Field Notes...From The Sunken Place

By Teresa Leggard:

I know, I know. It’s been out for weeks now. But it’s staying with me, this movie. It’s a warning, this movie. It’s still telling my subconscious things I hope I can bring to bare when a cold sweat breaks on my skin, the hairs on my arm stand at attention and it’s time to break the hell out.

Since viewing the motion picture debut of writer/director Jordan Peele, my mind has been a split screen wherein Get Out stays put on one side and the other side is a changing gallery of black creative work. I find myself trying to put them in conversation with each other to see what new meaning—if any—emerges.

First, most fortunately, there was a production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman playing at one of the local theaters. I saw the play just a few days after watching Get Out, and the comparison was almost too easy. Dutchman is a one-act play about a black man (Clay) and a white woman (Lula) who share a train car on the NYC subway. It would be a gross oversimplification to say having a black male and white female lead were all the two productions had in common. For a full synopsis of the play:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutchman_(play)

Of course, if anyone would have work that complemented Peele’s piece, it would be Amiri Baraka. But Brother Amiri was a poet as well as a playwright, and more accomplished as the former in my opinion. So, I began to search for any of his poetry that might speak to the same themes and anxieties. I don’t remember what I put into the search bar, but I turned over some virtual stone and found this:

“Wise I”

WHYS (Nobody Knows

    

The Trouble I Seen)

    

Traditional

If you ever find

yourself, some where

lost and surrounded

by enemies

who won't let you

speak in your own language

who destroy your statues

& instruments, who ban

your omm bomm ba boom

then you are in trouble

deep trouble

they ban your

own boom ba boom

you in deep deep

trouble

humph!

probably take you several hundred years

to get 

out!

I’m still wrapping my mind around the ways in which the two works speak to each other, but I believe it’s far more than the title of Peele’s film sharing the final two words of Baraka’s poem. One seems to be an evocation of instinct, a call to trust your gut. The other an ironic warning come too late.