I joke among friends that Finding Your Roots is the Maury Pauvich Show for people that don’t move their lips while reading …
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates. Jr. is one of the hidden gems of television. There are so many channels and streaming services that it is easy to overlook this not flashy, semi-precious stone in the multi-channel verse of content. My only regret is that so many of the subjects on this brilliant program are Hollywood and television actors — stars of a different sort — especially in the most recent years. Also, so many Progressives and zero Conservatives appear on the show, which kind of confounds me. Finding Your Roots is not overtly political in the least, except in a way that builds compassion for the hardship of immigrants in their journey to America.
Why are there not more politicians on Finding Your Roots? Or politico-cultural commentators? Or writers? Or, artists in general? And what about tech titans? CEOs? Why has Finding Your Roots become such an elite Hollywood situation? Is this thus because Actors and Actresses generally have such a yawning chasm of need for affirmation? Is appearing on this show, often in middle age, a studied self-reflection flex in public? Or, the ontological cousin of self-reflection, ancestral reflection in real time? Is this, ultimately, the perfect autumnal-career exercise for Actors?
One of the many reasons I am fascinated — fascinated! — by the show is its delightful anti-libertarianism (Ok, Ill concede it is a little political). This age, unfortunately, reeks almost overwhelmingly of Ayn Rand's selfish virtues. Altruism is a form of "wokeness," to be eschewed. This age disdains -- even seeks to erase -- the fierce historical forces which have shaped our society and, perhaps to a degree that many find unsettling, our own individual psychologies through the bloodline. Is that why so many to the right of Hollywood avoid the show altogether?
Of course, the fierce forces that run through the blood that connect us to our ancestors are not binding. There is such a thing as Free Will, although it is not, as the Randians believe, unimpeded by History. We are not our fourth great-grandparents, nor are we culpable for their crimes, from the perspective of today, for committed in remote history. A perfect example is Larry David, who clings to his Jewishness, yet playfully pokes fun at it at the same time. He had a memorable appearance on the show. In all around 3,000 Jewish men served in the Confederacy during the Civil War, and one of Larry David’s relatives, unfortunately, served in the fight against the Union. “I hope no slaves show up on this,” said Larry David, echoing the thoughts and prayers of every person that appears on the show, in one of my favorite episodes. And, of course, they did. And Larry David, being Larry David, used comedy to diffuse a potentially awkward situation. “Oh, Professor,” Larry told a chuckling Henry Gates, with solemnity for the sins of his forefathers. “I’m sorry.”
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In Season 9, which premiered on PBS a few weeks ago, Julia Roberts and Ed Norton were paired together because they share a vague ancestral connection. Julia Roberts, one of the most progressive voices in Hollywood -- she delightedly handed her friend Denzel Washington his Best Actor Oscar -- was clearly unhappy to find out that she indeed had slave owners in her bloodline. It was a golden Finding Your Roots moment that no craft, no Method acting, could hide. It was also perhaps the most human that we have ever seen Roberts on screen, if you were lucky enough to see it. She is no longer the incandescent, ingenue force of Nature asking to be loved by the World, as she was in "Mystic Pizza," when we all fell in love with her. The silences on the show are spectacular things. They have a dramatic energy all of their own, the mechanics of which are propelled by the history hidden behind the pages of the Big Black Book that sits between Professor Gates and the Subject. And after a silence, Julia Roberts showed a side of herself that is quite worthy of a watch, if you haven’t already checked the new season out.
Finding Your Roots has a certain gravitas to it. Perhaps that is why Actors — in middle age, largely — gravitate towards it’s calling. Further, the show lures the Viewer with the honey of authentic moments with celebrities, while feeding us an education in History. And not just American History, but World History. We are all immigrants, Ed Norton proclaims at one moment in the Season 9 Opener. Some immigrants come in poverty and some in chains; very few come in wealth and health. So — should there be such a thing as "ancestral guilt"? Whether or not one should feel guilty about the sins of one’s ancestors is kind of besides the point, however, when the camera is on the Subject in close focus ... it just kind of is. Finding Your Roots is a profoundly American show.
But it was not always thus. Finding Your Roots is not without controversy of its own. In 2015 Ben Affleck — always Ben Affleck — almost messed the whole thing up. Affleck, you will remember, tried to hide his slave owning roots (every guests greatest fear), which is ridiculous and controlling to say the least. No one actually blames any guest on the show for the sins of their ancestors. But Ben is a director with director’s … issues. It caused a big scandal, largely because Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard Professor, ought to have known better. I’ll guess he was a little star struck and his moral compass was off that day. It was, in the end, an ethical misdemeanor not a felony. And after a brief hiatus, the show returned.
I cannot recommend this show enough. It is, in my opinion, the most thoughtful show on television. But I really wish it was more than just a right of passage for Hollywood celebrities. Where are the Elon Musk’s! The Kevin McCarthy’s! The Matt Drudges! The KellyAnne Conways! Every moment on the show is a potential Gotcha moment, and politics does not matter.
Except, perhaps, in the sense that Finding Your Roots opens the minds of all participants — Viewers and Subjects — to the fact that we are all, as Americans, immigrants. And the compassion shown to immigrants is payment for the compassion shown to our own ancestors, whether recent or remote. Is that really such a bad thing?
How much Netflix can the world absorb? (Rachel Syme/TNY)
Might the energy and excitement of C-SPAN last week be influencing the thinking of Chris Licht of CNN? (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
M3GAN cost about $12 million to make and made about $30 this weekend. The secret? “Whereas many non-franchise horror movies were rated R, M3GAN sports a more audience-friendly PG-13.” (Pamela McClintock/THR)
Why we are still living in Trump’s post-truth America. (Jon Skolnik/VF)
“(Colleen) Hoover had the top three books of the year, and her novels sold 14.3 million print copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Of the 25 books on the list, eight were Hoover titles, and two, It Ends with Us and Verity, sold more than two million copies each.” (Publisher’s Weekly)
How the British Media are reacting to Harry’s Spare. (SEMAFOR)