Flag Wars

By Keith Boykin, in movies
Tuesday, June 24 2003, 12:29AM

The new documentary "Flag Wars" is a powerful film that offers an engrossing look at the issue of gay gentrification and the emerging conflict between blacks and gays. The film tells the story of residents in a depressed black community when white gays and lesbians start buying and renovating the local property.

Introduced with footage of blacks in Columbus, Ohio in the 1950s, the documentary begins in contemporary Columbus. An older black couple is shown sitting quietly on a porch when a drilling noise disrupts their peace. They turn, and the camera moves with them to find a group of whites doing construction next door. The contrasts between rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, young and old are highlighted by clever editing such as this.

By exposing the fault lines of race, class, age and sexual orientation that separate the longtime black residents from the mostly white gay newcomers, filmmakers Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras challenge simple notions about gentrification.

Among the film's many virtues, its greatest is its evenhanded approach. Without taking a position, the unnarrated film carefully documents both sides on the issue of gentrification. The absence of an overt agenda seems to have helped the filmmakers gain access to the two sides. We see white gay newcomers speak candidly about their intentions to take over the area while straight blacks speak openly about their opposition to such plans.

The problem with some documentaries about living people is that the films, like reality TV, can actually distort reality by implicitly encouraging the participants to perform for the camera. "Flag Wars" does not have that problem. In four years of shooting, the film crew seems to have created a bond of trust that enabled the residents to ignore the filming process. As a result, the lead characters in the story seem completely oblivious to the presence of the camera recording their words and actions.

The film's style also facilitates the residents' comfort. Rather than interviewing the subjects, the film makers show the residents in real life situations. We see them at house parties, in meetings, at court appearances and on the street. They talk to each other instead of talking to the camera.

The four principal characters symbolize the various perspectives in the community's gentrification debate.
Chief Baba Olugbala Shango Obadena has lived in the neighborhood all his life and fights to keep a sign on his house. The chief notes the irony that newcomers moving to the neighborhood insist on changing it in a process he calls "ethnic cleansing."

In contrast to the chief, white lesbian realtor Nina Masseria is the most vocal gentrification advocate depicted in the film. While showing houses in the area, Masseria complains that the longtime residents "still haven't given up their hold of the neighborhood." Unable to buy out a particular house, she ruthlessly acknowledges that time will eventually catch up with the owner. "He too shall pass," she says.

Linda Mitchell may be the story's real protagonist and the most sympathetic character. A lifelong resident of the community, Mitchell struggles to keep her house in compliance with new zoning regulations. While other houses go on the market, Mitchell, with a meager income, refuses to part with hers. Instead, she displays a sign that her house is not for sale.

Mitchell and Chief Baba must each answer to Judge Pfeiffer, the environmental court judge whose bark is a bit worse than his bite. Pfeiffer impatiently insists that Mitchell fix up her house and remove a couple of old cars from the driveway, but each time she comes to court out of compliance, he lets her off.

The judge also rules against Chief Baba at first, but later finds a way to help him. In each case, Pfeiffer makes a special effort to visit the offending property personally.

Along the way, the film shows other residents trying to cope with the transition in the neighborhood. An elderly black woman complains that "all of these people have moved in here," and her "these people" statement seems to refer to gays and lesbians. A white man fills out a mortgage application. Another white man, sounding like Christopher Columbus "discovering" America, explains how gay people save communities that "no one else will go to." From there, the film cuts to a black family sitting at a dinner table where one man says "they don't loan black folks that kind of money."

A white gay man tells a friend that he owns four buildings in the neighborhood, while back in court, Chief Baba fights to keep his one building the way he wants it. Baba comes up with what he thinks is a winning argument with he reasons that the sign above his door is the functional equivalent of the gay flags proliferating in the neighborhood.

Several of the black residents emphasize the racial disparity in wealth and access to capital that separates them from their white counterparts. As Chief Baba sees it, "two European males" are more likely than an average black family to have a lot of money. Baba also traces the gentrification problem to the point when his rundown community was designated as a historic area. That designation enabled city officials to regulate the houses and enforce strict building codes that many longtime residents could not afford to uphold.

The documentary also helps us to understand how limited access to capital can exacerbate tensions among competing oppressed groups. Rather than fighting the socioeconomic system that disempowers blacks and gays, the two groups end up fighting each other.

Blacks seem to object that investment dollars that pour into the neighborhood today were unavailable when the same area was considered the ghetto. Residents and local officials divide themselves along racial lines over the issue of whether to build new affordable housing in the community to remedy the gentrification problem.

The economic issues in Columbus quickly spill over into social issues, as we see when a group of black men complain about the changes in the community. One black man objects to a "flaming homosexual" teacher who he doesn't want to teach his son, but the same man curiously says he might not object if the teacher "was a little more subtle with his homosexuality and kept it in his home."

Prejudice in the city is not limited to blacks. At an antigay rally led by a white religious zealot, a young white boy holds a noose that strangles the head of a naked male action figure sexually positioned with another male action figure. Next we see members of the Ku Klux Klan demonstrating against blacks in the city.

At the community level, most of the disagreement between the two sides is based on differing perceptions of the same events. When a group of gay men are shown sipping wine and eating Chinese food in a fashionable living room, they find themselves talking about neighborhood improvement. One of the men says, "if you don't want to renovate it, then don't live in it."

On the other hand, Linda Mitchell is shown outside her modest home as Judge Pfeiffer warns her about a few stray weeds growing between the bricks in her house. "You don't try to take somebody's history away from them because you want their house," she says. "Nobody should ever have to go through this."

The crux of the problem for the black residents seems best articulated by one man who acknowledges the prejudice in his words. "I don't want to wake up in my black community and see white people when I open my door," he says. But then he identifies the real problem. "There's no way you can keep them out," he says. "There's no fair way. Because we don't want to be excluded (either)."

"Flag Wars" premieres June 17 on PBS. Check your local listings for times.