I Don’t Think We’re Talking About the Same Thing Anymore: #Blacklivesmatter and the Misunderstanding of What Protest Looks Like

If you’ve been online at all for the past two weeks, or watched the news, or talked to someone, or are part of civilization right now and not just wandering off into the Wild like Reese Witherspoon, you are aware of the events that are taking place surrounding the Grand Jury decisions in the cases of Eric Garner, a black man choked to death on camera by New York Police officers, and Michael Brown, a young black man gunned down by an Officer in Ferguson. Neither of these Officers were indicted, and the results have sparked protests and visible unrest throughout the nation, including social media hashtags like #blacklivesmatter, #handsupdontshoot, and #icantbreathe.

Ferguson was the catalyst for the social media discussion and viral protest, and then the Eric Garner decision in New York only further escalated the anger that many Americans felt at seeing a gross and corrupt system that is allowing Police Officers to go free of punishment for taking black lives. Now, if you type those hashtags or names or keywords into any search engine, you are sure to see pictures of people holding signs, doing “die-ins” (laying on the ground in large groups in public spaces) or school walkouts, all over the country. However, I believe in the heart of this social unrest and protest, there is a serious disconnect happening in which #blacklivesmatter is meaning two separate things for two different populations, and it is going ignored under the illusion of true solidarity.

The “#blacklivesmatter” and “#icantbreathe” hashtags can be understood as cultural texts within the social media landscape, meaning that they are works open to interpretation and different use based off of a constructed meaning by each individual who is using them. They were started with a very deliberate intention and meaning, but once they hit the social media sphere and become active texts, that original meaning no longer matters as much as the new meaning that will be ascribed, or coded, onto them by twitter, Facebook, and Instagram users. The disconnect that I think exists is that generally, “Black Twitter” and people of color are seeing an opportunity to express sentiments that they have felt for years, and are witnessing a peak in an ongoing battle. On the other hand, there are well intentioned white people who are having a reactionary response to these recent events, and instead of understanding that there is a flawed and racist institutional hierarchy, and that ALL #blacklivesmatter within the oppressive hierarchy, they are reacting only to THESE specific deaths, and THESE specific injustices. When white people are saying #icantbreathe they’re saying how awful Eric Garner’s death was and seeking justice for the cop that killed him. When Black people use it they’re saying #icantbreathe day to day in a system I’ve been suffocating under my whole life.

Most white people right now are reacting like Rowdy Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE when he puts on the glasses for the first time and sees how fucked up everything is. People of color are like the underground resistance in the movie who have known that this shit has been going on since long before the glasses to make it visible even existed. While the coalition and welcoming of any people willing to fight for a cause is welcome, I believe that these separate and mostly unspoken perspectives are allowing an opportunity for social change at an institutional level to become watered down to gathering masses of angry individuals being angry together, unaware of how to take the next step toward change beyond hashtags and awareness. I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying that awareness is a bad thing, but it is the first step toward making real change, and when awareness is just being raised among other folks who are already aware, there is less of a movement toward change and more of a stagnant mass unrest that eventually disperses.

When using the label of “Protest,” as opposed to a large gathering of people making noise, I think there needs to be context of what successful protests have looked like in the past, and to understand that on a fundamental level, most, but not all, of what is happening right now surrounding the Grand Jury decisions, is not a successful Protest. Malcom Gladwell outlined in a 2010 New Yorker article how Civil Rights protests (which are pretty much the established aesthetic of what a protest looks like for millennials) were organized systems, with dedication, strong-ties and relationships between human beings, and disciplined authority structures designed to have leadership to make hard decisions and direct the networks of protestors. This system of organized protest, much more than a Facebook invite to meet up in the campus student center with a sign, were effective at seeking ways in which people within the power structure of flawed institutions could be directly taken to task and held accountable to use their power for change. There was dedication and there were organized and directed political objectives, which goes beyond the images our generation has been fed of the million man march and even three days of peace and music being all that was necessary to make change.

Twitter does not hold anyone accountable. Facebook does not take authority figures to task. These protests are becoming, quite literally when you look and the cardboard signs and t-shirts, physical manifestations of hashtag “revolution.” On my campus, I have seen people do a “die-in” at the student center, and know that 4.5 minutes of silence were organized on the plaza through a Facebook organized meet-up, and saw statuses glorifying the “protests” for being able to just be there with everybody and hug strangers and share the moment. Well after the self-congratulatory stranger hugging is over and the groups disperse, these weak dies are broken and not one authority figure or hierarchical system has been challenged or taken to task. The protests were not even anywhere close to the Administration building or campus police force, directly addressing anyone who, even on the smallest scale, could make any kind of real systemic change. It’s nice to spread tweets and pictures letting people know you’re mad, but being mad doesn’t disrupt anything, it just creates noise.

If the system of injustice is a man (more like “The Man”) walking down the street and you see him, standing behind him and shouting will just allow him to walk away. Following behind him and shouting will keep creating noise, but he can just as easily keep walking. But by standing directly in front of The Man and shouting in his face, refusing to get out of his way until he makes a substantial change to the situation that meets your demands, you have just created change. You forced someone in a position of power to make a change. It could create conflict. He could punch you square in the fucking face. But I think maybe that’s what protest is. True protest is the willingness to get in the way and challenge authority, to risk getting punched square in the face, and to get back up as many times as you can and repeat, until the system of oppression that’s punching you has a broken fucking hand.

You can tweet or hold a sign, reminding everyone, and maybe even yourself having a crisis of privilege realization, that #blacklivesmatter, but what can you actually organize and accomplish that forces a historically racist institutional hierarchy to change on a fundamental level so that people know for a fact when they leave their home that all #blacklivesmatter?

The last thing I want to say is that my grandparents and most of their generation were aware of the way Black people were treated daily. They participated in it. Not everybody, but definitely a lot of old white people were fully aware, and didn’t give a shit, and still don’t. If there were hashtags notifying them that the Little Rock 9 were being integrated, they still would’ve opposed it. But the protests that constituted Civil Rights Movement, because of the organization and leaders within all oppressed communities including Chicano, Asian, Black, Women, and all of their intersections, directly attacked institutions and racial hierarchies. They took over buildings that represented oppression, they disrupted the system by getting in front of its leaders and forcing change, and they made or changed policy that was the direct source of institutional oppression. While not everything worked, or was perfect, or successful, the change that was made has a lasting effect and is engrained now as slight improvements within oppressive institutions that still require overhaul. The past protests forced new systems and laws into place that racist and ignorant people just had to learn how to tolerate, and still have to until they die off and leave the world in younger generations’ hands.

There still is a long way to go, but if the best we can do is tweet and post our frustration to be read only by others who feel it, and organize cathartic gatherings that refuse to directly challenge oppressors in exchange for the “feeling” of doing something powerful, then we’re failing to take the necessary steps to evolve the successful protests of the past, and all of the injustice that everyone is so angry about remains in place. If all we can do is tweet and post at the system, then all it’s going to do is block us and hide us from its newsfeed.

Discussing Appropriation: Dear White People, Mastadon, and Halloween.

Note: This you may want to check out last week’s post on appropriation of “booty,” which this post will somewhat be a continuation of. 

On the lead in to Halloween, college campus student organizations and social media outlets of more liberal minded folk attempt to raise as much awareness as they can about the racism behind dressing up as another culture as a Halloween costume. This usually includes things like white folks wearing black face, or sombreros, or knockoff Native American head dresses and garments, all as costumes, with no respect to the fact that they are portrayals of non-white races, ethnicities, cultures and experiences for the sake of entertainment and exploitation by (usually) white people outside of those groups. Dressing up like this, on Halloween or any other day, means that those people dressing up are committing a racist act, and therefore an act of violence against another group.

Sold online at Spirithalloween.com

So first of all, I want to take a moment personally to say fuck you to those people. But second of all, I want to make it clear, now that Halloween is over, that my “fuck you,” along with the social justice work done by people trying to raise awareness for this issue constantly, is falling on deaf ears.

On Friday night as I drove down to Old Town Ft. Collins’, where the costumed student population congregated for Halloween festivities, I saw three individuals who were proudly dressed as two Ku Klux Klan members, in full hoods and robe, each holding the ends of a rope that was wrapped around the neck of the third individual, an African American male, with a smile on his face. And don’t misunderstand this as a white person in black face, to be absolutely clear it was two white men and one black man, participating hand in hand, or more accurately neck in rope.

Read that again and let it sink the fuck in, please. ‘Cause I still haven’t completely come to terms with it, myself.

These folks, mingling joyfully with the crowd, were the bright racist cherry on top of a day filled with loads of kids on and around campus wearing their sombrero/poncho combos (#1 Most Common Offender I saw), and cheap colorful “Native” feathers (#2). I would hope that in a perfect world, someone said something to the KKK triplet, and that the reason they were walking away wasn’t because of crowd dispersal but was because they were publicly shamed. I’d like to say that these costumed white people were just ignorant, waiting to be informed about the problems with their poor decision, and recognizing why it was wrong. However, I don’t think we live in a perfect world. I don’t believe that it’s right to slight someone for ignorance, but it is acceptable slight them for refusing to amend it. These people all most likely saw or heard warnings against cultural appropriation on Halloween, and although ignorance and lack of understanding as to why it’s wrong may still may be a part of it, they didn’t think twice about the concerns of marginalized groups, and that’s just pure, mean, disrespectful hate.

Author Bell Hooks describes the commodification of Otherness, which is what is happening here with the appropriation of cultures and ethnicities as costumes, as being a spice or “seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (from Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance). Ethnicities that have become “Othered” to reinforce white supremacy become commodities to be consumed and exploited by dominant white culture, which is the mechanism through which appropriation expresses itself. Appropriation is a violent display of power and consumption, fueled by ignorance and lack of understanding of cultural contexts and historical injustices, with complete disregard by the participating individuals to correct their mistakes, or educate their ignorance.

So backtracking a little bit, the timely release of the independent film “Dear White People” directly dealt with the issue of appropriation. SPOILER ALERT. The climax of the film was a frat party, based off of numerous real parties that are displayed in the end credits, where white students get together in full black face, costumed as various “black” caricatures such as rappers and gangsters, in order to push back against black students who are protesting campus racism. In the climactic scene, much of the films “say more show less” style flips around, and the implications of what is happening are left to sit with the audience for contemplation. The only moment of the scene where a character directly articulates any kind of way to feel toward the audience is when CoCo says that for a night, the white people got what they wanted, which was to be black. Ultimately, the character is suggesting that appropriation happens because white people really just want to be black.

Now this is a complex scene, with much more being communicated visually than just this sentiment, however because it’s the only verbally articulated understanding of the situation, it’s worth addressing. I would argue that it is overly simplified, and problematic to communicate to a white audience who has no problem with cultural appropriation.

While it seems that in pop culture, there is a need to be more “black” coming from artists like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and Iggy Azalea, who have appropriated aspects of hip-hop that are tied historically to black female artists, and who have claimed they were looking for a “black sound” while relegating black people to the background of their videos, none of this is as simple as just wanting to “be black.” There is a massive commodification of styles, and more importantly sexual features, that have been condemned on the black bodies that they have been linked to, but are now being sold as products on the white bodies that are trying to claim ownership of them. The root of these changes is not artists wanting to be black, its artists and their companies wanting to make money by exploiting the Other.

The appropriation by white female artists trying to sell their bodies by promoting enhanced sexuality that has been condemned on black female bodies has sparked a pushback by Black female artists like Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé to attempt to take control and ownership of their bodies, and their previously condemned sexuality which they recognize is being commodified for whites. While it is still debatable about what they are accomplishing by claiming feminism and sexual liberation, it is clear that they are attempting to regain control of their own bodies, suggesting that if commodification is going to happen, then they will be the ones who will have control and power over their product.

But even this resistance is now appropriated, as evident by the video for Mastadon’s single “The Motherload,” in which Minaj-esque dancers saturate the screen, with full slow motion twerking and booty shaking, culminating in a dance battle with their dancing bodies on full display. This video is evident of the same kind of ignorance based power play that comes with dressing up to mock another Race or culture. Mastadon is appropriating the visuals, no matter how problematic they may be, that Nicki Minaj attempted to use to regain control of the black female body. “Motherload” delegitimizes and mocks her attempts at agency, while profiting off of the trendiness of her image and video. The drummer for Mastadon told Pitchfork that he hadn’t seen the Minaj “Anaconda” video, which if honest, still leaves the director and all other band members to know exactly what they are capitalizing on.

Submission from Mastadon’s “twerking” contest.

Mastadon received pushback, and controversy was created, but they took that opportunity to further capitalize, launching a contest that encouraged their largely white male audience to display their best “twerking,” leading to pictures openly mocking the Minaj visuals once again, as well as creating “asstadon” booty short, and a t-shirt of an enlarged-booty witch, with a pumpkin taking the place of her butt, just in time for Halloween.

This appropriation in pop culture is coming from the same place as Black Face. Whether it’s Mastodon appropriating black bodies to recall images of “Anaconda,” or white female pop-stars singing about their booty and desire for a “black sound,” it’s the same supremacist philosophies behind different forms of expression, and it continues to happen.

When it comes to pop culture, you have the option to vote with your dollar. You have the option to not participate in the exploitation race and culture by not buying what their selling, and by not contributing to corporations profits so that they produce more of the same at the expense of Others.

However, when it comes to the micro-scale, like seeing friends and colleagues dressed as “Mexicans” and “Indians” as Halloween costumes, the struggle to do the right thing increases as the desire to avoid personal confrontation weighs down. But we need to be able to have these discussions and tell these people what they’re doing is wrong. And if these messages continue to fall on deaf ears, then maybe we need to step up our game. Maybe we meet their pushback with more pushback, by any means necessary. Or maybe we just keep having the conversations with hopes that it all works out in the end… That doesn’t seem likely, but I’m not really sure there’s a definite answer.

I know that one thing you can do is go see movies like “Dear White People,” and let studios and people in power know that we want more of that kind of media made available, because while it’s not perfect, and no movie ever will be, we need to support more media that continue to try to have discussions about race, gender, sexuality, and class in ways that audiences can comprehend, and that keep a healthy and constructive conversation going.

Resistance is Futile: Mainstream Assimilation and Asking Who Can Participate in the Booty?

The photograph above, used for shitty attempts at click baiting  an article on Billboard.com about the singing competition show THE VOICE, displays the three female judges who have been a part of the show at different times. Two of the artists, Shakira and Christina Aguilera, are Latina, yet the show has managed to eerily morph all three of these stars images into what is virtually the same bleach blonde, fair skinned, Northwest European ideal of beauty. Whether it is part of the shows attempts at keeping a brand that requires their female judge to look a certain way, or if it is an image template that has proven to be a successful marketing tool and has been adopted for that reason by each pop star, they have all participated in assimilation toward the “normal” ideals of beauty and perfection. Either way, this assimilated image is not an isolated incident that is reduced to the images produced by THE VOICE, but it is instead a symptom of a larger problem that has faced “crossover” pop stars for as long as they have existed.

A “crossover” star is a label attached to a star who, because of their race specifically, is considered an outsider to mainstream culture. Mary Beltrán discusses this concept of the “crossover” star and its roots in what was dubbed the “Latin Wave” of the 1990s in her book “Latina/o Stars in the U.S. Eyes.” As Latina stars were making their way into American pop culture, they were not seen as being part of mainstream culture the way a white tar was, but rather a niche market that was permeating mainstream culture. The idea of the “Latin Wave” became that these “crossover” stars were accepted as viable moneymakers in mainstream culture, but were still only really marketable to Latina/o people. The alternative to being seen as just for a niche market was assimilating into the mainstream ideals of what sold and what was marketable to “mainstream, or white, audiences. Through assimilation, these crossover stars could break away from being seen as specifically “Latin” stars, and be seen as regular ol’ run of the mill Hollywood stars. However, assimilation meant the star giving up part of the ethnic background that helped define them in order to be accepted as ethnically vague, or some kind of “exotic” white.

The case study provided by Beltrán is a focus on Jennifer Lopez, possibly the biggest and most successful name to come out of the “Latin Wave.” She describes how J. Lo was first embraced as a Latin star, which not only meant focus on her Latina ethnicity in music and Hollywood roles, but also meant that sexual traits like the “booty,” usually emphasized and eroticized to create the “Spicy Latina” or “Spitfire” stereotype, where put directly under the spotlight and used to market Lopez in the mainstream. There was a constant battle between Lopez and the apparent need for assimilation, and a visible public struggle where her re-branding and marketing attempts to hide her Latina ethnic traits and qualities could be measured against her early interviews where she proudly embraced and promoted her Latina-ness. Lopez was compelled to speak about her ethnicity early on, usually taking full advantage of the emphasis on her derrière, but as she became more successful she began to emphasize her Bronx roots, as opposed to Latin roots, and her Hollywood roles became less Latina specific and more ethnically unidentifiable.

If this case study was to be continued, you can see today that the battle between assimilation and holding onto ethnic roots still plagues J. Lo. As evident by her two most recent, and I think highly contradictory music videos, she shows that she still struggles with the need to market herself as a successful commodity, and the need to promote pride in her ethnic roots while also struggling with the need to promote positive body images for women, and use her status to discuss issues of sexual liberation and agency while occupying an ethnic female body.

Lopez’s first video, “I Luh Ya Papi,” uses the title’s language, as well as the inclusion of two backup dancers who have emphasized Latin vernacular in discussion with a white male video director, to overtly display a Latin ethnic background right from the start. The discussion J.Lo and her backup dancers have with the director is attempting to challenge the typical commodification of the Latina body, speaking against objectifying women in videos, and attempting to reverse the roles so that men are objectified and that women are portrayed as the successful “players” with swarms of sexualized men surrounding them. Lopez openly acknowledges here that she recognizes problems with the portrayal of the female body, and is attempting to make a shift away from that. However, in her next video, she seems to succumb to the very objectification she finds so frustrating, and possibly finds it necessary in order to sell the commodity known as J.Lo.

In the video simply titled “Booty,” Lopez brings direct emphasis to, you guessed it, her Booty, as well as the Booty of Iggy Azalea, who is featured in the video with her. There is not any attempt though, to associate the booty with any kind of ethnic origins. Whereas in the 90s J Lo may have used her butt as a point of ethnic pride, now it is reduced to a simple object of lust, up for grabs by any ethnic or racial background. This is especially prevalent given that Lopez created the video with Azalea, who is criticized for putting on the performance of an Ethnic identity in her public appearance. Along with people like Miley Cyrus and Meghan Trainor, Azalea is part of a current Booty-centric wave that seems to consist of white female artists taking pride in that “boom that all the boys chase,” which seen as exclusive to females of color.

There is a long history of white beauty ideals that has placed female bodies of color as exotic and Othered due to focus by white mainstream culture on enlarged breasts, and most importantly butts, which were displayed as gross exotic fascinations for a dominant white culture who’s ideals of beauty were seen as the exact opposite of an ethnic female body. Since first contact with African women, whites have used black female bodies as the undeniable Other, or the polar opposite, of the fair skinned white females with smaller sexual features. White culture used women of color, such as the Hottentot Venus, to create a racist binary of what beautiful looks like, with white bodies being the ideal. The ideas of assimilation and beauty stem from the black and white body binary, where in order to be successful in the mainstream, or at the very least have an opportunity to try, women of color become as close as they can physically to the white ideal which has been force fed down our throats as what beauty looks like, attempting to get rid of the enlarged features of their bodies, that are used to identify black female bodies as an Other.

However, there is a collision happening right now that becomes emphasized by the Jennifer Lopez/Iggy Azalea video. Where females of color, even J. Lo, have seen themselves forced into a position of assimilation, giving up their ethnic features and traits in order to be more “white” and more successful, it seems now the white stars are beginning to appropriate the features that have for so long been seen as ugly, and Other than what it means to be beautiful and successful, in order to in fact become more successful. Trainor’s video is even seen as inspirational for destroying the traditional notions of a beautiful body. However, she’s not singing or talking about all plus size women, she’s singing about women who are plus size in the right places, meaning white women who are now taking pride in large boobs and booty, that have forever been shunned on black females.

I believe this trend is sparking a need to renegotiate who has the right to use female bodies of color in their music videos. Something like Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video, with whatever problems it may have, is possibly attempting to own the black female body, and the booty, which has seemingly been reduced to a prop to be exploited in the background of Miley Cyrus and Meghan Trainor. Minaj is taking a more aggressive approach of ownership and agency, while Lopez is perhaps opening the doors saying that all females can participate in the Booty. Coming from a background where Lopez had to sacrifice the Ethnic pride that came with her booty, perhaps accepting white artists who wish to use booty to their advantage is a way for Lopez to be able to regain ownership and discussion of her own. The question that arises is that if every female gets to claim ownership of the booty, regardless of ethnic identity, does the booty mean anything anymore, or has it been reduced and commodified into just another mainstream sexual object.

Borg Cube approaching the Enterprse. If you don’t get the reference… Google.

It seems the Booty trend is coming at pop culture like a Borg collective hell bent on assimilating all Booty’s in its path. I see someone like Jennifer Lopez, with a long history of Booty politics, who may see assimilation of the booty into a larger collective where everyone is able to participate as finally being allowed to use her booty as a successful tool, not just as a Latina, but as an artist just like everyone else. For Lopez, there is no longer a need to hide the booty, however assimilation of the booty into mainstream means that any Ethnic background it is tied to is now lost.

On the other hand, Nicki Minaj sees how the booty, with a long and rich history tied specifically to black female bodies, is being manipulated and used for the purpose of mainstream commodification. She is facing the same booty collective that faced J. Lo, telling Minaj that her booty will be assimilated and adapted, or shared by all females to be used in the mainstream, for whatever purpose, with no respect to the racialized history that applies to it. Minaj is using “Anaconda” to aggressively say back to those attempting to assimilate the booty for their own needs that they have no right, and that the ethnic female body is not a commodity or a product to be sold by the white mainstream that has denied it as an Other for so long. Minaj is resisting the assimilation of the black booty into mainstream as a de-contextualized product.

In other words…

I Luh Ya Worf.

Crime Drama and Priming: Teaching Viewers How to Recognize the Bad Guy

This week, FOX premiered their new Batman derived TV series GOTHAM, focusing on Detective Jim Gordon’s arrival to the corrupt (and completely non-functional, given Batman’s entire 75 year history of Gotham Police failing to do their jobs) Gotham Police Department. This show joins the countless other series on TV focusing on the drama of being a police officer, and providing viewers with stories about what crime looks like, and more importantly giving faces to the heroes and the criminals.

As described in a 2008 study published by Travis L. Dixon, which focused on television news stories specifically, despite declining numbers, crime continues to be a concern for Americans due to overrepresentation of crime stories in news reporting. Furthermore, overrepresentation of race, as in disproportionate reporting on African Americans as perpetrators with white people in positive roles or as victims, causes increased anti-African American sentiments when it comes to crime and punishment of African American perpetrators. To simplify, the skewed representation of people of color as perpetrators and whites as victims or heroes starts to prime viewers to understand people of color as a threat while they begin to sympathize more with whites, and will take the side of the whites in favor of harsher punishments for people of color.

The news latches on to these stories in order to entertain their viewers, and they begin to form master narratives out of crime that feature whites as victims to perpetrators of color. This kind of crime story needs to be created in order to compete with the alternative of cop and crime drama shows, many which feature the same types of priming but in a more stylized manner. Many of these shows and news reports activate a schema that exists inside of viewer’s minds, or preconceived ideas about a “type” of person being shown, so that the viewer can easily and readily identify who is the criminal. The viewer needs to differentiate between good and bad so that they can more easily be entertained.

The reason GOTHAM intrigues me is that in a way it breaks the formula of association with bad as black and good as white. There still is a focus on two male cop protagonists as the good guys, but the criminals they face, as they have always predominately been in the Batman mythos, are other white folks. There are white victims (like um, Batman’s parents, who I have now seen murdered so many times in so many mediums that I’m just kind of desensitized to Batman’s entire purpose of existence), but the people committing the crimes are also white, and break the typical form set by the media of a hyper aggressive black male going after the poor defenseless whites.

Now there are a few things that I am still trying to put together, one of which is the role of Jada Pinkett-Smith as Fish Mooney, who was created specifically for this show outside of the comic source material. Mooney is an African-American character who does not fit into any major “types” for African American women. However, what is problematic is that she fits perfectly into the “Dragon Woman” stereotype usually assigned to Asian American women characters. The Dragon Woman is mysterious, she’s deceptive, she’s in a position of power which she executes in a brutal fashion, and she’s shady as hell. Mooney fits all of these descriptions, and for Christ’s sake, her lair is in Gotham’s China Town. So although GOTHAM breaks form so far by representing crimes in a non-typical manner, it is partially due to the fact that there are just not many black actors cast, and the biggest one that is cast is being characterized in a fashion usually reserved for Asian women. This could be positive in the way that applying a stereotype to someone it doesn’t apply to normally diversifies representation by showing no one group or people fit into that type, which in this instance is the Dragon Woman Type. It could also still be just as negative by portraying a woman of color in power as villainous and shifty, as well as continuing to reinforce the elements of the stereotype for further production.

The other thing that caught my attention was the inclusion of Renee Montoya, a fan favorite from the comics, the only major person of color besides Mooney, and an openly gay character. As a reader of the comics I knew about her sexual orientation and wondered if they would directly reference her as Lesbian, in the first episode nonetheless. SPOILER ALERT! I was disappointed that when her sexuality was written into the show, it was written in a way that her dialogue with the male protagonist’s fiancé about their past gay relationship turned her sexual orientation into something mysterious and shameful. The show managed to use Montoya’s sexual orientation as just another device to assist in creating the mysterious crime Noir atmosphere that they are attempting to create. Something like that begins to prime viewers to view homosexuality, or bisexuality in the case of future Mrs. Gordon, as illegitimate. It becomes just another mysterious element of a character’s past as opposed to a sincere identity that can function within the hetero-normative hegemony of the rest of the show.

This is all only after the first episode, so it will be interesting to see what direction the show takes what was introduced here, but they have an opportunity to showcase a different kind of crime paradigm. Instead of showing the person of color vs. white victims that viewers are all too familiar with, there is an opportunity to diversify the face of crime in Gotham. This also means though that they cannot keep showing white perpetrators as poor whites, or as just insane and misunderstood. With origin stories for Batman’s Rogues Galery underway, the path of white folk who aren’t really criminals, just misunderstood, or financially poor white people who are just as much of a problem as other disenfranchised groups, could easily be followed. Gotham can break the mold that primes audiences to see certain types as perps and certain types as victims, but they have a long road ahead of them still.

You can watch GOTHAM for yourself here.

“That Queen” Lafayette Reynolds: Developing Personhood Within A “Type”

 “Everybody else in this fucking town’s falling in love, and getting engaged, and having babies. Has it ever fucking occured to you that Lafayette, that Queen that make all you white heterosexuals laugh and feel good about yourselves, has it fucking ever occured to you that maybe I want a piece of happiness too?”  

– Lafayette Reynolds, True Blood, Season 7 Ep. 5

The summer of 2014 welcomed the final season of the HBO vampire/horror/fantasy/soft-core porn series True Blood, and as a viewer since its inception, I have to say it was not disappointing. Don’t get me wrong though, that’s not meant in a good way. It had been on a downhill slide for a while now, and it successfully maintained that momentum all the way to the end, which was just a few dancing Ewoks away from being completely disingenuous and emotionally inauthentic cheese. (Just kidding. You know I love me some Yub Nub.) However, one moment genuinely shocked me, when after being caught having sex with Jessica’s (a hetero-female character) boyfriend, Lafayette was given dialogue so unsubtle that it borderline shattered the fourth wall, where the character directly addressed the pervasive problem, throughout all media, of Queer “type” characters and their limited dimensionality as human beings.

“Type” characters are seen not just with LGBTQ characters, but with racial minorities, as well as with gender and class, and they are seen anytime a character is acting the way that dominant society repeatedly tells us they are supposed to act. There are select traits and features are emphasized to more easily identify the character as Other than what is dominant, and there is no development or growth in terms of the character’s story, or in terms of their internal development as a person. In other words, the character exists mainly as an object that reinforces what is normal by explicitly acting out what is familiar as different and therefore odd.

Examples of the “Type” characters can often be found in mainstream representations of Queer characters, where they mainly exist to inform the heterosexuality of the main characters as normal. As Angelique Harris discusses in her essay titled “I’m a Militant Queen”: Queering Blaxploitation Films, in many films of the 70’s, the Queer characters were used for comedic relief and for juxtaposition with the protagonists as a reminder of just how masculine or how NOT Queer the main characters were. Derogatory words like faggot were used not just to refer to Queer characters, but to insult the hetero-masculine characters, as if equating them with the “faggots” is a threat to their masculinity and to their being “normal.”

The legacy of this comedic Queer, which Harris names “The Jester,” whose comedy is rooted only in their sexuality and their Otherness from the “normal” main characters has survived past the Blaxploitation era films that Harris discusses, and is most currently personified in Lafayette. Lafayette exists primarily as comedic relief, with most of his comedy being based on his sexuality and the outgoing and constantly gleeful personality that is suggested to accompany being a gay man. Because he is an African American gay man he is made into a “queen” by being given flamboyant gestures and an emphasized accent. He is dressed in makeup and clothes that would be considered feminine, and he is a deviant to social norms through being a drug dealer and user, which can be equated with the deviancy of his sexuality from the hetero social norm. However, although Lafayette fits so perfectly into the comedic Queer, or Jester “type,” I believe that what True Blood has done with the character is managed to successfully renegotiate the place of that “type” within a narrative, and give multiple dimensions to develop Lafayette into a human being, beyond being only defined by his “type.”

The creative team behind True Blood used the “type” character of Lafayette as an opportunity to have an open discussion with audiences about Queer representation in the media. I think it’s evident by the fact that Lafayette was supposed to die early on, as he does in the Sookie Stackhouse books, but instead is kept around until the very end (spoiler alert?), that the writers understood the unique opportunity they had with this type of character and the creative freedom granted to them on a premium channel like HBO to redefine what the comedic queer character could be. The show has offered alternatives to Lafayette’s Queer representation throughout the seasons by offering multiple Queer characters, vampire and human both, who don’t so easily and directly fit into historic Queer “types,” and have given Lafayette storylines and interactions that move beyond his sexual orientation. Lafayette always maintains signifiers of his “Queerness,” but it becomes less about reinforcing the heteronormativity of the rest of the cast, and more about maintaining that although his Queer identity is a major part of his character it is not what completely defines him. His Queer identity at certain points even allows the writers to directly address bigotry and homophobia beyond the metaphor of humans prejudice toward vampires. Essentially, Lafayette is a multi-dimensional character, just like the rest of the cast, but also has to deal with the added problems of prejudice that accompany being Queer.

The pinnacle of the writers using Lafayette to address Queer representation came in the episode I have discussed, where he directly attacks the possible one dimensionality that his character could so easily become trapped in. When Lafayette asks Jessica if it has occurred that he wants love to, his character is openly negotiating between the audience and his “type,” asking at the very least that he can be recognized as more than a comedic prop. There is room for a Queer character who acts like a “Queen” and who finds comedic value within his or her persona, but what the True Blood writers argue through Lafayette is that these character types are unique individuals, and that they are actual human beings with fears and struggles and success and relationships, just like the main hetero-normative characters. Lafayette may fit into a “type,” but he is just one Queer representation among options as infinite as all of humanity. Lafayette exists within True Blood to start to make room for more complex and diverse Queer representation, starting with one familiar “type,” sending a message that whether a Queer character fits into a certain defined role or not, they are a fully developed human being, and should be treated as such.