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.

Black-Ish: Do Black Creators have a Responsibility to Challenge Hegemonic Media?

“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight! Matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight!”

– Civil Rights Activist Thomas “TNT” Todd, as sampled by Public Enemy in Fight the Power

American pop culture and media has long been, and continues to be, saturated with grossly narrow representations of people of color. Mainstream media is perpetually controlled by the dominant culture within the United States, which has always been straight, white, and male. It is up to this group of people to produce content, which usually reinforces their values and creates images for consumption by mass audiences that shape a hegemony based on this one groups experiences and ideals. Because dominant groups tend to produce this content that so closely reflects themselves, when it comes to producing content representing people outside of the hegemony, there is an overwhelming failure to represent non-dominant-group people as anything other than stereotypes or underdeveloped characters whose purpose is to somehow reinforce the supremacy of the dominant hegemony. However, dominant hegemony will always produce the need for counter hegemonic culture, that attempts to undermine or challenge the values and the problematic image produced in the mainstream. These counter hegemonic images are usually on the fringes of the mainstream, being consumed by limited audiences, and discussing specific issues and problems that are seen largely in the mainstream as only relevant to those specific groups of people as opposed to issues facing us all. Rarely are counter hegemonic productions and creators allowed access into the mainstream, voicing opinions of marginalized groups to large audiences. The most current case of counter-hegemonic media being given mainstream distribution is the ABC show “Black-Ish”, which will soon be followed by “Fresh Off The Boat”, also on ABC, focusing on Asian Americans. The issue I want to raise here by analyzing “Black-Ish” is that what is happening with these shows is the illusion of truly giving voices to marginalized groups.  Instead of allowing for truly subversive content, the heads of production over at Disney/ABC are tapping into a need for counter-hegemonic media, which includes voicing some of the common struggles and problems faced by people of color as tools for comedic effect, while maintaining dominant values in the shows underlying themes and messages, thus continuing to silence the voices of the marginalized groups as serious concerns.

Black-Ish follows a trend started by the Cosby show of representing African Americans, and more specifically African American families, as intelligent, successful, and loving, as opposed to poor, or violent, or buffoons, in order to counter these images that saturated the media. When the Cosby show aired, the black families seen on TV were either in the Ghetto and needed white aid to get out, or had made it out of poverty but the fact they now co-mingled with rich or middle class white people was a punchline. Many images of African Americans still portrayed them as comedic buffoons on TV, re-presenting old images of minstrels or “Coons.” Cosby understood how harmful these images were and saw a necessity to provide images that suggested the opposite about African Americans to mainstream white audiences. The Cosby show was born out of the need for counter images, and was successful in that it created a legacy of shows that followed which shifted representations of blacks more toward Cosby-ish types instead of overtly racist stereotypes, at least until the mid to late 90’s where buffoonish characters started to reappear. The Cosby show also had the negative effect however, of creating the trend of what Sut Jhally calls “enlightened racism.” The images that the Cosby show and its successors produced started to turn into those of the “exceptional” blacks, who were nice and familiar, and most importantly non-threatening to whites. The images also started to form sentiments, to be internalized by both whites and some African Americans as well, that blacks who didn’t make it only had themselves to blame, despite the race and class issues that existed during the times. Heavy focus on the Huxtables’ (Cosby’s family) as the ideal black family framed any Black family who didn’t fit into their high class way of life as failures. During a time where the Reagan conservative political atmosphere and philosophy of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” was hitting its peak, the Cosby show justified individualistic sentiments, ignoring societal inequalities. What was created by the Cosby show was a Catch-22 where positive representations of African Americans were needed, however they came at the cost of blaming non Cosby-ish African Americans for their own struggle, and ignoring the need for an overhaul of widespread institutional racism.

Fast forward a few decades and the need for positive images to fight the negative ones has become the need for diverse images to provide a full spectrum of representations of marginalized groups who are still reduced to certain stereotypes in the media. ABC has decided to return to the form that the Cosby show initiated using the backdrop of an upper/middle class familiar Black family to pose the question “What does it mean to be Black in America today?” However, they do not present a wide variety of Black characters from diverse backgrounds and cultures, the way that someone like Spike Lee did in Do the Right Thing when posing the same question in the 1989, and they do not address hard contemporary issues of racism, while instead framing the concerns of a father trying to preserve African American history and culture within his family as a comedic lost cause. The pilot of Black-Ish, while attempting to ask the question of what it means to be black, instead asks “What are you willing to give up to be American?”

So much of the pilot episode focused on being American and living the American dream, while simultaneously having almost every family member be an antagonist in the Dad’s mission to preserve black culture in his family. Outside of the domestic setting, the Dad had to put up with racism in the workplace (which was of comedic value for the show, of course), culminating in his conditional promotion that only got him advanced because he was black, which he was angry about but eventually accepted. The entire resolution of every issue in the episode was that even though he couldn’t change or preserve anything he set out to, it was just better to accept the racism and loss of black culture in the next generation, because really, we’re just all Americans. The end goal of “Black-Ish” was to latch on to the need for positive and diverse representations, and use the Cosby upper-class familiar black family platform to deliver a message of assimilation as a key to success. Interesting fun fact, this is similar to the way that Cosby, along with Sydney Poitier, latched on at the tail end of the trend of Blaxploitation films with “A Piece of the Action” in order to sneak in the message of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and to just stop blaming everyone else for your troubles.

What makes Black-Ish most significant though, is that opposed to a show being produced by members of dominant white culture, it seems to be in the hands of Black writers and producers, two of which are stars on the show. Anthony Anderson and Laurence Fishburne both hold leading roles and are credited as producers. This means that they have the rare opportunity to give black voices that may not share dominant culture’s ideals a chance to be heard in the mainstream. The barrier that still exists here though is that the show must be marketable to mainstream audiences, which may create compromises between dealing with hard issues of inequality and racism, and keeping things light as to not offend viewers who just want to sit down and have a 30 minute laugh. So the questions that arise for me is how much are the creators able to fight the power within Black-ish, and should they even be expected to when white creators aren’t held to the same standards? White people aren’t expected to make “white” shows, so why should black creators be expected to make “black” shows?

I don’t believe I have an answer.

If a content producer of color has been granted the privilege of a voice on mainstream television, they should not have to be forced to use their voice to fight at risk of being labeled as someone who has betrayed their people, or made a switch. The primary goal of anyone in mainstream media is to make money for whatever company is allowing their production to exist. This isn’t going to change, and it’s unrealistic to believe that every content producer should be producing something that deals with hard issues or attempts to shift the dominant ideology. However, if a show like Black-Ish is going to directly address issues of race in the dialogue and plot, which is something that Cosby Show tended to gloss over or avoid completely, they are taking a responsibility upon themselves to use their story to make substantial shifts, as opposed to saying things that people want to hear, only to reach an endpoint that repeats the same old assimilation messages that negate any of the struggles that had been voiced before. So possibly the answer to my question, is that creators should be held to a higher standard when they make it a point to explicitly address race in their mainstream program, otherwise I believe that they are just co-opting social issues and current progressive mindsets in order to hide their compromising messages of assimilation. If a show is going to fight the power of dominant culture, they need to fight the power. Not play around with the idea of fighting the power, only to decide that life is easier when you just give in to the power. “Black-Ish” doesn’t end up fighting any mainstream ideals despite bringing up issues of race and inequality, and decides that in the end, despite all of these past struggles that have shaped current social/political/economic statuses and are maybe probably definitely worth talking about, we’re all just American’s trying to live the American dream, and that’s what matters.

Acting Queer: How Color-Blind Racism is Paralleled In Casting LGBTQ Roles

Earlier this year, at the 2014 Academy Awards, Jared Leto took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the HIV positive transgender character Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club. This was the crowning achievement among widespread critical acclaim for his acting in the role. He was praised for his weight loss, for his never breaking character during filming, and for his ability, as the above video suggests, to make the character “real.”

Leto finished his journey with the character Rayon by taking the opportunity in his acceptance speech to address the “dreamers” of the world and accept the award standing “for and with” those “who have ever felt injustice because of who you are, or who you love.”

However, a problem that went largely overlooked as the accolades and praise came in for Leto was the fact that there is an extreme underrepresentation of Queer characters being portrayed by members of the marginalized group who they are portraying. I think it is a fair assessment to say that the only mainstream Transgendered character actually portrayed by a Transgendered actor is Orange is the New Black’s Sophia Burset, played by Laverne Cox.

While I do not wish to take away from any actors’ talent or ability, I think that there is a problem within casting for Queer characters that is being overlooked which parallels the idea of “Color-Blindness” with respect to race. The idea of Color-Blind Racism is that in an abstract application of liberalism, every person is seen as having equal opportunity regardless of their race. In other words, an overly liberal mindset that racism is over in the United States creates a philosophy of equality that leaves historical injustices with current day ramifications in the past, as well as overlooks discrimination, privilege, and social power struggles to say that we’re all American’s and we’re on an equal playing field. This is not true, because if we stick to the playing field analogy, some Americans are born with the privilege of being on 3^rd base and headed for home while others are born at the end of the bench in the dugout with no chance at batting in the foreseeable future.

The way that I believe this mentality is aligning itself with casting choices for LGBTQ characters is by having a mentality of casting “whoever is best for the part.” Which makes sense, and if you’re making a film, you want the best actor. However, the problem is that the Jared Leto’s of the world are being cast, while actual Transgendered actors are being overlooked and kept out of sight within mainstream Hollywood representations of their group. Other mainstream roles are Walton Goggins Transgender character Venus Van Dam on Sons of Anarchy, and Lafayette Reynolds, who was discussed in a previous post. All of these characters are being played by hetero males who are putting on dialects and mannerisms that allow them to fit into a Queer type, allowing audiences and critics can praise them for their “transformational” acting. Essentially, they are putting on what I want to call “Queer Face,” which is reminiscent of old Hollywood habits of dressing white actors in Black face and acting out Black stereotypes as opposed to granting black actors roles.

The recognizable actors like Jared Leto have the privilege of being granted important roles during a time where there is a push for more representation of the LGBTQ communities and moves for social change. They can maybe even use this privilege, as Leto attempted to by standing “for and with” who he was portraying, to try to bring awareness and positive reinforcement to LGBTQ issues. In the end though, for every Jared Leto cast in a Queer role that will be hailed as inspiring and transformational, there are groups of Laverne Cox’s who are being excluded from participating in representation of their own community and issues.

“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.

Shifting Ideology in Mainstream Comics

On Thursday September 4 it was announced that DC Comics will be re-launching the series “Secret Six” being drawn by artist Ken Lashley and written by Gail Simone, who is known for having an active pursuit of diversity in the comics she creates. The announcement of the series’ return was welcomed news by the comic community, but even more so by Simone’s fan base when she made clear via her Tumblr that “Catman [the protagonist] is bisexual, and when we bring him back, that will be explicitly in canon.”

The inclusion of a bisexual protagonist in mainstream comics (Marvel or DC) is following Simone’s introduction in the ongoing Batgirl series of Alysia, who is the first mainstream transgender female character. It also follows the creation of the diverse cast of her cancelled DC Comics series The Movement, which featured multiple central characters of color, as well as an asexual hero, a hero in a wheelchair, and a plot that centered on a gay male teenager coming out to his religious community.

Since the early days of the comics industry, the ideology presented within the universes of the comics has been, for the most part, shaped by white men with a target audience in mind of white men. As the industry started to grow, diversity did as well, and more racially diverse creators entered the field, however they were still men writing for men, and still largely white. This has always been problematic because it begins to create an aesthetic within the shared universes of Marvel and DC where most heroes are white men, and all of the stories and ideas are created by white men, and what is being taught as important or “normal” in these fantasy worlds being brought to young minds of all races, classes, genders, and sexual orientations is shaped by a small group of white men with the power to tell stories.

The choice that Simone is making through her writing, to shift mainstream comics in a direction toward more diverse representation, is thankfully becoming not much of a lone endeavor. The comics industry is made aware by such strong reactions to work like Simone’s that many fans are crying out for more representation in comics that breaks away from the past of men writing for men, and they are starting to make the necessary changes.

In the past few years Marvel comics has launched new titles and even entirely new heroes that cater to the audiences who are craving diversity. Marvel launched X-Men with an all-female cast, they launched Storm, featuring the only mainstream title with a black female hero right now, as well as the announcement of Falcon becoming the first Black Captain America, Loki: Agent of Asgard being a gender changing protagonist, and a female wielding the hammer Mjolnir to become the new official Thor. They launched a Muslim American teenage girl from Jersey with immigrant parents as the All-New Ms. Marvel, and they re-launched the old Ms. Marvel character under the title of Captain Marvel, which has sparked the creation of the “Carol Corps” fan base that has giant gatherings at Comic-Cons across the country documented in full by the blogs of fans and series writer Kelly Sue DeConnick.

 

The changes being made by the industry show promise, and seem to coincide with a huge boom in interest in the medium due to the successful movies and attempts at gaining new readers through series re-launches, however the mainstream comics can’t seem to break away from the problem of hegemonic voices.

Although there is a decent amount of Marvel’s new titles featuring a diverse representation of characters, Storm, X-men, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Elektra, Loki: Agent of Asgard, and She Hulk are all characters that are not men, being given voices and experiences by men.* When the titles and characters are becoming diverse, but the general make-up of the writers stays the same, there is still the problematic effect of the underlying images and messages that shape the characters, stories, and overall universe, are all being conveyed by men who do not necessarily share the experiences of a hypothetical young female of color who picks up the first issue of Storm in hope of finding resonance amongst a shelf full of super-buff white guys making angry faces and hitting people.

By no means should lack of identifying with a certain race or gender or sexuality prohibit a writer from writing characters that identify with any of those, but the goal is to open up the opportunity so that more writers who do identify as something other than a straight white male have the opportunity to provide their voices and experiences to characters who are not straight white male.

The good news is that the solution to the problem of hegemonic voices is being tested RIGHT NOW in mainstream comics, and is proving successful.

The previously mentioned Ms. Marvel is not only about a Muslim American teenage girl from Jersey with immigrant parents, the writer is a Muslim woman from Jersey who lived in Egypt. Furthermore, the editor and co-creator is a Muslim woman who grew up in Jersey and is, as evident by her Tedx talk about representation, almost directly paralleled in her youth by Kamala Khan, the protagonist of Ms. Marvel. The creators are able to voice their experiences through a character that they can directly identify with, and it brings a level of genuine personhood to the character that I believe is unmatched in mainstream comics right now (based strictly off of the titles I read). The series is also proving to be successful, with each early issue selling out and going back to print multiple times, which means that more than just an audience who directly identifies with a Muslim American teenage girl is identifying with the comic, and that makes it completely viable that Marvel would want to repeat the equation that made this title sell so well.

The aesthetic is changing in comics right now, and more diversity is being met with success in the mainstream, but for the success to go beyond a trendy marketing scheme and become a true attempt at creating diverse representations that break a limited, dominant ideology, more voices with more diverse cultural and social experiences need to be given the opportunity to express themselves through characters that can be shared with the world.

-NPGOLD

*(Note: these are all Marvel titles, but the representations in DC comics, as well as major shifts being made in independent titles, I think, are worthy of other blog posts entirely. Stay tuned to the same bat-blog, same bat-url.)