WBAI-FM Upcoming Program
Arts Express

Thu, Jul 6, 2017   2:00 PM

VANESSA WILLIAMS TALKS VIEW SATIRE, SHAMING SURVIVOR

** "I knew that I had a vision, and that no matter what happened to me, it happens to people in life. And it's not going to change who you are. And I knew once the dust settled, I would get a chance eventually to show people who I really was, and what I could do - and knowing that you are who you are, and eventually you'll get a chance to prove and show people who you really are."

Vanessa Williams in a conversation about surviving and prevailing over sexist shaming early on in life, and her new television show, Daytime Divas. The multi-talented actress, musical performer and first African-American Miss America in 1984, phones in to Arts Express to talk about her new and different vocation as a broadcast journalist and host - however fictional - on the VH1 sitcom satire, Daytime Divas. And in her role as Maxine Robinson, named in homage to the late Max Robinson, the first African-American television news anchor who died of AIDS in 1988. Willams also shares thoughts about being forced to relinquish her Miss America title following the Penthouse unauthorized publication of nude photos, but salvaging triumph out of sexual shaming.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "Oh man, that is the question - I think the lessons learned in Grenada are so plentiful and relevant, as relevant then as they are now. Grenada was a model, not just for my mother, but many people around the world who imagined an alternative - to what we've become not only used to but what we've accepted, this form of capitalism."

The House On Coco Road: A Conversation With Filmmaker Damani Baker. Our past several shows have featured debates about what Four Futures may be in store following the end of capitalism. But back in 1979, there was the birth of a Fifth Future, however short-lived, on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Where Prime Minister Maurice Bishop established the promise of a Marxist revolutionary utopia - until his CIA orchestrated 1983 assassination, and the US military invasion. Baker is on the line to revisit with Arts Express through his Ava Duvernay produced documentary The House On Coco Road, that vividly inspired historical moment when as a young boy Baker was taken by his activist single mother and sister in struggle with Angela Davis, Fannie Haughton, to 'see people who looked like me and felt free,' experiencing 'my first black president,' and living in the first Marxist black utopia in the region - until brutally crushed by the United States.

** "Though Grandpa loved to tell stories, he didn't talk about the camp. And when Grandpa came back in 1946, the 'closed for business' sign was gone, so was his store - and all the Issei farms waiting for his visit..."

Poetry Corner: Japanese American LA poet Amy Uyematsu reads from her work. Drawing inspiration from breaking through silence to craft personal narratives touching on her parents and grandparents interned in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp 'built on Indian reservation land,' the 75th anniversary this year of FDR signing Executive Order 9066 sending 120,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps, and US wars against Asia. While referencing the 1992 LA riots, immigrants, rice, milk, Little Tokyo, Pearl Harbor, striving early in life for something she describes as 'Japanese American cool,' and 'too many classmates who acted like they like me, but never ask me home.' Julia Stein reports.

** "They want to reduce the variety of human experience, so that's why they hate artists. Right? Because artists are about celebrating and encouraging the novelty, the weirdness of humans. That's why they hate artists, because we're weird. They don't want that, because the more weird we are, the less predictable we are - and the less they can sell us, and control us."

Ideology And Culture Corner: Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus - A Conversation With Douglas Rushkoff. The Corporations R Us Report: Interview excerpt with author, professor of media theory and digital economics and filmmaker [Merchants Of Cool, Digital Nation] Douglas Rushkoff, exploring art in present day society and its interface with technology. And a denunciation of the sad state of art today, less about opening and uplifting audiences to critical thinking, than a thing to buy under the repressive reality of corporate capitalism - and with the Internet 'devolving into a giant electronic strip mall owned by tremendous multi-billion dollar companies.' Mystery reporter alias Corey Spondent is on the case.

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headline photo
VANESSA WILLIAMS, DAYTIME DIVAS