DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA: The American Experience of 2020
HBOLeave it to Spike Lee and David Byrne to sift through the wreckage of 2020 and salvage a few ideas worth preserving. The world may try its hardest to forget this miserable year, but David Byrne’s American Utopia provided hope amidst disaster and reminded viewers, especially Americans, that there are valuable lessons to be found in this tragedy.
Many will likely want to forget the pain of losing loved ones to a simmering pandemic. However, the racial justice protests that took place during it represented centuries of festering racial animus and should not be shrugged off so quickly. Despite attempts by some to escalate the protests over a few miscreants determined to set things ablaze, the demonstrations as a whole were one of the few bright spots in a tumultuous year. America’s long-due racial reckoning was finally beginning.
A significant part of that reckoning took place – and is still taking place – in Hollywood. What had started with the #OscarsSoWhite movement only a few years ago was simply accelerated by worldwide protests. A slew of racially charged movies were released this year, including Lee’s own Da 5 Bloods, Radha Blanks’ The Forty-Year-Old Version, the documentary Time and many others. Even though the films were made before this summer’s demonstrations, they still speak directly to the country’s racial turmoil.
One film people probably wouldn’t expect race to play any part in is a David Byrne concert. However, under the tutelage of Lee, who is more than qualified in this area, American Utopia directly addresses America’s racist past and present. A utopia is only possible once the dystopia’s problems are acknowledged. With a propulsive performance of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout” – with her permission, of course – Byrne and Lee don’t add to the discussion so much as articulate the visceral nature of police brutality in blunt strokes. Sometimes bluntness is necessary. As powerful and affecting as seeing the raw footage of police brutality can be, the display in American Utopia is able to transcend those videos available to everyone with a simple gesture: having the mothers of people slain at the hands of police hold up their children’s photos. The effect is hard to put into words.
In other ways, too, the film comments on the nation’s racist tendencies. A brief image of Colin Kaepernick, the American football player who was essentially blacklisted from the NFL after kneeling during a performance of the national anthem, appears on the stage during a performance of “I Should Watch TV.” It is remarkable but also deeply saddening that this was all made before Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor were killed. Lee and Byrne did not set out to address those murders, but because injustice to Black people in America is so common, they spoke directly to the moment nonetheless.
A similar phenomenon makes the movie just as applicable to the strangeness of nationwide lockdowns. Even though American Utopia was filmed before the pandemic, it felt like it was made precisely for those suffering through it. There’s something nostalgic about watching a concert documentary in a year when nobody was able to attend in-person concerts. The electricity of the crowd lends the music a hand and makes it a more memorable experience. Watching the crowd go crazy over hits like “This Must Be the Place” and “Burning Down the House” is a comfort in these lonely times. It’s a reminder of what concerts were like and an incentive to hunker down for a few more months in order to get back to them.
The other major event of 2020 for Americans was a once-in-a-lifetime election. Along with the summer of protests and the worldwide pandemic, the November election formed a trifecta of seismic events. Unlike the pandemic and the protests, the election was set in stone far before the year began. Everybody knew it was coming, the campaigns started back in 2019 and, despite wild predictions, the election happened on its scheduled date. And yet, that certainty about the event taking place didn’t prevent Americans from stressing out over the very uncertain outcome. Both sides were – and many still are – convinced the other was out to steal the election right from under their noses. And doomsayers on both sides predicted the end of the world if the other side should win.
American Utopia addressed the election, too, highlighting the importance of voting and how taken for granted that privilege is in America. Using his audience to physically illustrate the ridiculously low voter turnout in past elections, Byrne communicated a simple yet effective message to viewers. He even had his audience sign slips of paper promising they would vote, a non-binding but apparently effective method to get people to go to the polls. And go to the polls they did. It’s anyone’s guess how much Lee’s film actually affected the outcome, but it’s more than clear that the 2020 election had the highest rate of voter turnout in over a century – still only 66% though – and featured the most people to ever vote in an American election. Doom was averted, at least for a while.
However, the focus of American Utopia was not to force people to act out of fear. It was rather the opposite: to smuggle in urgent messages under the guise of feel-good escapism. What a master of disguise it is, because the best thing about Lee’s film is how good it makes its audience feel by its end despite its sombre subject matter and the circumstances surrounding its release! Not just through dopamine hits from hearing Talking Heads classics, but through the genuine, warm-hearted embrace – socially distanced, of course – of Byrne himself. Fred Rogers but with a smidge more cursing, Byrne is a larger-than-life, irrationally optimistic figure in American Utopia. At a time when Americans were feeling disillusioned with both potential future leaders of the country, Byrne was a role model for all – a sweet, impossibly perfect man who met the demands of the time. The burdens of 2020 would be difficult for any one person to shoulder, and yet Byrne was able to shrug them off with what looked like ease.
