Too black to be Latina, too light to be black? Saldana shows how confused society still is with regards to race

SIMONE: As herself

As one who enjoys the singing of the late musical performer Nina Simone, I wish I could say I was looking forward to the film based on her life that is supposed to be released publicly next month.

But with all the fuss that’s being made over the fact that actress Zoe Saldana is playing the part of the famed singer, all that this film is likely to do is further illustrate just how confused our society is with regards to race.

FOR THE RECORD, Saldana is a dark-skinned woman whose ethnic origins include significant elements of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico – along with traces of Haiti and Lebanon. I’m sure there are many in our society who look at her and see a black woman; something she has never tried to deny or downplay.

SALDANA: Can she be convincing as Simone?

She’s a dark-skinned Latina. There have been feature-type stories written that emphasize Saldana as the perfect example of how not all Latinas are light-brown in complexion, and can come in many complexions.

But there are those people who think that isn’t good enough for Saldana to play the part of Simone. They want someone whom they’d like to think of as pure-black.

As though her ties with Latin America make her unfit to think of holding such a role. Too light to be black, and too black to be Latina? It makes me think that all sides of our society have their hang-ups that need to be overcome. Either that, or maybe us Latinos are correct in thinking it's everybody else in society who's a bit ridiculous.

INSTEAD OF BEING a celebration of the life of an entertaining singer with a social conscience back in the 1960s, this film is likely to get bogged down in racial nonsense – particularly from people who think of race as an absolute.

Rather than some sort of mixture that 99 percent of us have little bits and pieces of everything. Everybody has that relative in their past who is the “dirty little secret” they’d probably rather have everybody else forget all about.

It’s going to be bogged down in a lot of cheap rhetoric about racial categories; rather than focusing on whether or not Saldana is capable of convincingly portraying the singer who gave us a convincing cover of that semi-pornographic blues tune “Sugar in My Bowl.”

At least it was when blues singer Bessie Smith gave it to us on ancient recordings nearly a century old. Simone turned it into something almost loving and sweet.

ALTHOUGH I DO wonder what Simone herself would have thought of the casting choice (she died in 2003). She was into the Black Power movement of the 1960s, and I know some jazz music fans (including my father) who still get outraged anytime they hear the song “Mississippi Goddamn.”

Which was her musical response to much of the violence against black civil rights activists who protested throughout the southern U.S. in the 1960s.

Maybe Nina would have been bothered too by someone not quite as dark and a little more brown than black portraying her. Just as I remember a few people getting all worked up when Saldana played the part of Lt. Uhura (the role that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., supposedly enjoyed) in that 2009 remake of Star Trek as a movie.

Although I found it interesting to read reports on Friday where Simone’s daughter said her objections to the film had nothing to do with Saldana’s complexion and were more tied to the script.

LISA SIMONE KELLY told Time magazine she’s bothered by the romantic relationship the film has her mother having with her manager, Clifton Henderson – a man whom Kelly claims was actually gay.

That may be a more legitimate reason to be skeptical of the film – although one I’m sure that would bore to tears the people who’d rather get all worked up over skin complexion.

Let's be honest -- being able to do Calvin Klein ads convincingly is a large part of why Saldana gets film roles

If anything, such disputes may wind up showing how irrelevant complexion and racial differences can be.

Particularly if the film winds up directing at least a few people back to the original records of Simone’s music. That would be the best outcome of this whole experience.

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Quinn wants the Latino vote come November. Who will he honor to get it?

I’m starting to wonder if Gov. Pat Quinn is mistaking March for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Searching for voters at the theater?

Either he is, or maybe he’s just that eager to have Latino voters think he’s aware of us to the point that we’ll contemplate giving him our votes come the Nov. 4 election for Illinois governor.

IT WAS JUST over a week ago that Quinn went so far as to declare the day Benito Juarez Day across Illinois. For the one-time president of Mexico who helped ensure that the nation remain an independent entity and U.S. ally – rather than a French colony that would have given aid and comfort to those forces that wanted to split the United States in two back in the mid-19^th Century.

Now, he’s made the declaration that makes Monday officially Cesar Chavez Day across the Land of Lincoln.

We’re not alone. This is actually the anniversary of the birth of the founder of the United Farm Workers labor union. He’d be 87 now, if he hadn’t have died at age 66 back in 1993. Many places with significant Latino populations (particularly in the southwestern U.S.) have made the same declaration.

Although it should be noted that Quinn made his declaration on Friday with a public appearance to add his praise to Chavez – who back in his own time would have had those who wanted to view him as a radical (just like Martin Luther King, Jr.). All because he touted the cause of people the establishment would have preferred to ignore.

BUT WHO NOW are much less venomous in their rhetoric – also just like King. Because they see now how ridiculous their rants were.

Of course, by doing his thing on Friday, Quinn got to get himself a plug on the same day that actor/director Diego Luna’s new film about the life of Chavez came out in movie theaters across the nation. It’s becoming his new tactic, just as he used to be the “Sunday press conference” man to ensure he’d get covered.

Which may mean all the people who felt compelled to see the film when it came out this weekend might be more inclined to think favorably upon the “Mighty Quinn.”

He wants to win

“Cesar Chavez organized the United Farm Workers to fight for fair wages, humane living conditions and basic dignity for some of the most oppressed workers on earth,” Quinn said, while also reminding us of the time he got to meet Chavez back in 1974 – back in the days when he was a low-level staffer in the administration of then-Gov. Dan Walker.

“HIS MESSAGE OF juntos podemos (together, we can) has stayed with me to this day,” said Quinn. Is he trying to be like Barack Obama's 2008 usurping of "Yes, We Can?" Or just different from Republican challenger Bruce Rauner -- whose minority vote strategy seems to be discouraging African-American voters from bothering to vote at all!

It’s not often that a governor is able to use a major motion picture release to try to gain himself some public attention. I don’t even recall him trying to use the Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln” to get himself support.

Then again, that film came out during a presidential election year cycle, and not a gubernatorial one..

Now I suspect that much of the audience for this particular film is going to be an ethnic-inspired crowd. I couldn’t help but notice that the one movie theater near I live that is actually showing the film is making a point of devoting two screens to it – one for showings of the film proper, and another for showings of the film dubbed into Spanish.

I KNOW SOME people are going to think it odd that a film about a Mexican-American (he was born here, and served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War) needs to be dubbed into Spanish, as though it were one of those tacky Japanese films about Godzilla or Mothra.

Will Quinn seek support here too?

But this will be one of those films that will attract a larger-than-usual Latino film-goers crowd just because it will be one of the few films that depicts a Latino as something other than a drug-dealer or maid.

So Quinn trying to reach out to voters by giving days to people of Latin American ethnic origins could be part of the political strategy.

I’m just wondering if he has a list of possible people already prepared. If he turns out to be a big-enough bat for the Chicago White Sox, will we get Jose Abreu Day sometime between Monday’s Opening Day and season’s end?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I haven’t gone to see the Cesar Chavez film yet, just as I will not be at U.S. Cellular Field on Monday. I suspect if I wait a few days, I can catch the film with a smaller crowd on hand. Just as the White Sox will play 80 more home games following the opener for 2014.

EXTRA: 85 years since 'massacre,' yet I just want to watch Marilyn Monroe

It has been 85 years since the violent outburst in a garage at 2121 N. Clark St. that we now think of as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Yet all I can think of on this Friday is Marilyn Monroe.

Yes, the curvaceous beauty to whom all Hollywood glamour for all time invariably gets compared.

A PART OF me wants to pull out my copy of “Some Like It Hot” and pop it in the DVD player.

Let’s not forget that the film starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was set largely on board a passenger train and in Miami Beach. But it started in Chicago with their two musician characters inadvertently witnessing the grisly killings.

Hence, they have to get out of town before they’re killed off. So naturally, they dress up as women, get hired by an all-girl band (Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators) and wind up encountering Sugar (played by Monroe).

Yes, it’s total nonsense. Just the other day I stumbled across a Monroe documentary that said much of the humor of the film was in the preposterous notion that Monroe’s character would not be immediately able to tell that “Josephine” and “Daphne” were really men.

BUT IT DOES put a humorous touch to that ugly day. It certainly comes across as more entertaining than the 1967 film “The St. Valentine’s Day” massacre, which was a slightly-fictionalized take on what supposedly happened.

But one that got bogged down in so much factual matter that it becomes dreary at times. It gives evidence to the old cliché, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

That film certainly did.

When it comes to the latter film, what I most note is that it gave us Jason Robards as Capone – some nine years prior to giving us the award-winning performance as the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in “All the President’s Men.”

HE WENT FROM playing a man who later got busted by the Internal Revenue Service to being the man who helped take down a political hack of a president.

Interesting material. Although I’d still rather watch Monroe – who showed us her humor as well as her curves.

The real thing!

Even if it’s not, strictly speaking, a historic moment film. Although if there is a moment in Chicago history that I’d like to see someone try to make a film out of, it is the Chicago fire of October 1871.

I realize that 1937’s “In Old Chicago” starring Don Ameche already gave us one take. Yet I wonder what could be done now, with the additional knowledge we now have that acquits the reputation of the O’Leary family and with the visual technology that could make the burning down of nearly an entire city a true spectacle to watch.

COME TO THINK of it, I think I’d still rather see the interaction of Curtis and Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.” It has its humorous moments.

And it also gave us what might well be the funniest ending line of a film (by comedian Joe E. Brown) ever when Lemmon’s “Daphne” character finally whips off his wig and reveals he’s a man.

“Well, nobody’s perfect!”

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Somebody’s a film buff in FBI

I couldn’t help but be amused when I learned of the latest attempt at a cutesy nickname given to a criminal suspect, or in this case, suspects, by federal agents.

For we now have the “Nuns on the Run” robbers – two men who apparently wore masks and nun’s habits to try to disguise their identities when they robbed banks, including one in suburban Palos Heights.

NOT THAT IT did them much good. Two men are now in custody. One was arrested last year, and in theory is scheduled to go on trial next month.

But the other man, a resident of south suburban Markham, was not arrested until this week. He had his first appearance in U.S. District Court on Wednesday for the charges of bank robbery, and conspiracy to commit bank robbery that both men face.

Federal officials say that both suspects had previously worked for banks, and the man who was arrested last year had also been accused of embezzlement at his previous place of employment – a bank in suburban Country Club Hills.

For the record, federal officials dubbed them “Nuns on the Run” because they thought the masks used by the robbers looked just like costumes used in the 2010 film “The Town.”

NOT THAT I recall this particular film, which was directed by Ben Affleck and is adapted from the novel “Prince of Thieves.” Actor Jeremy Renner was actually nominated for an academy award (“best supporting actor”) for his performance.

Yes, I had to look those details up.

I’m sure someone out there will think I’ve been living in a cave for not knowing this right off the top of my head. But I wonder about the agent who made the connection between the bank surveillance camera footage of the robberies and this film?

Although I have to admit that my initial reaction was to think that some agent somewhere was really digging into obscure films to come up with a nickname.

BECAUSE MY FIRST thought would have been to think that somebody was remembering the 1990 film “Nuns on the Run.” That starred British actors Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as a pair of low-level gangsters who have millions of pounds of another gangster’s money and are trying to rip him off.

To cover themselves up and escape an attempt on their lives, they take cover in the first building they see – which turns out to be a convent.

Hence, we get the sight of Idle and Coltrane in nuns’ habits throughout much of the film (along with a final shot of them in flight attendant uniforms). Much of the “humor” of this film is based on how absurd the characters act and look while trying to pretend to be women – particularly Coltrane, who makes actors like John Belushi or Jack Black look like fine specimens of physical fitness.

Then again, I suppose expecting someone to remember back two decades for an obscure reference would be a bit much to ask – particularly since I’m starting to wonder about myself for being able to remember this particular film.

PERHAPS MY OWN brain would be better off if it weren’t clogged with so much trivial detail? Sometimes, I wonder if these nicknames they come up with are so obscure that real people aren’t meant to “get” them. They’re just supposed to sound off-the-wall, while making the suspects sound more bizarre than they truly are.

Because this particular bank robbery wasn’t all that eventful – insofar as armed robberies are concerned. As a reporter-type person, I have written about stranger stuff on many occasions.

And as for the men who now face federal charges? They’ll have quite a bit of time on their hands awaiting trial. Perhaps they ought to try watching Idle and Coltrane’s performance as criminals-turned-nuns.

They managed to escape, albeit without the money – which church officials found and decided to use to put toward charitable works.

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I got my dose of propaganda in a place where I was trying to escape it

I went to a movie theater this weekend to see actor Andy Garcia’s attempt at an epic statement about the glory of personal freedom and the need to fight for it at all times.

Yet I fear that his film, “For Greater Glory,” is so laden with partisan rhetoric at its base that I hope not too many people try using it as a history lesson of sorts about Mexico and that nation’s relations with the United States.

A PART OF me believes that Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” is more historically correct than Garcia’s attempt to tell the masses about conditions in Mexico back in the 1920s when there were many elements that tried to undermine the results of the Mexican Revolution and the bloodshed became rampant.

Perhaps I should point out that it was in this era that both of my Mexican-born grandfathers fled the country, heading for the United States where they wound up living the bulk of their lives. Which is why I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood – rather than in Guanajuato or Guadalajara.

The desire to avoid being caught in the middle of the gunfire was their motivation for wanting to leave – even though neither of them had yet turned 20 at the time they left their homeland.

They both remained proud of their ethnic origins until the days in the 1970s that they died. But they also both desired a chance to stay alive, and have a life.

SO I’M NOT about to dispute the images given to us throughout the film of people being hanged from telegraph poles, or being randomly shot or of cavalry on horseback riding right into the church – with officers then giving the order for the premises to be ransacked.

I have no doubt those things happened. Because my own knowledge of Mexican history (of which I’m sure most of the people who watched this film with me on Friday have none) lets me know that there were actions that appear completely irrational – if not outright insane.

But I also know that the Mexican Revolution of the late1910s was meant to overthrow an oppressive government, and it succeeded. Which means there were elements in the 1920s that were just as eager to try to restore the status quo. It wasn’t really until 1929 and the 1930s that things settled down somewhat.

I also know that the Catholic Church, which in Mexico is far more dominant a presence than it is in this country – even in an overly Catholic city such as Chicago, was one of those influences.

WHICH MEANS THE policies viewed as oppressive by the church in that period were an attempt to suppress a rebellion against revolution. Much of the desire to raid (ie., inventory) the church was an attempt to get a handle on what had been stolen from the people whom the church was claiming to represent.

Not that any of this comes through in the film, although I realize that if Andy Garcia wants to get on his high horse and deliver some “spin,” he has every right to. We also have the right to read through the propagandistic rhetoric.

But some people won’t.

In the theater in which I watched this film, there were certain people who insisted upon applauding during the end-of-film credits (and who probably will be offended to learn that the Rotten Tomatoes consensus of film reviews indicates most critics can’t stand this film).

ONE WOMAN LITERALLY shouted out at film’s end, “That’s where our country is headed!”

That is just nonsense, and that is the reason why this film is going to linger in my head for quite awhile.

I suspect that many of the people who were in that theater with me were of a certain mentality on religion that they would like to think of as having a strong faith, but that others would argue means they want the church to be a force allowing them to push their thoughts and beliefs off on others.

These are the same people who view any attempt at sympathy towards people on issues such as gay rights or religious tolerance as being oppressive against themselves.

PERHAPS THEY REALLY believe that Barack Obama saying he has finally come to his senses on gay marriage is the equivalent of the strong-arm tactics used by Mexican government officials against the church.

Although until the day comes that U.S. troops, under orders of Obama, storm their way into the studios of “The 700 Club” while that show is on-air and shoot host Pat Robertson in the head while co-host Terry Meeuwsen looks on in horror, then we haven’t come close to the tyranny that occurred in Mexico that caused mis abuelos to flee for a new home.

And yes, I realize that image I just created is gross and over-the-top. But that’s really how far we are from anything resembling religious oppression in this country.

Then again, I’ll also concede that none of the “religious right” rhetoric that we hear these days to undermine the current president is anywhere near as intense as the Catholic efforts in Mexico some 90 years ago to undermine that fledgling government.

PERSONALLY, I THINK Garcia’s own politics (his family fled Cuba when he was a baby) are more in play here than any interest in recounting history.

View then-Mexico President Plutarco Elias Calles (played rather sleazily by singer Ruben Blades) as a dandified equivalent of Fidel Castro, and you get the image this film presents. Even though the real Calles had his own fascist ideological leanings and was a U.S. ally because of his willingness to resist Communist influences for his country.

Would it have made more sense for Garcia to try to make a period piece film set in Cuba? Perhaps, although it must be stated that he did just that back in 2006 with “The Lost City,” in which he played a Havana nightclub owner whose family was torn apart – first by the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, then by Castro. If I recall correctly, the critics didn’t think much of that film either – even though I remember it for a mysterious, unnamed character played by Bill Murray.

Maybe Murray, and another script rewrite by a historian, is what this film could have used as well?

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