The Blog of Jason “Jayce” Olshefsky

So recently I was involved in a discussion that didn’t turn out to everyone’s satisfaction. The scenario is this:

I was at a social engagement where everyone knew one another fairly well; in a small-group discussion when one of the participants — let’s say Jack — started describing a bigoted encounter he had with someone he associated with as part of his job. Just as he was about to quote the third-party, someone walked into earshot — let’s say Jill — who’s a member of the group who was targeted (and also the only person around who’s a member of that particular group). So Jack stopped and said, “I’ll tell you in a minute,” and everyone got quiet. I insisted that he continue and invited Jill to the conversation to hear — after all, this is a quote of an encounter, and not representative of his personal belief.

So we all talked for a few minutes. Naturally Jill was shocked but apparently not upset at what Jack had to say. Things went okay and the topic changed and the group broke up a bit. Jack asked that I never put him in that situation again. I apologize but add that he shouldn’t bring up such things in my presence because I would probably react the same way.

The universal response has been that I was wrong. I should have let sleeping dogs lie, let the conversation go fallow because Jill probably didn’t notice, and everyone would have been much more comfortable.

Now I don’t think my solution was ideal, but I think it was better than nothing. First of all, the argument that Jill didn’t hear anything is specious — for if it was indeed true, then Jack should have continued without pause, and clearly even Jack felt that Jill could hear him. Second, I don’t believe discomfort is as bad as it’s cracked up to be — for is it better to maintain comfort or point out something unethical? “Well,” you argue, “Jack wasn’t really being unethical, right?” At that moment, probably not, but I think that overall his behavior wasn’t purely right. Here’s what I think the chronology was in this case:

1. He had an associate who surprised him by saying something bigoted.
2. He disagreed with the sentiment but probably said nothing of it to avoid a conflict at the time.
3. I assume his association with this other person changed — perhaps he never needed to deal with them again, and perhaps he just avoids associating with them. But what he didn’t do was to directly address the issue — for instance to say that he was disappointed that such ignorance persists in this day and age.
4. When relaying the story, he was not proud of his actions — and he did not want to reveal that he didn’t defend the group to which Jill is associated.

Let me put it another way, this time with a hypothetical encounter. Two guys are talking. One is Jewish and the other is not. The one who’s not reveals that he works with a guy who’s anti-Semitic.

DAVE: “Don told me this off-color joke about Jews at work today.” (unspoken: “it’s okay to say this because it wasn’t me”.)
JOE: “So what did you do?” (unspoken: “such jokes reinforce that being Jewish is inferior in arbitrary ways and I think you agree that this is not true”.)
DAVE: “Well he’s my boss so I couldn’t do anything.” (unspoken: “I didn’t want to make him angry because I might lose my job — or worse. You know how those people are”.)
JOE: “What a prick.” (unspoken: “I would have hoped that you are a good enough friend to help me even if doing so is not to your immediate advantage. I feel disappointment because I now respect you less than I assumed I could”.)

On the surface, Dave and Joe seem more comfortable than if they dug deeper — for there is tremendous discomfort that runs very deep. But is that really healthy? Doesn’t it serve to reinforce bigotry? If Joe confronted Dave, I think Dave would react defensively — that he would be more upset about being called out for his lack-of-action than with the original situation.

So then you ask, “what am I supposed to do about them? I’m not a bigot and I don’t support them. Isn’t that enough?” Let me just put it this way: are you confident and proud of your actions? And I don’t mean as a form of denial: can you really defend your beliefs, thoughts, and actions in a rational and sound way?

The reason why I live by this code is that it helps me get to sleep at night. For as much distress I cause in people, I need to come to the conclusion that I did the most right thing I could at the time — to be confident and proud of my actions.

I’m not thrilled about making Jack uncomfortable. I don’t know if it changed anything for the better, if it made Jill upset, or if it disrupted Jack and Jill’s relationship. But I think that what I did do was force Jack to reconcile his actions — for if he was proud and confident of his behavior, he’d have no problem facing Jill. (So I guess I have an ulterior goal to coerce other people to be the best they can be.)

The catch is that I don’t know if I read the situation correctly. If, in fact, things happened like I thought they did, then I’m proud and confident of my reaction. When I look at my own life experience and situations in the past like these, I think my assessment was correct, though.

Now if only I could forgive myself for things I couldn’t have known …

I just barely made it to the screening of Do the Right Thing at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) I think I’m beginning to understand what’s meant by a Spike Lee “Joint” as compared to a “movie”: in a movie, it’s like a moving representation of reality, but in a “joint”, it’s like a view of reality as viewed through a filter or machine. Kind of like the difference between a photograph and an X-ray, or better, the difference between a fire and a box of matches.

I left and went to Solera Wine Bar (647 South Ave.) for a bit to think about it. I really couldn’t come up with anything but that match-fire metaphor. I did know it was different from a “movie” because “did you like it?” is not really a valid question to ask afterward.

See, it’s like an extract of life. You take all the stuff that makes people behave a certain way and you strip away all the parts that aren’t important and you’re left with this residue that’s the essence of it all. Spike Lee then takes that and shapes it back into a reality with characters and a story. But it’s not reality. The pizza shop isn’t a pizza shop, it’s the non-black outsiders in a black neighborhood who everybody obviously knows aren’t black, but who get blown up when they try and express/impose their culture/beliefs/biases. Mookie isn’t a black man who works at said pizza place, he is the silent majority who try to make ends meet but slowly boil inside as they try to find the point of the pointless.

So it really doesn’t even make sense to talk about it like a movie. It’s … umm … you know, a Spike Lee Joint.

Ali and I headed to the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) but we arrived early, and we got to join the tail-end of Jim Healy’s coffee chat in the cafe. I’d like to have attended, as I only got to really listen in on other people’s comments.  I’m still stuck on trying to think of a romantic comedy in the past 10 years or so that Jim would like, as he was at a loss to think of one off hand.

Anyway, the films that night were those of Len Lye, an experimental filmmaker in the 1930’s through 1960’s. His technique was to “compose motion” by drawing directly onto film stock. A Colour Box was one of his earliest and I immediately recognized the tiny nuances of hand-painted and stamped images magnified hundreds of times. He also incorporated innovative music — typically Cuban music in his early films and jazz in his later ones.

It was amusing that some films were created as advertisements — such as The Birth of the Robot and Colour Flight, but they were so abstract that it was difficult to tell what the point was. Well, The Birth of the Robot was rather direct. In it, a guy dies in the desert and is resurrected by Shell oil into a robot that operates the mechanisms of the cosmos. Rhythm had interesting story: it was a commercial for Chrysler that got rejected by the company because it used African drumming and included a “knowing wink” from a black worker (although IMDb’s trivia says it was because the film was “too abstract” rather than that Chrysler opposed racial equality in 1957). This also meant that an advertising reward for it was revoked because it was never actually shown.

Two of his last films: Free Radicals and Particles in Space were both excellent. Completely abstract in their artistry — and created from scratching white lines in black film — they conveyed the magic of motion and dimensions. I thought the hand-scratched titling that was animated to move in some warped spacial way was really innovative. The films also incorporated that technique, as if it were the film of objects dancing in a way unnatural to our orthogonal 3-D world.