01/27/05

LC050127

For sixty-seven years, Town Hall Los Angeles has educated and
inspired audiences through dialog with newsmakers on vital
issues. It supports democracy by fostering civic participation.
Information on membership and programs is on our website.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Roads blocked, shelves going bare, driveways covered with mud.
A firsthand account of the struggle to get out of Ojai.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> This is Santa Ana Road, a road that
bypasses the main drag out of town. It's now coated in mud from
smaller landslides that led to this. I don't think we'll be
getting out this way either.

Val>> And then, how scary can you get? One of America's best
actors starring in a psychological thriller, but does all that
talent go to waste?

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> The record rainfall that has hit Southern California is
very expensive. Road repairs so far have cost $45 million
dollars and the price is still climbing and that's just what the
state has spent. Cities and counties are spending millions
more. But dollars are one thing and living with all the mud is
another. Life and Times reporter, Stephanie O'Neill Noe, lives
in Ojai and has this very personal account of what it's like to
be stranded.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> This is Ojai and I love living here. I
mean, really, look at this place. What's not to love? Orange
groves that line our roads and neighborhoods, acres and acres of
ranches that expand into the landscape, spectacular sunsets that
paint Topa Topa Mountain pink, a downtown that attracts
Angelenos in droves to our shops, spas and farmers market, and
the Los Padres National Forest in my back yard literally.

My grandparents, Jack and Edith Emil, immigrated here from
Pennsylvania back in the 1940's and, with all the family visits,
it felt like home even before I moved here several years ago.
So when I file my stories for Life and Times, the commute to
Hollywood is a small price to pay. That is, until it becomes
nearly impossible.

The storms were severe. For my family, a peek out our own
window offered a precursor of community-wide damage. First, a
mini mudslide blocked our lower drive after devouring a chunk of
the main drive. Then from this hill, a much larger mud flow let
loose, wiping out our horse pasture.

These are photos taken the morning of the slide by our friend,
Bettina LaPlant. As you can see, the mud left no way out.
There are three of us stuck on the driveway. Fortunately, my
husband and I had moved our horses out of the pasture to our
upper corral a day earlier. Unfortunately, I now have to shovel
horse manure for five horses twice a day. No small task, I
assure you.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> And while eventually we were able to
move two cars off the property before the drive fully crumbled,
my husband's beloved 1969 Land Cruiser remains trapped with no
way out.

But it's hard to complain about my circumstances. Throughout
the Ojai Valley, tales of more serious destruction are
everywhere. Ojai natives, Marlin and Crystal Clark were among
those hardest hit. They had just moved into this home near
downtown Ojai when the storm unleashed its fury. Crystal was
awakened by a phone call from her mother.

Crystal Clark>> And when she called me that morning, she said,
you guys, it's coming. Just get out of the house. Pack what
you have to and get out.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Within minutes, floodwaters from a
nearby creek filled the neighborhood. This video taken by a
friend of theirs shows the initial destruction.

[Film Clip]

Marlin Clark>> Unfortunately, the water blew through one of the
kids' rooms here and then, throughout the whole house, it was
just tossing stuff. It was unbelievable inside how it actually
moved furniture around.

Crystal Clark>> Flipped the refrigerator on its back.

Marlin Clark>> Yeah, it actually flipped the refrigerator over.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Those appliances that didn't float
away, they pulled into the front yard in hopes of saving them.
But their new furniture and many personal possessions are gone
for good.

Crystal Clark>> I think there are two chairs left. The table
went downstream. The pool, I think, is six or eight feet deep.
This stuff here, it will be a long time before it's hard like
this because right now it's just silt.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> The storm's effect has left no one in
the valley untouched. Each day we locals now get trapped in
traffic tie-ups that make the 405 look like a dream drive. The
forty-five mile an hour speed limit is a thing of the past as
Caltrans crews work to repair this portion of roadway at the
Arnez Grade, now the only way out of town. And, believe it or
not, this traffic flow is an improvement over the three to four
hours it took last week to drive fourteen miles. Think about
it. That's about as long as it takes to drive from Los Angeles
to Stockton.

>> It's crazy. Your life depends on how soon you can get out.

>> It was a three-hour commute to take my daughters to school,
which is about twenty-two miles. Then since then, it is varied
from an hour to get them to school to two hours, depending upon
whether the flagman is operating or not.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Traffic so slow, in fact, that I could
actually walk along with the cars and interview drivers like
these guys who've been attempting daily to get to work.

>> There were a couple of times where I got to the end of the
line and just turned around and went home and forgot about work.
Sort of taking a vacation with it.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> In the grocery stores, there were a lot
of empty shelves because, managers told me, people were
stockpiling in the event the remaining road out of town got
blocked again. Hmmm, good point. After hoarding as many
groceries as I could carry, I decided it was time to find
another way out.

In addition to Arnez Grade, there are four other ways to leave
Ojai. My first try, the Ojai Santa Paula Road through the upper
Ojai Valley. So what is happening up in the road? People can
get through?

>> Well, at this point, it's totally impassable. Can't get
through in a vehicle, can't get through on a motorcycle. You
get by on foot, but that's not really going to help any of these
motorists.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> I decided to see for myself and came
upon this mess and it will be this way for up to six months. On
to Plan B. This is Santa Ana Road, a road that bypasses the
main drag out of town. It's now coated in mud from smaller
landslides that led to this. I don't think we'll be getting out
this way either. The prognosis? Three months before it's
passable.

On to Plan C, the 150 through Santa Barbara which allows you to
travel south on the 101 to Ventura and Los Angeles. Hi. Can we
leave Ojai through this way?

>> No.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Next and final stop, the other side of
Highway 33 which would take me through Taft, then to
Bakersfield, then finally south to Los Angeles. Uh-oh. Hi. Is
there any way we can get out of Ojai this way?

>> No.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Fearing I'd never get this story filed
and unwilling to get trapped in traffic again, I figured there
was only one certain way to get around it all.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> For Life and Times, I'm Stephanie
O'Neill Noe trying to get out of Ojai.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> The history of African-American freedom is one of
America's most dramatic stories from slavery to emancipation to
the ongoing fight against discrimination. But now one
provocative black thinker says it's time for a whole new stage
to begin, one that's not based on the idea of oppression. Her
name is Debra J. Dickerson. She's a Harvard-educated lawyer and
journalist. Her book is called "The End of Blackness". I
talked with her at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los
Angeles. Now you've said some pretty provocative things that go
a little bit even beyond that point. You've said, for example,
"Now blacks are the white supremacists." What does that mean?

Debra J. Dickerson>> You know, I wrote this book very
pugnaciously and very ferociously because I really wanted to
jolt people out of their comfort zones. I needed to be jolted
out of my comfort zone and I did that by writing this book.
Some of this is just an attempt to get us to look at things
that, on the surface, seem like ugly and uncontemplatable and
really are not once you sort of peel them away. What I mean by
that is, this notion, this implicit, unstated notion or sort of
the black conversation about the problems we're facing, that we
put white people into situations where they're completely
irrelevant and we keep them at the center of our decision-making
and of our agenda-setting.

Val>> Give me an example.

Debra J. Dickerson>> One example is when I took my nephew to be
on the basketball team at his black Catholic church. When the
lay minister, not the white priest --it's an inner city Catholic
church -- when the lay minister is talking to them -- this is
his pep speech to them, a bunch of ten year old black kids. You
know, telling them that they were going to face all this racism
from the white churches and they were going to be cheated and
people were going to be mean to them and basically telling them,
you know, you're going to lose your games, but you know what,
that's okay.

Now who thinks white people are like super-humans in that
situation? You know, they're always plotting against us,
they're always out to get us, and they're always going to win.
So isn't that like sort of what the Klan thinks? He's teaching
these kids, you know, paranoia and a weird sort of ego centrism,
but he was also more importantly teaching them to accept defeat.

That's why that statement is on the back, "Does racism work for
you?" Racism works for that guy because all he has to do is
focus on the evil of white people and he never has to find a way
to motivate these kids to go out and -- because they're going to
face all sorts of obstacles in their lives. They're poor. They
go to substandard schools. You know, racism, I would argue, is
not the biggest obstacle facing them.

So rather than teach these kids how to look inside themselves
and find that stand-up spirit that's going to get them through
these situations that he and I both agree they're going to face,
no, he was telling them to accept your loser status. So that's
what I mean by some of us being the ultimate white supremacist.
We appear to think white people are somehow super-human and that
they're relevant in every situation when they're not.

Val>> You draw a lot on W.D. Dubois and others who have really,
you say, hit the right nerve way back in history.

Debra J. Dickerson>> Right. And it's telling that I had to go
back a hundred years and more in the case of Frederick Douglass
to figure out how to be black in 2004 because I wasn't getting
it today.

Val>> What message did he have that you think works better for
today?

Debra J. Dickerson>> Their message is a message of
transcendent. Here are the principles that are transcendent,
that are not time and place specific as opposed to you can't
fight for a segregated army, that sort of thing. Especially Dr.
King was talking about not a struggle between black and white,
but a struggle between justice and injustice. That's a crucial
difference because white people are not America. Black people
are not America. All of us together are America and to sort of
frame it as a struggle against white people is, again, white
supremacist, you know.

Frederick Douglass who was a fugitive slave was beyond all this
race stuff. I mean, he was totally trans-racial and he was
looking toward the time where we were through with all of this.
And the contribution that black people make to that is to be
willing to participate in a conversation that isn't just about,
you know, the struggles of black people. So I had to go back in
time to figure out -- and I went back to those things to make my
peace because I figured all those classical documents, those are
these eloquent denunciations of white people and racism. So
those things will comfort me and I'll be able to, you know, like
be prepared to lose like this minister was doing and I'll have
these wonderful high-flowing phrases to do it with.

Absolutely not. These documents turned out to be intra-communal
critique, almost all of them. It was like, of course, there's
racism -- duh. The issue is, what is our response to it? The
response, to be timeless, to be transcendental, to translate the
way that the goals of the movement translated all over the
country such that you had Chinese kids in Tiananmen Square
quoting Dr. King. You know, that minister is never going to be
quoted anywhere outside of his own church except to condemn him.

What they were saying and what they pointed out to me was that
these messages are for everybody. This isn't just how white
people need to live. The standards of these guys applied to
everybody. Dr. King wasn't just lecturing white people. It's
about humanity. It's about justice. It's not about exalting
black people over white people. So it seems to me that's where
we've lost our way and that's why those thinkers in those books
have stood the test of time.

That standard -- I'm sorry I did it because those are really
hard standards to live up to and they make it impossible for me
to support O.J. thinking that he was guilty and say, well, white
people have done that so much and they've gotten away with so
much and see how you like it. That's not our true moral and
intellectual legacy. My father fought in World War II for a
country that completely segregated him. Was he an Uncle Tom?
He volunteered. He wasn't drafted. He island-hopped with the
Marines in World War II.

So for me to stand outside of that and to sort of go I'm better
than America, I'm mad at America, I'm going to be this black
nationalist who constantly sees himself at war with America, to
me it's a spit in the eye of the previous generations that held
on and expressed themselves and did their best, no matter what,
even for a country that segregated them because to have done
otherwise would to have been truly subhuman.

Val>> A lot of people say, well, I'm a successful black, middle
class professional and, no matter how much I achieve, when I
walk down the street, people still see me as black.

Debra J. Dickerson>> I find that notion that your actual
accomplishments, the person you actually are, a doctor, a nurse,
a professional person, can be completely obliterated by some
random, you know, pimply-faced teenaged white woman who clutches
her purse when you walk by. But it doesn't change the fact that
you actually are this professional person. Why should this
person get to define your reality? Again, it's this notion of
white supremacy. I throw that in there to startle people out of
this mode because it strikes me as a really illogical thing to
say.

What is the significance of what some random white person may or
may not be thinking in your life? It doesn't change the fact
that you are who you are and your accomplishments remain what
they are. You know, the movement couldn't make people love us.
It could just make people leave us alone. That has to be enough
because, if it's about making people love you, then that's a
problem you have, you know? That's not the other person's
problem. That's your problem.

That's about your sense of self. That's about wrapping your
identity around things that are not transcendental. That's
about craving white approval and reassurance that you're really
equal, you know? Either you're free or you're not. Either
you're equal or you're not. Deciding that everybody white is
out to get you or is even noticing you is both paranoid and
egocentric and we need to move beyond that. It's a choice.

Val>> Debra Dickerson, you are going to get, I'm sure, a lot of
response if you haven't already from this book. I want to thank
you very much for your very gutsy opinions.

Debra J. Dickerson>> I guess I'm not smart enough to keep these
things to myself (laughter), but I know I'm not alone. Thank
you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the
thriller "Hide and Seek" starring Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning
and Elisabeth Shue.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Lael Loewenstein
of Variety, and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Lael, your
thoughts on "Hide and Seek"?

Lael Loewenstein>> Well, Larry, this is a really scary movie.
It was a by the numbers thriller that really scared the life out
of me. You know, this little girl, Dakota Fanning, is
traumatized because she's witnessed the death of her mother and
she develops an imaginary friend. Her dad, Robert De Niro,
tries to figure out if this guy is real, if he's not. This
friend, Charlie, keeps doing more and more violent things.

Dakota Fanning is just incredible in the film. She's a
wonderful little actress. She looks like one of those little
waifs in this movie. She's got these big saucer eyes and a dark
wig. She's a terrific actress. I thought she really held her
own against De Niro. But what I didn't like about the film was
that I felt it was needlessly scary in every scene in every way
it could possibly have been. It was just very, very formulaic
and went for the jugular in unoriginal ways.

Larry Mantle>> Henry Sheehan?

Henry Sheehan>> I thought this was a real yawner. The only
thing that entertained me was that I saw this movie with Lael
and I loved watching her cringe. It was much more entertaining
than the movie itself (laughter). This is a movie about a
little girl whose mother commits suicide and, to help calm her
down and get through the trauma, her psychologist father takes
her up to a big creepy mansion in the woods. I mean, this is
the only New York psychologist who could actually sue himself
for malpractice. I mean, how is that for stupid, okay? That's
just the first stupidity. Granted, it's one of the bigger ones,
but it's just the first one. It's just like one after another.

I mean, she chases the neighbors away. We begin to suspect, you
know, that maybe dad has a little problem to match his daughter.
Dakota Fanning is made up by the director to look like someone
who escaped from a Charles Adams thing. I mean, she's got huge
dark circles under her eyes. She always stands absolutely still
with her hands right by her sides. She kind of just appears at
the top of the stairways all the time. She disfigures the dolly
of a little girl who comes to play with her. I mean, this movie
is just one big joke really, a dull joke.

Larry Mantle>> Our second film this week is the German movie
"Head-On" set in the Turkish community of Hamburg. It's an
unusual love story, the film itself a multi-award winner in
Germany.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Well, Henry Sheehan, what did you think of
"Head-On"?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, this is just a superb and gripping
picture about a strange love story. A twenty-one year old
daughter of a very strict Turkish family takes up with a forty-
one year old ex-punk rocker who's an alcoholic and it's totally
put the Turkish community in Hamburg behind him. He can barely
speak Turkish. She marries him just so she can get away from
her family and lead what we could call maybe a dissolute life,
but what she would call a kind of self-actualizing life. She
wants to party, she wants to have sex.

This woman is played by a first-time actress named Sibel Kekilli
and she's unbelievably a riveting actress. I mean, you can't
take your eyes off her. And the director, Fatih Akin, does a
remarkable thing. He stays with her through her passages and,
while we still sigh for her and think that she's self-
destructive, we also at the same time look at her as a kind of
existential heroine. I mean, she is pursuing the self-
destructive path, but at the same time, she is becoming who she
deliberately set out to be. This movie covers all kinds of
philosophical ground in this very strange way. I highly
recommend it.

Larry Mantle>> Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> I also thought it was an excellent film, but
for some different reasons. One of the things that I loved
about his movie was that it's really about this impossible love
story between these two people who, at the start of the film,
are essentially suicidal. They meet in an institution because
they both tried to kill themselves.

Sibel convinces him to marry her against his will. They start
off hating each other and they sort of fall in love. Well, she
likes him, but he can't stand her. They fall in love and, for
various reasons, she has to leave the country. They spend all
this time apart, but he can't get her out of his mind. In the
end, it's sort of a question of will they or won't they --
probably not -- make it together. I love these stories about
impossible love. It was a journey both physical from Germany to
Turkey and emotional for the characters and for me.

Larry Mantle>> Our final film this week is the Academy Award-
nominated documentary, "Born Into Brothels" set in Calcutta,
India's red light district. The film features cameras in the
hands of young boys and girls who are the offspring of the
district's prostitutes.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Born Into Brothels", Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> This is a wonderful film. It's one of my
favorite films of the year. It's a documentary about a woman
who originally went to Calcutta to live with prostitutes and
photograph them. But in the process, she befriended their
children and started to teach them photography as a way of
leading them out of the brothels, as a way of giving them some
hope. What I liked about the film was, first of all, it's a
poignant story without being in the least bit sentimental. You
never have this white man's burden of having to teach these kids
a better way of life. It's just, you know, she meets and
befriends them and this is what she does and they want to do it
too.

It's also beautifully shot because she's a photographer. She
has a great eye for composition. It's a story that leaves you
with a certain amount of hope. You know, I think there are very
few other documentaries I can think of right now that tell a
story in this kind of a way that leaves you feeling as hopeful
and encouraged as this one did.

Larry Mantle>> Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> It's a very strange movie in a lot of ways. In
some ways, it's a suspense movie because, especially for the
girls, the children and girls and boys, their futures hang over
them like a Damocles sword. I mean, you see their sisters and
their mothers in the streets all the time working as
prostitutes. I mean, this whole part of town has been turned
over to prostitution and what these girls are going to become
inevitably are prostitutes unless somehow their photography
leads them out of it. But the way for them to do that is to
reject these Indian norms that would capture them and adapt the
Western norms.

In other words, the people who are making the film about them
aren't so much interested in the photographs they take. They're
interested in the photographs they take that fulfill their idea
of what a good photograph is. So it's very interesting to see
these kids caught in between two different civilizations,
rejecting one and trying to adapt to another, and whatever they
come up with on their own, you know, isn't necessarily going to
help them unless it fulfills one society's norms or the other.
So these kids really are caught in the middle of a clash of
civilizations.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks so much for joining us for another
edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3
KPCC joined by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com, and
Lael Loewenstein of Variety. We look forward to your joining us
next week at this same time for another edition of FilmWeek on
Life and Times.

Val>> And remember that you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek
every Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC public radio. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

The men who would be Mayor are on the hot seat. The major
candidates for the job of governing Los Angeles meet to debate
the city's future.

That's next time on Life and Times.

For sixty-seven years, Town Hall Los Angeles has educated and
inspired audiences through dialog with newsmakers on vital
issues. It supports democracy by fostering civic participation.
Information on membership and programs is on our website.