Saturday, August 19, 2023

The Montgomery RiverFront Brawl (2): Real or Cinematic, The Chair's New Symbolism, Marvel's Memes, African Gods & Ancestors

  The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

Original Title:        "The ‘Montgomery Brawl’ Revisited: Was it Real, or Cinema Realite’, (& The New Symbolism of the Chair - the 2 Hour Prior Orisha Ceremony (Homage to and Blessings Asked for the African Ancestors from the African Gods, the Orishas (Oshun, the River Goddess; Ogun, the Warrior; and Shango, Bringer of Thunder and Masculine Strength)"

As the (original, above) lengthy title suggests, things about The Brawl keep coming out. Now we learn that 2 hours prior to The Brawl, a group of African-American ladies ‘went to the River’ at the same dock to offer flowers to their enslaved African ancestors who were brought to Montgomery and sold at the slave market a few blocks from the dock. The ladies aksed blessings from the African River Goddess (the ORISHAOsun). The awakened Goddess Oshun then invoked the chief God Ogun, the Warrior God, who sits on his sacred chair and provides mighty weapons such as The Chair (but who leaves their use to the recipient), and then Ogun was joined by the also awakened, mighty Shango, the God of thunder and power, AND MASCULINE STRENGTH.

Yoruba (West Africa) Sacred Chair:

In other words, The Brawl is contexted both by American pop media memes (e.g., Marvel’s ‘Aquamayne’), and by ancient African deities who had been awakened 2 hours earlier with offerings of flowers thrown into the river by African-American ladies, which consequently led to OGUN’s gifting of the Folding Chair to be used by the victims of The Brawl (and specifically by Ogun's hero, Mr. Ray)

(The Brawl’s confluence of ancient African and contemporary pop-media cultures (themes and memes) is astounding! And the synchronicity of it all makes one 'ponder'.)

— — — — — — — -

It’s 10 days after the peak internet exposure of/to the Aug 5, ’23, ‘Montgomery RiverFront Brawl’, and I am still digesting the many resulting internet pieces that message reactions, opinions, viewing angles, …about The Brawl.

All Americans, Black and White had the chance to empathize with the same clearly defined good guys…which they did (Did The Brawl give a new insight on ‘Southern Ways’, …that the Good Ole Boys (1) appreciate the good brawl, and (2) a good brawl doesn’t distinguish according to race if the morality is clear?)

Was the Montgomery Brawl real, or was it a great studio production — perfectly-cast, superbly-acted, Greek-chorused, even cinematic ‘theater-in-the-round’?’ (Keeping with the ‘uber-theme’ of hilarity, I prefer to ‘mentalize’ The Brawl’ as a neo-Greek Classical, Marvel Studio ‘joint’…same themes, almost verbatim memes or Marvel memes easily seen in The Brawl’s actions. (There, I said it…I think Marvel Studios is doing a great job of messaging positive, morally constructive, socially redemptive principles to America’s youth.)

The ‘Set’! Audience immersion…200+ viewers entrapped on a historically-replicated (ante bellum) tour boat stranded in an alligator-infested river, offshore the stage that was (really) the exact spot where slaves were sold 2 centuries ago. (This had to be a studio creation.)

The audience was out of earshot of the spoken dialect, but the entire, multi-segmented action was visible ….as the tour boat’s ‘Greek Chorus’ repeatedly chanted in unison, “Hey B..tch, Get out the Way’, (directly from a popular ’20s rap hit.)…at the private skiff owners parked at the dock space reserved for the tour boat…preventing the tour boat from docking more that 30 minutes. (What a perfect morality-play setting.)

And the script! Roles that connected with an audience already familiar with the script’s memes? And a clearly identified, and identifiable, victim (a descendent of slaves who had been sold in a market exactly on the tour boat dock.) Perfect setting, perfect ‘good-guy, bad-guy’ roles…all perfectly acted.

90% or more of internet reactions I’ve seen are a kind of amused veneer that is shattered to pieces by outbursts of natural, uncontrollable hillarity.

Though, for myself and apparently for many, many others, after each outburst, as I settle down between laughing spells, I am in wonderment why is The Brawl so amusing. What is so amusing about an assault on a elderly man just doing his job (or trying to do) to move a private skiff 3 feat along a city dock space reserved for a 200-passenger riverboat that had been delayed from docking more than 30 minutes by the skiff’s drunken, recalitrant, White crew and owners?

The answer, as much as I can figure, is the relief that no one was shot (this afterall is in the Deep South where guns are king), and no one was knifed — one White observer said if the White skiff crew had shown a gun, he would quickly have been “sliced catfish bait at the bottom of the river.”

‘Relief’ that everyone lived through The Brawl helped explain the amusement, but maybe, as I sensed and still do, there was more…that The Brawl was a rare occurence of unambiguous ‘Right and Wrong,’ and for once, African Americans were not only ‘Right’ but being right was acknowledged and protected, rather than being punished for being the victim.

(The elderly man-victim was incidentally African-American, a salient feature of the whole incident,…. but at the same time The Brawl was not just a racial ‘thing’, because a young White teen (15/16 yo) who came to the victom’s aid was also beaten and driven away.)

Maybe The Brawl was elementally amusing because even though racial-faces were predominant, it was not a race riot. The Brawl was more a Falstaffian morality play whose classic character roles, including the Fool, go back 4000 years or more! And the roles were ‘acted’ by real Black and White people…who incidentally performed ther roles superbly, including the Fool,…and according to a excellently written, wonderfully entertaining script with that must have come from senior writers at Marvel Studios (e.g., ‘AquaMAYNE!’)




Tuesday, August 15, 2023

The August 5, 2023 Montgomery (Alabama, ) RiverFront Brawl: 'Murika's Strangeness Peeks Out …No Shots, No Knives, Everybody Lived to Laugh …White and Black Laughing…at White Buffoons. Did This Happen in America? In Alabama? In Montgomery!? (1816 vs. 2023! The Harriet Tubman Riverboat! Black AquaMAYNE! The Spirit of Dr King! 'Kunta'! The Same Dock Where the Slaves were Unloaded!! No, Not Too Much..MUCH More Can be Said!)

 The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

Murika. ‘Marvel Speak’, today’s ‘Lingua Universalis Murikana’ (eg, Black AquaMAYNE.) ‘Mollywhoppin.’ Murika is getting stranger by the day…but that could be good thing. 

(An example is the August 5, 2023, ‘Montgomery (Alabama) Riverfront ‘Brawl’ ). 

Was the ‘Montgomery RiverFront Brawl” a kind of post-post-modern American opera in the round, public invited, choose your role (strongly influenced by, or even perhaps scripted from Marvel Comics memes.)

By some miracle, the August 5, 2023, ‘Montgomery RiverFront Brawl’ was a potential tragedy that didn’t happen…as if the Fates were up there enjoying their game of cards, and said:

 “Not today Montgomery, you fools just go ahead and do your foolishness…and don’t you dare bother us with real tragedy like bloodshed, broken limbs and stuff like that…just embarass yourself, you skiff owners, … and embarass the State of Alabama…Alabama is used to being embarassed by its throwback racism.”

The Montgomery RiverFront Brawl now one of the strongest answers to the critics of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “Wokeness”…the moral lines are sharp, clear and undeniably reflect the remnants of White, racist self-entitlement in a racist American region (Alabama)…where on August 5, 2023, an elderly Black riverboat co-captain(!) was assaulted (and video’d) for doing his assigned task which was to move an abandoned private skiff from the city dock space reserved for a tour boat (delayed from dockng for more than 40 minutes)…but he was angrily attacked by the returning skiff owners…more to punish him for touching their boat than carrying out his officially instructed duty. And the assault occurred on the very docks where more than 200 years ago (1823, and earlier) Negro slaves were taken off riverboats and marched in ankle chains to ‘holding pens’ only 2 blocks away, there to be sold at the slave market in center-city just a few more blocks away. It was as if the slave ancestors of the 2023 riverboat co-captain (assaulted by White drunken boaters) endowed the co-captain and his defenders who rushed to his aid, with physical and emotional strength to say, “No More, This Will No Longer Stand.”

Of the several well-voiced perspectives about that incident, this writer takes a positive view that one of the incident’s broader significance is that it examples America’s unique ‘growing up’ process…what better way to unite across histric racial animosity than a performance by ‘Opera Buffa’ actors at center stage so that everyone can laugh at clearly understood stupidity. Specifically, even White people can laugh at the White (redneck) attack on an elderly Black (and uniformed) staffer doing his job to clear dock space for a tour Riverboat (“The Harriet Tubman II”). One of the best reactions begins at minute 1:50 in the Youtube video:

YTE PEOPLE HAVE FINALLY SPOKEN ON THE MONTGOMERY BOAT B.RAWL‼️”.

But there is also a chapter 2 made by the same video-maker. Check out the ‘White’ lady who speaks her perspective at minute 9:20:

“YT MAN TRIES TO BRING IN “FLIP SCRIPT” ON THE MONTGOMERY ALABAMA B-RAWL‼️HE’S OWN R.O.A.S.T.ED HIM!

America has found a path to self-understanding through a new and uniquely American hybridized language that enables a common immediacy and understanding across (and erasing) America’s race-class boundaries. This new language is the set of memes from American mass media …,

and specifically in the context of the recent Montgomery incident, the memes of the Hollywood movie adaptations from Marvel Comics (e.g., “[Black] AquaMAYNE”, emphasis on Southern dialect spelling as heard at the Riverfront Brawl.)

The “Montgomery RFB” can also be framed as a Falstaffian opera-in-the-round with old and new elements, roles,, themes, memes, outcomes and even a ‘Greek Chorus’ (the Riverboat railing-line of teen Black girls in-unison sing-songing facing the dock (located at stage center):

“Hey [you], move your dam boat.”

Murika. ‘Marvel Speak’ (Black AquaMAYNE.) ‘Mollywhoppin.’

Yes, ‘Murika’ is getting stranger by the day…but maybe that could be good thing. (And, overall, we see that, true to their pacific African cultural roots, African- Americans are not inclined to lynch, mass murder, mass hate…but instead are ready to find humor in human frailties, and forgive…African Americans tend to see human bufoons as one chapter in God’s book ..and life is too short.)
— — — — — — — — 

(‘What the f…k is going on, America, are we regressing to a final end, a stinky, immoral finale to ‘America’s Original Sin’ (Slavery) ?) 

Or, have we progressed to a social media-meme-driven, post-modern neo-Capitalist-racist implosion? (Or, has America become to a ‘post, post-modern’ state yet to have a name?)

Facts about the August 5, 2023, Montgomery Brawl still roll in: … first, there had been a Trump rally that day, or day before, in Montgomery (the good ole boys were excited, and feeling extra-entitled); second, the riverboat docking was delayed at least 30 minutes by the private boat; third, the Black ‘dock worker’ is actually a “co-Captain (the media automatically assumed the assaulted co-captain was a ‘menial’ rather than a ‘second-in-command (First Mate)…a misassumption which in itself signifies racist re-labeling and re-framing of facts.

By some miracle, the Montgomery Brawl was a potential tragedy that didn’t escalate to deadly proportions. The only wounds that were incurred were wounded egos of the self-entitled egos of the redneck skiff owners.

The skiff owners set in motion their own fate (a general Mollywhoppin’.) The miracle was that no shot was fired, though I am 100% certain the there were deadly weapons (guns and knives) on that private skiff.

The whole thing revealed a ‘strangely wonderful’, or ‘wonderfully strange’ shift/seachange in American ‘kultur’…

America somehow ended up the confrontation with no deaths, no racial rioting…but instead wih plenty of laughs…at the skiff owners. 

Was the ‘Montgomery RF Brawl’a sign of racial co-recognition of ‘reasonable boundaries’ — yes, rebellion to officials and offical rules, and response in kind from Black Americans, but the knives, razors and guns didn’t come out…though they were certainly around, somewhere ‘handy’ but kept in place.

Was the ‘Montgomery Brawl” a kind of post modern American opera in the round, public invited, choose your role (strongly influenced by memes linked to Marvel Comics templates.)

This just might be a new American South’s holiday every August where Black and White southerners can choose roles according to their mood and participate in a good ole “Mollywhoppin Time.” Already there is a Youtube video of a multi-racal pool party where Black and White partiers share roles and mime the whole incident while beering down and falling over laughing at the good ole boy boaters who showed their asses and got Mollywhopped.

Murika is getting stranger by the day…maybe that’s a good thing.

And after the Molywhoppin celebration…everybody, too tired to hate, might’ve gathered together to share beer, barbecue, baked beans and fried chicken. ‘Murika’ finally finds a way to solve one of its major problems…race relations.

Most internet reactions are jolly, finger-pointing at the foolish, Falstaffian absurdity of the private boaters who were drunk, clumsy, made fun of and obviously headed for a righteous, good ole ‘woodshed’ “Mollywhoppin”…well-deserved just because they commically showed their asses in front of a huge crowd of African Americans watching one of their uniformed, official “uncles” get clearly ‘jumped on’ in full public view…and watching “Black AquaMAYNE” swim across the river (dodging “gators”, cottonmouths, and sundry other river monsters in that murky water) to arrive “to your left (Marvel meme)” to assist ‘Unc.’

Falstaffian. Murika. Black AquaMAYNE. Mollywhoppin. Mongomery Alabama…America’s new clown show.

Murika is getting stranger by the day…that could be good thing.

Friday, August 4, 2023

The Insurance Industry Forces Florida to Face the Reality of Climate Change, Finally

The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

Florida just doesn’t ‘Get it!’…the voice of ‘good business’ sense from the Florida insurance market is finally telling Florida like it is about climate change, by increasingly discontinuing insuring the properties of Floridians who stubbornly stay put in the paths of annual Gulf storms and refuse to move to higher grounds (probably out of south Florida, completely.) 

Climate Change is real, it has been real for a while, and in the name of ‘good business’, insurers should have ‘pulled the plug’ on insuring the annual flooding and storm damage to Florida real estate maybe a decade ago.

IN THE NAME OF ‘GOOD BUSINESS”…and to save Florida homes and business property, Florida’s conservative GOP contingent in Washington should stop denying climate change and encourage government studies and actions to stop or reverse climate change. (Comment to The Washington Post article: “How Florida let a top insurer abandon homeowners in their time of greatest need”, by Brianna Sacks, August 4, 2023)

MI6, Western Intelligence, Ukraine, and The Russian People

The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

Today, I watched a Youtube interview with the English intelligence chief (MI6, Sir Richard Moore,…the ghost thusly spake) who commented on "his" service's view about the current Russian invasion of Ukraine…and on the resultant backfires in Russia itself…and on Sir Richard’s ‘faith’ in an eventual Russian people's public non-support of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. 

But, IMO, the Russian people are not the yet-to-arise heroes the West (and their intel groups, MI6 prominently) put hope in.  Rather, the Russian ‘people though perhaps ‘heroic’ inside, are in day-to-day reality totally and ruthlessly controlled to a state of numb paralysis. That is the reality the West must constantly keep in mind and deal with, and never let Russia’s siren song to seduce our people.

I’ve written about the Russian people before and stated my perspective on the Russian ‘State’ (a history of total state control), and on the Russian people (nihilistic, born to the yoke of servitude, number one globally alcoholic,…but yet human underneath.)

One can only hope about the Russian peoples' desire for a better government, but theirs is a terribly high hill to climb. (For the Russian people to be heard, many hundreds of thousands might have to die by their own ‘leaders’ hands.)



Thursday, August 3, 2023

Trump Is Probably Not Afraid After His August 1 ('23) Indictment. (Fear’s a Different World to a Shark Driven by Bad Instincts)

 The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

American ‘democracy’ can’t handle a ‘Trump’…because we are trying to put on trial a 21st century political megalomaniac according to 18th century codes for ‘gentleman’-class-behavior…our Trump is not a gentleman and this is definitely not the 18th century (regardless of what SCOTUS Justice Alito says.) America needs to grow up, shape up, get educated. 

Further -America found out that Trump is not a leader, and not a good business manager…Trump is just a larger version of the corner ‘Mom-and-Pop general store operator operating on a an ad hoc budget and struggling to stay alive day-by-day…but in Trump’s case, grifting and living large with gold faucets, by any and all means, legal and illegal. America discovered that “Grift” is Trump’s pathway.

 — — — — 

I have a repeating mantra running in my brain about Donald Trump and America’s continual surprise and shock at his dodges and twists that catch us off guard every time he acts out… even though we should know by now to expect the unexpected. The reason, IMO, is that Trump is not human-normal, but is a ‘Force’ which America, as an immature, uneducated, unsophisticated culture, can’t handle.

A significant question, after August 1’s indictment of Trump for his inciting the ‘Jan6(‘21)’ attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, is…’is Donald Trump now afraid?’ (In other words, ‘is Donald Trump experiencing remorse?’ Most likely not, or at best fleetingly because he is too busy planning chortling over how he is going to gum up the works of America’s naive and corrupt legal works.)

So, I say ‘No!’ Trump is not afraid…Trump has no time for ’fear’. Trump is like a shark constantly swimming to ‘breathe’, i.e., to make money to sustain his errors and extravagant lifestyle (*which he can’t afford.)

Trump’s life awash in real or self-manufactured crises and tension. While he has largely mastered keeping totally focus on money, which IMO, Trump seems very good at (i.e., being 100% focused on money.) But Trump is not actually earning big money — Trump is not actually (net assets-wise) worth the billions that he claims. Rather, Trump, if not owning billions, at least ‘controls’ billions... and lives large off the ‘vig’ like a billionaire (like a real mob-boss, the gold faucets and hookers, etc are apparently all that matters …to him.)

Trump, the ‘Force’, doesn’t feel fear, only heightened aggression….like cornered animal. We thought Trump was a true ‘businessman’ (who nearly half of Americans either wanted, or wanted to try out as President.) But instead, America learned the difference between a corporate leader and an entrepeneur. America found out that Trump is not a leader, and not a good business manager…Trump is just a larger version of the corner ‘Mom-and-Pop general store operator operating on a an ad hoc budget and struggling to stay alive day by day.

The corporate leader knows how to work with a board (governance), but the enrepeneur is a wild-card cowboy who has learned to survive at on the open range, unfettered by fences and rules… except for rules of survival.

The entrepeneur champions ‘laissez-faire’ capitalism; …not of any scholarly, philosophical enlightenment…but because the entrepeneur can only be free to operate in an environment that is unbounded from all behavior chains — ‘ethics’, honesty, fair practcies, consumer safety (meaningless in that fishpond,…etc.

The entrepeneur is not someone who belongs as President. And Trump is an entrepeneur…whether he knows it or not!

Indict, Try and even convict Trump…then ban Trump from ever-again(!) standing for, being elected to, and occupying any future office of any kind — — America’s cultural-democratic structures can’t handle a ‘Trump’…because America asks its leaders to operate by the unwritten rules of 18th century class-based behavior. (America needs to grow up.)