he had in his possession, he said in an interview and a court complaint.They asked to inspect his bag. When he asked if he had to comply, the officers said no, and Mr. André was eventually cleared to board, he said.During the interaction with the police, other passengers had to squeeze past Mr. André and the officers on the jet bridge, the narrow passageway that connects the gate to the airplane during boarding. He said he was allowed onto the plane but left shaken by the interaction.“I knew it was wrong,” said Mr. André, the creator of “The Eric André Show,” a stand-up comedian, actor, producer and writer. “It was humiliating, dehumanizing, traumatizing. Passengers are gawking at me like I’m a perpetrator as they’re like squeezing past me on this claustrophobic jet bridge.”Mr. André’s encounter in April 2021 echoed another one in October 2020 by Clayton English, another Black comedian, at the same airport.Mr. André and Mr. English filed a lawsuit this month against the Police Department, saying they were unfairly targeted for drug checks, according to the complaint. Their lawyers said the department’s practice discriminated against Black travelers who had already been cleared by Transportation Security Administration agents.The Clayton County Police Department runs a jet bridge interdiction program at the airport and made stops between Aug. 30, 2020, and April 30, 2021, according to the suit.Court papers say the stops resulted in a total of three seizures: “roughly 10 grams (less than the weight of one AAA alkaline battery) of drugs from one passenger, 26 grams (the weight of about 4 grapes) of ‘suspected THC gummies’ from another, and 6 prescription pills (for which no valid prescription allegedly existed) from a third.”Two passengers — those who had the roughly 10 grams of drugs and the pills — were charged, the suit said.In that time, a total of 402 stops were made. In cases where race was recorded, more than half of the 378 passengers who were stopped were Black.The Clayton County Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation. In April 2021, when Mr. André shared his experience on Twitter, the department denied wrongdoing.“This type of interaction occurs frequently during our officers’ course of duties, and is supported by Georgia law and the U.S. Constitution,” a 2021 department statement said. The department added, “Our preliminary findings have revealed that Mr. Andre was not racially profiled.”The Atlanta Police Department — not the Clayton County Police Department — is the primary law enforcement agency at the airport, the airport said in a statement. “APD has a robust drug interdiction program but, unless otherwise required, does not engage in jet-bridge stops of passengers,” the statement said.From September 2020 to April 2021, the police seized about $1 million from passengers, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.Richard Deane, a lawyer involved in the suit, said the purpose of the stops appeared to be to seize money and that the stops were made largely, if not solely, based on race.The suit maintains the police violated the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the equal protection clause, which guarantees racial equality and prohibits racial discrimination, said Barry Friedman, founding director of New York University’s Policing Project, and another lawyer on the case.“We have a great concern about police acting when there’s no policy in place, particularly democratically accountable policy that guides the discretion of police officers,” he said at a news conference this month. “When there’s undue discretion, we get what you have here, which is severe racial discrimination.”Drug interdiction programs at airports started in 1975 with a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operation in Detroit and expanded to other airports, said Beth A. Colgan, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.“I think it’s a strong suit,” she said. “In terms of the Fourth Amendment claims, it seems clear that they were seized and that searches did occur and it would be difficult to describe these as consent searches.”Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize cash, property or vehicles based on probable cause that those involved are associated with criminal activity, Professor Colgan said. This is a low standard, she said, and people often do not challenge forfeitures because the process to get the money back is costly and time-consuming.Courts have favored law enforcement in cases of consent versus coercion, said Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a fellow and visiting professor at Harvard Kennedy School.“People may feel the need to say yes, and it’s a coerced sense of giving consent as opposed to a freedom of saying no and then feeling like everyone is going to suspect they had drugs on them,” she said.Mr. English, who lives in Atlanta, was the winner of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” competition in 2015 and has headlined in clubs, colleges and festivals.He said he spent his three-and-a-half-hour flight in 2020 wondering what he had done wrong and whether he would be arrested upon landing. When the police took his boarding pass and identification and searched his bag, he felt he had no choice but to comply.“I felt completely powerless,” he said at the news conference. “I felt violated. I felt cornered. I felt like I couldn’t, you know, continue to get on the plane. I felt like I had to comply if I wanted everything to go smoothly.”Mr. André lives in Los Angeles but travels through the Atlanta airport often for work and has recently taken to hiring a service that brings passengers directly to the plane after they’ve cleared security because he’s afraid of repeating his experience from last year.“It’s not just about me or what I went through,” he said. “It’s about the community I identify with. It’s about Black and brown people being discriminated against and being treated like second-class citizens, being treated as if they’re already suspicious and they don’t belong in this country by their own government and the trauma that comes with that.” More

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      Exploring James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry’s Friendship

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      The acclaimed writers are communing once again in productions of “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge” and “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Public Theater.James Baldwin recalled first meeting Lorraine Hansberry in 1958 at the Actors Studio in Manhattan after a workshop production of “Giovanni’s Room,” a play based on his novel of the same name. The “biggest names in American theater” were there, he noted, and gave their critiques of the play. But then he locked eyes with a woman yet-unknown to the theater establishment who articulated a full appreciation of him and his work. Of that encounter, Baldwin wrote: “She talked to me with a gentleness and generosity never to be forgotten.”For the next seven years, Hansberry and Baldwin would continue to find moments of deep understanding, forging a relationship even though they often did not live in the same place. But their storied friendship was cut short by Hansberry’s untimely death at the age of 34 in 1965.This fall the two writers are communing once again at the Public Theater and, perhaps, finishing a few conversations, with productions of “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge,” created by and co-produced with the Elevator Repair Service, and a revival of Hansberry’s classic play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” directed by Robert O’Hara.From left: John Clay III, Paige Gilbert and Tonya Pinkins in Robert O’Hara’s production of “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Public Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge,” running through Oct. 23, presents a re-enactment of a 1965 debate between Baldwin, the writer and civil rights activist, and William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative founder of National Review. The two men argued the motion, “The American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro.”The play provides a historical touch point for our fractious political present. The director John Collins said: “I think there are several ways to frame why you should listen to those you disagree with, and sometimes it is because one should allow for the possibilities that the people you don’t agree with might have something intelligent and worthwhile to say. The other reason, though, is to really understand the seriousness, and sometimes the danger, of these other arguments.”Drawing verbatim from the debate transcript, the play ends with an imagined conversation between Baldwin and Hansberry that was inspired by a 1961 discussion about Black Americans in culture. (In addition to Baldwin and Hansberry, the other participants included the essayist and publisher Emile Capouya, the journalist and social commentator Nat Hentoff, the poet Langston Hughes and the writer and critic Alfred Kazin.) While they focused primarily on the question of Black writers in American literature, they also considered the status of Black Americans.On the subject of crafting Black characters, Baldwin explained, “Faulkner has never sat in a Negro kitchen while the Negroes were talking about him, but we have been sitting around for generations, in kitchens and everywhere else, while everybody talks about us, and this creates a very great difference.”Hansberry confirmed, “Which is a different relationship, because the employer doesn’t go to the maid’s house.” She continued as Baldwin and the rest of the room erupted in laughter, “We have been washing everybody’s underwear for 300 years. We know when you’re not clean.” The recording captures Baldwin and Hansberry’s intimacy and the joy they felt in each other’s company.Imani Perry, the Princeton University professor whose books include “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry,” describes theirs as “an intimate intellectual companionship. They are both deeply concerned with Black life and regular Black folks’ lives, and also think about the politics of race and its depiction in the public arena.”“He trusted her artistically, which is a big deal, for someone who is his junior, younger than him, and also when they became friends, he had a larger visible platform,” Perry said of Baldwin, who was 34 when he met a 28-year-old Hansberry. “It was a beautifully intimate friendship. It’s the kind of thing that I think every person who’s either an artist or intellectual, and certainly a person who’s both, yearns for.”Greig Sargeant as James Baldwin and Daphne Gaines as Lorraine Hansberry in the Elevator Repair Service’s production of “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge” at the Public Theater.Richard Termine for The New York TimesGreig Sargeant, who plays Baldwin and conceived the play, notes that Elevator Repair Service wanted to show the public and private Baldwin. “We did some research,” he said, “and one of the things that we found was that article ‘Sweet Lorraine,’” the essay Baldwin wrote to eulogize his dear friend. In writing the last scene of the play, Sargeant and April Matthis, who originated the Hansberry role, consulted numerous essays, interviews and speeches. Baldwin and Hansberry “sharpen each other by having these debates,” Matthis said, “and it’s always loving, and it’s all meant to hold each other to account with so much love.”The Public Theater’s fall season also includes a revival of Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” about a Black family’s struggles to achieve their dreams within the constraints of a segregated America. The drama, directed by Robert O’Hara and opening on Oct. 19, centers on the Youngers and their decision to buy a house in a white neighborhood in Chicago. It emphasizes the impact of desegregation.To drive home this point, O’Hara decided to include a scene with a neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, that is usually cut from productions. “We know where they’re moving in many ways is more dangerous than where they were living,” he said. “I love the scene where Mrs. Johnson says she’s for ‘people pushing out.’ And then she says, but you might get bombed. She’s a harbinger of what the Youngers will face in suburban white America.”Ahead of the play’s historic premiere on Broadway (it was the first written by a Black woman to be produced there), Hansberry and Baldwin reunited in Philadelphia for its run at the Walnut Street Theater. Sargeant noted, “I read an article once where Baldwin said that the great thing about going to see ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ was that he had never seen so many Black people in the audience,” because “Black people ignored the theater because the theater ignored them.”“So now the good thing about being in 2022,” he added, “is that we have an institution that is making an effort to make positive changes for the future, having us both there at the same time, highlighting the relationship between Baldwin and Hansberry.”One hears in both O’Hara’s production of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge” a longing for missed conversations. “Baldwin” offers trenchant examinations of the American condition, and “Raisin” questions the American dream. “Lorraine Hansberry had this incredible, fantastic, lightning bolt of a play, and then she died so early,” O’Hara said. She did not live to see the Black power movement, or the queer women of color who led third-wave feminism. O’Hara continued, “Imagine what she would have been able to do if she were able to dream longer with us, and that’s what’s exciting, we can now acknowledge her queerness.”Producing the play in 2022, O’Hara anticipates the impact of the civil rights movement in the late 20th century, a period that Baldwin lived through and wrote about. He continued, “Doing it downtown, we can investigate some of the more difficult crevices.”The production takes on substance abuse, depression, sexism, classism, and the virulent racism that shaped mid-20th-century American society and continues to inform our own. O’Hara said his take on the American classic draws from his general approach to making art. “I live by this tenet as an artist and a human being that I will not be limited by your imagination,” he said. “Because you can’t imagine it doesn’t mean that it’s unimaginable.” Similar to Baldwin and Hansberry’s exchanges, O’Hara said, “I bring a cavalcade of interesting and exciting people around me to push me into the future.”He noted the enduring importance of Hansberry’s classic and, similar to “Baldwin and Buckley,” how it anticipates our present. “I think of it as a tragedy in hindsight,” O’Hara said. “There’s uplift in the play of them wanting to move out of where they are. But I don’t want us to get lost in the glorious ending. They are moving into the white suburbs in 1959 Chicago. I just think about King saying that Chicago was more dangerous and more racist than the South.”These two works feature questions not only about the status of America but also the theater by remembering two iconic American artists. Baldwin and Hansberry challenge, as O’Hara noted, the idea that “there’s one type of Black story. There’s one type of reality that fits Blackness.” The story contains many more chapters waiting to be written. More

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      What’s So Frightening About Identical Twins?

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      “The Silent Twins,” a new film starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance, sets out to show the complexity of twinship onscreen.Growing up in England and Wales in the 1970s, the identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons spoke to each other all the time. They chattered and laughed, and whispered. They were prolific readers and wrote stories that showed great creative promise. They had ambitions to become famous authors.But throughout their childhood, they had experienced racist bullying at school, which became particularly bad in Haverfordwest, where they and their brother were the only Black students. They became selectively mute, a condition generally caused by severe anxiety. Eventually, they rarely spoke to anyone but each other.Later in their teenage years, this behavior, alongside incidents of petty theft and arson, would ultimately lead them to Broadmoor, one of the most notorious psychiatric hospitals in Britain, for nearly 12 years.Only one of them truly left the institution — Jennifer died of inflammation of the heart on the day of their release, at 29.Marjorie Wallace, the investigative journalist who first reported on the story of the twins in the 1980s and campaigned for their release from Broadmoor, wrote about them in her 1986 book, “The Silent Twins.”“I loved their sense of humor,” Wallace said. “Very ironic, very perceptive. They saw the funny side of everything, as well as the tragic.” She first met the twins when she was working as a journalist for The Sunday Times. Although they didn’t engage with her at first, she convinced them to speak to her by reading their writings: from Jennifer, for example, a novel titled “Discomania,” and from June, a novel titled “The Pepsi- Cola Addict,” alongside diaries and other texts.Wallace quickly realized that June and Jennifer had incredibly rich, complex worlds under the surface of their silence. “It’s a bit like deep-sea diving,” she said. “And you suddenly come across this Technicolor world that they wrote.”Over the years, June and Jennifer’s story has been used to sustain ongoing narratives about the dangers of twins that are often seen in films and on television. Think of the creepy twins in “The Shining,” for example, or a recent Netflix hit, “Echoes” (which presents its lead twin characters, who swap lives once a year unbeknown to their family and friends, as borderline psychopathic), where tropes of fascination, intrigue, fetish and horror abound.Leah Mondesir Simmons and Eva-Arianna Baxter in “The Silent Twins.”Jakub Kijowski/Focus Features“The Silent Twins,” a new movie about June and Jennifer starring Letitia Wright (“Black Panther”) and Tamara Lawrance (“Kindred”) as the teenage and adult twins, aims to buck this trend.Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”), the film hopes to capture the rich, tragic palette of the twins’ lives. It makes clever use of stop motion animation and original music inspired by their writings.“I wanted to tell this from their point of view, from the inside,” Smoczynska said. “And just to introduce them as beautiful, sensitive, very funny, intelligent sisters.” She was drawn to the story having grown up among a “constellation” of her mother’s sisters in Poland.“Their story has many, many layers; for me, it’s one of the most beautiful love stories, because it’s very dynamic,” she added. “And it ends with the act of love. That’s what June said after Jennifer died. That her sister sacrificed herself for her and freed her.”She spent weeks reading and discussing Wallace’s book and the sisters’ diaries, novels and poetry, alongside the cast and crew. “That’s why this movie is not only one genre,” Smoczynska said. “You have both psychological drama and fantastical elements because the same was in their writings. They were very complex in terms of form, and their descriptions.” Now, some of the twins’ novels and other writings are set to be professionally published for the first time.Wallace said it was a calculated choice to work with Andrea Seigel, who wrote the screenplay, and Smoczynska, who she felt would do justice to her reporting. “There have been many, many people who have come to me with synopses and scripts,” Wallace said. “One of them was about two white girls in Mississippi who were drug addicts and went to crazy raves.” Wallace worked as a consultant and co-producer on the film and is still close with June, who Wallace says gave her blessing to the film but is intent on living a private life.While Wallace said the new film is “not entirely maybe what I would have done” (she wrote the screenplay for the original BBC adaptation of her book in 1986), she described Wright and Lawrance’s portrayal of June and Jennifer as “remarkable.” “At some points in watching the film, I honestly thought I was back in Broadmoor,” she said, ‌highlighting a phrase June used while imagining that institution: “My sister and I, as vulnerable as flowers in hell.”Alongside reframing June and Jennifer’s lives and paying tribute to their acts of creativity, Wallace hopes that the film will have an impact on the portrayal of twins on film and TV in general.Lisa and Louise Burns in the 1980 film “The Shining,” directed by Stanley Kubrick.Warner Bros. Entertainment“If you look at the old movies, and in fact, any current movies, they either make twins out as evil killers or freaks,” said Wallace. “Or they make them comic, or they use their identical image to be able to manipulate and play havoc.”“It’s extraordinary that I haven’t really seen a film about twins which has represented the complexity and the depth of the love, the hate, the way of finding your own identity when you’re looking in the mirror all the time to see an identical person there,” she said. “Until now, maybe, with this current movie.”Joe Garrity, a filmmaker (and twin), said Wallace’s book was a “really foundational” text for him in learning about the range of twin relationships. His award-winning 2016 short film, “Twinsburg” tells the story of a pair of twins attending the (very real) annual Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, and grapples with the idea that, though they were raised to be inseparable, they have fundamental differences.“The more we can have depictions that examine those internalized identities that are given to us from others, the better,” he added. “The more people will feel seen and heard, even non-twins.”Lawrance and Wright, who are producers on “The Silent Twins,” became incredibly close during the course of the filming, staying up all night talking and planning their scenes, and even moving in next door to each other. Lawrance felt deep empathy for the sisters and said she knows what it’s like to feel voiceless because of her race and gender. “I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, as a Black woman, there have been many times in which I have felt isolated within an institution that was so much bigger than me.”For Wright, who was brought onto the project first and already knew of June and Jennifer’s story, she said it was important that she and Lawrance had creative control behind the scenes as the only Black women on the production team.The director “understood early on that she doesn’t have all the answers, she’s not a Black woman, so she was willing to listen, she was willing to learn from me and Tamara,” Wright said in an interview. “And immediately I told her, if I’m going to join this project, whoever’s going to play my twin, we have to have a seat at the table, we have to be executive producers or producers: pick one. We have to have a say because this is our story.”Lawrance and Wright worked intensively with movement and voice coaches to attempt to replicate the sisters’ behavior and appearance onscreen, despite looking nothing alike. They also spent a lot of time considering the differences in their characters. Wright views June as a “caged bird,” with the maturity to understand that the twins’ way of life couldn’t last forever, but had deep love and loyalty toward her sister.Lawrance thinks that Jennifer was more insecure than June, which made her slightly more obsessive. “Watching the documentary and reading the book, I really felt for Jennifer, because I felt like media coverage of the past depicts her as the evil twin,” she said. “The one that is possessing June.”Looking back, Lawrance saw how their differences came between them. “In her diaries, she writes, ‘I’ve got this scar on my nose. My sister is so beautiful.’ The admiration of the other was extreme, but also her finding her intolerable was also very extreme. There’s this amazing quote in her diary, where she says: ‘Cain killed Abel. No twin should forget that.’”Phil Garrity, left, and Joe Garrity in the film “Twinsburg,” directed by Joe Garrity.Drew DorseyJust as the stories of twins in mythology stretch back thousands of years, that film and TV will continue to be fascinated with twins is inevitable: Coming movies featuring twins include the horror “Goodnight Mommy,” and a comedy musical inspired by “The Parent Trap.” Could “The Silent Twins” have a small but lasting impact on their portrayal?Smoczynska reflected that after a screening, a mother came up to her, very moved, and said that she had gained a much greater understanding of her twins.“This is the reason why you make the movies,” Smoczynska said. “So that somebody can find himself or herself and understand life, and heal.” More

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      California Bill Could Restrict the Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

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      The bill, which applies more broadly to other forms of creative expression, has unanimously passed the Senate and Assembly and could become law by the end of September.A California bill that would restrict the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings has unanimously passed both the State Senate and Assembly, and could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The bill, introduced in February by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat who represents South Los Angeles, comes amid national attention on the practice following the indictment of the Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna on gang-related charges. Prosecutors have drawn on the men’s lyrics in making their case.The California measure, however, would apply more broadly to any creative works, including other types of music, poetry, film, dance, performance art, visual art and novels.“What you write could ultimately be used against you, and that could inhibit creative expression,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview. He noted that the bill ultimately boiled down to a question of First Amendment rights.“This is America,” he said. “You should be able to have that creativity.”Mr. Newsom has until Sep. 30 to sign the bill into law. If he neither signs nor vetoes the bill by that date, the measure would automatically become law. The law would then go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, Mr. Jones-Sawyer said.When asked whether Mr. Newsom planned to sign the bill, his office said that it could not comment on pending legislation. “As will all measures that reach the governor’s desk, it will be evaluated on its merits,” it said.Though the bill’s genesis is in preventing rap stars’ lyrics from being weaponized against them, the measure loosely defines “creative expression” to include “forms, sounds, words, movements, or symbols.”It would require a court to evaluate whether such works can be included as evidence by weighing their “probative value” in the case against the “substantial danger of undue prejudice” that might result from including them. The court should consider the possibility that such works could be treated as “evidence of the defendant’s propensity for violence or criminal disposition, as well as the possibility that the evidence will inject racial bias into the proceedings,” the bill says.“People were going to jail merely because of their appearance,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said. “We weren’t trying to get people off the hook. We’re just making sure that biases, especially racial biases toward African Americans, weren’t used against them in a court of law.”The bill would require that decisions about the evidence be made pretrial, out of the presence of a jury. For decades, prosecutors have used rappers’ lyrics against them even as their music has become mainstream, with critics and fans arguing that the artists should be given the same freedom to explore violence in their work as were musicians like Johnny Cash (did he really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?) or authors like Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote “American Psycho.”In other cases, though lyrics were not used as evidence, they were discussed in front of the jury, which “poisoned the well” by allowing bias to enter the court, according to Mr. Jones-Sawyer’s office. It also noted that while country music has a subgenre known as the “murder ballad,” it is only the lyrics of rap artists that have been singled out.Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who has extensively researched the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, said that the way prosecutors have used defendant-authored lyrics in court was unique to rap.The practice, she said, essentially treated the lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts — denying rap the status of art.” The California bill is significant, Dr. Kubrin said, because it would require judges to consider whether the lyrics would inject racial bias into proceedings. “This is bigger than rap,” she said.Among the first notable times the tactic was used was against the rapper Snoop Dogg at his 1996 murder trial, when prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case.” The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.Snoop Dogg entering a Los Angeles court in 1996, where a prosecutor cited his lyrics during a murder trial. He was acquitted.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressMost recently, the charges against Young Thug and Gunna have called national attention to the tactic. Both men, who have said they are innocent, were identified as members of a criminal street gang, some of whom were charged with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, co-wrote the Grammy-winning “This is America” with Childish Gambino and is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s hip-hop scene.In November, two New York lawmakers introduced a similar bill that would prevent lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases unless there was a “factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.” It passed the Senate in May.In July, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced federal legislation, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which they said would protect artists from “the wrongful use of their lyrics against them.”The California bill is supported by several other music organizations and activist groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California, which advocates criminal justice reform.In a statement of support from June, the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization that battles systemic racism in the music business, said that prosecutors almost exclusively weaponized rappers’ lyrics against men of color.“Creative expression should not be used as evidence of bad character,” the organization said, maintaining that the claim that themes expressed in art were an indication of the likelihood that a person was violent or dishonest was “simply false.”Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, said that the bill was intended to protect not only rappers, but also artists across all genres of music, and other forms of creativity.“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mr. Mason said. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.” More

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      An Oscars Apology for Sacheen Littlefeather, 50 Years After Brando Protest

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      The Apache activist and actress was booed onstage in 1973 after she refused the best actor award on Marlon Brando’s behalf and criticized Hollywood for its depictions of Native Americans.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache and Yaqui actress and activist who was booed onstage at the Oscars in 1973 after she refused the best actor award on behalf of Marlon Brando.The Academy said in a statement on Monday that it had apologized to Ms. Littlefeather, 75, in June, nearly 50 years after Ms. Littlefeather pierced through the Academy Awards facade of shiny statues and bright lights in 1973 and injected the ceremony with criticism about Native American stereotypes in media.Her appearance at the ceremony, the first time a Native American woman stood onstage at the Academy Awards, is perhaps one of the best-known disruptive moments in the history of the award ceremony.When Ms. Littlefeather, then 26, spoke, some of the audience cheered her and others jeered. One actor, John Wayne, was so unsettled that a show producer, Marty Pasetta, said security guards had to restrain him so that he would not storm the stage.Ms. Littlefeather said she was “stunned” by the apology in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I never thought I’d live to see the day I would be hearing this, experiencing this,” she said.“When I was at the podium in 1973, I stood there alone,” she added.Ms. Littlefeather also brought attention to the federal government’s standoff at Wounded Knee with Native Americans in the 1973 speech, which she came up with shortly before being called onstage on behalf of Mr. Brando, who was to receive the best actor award for his performance as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”Ms. Littlefeather said in an interview with the Academy, which was published on Monday, that she had been planning to watch the 45th Academy Awards on television like everyone else when she received a call the night before the ceremony from Mr. Brando. The two had become friends through her neighbor, the director Francis Ford Coppola. Mr. Brando asked her to refuse the award on his behalf if he won.Ms. Littlefeather arrived at the ceremony with only about 15 minutes left of the official program, wearing a glimmering buckskin dress, moccasins and hair ties. Ms. Littlefeather said she had little information about how the night would work, but Mr. Brando had given her a speech to read if he won.That plan evaporated when a producer for the Oscars saw the pages in her hand and told he she would be arrested if her comments lasted more than 60 seconds, she said.She introduced herself, then explained that Mr. Brando would not be accepting the award because of his concerns about the image of Native American people in film and television and by the government. She paused when a mix of boos and cheers erupted from the audience.“And I focused in on the mouths and the jaws that were dropping open in the audience, and there were quite a few,” she told the Academy. “But it was like looking into a sea of Clorox, you know, there were very few people of color in the audience.”The crowd quieted, and Ms. Littlefeather mentioned the Wounded Knee standoff and then left the stage without touching the golden Oscars statue. She said some audience members did the so-called “tomahawk chop” at her and that when she went to Mr. Brando’s house later, people shot at the doorway where she was standing.“When I went back to Marlon’s house, there was an incident with people shooting at me,” she said. “And there were two bullet holes that came through the doorway of where I was standing, and I was on the other side of it.”Ms. Littlefeather, who was not available for an interview on Tuesday, told the Academy that speaking about these events in 2022 “felt like a big cleanse.”“It feels like the sacred circle is completing itself before I go in this life,” said Ms. Littlefeather, who told The Guardian in June 2021 that she had terminal breast cancer.The former president of the Academy, David Rubin, wrote in the apology to Ms. Littlefeather that the abuse she faced because of the speech was “unwarranted and unjustified.”“For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged,” Mr. Rubin wrote. “For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”Mr. Rubin’s letter will be read next month at a program at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, “An Evening with Sacheen Littlefeather.”The Academy described it as an event of “conversation, reflection, healing and celebration.” Ms. Littlefeather said in a statement that she was looking forward to the Native American performers and speakers at the event, including Calina Lawrence, a Suquamish singer, and Bird Runningwater, the co-chair of the Academy’s Indigenous Alliance, who is Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache.“It is profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago,” she said. “I am so proud of each and every person who will appear onstage.” More