Soul! EP 53 Baldwin/Giovanni interview 1/2
Soul! Ep 53 - Open
Funky Soul! Opening with VO by Joe Dennis. Soul! Producer Ellis Haizlip introduces program, James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni from Soul studio in New York City.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin discusses w/ Nikki Giovanni his extended stays in Europe, saying that he moved to Paris in 1948 b/c he was trying to become a writer & couldn't find the "stamina" or "corroboration" in the United States, returning to NYC in 1957. "I'm condemned to live in the world." "It's very valuable to be forced to move from one place to another & deal w/ another set of situations." Television studio; table with alcohol and drinks between Giovanni and Baldwin.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin takes a sip of tea, then discusses w/ Nikki Giovanni his 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel." "If I wrote that essay today I would be writing a very different essay out of a very different problem." "It's not the world that was my oppressor only. What the world does to you, if it does it long enough & effectively enough, you begin to do it to yourself. You become an accomplice of your own murderers. They think it's important to be white then you think it's important to be white." "The danger of your generation is to substitute one romanticism for another. These categories are commercial categories." "The standards that almost killed you are really mercantile standards that are based on profits which the church sanctifies. It's when you begin to realize all of that that you begin to break out of the culture which has produced you & discover the culture that has really produced you." Baldwin holds a cigarette.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
Nikki Giovanni says to James Baldwin that the thinking among blacks during the civil rights movement was that they assumed they knew white people. James Baldwin smokes cigarette, says that Americans are astonished to find out that the rest of the world doesn't like them. Nikki Giovanni says, "You all can have Jesus, give me the world. Even though it's polluted, dirty, ugly, give it to me. I will take it."
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin says he left the church when he was 17, that he respected & loved Martin Luther King Jr., & that white people have lost the ability to love their children. "The word morals is misleading. Power without some sense of oneself is another kind of sterility. And the black people will become exactly what the white people have become." CU cigarette burning between Mr. Baldwin's fingers. "My point of view is that it's about the children." Nikki Giovanni says that for blacks, being able to say that one doesn't like white people was liberating. Sideview CU James Baldwin smoking cigarette.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
Nikki Giovanni admits a "parochial" or provincial world view (more concerned w/ life & condition of African-Americans than her third world brothers & sisters). James Baldwin says, "A cop is a cop." Nikki & James discuss their obvious opinions of the police. James lights Nikki's cigarette before lighting one for himself. Mr. Baldwin says "I don't care what happens to J. Edgar Hoover & his tribe. But I do care what happens to you (Nikki). The relationship between morality & power is a very subtle one."
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin: "We're not obliged to accept the world's definitions. Just b/c white people says they're white, we're not obliged to believe it. We need to make our own definitions & begin to rule the world that way. Because kids, white & black, cannot use what they've been given. They're rejecting it. Nobody wants to become the President of Pan Am or the Governor of California or Spiro Agnew. The kids want to live." "The key is love." Nikki Giovanni says she digs the culture, not the theology of the church. James Baldwin says blacks took Jesus & made him into their own, providing him w/ a new identity. Mr. Baldwin says that God for white people is "some metaphor for purity & safety." "Why does the son of God got to born immaculately? Aren't we all the sons of God? That's the blasphemy." "God is our responsibility. God's only hope is us. If we don't make it, he ain't gonna either."
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
Nikki Giovanni & James Baldwin discuss the roles of sex & love within the black community. James Baldwin says sex isn't the problem, love is. "The black man is forbidden by definition to assume the roles, burden, duties & joys of being a man."
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin discusses the overbearing, inhuman & ultimately maddening silence his father had to assume simply b/c he was black & had no other choice than to endure the rampant racism of the time in America. Mr. Baldwin grows adamant, enraged with "the spiritual disaster." Nikki Giovanni says she can't understand violence committed by the black man against his own family after being mistreated by the white man. CU cigarette burning between fingers of Mr. Baldwin. CU active hands of Ms. Giovanni.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin on anger transference: "A man comes home. He is in a situation he cannot control. He is a human being. It's got to come out somewhere." "They got you by the throat & by the balls. Of course it comes out. Where would it come out? It comes out on the person closest to you. One cannot be romantic about human nature." "I know that a great deal of what passes for black militancy is nothing but a fashion." Nikki Giovanni & James Baldwin chat about love & manhood, smoke cigarettes.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
James Baldwin on anger transference: "Let's say I'm King Oliver. I'm a pretty good musician. And somebody called, say, Bing Crosby, who couldn't carry a tune from here to here-- now, I watch this little white boy become a millionaire many times over. I can't get a job. Time goes on & you get more weary & since you cannot get a job your morale is destroyed & the body begins to fail you, and your death approaches, all b/c being a man you've never been able to execute what a man ought to be able to do." "How am I going to love anybody except in such an awful pain & rage that nobody can bear it? I'm not trying to defend it, I'm trying to make you see it."
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview
Nikki Giovanni discusses the absent father syndrome w/in modern black culture & the need for a constantly present father/lover w/in the family. James Baldwin: "The standards of civilization into which you are born are first outside of you. By the time you become a man they are inside of you. If you are treated a certain kind of way you become a certain kind of person." "In this civilization a man who cannot support his wife & child is not a man. The black man has always been treated as a slave & of course he reacts that way." "Life is short, it really is. It's important to not get hung-up on any given detail b/c it is there." Mr. Baldwin says love is irrational while Ms. Giovanni insists that it must be rational.
Soul! Ep 53 - James Baldwin Interview - Part 1 Close
James Baldwin says he almost married at the age of 22 b/c at the time it seemed he had no viable future. Nikki Giovanni says nowadays it seems that a black man can't make it with a black woman. James Baldwin says we know nothing about the black man. FO/FI to Ellis Haizlip closing show. (Visual errors begin at TC 07.10.14 and maintain for remainder of program. These are on the master and cannot be corrected.)