By Sikivu Hutchinson
For most people, the story of the 1978 Jonestown
massacre is "simple"—a bunch of gullible Kool Aid drinking “cultists” from San
Francisco followed a crazy manipulative white man into the jungle “Heart of
Darkness” style and were systematically killed in the largest mass
murder-suicide in American history. For
decades, a succession of Jonestown productions, most notably the 1980 TV film
“Jim Jones: The Guyana Tragedy”, and countless books authored by white people,
have focused squarely on the lethal charisma of the Reverend Jim Jones, leader
of the infamous Peoples Temple church which emigrated to Guyana in the 1970s. Mainstream
history’s “Jones ‘jones’ “ whitewashes the fact that black people comprised
over 75% of the church and that the majority of those who died in Jonestown
were black women motivated by the utopic promise of a black paradise. In the turbulence and disillusionment of the post
civil rights, post-Vietnam era, Jonestown was supposed to be an antidote to the
racial strife, economic inequality and segregation of the U.S. For black women and black people looking back,
one of the profound lessons of Jonestown is that these conditions have only
intensified in a nation in the twilight of a black presidency.
My 2015 novel and new film White
Nights, Black Paradise are a corrective to the devaluing of this history.
I decided to produce, write and direct a short film
treatment of the novel with an all-black crew and predominantly black cast of insanely
talented actors out of frustration with the parade of white savior/redeemer/villain
representations of Jonestown. The short
film will be a springboard for a feature length treatment. Over the past few decades, films like Cry Freedom, Mississippi Burning, Django
Unchained and, most recently, the cartoonish Stonewall, have used charismatic white leads to tell histories that
should revolve around black folk. Recent
portrayals of Jonestown marginalize black women and omit the intersectional
gender politics, queer identities and socio-historical context of the Peoples
Temple movement. Even African American
documentarian Stanley Nelson’s otherwise on point 2006 film
The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
fails to amplify black women’s pivotal role in and contribution to the church’s
activism.
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| Ernestine (Camille Lourde Wyatt) & Ida (Janine Lancaster) |
Doing a film adaption was also an opportunity to
showcase underappreciated and underrepresented multigenerational black
actresses. Many of the cast hail from screen and stage via Los Angeles’
acclaimed Black theatre company the Robey Theatre,
which was founded in 1994 by actors Ben Guillory and Danny
Glover.
As adapted from the book, the film production
centers on black women characters partly modeled on real life Peoples Temple
members who went to Jonestown. Theatre
pro Camille Lourde
Wyatt plays Ernestine Markham, a character based on Christine Miller; the
only person recorded challenging Jones’ command that the community commit mass
suicide on the so-called “Death Tape”.
Because there is so little known about Miller’s background I wanted to
provide her fictional counterpart with a rich back story. In White
Nights, Black Paradise, Markham/Miller is an English teacher, politically
conscious “race woman” and Temple loyalist who speaks out when the corruption
and abuse in the church become impossible for her to ignore.
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| Hy (Aba Arthur), Jess (Dionne Neish) & Taryn (Tiffany Coty) |
The diversity of belief systems in the church is
reflected in the atheist and agnostic world views of lead protagonists and
sisters, Taryn and Hy Strayer. Played by
electric actresses Tiffany Coty
and Aba
Arthur, the often contentious pair becomes involved in the Temple out of a
commitment to social justice in the Bay Area.
This was the unifying theme in the lives of many surviving Temple
members who lost family in Jonestown—black women and women of color like Jordan Vilchez, Juanell Smart and Leslie Wagner-Wilson (the
only black woman to pen an autobiography
on the tragedy*) were all motivated to stay with the Temple because of family
ties and the church’s commitment to progressive politics.
The rich gender and sexual diversity of the church
is reflected in the characters Taryn, Devera Medeiros and Jess McPherson. Devera is a transwoman and writer cultivated
by Jim Jones while Jess is a holistic therapist involved in an intense, often
co-dependent love relationship with Taryn. As played by Latonya Kitchen (making her film
debut) and the riveting Dionne
Neish, both exemplify the ways in which strong, accomplished black women
became ensnared by and complicit in the Temple’s culture of persecution and
terror. This dynamic is also illustrated by the role of Zephyr Threadgill, an
aerospace engineer incisively rendered by Robbie Danzie,
who serves as Jim’s “prosecutor” in a pernicious Salem Witch trial-esque
interrogation scene. In her role as co-conspirator, Danzie is ably matched by
veteran actor Darrell
Philip, who nails Jones’ brooding megalomania.
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| Zephyr Threadgill (Robbie Danzie) & Jim (Darrell Philip) |
In tackling the key role of Taryn, Chicago-native
Tiffany Coty said she was attracted to the film because of the dearth of meaty,
complex roles for black women in the industry.
Black actresses past the sexist “prime” of ingénue must fight tooth and
nail for limited opportunities in the Hollywood pipeline. Mainstream film has no use for older black
women beyond the obligatory self-sacrificing mothers, white women sidekicks, or
austere, Talented Tenth one-scene courtroom procedural judges.
In our film, black women emerge as powerful
historical actors representing the entire spectrum of religious belief,
“apostasy” and agency. They also have pivotal roles as documentarians of the
church’s politics and power struggles. Most
fictional portrayals of Peoples Temple have avoided focusing on the complex role
of the Black press in the church’s rise.
White Nights, Black Paradise
highlights the influence of Carlton Goodlett, firebrand publisher of the once prominent
Sun Reporter black newspaper chain as
well as the Peoples Forum newspaper. In the book and film, Goodlett’s unwavering
support of Jones and the Temple is offset by the critical presence of Ida
Lassiter, a fictitious investigative journalist and activist. As played by actress and former reporter Janine
Lancaster, Ida spars with Lourde’s righteous Ernestine over the emigration of
the church to Jonestown and her checkered past with Jim Jones.
The limitations of interracial “sisterhood” and
second wave feminist solidarity are epitomized by the divisive figure of Carol,
played by Allison
Blaize. Modeled on Carolyn
Layton, a white Temple lieutenant, chief strategist and mother of one of
Jones’ children, Carol represents one of the biggest paradoxes of the church. White women, often sexually manipulated, were
installed as “gentle” enforcers and authority figures by Jones. The tacit conflict between black and white
women over leadership upended the image of socialist egalitarianism the movement
attempted to project in public. These kind of politics—all too real in this era
of Clintonian white corporate feminism--are conspicuously absent from the white
gaze of historical fiction.
In White
Nights, Black Paradise, Peoples Temple is a space of projection for black
women’s dreams, ambitions, and struggles for self-determination in apartheid
America. As Robbie Danzie (Zephyr)
notes, “The novel reminds those of
us passionately committed to organizations (spiritual or not), that our
participation must be based on inquiry and self-study, as opposed to heightened
emotion and blind faith or trust stirred by others. Even today, there are
those of us roused to action, sometimes tragically, by leaders of churches
and/or political organizations, who've become intoxicated by increased money
and power.”
*Jonestown survivor Hyacinth Thrash narrated her
life story to an autobiographer for the book The Onliest One Alive
Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of White Nights, Black Paradise and Moral
Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars. The film will be released this fall.
