Welcome to Carsey's Intervention an supposed-to-be-blog page. Today I'll be giving you a quick run down on what I did for my intervention.

First, I suppose I should explain the concept of an "intervention". If you've ever experienced one, it may have just looked a joke - like some of that crap that Steve-O, Johnny Nashville and them other knuckleheads from Jackass did. If that's all you got from it, I dare say it was an unsuccessful. An intervention causes a break in given concepts, changes thoughts. In other words: IT HAS A POINT. Given this, an interevention can be seen as any action that causes those experiencing it to reconsider their views or teaches them something they didn't know. Remember back when you were nine and went to Nana's house for Christmas and ended up explaining to three uncles, a cousin-in-law, the woman you found out was your biological father and that drunk guy that people keep referring to as "a friend of the family" what the purpose of the electoral college is? Well, that was an intervention.

IIntereventions as we used the term in RTF 344M was something more planned and purposeful. Sandy Stone, in teaching this course, had something more theatrically based in mind. We as human being have this little tendnecy to react differently as things are presented to us differently. For instance, let's say that there is a protest of a city adminstration's policy toward recycling. The public will have a certain view of it. Many will dismiss it as rantings of hippies and kaya smokers with nothing better to do between bong sessions. These, however may be the exact people you want to reach. So how do you present your message in a way they'll at least consider? Well, if you can get in a place where alot of these people will be and present yourself in a manner that there are comfortable with, then go into a dramatic presentation from you're point of view (staged argument, that kinda thing), then perhaps you can get them to consider some points of view that they would not have before.

And so goes the intervention. You find ways of getting information or ideas to people in a way that they aren't expecting such that, perhaps, they won't deflect it as soon as you start talking. I'll probably toss some links that go into this business more explicitly later on. Right now I'm finger cramped. You keep reading below.

 

THE PROJECT

Originally what I had in mind was to do an original piece admonishing the practice of chemically altering one's hair with particular emphasis on straightening. I did some checking around and found a report that said that hairdressers show a tendency toward having low birthweight babies. This was believed to be connected to the exposure to the chemicals like the dioxins in chemical perming products (of course I can't find the link now, but I'll try to add it later).

Armed with this info, I intended to do some test runs of the planned intervention. Using a some text I already knew. In particular a verse from a song by Goodie Mob (media and real samples at the bottom of this this page at amazon.com).

Time, unfortunately, caught up with me and I found that I didn't quite have it in me to write something original. I also got a little bit chicken and wasn't really feeling the idea of doing the AuntJemimah Anti-Perm Extravaganza just yet (worry not, it will yet be born).

So I decided instead to just use the verse from the song as my intervention. Here's the orignal text:

Me and my family moved in our apartment complex
A gate with the serial code was put up next
The claim that this community is so drug free
But it don't look that way to me cause I can see

The young bloods hanging out at the sto 24/7
Junkies looking got a hit of the blo it's powerful
Oh - you know what else they tryin to do
Make a curfew especially for me and you the traces of the new world order
Time is getting shorter if we don't get prepared
People it's gone be a slaughter
My mind won't allow me to not be curious
My folk don't understand so they don't take it serious
But every now and then, I wonder
If the gate was put up to keep crime out or to keep our ass in

Who's that peeking in my window
POW nobody now

Deep, right?

Well, I chose a couple of spots to do like test runs. The first place I tried was in Einstein's Arcade in Guadalupe. Not much response there. Everybody was too into their video games, and it was actually kind of loud. It was also dark, so the video we ("we" being me and film director extraordinaire, David Garcia) didn't really come out that well.

Next I tried at the arcade down the street from that. The lighting was better, but there weren't a lot of people - I was going to leave, but David suggested just performing for the the guy working the change booth, so I did. Got some interesting reactions which you can view here. Seems he pretty much thought I was crazy.

Next I decided to try it out at in a larger venue. I chose the food court at Dobie Mall. The video turned out much better, and you can see some reactions, which pretty much consisted of people trying their dangdest to ignore me. Here's the documentation.

Lastly, I decided that I wanted to actually show the class what I did, instead of just showing them the less that spectacular video I got. It occurred to me later that I could have just made this my intervention. I'm glad I did it in several environments, though. There was a big difference in the amount of attention that people gave. I also think there was a difference because I delivered it differently. Since I was fighting against loud background noise or feeling like I really had to get people's attention, there was more nuance to the performance, and I felt like people heard what was being said more. It's really what I intended the first couple of times.

The point of the intervention? Well, I'd say that in our current state of "increased security", the idea of the incursion of the powers that are intruding further into our lives is one that is ever more palpable. Hopefully somebody heard it and thought that it might prove useful for them to keep watch .

Also, I kind of like the idea of showing people that hip-hop is, in fact, poetry. If done again, I might add an element after the performance explaing to people that what they heard was a verse from a rap song. I read this in one of my acting classes, and people in the class who's heard the song before didn't recognize it. I think I might find myself getting in the habit of taking these words out of the musical context and giving people a chance to really hear them.

Another result of the in-class intervention was that I realized that I've had this really good monologue memorized for a while and not used it. On my way out of class Harriss (a classmate) made the comment that he enjoyed the monologue. I'd never considered it as such. Now I do.

 

Peace: C. Walker, Jr.

 

 

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