When God and The Prophets Were Black

The Green Pastures was a movie produced in Hollywood in 1936, the year my maternal grandparenst were married. It was adapted from the Pultizer Prize winning play of the same name. Like Disney's 1997 TV version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella which I wrote about in my December 30th post, the casting for The Green Pastures was like nothing the world had seen before or since at the cinema. The entire cast is African-American. God, the angels, the prophets, Adam and Eve, the King of Babylon, etc. are all blacks who speak in "old" black southern dialect. All of the stories in the film come from The Bible and are played out in the mind of a little black girl.

The characters of The Green Pastures may be offensive to some who despise old Hollywood films which too often portrayed blacks as ignorant, unlettered servants or slaves, or excessively comical, but the characters of The Green Pastures have a kind of dignity which is too lacking in what is considered by some to be "black culture" in America today. Current popular culture which is held too much in adulation by young African-Americans is a negative pool of gangsta's (gangsters), pimps, and ho's (whores). This, with a number of other issues, has damaged the black community in America. Even abroad some people believe current black stereotypes and cannot understand African-Americans who do not act "black." I would feel so ashamed sometimes when I was in Turkey and see some rap videos. Being someone who was 18 or 19 when the first rap songs went mainstream, I continue to view with distaste what rap has become since the first rappers I heard were The Sugar Hill Gang and

Kurtis Blow. They did not spew vulgarities, praise the gangster and thug life, and denigerate women. Not being a total prude, however, I do view some of the 1990s rappers like Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and Bone, Thugs, and Harmony as rap artists inspite of everything.

When I saw The Green Pastures on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) about 3 years ago, I did not find it offensive. Here were black people who spoke like my rural grandparents and others I would be around during my summer vacations in Greene County, Georgia, the county seat of my mother's family. In fact, I understand less the dialect that young African-Americans speak today than I do these people's in the film.

The Green Pastures is rated with 5 stars on Amazon where it can be purchased in DVD here. Here is also an excerpt from the film.

Controversial still, stereotypical, naive, sentimental, whatever your opinion, The Green Pastures is a classic artifact of African-American cinema, and I recommend it as a Romantic, moving, heartwarming, creative take on The Bible, and a work of art.

The Brutal Romance of Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) was a Norwegian novelist born in Denmark who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 mainly for her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter about the life of a woman in 14th century Norway. Undset is largely unknown today outside of Norway and except by a few Catholic scholars which is a shame because her writing is truly some of the most powerful, beautiful, realistic, and brutally Romantic works ever written. She is my all time favorite writer not only because I revel bathing in the Romantic, obscure, and the beautiful, but because she is indeed one of the giants of western literature.

Sigrid Undset's power as a writer was influenced by several sources. Her father was an archaeologist, and she developed an extensive knowledge of the old Norse and Icelandic Sagas. She was also influenced by several prominent Scandinavian writers of the 19th century like August Strindberg , the playwright Henrik Ibsen, and other writers like the Brontes, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, and William Shakespeare. Though she became renowned for her novels set during the Middle Ages in Norway, Undset's early novels and short stories dealt with the lives of young women living and working in Kristiania, which is now Oslo. Her modern characters show an alienation and lack any spiritual base to help them survive life's often boisterous and brutal storms.

Her novel Jenny (1911) caused a scandal because of it dealt with sexual issues. The main character Jenny is a young artist living in a community of young expatriate artists in Rome. She is loved by a fellow Norwegian artist, but cannot bring herself to respond to him; still she becomes engaged to him. When she returns to Norway, she meets her father, a rather weak man who is hounded by his wife. Jenny feels sorry for him, but does not love him. After a brief liasion with the father, she learns that she is pregnant. The story ends tragically like most of Undset's novels and short stories. Jenny, unlike, Kristin Lavransdatter which is Undset's masterpiece, was out of print until 1997 when I had the longed for opportunity to read it in Tiina Nunnally's collection called The Unknown Sigrid Undset. The descriptions of Rome and the countryside outside the city are breathtaking. You can almost hear, breathe, and smell nature in Undset's stories. You can also relate to the character's feelings and passions.

For years Kristin Lavransdatter could only be read in an older version of English, but in 1997 Tiina Nunnally translated the it into simplier modern English. Kristin Lavransdatter is in three volumes and a must read. It is the story of Kristin the daughter of a wealthy Norwegian landowner in the 1300s, her passionate love affair with the darkly handsome, erotic, and reckless Erlend, who seduces her when she is taking a spiritual retreat at a convent, their turbulent marriage, her decision to become a nun after the death of Erlend, and her and a number of her children's deaths during the Black Death. This novel is a beautiful but difficult read because of the amount of tragedy. It contains passionate love scenes (without sex described in detail), violence, the death and injury of young children, and lush descriptions of nature. The saintly and the sinful are presented. Kristin's spiritual journey is told just as it is in Undset's other medieval masterpiece The Master of Hestviken whose protagonist is male, a highly moral person, who passionately loves the same woman from childhood, but even though he is a highly decent person, goes on to commit murder when the honor of the woman he loves is wrecked.

Sigrid Undset soaked up life. The realism, beauty, passion, Romance, despair, and raw brutality of her works are a reflection of her own life and spiritual journey. When her father died, she had to abandon her dream of getting a university education. For 10 years she was an diligent office worker and secretary, feeling frustrated in having to do work that really did not reflect her talents. Early on, she dreamed of being a writer, devouring works by her favorite authors, and trying her hand at writing a novel set in the Middle Ages. Her first published work was set during the modern era and dealt with adultery. Later she distanced herself from modern themes and placed her characters in medieval settings, but gave them range and emotions that people in all times and places can relate to.

Being rather shy and reserved, Undset probably did not have a relationship until she was 30 when she met a Norwegian painter Anders Castus Svarstad during a trip to Rome. Svarstad was 9 years older and married with a wife and 3 children back in Norway. It was probably love at first sight, and they began to live together, marrying about 3 years later once he was able to get a divorce. The marriage produced children, but eventually broke up. During the time, Undset, because of the demands of being a wife and mother was not able to write. She also had the first rumblings of a spiritual crisis which would lead her to reject Lutherism and become a Roman Catholic.

When Germany invaded Norway in 1940, Sigrid Undset fled first to Sweden and then to the US. While in America she pleaded for her country's liberation through her writings. After the fall of the Nazis, she returned to Norway, but for whatever reason never wrote again. Why she never wrote again is a mystery, maybe she was just too worn out and the creative juices had just dried up. So much had occurred in her life, that she was probably also rather disillusioned.

The article Reading Sigrid Undset gives more insight into her writings as also articles and speechs on Nobelprize.org which can be viewed here.

Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in 2004 (Boy, did I ache with thrills that an African-American woman would promote and recognize a classic of world literature!) helped it to be an bestseller even though Anna, the main character commits suicide and the novel was published in the 19th century . So like Oprah I endorse the Romance and realism of Sigrid Undset.

Discover.

The Money Tree

I have a little time on my hands today since bronchitis has creeped back up on me and grabbed me in the last two days. I don't smoke, but if there is a swift change of weather, I get sick. Our weather went from the 20s at night, to a little over 70 degrees F in the last couple of day during daylight hours. According to my dermatologist, people here in Georgia, are more prone than anyway else on the planet to have skin and breathing allergies. This year I have not experienced any skin allergies which dry out and make dark blotches on my cheeks. Two years ago, my dermatologist gave me the weapons I needed to moisturize, so this year my skin has not been a problem.

Bronchitis hasn't been much of a problem either. Each time I go to Turkey, my lungs seem to get cleared out, I guess because of the proximity of the sea. Strangely, the excessive smoking of some Turks don't seem to aggravate my allergies very much. It is just when I come back to Georgia....Still this year my bouts with bronchitis have been few and far between with me rarely having to use my inhaler.

This week has been pretty good. On my evening job, I am displaying well that I have a special touch with customers, and my sells conversions have been exceptionally good. Like my mom continues to say, "There will always be some Turks in your life." Maybe there will be. Suffice it to say, there is one who has tried to hold on to me for close to 2 years now. And now that I am becoming convinced of his sincerity, I now no longer want it or hope it to be off again on again between us.

Last Sunday, we had the centennial birthday celebration for Miss Lizzie Swanson which I mentioned in my Saturday post. The highlight of the event was that Miss Lizzie's church decided to make a money tree for her. The tree was brought after she arrived from church with the people who took her there. A tall, green artificial plant was made into a money tree with bills attached by straight pins to each leaf. In the end, the money which was collected by adults and children at her church came to $834. $834 won't go an enormously long way with today's inflation, but at 100, Miss Lizzie's needs are frugal. It was a great day for her, and she looks great at 100. Still feisty at 100!

A New Discovery, Sort Of...

When I was an undergraduate at The University of Georgia, I almost majored in anthropology. At the time my alma mater was seeking or claimed to be diligently seeking minorities especially African Americans to major in fields which did not usually attract blacks. Among my choice of electives I picked anthropology since then as now I was extremely interested in world cultures. The professor I studied under encouraged me to consider majoring in the field because I did so well in my studies, getting all A's. I evaded her urgings for reasons I will not go into here.

Around 2003 or 2004 when I was hunting online for any information I could find on Iraqi reactions to what was happening to their country, I found a site called Iraq4u.com which catered to Iraqis who no longer resided in Iraq. On the site were some Iraqi music by various singers, and because of my search there I fell in love with the music of Ilham al Madfai. I subsequently bought one of his CDs. But besides discovering al Madfai, I learned from the site that a people whom I thought had vanished in the pages of Biblical history still existed in Iraq. These people are the Assyrians, the fearsome warriors spoken of over and over in the Old Testament portion of The Bible. The ancient capital of the Assyrians was Nineveh, and even today in Iraq there is a province called Nineveh (Ninawa). There is very little left of what was once the ancient city of Nineveh, however, the descendents of these ancient people who had one of the first Middle Eastern high cultures live on, not as the worshippers of pagan gods like their ancestors millenia ago, but as Christian people. The Assyrians live dispersed throughout the world now. Assyrian minorities who still live in the regions which is their homeland are threatened by Arabization and Islamic extremism. About 400,000 live in the US.

The Assyrians are a Semitic people, whose native language is a form of Aramaic called called Neo-Aramaic or Syriac. Jesus is believed to have spoken Aramaic, so I am sure knowledge of this gives the Assyrian people a lot of pride. When I was Turkey in September, I watched a program on Al Jazeera English one afternoon, about a soccer team for the Assyrian community in Sweden. In this report, I heard for the first time about the Turkish genocide against the Assyrians who lived in eastern Turkey. I was well aware of stories of the Armenian Genocide, but here was a second group who apparently is not fighting as aggressively to get Turkey to admit to crimes as the Armenians are doing. At least I have not heard of any uproar coming from the Assyrian quarter to the degree it does from the Armenians.

What I am learning about the modern day Assyrian people is fascinating along with their music. One of their top singers who was born in Baghdad, but now lives in California is Linda George. She sings in Syriac (Neo-Aramaic) and English and has been inspired by such singers as Anita Baker and Barbara Streisand. Her official website can be accessed here.

The Assyrian people are very proud of their heritage and dream of being able to reclaim their homeland. They were after all the old kids on the block before the Babylons, Medes, Persians, Arabs, and Turks showed up in their territories. Nevertheless, the Assyrians are a mixed "race" of people. I personally think the ones I have viewed online resemble the Turkish people more than they do Arabs, Iranians, or Kurds.

It is said that Assyrian culture was around over 6,000 years ago. They had converted to Christianity before Islam existed. When I look at the products of Assyrian nationalism, it is a interesting mixture of their pagan and Christian heritage. These people are proud, ancient, and becoming a group which is a rare entity in the Middle East: they are Christians.

Here is a video by Linda George about Iraq.



A video by Assyrian singer Faris Esho with a lively couple dancing in traditional Assyrian costume.



A nationalist Assyrian video with (can you believe it?!) the rapper 50 Cent wearing a muscle shirt with the Assyrian flag on it. Is he Assyrian? :) Or does he even know that what he is wearing is the Assyrian flag? Perhaps an Assyrian fan gave it to him.




Here is another Assyrian nationalist video which has art referencing ancient Assyrian civilization.

Finally this video explains Assyrian traditional clothing

I really hope this ancient people can survive because the world will be less colorful without them.