Let me start by saying that even though in last week's post I said I would probably have to give up on those last two movies for now, I was still trying to come up with strategies so I could somehow get them in this round.
It's just not going to happen.
Besides that, I got to see many cool things that I enjoyed a lot.
Slash: Raised on the Sunset Strip (2014)
Paris is Burning (1990)
Unsung: The Story of the Sylvers (2011)
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)
Reggae in a Babylon (1978)
Actually, I didn't enjoy Reggae in a Babylon all that much. The sound quality wasn't that great, and it didn't seem to have a strong point of view. What it did have was original footage from an important time, so there is an importance to it regardless.
The others all filled different places, but I liked each of them so much!
That previous post focused on serendipity, but the factors that made that serendipity possible were my having a lot of interests and frequently checking on those disparate areas.
(Actually, I believe a big help to my "book sense" is that I will periodically look though my entire to-read list, keeping the options fresh in my mind and allowing new associations to pop up.)
Anyway, The Sylvers and Slash both came up as suggestions on Youtube because of other things I had watched. I know the algorithms frequently lead toward white supremacy. Since I am often checking on things for research rather than taste, I also get a lot of suggestions that are irrelevant (no more jazz now!). However, sometimes things work out.
Slash was just a lot of fun. It certainly gives an idea of someone who must do music, but also it shows a whole Hollywood world of his childhood that I had no idea about. There is history of the band, but it's more than that.
Unsung is a whole series of episodes about various bands, many of which seem interesting. I hope to get to more eventually, but currently I have only watched two.
I had mentioned watching the one on Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam in a different post, but I knew about it because I had kept getting prompted to watch the episode on The Sylvers, singers of (among other songs) "Boogie Fever".
Actually, when I combined Black Music Month plus Pride Month last year, as much as I knew Sylvester's music, I did not know him. My awareness of the artists who made the music was practically nonexistent until MTV (unless my parents played their records; that is a limited group). It has been enriching to learn more about music that is often so familiar.
That was one of the most intriguing things about Summer of Soul. It was great seeing the old footage, but especially touching to see new footage of people watching the old footage. Yes, that included Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. seeing old footage of their performance. More than that, there was someone who had attended the concert, and remembered, but also kind of didn't trust the memory. Was that real? And it was.
That moment was just really beautiful.
Part of looking at history is tracing the path between it and the present. I have been looking back at things that are peripheral in my memory and bringing them forward.
I remembered reading a review for Paris is Burning back in the day, and maybe even knowing there was a connection to the "Vogue" song. With the contemporary vilification of drag and seeing occasional references to Willi Ninja, it was just time to watch it.
It is easy to just have this impression of drag as garish queens. That is one cross-section, but there was so much more to it. Your drag could be military or a student, or just anything else that you wanted to try on. There was definitely a competitive aspect, and in that way I guess shows like Drag Race make sense. What stayed with me the most was the vulnerability of some of the house members that we got to know better, and then learning that they often didn't live very long.
Paris was probably the least musical of the movies; the music was there, but not as much the point.
The points it did have were good, and ones we might be getting back to fairly soon.
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