I recently tripped across a poorly edited YouTube clip that was frustrating to listen to. I'm including the link to cite my source.
It said Elvis was considered to be the father of rock and roll and he was controversial in his lifetime in part because he was a White man singing "Black music." And it went on to comment on him growing up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi and attending Black churches.
I have long known that when his music first hit the air, it was the radio era and an era of segregation and they introduced his songs by naming the high school he went to as code for "He's White."
Because he sounded like a Black musician.
My understanding is that New Orleans allowed slaves to keep their culture alive one day a week and this preserved their music and eventually led to Jazz which eventually led to rock and roll. I never quite knew exactly how Black music got paired with White lyrics and became American rock and roll, a predominantly White genre.
Apparently, the answer is: Elvis Presley.
The piece said Elvis attended Black churches as a child. I've never been to a Black church, but the culture and lively music of Black churches is frequently depicted in movies and TV shows.
Off the top of my head, you can see it in the following:
Sister Act
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
Big Momma's House
Hidden Figures
The Color Purple
I can't off the top of my head think of any movies showing White churches, their culture and music.
We bitch when white men write only about white male culture as that is exclusionary. We also bitch about cultural appropriation if they write about anything else. We also also bitch about how evil and terrible it is if other cultures feel forced to put their culture on display to try to make money.Apparently, nothing makes us happy.
That's a comment by me on a public forum that I previously quoted in a post elsewhere trying to make the point that if you are a minority and want more stories about your people or more authentic representations of your people or your point of view, you need to stop whining and crying about White people excluding you or getting it wrong and write it and produce it yourself.
Vin Deisel and Sylvester Stallone both made their first film themselves to break into acting. No one wanted to hire them.
The original Star Wars had shitty quality and years later they updated some scenes to be more in line with the vision of George Lucas who had a heart attack while writing the script and made the first movie using like one third of the script. Yet, it gave birth to the modern movie special effects industry.
White men and their voices aren't dominating story telling "because of gatekeeping." A lot of big name "White" males -- please note Vin Diesel is mixed race and it's why no one would hire him -- didn't get there by being warmly welcomed by the planet because White Male Privilege.
A lot of them opened doors the same way I got onto the leaderboard of Hacker News:
1. They crawled.
2. They didn't whine and cry about sexism, classism, or other supposedly exclusionary bias keeping them out. Instead, they asked themselves "What does it take to open that door? How do I prove myself?"
I recently watched The Help and Hidden Figures and hope to write about that soon. I don't recommend watching The Help. It's a lousy movie for reasons largely unrelated to what it gets the most press for: Black actresses complaining about it being a White-centered story.
Robert Redford started Sundance to give a venue to independent films. And he then had to defend it because the minute your independent film gets public acclaim, you're going to be called a sell out and pressured to change things in a way that may make you feel like a sell out.
SimCity got sold to a different company and lost its soul but gained some things. I like both SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 and have different criticisms of each.
SimCity 3000 still has a soul and "a game god" -- an algorithm that would destroy badly placed infrastructure like a god telling you "Hey, stupid, move that. I'm going to keep hitting it with earthquakes until you do."
SimCity 4 seems to lack that but has more modern ideas about how to handle trash and energy and a delightful variety of farms.
White men do some of what they do because that's what WORKS when dealing with the public on a large scale. You can learn from them while trying to find your voice for your people or revel in your abandon.