Freedom and Liberty in Space Is The Place

    One discussion that I found particularly interesting surrounding the movie Space Is The Place was Anthony Reed's distinction between freedom and liberty—between Sun Ra and the Overseer—in his article "After the End of the World: Sun Ra and the Grammar of Utopia."

Within the movie, the Overseer plays into the capitalist and exploitative circumstances that surround him—he has little care for the sex workers who are beaten, he drives a "chariot" (his Cadillac) and wears a pristine white suit, he conspires alongside NASA agents to have Sun Ra kidnapped so he can continue to "oversee" and determine the future for black people on Earth—and in that sense, he comes to represent a future for black people centered around liberty—that is, liberty to exploit those around you for whatever personal gain you may seek. As Reed puts it, "The Overseer is the one who has usurped the role of the slave owner for his own ends...".

    Sun Ra, on the other, seeks to harness the emptiness of space and the halting/restarting of time as an opportunity for freedom, where the structures and histories that have shaped the social position that black people exist in within America can be abandoned for something new. When reading over Reed's article and watching Ra's movie, I was reminded of a concept that I first learned in the context of environmental science called "path dependency," wherein choices or events that have occurred in the past limit the potential for alternatives in the future because the systems we build are often resistant to change (whether that be for economic, social, or political reasons). In that sense, when June Tyson is chanting "it's after the end of the world" at the beginning of the Space Is The Place, Sun Ra and his Arkestra are announcing the an end to the time whose past has steered black people in America away from the alter-destiny, a destiny in a new space and a new time.