Cautionary Tales are a widely used device in Western art forms to take real or imaginary lives and explain [or imagine] their crash-and-burn demise as a warning to us all: beyond here be dragons. I became aware of the wide use of this device reading Gore Vidal's narratives and counter-narratives about some scholar taking down a militant or - to use Vidal's tongue-in-cheek - "the fags." Oscar Wilde comes to mind as someone scholars kept churning out cautionary tales about sex, and Vidal was ready in the wings to take the muthafucka down. And he did so quite beautifully, which is why I was always riveted to read his prose. I recommend it.
So I approach any biographical work with suspicion: what is the task of the artist or producer?
This suspicion is reflexive if the subject matter is any one of official outcasts of this pretended, wicked white settler society and its false prophet white Jesus.
I only knew some of Nina Simone's music and less of what others might have mentioned in their own works. Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Kwame Ture come immediately to mind. My general impression was here was an articulate, angry voice to articulate the human rights crimes of the United States, when the nation did not welcome neither articulation nor anger. Just compliance.
So even without being an African woman, she came to me as an outcast.
Still, I was eager and anxious to see the documentary about her life, ""What Happened, Miss Simone?" to see if it filled in the many gaps of my knowledge without giving the usual Cautionary Tale.
Gaps were filled. One of Malcolm's daughters articulates what is truly wrong with this Christian country when she says: "Participation in activism during the 60's rendered chaos in any individual's lives. People sacrificed sanity, well being, life. Nina Simone was a free spirit in an era that didn't appreciate a woman's genius. What does that do to a household and a family, not because of [lack of] income but because your soul not being able to do what you need it to do ... "
Nina. Jimmy. Josephine. WEB. Stokely. Geromino. Did these luminaries find the secret to persisting by emigrating and avoiding the academic oblivion and baby talk that other African radicals faced when they stayed here on Turtle Island too long and blended like American cheese into the tasteless casserole that is the United Snakes of America? [Thank you, Nina, for that: I will use it liberally from now on].
Nina escaped to Liberia, is described as being happy, but inexplicably ends up in Europe where she is medicated and given an ultimatum to resume her career. I wanted to hear MORE about those eight years in Liberia!
These, I guess, are the facts, whether I like them or not.
So if there is a Cautionary Tale here is it to not wander too far off the reservation? Simone is described by her contemporaries as "sacrificing" so much to the slave rebellion [aka, civil rights movement]; that she was no longer marketable; that she scared record labels and soured radio stations. I couldn't help thinking the handlers of this project see life as a linear existence, not circuitous, where one body of water meanders to feed another.
In real life, school teachers can become salsa music sensations, Ivy League pre-med students can "drift" into a stellar acting careers, and young, well-married attorneys can become one of the greatest revolutionaries of our time.
Such are the nonlinear trajectories of Celia Cruz, Katharine Hepburn, and Fidel.
The idea that any of them betrayed their destiny or needed medicating to stay the Course would be troublesome.
Nina said and wrote what she meant, how she felt, and what she was inspired to do: and she was crushed at every turn not only by her country's elite but by people who said they were her husband and "brother."
Maybe the first thing revolutionaries must do is kill their friends. If that is too extreme, the words of Jesus rejecting his blood family might substitute as a non-violent mantra.
To do neither is to risk one's sanity.
The Cautionary Tale needs to be coaxed out of this documentary project. On her way through a music career, Eunice Wayans was destined to join Assata in leaving the Black Panthers because they weren't militant enough and taking up arms with the Black Liberation Army. If they had been caught and jailed in New Jersey, they'd have broken each other out, and fled to Cuba. Miss Simone wrote that her husband could not satisfy her sexually: this better course would have given her the orgasms she so craved.
