We usher at the local theatre about once a month for live productions. It’s our “date night,” and we generally make a half-day of it. We have to prepare for the show, because even though we are “out there” in the lobby or in the aisles, we are still part of the theatre production: our clothes and our demeanor are to support the on-stage events. Our customers are the theatre-goer who’s paying for a seat and a view and an experience. We are there to assist in that. So we dress to be somewhat invisible and yet in ways that mark us as not quite blended in with the paying customers. We do it for them, but them includes the box office, the production staff, the on-stage performers, the pit, the house manager, and so on—it’s not just who shows up to watch, but who shows up to do. The reason is for them and not us. The show is to entertain and delight and even to transform. We’re just there to assist.
I was thinking about this today as I was getting some great information from friends on ways to research this topic of race in America. So much of the information about race and about ways to confront racism and ways to embrace a multi-ethnic culture is expressed through entertainment. Sometimes the entertainment is purely for fun. We just watch and enjoy, and maybe come away a little happier and a little more content with a diverse world. Sometimes the experience is a bit deeper. “Showboat” is an example of entertainment on stage that has an almost too-obvious message: what we see in society often informs us of how we understand. Magnolia is the same performer and person before and after the great revelation. But the audience (in the show) is not. And the audience in the theatre is, we hope, also not the same, but changed for different reasons. Less like the in-show audience. Less hostile and judgmental. More capable of seeing the “other” to mean “us.”
And sometimes the entertainment is just astounding and audacious and we are enveloped in the experience even as we are rethinking our positions. You cannot watch Marvel’s Black Panther without coming away with a little sense of the joy and love that would come from an unconquered people free to live in an unafraid, even confident manner. Wakanda is appealing not just because it appears exotic, but because it appears to be a place where intelligence and beauty and work and achievement are all acknowledged. Who wouldn’t want to live in Wakanda, and who wouldn’t want to make a Wakanda in the place where they live? BlacKkKlansman is film that feels (IMO) all over the map in its tone, but through the madcap zaniness at spots and the utter serious moments in others, what comes across is the incredible experience that is America, the two worlds of black and white, police officer and civilian, public opinion and private accomplishments. As I lived through those times from the outside, a lot of what was presented felt like newsreels, and yet it gave me insight to the then that makes sense to the now. And then there’s my experience with The Hate U Give…it left me drained. Devastated. I cannot recall a time when a movie experience left me silent and choked up, so over-emotional that my emotions were frozen, like a speaker that cuts out when the sound is overwhelming. Entertainment, maybe. But an experience that didn’t leave me—an experience that soaked me.
It matters what we watch, because it matters who we are. Our entertainment often can tell us a story and bring us to a truth that we cannot see because someone gives us an F.A.Q. (set of “Frequently Asked Questions”) or presents the slide deck of “Ten Ways to Mollify the Racists in Your Life.”
I am totally not saying that the intellectual resources are not important. Totally not saying that. I’m reading a set of books right now, and one of them is by Dwight Hopkins, “Down, Up, and Over.” It’s a deep-level (to me) investigation into black theology and black theologians, and it is tough going because it is an educated man’s work that doesn’t attempt to make things easy. In this book, the hard things to process are hard to process because they are hard things. No pablum here.
But—
It’s my experience that having an experience to unfold the meaning of an event or a moment or even a philosophical position does more to help me understand. The entertainment shows me people who are developing in that moment, and that is how I get to the deep moments and the times when I say “Aha!” And even the times when I sit in the theatre, silent and alone and stunned, not sure if I feel anything anymore.
It matters to us, what we entertain ourselves with, and it matters how we use our time to live in an experience, and it matters that we are changed by simple ways and simple truths.
Entertainment matters.
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