The New Yorker Radio Hour - Steve McQueen Comes Home

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Steve McQueen is the director of four feature films, including the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave.” His new series, “Small Axe,” which is streaming on Amazon, consists of five portraits of the West Indian community in London from the late nineteen-sixties through the nineteen-eighties. For McQueen, the stories allowed him to reflect on painful aspects of his own upbringing in that time and place—like the way many children of immigrant families were shunted into “subnormal” schools. “I wanted to feel that I exist,” McQueen tells Richard Brody. “This is part of the narrative of the world, part of the narrative of life. And sometimes things like that never get seen or never get noticed or never get the recognition.” Plus, the staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar on what happens to families in Haredi Jewish communities when one parent leaves the faith. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. There's a new series streaming now on Amazon that is unlike anything else you'll see right now. It's called Small Axe. And it's the work of the British director, Steve McQueen. The New Yorker's Richard Brody was just blown away by Small Axe, and he spoke with Steve McQueen recently. Here's Richard. Steve McQueen is the director of four feature films, hunger, shame, shame, and widows, and is best known as the director of the Oscar-winning 12 years a slave. Do I upset the master than the mistress? Do you care less about my loss than their well-being?

Master Ford is a decent man. He is a slaver. Under the circumstances, he's a slaver. But you truckle at his boot. You luxuriating his favor. I survive! Steve McQueen's new project is called Small Axe. It's on the BBC in the UK, and, as Amazon here, but it's not actually a TV series. Rather, it's a collection of five separate feature films, each of which deals with a different aspect of the lives of West Indian people in London from the late 1960s through the 1980s. These are new men, new types of human beings. It is in them that are to be found all the traditional virtues of the English nation, not in decay as they are

in official society, but in non-examination. full flower. Rita, because these men have... Had you had this in mind from the very start of your career as a feature filmmaker? At what point did this project crystallize for you? 2000, 2008, 2009, when I knew that I... At some point I would have to sort of come to this point. But I wasn't ready yet because there was fear, basically,

but I'll be honest with you. You know, you need that distance and time and space to be brave to sort of delve into them because they're so close. The Queen himself grew up in. the West Indian community in London. And from the very beginning of the Small Axe series, which is to say from the first moments of the first film, Mangrove,

it's obvious that Small Axe is a work of great personal urgency and of love. McQueen is now in his 50s, but he's been a film and video maker for more than 20 years, and it's as if he's been waiting his entire career to tell the stories in Small Axe. Some of the stories in the series are drawn from history. some, he imagines, and others emerge from his personal experience. One of the films in the series, Education, is derived from McQueen's own experience as a student in London, and in particular, from the racial bias that he both experienced and observed there. On Friday, we didn't do anything all day, nothing.

The teacher came into the classroom after assembly for about ten seconds. We just sat all morning doing nothing. Come on, it can't be that bad. What about the other children? They make animal noises. It's so boring. You used to say a last school was boring. Yeah, but this isn't even a school.

It's not a school if the teachers don't teach you anything. What are you two chatting about? And I'll explain. Basically, there were these schools called the educationally subnormal schools, which were created in the late 60s, early 70s. And these were to sort of house people who they thought, obviously, couldn't cope with school. And a lot of those children were...

of Westernian descent, black descent. And what happened with black community at that time where the parents got involved, where they had these things called Saturday schools, where they kind of fought back to take their children out of these sort of dead-end sort of educational systems. I'm a mother of three boys growing them up in London.

I was horrified to learn them call my eldest, who have a strong West Indian accent, them call him as a slow coach when them first arrive, school that but them call him now this is a boy could read and write and do some basic arithmetic with him three-year-roll because I make sure him could if a teacher think a child's stupid him start to act stupid at a bare fact I give up hope for him my helles but I won't make it happen to me other two will give up my job if I have to so tell me what we can do for them send them to one of our supplementary Saturday schools

That's the first thing you can do now. And they're free... So that was your experience. You attended a Saturday school? Yes, I attended Saturday schools. I turned to the first one in Hammersmith, actually. The first Saturday school, even before I knew. And another one later on in West London, yes.

So that was education. It was like the current pulling me back into the sea a bit. Because I didn't really want to confront that. It was very painful as well. They educated by had to. All of this stuff. It's like the current. You're lying on the beach,

and that current is pulling you, dragging you into the scene. It's slight resistant from yourself, but you cannot resist. Everybody is ready. Breckland, I see you. One of the most original films in the series is Lovers Rock. Lovers Rock is the story of a blues. A blues party, which is what we create in this film,

was a party where people would turn their front rooms into sort of discothex. And this happened because black people were not really invited. into clubs in the UK. So they would roll up the carpet in the front room, put the couch and everything into the back room and make it into a discotheque. The living room is empty of furniture and full of dances.

Young men and young women are gathering together, dancing separately, dancing together. As a DJ, hazes the crowd with his choice of music. Lover's Rock is simply one of the great modern musicals. It's a graceful romantic drama that also brings to light underlying social crime. crises in the community, a story of money and of gender-based violence. But ultimately, it's a work of expansive, rapturous lyricism, and it's derived in large part from the experiences of Steve McQueen's

aunt. My aunt sort of nocturnal adventures in London. Yeah, my grandmother was very quite, quite strict and she wouldn't allow her to sort of go to these sort of all-night parties, but my uncle used to leave the back door open for her to go. Again, it's very West Indian, you know, in that sense, a way of, you know, party on Saturday, church on Sunday, and that's what happened to her. So, you know, yeah, it was a Cinderella story, really. One of the things that struck me about the three of the films that I saw is their stylistic diversity. The subject of the story, subjects are very different, and the way you film them is very, very different. So, for instance, lovers rock, it's a virtual musical.

Yes. That's why I was after. I really wanted to make. making musical for a long time, but it's like, how do you find it? And I think we found it. We found it in a way because that place was a place where people could be themselves for a night. I mean, it's like any other working class person. I mean, a lot of the Western young people, nine to five going to jobs, unfortunately, you know, facing a sort of racial situation at jobs and the unrest and being targeted a lot by police. There was a lot of tension with the Westernian community, especially the second generation, because they weren't like their parents. They weren't meek, they fought back. And this place became this refuge. Those young people, it was their space.

It wasn't a space their parents gave them. It wasn't a space that anything else. It was a space that they invented. Perfume the air with the music of the time, which was Love's Rock. I have to call attention to that moment in the very center of Lovers Rock when the DJ stops the music and the entire crowd of dancers continues to sing silly games. a cappella. It lifted me out of my seat. It's an exquisite moment. Well, you hope for those moments.

You could encourage it, but you can't push it. So therefore, what happened was just, people were just so comfortable, and it just went on and on and on. So that scene was not strictly choreographed or programmed. No, it couldn't have been, because I knew that there were, I turned it off, I called hopefully there was sing, but then you've got to go with it because it's in the air. People were so comfortable with each other.

Again, I think it was like being in the blues. People saw each other. You know, in England, unfortunately, Britain, often, you know, black actors never have the opportunity to play themselves. So they can't really add to the role. It's almost like they stick to the script. And in this environment, they could be totally and utterly themselves.

Of course, these are great actors because they're limited by the period and language and so forth. But they're so great that they can operate within those limitations. and how I like to work often, I write the harmony and melody, but you can improvise within the harmony and the melody. You can do what you want, as long as it stays within the harmony and the melody. And that's what happened. It's about making possibilities.

That's what it's about. The films in Small Acts aren't just personal for McQueen. They're also personal for his cast. John Boyega stars in red, white, and blue. It's based on the true story of Leroy Logan, a young black man in London who joins the police force with the explicit intention of reforming it. His desire to do so is sparked by his relationship with his father,

a truck driver who was brutally beaten and wrongly arrested by white London officers. Isn't that what you taught us? Isn't that what you drilled into us? Study every hour, God said. Don't leave the house or mix with the black kids. Educate ourselves at the expense of our lives. You made us feel like we could be a part of everything.

You wanted us more British than the British. At least this way, Dad, I can change things. That's seriously, what do you think I am? I really don't know. Wow. I couldn't understand. The only way I could get into that story really was with the father and the son.

That was the only way I got at first deal with it. Because I think Leroy, I didn't really understand him at first, I'd be honest with you. Because at certain point I thought the father was more radical than the son. I really did. I thought this is kind of, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is a certain point. And this is weird. The father's more radical than the son. And I think what was interesting for me, at the same time, of course, was John Beaga. And what was going on with him.

As we were shooting red, white and blue, John was taking part in this march in High Park about Black Lives Matter to deal with George, you know, unfortunately, the firm fortunate killing of George Floyd. And he gave a speech, obviously, in High Park, which was extremely powerful. Black lives have always mattered. We have always been important. We have always meant something. We have always succeeded. And I know for a fact, and he has said it,

that making red, white and blue, influenced him at that time. So you have two poster boys in our movie. You have Leroy Logan, who was the poster boy for the Metropolitan Police. In fact, he was a poster boy to recruit other minority policemen. And you have John Baeger, the poster boy of Star Wars. There you have it.

Two people doing it. trying to sort of work within the industry that they're passionate about and still not being able to reach the heights that they could have. It's not actually a question at all, but it's just something I had to say in order to sort of understand how we got to the end of the picture, because all these things were going on at the same time, when things were being unearthed and discovered, excavated and discovered,

and that's all. When I watch a movie, one of the things that I hope to feel is the sense that the filmmaker is making images that he or she need to see personally. Not just that they want to show, but that they want to see for themselves. And I feel that with the films of Smallax,

that you were making films that you yourself needed to see images that matter to you personally. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, definitely I'd see those images. And I had to see those images because I wanted to feel existence. No, I want to feel that I existed. You know, this exists.

This is part of the narrative of the world, part of narrative of life. And then sometimes things like that never get seen or never get notice or never get the recognition or never get the light shone of them. And it's not about recognition, it's about the attention more than anything else. If we don't see certain images,

then we sort of deny ourselves a certain kind of truth. or we try to hide it because we're not strong enough to sort of deal with it or we don't want to see things because we don't want to think about it. But again, it's a classic thing. If you don't know your past, you don't know your future. I had to go there, I had to get in there to understand it

and unravel. You're looking for the truth and often possibly you can find it. Director Steve McQueen, his series Small Axe is showing on Amazon right now. And he spoke with Richard Brody and you can read Richard on the movie all the time at New Yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm

David Remnick, and I'm here with Larissa McFarker, a longtime staff writer for the magazine. Larissa, you worked a long time on a story about the difficulties of leaving an extremely tight-knit religious community, specifically when a person wants to leave the community and divorce their spouse. What led you to want to look into this? Well, the religious community you're referring to is what's often called the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, though they call themselves H-A-R-E-D-I, which is H-A-R-E-D-I. And so what drew me to it is the impossibility of the situation where you have one parent who is more or less secular, and another parent who is still a member of an ultra-Orthodox or Harati community, and a court

somehow has to figure out how their children are going to be raised. And I wanted to look into it because I just could not imagine how to figure this out when the norms and the beliefs of these two ways of life are really irreconcilable. You spoke to three different people for this piece in depth. Tell me about them. So I spoke to a couple of lawyers who deal with these custody cases between one secular parent and one religious parent. But first I spoke to Honey Getter. And she grew up in Rockland County, which is about 25 miles northwest of New York City. And her family is very religious. She was not one of these kids who rebelled at an early age.

She loved her religion. She loved her family, and she loved her whole world. I grew up with so much joy, so much singing. We were a pious group of people, putting God before anything else. God was an intimate friend and was someone you connected with really deeply. And that's a beautiful thing to have that kind of connection and that kind of joy, that kind of grounding where the world is so difficult, but you have this beautiful love that surrounds you all the time. When you were married, you were married in an arranged marriage when you were 18. Did you expect to be happy as a married woman?

I didn't grow up with fairy tales. I didn't expect it to be happily ever after. I expected to be able to build a beautiful home with someone else. As in all communities, we have unwritten rules about what happens. And the unwritten promise in the community is that you'll get married and you'll build a life and you'll have peace. And both of you will work towards creating a beautiful home for God and find a way to work together and be together. And happiness will come from that. And that didn't happen. Not for me.

In the community, honey grew up in. Modesty is very important. And one of the traditions is the morning after a woman's wedding. Her mother comes and shaves off her hair. I know it sounds so vain in some way. But I had had long here my entire life. I have very thick hair. And it means something.

And the night before, I think both of us, my ex and I had a traumatic experience in terms of what happened with this ex. I can't speak for him, but I would venture to guess that it was not pleasant. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. And the next morning, after the most intimate act you can do with another person, especially someone you don't know, and it's terrifying. My mother showed up with clippers and shaved my head off, and I felt like my mind. entire identity was gone. And as I'm telling you the story, I'm thinking about an ex-sister-in-law of mine who tells the same story and how she loved that her mother came and shaved her hair.

And then she started wearing a wig because she hated her uncontrollable hair. Right? So as I tell you my trauma, the same thing happens to another person and they're grateful and excited. It's not a one-way thing these. these rituals and the way that they impact us. And when did you find out or begin to get language for the idea that you were gay? That's a wonderful question.

Like, when did I start having language about being gay? After I had my second child, I was having physical. Honey told me a story that during her second pregnancy, she was essentially put on bed rest, and our husband bought a television, which was not really allowed in their community. This was around the time that Ellen DeGeneres had come out. When Hani's husband came home, she talked to him about it. I said to him, you know, I think I'm a lesbian,

and he said, what's that? And I explained that it's a woman who's attracted to women. And he said, yeah, of course you are. And we continued on our day as if nothing happened and we had another child. Now, why was this not a bigger deal in your marriage? Because we didn't know it could be. just because I was attracted to people that didn't mean that I could live a life like that,

I hadn't figured that piece out. And there's something about growing up in a religious community where there are no love stories where you don't see physical contact between men and women that made it totally okay in my mind for me to be gay because I really believed that women were attracted to women and got married to men to have children. I didn't know any other way. Nobody spoke about attraction. and so it never occurred to me that men were actually attracted to women or vice versa.

For me, living in a community and lying about who I was was not going to work. There are so many people that I know who are gay or lesbian within the community and have their talus outside and then stay because it's so complicated to leave. But for some of us, living authentic is more important than belonging in a community Honey Getter was 23 years old and the mother by then already of three kids when she decided that her life had to change. What happened within her and what was the process of trying to leave like? Well, it actually took her a few years before she left the community. The first thing she did was leave her marriage and go into therapy.

And this is the other thing. Honey got divorced around 20 years ago. And that's part of why she's able to talk to us because her kids are grown. Whereas people who are in the middle of custody cases now, they can get incredibly contentious and traumatic. I spoke to a lawyer who's negotiated more than 700 of these cases. Yeah, I have my iPhone recording. His name is Jolie Akoub.

I definitely find that religious divorces are more emotionally involved because when you're contacted by a client, you're never contacted by a person by themselves. You're going to have their rabbi involved. You're going to have brothers-in-law, their father, and you feel that pressure because the whole community wants to know what's happening in the case. But when you're successful, you get that reward as well. Jolie Akoum more often represents the religious partner.

He spoke to me from his office. So what are some of the differences between a divorce in an ultra-Orthodox community and a secular divorce? The level of detail that you have to address in a religious divorce versus a secular divorce. everything from the style of headdress that a man or boy wears upon reaching bar mitzvah to the length of his payas, to how far a girl's skirt would be, does she wear stockings, are they clear stockings, not clear stockings, to the curriculum in a school. Plus, you have the fact that there's a Jewish holiday every month of the year except for one month. And so you have an agreement that can be so much more complex than a regular secular divorce. It's interesting. I've seen that a lot of the time courts may side with the religious parent,

even though the courts are secular because they value stability in the children's lives. Why do you think they side so often with a religious parent? It's an easier sell to a judge to say, look, child's two years old. I'm going this way. She's going that way. We need to find a middle ground where we can both be in that child's life, right? I think that's an easier case. But once you get to, you know, I've got four kids. They're all over the age of eight now, you know, and they're semi-teenagers. And their entire life being and peer group is in this community. Judges recognize divorce is so destabilizing for children. And the last thing,

that they're going to do is kind of allow one parent to just jolt that even more. I mean, I guess one of the things I'm wondering about is how it seems like the courts do sometimes seem to value stability so much in the child's life that they value it more than the relationship with the second parents, the second parent being the one who's moved away from the community that become more secular, the one who threatens the stability of their life as it's been to that point, does that seem right to you? I put the onus on the parent. That's really the way I view it. It's not about the parent at all. It's about the kid. So if you feel, and I'm giving an example, that it's so important to take a child to a gay pride parade because of the way it makes you feel

and how you perceive it's going to affect, you know, maybe the way this child is going to have a worldview, I think in certain cases that's a reckless act. And I think in certain cases, that's a beautiful act. It really depends on the circumstances. So you can see how much is it stake in this argument. If you're an LGBTQ parent or a secular parent, Joel is saying that your values might be distressing and confusing to your child. Because they conflict so totally with the religious values the child has been raised with and which his other parents still believes in. To me, it's not about like an issue of expression that this parent is no longer allowed to express themselves the way that they want. I think a parent, you know, when I have children,

there's so many things we give up, you know, including our sleep to, you know, our time. It's one of the sacrifices you make. And they're in an unfortunate position. But I think you just have to give some care in thinking about not what would make you most happy, but what would kind of work for the child. Losing sleep is one thing for your kids, and we all do that. But I think losing your constitutional rights is a bridge too far, and it's one that the courts won't make you do. That's Julie Kay. She is a legal strategist for footsteps, which is an organization that helps people who are leaving or pulling away from Hasidic communities. I've had, you know, attorneys, for the children, others say to me, well, you know, this would all go away if your client would

just go back in the closet. A wise psychiatrist who specializes in contested divorces once told me, you know, children are made of rubber, not glass, and that it's important for them to be able to learn to navigate these spaces with loving and cooperating parents on both sides. And I think, you know, what I would say is that the ultra-Orthodox community has to start to embrace these families more. Larissa, so what do you make of all this? It sounds like both lawyers pretty much agree that everyone should be looking out for the children. So what's the issue here? Well, the issue is that they're, of course, very different ideas about what's good for the children, right?

And the question is, how do they reconcile these really irreconcilable worlds? And honestly, I think that both sides underestimate how hard it is to do. So Joel believes that footsteps does really great work in providing its members with emotional support. But now that it's also hiring lawyers to litigate these custody cases, he thinks they're creating more problems. I think when they have gone and really petition so many, you know, large law firms to do pro bono work, it's with the pitch that this is about, you know, freedoms, rights for transgendered, rights for gay rights. And I think that's where I kind of think that they're off in their approach. Because it's about the children.

It's not about individual rights. If you were seeing courts not respect the rights of parents who are gay or transgendered, absolutely bring in the big law firms and let's establish the right, you know, of them as parents. But we have those rights and those rights are never trampled on. This is true. The courts have not technically denied custody to an LGBT parent or a secular parent. But the question is what those parents can do around their children and how they raise them.

Whether or not the secular parent has to pretend to go along with religious rules that they no longer believe in. A few years ago, the norm was to ask the secular parent to basically just fake it, to pretend while they were their kids that they're still religious. But there was a big case in 2017, the Weissberger case, that changed that standard. In Weisberger, basically, the court said that the secular parent did not have to lie about who she was. But it did require her to make sure that her children continued to follow religious rules. So what Julie wants to establish in the future is that forcing secular parents to monitor their kids' religious observance is really not all that different from forcing them to be observant themselves.

It turns the parent into a religious nanny or a religious cop that he now has to make sure that his children, are following religious norms that he himself doesn't have a deep-seed of belief in. I think that really starts to interfere with having an authentic parenting relationship. You might think that the way to solve these problems would be just for the two parents to tolerate each other's worldviews and that the kids should just go back and forth. But if you belong to a religious minority, you might see it very differently. Here's the way Joel sees it. I think you have to realize that the religious parent is probably,

more on the defense than the offense because everything that a more secular parent wants to expose their child to is generally something enjoyable. It's not like the secular parent saying you're going to sit and do 10 hours of, you know, secular studies and learn American history. It's you're going to get to watch YouTube, get to use an iPhone, go and play in, you know, a secular swimming pool with mixed gender. in most of their community is built around shielding themselves from those things so that they don't succumb to the desire. You know, I'm not sure I completely agree with Joel here.

I mean, I understand that it can seem like iPhones and YouTube or irresistible, and I'm sure to some kids they are. And of course, many people have left religious communities of all kinds because of the lure of secular life. But in fact, the pull on the religious side is also very, very strong. It's everyone and everything the child has ever. known. It's their whole world. So this is really the tragedy of divorces of this kind where one parent is secular and one is religious. It's not like with a secular divorce where the parents

might have slightly different rules or badmouth each other. It's a situation where you're going from one parent who says something is fun and normal to another parent who says it's a violation of the laws of God. And even if a court grants both parents partial custody, it's just very hard to imagine how a child make sense of that without ultimately rejecting one parent or the other. You can read Larissa McFarker's piece about the organization Footsteps at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. We'll see you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Calli Leah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.