The executioner’s face; or, “Me and you” in Mellencamp’s “Jena”

So, according to the AP, the mayor of Jena Louisiana is incensed over a new song John Mellencamp has released in front of his upcoming album. In multiple stories we’ve heard that Mayor Murphy R. McMillin is angry about what he has repeatedly referred to Jena’s unfair treatment at the hands of media and activists (I’m surprised we haven’t been subjected to hearing about “activist media” in the wake of this case!)

But this time, apparently, someone has gone too far, Mellencamp. Or as McMillin put it to the AP:

“The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied,” Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed on Friday to The Associated Press.

He said he had previously stayed quiet, hoping that the town’s courtesy to people who have visited over the past year would speak for itself. “However, the Mellencamp video is so inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough.”

I have to say, I think Electronic Village’s headline on its own Mellencamp/Jena story puts it best (thanks AfAm Political Pundit):

“Lyrics Anger Jena Mayor More Than Nooses Ever Did”

Mellencamp’s video, meanwhile, is pretty interesting as a memory exercise, stringing together a series of highly recognizable images associated with slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. I must say, at first I had wished it could work a little harder, though I’m not sure what “harder” would look like. But it is especially good in the way it historicizes Jena as contemporary event in a long chain of other events, and that is actually extremely important.

After all, many of the video’s images are “recognizable,” but would they have been “remembered” without the song? Thank you, Mellencamp, for reminding us to remember.

The song’s opening lines, “An all white jury hides the executioner’s face / See how we are, me and you?” are also quite compelling, if only because in today’s world it is especially brave to ever consciously racialize anything, particularly race. I hear in these lines Down with Tyranny’s claim that “Many of [Mellencamp's] most inspired songs are patriotic in the finest sense of the word, celebrating the inclusiveness and unity that brings people together,” for such coming together is impossible in the absence of responsibility.

And that is not to say that Mellencamp, or anyone white for that matter, is supposed to take responsibility for the events that took place in Jena, Louisiana. But, at the same time, if you have even a nascent sense that the Jena 6 case is about something bigger, for instance the pervasiveness of racism, particularly in relation to the justice system, then you must indeed take responsibility for acts done in your name. There is an eerie splitting in the first line of Mellencamp’s song; the jury is not the executioner, but they, consciously or unconsciously, give him harbor, give him safety in their blindness to their own “all-whiteness” and what that might conjure–to themselves and to others.

I am reminded of something I was thinking during the Tintin controversy earlier this year, which I read as being as much about complicity as it was about empathy. As I said then, this isn’t only about you as a white person, it is also about me as a black person. And if you imagine that we must both live in this country as people, then my feelings should be important to you.

Feelings. There is a vague tenderness in the second line, “see how we are, me and you?” Who doesn’t want to stay out of harm’s way? Who ever wants to think badly of himself, or to see some uncanny potential in one’s own actions– to recognize harm that might come regardless of intention? Who wants to be that small or to feel such powerlessness?

We are small, and I include myself in this. But we can be bigger, which is why singing and blogging and marching and talking and thinking are so important. Even though every act might not necessarily lead to an immediately palpable result, it is important to shake our bodies and voices, to remind ourselves and others that we are agents, for better or for worse.

Mellencamp’s attempt to reveal the executioner’s face also reminds of another famous protest song, Bob Dylan’s anti-war song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”:

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Here is the Mellencamp video, followed by the lyrics. Mellencamp has also released a statement on the video, which you can catch here:

“Jena”
Written by John Mellencamp

An all white jury hides the executioner’s face
See how we are, me and you?
Everyone here needs to know their place
Let’s keep this blackbird hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

So what becomes of boys that cannot think straight
Particularly those with paper bag skin
Yes sir, no sir we’ll wipe that smile right off your face
We’ve got our rules here and you must fit in

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

Some day some way sanity will prevail
But who knows when that day might come
A shot in the dark, well it just might find its way
To the hearts of those that hold the keys to kingdom come

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take those nooses down

Oh oh hey Jena
Oh oh Jena
Oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

Take those nooses all down

(c) 2007 John Mellencamp