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Punctum: Sun
Ra
By George Chen
DAVID HILLIARD TAKES
the wheel of the chartered bus during the Black Panther Legacy
Tour, pointing out little-known sites of civic history. This is
where the old headquarters were once housed, now a bakery. This
is where Bobby Seale lives, and if we're lucky, Bobby himself will
come out and talk to us. David Hilliard takes the wheel, summarizing
the Panthers' public works and fallen heroes, a living portal to
a time when everything seemed on the verge of collapsing, or at
least the possible options for rebirth hadn't yet been shuttered.
It takes more imagination,
or naïveté, to see beyond these barriers now. The very
force of the '60s zeitgeist limits the potential of an overly referential-reverential
present: the Black Bloc is no SDS – why would it be? –
and certainly the Strokes are no MC5. With the resurgence of revolutionary
nostalgia comes a safety provided by distance, healed or at least
scabbed over with gestures like the Weather Underground documentary
and even the DVD reissue of 1974's Space Is the Place (Plexifilm).
Placing Sun Ra in the
context of the Panthers doesn't exactly fit with the otherworldly
persona he tried to uphold, but the man was not hindered by contradictions.
The self-proclaimed musical ambassador from Saturn turned his experimental
jazz movement into a platform for his Egypt-derived mythology, promising
to repatriate to a home planet out of the orbit of the corrupting
influence of white people.
The Philly-based Arkestra
was invited to Oakland by the Panthers in 1971, and Sun Ra lectured
for one semester at UC Berkeley in a course titled "Afro-American
Studies 198: The Black Man in the Cosmos." As with the confusing
plot of Space Is the Place, the lectures furthered Sun Ra's
rewriting of social science in his own otherworldly techno-babble,
turning biblical passages into equations and anagrams, and probably
frustrating anyone trying to get a straight answer out of him.
Since Space Is the
Place's limited theatrical release in 1974, director John Coney's
warped vision has been a cult item available on VHS. This director's-cut
DVD, with interviews and extra footage, leaves out any documentation
of the terrestrial life of Herman "Sonny Ray" Blount.
Instead, Space Is the Place combines blaxploitation and low-budget
sci-fi. Shot in the early '70s as the Panthers were falling apart,
this dramatized manifesto takes its place on the revolutionary-chic
mantle as a blast of conspiracy theory, art-house imagery, and Afro-futurism.
The DVD's features include
black-and-white footage of the Arkestra traipsing around the pyramids
in Luxor, Egypt, a surreal scene with the group dressed like an
Afrocentrist glam rock cult. Kodwo Eshun points out in his book
More Brilliant than the Sun that Sun Ra's Egyptophilia broke
with African American Christian tradition, which identifies with
the Israelites over the Pharaohs. It wasn't the only break with
tradition that Sun Ra made, but it was a sign of things to come.
Reportedly Sun Ra came
up with his own lines, which he delivers in an understated mumble,
and he spends most of the film looking aloof, staring past the camera
and floating through plot holes as if the movie doesn't really concern
him. The musical interludes sprinkled throughout are pretty astounding,
a more convincing argument for the teleportation capabilities of
Sun Ra's crew than the blue-screen flying scenes. The villains of
Space are the chortling Overseer, a galactic pimp who engages
Sun Ra in a card game for the fate of Earth, and a pair of NASA
scientists trying to undermine Sun Ra and steal his scientific knowledge.
One of the more entertaining scenes comes when the NASA men attempt
to torture Sun Ra with Germanic accordion music. White noise waves
used to cancel out a black enigma.
Prophets and cult leaders
often promise some sort of revolution, and we love the idea, even
if a revolution's liberation potential can wind down into wasted
energy, its spent idealism turned into nightmare. The Overseer is
ahead in the game for control of Earth, so when the apocalypse arrives,
it feels welcome. At the end of Space, Sun Ra's ark is loaded
up with repentant sinners across racial lines. At least his dictatorship
seems benevolent. The third planet, a ball of Styrofoam, explodes,
and we float away from the failed experiment.
At Los Angeles's Museum
of Jurassic Technology, one of the first exhibits you see is a cross-section
of a small wood Noah's ark. Like the entire museum, the presentation
of the ark as a historical fact is a put-on that challenges institutionalized
knowledge. It's also the sort of thing that would appeal to Sun
Ra fans. In the end, I think Space Is the Place has more
in common with the museum than with the Black Panther tour. Both
highlight the sense of wonder and possibility in creation myths,
calling the most basic assumptions into question.
For more information
on the Black Panther Legacy Tour, go to www.blackpanthertours.com.
E-mail goes unanswered
at punctum@sfbg.com.
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