Under African Skies

Under African Skies – Under African Skies is a documentary apparently commissioned by Paul Simon to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the issuance of that artist’s landmark album, Graceland. The director, Joe Berlinger, previously made a well-received film about Metallica, Some Kind of Monster, that showed band members engaged in expensive group therapy, something like couples or family counseling, aimed at resolving conflicts that were impeding the artists’ creativity. Some Kind of Monster, which featured heavy metal rockers, discussing their hurt feelings and “opening up to one another” under the unctuous ministrations of a high-paid therapist was very funny. Most critics thought that the film was intentionally humorous. I’m not so sure. On the evidence of Under African Skies, Berlinger, who seems to be paid sycophant to powerful and unbelievably wealthy entertainers, takes his puff pieces seriously. I suppose he wanted us to believe that the head-bangers in Metallica were really earnest and rather unassuming blokes laboring manfully on “their issues”. Under African Skies features many engaging and charismatic South African performers and they enliven the proceedings immeasurably. By contrast, Paul Simon is stiff, pontificates platitudinously all the time and seems pretty much clueless. He is obviously engaged in exploitation of the African performers. I admire Graceland immensely and don’t doubt that it is an important landmark in pop music. I’m glad Simon made the album but I don’t think that this transparently self-aggrandizing and self-justifying movie does his cause any good. It seems that Simon was roundly criticized for violating the UN sanctions embargoing all contact and trade, cultural and otherwise, with the South African regime supporting Apartheid. (I didn’t’ recall this controversy but it must be a bone stuck in Simon’s craw.) Simon has made the film, it seems, to secure the public forgiveness of political figures who earlier condemned him for “exploiting” African musicians, ripping off their music, and ignoring the UN sanctions that the rest of the world was supposed be supporting. (A backstage all access pass granted to a political enemy, by the way, seems to be a powerful engine for procuring forgiveness). The problem is that Simon’s position on these points is morally incoherent – like many rich and famous people, he doesn’t seem to think that he needs to construct any kind of logical argument to defend his conduct: he assumes that his sheer star power will reduce all opponents to silence. (This seems to be what he thought in 1987 as well when he produced the record.) There is a perfectly good argument to be made that the sanctions against South Africa were pointless, harmed the very people that they were supposed to help, and were a bad idea that should have been ignored. But Simon, a typical Manhattan Jewish liberal, doesn’t make this argument. Instead, he seems to assert that the sanctions were a good and beneficial idea, but that they didn’t apply to a person of his beneficence and genius. What Simon seems to ignore is that literally anyone could make this argument to justify ignoring and violating the sanctions. Simon’s theory seems to be that since he had a product that was good for people and good for the South Africans, then, he should have been licensed to ignore the UN-imposed embargo. But who couldn’t make this argument? Even someone supplying police dogs to the Affrikaner cops could make some sort of argument of this sort. Simon’s Graceland is a great record because he breaks rules – who would have thought to combine sardonic hyper-modern lyrics about identity crisis and failed marriages with the bubbly ad brilliant pop music from the embattled Townships of South Africa? The fusion is completely improbable and astoundingly beautiful. And this is accomplished by violating all known rules of genre and pop music. Unfortunately aesthetic transgression doesn’t convincingly translate into political theory.