Censorship & Hollywood
By: Lucy Keiko Tambara
Tags: California, Literature, Politics, Film Criticism

I never understood what the concept of a writer’s voice is, it sounds like a lazy attempt to not deal with baggage from the past.

In college, I took a course on the history of the gulag in Soviet history. A ghastly prison system that jailed leftists, freethinkers, and anyone who disagreed with the Soviet regime. I remember learning one tactic the KGB did was they would tell two stories at the same time, to confuse the subject. That is it? That is what caused the Cold War, seriously? Just study Middlemarch you can learn all you need to know about hypocrisy, wealth, and the illusions of love and friendship among people.

The greatest comedy of errors for our age was the resurgence of the Tipper Gore school of thought that Russian disinformation toppled our democracy. Democracy for who? Censorship with all of its past pearl clutching discourse never existed for those at the bottom. The old talks of civility and “honesty” sound similar to the missionary rhetoric of 19th century civilizing missions that suggested that one must be chaste and pure and remain quiet as a means to speak truth. Disinformation has muddied those waters.

Those pearls of liberal resistance fell to the ground when Donald J Trump entered the oval office. Though leftists like myself never clutched pearls, I meditated with my mala beads, a tool for meditation.

I argued for years our democracy was a endless mythology when George Bush Jr. had his brother the former governor of Florida grift a second term for the presidency. Also, what about the election in Georgia from fellow writer Stacey Abrams? I will never forget about that tragedy turned to hope either.

The ways in which language can either heal or harm is finally seeing its day of reckoning. Why people communicate the they way do is being examined to understand why people say the things the say.

This examination is going to be incredibly vital as the ongoing noise about disinformation between the US and Russia continues on. Its the oligarchs, people. At this point, any competent teacher regardless of the subject has built into their lessons how to combat disinformation.

Studying Middlemarch with a class of Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander and Arab Americans while I was majoring in English at California State University, Los Angeles should be the future of higher education regardless of setting.

Strange, we all grew-up in different regions but we all shared similar traumas of not feeling as if we were worthy of being in the classroom seat despite the fact that we all worked in dead-end jobs to get us to that seat. What is wrong with society? Our cohort mirrored what every writer’s room should look like Hollywood.

Our biggest champion in the department was a former Hollywood writer who wrote for the television show, The Sopranos. An older returning student, he helped many of us find confidence in our writing. He said any of us could be in a writer’s room — Hollywood chooses actively to ignore state school kids because they know we are trained to challenge the mythologies of the Western canon.

Our teachers assigned us the canon of British literature because Cal State Los Angeles is the hub for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and is also the home of the first Chicano Studies Department in the country. The curriculum in the humanities centers self-discovery through text & data interpretation as an act of liberation.

My entire education prepared me to not only endure but, to survive every single ongoing cable news scandal of the Trump years — from the pearl clutching of the liberal resistors to the frightening nightmares of journalists being harmed by police brutality. These ideas will continue on in the dawn of the Biden years. But, I hope there will not to be a repeat of the Obama years were our foreign policy was a battle between war hawks and idealists. If there is, I will not make the same mistake I made then, being scared of my own power and truth. I’ll essay through my frustrations.

As the world turns, I’ll continue to wait for the train station to open as I run in the hills listening to “Torn” and laughing at how angsty I was in my younger years. The perfect sky isn’t torn. I’m not late either, I arrived at my destination. I am exactly were I am supposed to be, home. I guess the fortune teller was right, unconditional love began the minute I returned home. I found it within. I just need to keep writing my journey uncensored & unafraid.