HBO NATIVE SON nottes on a first viewing

HBO NATIVE SON---on the first viewing, November 11, 2019



HBO Native Son brings a hard question to the Western conference table:  why does a nation's culture industry appropriate works of art from time past or present, shift them from one genre to another,  dazzle potential consumers with promises, and gamble to make a profit?  The industry's  economic motives are plain; its aesthetic, historical, ideological, and political motives are foggy.  The traditional movement was from print to non-print; in our brave new digital environments, uncertainty is dominant, and the idea of genre is a matter for endless debate.  Consumer response flow along a spectrum from uncritical approval to embittered condemnation.  Rigorous studies of the industry might reveal that manipulation of forms and displacement of values boil down to an unstable variable" TASTE.



Who is selling whose taste to whom?  Which new artists, with or without anxiety of influence, is reclaiming and recasting the old artist in a mold she or he never made?  What are the  consequences  for readers/spectators who know the ur-narratives as they have commerce with the estrangement of new ones?



A collage of subjective impressions visual and verbal    cryptic clues

color the trial and error of grasping in the ambiguous

matrix of difference.



Green hair, black fingernails,  urban jacket (oddly politicized), the heavy metal of oversized rings making weapons of the hands, Bigger Thomas' eyeglasses adjusting how the world appears, a gun "inherited" from his deceased father, a bike (environmentally responsible transportation)



I don't need an alarm clock to be woke; I can make my own world



The flash of Ellison's Invisible Man is an omen/ Neo-Bigger knows always already in the arrogance of now  what Ellison's nameless narrator had to learn in pain





FATE

breakfast/ a middle-class  décor of a lower-class apartment/ Mrs. Thomas is a paralegal (law is not external to the single-mother family), a mirror,  a rat disturbs negotiated tranquility , and Bigger kills it with a skillet   ---Mother to Son: Throw it away and wash your hands.  There's a glint of kindness in Bigger's setting out milk for stray cats.



The Afro-future Bigger has a brand new bag, a manifesto: I make my move when I decide/ I ain't stupid/ Plenty of things I could do, be good at

Bike-messenger Bigger meeting his girlfriend Bessie outside a ubiquitous  beauty parlor is a telling moment when the chemistry of love fails---what has Bigger's lie to his boss when give guilt-perfume to Bessie to do with it?



Bigger scans the sky --be like a bird--from the drug dealer's car ---I need my weed, nigger/I don't need a job  [but he has one, does he not?]

Unlike the old Bigger of the novel, the new Bigger of the film doesn't plan a robbery; his pal does; Bigger doesn't lead, he follows

in the cave of a  cinema  where the Devil finds work nothing much happens / music/ sports --that was my dad's thing



The possibility of working for Will Dalton, the capitalist oppressor, a supporter of the NAACP, is a brand new game of the same old shit, the bread and circus with Mary Dalton rejecting her place as a "princess"  on a pedestal



Bessie and Bigger copulating  on the wall ---an echo of The Godfather



FEAR

A mansion in Chicago as wide as an English country house

Mrs. Dalton--"She wasn't always blind," her husband said

Mr. Dalton ---impressed with Bigger's resume, he offers Bigger a chauffer's job at $1,000/week plus a room with a view on the top floor ( a nice place for an assignation)



Mary Dalton has political yearnings ---she presumes Bigger has to be outraged because he is black/ her father  has to be a capitalist because he is rich  



radio in the car and Bigger sampling a range of music --hip hop to classical



Take Mary somewhere to meet Jan/Bigger refuses invitation to join the meeting

Jan takes the driver's seat when the three go to a black eatery , namely B & G Tavern in Bigger's neighborhood

 (Bessie and one of her friends note how Bigger's association with whites alienates him them  ---of course, Bigger has chosen to alienate himself from the traditions blueprint of blackness, the expected!!



Mary: Jan and I are engaged.  Don't tell my dad.

Bigger comments that his father, an accountant ---one day he dropped dead --six or seven years ago

Mary:  I have no idea what black people think.



Mary and Jan spoon in the back seat.

Intrusion of the former driver for the Daltons ---Mr. Green--in Mary's remark: he was straight.



Bigger takes Mary to her home, but will not help her up the stairs.

Bigger takes the Daltons to church  (this scene is not integrated with the overall plot)

Bigger in the Dalton's library;  Mrs. Dalton read Braille

Bigger at the car wash

Bigger is chided for not showing up for the planned robbery with his pals; he is accused of selling out; he becomes angry and fight with Jake



Green shows up and gives advice to Bigger

Green: we grew up in the same hood

Bigger: You don't know nothing about me

Green:  Mr. Dalton's giving you a chance; make something of it



Bessie and Bigger + Mary and Jan in the park by the lake

Bessie tells Mary she is trying to get a degree in business management  ---here I detect the innate  intelligence of a black woman is in opposition to a black man's  willed rejection of upward mobility through higher education; this point may be loss on a viewing audience

Bessie paints Bigger's fingernails ---black



Mary takes Bigger to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

'Bigger's interior dialogue with himself---the music is a masterpiece;  Strength is the man who stands out from the rest//I don't want to know nothing  about your morality---here's a mixed platitude



At a drug party, Jan becomes very angry with Mary for kissing another man ( FUCK YOU ) Mary feels weird from the drugs when Bigger takes her home; she strips to her underwear and cavorts on the lawn---she meets the world with her black drawers on

When Bigger takes Mary to her room, her disoriented self tells him I LOVE YOU as she seduces him; she

 does kiss his body

When Mrs. Dalton calls her daughter's name, Bigger suffocates her with a pillow/ murder committed out of deepest fear which even the outsider in Bigger can't escape



FLIGHT



Maybe they'll catch me; No, they're all blind

Puts Mary's body in the blazing furnace---ODDLY IN NO VERSION OF NATIVE SON DOES THE SMELL OF BURNING FLESH PERFUME THE HOUSE

 Bigger returns to his mother's house to sleep; Buddy finds a wad of money Bigger has dropped

Mrs. Thomas talks to Bigger---You're a very special boy Bigger  ---always doing things your way ---not easy  --proud of your assuming responsibility  ---she hugs him tenderly

Breakfast again ---something other than what I am moment for Bigger



Mrs. Dalton and Peggy in the kitchen .  Bigger says he brought her home and plays ignorant to the max



Bigger is interrogated by black male and female detectives about the drug party on the Chicago Gold Coast --smoking and drinking/ he lies about Jan, saying "Politics ain't my thing."  The law has a slave mentality.



Jan is grilled by the detectives

Peggy discovers Mary's earring in the ashes

Why is just here is the famous quotation regarding double consciousness thrown at us like a curve ball?

Flash of newspaper (Bigger is a suspect of interest)

Bigger in the cinema yet once more



Bigger , all stereotype symbol-laden, has meeting with Jan

I raped her ---did I? --get down/ It's too late for that

Pulls gun on Jan and exits



Bigger cuts his green hair off, goes bald, morphs into Tupac! and hides out at Bessie's place



Bessie:  Did you kill her?  You killed her

Bigger: No, but they'll pin it on me [[the Othello lie is the truth]]  I need you to lay low hide out then just go

Much confusion mixed up in the blues of a  feeling

Bessie is  the epitome of judicious remorse

If you didn’t do nothing wrong

Bigger: Hey, I got this



Near rape of Bessie, but she has the gun and throws it out of the abandoned building

You got to turn yourself in

Bigger:  So sorry. I'm so sorry.  Is this his For Colored Girls song?



 QUICK CLOSURE/Bessie lives--a nod to Baldwin's IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK



sound of squad cars/Bigger watches Bessie walk away in desperation

STOP---police guns trained on Bigger's back

Bigger stops and turns--walks toward police, hands in pockets (black panther scowls on jacket)

as Bigger's hands move, he is shot by police  (what need is there for a trial/ American justice is accomplished  NOW FLY HIGH AND ABOVE IT, BUT IT AIN'T NOT YET ABOUT CLOSURE





For a person who knows the novel Native Son well, HBO Native Son is a disorienting series of episodes and fragments of reversal.  The HBO plot is very post-whatever, a confused attempt to engage systemic racism by not engaging systemic racism.  The film is a tragic falling apart of things



A second viewing may cast a different light on the gaps.



November 15, 2019