Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary As We Speak, which explores the weaponization of rap lyrics in the criminal justice system. Emerging themes include how, exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword, the power of speech and who gets to use it, and the power of setting words to music and music to images to convey meaning. Astrological correlates include Mercury, the 9th House, and Venus.
Distribution: Streaming on Paramount+, more info
Director: J.M. Harper
Run Time: 95 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.510] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. This season, we're focusing on Sundance 2024, specifically the 36 different documentaries that we're able to see. And this is the second of five episodes in a section that we're calling Deconstructing Dominant Power Systems. And so today we're going to be covering a piece called As We Speak, which is a part of the US documentary competition at Sundance. It's by JM Harper and it is produced by MTV film. So I'm assuming that it's going to eventually arrive at some point on Paramount plus, but I'm not sure if there's any date that's been announced yet. So, Wonder, maybe you could read the synopsis of As We Speak.
[00:00:54.227] Wonder Bright: As We Speak. Bronx rap artist Kemba explores the growing weaponization of rap lyrics in the United States criminal justice system and abroad, revealing how law enforcement has quietly used artistic creation as evidence in criminal cases for decades. J.M. Harper's self-assured directorial debut unfolds like an original odyssey, shedding light on the intersection between the weaponization of rap lyrics and threats to freedom of speech. Traveling with Kemba grounds the international exploration in the perspective of an artist, he guides us through the origins of gangster rap to drill, studies on racial bias in music, discussions with legal experts, and candid conversations with influential artists like Killer Mike to reveal a profound history of targeting Black music and artists. Harper's seamless transitioning between restructured interviews, animated sequences, and imaginative reenactments reveals an audacious vision that also reflects the depth and interconnectedness of the issues at hand. Harper's sophisticated and immersive journey merges style and substance, boldly weaving through a web of issues and ultimately shining a light on the First Amendment, provoking crucial questions about whom it protects. And that synopsis was written by Sundance programmer, Stephanie Owens.
[00:02:15.296] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's a really pithy summary of the piece. And I wanted to first start by just talking a bit about the style and the form of the documentary, because it does feel like this music video in some way, the way that it's edited in a very snappy way, it's matched up with this journey that Kemba is going on, traveling around the country, talking to these different artists who are rap artists who have either been directly impacted by being prosecuted for their lyrics, their artistic expression. And yeah, some reenactments that are in there as well. But in terms of the content of the piece, they're really digging into the dynamic of how these rap artists are being targeted in a way that is different than, say, other artistic expression. There was one researcher that was cited that took some lyrics from an old song that was talking about how someone was going to go into a town and shoot the sheriff. It was kind of like a Western song. So when people hear it in its original context, they assume that it's just metaphorical, it's not literal. But yet, if they take those same lyrics and they did a whole study where they said, okay, this is a country song, this is a rap song, there's like a third genre. But the only genre that people thought it was literal was if they thought it was a rap song. And so there's this way in which these black artists who are using this kind of poetic interpretation to talk about the experience of their lives are getting interpreted to be literal and being used against them in a court of law, which is going against the First Amendment and the spirit of that First Amendment. And there was somebody who had this really brilliant breakdown of the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought, and getting all the way to the freedom to assemble. You start from an idea and it's from that idea to a whole movement and how the first amendment is supposed to protect each one of those different stages. But yet, when we see in the context of these rap artists, those protections are not being enforced or used in the same way that people who are outside of the rap genre are - they’re not being held up to the same standards as these artists are.
[00:04:14.292] Wonder Bright: Which ultimately results in questioning the idea that these are even, quote, “standards”. That if they're being used not so much to prosecute rap artists, like, a very particular, specific subsection of artists, if they're not being used to prosecute, so much as persecute, then what are these standards even measuring? And I also want to pick up on the thread there that you mentioned around JM Harper's use of audio rather than visuals to create a soundscape / visual-scape that in many ways feels more like a music video than an essay documentary style. Because one of the things that happens as a result of his beautiful use of that aesthetic and sound is that it actually immerses us in the world from the perspective of the artist rather than from this distant disembodied observer who is impartial, right? Because it ultimately, for my money, really sort of questions that impartiality from the very root of the aesthetic. It ultimately questions that idea of impartiality simply by altering how we're entering into the interrogation that's underway.
[00:05:40.532] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah. And so I guess when you start to think about the different significations, what are the things that come to your mind when you think about this film?
[00:05:48.797] Wonder Bright: For me, it's Mercury all the way down. It's 100% the planet Mercury, which is the Roman name for Hermes, the Greek god who is the messenger of the gods. So Hermes is responsible for bringing the messages of the gods to the people. And there are so many eloquent ways that J.M. Harper calls to life that archetype, and that archetype as embodied through Black writers and Black artists and makers. The film actually, within the first five minutes, I believe, there's a bit where Kemba quotes James Baldwin: “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see”. And I mean, once again, James Baldwin for the win, like, telling us the truth that we need as if it were medicine. And the fact that they framed this film using that quote gives us an entryway into hearing the words of Kemba, and all of the rap artists, and all of the legal scholars that they are talking to from the perspective of what is happening when we blot out this message from people who have medicine for us, from people who are telling us something that we need to know. Because the dominant systems of power in this country are colonialist and white and capitalist, this idea of squashing Black voices through rap, which is by far one of the most accessible spaces that Black people can talk to one another in a public setting. You know, because we have young Black artists coming up through TikTok and through YouTube and all of these spaces that if they're persecuted, by prosecutorial forces, they can no longer have access to those spaces as we learn in the film. And so now we're preventing people from speaking to one another, which goes into what the First Amendment protects, which is the right to assemble, also through the use of these kinds of communicative forces. And so what aren't we hearing? It's not just Black folk that don't get to hear these words. We're not hearing the results of the oppression upon people who don't have power. And so this is a really important piece of the puzzle when we look at how people are deconstructing dominant power systems in the wake of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction. Because if we are oppressing speech, then we can't hear what people have to say.
[00:08:51.983] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. Beautifully said. And I concur with the dominant signification of this piece is Mercury, but I think that this is actually a piece that we can start to look at aspects of the quality, context, character, and story to see how there's some other nuances that are also coming into play here beyond that. Because obviously we have the main protagonists of these artists who are black and people of color, they're going up against authority. So the governments, the 10th House powers that be, but there's also the use of the 9th House of law. And so we're really in the context of what the law is and how the law is being applied into this specific case. And so you have the authorities in the 10th House using the 9th House to oppress and suppress different aspects of the 1st House, freedom of speech, communication of an individual. There's also, like, 3rd House is often associated with communication. There's also a big part of the 5th House, which is creative expression. So it's the creative expression of individuals that are at the end of the day being repressed. And so it's like the 5th House being squashed by the 9th House via the 10th House of authority. And if you take the character dynamics of that authority, it's the Saturn-Pluto complex that we've been talking about over the last episode. And in the first episode, we really unpack the dynamics of that constrictive aspect of Saturn and the power dynamics of Pluto coming together to really be this repressive force of the powers that be. In this case, a lot of the underlying racist history of the power structures here in the United States. And also around the world, because there's other dimensions where they travel to other places like the United Kingdom, where there's a lot more surveillance that's happening online. And so you have this other aspect of people's privacy, which can be all of the Houses below the horizon, the first to the sixth, of surveillance and surveillance capitalism. But in the case of the United Kingdom, the government's actually surveilling in directly suppressing the speech by getting stuff to be taken off online by working collaboration with these corporate entities. So more of this 2nd House businesses that have the 10th House government coming in and basically pulling the plug on some of these videos that they're saying are a threat to whatever the safety and security, they're finding a way to basically get these videos taken offline. So there's more explicit censorship that's happening in certain countries and, yeah, I just wanted to share what Richard Tarnas says about Mercury because I think we are talking about Mercury, just to bring in Mercury a little bit more into the discussion. So Tarnas says that “Mercury is the principle of the mind, thought, communication. That which articulates the primary creative energy and renders it intelligible, and the impulse and capacity to think, to conceptualize, to connect and mediate, to use words and language, to give and receive information, to make sense of, to grasp, to perceive and reason, to understand and articulate, to transport, translate, transmit. The principle of Logos Hermes, the messenger of the gods”. So I think there's a lot of that communicative aspect that we all have with Mercury. And so this is a film that's really looking at the dynamics between the Saturn-Pluto powers that be and ways that it can restrict the mercurial aspect of free speech.
[00:12:11.383] Wonder Bright: Well, let's also point out that they're using Mercury to do that. So they're writing into law and writing into their prosecutions, the mercurial output of the rap artists, and then they're writing it into their prosecution. What that means without listening to the artists explain what it means. So they're using their words against them, and they're naming and identifying what is happening in a way that takes the authoritorial control away from the artists and into the hands or the mouths or the pen of the people who are prosecuting them. So they're using mercury as well. So it's mercury all the way down, Kent, is what I'm saying.
[00:13:07.156] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah, well, I certainly agree. And I feel like this, as a film, is also using the communicative style of hip hop in the way that it's telling the story. So it's covering the rap and hip hop artists in a way that, even the way that the film is structured and formed, it's this creative imagination that's also there where you have this courtroom scene that is this imaginal recreation, but metaphorically bringing home these larger points of trying to look at all the different pressures of public defenders. You should just submit and not try to fight it, otherwise you could have longer sentences. And so you see how these tactics by the prosecution and the attorney generals of the representatives of the state are using how the criminal justice system is really weighted against people, where they're forced to plead guilty and take a plea in order to avoid the longer sentence. And so at the end of the film, they showed well over 700 different cases where artists have had their creative work used against them in a court of law. So this is a film that's really diving deep into this subsection of ways that, as we're deconstructing the dominant systems of power, then this is one mechanism that can be used through the law to be able to suppress speech and bring what they would see as this kind of order. But I would see as, like you said, it's depriving us of this ability to have these ideas and thoughts and these experiences shared. And we're worse off of not having the full diversity of all these perspectives to hear from, and learn from, and to have these insights and perspectives that are being denied through these systems of power.
[00:14:44.974] Wonder Bright: And let's not forget Venus in the role of the artist and also the role of someone who gives voice to things. The Guaquelin studies in the last century revealed that singers had Venus closely conjoined one of their angles. And so inside that, you can see how Venus is closely connected to vocal artists and to people who are creating music, who are communicating through, not just verbal speech, but the nonverbal experience of soundscapes. And one of the things that I really loved about this film is the way that it went back historically and looked at how Black American music sounded so different to white Americans initially. And it was seen as being really, really dangerous. There were all these clips of how it was seen as something that was going to pollute the white teenager, you know, and we have, like a, just a completely different structure for music in European versus African or Caribbean cultures where the music scape is just a very different thing. And As We Speak does a really masterful job of breaking down that soundscape and how it has historically been met with resistance by dominant power structures, which are white Eurocentric power structures. And so it's really important to understand that there's this nonverbal component to this that is part aesthetic, you know, like, how rap artists dress or how Black people dress is seen as inherently threatening. Or how they sound is inherently threatening. And so of course then there's also this, like, what they're actually saying is inherently threatening. And yet how much of that resistance to the sights and sounds is just based on pure projection of fear of what we don't know. And it's just a kind of, like, instinctive thing, I think, for most people generally to be afraid of what they don't know, which is why it's so critical that we don't penalize people for sharing from the space of what they do know. Because as long as we don't know, we're going to continue to be afraid. Hmm.
[00:17:08.672] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's really reminded me of the film that we watched last year about Little Richard and his plight of having his music appropriated and that it took a long time for him to really get his due for the different types of innovations that he was doing with rock and roll. And that historical callback that is made in the film, I think is really important because it goes back to early slave rebellions and how they were outlawing drums and suppressing enslaved peoples from singing and being able to express themselves. And then that moves into the blues and how that was marginalized, and jazz, and rock and roll, then soul. And then now we're into, like, hip hop. And then in this film, they're focusing a lot on drill rap, which is a genre of music that they're digging into different ways that has been suppressed both from the law, but also in different cultures. And so, yeah, there's like a long lineage and history of how Black music has been suppressed or repressed and eventually making a huge impact on the culture in so many different ways, but yet the original transmission is not necessarily honored. And so who would you prescribe this film for?
[00:18:17.686] Wonder Bright: I would prescribe this film, well, obviously for anyone who really wants to understand Mercury and the thorny thicket that Mercury opens up. If you're looking at medical astrology, Mercury is actually a really problematic planet because in addition to any kind of ailment that somebody might have, they also get tied up in knots because they overthink or they worry or they get really neurotic. Ask me how I know. Because they get really tied up in knots and they worry and there's a kind of neuroses associated with it. So Mercury, which on the surface of it, we think, oh, the winged messenger of the gods, he's got these like really fun little feet with wings on them. How bad could he be? But Mercury is actually a really complex planet that, you know, they say the pen is mightier than the sword. And this is a film that really bears that out. So this is a film for anyone who really wants to understand the complexities of Mercury and what is needed in order to protect it, and what is needed in order to not make it into a weapon. Ironically, that's the thing that the rap artists are being accused of, but it's not actually who's weaponizing Mercury.
[00:19:35.300] Kent Bye: Yeah. And speaking of those rap artists, one of the things that I want to bear witness to is just the sea of voices that we're hearing from, like the front lines of this experience of people who have faced that type of repression and oppression and persecution for their creative expression. And there's some real pithy moments of lawyers who are unpacking it and breaking it down and really showing the hypocrisy of what's happening in the situation. And also Kemba, who is the heart of this piece, doing this investigation and being the vessel under which these conversations can happen and having all these people talk to him. And he is embodying this 9th House expression of the legal process and stepping in as a symbolic representation of somebody who would be going through this and all the systems of power that are working up against him and the choices that he has to make in the face of that.
[00:20:30.086] Wonder Bright: And at the heart of it, he's really, really living into the Baldwin quote that he reads at the start. “I'm telling you these things because I love you”. And I feel like he really holds that space with a lot of grace. And I want to bear witness to JM Harper for using his mercurial and his Venusian powers to bring forth a vision of a world as it is, and also as it could be.
[00:21:03.559] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that's all that we got for today for this episode of Story All The Way Down. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up for their newsletter. You can go to storyallthewaydown.com, sign up and get more information. So thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
