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People Speak Tells Extraordinary Works of 'Ordinary People'
For many people, history class was a lesson in keeping one's eyes open. Or as writer Anthony Arnove puts it: "It was rote recitation of facts, military battles, great people elevated in society... It had nothing to do with me and my experience."
He is among a group of people hoping to change that. Arnove, partnering with famed historian and author Howard Zinn, are behind "The People Speak," a documentary which depicts pivotal moments in American history from ordinary people. Bringing it to life are a host of noted musicians and actors, including Viggo Mortensen, Bruce Springsteen, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei and Matt Damon, one of the producers of the film.
"The People Speak," which airs Sunday night on The History Channel, was based on Zinn's books, "A People's History of the United States" and "Voices of a People's History of the United States," the latter co-written with Arnove.
"[Zinn] saw all of this history being made by ordinary people that was not being taught in college textbooks," Arnove said, telling of Zinn's time as a professor at Spelman College when Alice Walker attended the school.
Those were the voices Zinn incorporated into his books, nuggets of history not taught in traditional textbooks, Arnove explained. Portions of the books were eventually performed in live recorded readings, centered around categories of women, race, class and war, that compose "The People Speak" film.
Arnove and actors Jasmine Guy and Michael Ealy recently visited Emory University with Arnove to promote the documentary.
"The live experience, the filming process, was really incredible," Guy said, explaining that actors and musicians practiced their lines backstage in character. "We had Frederick Douglass in one corner and Martin Luther King in another and Abraham Lincoln... it was deep."
Guy said she was most touched by the work of Abbey Lincoln, whom she knew as an actress and singer, but not as an activist. Guy depicted Lincoln, Alice Walker, Sylvia Woods and others in the film.
"In reading it, it was so raw and it kind of touched a nerve with me because it was talking about the acceptance of our own beauty as black women and how we can't ever seem to get it right," Guy said of Lincoln's work. "And I think those people you don't expect to come out with these profound powerful moving words really moved me the most because they did come from everyday people."
Ealy, known for his roles in the "Barbershop" films, said he was most humbled to perform the parts of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
"When reading the parts, I thought that's unique to take those two pivotal figures and juxtapose them," he said. "I was most inspired by Muhammad Ali, just being a very big fan of his and hearing his words about a very controversial subject and the timeliness of it now, and whether or not there would be someone... who would take the same stand."
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33 Comments so far
Show AllI read the "Peoples history" as a kid in the late 70's and it made me useless in the classroom, As a homework source it dissented from every textbook and radicalized my whole ide of what "history" is.
The first written records have been pulled from the dirt in iraQ and guess what they are?
Accounts payable... History is DEBT, they came about in the same moment.
Thank you Howard Zinn, There is no truth anymore. Just enforcement, domination and struggle.
Soon enough none of this will matter at all...
It is ironic: history's beginnings uncovered in Iraq, and it's ending buried amongst the rubble and collateral damage in the same place. No, soon it will not matter a twit.
Wow, after all these years...
It will be interesting to see when the show airs. I hope the History Channel does not butcher it, or water it down. It will be riddled with commercial breaks, too bad PBS is not airing it. The only good thing about PBS is that the corporate commercials appear only between programs.
Howard Zinn filled in the gaps and corrected the falsehoods of my earlier classroom information. For that I am grateful.
the boss plays for the BOSS how appropriate! howard was the guy for my
friends and i who made us aware and how to articulate the feelings
we had as young adults about just how fucked up america really is!
for that we are all eternally grateful and never have believed
any propaganda since. thank you brother howard! america is truly
the evilest country on this planet.
Reading your remark, I wonder if maybe you've forgotten the point of Zinn's history?
"America" is not fucked up. "Amercia" is not only the corporate and imperialist bastards who dominate our politics and economy. "America" is also the people, both big and small, who resist. The history of "America" is a history of struggle between competing needs and--for that matter--bewteen different visions of what "America" is and can be.
Zinn has given me optimism. I am not alone. Nor am I somehow "un-American" in my desire for justice, against war, for democracy. It has always been a small, powerful minority who has tried to impose their agenda upon the rest of America, but there has always been resistance. And that resistance has had important victories. Life is a serious of struggles and small victories.
Please don't give up. Dust off your old copy of Zinn from your bookshelf, read a couple of chapters and call me in teh morning if you don't feel better!
I've found the thing that's helped me a great deal is learning all the things that have gone on in our government from its beginning. It gives me the hope that this too will pass. Of course it'll return again at some later date, as it always does, but maybe, we can hope, things will be better in the in-between.
America as a state is fucked up. It is now a corporate state. It has always been a land grabbing state. Those little house on the prairie and Walton families might have been good people, but they still resided on land grabbed from the Native Americans. And most of the wealth of this country has been generated by slaves and poor whites. Tell me how the United States is not fucked up.
Certainly amongst the evilest. It does the most harm because of it's size and power.
Howard Zinn filled in the gaps and corrected the falsehoods of my earlier classroom information. For that I am grateful.
People's History is one of the great classics, but unfortunately this series is just famous people speaking the text in a darkened theatre. Ok, but a bit far from the dramatization that I think was originally in the works.
Hmmm ... celeb idols speaking for common folk "heros"; what hyperbolic doublespeak! (Can we the people get a common man to interpret for "rock star" Uncle "Bomb's?)
This is a must see for me. Though it might be hard to glean anything new from this after reading 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'. A fascinating book. (James Lowen).
Hopefully I'm wrong and will leave even more wound-up & pissed than I am now. (I'm hoping to peak the day the 'shit finally hits the fan':)
As for PBS, they'd probably hack the shit out of it anyway.
I can't forbear repeating my comment from Zirin's piece on this program:
Eh.
Maybe it'll inspire some raised-consciousness in History Channel devotees.
Too bad it's on CABLE teevee, though, not free teevee.
Although I get mail DAILY from Comcast and Verizon regarding their bloated "triple-play" bundles, and although antenna reception with digital broadcasting is problematic at best, I refuse to pay for hundreds of channels of pop culture purée.
Guess Zinn doesn't make the cut for those PBS holiday fundraising craptaculars, though.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I don't mind paying Cox a little for the dozen or so channels I watch: Animal, Discovery, Travel, History, two access for local and Amy Goodman, several cooking, PBS occasionally (the few times when they aren't having fund raising or Lawrence Welk), and my guilty pleasure, TNT for The Closer and Raising the Bar. Oh, and my other guilty pleasure, Nash Bridges in syndication. I like that show because of Cheech and also because they have great neighborhood shots of my home town, San Francisco. The show also manages to capture a little of the weird ambience of the city. I get so homesick sometimes. One of the access channels has great programs made here in Tucson including shows reflecting our large hispanic heritage. Tucson access does a good job, I have to admit. Since I joined Netflix I hardly watch PBS, but that isn't cable anyway. I can get all the British TV from Netflix, plus any of the Showtime and HBO series, and they have produced some wonderful series. I watch Netflix downloads and DVDs on my huge apple computer monitor. The iMac was one of the best buys I ever made. Our Cox bill pays for both my flat, and my sister's downstairs. That covers four TVs. Cox also provides our phone and internet service, both flats. The bill is about 120 a month or 60 a flat, a pretty good deal.
I used to hike and run and back-pack. For several decades I didn't own a TV set, not because TV is so lousy, but because I didn't have time to watch. Now COPD pretty well confines me to my house.
TV isn't inherently bad.
"TV isn't inherently bad." This is where the problem lies. The following are only a few examples of why TV is inherently bad!:
"It is the number of hours, and the age at which they start (watching TV), which produces the biological effects. It is because of the medium, not the message, that these effects are occurring." Dr. Aric Sigman
Dr. Aric Sigman's report, analysing 35 different scientific studies carried out into television and its effect on the viewer, has identified 15 negative effects he claims can be blamed on watching television. Among the most disturbing findings are the links he claims to have found between long hours of television viewing and cancer, autism and Alzheimer's."
From 'TV is linked to cancer, autism, dementia' by Fergus Sheppard - February 19, 2007 in The Scotsman.
"The television set works as a high-tech drug delivery system, and we all feel its effects. The question is, can an addiction to television be destructive? The answer we receive from modern science is a resounding "Yes!"'
See 'Television: Opiate of the Masses' by Wes Moore in The Journal of Cognitive Liberties - Vol. 2, Issue No. 2: 2001.
"The greatest weapon of mass control to ever arise sits proudly in our home, welcomed by us into the safe confines of where our children reside. The tool used by corporatists to gain dominion over our nation and lives has become our most cherished possession. We place full trust in its capacity and technology, in the escapism it can offer and the news it can provide."
Manuel Valenzuela in 'Keepers at the Gate: He Who Controls Television Controls the Masses' - December 8, 2005.
"Four years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences."
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy in 'Fast forward into trouble' in The Guardian - June 14, 2003.
Well, I will have to find a TV Sunday.
BTW, colleagues, I am a bit perplexed at the cynicism here.
We will be lucky if a tour de force like Zinn's does not get severely diluted in a TV performance, and I would trust the rats in my father's barn before the History Channel, but I really wonder how you would have this staged.
Performance is not in itself travesty.
Over the years, Howard Zinn has helped to inform us of larger historical truths than the American educational systems allow. But, like all famous progressives (i.e. Noam Chomsky and Molly Ivins), he refuses to re-visit and discuss the obvious deceptions and official lies surrounding 09/11/01.
I am also disappointed that in his 'A People's History of the United States' there is no mention of the plot to seize the White House in 1933 (see Jules Archer's 1973 book 'The Plot To Seize The White House').
And, as others have wondered, why is this on the History Channel?!
"why is this on The History Channel?" because no one else would air it I suspect!
i think this is one of the best discussions of zinn/chomsky on 911:
http://flag.blackened.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=75145
ambi, the initial poster, clearly outlines the logic and reasoning for why 911 must have been an inside job, and from an historical perspective. it's very good. and of course, as he says, this is without even looking at the ex post facto evidence (i.e. Dr Niels Harrit's paper on unexploded nano-thermite for example).
i think this is one of the best discussions of zinn/chomsky on 911:
http://flag.blackened.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=75145
ambi, the initial poster, clearly outlines the logic and reasoning for why 911 must have been an inside job, and from an historical perspective. it's very good. and of course, as he says, this is without even looking at the ex post facto evidence (i.e. Dr Niels Harrit's paper on unexploded nano-thermite for example).
Maybe it's because people are getting tired of disaster 'documentaries' and end of the world by asteroid senarios. Ya think?
How can anyone spend time watching TV and then proclaim themselves to be independent thinkers? Let's admit it: the vast majority of the American public is a sorry excuse for just about everything involving objective thought and direct action.
This move by Zinn - trying to reach and inform the dumbed-down American masses via Hollywood celebrities on a TV screen - will ultimately be a losing cause.
Theodore Roszak sums it up in 'The Cult of Information': "The 'information environment' is, after all, a thing of our own making. It should, therefore, be within our power to change it to serve our own valves. It is a grim vision of life that assumes we must timidly become the victims of the culture we have created."
Paying giant corporations to access cable TV endorses the American way of life that some of us are actually trying to change.
Yes, and some of us are actually trying to live in the world. I'm getting a little tired of the Common Dream High Horse.
But when will they do a documentary on how William Jennings Brian was defeated and then corrupted (He later became a Secretary of State)? This story is the template for gangster capitalism in the USA. From the Wall Street originated wars to control of elections and monetary policy, it's all there. Hey Zinn, how about it?
I purchased Howard Zinns book a long time ago, when it was first published and I will bet the history channel will do a butcher job on this book.
A People's History is the greatest book I've ever read. I wish I would have read it 15 years ago. It is a Bible for me.
I've never read Howard Zinn but have enjoyed listening to him on Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. I'm looking forward to 'The People Speak'. It should be interesting.
Really, you should read "A People's History". You won't be sorry. It has been a permanent vision corrective for me.
I hope the TV series will not be sanitized and made boring.
Joe
Jeez, listen to all the mealy-mouthed banter here. No wonder the right-wing nuts have all the power! Listen to how the Left finds fault with even GOOD things - like the opportunity to hear the truth on television of all places. People - Can't you just say, wow, this is great news, something to look forward to and tell your friends to watch? I can't see it here in Canada but I wish I could. I will be waiting to buy it on DVD and I hope it's soon.
Hate to break it to you but Canada is merely a province of the Empire. How bout Steve Harper? You must love him eh? You better move somewhere else if you think you are immune.
Your comment is lacking in content, think up an issue to comment on
Teachers and parents, check out www.zinnedproject.org for teaching activities and resources that bring a people's history to life. Teach outside the textbook.
Interesting discussion y'all are having there.
I'm a foreigner and read Zinn's book about 15 years ago. It was interesting to me in the way Studs Terkel has interested me. I love the stories of Americans and the stories of your country.
But for me it was not the revelatory book you all describe, my eyes were not uncovered, I had no epiphany.
This comes from not being "educated" in America about America. There was nothing in my experience to counter or discredit.
Sure , my home country Australia could probably do with a similar book to blast away a few of their own myths. Couldn't hurt could it.