Welcome to the Future

A blog with a focus on Afrofuturism. . . . . Created for AF AMER 112B at UCLA (Take this class! Do it!!)

[looktothefuture]

On the brilliance of my peers and a reflection of my experience in the class

During the last week of class, we went through some of the work that my fellow students did for the final project. We had the choice of either an essay or a creative project, mostly short stories and short films, with a few screenplays by film majors/minors. As we are on Zoom and not everyone has access to the same resources they had pre-pandemic, I was expecting the films to seem fairly “low budget” and very obviously taken on a cellphone, etc. My bar was low. Contrary to this, I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the short films and short stories presented by my fellow students! I go to school with some amazingly talented people!! There were special effects in some and amazing filming in all of them. The plots were also incredible! As a senior in my last quarter at UCLA, I am so glad I got the opportunity to be surrounded by all of these brilliant minds. I thought nearly all the films were at or near the quality to be presented at a film festival.

Finishing up the presentations for the short films one day and then the short stories the next, I got a bit emotional. I really am going to miss all of my amazing peers and the magnificent Professors that guide us through our college journey. As a transfer student, I didn’t get to spend a lot of time at UCLA, and I’m glad to get the chance to end my experience there on such a high note! Professor Due is someone that I will never forget. Her care and compassion towards her students, her excellent writing, and her openness with her students is something that will stick with me throughout my life. I also won’t forget the experience I’ve had in this class with my fellow students. Their work was incredible.

My favorite film from that day was Tomorrow’s Yesterday Redux. It really highlighted the current experience of black people in America today, especially in light of the atrocities they have faced with police violence. I thought it was an astounding film, it looked so professional. The way the violence black Americans face was presented was very outright, and I think that it’s very necessary to present it that way. If you just ignore or downplay a problem like this, it will just get bigger. The emotions the film triggers are very important! It also showcased how it takes everyone being on the same page and working together to make a significant impact in this world. This is something that I think is critical with the ongoing violence and racism black people face in the world. The film really felt like a call to action.

Again, I am so happy I got the opportunity to take this class. I think this was the best way to end my undergraduate career. I really want to thank all of the students and especially Professor Due for making my last quarter the most memorable of my entire undergraduate career. Thank you so much!

[looktothefuture]

On "The Courier" by Courtney Jones and the current state of the world

“The Courier” is a short film by Courtney Jones and takes place in 2027 when the population of the world spikes drastically. There is a pandemic outbreak of a virus called the “hunter virus” and it kills tens of millions world wide. The general knowledge about the virus is that it was naturally occurring and came out of nowhere. This sounds VERY familiar, considering the state of the world right now! Attending this class on Zoom and watching this while simultaneously living this in the real world was absolutely surreal.

A company called Globalceutical is spearheading the movement to find a cure for the disease, and one of their scientists makes a breakthrough. Little does she know, the company is the one that created the virus in the first place and has no intention to cure the virus just yet, as it makes them a lot of money. The scientist suspects this and sneaks out the cure. Then she’s followed by the company’s thugs, and she quickly tries to find a person to give the cure to. She finds a courier that is about to finish his work for the day, and hands off this very important package to him, telling him to take it to a very specific person, and no one else. He gets the package to his destination, but quickly realizes that the man is part of the company. He gets chased once again, but successfully fends off his attackers. At the end he injects himself with the cure, effectively becoming the cure himself, while the company gets a vial filled with an electrolyte drink instead.

This short movie was great! It had a lot of futuristic technology, and a black man as the savior of the world. I really liked the premise, and as we are currently living through a pandemic, all I can say is that this short film feels TOO REAL! It’s really surreal, and the courier is very relatable. He’s just trying to do his job and is looking forward to his vacation before the fate of the world is literally handed to him in a vial. With Covid-19, there have been a lot of theories that have been circulating as to the origin of the virus, and many were similar to what was presented in this story, although I guess there would have to be a lot of research to find out how the virus became so deadly. I’m glad that we’ve quickly found a vaccine for our real-life pandemic and the world is slowly returning to normal. Gotta say though, I think I’ll keep the mask, it makes getting ready in the morning SO much easier!!

[looktothefuture]

On some of the works of Tananarive Due, cloning, and biomedical research

This week, we read “Herd Immunity” and “Like Daughter” by our very own Professor Tananarive Due. These short stories were amazing, with “Herd Immunity” basically predicting our current pandemic, and “Like Daughter” showing what cloning might become like in the future.

“Like Daughter” is about a woman who had an abusive and downright awful life growing up and her experience with cloning. This woman, Denise, known as Neecy by her best friend, participated in a cloning study and decided to clone herself. Cloning in this world is done by inserting genetic material from a donor, in this case herself, into an egg. Denise eventually gave birth to a clone of herself, and raised her daughter (also called Neecy) to have a better life than herself. Her plan fell apart when her husband left her and she saw her daughter begin to go through similar grief as she did as a child. This caused her to not even be able to look her child in the eyes, and she contacted her best friend and godmother of her child (Paige) to come and take her daughter away. Upon seeing Neecy, Paige is transported back to her own childhood with Denise, and she realizes that this child is going through much of the same confusion Denise did. She then realizes that she can’t keep Neecy with Denise, and decides to take her away for the time being. This story goes through the implications of cloning and a woman’s experience trying to cope with and rewrite her past, basically living vicariously through her cloned daughter. It really made me think about the uses of cloning, and what people would use the technology for if it ever gets to this point. Cloning is very important in science, with cell lines like HeLa paving the way for medical research.

The HeLa cell line is a immortal cancer cell line, capable of perfectly replicating itself rapidly, and I’ve had the opportunity to use them in a biomedical research internship I did a few years back. Reading “Like Daughter” reminded me of the HeLa cells a bit, and the real-life story of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died of cervical cancer in the 50s. Her cancer cells behaved differently than the other cells used in research at the time, and were quickly used to create a line of cells for research—all without the consent of Henrietta Lacks. No one asked her for permission, most likely because she was a black woman in the 50s. As a woman myself who has had doctors dismiss my pain time and time again, only to be told it was something that could have severely effected my life if it wasn’t caught in time, Henrietta Lacks’ story really stuck with me. When I got the opportunity to hold her cells in my own hands, I felt a deep respect for this woman and all that she went through and all of the medical advances that happened because of her. I think I almost cried.

If you haven’t heard of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cell line, I recommend reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It really illustrates the problems black women often face when trying to get medical care, and how racism, a lack of bodily autonomy, sexism, and poverty can affect a person.

[looktothefuture]

On The Parable of the Sower and Children of Men

During Week 4 of the quarter, we discussed Octavia E. Butler and her book, The Parable of the Sower. In the last blog post, I created a community similar to Lauren’s Acorn in Butler’s book. To go with this theme of dystopia and survival, we watched Children of Men. Butler’s book was shocking in its descriptions, but I noticed the difference between reading something and seeing it in front of your face on screen, like in Children of Men. I guess it’s the difference between hearing something from someone else after the fact and living through an event yourself! Professor Due warned us that Parable of the Sower would be a shocking read for some, with Butler’s graphic and extremely vivid imagery. However, I was able to read through this book without a problem after I got used to the world presented in the first couple chapters.

Children of Men, on the other hand, was thoroughly shocking at every turn! This movie threw curveballs at you all throughout the plot, and it was heartbreaking and emotionally charged all the way through. I definitely teared up at a few points, seeing the blatant murders taking place on the screen, and worrying for the life of Kee and Theo. Julian’s death in the beginning was a surprise for me—she and Theo were getting along and seemed to be bonding once more on the car ride towards Canterbury. The storyline was moving, and showed a very dystopian world in which there were no children, refugees, or “’fugees,” were abused and treated like animals and thrown in cages, unwelcome in what was supposed to be a safer place than the home they escaped from, and Kee, the lone savior of humanity—the first pregnant woman in twenty years, and a black woman at that! I really liked the switch they made between the book and the movie, adding Kee as the savior of humanity. It was a small change from the book, which I haven’t read yet, but I think it was an important one. Seeing a black woman in an important role such as this was refreshing. Films with black women in an crucial role are rare and were especially rare at the time this movie was released (2006). I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and it’s messages about climate change, racism and the refugee experience, and war. Soon after watching the film (quite literally hours after) I bought the book. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to read it soon!

[looktothefuture]

Rose: Change & Kindness

Earthseed. Hope for humanity in an everchanging and increasingly inhospitable world.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower shows a glimpse into the world where the structure of society has crumbled, and the main character Lauren finds solace in the religion she creates: Earthseed. Earthseed focuses on the everchanging nature of the world and helps its followers come to terms with their world. It prepares them for the many challenges they face throughout the book.

At the end of the book, Lauren and her Earthseed acolytes create a community called Acorn. Acorn becomes the first Earthseed community, focused on the betterment of the world around them through the acceptance of change.

For this blog, I will use this inspiration to create my own Earthseed community:

Rose. A community that is blooming and beautiful despite the thorns that surround them. Rose is a safe haven hidden behind a literal forest of briars. The community of Rose becomes a place where people can seek relief from the various troubles that plague this society. Some of the problems the people in this society face before joining Rose is privatization by large corporations, poverty, and lack of education. As the Marketplace that Covers All the Letters of The Alphabet, or Alphabeta as its more commonly known, privatizes everything under the Sun and installs its own government in the state, the people of this place suffer. Most jobs (besides those that require emotion or droid maintenance) are taken over by “tin cans,” as people have come to call them. Those that do have jobs work long hours, often supervised by droids and kept on edge as their life depends on them doing well at work (or “well” as Alphabeta defines it…Which means they have to keep up with the seemingly infinitely working droids). The people of this society have come to expect that nothing will ever change and all hope for the future is lost. Slowly the droids gain more intelligence and suffer just as much as their human counterparts because of their Alphabeta overlords. Everyone wants to leave, but no one can, due to the tracking chips Alphabeta implants in all its citizens, human and droid alike. As far as people know, the chip can only be deactivated by the Supreme Overlord himself. If the host of the chip suddenly begins hoping for freedom and fighting for it, the chip cannot be deactivated, and instead kills its host. Alphabeta makes sure all of its workers are fearful of escape and only focused on working, droid and human alike. Slowly it becomes hard to tell the difference between droid and human.

Rose becomes a place where people can finally escape from the clutches of Alphabeta and live in peace.  Rose is in an area that is considered completely uninhabitable by Alphabeta, due to the dense briars that kill anything that tries to force its way into the forest, so the area is completely ignored by the corporate empire. Rose is started by a scientist researching ways to help people escape Alphabeta. Rose becomes the first place to create deactivators for the tracking chips, and its members infiltrate the work houses where the droids and humans work. Slowly, they deactivate the chips of both the droids and humans, and begin working to convince people that change is alright. The Earthseed verses help convince people that it is now safe to try to fight for their freedom now that their tracker/self-destruct chips are deactivated.

“All that you touch You Change.   All that you Change Changes you.   The only lasting truth Is Change.   God Is Change.”

This verse, the first verse in Earthseed: The Book of the Living by Lauren Olamina becomes something the workers live by. The workers finally are able to come together and fight for their future. Humans and droids work together to take down Alphabeta with the help of those living in Rose. Many join Rose and help free those in other warehouses, as former workers know these places better and are better able to convince the dejected workers that things can change.

“Kindness eases Change.”

The residents of Rose live by this verse of Earthseed and help the workers adjust to life outside the warehouses and gain skills that will allow them to stop relying on the Alphabeta empire. Rose also houses displaced workers in their safe and hidden community. Slowly the community grows as humans and droids work and live together, growing their own crops, learning about the world outside of Alphabeta, and thriving. The community is governed by a counsel that changes every three years, and every issue is voted on by the whole community. Anyone is allowed to join Rose, as long as they truly believe in changing the world through kindness. To get to Rose, one must gently make their way past weeks’ worth of briars by foot. If the branches are forced apart, they wrap around the victim and they are impaled by the seemingly sentient plant. However, if one kindly moves the plant, it allows them through. By taking care of the briars that surround them and being kind to one another, the community of Rose thrives—beauty surrounded by thorns.

[looktothefuture]

Looking to the future for hope

So for my last quarter at UCLA, I decided to take AF AMER 112B – Aboard Mothership: Introduction to Afrofuturism and BOY AM I GLAD I DID! I took it on the recommendation of several friends who took the professor’s Black Horror course, and three weeks in, I think this is one of the best classes I’ve taken here. The class is taught by Professor Tananarive Due, and it’s probably one of the most refreshing and fun classes I’ve taken, especially since the whole world has shut down.

As the title suggests, the class focuses on Afrofuturism. As a person who is a certified nerd and enjoys all things science fiction, this class was perfect! I’m in my last quarter as a STEM major, going crazy because of my capstone project, and I was really missing the diversity of thought and creativity that comes with a class like this focused on social and cultural analysis. I truly am delighted to be taking this class.

With our reality looking sort of bleak and increasing violence faced by black Americans, it is clear why Afrofuturism is so important. It provides empowerment and escape from our harsh reality. Other times it highlights the harshness of our reality and emphasizes the changes that need to be made. It allows a community that has been suppressed and kicked around for a long time to flourish and express themselves.

As a musician myself, I absolutely love the music portion of this class. There’s so much music covered in this class and that makes me so happy! We started the class off on a very upbeat note with “Mothership Connection” by the funk band Parliament. This was a video of the live show with a literal mothership coming down at the end of the clip. It really showcased what this class and Afrofuturism is about, full of hope and empowerment.

We also listened to Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer” as part of this class (I love her!). Monáe uses Afrofuturism to touch on topics like police violence, suppression/conformity, feminism, and queerness. Watching her videos, it is clear that she draws a lot of inspiration from the Afrofuturistic artists of the past like George Clinton and Sun Ra. Something that was pointed out was the people with the mirror masks, just like those that were seen in Sun Ra’s “Space is the Place.” I really enjoyed the theme of reclaiming your identity after it is stripped from you. That is something that resonates with me greatly.

Music is something that really brings people together and empowers them. I personally see this when my mother sings traditional songs with other Indian women. She did not have the best immigration experience (or as a person outright) and was pretty much forcefully ripped from her home and brought to an unfamiliar country, barely out of high school and married off to a man she did not know. She never got to live her life outside of being forced to be a young mother in an unfamiliar place, and I have seen firsthand how music really provides hope and empowerment to people who have had everything taken to them.