Chasing the Scream

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

Strange Fruit is at the core of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, the movie that just earned Andra Day a Golden Globe for her portrait of Billie Holiday. And I can understand why they gave it to her over let's say, Viola Davis for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (another movie you've GOT to see). The movie has been called 'disjointed' and 'lacking on focus' but for me, it definitely nailed what it was set to do: showcase Billie's talent while making sure it left clear that racism has always been at the core of the 'war on drugs' in the US. 

Oh, I think the movie is visually stunning. Andra Day is a beautiful woman and she looks incredible in the film. I literally gasped many times during the movie because in my head, she WAS Billie Holiday. The art direction and costuming are fantastic and Andra does her own singing, sounding so uncannily like Billie, that to my untrained ear, she seemed to be doing the most fantastic lip sync of them all. Shanté! you motherfucking stay. But no, Andra -an accomplished singer herself- sings Billie's songs in her own voice and it adds to the realism of the piece. Is it a perfect movie? Probably not. But it works. I know critics are going to go for the minutia, but that does not matter to me, the garden variety moviegoer. And that's what counts, no?

To me, what stood out was the light the movie shone on the real reason Billie was so hounded by the Feds. Billie refused to stop singing Strange Fruit, the song that according to Harry Hanslinger, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Chief, incited people to think about racism. In the United States. In the forties and fifties. The fact that he also considered Jazz to be the 'devil's music' is just icing on the cake. He's an avatar for whiteness in the movie. The war on drugs is a war on Black people and communities of color in the United States. Oh, you thought that the war on weed was to protect the kids? I'd laugh if I were not busy typing this. 

The US vs. Billie Holiday (based on the fantastic Chasing the Scream book by Johann Hari) connects the dots for the uninitiated. So tell me, how much do you know about the war on drugs in North America? Some people only remember those DARE commercials. But in this movie we see Billie was hounded by the Feds because she was a Jazz singer. She was hounded by the Feds because she was a Black woman and she was hounded by the Feds because she refused to stop singing a song that she considered needed to be heard and the racist establishment thought it needed to be silenced. And they caught her using the only weapons they had against her: her penchant for terrible men and her drug use. 

The war on drugs was used as a last resort (after banning her from clubs, accosting her lady friends and sending her to jail for a year) to silence Billie Holiday. But she kept singing Strange Fruit. Even after her life fell apart in pieces. Billie died of cirrhosis at age 44 handcuffed to a hospital bed. The Feds handcuffed her in her deathbed as a last attempt to silence her. And they have not been able to achieve that. More than fifty years after her death.

So if you have Hulu, make sure you stream the movie. If you don't have Hulu, read Chasing the Scream. And if you have Billie's records, make sure you sit down and listen to them. Especially Strange Fruit. Because many things have stayed the same since she recorded that song in the late thirties. Especially racism in the United States. Don't believe me? Well, the US House just passed and anti-lynching law. One hundred years after it was introduced. It does take nerve. 

XOXO

P.S. here's Trevante Rhodes, one of Billie's men. In case you needed some more motivation to watch the movie. You may remember him from Moonlight.