Berry, Halle 14/8/1966

Michael: No, this is not the fragment who was previously Dorothy Dandridge.  This fragment is a second-level mature artisan – second life thereat.  Halle is in the observation mode with a goal of growth.  An idealist, she is in the moving part of emotional centre. 

Body type is Solar/Venus. 

Halle’s primary chief feature is skewed impatience and the secondary is stubbornness. 

The fragment Halle is fifth-cast in second cadence; she is a member of greater cadence three.  Halle’s entity is six, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – an entity mate of both Merlin’s and Arvin’s. 

Halle’s essence twin is an artisan and her task companion is a slave. 

Halle’s primary needs are: exchange, adventure and freedom. 

There are 16 past-life associations with Arvin and 12 with Merlin.  ________________________________________________

As I am a sceptic, I looked on at Halle’s historic best actress win speech and though I trembled and cried, I was also detached and shrewdly aware why she had won. Indeed, she was the vessel, at long last, because months earlier the twin towers were felled and who knew what strange new nightmare we had entered. Just to be safe, what do you know, none-too-liberal, the archly discriminating gatekeepers in Hollywood decided that it fiinally was time to “let’s make like nice, whatta say, let’s give her the award.” Oh Please!

In a truly great American cinema, Dorothy Dandridge was just as deserving to have won best actress Oscar for “Carmen Jones” as was Elizabeth Taylor damn well deserving to have won best actress Oscar for her riveting performance in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Naturally, to cancel the threat of the very brilliantly talented Diana Ross, singer/actor, winning the best actress Oscar in 1973 for “Lady Sings the Blues,” she was pitted against my father’s paternal first cousin, the actor Cicely Tyson in “Sounder.” A Briton, Maggie Smith was a spoiler vote, so that the sizeable British voting members of the Academy, could cast her a vote rather than vote for either Black nominee. Then there was another foreigner, Liv Ullmann, when the Academy awards are an American awards rather than film festival – the difference is plainly obvious. All this left one other candidate for best actress Oscar, Liza Minnelli, who was just as vapid and untalented as she has remained. And thus, neither Cicely Tyson nor Diana Ross won a best actress Oscar that night in 1973 and, of course, neither would go on to do so.

Just look at the 02:13 mark of the featured video of Halle Berry’s best actress Oscar acceptance speech for her turn in “Monster’s Ball” in 2002, there was sat Helen Mirren, onlooking as though she were looking at this imposter freak, someone being allowed to take a damn award that rightfully ought to have gone to, Judy Dench. There sat Helen Mirren who did not stand up as Halle, an American actor, winning an American award, said, “tonight this door has been opened.” Helen sat there livid at Halle high-jacking the awards with all this affirmative action claptrap. Never mind the Briton small-minded bigot, at least Sidney Poitier (old soul sage) was present to witness the historic moment. Well, you can bet Prada-heeled Britons in Hollywood, went all out to quickly slam shut that door because why should ‘they’ have received such a prestigious award? They are not even RADA graduates. Americans fought a war to rid themselves of the tyranny of these people and their colonising conceit and arrogance. Let’s face it, a BAFTA award hasn’t the cachet of an Oscar; it should be of negligible worth if an American actor is either nominated or wins a BAFTA award. It is not an Oscar.

Why in the hell is American cinema being steamrolled and bullied into submission by these holier-than-thou poseurs? No Briton with the exception of Elizabeth Taylor, who was riveting and compelling in every role she ever played, been deserving of being awarded an Oscar. What right have Kate Winslet, Olivia Colman, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, to name far to many, to be in the same league as Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Grace Kelly, Mia Farrow, Meryl Streep to mention a mere few?

Ever since the fairy dust of Chuck & Di’s 1981 pantomime, arriviste Hollywood have been bowing and scraping as though these were pre-1776 times. Since that best actress Oscar acceptance speech by Halle Berry in 2002, there has been a plethora of decidedly non-American actors, walking off with an Oscar in a parade of spiteful arrogance. Why Kate Winslet has won a best actress Oscar is beyond me, her every performance is just plain, insipid… uninspired. Winslet and her foreign colleagues are void magnetism and merely use the snobbish hauteur of their British accent as their cachet for being perfectly entitled to an Oscar. Who are these people to be in the same league as Faye Donaway, Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep.

Let me tell you something, that award right there is the most bold-face looting in recent memory. Just like Angela Bassett was robbed of the 1994 best actress Oscar for “What’s Love Got To Do With It” so, too, was Viola Davis robbed of the 2017 best actress Oscar. Viola won best supporting actress Oscar for a role in August Wilson’s “Fences,” which won best actress Tony on Broadway; it is not a supporting role. They even tried to see if they could snatch it from Viola’s rightful clutch, as they did with Cicely and Diana in 1973, in 2017, by also putting Naomie Harris and Octavia Spencer in the mix. Not only was it insult enough to have been misplaced in the nominations category but there was a strong likelihood that Viola could have lost out, just so that she could be put in her place for being so damn good. Bar none, she is the best actress under 60 in English-speaking cinema. Period.

Seriously, though, what can one expect of Hollywood when they had the temerity to tear their arses in the world’s face by having you and me believe that the statistically impossible truly had occurred, affording a tie in 1968 to Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand for best actress Oscar. An Oscar has been of negligible worth since. And as such, it has become a members only club, to keep Black actors at bay; indeed, they go looking elsewhere for actors to whom they award Oscars, chiefly to Britons. To hell with Mr. Darcy. American cinema, to say nothing of actors, are being robbed. Where are the films, telling the story of Cuban-Americans in Miami, Lakota families and their rich history in the north. There are a thousand stories to be had in each of the 50 states of Black, Latino, Jewish, Irish, Mexican, Cuban… all Americans and it is not being told. Yet, you have these arrogant Britons, dragging on a fag and copping hauteur, though no doubt more jizzed than a Grand Central Station urinal during evening rush-hour, grabbing an Oscar time and again and toffing up their accent to bedazzle the none-the-wiser, silly little Yanks.

The one thing that the past five years has taught us, is that Britons are alarmingly racist and not only are they more racist than Americans but unlike Americans, they refuse to admit to being racists. Whether you are black or white, you are American and Americans are second to no one. Period. Why is the acting heritage of American greats like Hepburn, Davis, Stanwyck et al being eclipsed by non-Americans, chiefly Britons, marching in grabbing an Oscar; obviously if an Oscar had comparably less cachet than a BAFTA, no British actor would time-waste, courting an Oscar. Indeed, the age of neo-colonialism is upon us. Helen Mirren is leaden and starchy and does Helen Mirren, time and again. Same with Maggie Smith, Judy Dench (the dame means nothing to Americans) Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Olivia Colman the whole lot of them, it is all third-tier smoke and mirrors by way of copping Toff hauteur and using voice (à la Dune) by way of that accent on the oh-so-unsophisticated Yanks. Hell, in 2016 Helen Mirren even argued that there was nothing possibly wrong with only one Black American female having won a best actress Oscar to that point, in the 78-year history of the Oscars.

There are two types of looting with which we are all familiar. One, Black people looting at the drop of the hat; it is expected and an excuse to be reviled by the rest of society. Secondly, though not readily admitted, planetary looting of which we as a species are wholly guilty, which will cause our civilisation’s ruin in due course.

Ah yes, then here we have the most invidious looting. Britons looting an American award because clearly the BAFTA award hasn’t the same cachet. The Academy awards are an American award; they are not part of a film festival, which by its very nature is open to all nationalities, they are a uniquely American award. Then, there is the most egregiously invidious looting: Whites looting Black culture because… well, one can. To fuck with you, Jazz is too good for you; to hell with you, you could not possibly have invented this… This is American music; if indeed it were American music, god only knows you would never have deigned to have afforded us access – like your Oscars – to the art form, which boasts an unrivalled pantheon of musical geniuses. But hey, stay over there in your parallel universe, making your trifling music, as if anyone Black, on returning home after racism’s bile being spat their way 1 to 1000 times for heading out the door could care less. Please go ahead, piss yourselves silly, thinking that somehow any Black has time to waste when at home, to listen to music of the people who hate us, who murder us because… well, one can. Stay there in your parallel universe, lying to yourselves about how great you are – greater wealth and market share does not make for superior art; it is merely damn good business as much as so as are drugs. Don’t, however, for nanosecond get carried away with your deluded, revisionist sacrilege, talking knee-on-our-neck odious crap, “Jazz has its roots in klezmer!” “Jazz is American music! Nope, not having it!

Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music

Acrylic on Canvas

73 ³⁄₄ × 158 ¹⁄₂ × 2 ¹⁄₂ in.

Alma Thomas

1976

Provenance: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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How could you possibly expect us to suffer you anywhere near Jazz? Your perception of us; indeed, your notion of what we are and how we should be perceived and celebrated, are as dumb-no-fuck, bug-eyed blasted coons at whom you get to laugh. An Oscar is nothing more than these TV singing competitions where the winner is determined by the votes of well-groomed Joe & Karen Bigot where the outcome will almost always be predictably White. Imagine that, the year that Jennifer Hudson appeared on American Idol, she did not win the competition. The Academy has deemed that Black women are not deserving of a best actress Oscar, anymore than they can damn-well sing. Imagine, Bette Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan to name but a handful’s legitimacy, determined by the purely predictable, racialised bias of the Academy and its none-too-liberal members. There really ought to be litigation all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court to determine once and for all, if foreign-born actors are eligible to win an American award, the Oscar, when the awards are an American rather than a film festival’s prize. The very heritage of American cinema demands nothing less.

Jazz is Black culture. Jazz is Black high art. Jazz is Black spirituality. Jazz is the assertion of our humanity in the face of your savagery. Jazz music is the language of Black culture’s high-priests, its poets, its genius visionaries. Jazz… it’s about us.

As ever, life is like a flying dream; if you look down, you’re fucked. Enjoy the ride and fear no one!

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