by Darius James
TALKING DREADS
As invisibles, our work becomes the subliminal work of sorcerers. We must steal into the last sanctuary, the sanctuary of dreams, and attack that portion of the brain that understands not words, but images. We must burrow into the blind spots of personality, chanting the black incantations of our otherworldly ancestors, and change the signposts of slumber . . .
CUT TO:
INT.—Bubbles’ Brain.
A sudden brilliance of blinding intensity bursts behind Bubbles’ lids. The light wanes in afterglow. And an ovoid HEAD, ruffled with flakes of peeling black paint, looms in grainy obscurity.
The head turns with a rusted scrape. A tiny lantern swings before its unblinking eyes. A duck-billed cap sits on its frizz of iron curls. Its nose is flat and flared with a pair of protruding sausage-shaped lips. Its canary-yellow teeth snap open and closed.
The jodhpured JOCKEY chugs like a pistoned engine gathering steam, lurching with metal clanks. With creaking mechanical movements, its thigh-high riding boots gleaming in its lantern’s circle of light, the jockey marches past a tract of identical ranch-style houses.
His IRON HOMEBOYS fall in line.
Organized in single-file formation, with backs inclined, elbows crooked, and little iron feet clanging, the ARMY OF COON-FACED LAWN ORNAMENTS trot in synchronized two-step up the lamp-lit street.
Cacophonic music blares in the air. A coal-skinned IMP hovers at the rear, tootling Moondoc’s “March of the Iron Lawn Jockeys” on its soprano saxophone.
FADE
Shelter From Negro Fallout
A committee of the National Academy of Sciences, in a recent study of national preparedness for the fallout of volatile Negroes, concluded: “Adequate shielding is the only effective means of protection.”
A PUBLICATION OF THE OFFICE OF CIVIL AND DEFENSE MOBILIZATION
___________________
Introduction
Let’s take a close hard look at a dark fact in American life. The Negro is a walking, talking time bomb set to explode without notice at any moment. It could happen anywhere. At any time.
Imagine yourself in the lobby of a high-rise office building in the midtown section of Manhattan. You have an important business meeting to attend. You check your watch. You have time to kill. So you get your shoes shined by a rag-popping, rheumy-eyed old Negro with a pint of Jack Daniels stuffed in his back pocket.
He looks friendly enough. So you share some jokes. Exchange ball scores. Admire his rag’s syncopated rhythm. Discuss the size of Mike Tyson’s neck.
The Negro turns, squats, and buffs your shoes with his buttocks. “What rhythm!” you enthuse. “If only my wife could shake like that!”
Without warning, a column of flame shoots to the ceiling and a shower of cinders blackens the air. The next thing you know, the rag-popper is gone, you’re coughing a lungful of incinerated Negro, and, worst of all, your skin has turned completely black! Permanently.
It could happen. Anywhere. At any time.
And the consequences are far more serious than a few combusted bootblacks. The fallout from the exploding Negro’s darkening melanin agents could infect millions of innocent Caucasian men, women, and children close to the point of ground zero, reducing this country to a nation of lumbering Al Jolsons in mammy-whining blackface.
Think of the confusion it would create at the country club. No one would know who to send through the service entrance!
The United States federal government has a shelter policy based on the knowledge that most citizens beyond an exploding negro’s range of blast will survive if they have adequate protection from Negro fallout. A shelter incorporates the fundamentals of Negro fallout protection—shielding mass, ventilation, and space to live. Shelters offer protection not only from the fallout of exploding Negroes, but from boiling Jews, frying Puerto Ricans, and other ethnic undesirables as well.
Remember—protection must be provided before, not after, the sirens sound!
What is an exploding Negro?
For that matter, what’s a Negro? The word sounds like an encrusted growth bubbling with milky poisons on the reproductive organs of an aged streetwalker. I hear the word Negro and my penis shrivels.
Contrary to our whimsical folklore, the Negro didn’t sprout full-grown in the cotton fields of the South, moaning some spooky-sounding spiritual (though that stuff on their heads would lead one to suspect otherwise). In fact, the idea of the Negro has been with us much longer than Negroes themselves. We need only turn to that tome of truth and wisdom, the King James Bible, which says, in rich word and apt metaphor, blackness is disease, death, damnation, and despair, as well as basic sin and evil, to understand that the first Negro was Satan. This is why Negroes are born with horns and barbed tails. And why Africa is so hot.
Unfortunately, the diabolical origin of the Negro’s anatomical peculiarities doesn’t explain the nubbed condition of James Brown’s even browner teeth.
Now, we know, for the Bible implies it so, that the Negro is Satan, a word that originated among the ancient Hebrews. Negroes, therefore, are an invention of the Jews!
Barney Brimstone
Director
Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization
*A residential area dominated by plaster madonnas and the thick, oily smell of fried garlic
FADE UP:
INT.—Suburban Home—Living Room.
TELEVISION
Farina one o’ dem homey, pig-tail-eatin’, no-pussy-gettin’ kinda niggas. His mouf be ashy. He a’ways be barefoot wif his thumbs hooked in d’staps o’ dem Farmer Brown overalls, complainin’ ’bout how he can’t get hissef no pussy. I tol’ da nigga his bref stink! If you stop eatin’ them pigtails, you might get yourself som’ pussy!
Hiccuping, high-pitched laughter enlivens the gloom of the suburban living room. Light wavers across the faces of grimacing, black, iron-orbed LAWN JOCKEYS camped in front of a television set. An animated, circle-based figure of BUCKWEE capers on the screen, rolling his white pop-ball eyes and flapping his hotdog-bun lips.
CARTOON BUCKWEE
You eat so many goddamned pig tails you got da muthafuckas growin’ out yo’ head! If you wasn’t so country, wif all dem pigtails you got, you could say you was Ziggy Marley an’ get you some pussy! In all kinda colors!
The LAWN JOCKEYS scramble through the house as the television broadcasts in the background, scrawling graffiti on the walls.
CARTOON BUCKWEE
Eat to live, live to eat, brutha! Elijah Muhammad didn’t eat no pig tails, but he ate plenty o’ pussy! Dat’s why Malcolm left da Nation! ’Cause da Messenger was snackin’ back on carrot cake and’ pussy pie!
After stealing meat cleavers and serrated knives from the kitchen drawers, the army of little iron men marches up the stairs. Moondoc’s music blares.
The Lawn Jockeys barge into a room, throwing elongated shadows against the wall. An ELDERLY WHITE COUPLE with masked eyes sleeps blissfully in bed.
The couple awakens, heads swiveling in blind confusion. The Jockeys grin.
And the blades come falling down.
INT.—Image Chamber.
Close-up on Talking Dread’s phosphorescent face.
TALKING DREADS
You could wake up one morning with lips the size of two country sausages, an inability to pull a fine-tooth comb through your hair, and an inexplicable craving for deep-fried pork by-products slathered in vinegar and hot sauce.
The Talking Dreads points directly into the camera as a montage of white faces spins around his head. While he speaks, each face turns black.
TALKING DREADS
Yes! This could happen to you! You! You! Or even YOU!
CUT TO:
Bubbles in blackface with a big Pebbles Flintstone dinosaur bone pushed through her coils of blond, lint-flecked hair. An oval of ash frames her mouth.
BUBBLES
I may file my teeth, have a big bone through my nose, and wear a plate in my lips, but I am so
mebody!
SMASH CUT TO:
INT.—Bubbles’ Brain.
Bubbles—with her limbs stretched in the cross-barred figure of the double Vesuvius man—tumbles inside a circle of revolving NEGRO FACES. The Negroes, in late 1940s dress, are convulsed in laughter.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I sank deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of my own mind, whirling in a vortex of improbable visions until, finally, I was transported to the scene of a forgotten childhood game.
Bubbles fades into outlined transluscence and disappears.
The ring of cackling coons rotates around a nymphetic NINE-YEAR-OLD, nude, with dusty peach-colored skin, demonic lynxlike eyes, and a froth of dazzling blond curls. She lounges in blissful languor on a rumple of blankets spread across a heart-shaped bed.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
As a child, my parents treated me like a glorified house pet. I was their golden flower, their blossom of blond innocence. In their eyes, I embodied the very essence of uncorrupted purity.
Dozens of dolls dangle overhead, their faces disfigured masses of hardened black bubbles. Plastic limbs and eyeballs twirl on the ends of colored strings.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I resented this. And took it out on my dolls. I would pluck out their eyes, shove their faces on the stove, and watch their hair flare in a sparkle of pungent flame.
Moist red paint gleams on the Nymphet’s pouting, plum-red mouth. Pink buds button the low hillocks of her chest. Red stiletto heels accentuate the line of her coltish, reedlike legs.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
So, in spite of my parents’ pampering, or possibly because of it, I was the kind of bright-eyed moppet who enjoyed playing with her powdered panties down.
The Nymphet’s crimson-tipped fingers furiously flick the rose-tinted crease of her hairless, hymen-sealed pudenda. The wheel of circling Negroes shatters in a whirl of shards.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
At first, I confined my games to the bathtub, turning its faucet until it gushed full force between my legs. Then, gradually, my games grew more complex.
With the upper half of her face hidden behind a black, bird-winged mask, another naked GIRL-CHILD stumbles into the room wearing bubble-toed shoes with high platform heels and a feathered, wide-brimmed fedora.
THE SCARLET NYMPHET
Where you be gettin’ them fly threads, Blackbird?
The WHITE CHILD in the bird-winged mask slaps the Scarlet Nympet across the mouth. A thunder crack resounds throughout the room.
BLACKBIRD
Later for my habadasher, bitch! Where be my money! You know my dick don’t be gettin’ hard until I be gettin’ my money!
THE SCARLET NYMPHET
Boo-hoo-hoo! Don’t be beatin’ on me, Blackbird! I already done be down on d’stroll an’ sol’ me plenty o’ plump, pink pee-hole!
Tight shot on NYMPHET’s eyes. The corners crinkle in mischief.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
Sly and rebellious, with a keen eye for the street, I was a city kid. A New York city kid. I was not unlike those unmanageable little girls who, crossing the line dividing the wealth of the Upper East Side from the poverty of Spanish Harlem, played stink finger with little Puerto Rican boys in housing-project hallways.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT.—42nd Street Grindhouse—Day.
In leotard, tutu, and Wayfarer shades, the Scarlet Nymphet sits in a darkened movie house surrounded by loud DRUNKS and dozing DRUG ADDICTS. The lights of the movie screen flicker on the Nymphet’s face.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I’d duck dance class, sneak into rundown Times Square movie houses in my leotard and tutu, and catch classic inner-city entertainment.
The Scarlet Nymphet snaps her fingers and wiggles her behind in the theater seat.
THE SCARLET NYMPHET
Git it, Sweetback! Give it to me good, daddy!
Movie images of MELVIN VAN PEEBLES balling a WHITE BIKER DYKE are reflected on the surfaces of the Nymphet’s shades.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I laughed at Blackenstein’s four-cornered ’fro, which presages the cubed coifs of Hip-Hop.
CUT TO:
Film clip of a BLACK FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER in a suit with oversized shoulders slanting at odd angles. A column of squarely cut hair sprays straight up from his head. Wearing gold chains and unlaced Air Jordan chimney-sweep boots, the Monster dances with arthritic stiffness, grunting an incoherent rap song into a microphone.
M.C. BLACKENSTEIN
What makes a whyte man? A combo of CAT, RAT, and DAWG!
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I sat in thrall to the black power pussy plays of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones.
CUT TO:
Trailer of the Scarlet Nymphet in a Day-Glo, butt-huggin’ micro-miniskirt and a big, bulbous Afro wig, leaping through the air with a flying kung-fu kick. She topples a gang of thugs, spraying them with machine-gun fire. Seventies disco-funk crackles on the scratchy soundtrack. Bold titles burn across the screen—
SEE: “THE HARLEM HARLOT”!
SHE BAAD! SHE BLACK! SHE BEAT MUCH BUTT!
HER NAME IS BUBBLES BRAZIL!
AND SHE GOT A BIG AFRO!
The Scarlet Nymphet’s bubble of kinky hair grows bigger. And bigger. And bigger.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
And I once wondered why a werewolf would wear dreadlocks.
CUT TO:
Film clip of WEREWOLF with black, red, and green dreadlocks growing in the middle of his face.
SEVENTIES RADIO SOUL-JOCK
(v.o.)
By day, he praised the glories of Jah. But at night—the full moon brought out the Beast of Babylon!
Blinded by his suffocating tangle of hair, the werewolf runs into walls and stumbles over garbage cans.
THE RASTAFARIAN WEREWOLF OF WATTS!
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
But it was a triple bill featuring the lewd likes of Rudy Ray Moore that inspired my version of the Coon Game.
CUT TO:
Film clips from Dolemite, The Human Tornado, and The Monkey Hustle.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
I first learned the Coon Game from my grandfather, “Big Bellies” Brazil, who slapped on the shoe polish and played it in the thirties, when the Chicago of Amos and Andy darkened the airwaves of American radio.
CUT TO:
Nineteen-thirties art card of white suburban family settled in their living room, awed by the emanations from their cathedral radio. Each face is a clownish, white-lipped mask of black greasepaint.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
And he learned it from his grandfather, “Even Bigger Bellies” Brazil, who toured the country in corkface and said, “Unless Othello shot craps, ate watermelon, and cut Desdemona with a razor, playin’ niggers paid better than Shakespeare and got bigger laughs.”
CUT TO:
Grainy, sepia footage of blackface MINSTREL reciting Shakespeare in butchered black dialect through mouthfuls of watermelon.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
“Big Bellies” said blackface was the cornerstone of American independence. Without it, we might not have ever thrown that shipment of tea to the bottom of Boston Harbor and we’d still be a colony of Britain today.
CUT TO:
Black-and-white footage of potbellied, cigar-chomping blackfaced “INDIANS” in crow-feathered bowlers and buck-skin pants, waving straight razors at frightened ENGLISH SEAMEN.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
“Big Bellies” also hurled baseballs at the heads of niggers seated on the plank of the amusement park’s Dunk the Darky concession and slipped strings of lit firecrackers into the back pockets of unsuspecting spooks. As their pants popped into flame, he’d ask, “Who farted?”
CUT TO:
Baseballs careening off the head of a BLACK MAN. His eye is swollen shut, his lower lip is puffed, and his nose is broken.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
Laughing at niggers is our first great national pasttime. “If we didn’t laugh at niggers,” “Big Bellies” said, “we wouldn’t have known what to do with vaudeville or radio or movies or T.V. We wouldn’t have known whose picture to put on the pancake box.” Laughing at niggers is at the root of popular American entertainment.
CUT TO:
Montage condensing the 1959 television documentary on the Nation of Islam, The Hate That Hate Produced, sweetened with sitcom laugh-track.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
So I took the Coon Game and turned it into a masturbating minstrel show. That’s how my friends and I learned life’s funky facts. When my friends came over to play, I’d break out the bootblack, and say, Let’s get dirty! And we’d act like a bunch of drunken niggers in a down-home honky-tonk on Saturday night.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT.—Upper Westside Brownstone—Living Room—Day.
A naked, SHIRLEY TEMPLE–CURLED LITTLE GIRL in blackface shouts to a group of naked, blackface PREPUBESCENTS.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE–CURLED LITTLE GIRL
Hey everybody! Throw yo’ ass in the air like you don’t care! And do THE UNCLE REMUS!
The LITTLE GIRLS’ wiry black limps twitch in a spastic combination of camp sixties dance steps, as they bump behinds with a lewd, rude, and crude attitude.
BUBBLES
(v.o.)
We’d get low down—wobblin’ our knees in a bowlegged chicken dance, shakin’ an’ twitchin’ an’ rollin’ our hands all over our young behinds real nasty.
Leaning over the surface of a glass-topped coffee table, the group of naked little girls snort lines of chocolate-colored heroin. The Shirley Temple–Curled Little Girl boasts—