Canceling Ghost Ship TV show was lesson
Bay Area writers rejected a major project after plea from survivors
Just before midnight on Dec. 2, 2016, I received a series of texts I will never forget. My friend Sara sent me a burst of messages all in a row: “There’s a fire at Ghost Ship,” she said. “It’s bad. Don’t go.”
I was in Oakland — at another underground venue, in Jack London Square, at a different show organized by punks, for punks. Afterward, I had planned on heading to Ghost Ship, a warehouse where several of my friends were DJing and performing live electronic music, and where other friends would be attending, dancing, commingling.
My texts to those friends went unanswered. And then, of course, I woke up the next morning to the worst news imaginable: numerous fatalities confirmed, with dozens more missing or unaccounted for. Of the 36 people who died in California’s deadliest fire since 1906, I was close with
“I would love for this not to happen for at least another decade, if possible.”
Plea on social media to cancel project from friend of Ghost Ship victims more than a dozen.
I am a writer by trade, and in the weeks that followed, I poured myself into writing about my friends. I had to. It was an attempt not only to stave off grief but to process it and, more importantly, to tell the stories of those who could no longer tell their own.
All of this was on my mind last week, when, just days after the fire’s third anniversary, the news broke that East Bay authors Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon were producing a series or movie for CBS, “based on the Oakland Ghost Ship tragedy.” My gut twisted in knots. I knew that this day would come; I didn’t think it would come so soon.
Waves of dismay immediately rippled through the Ghost Ship community. My social media feeds were alight: “This show must not happen,” wrote one friend. “I would love for this not to happen for at least another decade, if possible,” wrote another. When journalist and 48 Hills Publisher Marke Bieschke
engaged Chabon on Twitter, Chabon replied — seemingly in the hope of appeasing the growing backlash — that the project was in its earliest stages. He also noted that it would be adapted by Elizabeth Weil, a journalist who wrote a long and detailed story, ostensibly about Ghost Ship, for the New York Times Magazine.
But to the friends and families of the deceased, that detail just made the situation worse: For many of us, that piece had been the most upsetting of all the Ghost Ship coverage. Journalists must choose which parts of stories to focus on, to be sure, but Weil had chosen to zero in almost solely on the plight of Max Harris, a defendant in the criminal trial stemming from the fire. The way Weil’s reporting made barely any mention of the 36 victims left me and everyone I know feeling hollowed. In framing the story around Harris, it felt like those we lost in the fire were on the fringe of their own story.
So when Waldman followed up on Twitter, asking community members to email feedback to her on the project, we did. I sent her a long, deeply personal letter. I wrote about injustice.
I tried to tell her exactly what I had found myself writing in the weeks following the fire — that Ghost Ship is about much more than tragedy. It’s a story about artists, musicians and performers creating work entirely separate from commercial processes. Each artist performing that night had honed their craft to a fine point, but because their music had little value in commercial realms, earning a living from their work was impossible. They kept making art anyway.
Ghost Ship is also a story about housing injustice, and the rising tide of class and income inequality that increasingly strangles the Bay Area’s artistic spirit with each passing year. It is about the evertightening choke hold on spaces that showcase experimental art, music and performance. Most of all, it is about people who gather together, in spite of it all, to experience community that thrives on honesty of art and depth of expression, not dollars earned or drinks sold.
For two people who are so disconnected from the noncommercial, DIY arts scene that organized that night’s event to profit from telling Ghost Ship’s story simply felt unjust. And the potential for yet another story to focus on Harris — particularly a story with such a wide reach — felt like an outright betrayal.
It is to Chabon and Waldman’s credit that not only did they listen to the community, they took swift corrective action. Within days, Waldman announced that they were canceling the project.
So what have we learned here?
Waldman and Chabon are both talented storytellers, and I believe they conceptualized this project with the best of intentions. But impact outweighs intent, especially when victims’ families and loved ones are still struggling with the trauma of loss — and, in some cases, with protracted litigation. Any attempt to retell the Ghost Ship story must center on, give voice to and consider the input of the survivors, friends, families and community members who will forever be marked by the fire.
The past week’s events also speak to a larger conversation we are having, as a culture and society, about authenticity and ownership. What does it mean to lay claim to a tragedy? What is appropriate, and what is appropriation? Does it depend on who profits, or on who controls the narrative? Who speaks for whom?
As a writer and storyteller myself, these questions are always front of mind. I don’t have firm answers; I’m actually certain firm answers don’t exist. But I know we must keep considering these thorny issues of narrative and ownership, and we must take them seriously. To discount or disregard them is the path toward injustice.
On Dec. 2, I joined a group of friends at a small club in San Francisco. It was the third anniversary of the fire, but the first time I attended any kind of remembrance or memorial gathering. I had avoided them in the past, because I felt I could not bear them.
This time I gathered with my friends. We talked about our lives, our city, about the friends we had lost and about the friends we still have. Some of us cried; all of us laughed. We listened to the music our friends made and the music that got us, the survivors, through the fire’s aftermath.
Those we lost in the fire are gone, but not forgotten. Their spirit lives on in their remembrance, and in the art they left behind. They are immune to erasure. We will see to that.