This is rakontur

By John Hood, July 30, 2013

MIAMI, FLORIDA — “To be, or not to be” might work as a sound bite, but in the end even Hamlet had a hard time believing it was really the question. You either are or you aren’t. And if you are only because you’re afraid to face what happens when you aren’t, you don’t deserve the “Slings and Arrows” that make life worth living.

Nah, if you’re truly concerned with being, a much better question is “to see or not to see".  Since you already are, to what degree can you be?

That seems to be the question a couple young guns asked of themselves when they set their sights on the riot of stories they saw goin’ on in the streets of their hometown. The issue was how best to get the world to believe what they were seeing. Back amid the echo of the big bang, storytellers held sway by firelight; in the age of big bang boom however, the two knew they needed more than the crackle of a log and the singe of a smore.

So what to do? Miami was coming off like a cross between the Wild Wild West during the heady days of legendary gunslingers such as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and while Ned Buntline had made picture perfect penny dreadfuls of the West at its most Wild way back when, these new stories couldn’t be pinned to a page, even if enough people still took the time to read. And what these cats saw deserved to be seen by everyone.  

In enter rakontur. Named for “one who tells stories with skill”, and misspelled to reflect the hard of a consonant’s consequence, rakontur is an outfit built and designed to capture the world in which we’re living and lying, fighting and dying, scheming and scamming and sucker-punching, all in the interest of the almighty buck. As much a window on this brave new wild, as it is a viewfinder, rakontur was from its very inception scoped to seek out both what’s hidden behind the headlines, and what would account for headlines had it not been so hidden. In other words, the core of the stories that core our world.

rakontur got it from the get. Its principals -- Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman -- had the kinda symbiotic relationship that makes yin go with yang, this need its that, and here hold to now. Corben got the stories on film; Spellman got the films rolling, from startup to screening.

And oh what an array of stories did rakontur spill on to the screen. Raw Deal: A Question of Consent proved that there are two sides to even the ugliest of lies, and that neither are likely to hold much truth. Cocaine Cowboys rode the get-high country to its inevitable come down, and spurred enough dustup for a sequel. The U uncovered the me-me-me which unmade one of Miami’s most fabled institutions, and set records for eyeballs on ESPN. And Limelight illuminated the myriad shadows behind a nightlife kingpin, right up to the murder which caused the relinquishing of a crown.

With The Tanning of America, rakontur takes all that its earned and turns it on to American Culture at large, where half the country still seems loathe to admit that black is the new black, and there’s no taken it back, even while their very lives move to the beat of an inner city drum.

It's Eminem and Cosby, the Fresh Prince and the Boy Beasties, Bambaataa and Basquiat and ICP. It’s Tarantino and it’s Van Peebles, pere and fils. It is the precipice of acceptance, the threshold of colorblind, the point past tolerance. It's a foreshadowing of a Utopia beyond even MLK's most daring dream, a sea change where one can actually see change things, and it's all coming about via entertainment.

It’s that tan which burns from the inside out and turns the world rightside up.