An interview with Honors Alumni Caullen Hudson by Allison Scott
Can you tell us a little about your journey after graduating in 2013? What did you plan to do, what are you actually doing now, and how did you end up where you are?
My journey post-undergrad was more or less in three phrases. The first two years out of school I mainly worked on freelance film productions—independent and smaller productions mostly—while teaching fitness classes and slowly building Soapbox Productions and Organizing, which would eventually be my full time work. Even before high school, I knew I wanted to do something in the arts or entertainment as well as push for radical social change in some capacity. Though freelancing and teaching classes wasn’t bringing in the big bucks, I did enjoy the independence and space it gave me to learn more about Chicago and develop some filmmaking skills that I didn’t foster as much while in school.
In 2015 I went back to DePaul to get a master’s in Sociology, which helped me gain a better understanding of the root causes, histories, theoretical frameworks, and even legislation behind various interrelated systems and social issues. Most importantly, it helped me to better understand and conduct not only actual social research but qualitative interviewing and creative pathways to present important information. A big driver for going back to school was to strengthen those skills in order to strengthen what SoapBox could become. It was an attempt to connect the academic space to the creative to the movement without the bureaucracy and ivory tower hierarchy of academia, but with the resources and platform. During and after grad school was when I was able to put more energy into SoapBox and become more involved in movement spaces in Chicago, learning from amazing activists, organizers, and organizations. Now, five years after grad school this month, I’m running SoapBox full-time as the Executive Producer (or Executive Director, in traditional non-profit language), making films, organizing with grassroots campaigns, creating workshops, recording podcasts, and developing other media strategies that are hopefully as educational and entertaining as they are radical and transformative.
You completed an Honors Senior Thesis called “What’s Beef?” What was that project about, and how did that research shape what you do now?
“What’s Beef?” is a documentary film that serves as a critical analysis of the common critiques of American gangsta rap from the 1980s to the early 2010s. Using the pioneering rap group NWA as a site, the film highlights the emergence of the “gangsta rap” genre in the late 80’s as a social, political, and cultural response to white supremacy, specific anti-Black policies in the “war on drugs,” neoliberalism at large, and other interrelated systemic harms in an American context.
Originally an academic paper, the documentary examines the reality behind some of the more criticized images/themes of gangsta rap and takes a deep dive into NWA’s forceful breakthrough into mainstream popular culture within the timely context of their fame.
In many ways, the film is foundational to much of the work I do with SoapBox and more generally how I see the world. I believe that at a baseline everything is political; therefore, it’s important to be able to dissect, understand, and challenge popular culture in a way that makes sense of the world with a sense of nuance, history, and humanity.
Can you tell us more about the nonprofit you created, SoapBox Productions & Organizing?
SoapBox Productions and Organizing is a film and social activism 501c3 nonprofit specializing in multimedia storytelling for structural social change.
Our mission is to utilize media to power, frame, and sustain social movements that advance holistic solutions to root problems. In tandem with grassroots organizing efforts for racial, economic, and social justice, SoapBox delivers emotional impact storytelling for liberation. We produce documentaries, fiction films, podcasts, articles, and community-based programming that intend to educate, agitate, inspire, and ultimately transform.
When I left DePaul in undergrad, that concluded my job at the Ray Meyer Fitness and Recreation Center (shout out!) Seniors filled out some end-of-the-year form that included your goals after graduation. I put, “make movies and end capitalism.” I didn’t quite do the latter but I learned that SoapBox was my way of blending those two worlds, as paradoxical as it may have seemed to many at the time. I don’t think of the work we do at SoapBox as “accomplishments” or specific markers of success but I do think what we’re trying to do, as well as the people and organizations we’re in community with, is important and has revolutionary potential.
We want audiences and anyone who engages in our work to have an emotional response and fulfill a call to action, but we also want folks to believe and know it’s possible to build a society that prioritizes well-being, life-affirming institutions, and collective economies of care instead of profits, hierarchy, power, and violence. The latter is normalized and propagandized to us as the only way life can be, but I believe it to be unsustainable if we want an actual informed democracy to thrive with dignity and autonomy.
Film, television, media, and storytelling have the power to create as well as reinforce ideas, so we may as well be grounded and authentic with how we communicate them and align that with a praxis of liberation.
And finally, you were asked to speak at this year’s Honors Senior Gala. What advice would you give to the class of 2023?
I still have imposter syndrome from that experience, but had also had so much fun! My advice to the class of 2023 is to be bold. My advice is to care for yourselves and care for your people because we legitimately do not have time for an alternative. Whatever your passion is, whatever your future industry is, make a larger demand for how you want society to be because we can and we will make up something better. We have to work towards a world where rest and peace are normalized and prioritized because if we don’t, generation after generation will continue this cycle of replicative individual, community, and global harm. No matter if your work is in education, in the medical field, in fine art, in business, my advice is to fight for others, name power, and make direct and explicit stances to create a more liberatory future for people and the planet. If we do that and do that consistently, I believe we can organize and create new conditions that shape human behavior on a collective level. One of my favorite quotes from Mariame Kaba states, “Write yourself into history. Not because you’re vain, but because you’re important, your work is important, you’re building off the work of your ancestors, and someone will be building off of yours.” We have to simultaneously learn from our ancestors, act in the present, and keep future generations in mind.
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