This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.
I still remember the first time I watched Roots.
It was October 1989, and I was finally crowned old enough to join the grown-up business of late night television with my mom as an onlooker. Our wood-paneled TV sat in its corner, with me bouncing from the floor, to my stomach, just before latching onto my mom’s lap. A man named Kunta Kinte was being whipped via my television screen for refusing to refer to himself as “Tony”—his slave designation. Before that moment, slavery and racism was an abstract concept from a picture book, but this felt real. It felt personal. With his mutilation hurting my eyes, I turned away and cried.
I cried for most of that week.
As I’ve grown, that image has stuck with me; the face of LeVar as a 19-year-old having the courage to be the face of that pain. It’s what motivated me to confront topics of racism, and moving forward, I’ve often wondered how he felt about taking on that responsibility.
“Sharing an enthusiasm has been my soul and core intent,” LeVar “Kunta Kinte” Burton, reveals in a phone call. “The actual outcome of that has been generations of people that hold me in high regard, it was never, not even slightly the expressed goal.”
It’s a hard thing to believe. After all, he was one of the few men that took the time to teach children like myself through the 70s, 80s, and 90s how to read through Reading Rainbow. I read my very first book back to front because of the man. The name of the book was Momma Don’t Allow. And as if that wasn’t enough, Burton found the time to move from working on the ground, to working in the stars as the fictional Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge—arguably the most intelligent officer on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In short, Burton took on the representation of a black struggle at the age of 19, but he also became the manifestation of optimism with a black face. Now, at the age of 61, he’s still rocking the same belly laugh, while directing, acting, and reading to past and future generations through LeVar Burton Kids and LeVar Burton Reads. I had the amazing opportunity, just a week and change before my birthday, to ask this global treasure about the pressures of being an unblemished icon with a love for literature. And of course to draw his opinions about a certain non-reading president.
As corny as this is going to come off right now, there’s no way I’m not typing this.
You don’t have to take my word for it.
VICE: Listen, I’m sure you hear this a lot, but you’re one of the reasons why I even write for a living, especially as a black writer. Seeing someone that looked like me, and spoke stories into existence—it meant the world to me.
LeVar Burton: Oh man, I really appreciate hearing that brother.
I wonder about when you have these moments to sit down and take in comments like this. How do you not get overwhelmed over the generations of people who hold you at that high regard?
Well for me, being not only someone that can read, but a reader for life has always been a badge of honor for my family. My intention all along has been to simply share that same enthusiasm for the written word because as you can tell from my life, I know full well the benefits of being a literate human being. And I know how books have helped to shape my own life. Sharing an enthusiasm has been my soul and core intent. The actual outcome of that has been generations of people that hold me in a high regard. It was never, not even slightly, the expressed goal at all [laughs], the goal was to just read and do my thing. Plain and simple.
Haha, but really, they seem to represent a growing number of people who have the same ideas about reading.
I’m sure, and I got something to say about those people like Donald Trump and Kanye West who self profess themselves as non-readers. And this is what I want to say. I ain’t got time for anyone like that anymore. I ain’t got time for the Kaynes or the Trumps who don’t read as it shows. Go somewhere else with that nonsense and take that bullshit someplace else. For as long as people like that will continue to publicly profess this idea to a generation of people, I’ll be standing here for literature until my very last breath. I repeat, until my last very dying breath. I’ll stand for it always in the living world. That’s where I’m at right now as far as those two and anyone like them [laughs].
Nothing else needs to be said on that I guess. But I’m sure you acknowledge the varying degree of ways we’re consuming information these days.
I completely get that. But what we simply need to do is make sure we include the written word as a part of our regular diets. We need to create a balance as best we can as our modes of consumption change for our own benefit. We’re certainly living in an era where the paradigm has shifted away from the written word into the moving pixelated image. But it’s not like when writing entered the fray, we just suddenly stopped talking [laughs]. There’s no reason why we should stop reading y'all. We gotta keep reading.
I couldn’t leave you without a Star Trek question, especially in mentioning Donald Trump and some of the dark times we’re living in. I’d like to know what would you like to see happen as far as Star Trek’s vision of the future.
Star Trek needs to keep representing that hopeful vision of the future now more than ever. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve always been attracted to Star Trek before my involvement and after. It was both the athezis and the antidote to the dystopian view of a future world. I’m an Aquarius by design, and that compels me to bet on the human race. As far as the movies themselves in the JJ Abrams timeline, I’ve noticed that it adheres less to that same value system, the same system I personally value. To me, Star Trek is at its best when it exudes the idea of exploration as expressed in the way Gene Roddenberry had always envisioned it. Which was of course the idea that there’s this infinite scope of diversity among the infinite combinations of life within a universe that by definition, is diverse and forever infinite. Watching Star Trek was always a powerful reminder that the only moment we’re getting off this planet to explore the outer reaches of space is when we get our shit together in the here and now.
So what’s the little bit you can tell me as far as this Hot Docs podcast festival you’ll be attending for your LeVar Burton Reads podcast.
Well I’ll be in several cities for the Hot Docs Podcast Festival so hey, if you guys like storytelling come on out. I’ll be reading with live instrumentation It’s going to be a great time for everyone. Noel dude, come on out. It would be great to see you in person.
You know I will.
Please make sure you do.
LeVar Burton will be touring across North America for LeVar Burton Reads Podcast beginning on October 31st.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.
from VICE US https://ift.tt/2O7oKDB
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment