Page 84 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)

visit, a white CO orders Stevenson to a small
room for a strip search, as a condition for
meeting with his client—an astonishing, il-
legal condition, an order applied to millions of
America’s incarcerated humans but here used
to humiliate a black man viewed as a little too
uppity with his suit and tie and his briefcase.
Stevenson, resigned, is shown stripping
out of his suit jacket and shirt and loosen-
ing his tie. “Pants and underwear,” the CO
sneers, and the camera goes tight on Steven-
son’s face, rage twitching in his cheeks—in
Michael Bakari Jordan’s cheeks.
For the uninitiated: A strip search requires
the person to strip naked, bend over, spread
their buttocks, and cough. While it’s touted
as a way to keep contraband out of jails and
prisons, the search is also no slight debase-
ment. And trust and believe, I know of what
I speak, for I spent more than a calendar in a
state prison and felt no less human than when
I was ordered to comply. All but impossible
to forget standing buck naked in a cold con-
crete room, just-removed cuffs like phantoms
on your wrist, one, two, three men looking on
as you turn this way and that, lift the soles of
your feet, show your palms, open your mouth
and thrust out your tongue, as you turn your
back on command, bend over, spread your
ass, and cough. The first time it happened
to me, I had the nerve to be incredulous, not
realizing, when I entered the system, that
I’d in many ways forfeited the right to gov-
ern my body.
Though Jordan had experienced the search
only in the context of filming, to be present
in that moment had to have been a kind of
trauma, and believing that made me feel an
unexpected connection to him. Yeah, he was
an actor playing a part in a scene, but he was
also using his talent and power—you can bet
it was no accident—to show an injustice.
So it goes: Actors make choices—if they
get to the point where they’re fortunate
enough to be selective, anyway. An actor like
MBJ can pick and choose. The question is,
what does he do with that power? The ques-
tion is, what kinds of stories does he choose
to tell to the millions? MBJ has amassed
real power in Hollywood, and needs to keep it
to tell the stories he wants, but he also seems
bent on not being of Hollywood. Jacket, turtleneck
sweater, V-neck
How does a thirty-two-year-old black man
sweater, and trou-
navigate those dual aims?
sers by Tom Ford;
The cast—and the real-life Stevenson— boots by Christian
sat for a Q&A after the screening. Near the Louboutin;
end of it, the interlocutor asked: Having watch by Piaget.
played superheroes and villains, what does
it feel like to tell a true story, where every
gesture had been made by people who were
living and breathing?

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