Punk & Pedagogy
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Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities cover
MAKE SOMETHING BETTER

Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities

by Anna Deavere Smith

Crown Heights, in everyone’s own words.

For you if

you're exhausted by two-sided shouting and want to hear all the voices in the room.

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After the 1991 Crown Heights violence between Black and Jewish neighbors, Smith interviewed dozens of people, including activists, rabbis, residents and Al Sharpton, then performed their words verbatim, one voice at a time. No narrator ever tells you who is right. You come away understanding a conflict from the inside, and understanding how a single conversation contains every side's fear.

Where This Book Lives

Themes
antisemitismcommunity and belongingmulticulturalismoral historyrace and racismtheatre as weapontestimony and witnessvoice and silencing
Topics
antisemitism

Documentary theatre built from real interviews, so the voices are real and some are uncomfortable. It is also a model for DoCR-style storytelling: listen first, then perform. A close relative is Theatre of the Oppressed.

Related Viewing

Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Attica poster

Attica(2021)

dir. Stanley Nelson & Traci A. Curry

Same theme: Testimony and Witness

The prison uprising, in survivors’ words.

A documentary on the September 1971 uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, when about 1,300 incarcerated men took over the prison to demand basic rights, and the state's assault that ended it killed 39 men, prisoners and hostages alike. Built from archival footage and testimony from survivors. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Why it’s here: The film puts the people who lived it back in charge of the story, and the story is how a state answers a list of demands. What's punk is the demands themselves: showers, food, medical care, the right to be treated as human. What's pedagogical is the aftermath, the gap between what officials said happened and what survivors and records show. It's a lesson in how to read an official account.

Where to watch: Paramount+; rent Amazon, FandangoLetterboxd ↗

Bamboozled poster

Bamboozled(2000)

dir. Spike Lee

Same theme: Race and Racism

The minstrel show, on prime time.

Pierre Delacroix, a Black TV writer, pitches a modern minstrel show as a deliberate insult to get fired, and the network loves it. It becomes a hit, and the satire spins out of his control. It was shot on digital video and is one of Lee's most uncomfortable films.

Why it’s here: The film turns the lens on who profits from caricature and who agrees to wear it. What's punk is that Lee refuses to make it comfortable: the audience laughing is the target. What's pedagogical is media literacy in its harshest form: how a joke becomes a product, and how the person making it stops being able to say no. It contains harsh imagery by design. Pairs with Sorry to Bother You and Network.

Where to watch: Rent only: Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At Home (~$3.99)Letterboxd ↗