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A 5-10 minute Diversity Experiment (that is a bit fun and not controversial) about editing
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From: Christine Taylor-Butler <kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:11:07 -0600
Bear with me on this one, i'm a Big Bang Theory type of nerd. … And this is only from "my" perspective.
I was in the car yesterday when a song came on the radio. I'm a bit behind on pop culture with both girls in college so I wasn't familiar with the artist. But while I waited for a store to open I found the song on Youtube and played it over and over again. Something about it being uplifting - but also about a subtle ethnic coding. i was having that discussion with an editor friend the other day - about signals and nods in shows like Scandal and Sleepy Hollow that are often caught by an ethnic audience and missed by those outside the culture. Just enough to say "you're invited."
My oldest daughter returned from a day of college classes and I said I'd been stuck on a song all day. I described it and she said "Sarah Bareilles Brave?"
Nope. That wasn't it. She showed it to me on Youtube and it had all the elements of the other song but the "accent" was different from the one I had heard.
So see if you can understand what I mean. The first link is Brave. It's uplifting. Makes my African American daughter feel hopeful. But understand my daughter been trained to code-switch and mostly speaks in a mainstream vernacular. She speaks more than one language and studies classical music and art. Brave is commercial, but I found nothing ethnic in the undertones even with the black woman dancing. When watching it I "code switched" to mainstream language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4
It is a very precise language with a beat that is careful and measured. The video is multicultural representing all races and body types. Even the singer's dancing is as measured and precise as her singing. It is a lot of fun and the dancers are joyful. But there are no surprises.
Then we watched this one and can't get it out of our heads. Even a day later. Then I showed both to my husband who'd had a tough day at the hospital. He grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood but spent a great deal of his free time with his "clan."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
The Williams video employs the same concept as the Bareilles video. A beat that is repetitive and measured. Multicultural dancers of various ages, ethnicities and body types. But this time watch the singer who also appears often in different outfits (in the college hallway, in front of a choir). The video is full of surprises which vary with the dancer's pacing even with a consistent beat. There are completely different nuances, changes in beat, and even changes in pace among the dancers. There are also a lot more people featured and it is more inclusive. But more than that - it is filled with cultural nuances in the '"accent" of the song that my daughter immediately recognized as her culture. I recognized it in the car before I searched for it on Youtube. Hearing this song I switched to my cultural roots which is more comfortable for me and more energizing.
Why is this important? An editor once said that if she gave a book to fifteen different editors she'd get fifteen different books back. I often council authors of color to wait for the right person - the one that gets the "nuances" that others don't get. If someone who loved the Sarah Bareilles pattern of speech and cadence had been asked to edit Pharrell's video, it would have been a different video. In fact, the production company for the latter has made available all of its outtakes - 24 hours of them - of people who are just dancing and singing to this song - many without rhythm and precision and yet you can't help but dance with them.
Part of getting this diversity thing right - is getting all of us - ALL OF US - to be able to see the nuances that will become a "call" to children of color without scaring off a mainstream market that would label the work as "for them" or "niche." There's what we see on the surface in public, but there are the nuances we need to know about when those people are home and the door is closed. When an author presents those codes it is not always something that can be explained but must just be trusted.
I remember showing a manuscript to an editor (who is - to this day a great friend) The phrase was "you aren't all that!" She said "is something missing?" I said "No. That's the expression - albeit old now." And every time she re-read the passage she'd say "Isn't this missing the last word?" and I'd go, "nope. That's the phrase in its entirety" and we'd laugh about it.
So I liked the first video. But I'll be listening to the second multiple times on my way to work with kids in St. Louis tomorrow. Because THAT song is the one those kids will recognize as inclusive. It's a subtle difference, but when those codes and clues aren't there it is glaringly absent to those kids in a way that it might not be to the rest of us
The key to any good art is not seeing what you see, but learning to see what you didn't see before.
In good health, - and I dare you not to dance when you play the second one…..C
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:11:07 -0600
Bear with me on this one, i'm a Big Bang Theory type of nerd. … And this is only from "my" perspective.
I was in the car yesterday when a song came on the radio. I'm a bit behind on pop culture with both girls in college so I wasn't familiar with the artist. But while I waited for a store to open I found the song on Youtube and played it over and over again. Something about it being uplifting - but also about a subtle ethnic coding. i was having that discussion with an editor friend the other day - about signals and nods in shows like Scandal and Sleepy Hollow that are often caught by an ethnic audience and missed by those outside the culture. Just enough to say "you're invited."
My oldest daughter returned from a day of college classes and I said I'd been stuck on a song all day. I described it and she said "Sarah Bareilles Brave?"
Nope. That wasn't it. She showed it to me on Youtube and it had all the elements of the other song but the "accent" was different from the one I had heard.
So see if you can understand what I mean. The first link is Brave. It's uplifting. Makes my African American daughter feel hopeful. But understand my daughter been trained to code-switch and mostly speaks in a mainstream vernacular. She speaks more than one language and studies classical music and art. Brave is commercial, but I found nothing ethnic in the undertones even with the black woman dancing. When watching it I "code switched" to mainstream language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4
It is a very precise language with a beat that is careful and measured. The video is multicultural representing all races and body types. Even the singer's dancing is as measured and precise as her singing. It is a lot of fun and the dancers are joyful. But there are no surprises.
Then we watched this one and can't get it out of our heads. Even a day later. Then I showed both to my husband who'd had a tough day at the hospital. He grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood but spent a great deal of his free time with his "clan."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
The Williams video employs the same concept as the Bareilles video. A beat that is repetitive and measured. Multicultural dancers of various ages, ethnicities and body types. But this time watch the singer who also appears often in different outfits (in the college hallway, in front of a choir). The video is full of surprises which vary with the dancer's pacing even with a consistent beat. There are completely different nuances, changes in beat, and even changes in pace among the dancers. There are also a lot more people featured and it is more inclusive. But more than that - it is filled with cultural nuances in the '"accent" of the song that my daughter immediately recognized as her culture. I recognized it in the car before I searched for it on Youtube. Hearing this song I switched to my cultural roots which is more comfortable for me and more energizing.
Why is this important? An editor once said that if she gave a book to fifteen different editors she'd get fifteen different books back. I often council authors of color to wait for the right person - the one that gets the "nuances" that others don't get. If someone who loved the Sarah Bareilles pattern of speech and cadence had been asked to edit Pharrell's video, it would have been a different video. In fact, the production company for the latter has made available all of its outtakes - 24 hours of them - of people who are just dancing and singing to this song - many without rhythm and precision and yet you can't help but dance with them.
Part of getting this diversity thing right - is getting all of us - ALL OF US - to be able to see the nuances that will become a "call" to children of color without scaring off a mainstream market that would label the work as "for them" or "niche." There's what we see on the surface in public, but there are the nuances we need to know about when those people are home and the door is closed. When an author presents those codes it is not always something that can be explained but must just be trusted.
I remember showing a manuscript to an editor (who is - to this day a great friend) The phrase was "you aren't all that!" She said "is something missing?" I said "No. That's the expression - albeit old now." And every time she re-read the passage she'd say "Isn't this missing the last word?" and I'd go, "nope. That's the phrase in its entirety" and we'd laugh about it.
So I liked the first video. But I'll be listening to the second multiple times on my way to work with kids in St. Louis tomorrow. Because THAT song is the one those kids will recognize as inclusive. It's a subtle difference, but when those codes and clues aren't there it is glaringly absent to those kids in a way that it might not be to the rest of us
The key to any good art is not seeing what you see, but learning to see what you didn't see before.
In good health, - and I dare you not to dance when you play the second one…..C
---
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Received on Thu 13 Feb 2014 02:11:43 PM CST
