It is the second to the last day of class.
Perhaps they are tired.
Some students in my “American Swagger” class struggled to see the complexity in “Delirium,” a vignette in the motion picture Coffee and Cigarettes and ideas we have discussed all semester.
In this vignette, one of several in the 2004 Jim Jarmusch film, Bill Murray plays a waiter who serves the Wu Tang Clan, two African American hip hop performers. Moreover, Murray leaves the table with knowledge about Eastern healing treatments. All this from two men he calls “troublemakers.” Stereotypes and irony hover.
It is my hope that as the students sit down to write the final essay for this class, which is worth fifty percent of their grade, they will not forget to analyze the fluid nature of power as seen in this clip.
Who has it?
Who seems to always have it?
A couple of students did “get” how complex power and thus, swagger, is in the United States since the antebellum period and what this complexity means for the Cameroonian immigrants in Behold the Dreamers, the novel assigned in this course.
Here’s one student reflection on “Delirium” and this book:
As I watched the video clip “Coffee and Cigarettes, Delirium,” it seemed very unconventional. Billy Murray, beloved by the American mainstream, gets advice from Gza and Rza of the infamous Wu Tang Clan. The Wu Tang Clan is considered by many as one of the most influential and powerful groups of the Hip Hop era. The group, which formed in a New York City borough, consisted of Rza, Gza, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, and Masta Killa. They were considered to be “hardcore” in their style and messages. They spoke about “Blackness” and the power of being black. Often, they were seen as sending strong messages in a different style. They used language from ancient Egypt. Their methods have garnered them respect and admiration across the industry and in the hearts and minds of fans. The connection between the idea of power and American swagger was made when Bill Murray said that Wu Tang Clan is a bunch of troublemakers. We have heard this theme many times in our journey and discovery of American swagger. The Miami Hurricanes football team, the character of Django, and Melvin van Peebles were all at some point….characterized as troublemakers. Somehow, they all managed to display their power at some point. Despite the initial hesitation, Bill Murray listens to advice on the effects of coffee and cigarettes [on his body]. He is told of the harmful effects associated with both and ultimately[,] a complete satire follows via the advice of Gza and Rza…People have a way in America of figuring out how to express their power…The idea of … power is being mocked in the video clip.
Another student wrote: The last chapters of Behold the Dreamers deepened my awareness of swagger and how it changes. The hardest thing for Neni is giving up on her American Dream and returning to Cameroon even though she will return to better living conditions…. Immigrants have often come to America …. seeking economic opportunity ….only to be disappointed by the American Dream and the “long, hard journey ….” (Mbue pg. 313) Opportunity is not given equally, as we see in the readings about the Irish and the German immigrants during the 19th century. German immigrants brought wealth with them and were able to secure land and holdings. [T[he Irish came to American poor and struggled for the most basic rights and opportunities. Jende and Neni leave America with a small amount of money and return to Cameroon with enough to financially secure a good life…[that they would] never have achieved in America.
[I]n the clip “Coffee & Cigarette,” ….you have two hip hop members from WuTang Clan, ….drinking herbal decaffeinated tea while discussing homeopathic medicine [with] Bill Murray [who is a] waiter with his hat on sideways and drinking coffee straight from the pot….Swagger flows and changes between RZA, GZA and Murray like…. it changes and flows between Jende, Neni and the Edwards. American Swagger changes through the course of history, based on social, economic, religious and political disparity and inequality.
While there was room for both students to deepen their analysis, they understood the limits of the driven “American” and his or her swagger, however those limitations arrive based on the color of skin, gender, money and citizenship.
Wealthy black hip hop performers and imagined African immigrants faced challenges that a wealthy celebrity playing a waiter or an imagined New York City investment executive would never have to face – no matter either man’s struggles with family or coffee addiction.
The “America” that Alexis de Tocqueville and others, including Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, saw is filled with great problems owing to such inequity, but also the way in which the lowliest can still surprise us by doing the unlikely. The evidence is in imagined works and in real life. What do such surprises say about human drive and our ability to display swagger even when we are down and out?
Indeed, a third student gestures toward such complexity in this reflection:
What I was made more aware of by our materials for today was how closely swagger is connected to tenacity and self-determination. In the last three chapters of Behold the Dreamers, we see the departure of the Jongas from New York back to Limbe, the home that they left with very little wealth and without any sort of power to speak. Through self-determination alone, Jende and Neni overcame all the initial hardships that they faced as poor immigrants in a foreign country, and, although they were effectively forced out of America by a largely faulty immigration system, [they] will now return back to their home country in “circumstances different than when he [they’d] driven away from it” (381), just as Jende had hoped. They will finally have freedom and autonomy in their home town to pursue any endeavors that they desire, all because of their own persistence in striving for their goals in a country that has not been historically kind to immigrants (let alone those of African descent). But this holds true even for non-immigrant American citizens, and we see this with individuals like the members of the Wu-Tang Clan (who are for the children. R.I.P. ODB). RZA and GZA are individuals who were constantly subjected to an oppressive American government and a poverty stricken African-American community in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Through pure self-determination, they carve their own paths and strive for success, both in monetary means and in personal fulfillment, as we see with the group’s continued persistence to grow in terms of self-education and self-betterment. I think that today’s materials are heavily related to Migo’s “Bad and Boujee” in the most literal sense imaginable. In both Behold the Dreamers and the clip from Coffee & Cigarettes, we see individuals who have molded and formed their own success from nothing, and in the face of a world that opposed them at every turn. All of this is to say, struggle and self-determination have been virtually inseparable themes connected to swagger in American society, and they are front and center in both of our sources for today.
I will end with where we started five weeks ago: University of Miami football and the swagger this team made famous in the eighties. Will the students see ties between the driven way of college football players of African descent on display here and how it can be historicized and problematized?
What are the tensions between the young student-athletes and ideas in that clip and the one featuring Bear Bryant below? What does “time” permit the promises of freedom, but never entirely?
catalogue 