45 seconds. That is roughly how long Academy Award winners have at the podium to give their acceptance speeches. 45 seconds to share their gratitude, acknowledge those who helped them, and possibly leave the audience with a bit of inspiration. When “Zone of Interest” won Best Foreign Feature Film at last month’s ceremony, the film’s writer and director Jonathan Glazer approached the podium to claim his 45 seconds. The words that came out of his mouth catapulted Hollywood further into what some might call an identity crisis, but what I believe is really a humanity crisis.
The long and the short of it: “Zone of Interest” follows the seemingly beautiful life of an Auschwitz commander and his family during the Shoah (Holocaust.) The film is sometimes compared to a horror movie; while the family is living their picturesque, wholesome life, the audience can hear (but not see) the horrifying screams, cries, and unimaginable sounds of humans being tortured just a stone's throw away on the other side of a wall that divides the beautiful family grounds from the horrifying concentration camp.
To some it came as a surprise when Glazer, who is Jewish, used his time at the podium to call the world’s attention to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst,” he said. “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” These words became an immediate source of controversy, with many misquoting Glazer to construe him saying, only, “We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness.”
Is saying “‘Never Again’ should mean ‘Never Again for Anyone,’” equal to refuting one’s Jewishness? More than 1,000 high profile Jewish artists and creatives seem to think so as they signed an open letter denouncing Glazer’s speech days after the Oscars. Then, last week, a smaller but still significant 150 famous Jewish artists signed a letter in support of Glazer, defending his courage to speak the truth and condemning attempts to blacklist him. Since the IDF massacre of World Central Kitchen workers on April 1st, hundreds more have publicly signed on to support him.
But the whole conflict raises issues that reach beyond this exchange: Who gets to determine the boundaries for art, speech, and identity? And how do those in power try to censor the truth?
These questions also swirl around an entirely different controversy in the entertainment industry– the release of Beyoncé’s newest album, Cowboy Carter. A work of stunning range, visceral power, and haunting beauty, the 22-track masterpiece is also a manifesto against the racism that has long shaped the country music industry. In 2016, when Beyoncé took the stage at the Country Music Awards with The Chicks, her performance ignited widespread racist outrage, with many angrily saying that the singer had no place in country music.
Even now, after releasing a record that unapologetically embraces and celebrates her country and Creole roots in Alabama and Louisiana, some country radio stations have refused to play her music even as she has climbed the charts to be the first Black woman to ever reach #1 on the Country Music Charts. This effort to erect a color-barrier around what gets to claim the label “country” is tied to how racism has shaped the genre. But it also reflects deeper existential anxiety for an America where “country” has been code for “white.”
With collaboration credits and literal blessings from industry legends like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Linda Martell, it may seem that Beyoncé designed this album to establish her bonafides beyond any doubt. But a closer listen reveals a deeper declaration: country music has always been a Black genre. Its “Blackness” has just been purposely erased. Take the “Texas Hold ‘Em” track: The banjo line is played by Black bluegrass legend Rhiannon Giddens. While the Grammy Award-winning Giddens is a star in her own right, a central part of her mission has also been to name and claim the role that Black Appalachians played in birthing the genre. Though country historians will sometimes concede that Black banjo players “influenced” country music, Giddens’ work proclaims the often-obscured truth: The banjo originated from African instruments like the akonting. Black banjo players didn’t just “inspire” early country artists, they were active creators in developing the sound we now identify as “country.”
In the same way that it is inspiring to see Beyoncé push back against who gets to be “country,” I’ve been so awed by the bravery of Jewish leaders across disciplines who are crying out for peace in Gaza—facing both this country’s antisemitism and folks within Judaism who say that this political activism means they are insufficiently Jewish. As someone who is often told by other Christians that I’m not a “real Christian” because I preach antiracism, embrace queer folks, and support abortion rights, I know the pain when following your conscience leads others to reject your identity and police your authenticity. It’s a sorrow I imagine Jonathan Glazer himself felt when his peers questioned his Jewishness. I also imagine Beyoncé felt that sorrow when she found herself performing to a cold and hostile audience at the CMAs.
Speaking the truth isn’t always easy. It will often put us in direct conflict with powerful voices and forces who prefer a comfortable lie over naming a profoundly uncomfortable reality—whether that’s racism within the country music industry or the war crimes currently being committed by the Israeli government. But the God I preach never promised that faithful living would be simple. Prophetic action is, however, the only force that can birth the abundance we were created to share.
Ironically, after all of the hubbub about whether or not she has made an authentic “country” album, Beyoncé declared on Instagram that “This ain’t a country album. It’s a Beyoncé album,”—meaning that “Cowboy Carter” is bigger than any genre because it contains the multitudes inside of her, inside of all of us. It is something bold and new, combining Pop, Country, Soul, Hip Hop, Opera, Rock and even Afrobeats seamlessly while lifting up new black voices AND paying homage to trailblazers, white and Black, who paved the path for her. It is not one thing. It is many things.
Similarly, Glazer’s Zone of Interest isn’t a “Holocaust film,” it’s a Human film. Learning from history doesn’t mean that we brace ourselves for the same tragedies to happen the same way again, it means that we have the empathy, the understanding of Ubuntu (We are human through other humans) to know that what happens to one of us happens to all of us. As Glazer says, “The Zone of Interest” is about what we choose to pay attention to — and what we’re able to ignore.“It’s not saying, ‘Look at what they did, It’s saying, ‘Look at what we do.’”
So what can we do when faced with violence that has already killed more than 33,000 people in Gaza—including ~13,800 children? What can we do in the face of violence in Haiti, the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, here at home? We can be brave, and use our voices to speak our values. We may not have the podium at the Oscars or the platform that a best selling album provides, but we each, in our own way can use our 45 seconds to insist on a world steeped not in violence but in love.
In particular, we can each use “our 45 seconds” to leave a message on President Biden’s Comment line demanding that we stop sending weapons to the IDF. The line is open Tuesday-Thursday from 11AM-3PM at 202-456-1111.
Healing the world will take imagination. It will take radical empathy. It will take the kind of fierce love that breaks down barriers and genres; that dismantles boxes and tribalisms. And it takes bold and brave proclamations of truth: we simply can’t murder our way to peace. This is why art and activism go hand in hand–proclaiming truth is also an essential part of what it means to be an artist.
If you are looking for a brave and beautiful space where art and activism will be channeled toward healing our democracy on the way to the election, come be inspired by artists like Cole Arthur Riley, Frederick Joseph, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and V (formerly Eve Ensler) at a national conference just for you: Freedom Rising: You. Move. The World. You’ll also organize with LaTosha Brown, William J. Barber II, Valarie Kaur and Gabby Bernstein as we celebrate art’s power to change the world.
And of course Sunday at Middle Church will be an artistic celebration of the ways love can make us brave. Come if you can. I want to see us be brave!
Love,
Jacqui
Beautiful, thoughtful words. Thank you.
There is a powerful message here, and I'm happy to hear you express it.