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SBS Australia
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
Turn up the volume on the Music in the Movies collection
L-R: Tenacious D In The Pick of Destiny, Amadeus, Bran Nue Dae, Heavy Trip. Credit: SBS On Demand Music and the movies have always been intertwined, from the days of in-theatre piano players accompanying silent films to purpose-written scores and on. With the glittering mayhem of Eurovision almost upon us , let's whizz through a few melodious highlights of our Music In The Movies collection . It's impossible to do justice to legendary musician, singer-songwriter extraordinaire, gifted producer and impeccably sexy performer Prince in a pithy paragraph. The Minneapolis-born legend transcends words and reshaped musical history in his own slinky image. Just go crazy for his star-making cinematic debut, 1984's dystopia-destroying rock musical featuring his badass band The Revolution. Prince fought hard to make it happen and was richly rewarded. Picking up an Oscar for best song score, the film, the album of the same name and single 'When Doves Cry' all came in at number one simultaneously, marking the first time in history any artist had scored such an astounding trifecta. Purple Rain is streaming at SBS On Demand and will also air at 9.40pm Thursday 15 May on SBS World Movies. Arrente and Kalkadoon filmmaker Rachel Perkins comes from a staunch line of Aboriginal activists, carrying that fire into her sizzling screen career, including delivering ground-breaking SBS documentary series . Jimmy Chi's 1990 rock musical Bran Nue Dae – which Chi composed with his band Kuckles, The Pigram Brothers and Scrap Metal – spoke to her. A pioneering breakthrough for First Nations voices in Australian theatre, she adapted it for the big screen in 2009, bringing this tale of young lovers Willie (Rocky McKenzie) and Rosie (Jessica Mauboy) to life with an abundance of love and joyous song. It also features a bevy of brilliant co-stars, including Deborah Mailman, Magda Szubanski and the incomparable Ernie Dingo . Bran Nue Day is streaming at SBS On Demand. Fake news stories have been going viral since way before social media. The scurrilous rumour that once-renowned composer Antonio Salieri poisoned young pretender Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart just before Christmas rocked the Habsburg court in 1791, persisting to this day despite being utter poppycock. Poet, playwright and author Alexander Pushkin first saw the scandalous potential, spinning the tall tale into a short play. Almost 150 years later, Liverpudlian Peter Shaffer's new stage version soared, inspiring Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman's ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ) bravura biopic. F. Murray Abraham is deliciously wicked as the internally twisted Salieri to Tom Hulce's doomed mover and shaker Mozart in this lush, loose-with-the-truth costume drama set to the latter's greatest symphonic triumphs. Amadeus is streaming at SBS On Demand. Chinese-Australian filmmaker Tony Ayres' tribute to his complicated mother, in all her beauty and mayhem, is an only lightly fictionalised drama. Impossibly glamorous Twin Peaks star Joan Chen is magnetic as Rose, a Hong Kong nightclub singer who struggles to settle into the suburbs of Melbourne after being whisked away by Australian sailor Bill (Steven Vidler). But we join the story in medias res after she's already high-tailed it to Sydney, working through a procession of 'uncles' before crawling back and spiralling from there. All of this is seen through the glinting eyes of a young boy, Ayres' stand-in Tom (Joel Lok) who's just trying to get a handle on what stops her from finding peace and anchoring him and his teenage guitar-playing sister May (Irene Chen, no relation). The melancholy of a musical life arrested is integral to lost soul Rose's journey. The Home Song Stories is streaming at SBS On Demand. Céline Dion battling through Stiff Person Syndrome to perform live from the Eiffel Tower was one of the highlights of the rain-drenched but nevertheless dazzling Paris Olympics opening ceremony . Her radiant aura also illuminates this quite surreal 2020 'biopic', or 'fiction freely inspired by', as the trailer cheekily has it. Writer/director Valérie Lemercier also plays Aline Dieu, picking up a César Award for her performance as our not-quite-Céline, rattling through a rags-to-riches story that bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the mother-ship. To confuse matters further, Lemercier's Aline also performs many legit Dion hits, though lip-syncing to vocals by French pop star Victoria Sio. It's fabulously bonkers. Aline is streaming at SBS On Demand (but be quick - it's only there until 2.45pm 25 May). Any music-forward film featuring a heavy metal band called Impaled Rektum will get a specific subset of folks signing up, sight unseen, and another chunk running for the hills. Either way, first-time Finnish directorial duo Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren's out-there comedy isn't exactly what you think it is. Featuring a rag-tag bunch of riotous, small-town rockers led by Turo ( actor Johannes Holopaine), they're determined to play at a major Norwegian metal fest whether they're invited or not. Even if one of them is technically, umm, incapacitated. A buddy movie with road-trip bones, it's a highway-to-hell of a lot sweeter than it sounds. Heavy Trip is streaming at SBS On Demand. If you need a soulful pick-me-up that's ever so gentle on the heart, hitch a lift with writer/director Chung Chi Cong's Before Sunrise -channelling treat. In the early hours of an exceptionally well-shot Saigon, guitar-playing indie musician Tam (Ha Quoc Hoang) jumps on the back of for-hire rider Thanh's (Tran Le Thuy Vy) motorbike. But instead of heading straight to his home, they shoot the breeze from dawn till dusk, circling the city and singing as they go. While the promise of connection hangs palpably, one must leave tomorrow in this tender love song for the almost was. Good Morning and Good Night is streaming at SBS On Demand. Good Morning and Good Night There was . Otherwise known as Jack Black and Kyle Gass, the 'they-go-low' jokers may or may not be self-cancelled and/or no longer besties, but way back in 2006, the long-running alternative comedians who can play electric guitar were having a gas in their big screen debut, The Pick of Destiny . Quite literally, with a plethora of fart jokes unleashed in a stoner movie that's less This is Spinal Tap and more in vibes, right down to battling Satan himself after strumming with the titular supernatural pick. Theirs is certainly an acquired taste, but their fans are legion. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny is streaming at SBS On Demand. Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny Share this with family and friends SBS's award winning companion podcast. Join host Yumi Stynes for Seen, a new SBS podcast about cultural creatives who have risen to excellence despite a role-model vacuum.
Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Noddy Holder on the ‘heavy' box-office bomb that blew up Slade
It's July 29 1974, the first day of production on the film that will surely take Britain's biggest singles band to the next level. In The Revolution club in Mayfair, central London, the cast and crew of Slade in Flame are embarking on the six-week shoot that will take this other northern four-piece to Beatles -adjacent success. That, at least, is the plan of band handler Chas Chandler, the ambitious tough-nut ex- Animals bassist and former manager of Jimi Hendrix. 'When we [signed with] Chas, it took two years before we had a hit,' recalls Slade frontman Noddy Holder of the early years of the glam-pop phenomenon who formed as a Mod-like rock band in Wolverhampton in 1966. The 79-year-old and I are talking on the occasion of the 50 th -anniversary of Slade in Flame, which means a spruced-up print, cinema re-release and DVD reissue courtesy of the BFI. 'Everybody was saying to him: 'You got to give it up with Slade, they're not going to make it,'' continues the singer, those mutton-chop whiskers are still present and correct, albeit greyer and wispier and half concealed by a dandy-ish purple fedora. But the fearsome Chandler 'stuck with us because he'd had Hendrix, and the next project he wanted was a four-man band. He followed the blueprint of the Beatles: get to number one, get another number one, get to number one the first day of release. We did that three, four times. 'Course, the next thing the Beatles did was make a movie. So Chas, of course, said: 'I want to make a movie with Slade.'' That, after some script back and forth, meant a dark rock'n'roll fable written by Andrew Birkin (brother of Jane) and directed by 27-year-old first-time film-maker Richard Loncraine. Set in the late 1960s, it was about a band, Flame (portrayed by Slade), and their rise to fame, co-option by a dodgy manager (played, in his first significant screen role, by Tom Conti) and bitter demise. Good times. In The Revolution, the scene being shot involves Flame's first singer, the man who will ultimately be ejected in favour of Holder's Stoker ('a more exaggerated version of me,' Holder tells me. 'Or I'm a more exaggerated version of Stoker!'). He's a theatrically ridiculous warbler – a Midlands Jacques Brel – called Jack Daniels, and he's played by the actor Alan Lake. Even on the first day of shooting, there was some dissension within the ranks of Slade over the film's merits. Mercurial guitarist Dave Hill was already less than impressed. 'Dave was Dave,' Holder says, of a musician who still tours with a version of Slade (Holder hasn't since 1992). 'Dave has said himself that he hadn't got a f------- clue what the film was about. He didn't read the script! He only read the scenes he was in! And when he saw the end-product, he thought it was way too heavy for Slade.' Which brings us back to Alan Lake. Holder gives a high-pitched tee-hee at mention of the actor, who wasn't long out of prison when he landed the part in Slade in Flame. 'He was mates with the Krays and all sorts of people. And he had been in a pub in [Sunningdale, Berkshire] and got into a fight – him and a pop star called Leapy Lee, he had one hit called Little Arrows. Some of the locals in the pub were slagging off Diana Dors – who Alan was married to! So, of course, a fight broke out and Alan stabbed someone. Him and Leapy Lee got jailed.' The extracurricular activities of their co-star, though, didn't deter Slade. 'We got on great, he was just our sort of bloke. We're sitting around waiting for lights and cameras to be reset, he was telling stories about the clink, the East End, all these hard nuts. But: you wouldn't cross Alan. His fatal flaw was, when he was pissed, he got out of control.' Which Lake duly did on that first day of shooting. Sloshed after his lunch break, when the manager of The Revolution wouldn't open the bar for him, 'Alan lost his rag and beat the s--- out of him.' Chandler and producer Gavrik Losey (son of blacklisted Hollywood director Joseph Losey) fired Lake on the spot. But the next day he was back, cap in hand and wife on arm. 'Diana Dors pleaded with them to give him more chance. She guaranteed he would not drink the whole of the rest of the movie. And they gave him a chance. And as far as we know, he never touched another drop the whole of the movie.' That, Holder adds, was indicative of Lake: for all his demons and toughness, 'he was totally reliant on Diana'. That was proved terribly true 10 years later. Dors died from ovarian cancer in May 1984. That October, Lake dropped off their 16-year-old at Sunningdale railway station, returned to the nearby family home and shot himself in the son's bedroom. In summer 1974, Slade have already had an intense 12 months. The previous July, with Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me, their fifth number one single at the top of the charts, they headlined London's Earls Court, a legendary show that was – and would remain – their largest indoor show in the UK. Two nights later, drummer Don Powell picked up his girlfriend Angela Morris from Wolverhampton's Dix nightclub in his white Bentley. In the wee hours of July 4 1973 the car left the road and hit a brick wall. Both were flung from the car. Morris died and Powell suffered catastrophic brain injuries and multiple fractures. He spent five days in a coma in Wolverhampton Royal Hospital. But even for the critically injured drummer, the Slade train didn't stop. Within a few weeks the band were in America, touring the East Coast and recording, in New York's Record Plant, their next single: Merry Xmas Everybody. 'We didn't know whether Don was going to survive – they only give him 24 hours to live when he had the crash,' remembers Holder. 'When he come out of hospital six weeks later, we took him to America, just to see if he could play again. But he had no memory. Couldn't remember the hits. Couldn't remember nothing about his life. Couldn't taste or smell.' Unsurprisingly, a newly written song, no matter how catchy, was beyond Powell. 'We had to talk him through it all. So Merry Xmas was probably the hardest record we ever recorded. We built it up like a jigsaw puzzle. I'd be singing in the booth and with the guitar, and I'd be shouting to Don through his headphones: 'There's a [drum] roll coming now, it's gonna go 'bada-bada-bada'', and he'd go 'bada-bada-bada'! That's how we had to record for two or three years. The same [with playing] on stage.' Learning his lines for the film, then, would also be a challenge. 'That's why mainly in the film Don's got comedy one-liners,' says Holder, who says that he 'loved' acting and went on to star in three series of the sitcom The Grimleys (1999-2001), created by future Line of Duty showrunner Jed Mercurio. 'But Don was a one-liner merchant anyway – he was a drummer, and they're one-liner-type people.' In the summer of 1974, his newbie actors' rusty skills were the least of the problems facing Loncraine, a debutant director who'd later make multiple films and TV dramas including The Missionary with Michael Palin and Dennis Potter adaptation Brimstone and Treacle with Sting. 'Chas was not easy,' says the director of a manager fiercely protective of his 'boys'. Having ponied up the budget from David Puttnam's Goodtime Enterprises and from Slade's record label Polydor, Chandler ruled the film set with a rod of iron. Loncraine remembers shooting a night sequence: Flame are in a car chase with a rival band and police, and their vehicle flips over and catches fire. 'We only had one night to do a lot of work, and I was working at a garage location up the road from the other unit. We were shooting on Panavision's latest camera, which we managed to get it by hook or by crook – I was holding about a quarter of a million quid's worth of camera. 'Suddenly it was grabbed out of my hand, and Chas said to me, 'I want more close-up of my boys, you young c---', and threw the camera in a puddle. He was quite blunt to say the least.' For his part, future Oppenheimer star Conti – 33 at the time and with a largely theatrical background – confesses to blithe ignorance all round. The storied actor, now 83 and deep in the final stages of writing his memoir, admits he had no idea what he was getting into. 'I hadn't heard of Slade, I'm afraid!' the Scotsman says with a laugh. 'It's ridiculous but I was brought up on Mozart and that lot. Popular culture, I really didn't know much about. I knew The Beatles of course. But I didn't know anything about the rock world at all, really. So it was quite fun to be involved with that a bit.' His character, a shady businessman turned manager, was of particular interest to Chandler. As recounted in 1999 by Ken Colley, the character actor who played a talent scout in the film, he'd been told by Chandler that 'when The Animals ended, he had been left in Los Angeles with a broken marriage, bad health and $5,000 in his pocket, and he swore he was never going to let anything like that ever happen to him again. That's why a film showing the contractual scheming and the underhanded side of the music business appealed to him.' Certainly it was more appealing than an earlier script: a spoof of 1950s TV series The Quatermass Experiment, it was called The Quite-a-mess Experiment. Holder was going to be Professor Quite-a-mess, 'and the triffid would eat Dave Hill in the first half hour of the movie,' says Holder. 'And all you'd have through the rest of the movie was Dave's fringe hanging out the triffid's mouth!' All of that is news to Conti. Although he did have his own run-in when he met Chandler for the first time, after the film's premiere, at The Metropole theatre in London's Victoria on February 13 1975. 'There was a slightly embarrassing moment,' the veteran actor begins. 'There was a very pretty girl getting some food [at the after-party] at Morton's, which was a club in Berkely Square. I got chatting to her. Her name was Lynsey de Paul, but I didn't know her or to whom I was chatting. But we took our plates of food and drinks and sat on the staircase and chatted. And somebody said to me later: 'You were taking a bit of chance weren't you, talking to Lynsey?' 'What do you mean?' 'She's just broken up with Chas Chandler.' But there were no repercussions!' Alas, there were repercussions aplenty for the musicians at the heart of it all: Slade in Flame bombed. It turned out that a dark rock'n'roll fable about a pub band being shafted by the music biz – with a moody, only-occasionally-rocking, period-specific soundtrack that was less Cum on Feel the Noize than Cum on Feel the Angst – wasn't a must-watch for Slade's core, teenage, significantly female fanbase. At least the critics were kinder. 'Barry Norman, the big guy at the time, he loved it,' says the puckishly cheerful Holder, still chuffed. 'Which we never expected. But in terms of bums on seats, it didn't hit, because of the seriousness of the subject.' How disappointing was that to Slade? 'Oh, very! Particularly in the situation we were as a band – we were used to number one records. We expected to have a number one film! It definitely harmed our career.' Holder remembers an appearance on Top of the Pops 'straight after the premiere'. The director of the show turned up at the afternoon's rehearsal, 'went up to Dave and said: 'It's a fantastic movie, but you've made a hell of a mistake for your career.' Because it was not what the fans wanted. The fans didn't want to see behind the glamour. They only wanted to see what we were all about, the happy-go-lucky, cheeky chappies. The fans couldn't split the Slade reality from the Flame characters.' Musically, Holder took some consolation from the fact that he and bassist Jim Lea, his co-writer, stretched themselves with How Does It Feel, the film's epic, rock opera-like, six-minute theme song. But that only went so far. 'Fans didn't like it. Chas didn't like it. Dave and Don in the band didn't like it. Polydor didn't like it. Only me and Jim liked it. But we had to bring it out as a single because it was the theme to the movie. We'd already had Far Far Away out [from the soundtrack], which got to number two. But How Does It Feel was the first time we'd missed out on the Top Three since 1971.' That Number 15-with-an-anchor single was the final straw. Drastic action was called for. America was one of the few international markets remaining impervious to Slade's charms. 'So after the movie came out in the spring of '75, we decided to go to the States and make a concerted effort. We'd been many times. But in them days, you had to be there for a year, two years. Zeppelin did it, Sabbath did it, Fleetwood Mac did it. 'So we had to get slogging on the road, and we decided to go for two years. And that's what we did. 'Course, when we came back after two years, the punk thing was happening. We were boring old farts then. So we were way out of favour with the media, weren't getting records played on the radio, nothing. In Europe we were doing fine. But in the UK, dead in the water.' It would take a last-minute and acclaimed appearance at the Reading Festival in 1980, when they replaced Ozzy Osbourne, 'to revamp' Slade and kickstart a new phase of their career. And now? Bizarre but entertaining, Slade in Flame stands up as a curio, a gritty kitchen-sink drama grafted onto the giddy, gleeful world of one of the biggest pop bands of the era. And it's a period piece, albeit of two different periods: the hardscrabble late '60s in the music business, when the deals were shady and the managers shadier still; and the mid-'70s, when cinematic rock fantasias like The Who's Tommy and David Essex's That'll Be the Day were natural, you might say vainglorious, extensions of musicians' activities. For his part, Noddy Holder remains proud of the film, pleased that 'we stuck to our guns and did it how we wanted. I'm not saying the whole band agreed with that. They do now. I think [even] Dave probably does now.' At the time of our meeting in April, Holder said he was unsure whether all four members would convene for a special London anniversary screening in London on May 1. It's been 'a long, long time' since all four did anything together – perhaps, even, 1996, when they got together for Holder's edition of This Is Your Life and Chandler's funeral (those events were unrelated). 'And Dave and Don had a big fall out two, three years ago. I see Dave most out of any of them. If I'm in Wolverhampton, I might call him up and go for a cup of tea. But Jim and Don, I never see 'em.' He mentions a 'f------- great' quote he just read by Liam Gallagher. 'He just makes me laugh. He said: 'You have to have a messiah complex to be the frontman in a band. But once the drummer and the roadie get a messiah complex, you're f-----.' Just genius!' the singer cackles. On that point: Noddy Holder has always said that a band splits up for a combination of five reasons. 'Ego. Next thing is money. Then drink and drugs. Next thing is women. And the last thing is musical differences. And in Slade's case it was all five!'
CBS News
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Musicians hand-picked by Prince to play tribute concert in Hopkins
The music of Prince is being celebrated by those who played with the great one. "Can't everybody play this music not the right way," said the executive director of the 2Gether tribute concert, Michael Bland. Bland, who is also a drummer and musical director, gathered the greats together. "We're all on a mission now to keep his music alive in whatever way possible," said Bland. Tommy Barbarella, Levi Searcer Jr., Dr. Fink, Ricky Kinchen and Homer Odell, will all do the honor of playing Prince's music. "It pretty much exemplifies what I'm trying to do," said Bland. "I'm trying to unify all the people in Prince's universe, one person at a time. Well, 12 people at a time." Special guest Ashley Commodore, JB, G Sharp and the UC Horns are determined to bring Prince's music to a new generation. "There are young people growing up now who have no idea who Prince was, is, and I just never thought I would see a day when that would be possible because he is easily the Mozart of our time," said Bland. "He's like the teacher, like we all learned from him, and what every artist can learn from him is if you want to learn how to perform if you want to learn how to play, you listen to Prince," said Mint Condition's Ricky Kinchen. Kinchen says its an honor to play Prince's music. "Prince was funky man, Prince was musical, Prince was melodic, Prince was everything," said Kinchen. "Like I said, Prince is the reason why all of us are here." "It's hard to believe it's been nine years [since] he left," said longtime Prince collaborator Dr. Fink. Fink believes Prince would approve of this tribute. "I think he would probably like it, I think he would appreciate [it] quite a bit, and he'd probably wish he could join us on stage," said Fink. Handpicked to be the holders of his legacy, 2Gether promises to showcase all that made Prince legendary. "They're going to hear music from The Revolution, pre-Revolution years. They are going to hear NPG tracks, all those eras, they are going to hear some Time and Vanity 6 as well," said Fink. You can hear the music of Prince at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Showtime is Saturday at 8 p.m.
Boston Globe
03-04-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
How the Revolution carved out space for women's liberty
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Abigail did not appreciate this banter. In a letter to another Massachusetts woman, she noted that John was 'very saucy' about her 'list of female grievances.' And she was right about the law: Before and after the Revolution, men controlled their wives' property, their income, even their legal identities. Advertisement But many historians have uncovered evidence that in an unjust world, American women found small but real ways to shape their own lives. The Revolutionary War, with its emphasis on individual liberty, played a key role in encouraging and accelerating this process. One researcher, Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, has shown that the number of women choosing not to marry — only a couple of percentage points at the start of the conflict — increased rapidly in the years after. Another, Susan E. Klepp, has shown that the women who did marry chose to have fewer children. After a postwar baby boom, birth rates began to fall, with women marrying later and using techniques like herbal abortifacients to space their pregnancies further apart. Advertisement Both Klepp and Chambers-Schiller are making inferences from demographic data. But exciting new research has uncovered examples of regular women speaking and acting for themselves. These women — war widows, working-class mothers, elderly Black women — drew inspiration from the Revolution itself, which gave them new ideas, new circumstances, even new language to argue for lasting changes of their own. The Abigail Adams statue at the Boston Women's Memorial on Commonwealth Mall. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Telling the system what it wanted to hear The Revolution was a violent and tumultuous time for many Americans. On remote farms and in occupied cities, women worried about being robbed or murdered or raped. In a forthcoming book, Lauren Duval, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, details the terrible ways in which the war hit the home front. A Long Island woman named Elizabeth Johnstone was raped by two British soldiers while her 4-year-old daughter watched and wept. A Philadelphia woman named Elizabeth Drinker wrote that she was 'afraid to go to bed.' Drinker continued: 'Every noise now seems alarming that happens in the night.' These years of chaos — husbands and sons dying in battle, homes and belongings being seized or destroyed — had enormous impacts on American women. They responded with a canny mix of strategy and survival. Their actions did not always generate public records. (Drinker described her fears in a private diary.) But historians have discovered some surprising and revealing archives. Advertisement One such archive is the legal petitions representing and often written by 18th-century women. While researching the 2023 book 'In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America,' Jacqueline Beatty read thousands of these petitions — pleas to charities, courts, and legislatures; divorce cases; and deeds for manumission, among other examples. These petitions allowed women to do something rare in this era: make demands for themselves. The war gave them plenty of opportunities. Beatty, a professor at York College, writes that during the Revolution the number of petitions 'increased exponentially.' A woman named Margret Clendening asked the South Carolina legislature for help. 'The ravages of the war and the loss of her husband,' she said, had devastated her family. A woman named Mary Dunton begged a Pennsylvania council for a pass to travel to New York, where the British had imprisoned her husband. Although the Colonies' new army and government had failed to free him, Dunton argued that she could 'effect his exchange or liberty.' Another petition came from 'Daphne, an African,' who submitted her request for aid to the Massachusetts General Court. Daphne's owner was a British loyalist who'd fled Boston during the war. After the state seized his property, it had not taken adequate care of Daphne, who, in the words of her petition, was 'unfirm and wholly unable to support herself in a very advanced age.' In petition after petition, women added their signature or their mark — they engaged with the legal system and advocated for themselves. As Beatty points out, this advocacy often required them to play to gendered stereotypes, to flatter the men who remained in charge. In her famous letter, Abigail told John that 'if particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion.' But most women in this period chose a less radical tone. Advertisement Dunton emphasized that she had 'no support but what arose from the labor of her husband'; Clendening stressed that she was caring for a 'number of small children, whose support and education depends wholly upon the industry of your petitioner'; Daphne dwelled not on the evils of slavery but on 'the short time which probably she has to live.' This approach was calculated: Women understood that they lived in an unfair system, and they told that system what it wanted to hear. The Revolution did change that system in subtle ways. Debates about the British king, and the American government that would replace him, popularized ideas like independence and individual liberty — what the Declaration of Independence famously called 'unalienable rights.' Women borrowed those ideas to advance their own causes. Hannah Ellis, who lost her husband at the Battle of Monmouth, asked for the 'relief which is due her.' Her husband, she wrote, had 'bled and died … in defense of the rights of mankind.' Once the Revolution ended, women began applying the language of 'rights' not only to their men but to themselves. Beatty traces this transformation by analyzing divorces requested by women. These surged after the Revolution. According to Beatty's analysis, women in Boston filed for five divorces in the 1770s. In the 1780s, they filed for 15 — and by the 19th century, that number had climbed to 30 or more per decade, easily outpacing the city's population growth. Advertisement The terms in these cases also shifted. Elizabeth Finney filed for divorce because her husband beat her and threatened her. Her petition said that he had 'wholly subverted … all that comfort and happiness which she had a right to expect.' Mary Lobb also invoked her legal rights when describing her husband's abuse. So did Catherine France when she explained that her husband took the money she made as a laundress and spent it on alcohol. So did Nancy Robinson when she claimed that her husband had slept with other women and 'destroyed' her 'peace and felicity.' In their petitions, these women emphasized that they had played the role of faithful and submissive wife. But they also leveraged that role to get what they needed: safety, alimony, freedom. Sally Jones Wilson accused her husband of adultery. Her petition made the next step clear: 'a right accrues to the said Sally, to be loosed from the bonds of matrimony.' Newfound confidence Historians have argued for a long time that the Revolution inspired women in various ways, but they've often focused on domestic topics. There were the women who decided not to marry. (A Massachusetts woman wrote a poem championing this option: 'Round freedom's fair standard I've rallied and paid, / A vow of allegiance to die an old maid.') Or there were the women who decided to have fewer children. Elizabeth Drinker, the Philadelphia woman who was 'afraid to go to bed,' had eight children. In the years after the war, Drinker's daughters averaged just over four children each. If the Revolution empowered women in these domestic realms, though, it seemed to make less of a difference in politics and law. There were small steps, most notably when New Jersey allowed some women to vote, but the state reversed that right in 1807. America remembered the ladies, briefly, only to forget them. Advertisement And yet new scholarship like Beatty's suggests this was only part of the picture. The women who filed their own legal petitions engaged directly with the legal system. They understood that change was messy and slow — that it sometimes moved backward, as in New Jersey, and that it often required one to operate within an unfair set of laws. But just as the Revolution inspired women to take control of their bodies and their domestic duties, it also inspired them to view themselves as American citizens with American rights. Women in this period, writes Beatty, 'developed a new consciousness of and confidence in their ability to demand these rights from the state.' That mindset eventually led to more activism, which led to more rights: the right to own property, the right to vote, the right to equal pay. It started with the Revolution, and it continued through 19th-century figures like Louisa May Alcott, one of the post-Revolutionary women who decided not to marry. The reason, to Alcott, was obvious: 'To many of us,' she wrote, 'liberty is a better husband than love.'
Miami Herald
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Kelly: Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance was far deeper than rap
Kendrick Lamar wasn't performing music on the world's biggest stage. He was administering a lecture in code that was aimed at mainstream America. The Pulitzer-winning hip-hop legend delivered a tutorial in song on what it's like to be black in America during his Super Bowl halftime performance on Sunday night. It's a complicated discussion not everyone can digest, but Lamar's performance and show illustrated how being a person of color in America is a game (his set was a Playstation joystick controller) we're all trapped inside, and forced to play. 'The Revolution is about to be televised,' Lamar said after delivering a freestyle of an unreleased song in the first minute of his 15 minute show. 'You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.' Lamar is alluding to this country's political climate, where Donald Trump's second term began with a massive roll back of Affirmative Action and calls for mass deportation. And we're not even two months into Trump's four-year term. Even though Lamar, who is also referred to as K-Dot, is a rapper embraced by the mainstream, his music has always had backpack rapper (politically conscious), political undertones aimed at elevating and empowering people of color. His catalog of songs — from 'DNA' to 'Alright,' and 'King Kunta' — have always had themes, topics, and lyrics that inspire fist raising, and encourages people of color to unite. Samuel L. Jackson, the actor who infamously played a house negro in 'Django Unchained,' narrates Lamar's Super Bowl performance impersonating Uncle Sam, the mythical figure who represents America's business interests. Jackson spent the entire show lecturing Lamar about the fact he's being 'too ghetto, too rebellious,' and flat-out asked him, 'Mr. Lamar. Do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up?' That's code for, 'do you know how to navigate the system,' and stay under the radar to avoid drawing attention to your blackness. To live in that world it requires sacrifice, compromise and code switching, which is what people of color have been taught they must master to succeed in America. Lamar is using the Super Bowl performance to tell us there's another way. He responds Uncle Sam by having an all-black male dance crew dressed in red, white and blue assemble as American flag that's split in half, and he pack man, I'll confess there is always a voice coming from somewhere telling us that 'you're being too black, too ghetto, you're not playing the game enough,' reminding us how it's important to fit in to mainstream society. Their acceptance is necessary, and if you don't follow the guidance of the oppressor then one life can be deducted, which is what Jackson [Uncle Sam] does in one of his interludes because of Lamar's song choices. What Lamar's career, and success proves is that you can have mainstream success without selling out, which he illustrates by performing 'Loyalty,' a song that reminds blacks they come from royalty, and points out that to this day we have the greatest influence on popular culture, and not just in America, but the world. K-Dot's performance set aim at pressing everyone's buttons, and Lamar's notorious beef with Drake, another popular rapper who inspired the 'Not Like Us' song that has now spent 22 weeks as Billboard's No. 1 song, and won Lamar five Grammy Awards earlier this month, was symbolic. Drake sued Lamar and his publishing company with the goal of preventing them, and the NFL from performing 'Not Like Us,' at the Super Bowl. Lamar teased the audience with the intro of the song the whole performance, and was even warned by Uncle Sam to not play the song. But he did it anyway, and stared into the cameras with a cheesy grin while speaking directly to Drake, which is part of the song's lyrics, and accuses him of being a pedophile. Lamar went as far as wearing a diamond-encrusted chain that features an 'a minor,' which is the most popular part of the 'Not Like us' song, one that most crowds scream out while the disc jockeys turn off the music. Before performing 'Not Like Us,' Lamar warned the audience that Drake might sue, then told the crowd in a freestyle rap 'tried to rig the game, but you can't fake influence.' It was a strategic move (much like including former Drake girlfriends SZA and Serena Williams), and a performance meant to remind Lamar's target audience that the black experience can overpower a rigged system if you remain authentic. Lamar is telling those who know how to decode his message that the game isn't set up for you to win, so don't play.
