Small Axe, Little Baby Out of Many, OnePeople - # 8 - 17/12/20 John Root
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Small Axe, Little Baby
Steve McQueen’s five-part tv series Small Axe was an important breakthrough in British television. For the first time we had programmes made and written by black people, featuring black actors, and which covered the ‘black British’ experience of the 70s and 80s, that emerged from the earlier experiences of ‘West Indian immigrants’. Whilst the fictional Lovers Rock hardly featured a white face, the other four films featured conflict with establishment authorities, especially the police and the education system.
The series artwork used the logo of Trojan Records, the pioneering reggae label in this country, and music of various genre was well featured in the series. Its title referenced a Bob Marley song, which began with a quote from Psalm 52: “Why boasteth thyself, O evil man’ before going on to the chorus: ‘If you are a big tree, we are the small axe, sharp to cut you down, well sharp to cut you down.’ So the films were about people who may have been widely regarded as ‘small’, and yet who not only survive but also overcome the mighty.
It is unlikely that the BBC intentionally scheduled the programmes for the run-up to Christmas, yet in fact the series provided a more appropriate prelude to the meaning of the season than the schmaltz which dominates our tv channels for one month of the year. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” the shepherds were told (Luke 2:12). Readers of Luke’s gospel have already read the prophecy by the child’s mother, Mary: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.” The child was to be a world-changer, a table over-turner, a small axe. He was not the king that Herod feared or that the wise men expected to find, rather a baby who would eventually change the world by becoming a servant.
In the Bible it is the case that ‘size matters’; but it turns the world’s understanding of size upside down. It is the small, the child, the humble who God values; not the boasting, the brash, the bullying and the powerful. Deuteronomy 7:7 reminds Israel that God’s election was based on his faithfulness, not their size – rather ‘you were the fewest of all peoples’. Gideon’s army is diminished, not augmented, in order to succeed. God uses David, the least impressive of seven brothers, to defeat the mighty Goliath: ‘five stones from a sling’ (1 Samuel 17:40) could have been an alternative title for the series. Jesus often talks about and shows the power of small things: the mustard seed, the five loaves and two fishes, the widow’s coin. He speaks of the value of the least, the ‘simple ones’.
Too often down the centuries churches have forgotten Paul’s message that God “chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1, verse 28). But it is when we are obedient to the way of Jesus, that turns victims into visionaries, that God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.
Some of the most powerful moments in McQueen’s films were when he showed people’s weakness. The painfully long focus on Alex Wheatle lying trussed and helpless on the gymnasium floor. Kingsley, humiliated at school, lying almost submerged in the bath. The tender, tentative reconciliation with his father as the uncertain conclusion of Leroy Logan’s story. His disputed decision to try to achieve good in the police force was left inconclusively: ‘something good will come of it’.
Most intriguing of all was the surreal, very long sequence in Lovers’Rock when the barrage from the sound system gave way to a mellow acapella singalong to Janet Kay’s plaintive Silly Games – a song about people failing to connect, sung at a party! And was that gentle sequence intended as a deliberate, even critical, counterpoint to the film’s other long sequence featuring mad, wild, largely masculine dancing? McQueen’s series may have been channelling nostalgia, and was certainly channelling anger; but his films were also making viewers think and ask questions about weakness and strength, and what it is that causes big trees to fall.
However, the prophet Jeremiah was commissioned not just to ‘uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow,’ but also ‘to build and to plant’ (1:10). You need more tools than an axe to build strong and vibrant communities. Faith challenges us to not just cut down but also how we can plant, albeit what may seem very small seeds.
In the series we saw only occasional glimpses of Christian faith, like the faded pictures of back home on people’s mantelpieces. We have glimpses of hymns in the background, formulaic or self-focused children’s prayers, a bible turned to at a low point. They suggest the remnants of a disappearing faith, yet on the bus going to the blues party Martha sees a man carrying a cross and a cloud of guilt brushes across her face: you can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl. By contrast, Leroy Logan’s strong faith (you can read about it in his autobiography ‘Closing Ranks: My Life as a Cop’) was airbrushed out of his story, though his films open-ended conclusion spoke of what was ‘scorched’ needing to be ‘replanted’.
This was billed as the first series of Small Axe, so presumably there are more films on the horizon to look forward to. Perhaps, having given us an inside picture of the profane world of blues parties, McQueen might now also give us an unsensational, sympathetic but questioning portrayal of its pious counterpart, a church. It is a background that a good number of his actors take seriously.
A slightly shorter version of this post will be published in the January edition of ‘The Voice’ newspaper.
Add Ons
* Quote of the month: ‘If you don’t know your past, you won’t know your future’. Rastafarian prisoner in Steve McQueen’s ‘Wheatle’ in the ‘Small Axe’ series.
* Jubilee Centre are hosting an on-line talk and discussion by Professor John Coffey of Leicester University on Difficult Histories: Christian Memory and Historic Injustice, on Wednesday, 27th January at 7.30. Register through Jubilee Centre.
* The world heavy-weight bout between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury looks interesting: nice black guy vs nasty white guy? Then again: descendant of Yoruba aristocracy vs child of lawless Irish travellers?.
* This will be the last Out of Many, One People posting until Tuesday, 12th January.
Meanwhile may you know peace and joy through Christ with us and in us; and God’s direction, strength and wisdom for the year ahead.