Utilitarian Review 2/27/16

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

News

Folks may have noticed we only had three posts this week. In general, I’ve been distracted with other work and haven’t been pursuing contributors as regularly…or writing as often here as I once did. I’m not sure exactly what that means for the future. Chris Gavaler and Robert Stanley Martin still are committed to posting here weekly, and I still do want to write on occasion. If you want to write here, please contact me (myname at gmail); we’re still running guest posts.

I guess what I’m saying is, we’ve been quieter than usual, and it seems likely that that will continue to be the case unless something changes. Anyway, as always, thanks for reading.

On HU

Me on the New Black, a documentary about the marriage equality campaign in Maryland.

Shreya Durvasula on Walter White as superhero.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates for comics September and October 1952.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I wrote about Deadpool R-ratings, and how superheroes are about wanting/not wanting to grow up.

I took part in the Public Books roundtable on women directors, writing about the Descent and rape revenge for women.

At Quartz I wrote about

—what African-Americans should get a biopic after Jesse Owens.

—how we need to reduce Supreme Court tenures to politicize the court.

At the Establishment I wrote about

—Taylor Swift and how we don’t expect men to step up for Kesha.

—the Mad Max series and how women equal civilization and men gotta ramble.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—Bowie, Lori Maddox, and listening to victims even when they say they’re not.

—Huffpo and the authenticity of hackwork.

At the Chicago Reader

—I previewed Typeforce, a typeface art show.

—I did a little review of indie band Sunflower Bean.

Other Links

Greg Howard on how SB Nation published a disastrous piece on Daniel Holzclaw.

David Perry on disability inspiration porn.

Yasmin Nair/a> argues that freelancers shouldn’t write for free.

Walter White: Ultimate Supervillain or Misunderstood Entrepreneur?

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Shreya Durvasula

Since their creation less than a hundred years ago, superheroes have effortlessly captured our imagination. Studios seem incapable of making non-superhero movies and television executives are following suit. As the superhero genre expands past the pages of the pulpy comic book, it has to evolve and grow. A great example of this growth is the show Breaking Bad, particularly in its depiction of the character Walter White. A close look at Breaking Bad will reveal its underlying superhero DNA and how Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator, used the superhero genre to expound on his hypothesis.

First, a brief history of the origin of the superhero figure. The modern American superhero is derived from hundreds of years of hero figures. The superhero genre has its roots in myths, with figures such a Odyssey or Robin Hood linking the notion of heroism and bravery to justice and fairness. In the era directly preceding what would come to be known as the “Golden Age” of superheroes, figures such as Doc Savage, Tarzan, and the Phantom laid the foundation by contributing certain genre elements such as a double identity, masked costumes, and superhuman strength. Arguably, one of the direct ancestors is the Scarlet Pimpernel, the dashing protagonist of Baroness Emma Orczy’s same titled play and subsequent novels. Each iteration brought us closer to what is undeniably the first superhero; Superman. Adorning the iconic cover of Action Comics #1, Superman ushered in a new age and helped establish a new literary genre. Batman and Wonder Woman followed suit and helped codify the genre. The genre has grown by leaps and bounds, no pun intended. A new generation of writers, artists, and creators pushed the boundaries of the established classification in the Silver Age of Comics, with figures such as the Hulk, Spiderman, and the Flash redefining the genre.

>Delving deeper into the specifics, let’s look at the definition and the various elements that comprise a superhero figure.

When we meet the mild-mannered Walter White with his alliterative alter-ego sounding name, he is working two jobs to make ends meet. His life is bleak, and it gets bleaker when he finds out he has cancer. Walt undergoes chemotherapy and pumps toxic chemicals into his body to fight the tumorous lung cells. As the chemicals course through his veins, Walt has to resort to increasingly desperate measures to pay for his treatment.

Historically, chemicals/ chemistry as an agent of change is a common trope in comic books, especially in the Silver Age of Comic Books. A radioactive spider bite mutates Peter Parker’s DNA, gamma radiation transforms Bruce Banner into the Hulk. And the anti-carcinogen chemicals used in chemotherapy allow for the creation of Walt’s alter-ego, Heisenberg. As Walt starts cooking methamphetamine to make money for his family, he gets pulled deeper into the drug world. Initially just a pseudonym to protect his identity, Heisenberg ultimately becomes the persona Walt uses in that world. This development happens over the course of the first season, culminating in an explosive scene where Heisenberg has ostensibly bested his first arch-nemesis, Tuco.

Heisenberg Intro CLIP

This is arguably the first appearance of Walt’s alter-ego, Heisenberg. Unlike Walter, Heisenberg is self-assured and confident. He is able to hold his own against an aggressive and unstable drug dealer and he only grows stronger.

The reason Walter White continues to make methamphetamine despite the danger is for the money. Well, not just the money.

While solid, hard cash pays for his treatment, it also then serves as a nest egg and a protection of sorts for Walt’s family- his wife, Skyler, his son Walt Jr (immediately a properly sympathetic character), and his as yet unborn daughter. Walt’s prowess at organic chemistry, even for a brilliant student from the California Institute of Technology, border on the fantastical. He is able to make an incredibly pure thus potent version of meth, “Blue Sky” which even addicts recognize as being superior. Early in the first season, Walt gets rid of the evidence of a murder using the dissolving powers of hydrofluoric acid to destroy a human body. He creates a mini-bomb from fulminated mercury which he uses to destroy Tuco. In season 2’s episode “4 Days Out”, Walt constructs a mercury battery using chemicals, coins, and galvanized metal for the chargeless RV, rescuing Jesse and himself from dire straits and making MacGyver proud. Walt may have the goods, but Heisenberg is able to deliver them.

Any respectable superhero must have a sidekick, and Walt would be bereft without Jesse Pinkman, or Cap’n Crunch as he’s known in the meth head circle. Walt chances upon Jesse escaping during a DEA ride along, and convinces him to help cook and sell meth. Jesse is Walt’s sidekick, helping him navigate the seedy world of drug dealing, while providing a skewed moral compass. They even have their own version of the Batmobile, the RV. It can’t fly, but it does allow them to cook in undisturbed peace and a place to store their equipment. Despite his complicity in Walt’s dealings, Jesse remains an innocent figure, even by the end of season 5.

Finally, what would a superhero be without a costume? Naked, unrecognizable. Heisenberg’s iconic porkpie hat elevates his status from measley high school teacher to drug lord. By Season 3, Heisenberg has accumulated a reputation for himself and is known by his hat.

But is Walter White a superhero or a supervillain?

In Peter Coogan’s book, “Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre”, he outlines 5 main types of supervillains; the monster, the enemy commander, the mad scientist, the criminal mastermind and the inverted superhero-supervillain. While Walter definitely displays aspects of the mad scientist and the criminal mastermind, he is a great representation of the last type of supervillain; the inverted superhero-supervillain. Walter clearly views himself as a “good guy”, a man kept down by the fates but his actions are those of a self-interested and selfish man. Season 2, Episode 12 “Phoenix” marks an important turning point in Walt’s character. Walt and Jesse are on the outs, and Walt is holding Jesse’s share of the drug money hostage until Jesse can prove his sobriety. Their relationship is further threatened by the interference of Jane, Jesse’s girlfriend. Walt arrives to confront Jesse and notices both Jesse and Jane in a deep drug-induced stupor. He inadvertently rolls Jane over on her back and she subsequently chokes to death on her own vomit, while Walt looks on, horrified but unwilling to intervene. His desire to be rid of Jane combined with his callousness towards an innocent life are classic supervillain traits.

Walt displays other traits typical of a supervillain. In season 5, Walt is given the opportunity to sell his share of the methylamine to a competitor and receive $5 million. He refuses to take the money and leave the meth business. This mania about needing to be the best and creating a drug empire is typical supervillain behavior. “You asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.” While he seems to have some remorse about the vile product he’s creating, it is fleeting at best. Any guilt Walt feels is overshadowed by his pride in the purity of the product. This pride in his criminal artistry is another one of the characteristics of a villain.

One major attribute of a supervillain is “the wound”. Many supervillains suffer from an original incident that leads them to battle the superhero. This wound, real or perceived, is essential to the identity of the supervillain, the core of what drives them to do ill. Walter believes what he has—not just the physical resources of supplies and equipment he possesses but more fundamentally, his native resources of intelligence and invention—is of infinite and absolute worth. He is not going to stop until he’s been fairly compensated for them, which means he’s never going to stop.

I’m the one who knocks clip

It’s not just the character of Walter White that draws inspiration from the superhero world. From the colorization to the cinematography, elements of graphic novels and comic books are evident in the look and feel of Breaking Bad. When comics were printed on pulpy, rough paper, they had to be brightly colored to sell. Superheroes had to recognizable when someone was scanning the newsstand. Vince Gilligan similarly colorized his characters through costuming. Walt’s sister-in-law Marie’s obsession with the color purple was treated as a joke, but it becomes her signature color. This meticulously prepared chart shows the color of each outfit the characters worse throughout the series. Delving a little deeper in the colors, we see that Walt starts off in neutral, bland earth tones. His obsession with money is reflected in the light greens. As he becomes Heisenberg, the colors get darker and muddier.

>Skyler is usually dressed in blues and whites, indicating her innocence and purity. In season 3, as she gets increasingly drawn into her husband’s web of lies and deceit, her clothes get darker. When she is fully immersed in a scheme to launder Walt’s drug money, Skyler is shown as wearing black and dark browns. She is once again depicted in lighter colors as she tries to extricate herself and her family from Walt’s drug empire. This type of color analysis can be done for Hank, Jesse, and Walt Jr. as well. Gilligan’s meticulous eye for colors and costuming reinforce who the characters are and the world they inhabit.

Gilligan’s careful consideration of color is evident in the cinematography and visual design of the show. In an interview with Creative Cow, Director of Photography Michael Slovis says about the show’s look:

One trademark in the show that’s terrific and that Vince and I talk about and exploit is that we often don’t see the faces of the main characters. Vince says that everyone knows who these people are so we really don’t need to see their faces…If I can tell the story in a pitch-black room with the face totally in silhouette, that’s what we do. It’s expressionistic. We represent reality, we don’t reproduce it. Another example of that are those colors in New Mexico. Those golden, orangey, yellowy colors don’t exist in real life… We take a very, very representational, emotionally based, expressionistic approach. The same thing goes with those wacky POV shots we do… nobody sees things from those angles but they serve the story.

As Slovis mentions, the show doesn’t aim to reproduce reality, just represent it. An example of Gilligan playing with representing reality is the color of Walt’s meth- Blue Sky. Using the chemicals Walt used meth should either be clear or tinged a slight yellow color. Gilligan makes the artistic choice to make it blue, a sky blue that reflects WW’s limitless pride, greed, and lust for power. An example of the colors that Slovis mentions as well as the expressionistic approach Gilligan and crew take is clearly reflected in the cold open of Season 3. The introduction of the cousins, Season 3’s big bad can be imagined easily in large columns of a graphic novel or a comic book.

Cousins Clip

Gilligan frequently uses canted and unique Point of View shots to establish WW’s looming presence. Whether using a camera mounted on the Roomba during a party scene or the shovel head when burying treasure, these POV shots firmly establish that this is an alternate reality. TV Worth Watching, a pop culture blog, compiled all the unique shots in Breaking Bad. This perspective of the characters is not typical of a drama since it is not from the point of view of the audience or another character. Despite dealing in real life situations, with blood, gore and violence, the cinematography indicates that Breaking Bad exists in an alternate reality. WW’s Albuquerque is Batman’s Gotham- a universe that is grimmer and grittier than the real world.

What does this reading of BB through the lens of the superhero genre award us? The very nature of comic books is that they are episodic and contain ongoing stories. Batman may defeat the Joker in this issue, but wouldn’t you believe it, the Joker returns. Marriages and even deaths are not permanent, and reboots offer a new creative team the chance of a fresh start and clean slate. Breaking Bad ran 5 seasons and had a clear narrative arc running through it. It is the story of how Walter White becomes Heisenberg and his subsequent downfall and redemption. While Walter’s story may have ended, the larger themes of addiction, search for power, and insatiable greed live on. The drug trade will continue to flourish without Heisenberg, people will buy, sell, create, barter, use, and abuse methamphetamine. Gilligan underscores the futility of the war on drugs by using elements of a genre that does not provide easy resolution. The players may change, new opponents rise and fall, but the story continues.

References

Coogan, Peter M., and Dennis O’Neil. Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain, 2006. Print.

Gilligan, Vince. “No Mas” Breaking Bad. AMC. 21 Mar. 2010. Television

Hutchinson, Gennifer. “Cornered'” Breaking Bad. AMC. 21 Aug. 2011. Television.

LaRue, John. “Infographic: Colorizing Walter White’s Decay.” TDYLF. N.p., 11 Aug. 2013. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. <http://tdylf.com/2013/08/11/infographic-colorizing-walter-whites-decay/>.

Mastras, George. “Crazy Handful of Nothin'” Breaking Bad. AMC. 2 Mar. 2008. Television.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Print.

Slovis, Michael. “CreativeCOW.” CreativeCOW. Ed. Debra Kaufman. CreativeCow.Net, 2013. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. <https://library.creativecow.net/kaufman_debra/Behind-the-Lens-Michael-Slovis/1>.
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Shreya Durvasula is an Outreach Coordinator in Cambridge, Massachusetts and an avid TV enthusiast and blogger. This post grew out of a presentation she gave to the University of Maryland Honors course, “Deconstructing Breaking Bad”, which attempted to dissect what made Breaking Bad so compelling. Shreya’s guest lecture on the superhero genre as it applies to BB inspired a graphic novel student response, so she feels like she got the job done. You can read more of her writing here.

The New Black

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on The Dissolve.
____________________

“It is my people. I’m a sistah in the movement,” Sharon Lettman-Hicks says early in The New Black. She spells it out herself: “S-I-S-T-A-H.” Lettman-Hicks is the executive director and CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition, and the movement she’s talking about is the push for LGBT rights. When she talks about that movement in language that recalls the black civil-rights struggle, it’s because she sees them as one and the same. As she says, gay marriage is part of “the unfinished business of black people being free.”

As The New Black notes, this isn’t always the way the media frames the relationship between the black and gay communities. After the 2008 election, in which Barack Obama won the presidency and California passed a ballot referendum making gay marriage unconstitutional, black voters, seen as religious and socially conservative, were blamed for the loss.

The New Black, which focuses on the 2012 ballot referendum on gay marriage in Maryland, is committed to showing that the easy opposition between blacks and LGBT is a false one. In part, it tackles this by foregrounding black, LGBT people, such as Irene Huskens, a police officer who tearfully talks about marrying her partner so she and their children can be a family. But like Lettman-Hicks (who is straight), the film insists that gay marriage and the civil-rights struggle are continuous issues, so the former is central to the black experience in general. One preacher, speaking from the pulpit on election day, tells his congregation that Question 6, the Maryland gay-rights proposition, is a “referendum on the church”—a moral test of the black community’s commitment to equality for all.

Obviously, not all black preachers, and not all black people, feel that way. The New Black is unabashedly pro-gay marriage, but it treats the other side respectfully. Opponents of gay marriage in the community are given their say. Pastors talk about the Bible. A congregant stands up to explain that being gay isn’t a civil-rights issue, because unlike being black or female, it’s a matter of choice. One of Lettman-Hicks’ house guests worries out loud about his son being corrupted by the homosexual agenda.

Including these voices is a painful, but, the film implies, necessary step, not for a balanced presentation, but because the community that includes black and LGBT people also includes homophobia. In fact, homophobia and queerness often exist together, side by side, or pew by pew.

At one point, The New Black takes a detour to trace the career of Tonéx, a highly successful gospel performer who came out in 2009 on The Lexi Show (“Have you struggled with homosexuality?” Lexi asks. “It wasn’t a struggle,” Tonéx responds. Cut to Lexi looking like someone has slapped her with a carp.) The material about Tonéx is fascinating, but initially seems to have little directly to do with the gay-marriage question in Maryland—until the film shows several gay Question 6 activists talking effusively about Tonéx, and how he’s represented not just the out queer community, but all the closeted queer people in all the African-American church choirs. As Anthony Heilbut chronicles in his 2012 essay collection The Fan Who Knew Too Much, closeted LGBT people, from James Cleveland to Alex Bradford to Ruth Davis, have been central to the African-American gospel tradition, and so to the African-American church. Whether acknowledged or not, they’re as much a part of conservative black church life as they are of any other part of the black experience. Love them or hate them, they’re family.

So the title, The New Black, has a double—or triple—meaning. It refers to the LGBT community, which can be seen as a new civil-rights movement. It refers to a new black identity, which can include LGBT people. And it also, ironically, refers to the fact that there is no new black; black identity and LGBT identity have always been part of the same community. When Question 6 passes, Huskens tearfully kisses her soon-to-be-wife and hugs their children. Huskens’ mother-in-law-to-be struts across the kitchen, looks in the camera, and exclaims, “Yes we can!” There couldn’t be a clearer statement that the black family and the LGBT family are one and the same.

Utilitarian Review 2/20/16

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: An interview with romance/sf novelist Bee Ridgway.

Matthias Wivel on Dan Clowes’ Patience.

Me on Beyoncé, Bill Gates, and anti-capitalism.

mouse gives a roundup of the best furry comics today.

Madeleine Gavaler on Lady Macbeth endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates of comics July/August ’52.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I wrote a tribute to Vanity and the Last Dragon.

At the Establishment I surveyed the gay history of country music.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—why, contra Chait, progressives shouldn’t root for Trump.

—why SC should be moved ahead of NH on the Democratic primary calendar.

Other Links

Talia Jane on working at Yelp! and being unable to afford food.

Andy Green on the awesomeness of Bill Withers.

Jessica Luther on why sports sites handle reporting on sexual assault so badly.

My Favorite Supervillain Endorses Hillary Clinton (or, Macbeth ACT 5 continued)

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Madeleine Gavaler

“So thanks to all at once and to each one whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone,” said the under-characterized Malcolm with a flourish. Lady Macbeth rolled her eyes from behind her tree branch, as the men around her reveled in their masculinity and C-sections.

“I know it seemed like Shakespeare put me back in my properly gendered place,” she soliloquized quietly, with a surprisingly meta understanding of her unjust treatment, “but, as my more intelligent audience members guessed, I faked my guilt and insanity and suicide once I realized that my husband could not handle murder and power in moderation.”

Picking at the spots of blood still caked on her hands (that had not even been acting, women who orchestrate murders always have blood under their fingernails), she pondered possible careers and names. “Shall I go with Hillary, or will that perpetuate the misogynistic notion that all competent, powerful women are bitches?” she wondered. “This is eleventh century Scotland, but I’m definitely a Democrat. I know evil is not typically part of the party platform, but I do support gay marriage and cutting military spending. Down with the patriarchy!” she said. Lady Macbeth is also pro-choice.

Malcolm’s ears perked up having heard mention of feminism from behind an unsuspiciously womanly shaped tree branch. Lady Macbeth frowned, realizing that now and a millennium from now, you have to be quiet about gender equality or men will get offended. She also wondered if her voice was beginning to blend with the writer’s, who incidentally just started reading an autobiography of Hillary Clinton. “Unsex me here! Screw your courage to the sticking place!” Lady Macbeth whispered to stay in character.

She was still standing in the middle of a battlefield, and a particularly sparse and boring one because Shakespeare writes minimal stage directions. “Can I stand here being self-aware and voicing Madeleine’s political beliefs, or is there more to me? Do I have the potential for a meaningful plot arc, or am I limited by the abilities of a high school student who has not attempted creative writing of any sort since middle school, probably for good reason?” she asked, regaining control of the narrative. “Why do I ask so many questions?”

Lady Macbeth considered bringing her incompetently evil husband back, but then remembered that his severed head appeared on stage and could not think of a way around that one. Also, she does not need a man to complete her. “Are there any other tolerable characters in this play?”

The three witches appeared on the field which was slowly becoming more detailed and grassy and did a musical number like the one in Act IV that most don’t find as bizarre as they should. Concluding with a pas de bourree, they looked expectantly at Lady Macbeth, who after a ten day hiatus had forgotten if there was a plan for the rest of this story and was also feeling rather upset because she had just finished illegally binge-watching her favorite show about pies and murder and Lee Pace. Lady Macbeth also hopes Agent Carter gets renewed, because she understands how hard it is for women who accomplish just about everything in the male-dominated workplace without any credit.

“Double double toil and trouble, please stop daydreaming about hot British women,” said the weird sisters, whose favorite show is Dollhouse, in unison. They had given up on trochaic tetrameter because it is hard. The first witch, whose name is Maurice, realized that she had hurt Lady Macbeth’s feelings. It had been a very long day for her, and she was tired of bearded women putting other women down.

“No more slut shaming!” said Lady Macbeth, which wasn’t exactly relevant but always a phrase worthy of sharing. “My sweet malevolent nursery rhyme-y ladies, I find your anti-Semitic recipe on page 357 of Prentice Hall’s Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes rather problematic, but otherwise I think you three have a lot of potential.”

Lady Macbeth, Maurice, Helen, and Bertha sat down together in a nearby tearoom to discuss their backstories. Maurice, who finds Earl Grey with a blueberry scone especially delightful, went first.

“Shakespeare initially portrayed me as a chestnut-stealer who cuts off sailors’ thumbs, but I wasn’t always this way,” she said, her mascara running. Maurice wore heavy makeup at first because she felt the need to overcompensate for her scraggly beard, which everyone relentlessly teased her about in middle school. Over time, however, she has found her makeup to be fun and empowering. Maurice puts loving herself first, of which Helen and Bertha are very supportive. Her tale is being paraphrased to omit all of the swearing, for Maurice has quite a mouth. Helen and Bertha find this quality of Maurice endearing. The weird sisters love each other very much and enjoy the bonding experiences of dance numbers, life-ruining, and lesbian witchcraft.

“What about you, Lady Macbeth?” asked Bertha. Her beard was a beautiful auburn that brought out her eyes. “What made you commit murder?’

Sipping her English Breakfast with a dash of cream and no sugar, Lady Macbeth pondered how to answer. To her surprise, she did not want these conniving witches to think poorly of her murdering instincts. “You see,” she said, and hesitated. Was Lady Macbeth finally ready to reveal her mysterious character motivation? She continued to hesitate. The weird sisters looked at her expectantly. Lady Macbeth took a deep breath. Lady Macbeth exhaled and inhaled and exhaled and inhaled. Lady Macbeth cleared her throat. She paused again for dramatic effect.

“It was a means to an end. I knew that if I could murder Duncan and become queen, I could operate through my useless, weak husband to establish peace and prosperity in Scotland.” Lady Macbeth had planned to establish a democratic republic with healthcare and an abundance of welfare programs for its citizens, complete with a balanced budget and no drones.

The bearded women giggled. “Yes of course, silly,” said Helen. “That’s the whole reason we told Macbeth about his future; it was our plan to help you towards your perfect, happy, matriarchal society.”

“Unfortunately,” sighed Helen, “the men ruined our hopes and dreams.”

“Not all men,” whispered an earthworm outside that would later be reincarnated into William Shakespeare. A neighboring earthworm explained to Shakespeare the core ideals of feminism and how he might even accidentally be perpetuating misogynistic values and social norms in his daily actions.

“Well,” said Lady Macbeth, “I’m thankful for this opportunity to finally voice my side of the story through a critique of political and gender values in America. I hope we achieve peace in the Middle East soon and someday create the wonderful society that I tried to.” Lady Macbeth and the three witches laughed at the absurdity and disappeared into their spaceship to look for a less morally corrupt society, in a manner reminiscent of the excellent movie Hamlet 2, starring Steve Coogan.

Black Bill Gates

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

“I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making,” Beyoncé declares in her new video “Formation.” It’s an unapologetic, swaggering declaration that she is a businesswoman and a power to be reckoned with. That’s not an unusual boast for the singer—her 2013 video for “Partition” opens with her languidly ordering about a (notably white) servant. But it does clash a little with “Hymn to the Weekend“, the video she released only a few weeks before in collaboration with Coldplay.

As I discussed last week, “Hymn to the Weekend” is set up as an Orientalist tourist video. Coldplay singer Chris Martin drives around in a cab, staring out at Mumbai, and relishing exotic displays of street art and the high spirits of street kids. India is figured as exotic and exciting. But it’s also presented as poor, earthy, real, visceral. For the video, the people of India are fun to stare at because they are not Bill Gates, and because they are outside the logic of the capitalist west. Here, the video proclaims, as Martin moans on about feeling drunk and high, is an ecstasy that isn’t about money and fame. It’s an experience you cannot purchase, even with your tourist dollars. It must be lived.

Though Beyoncé is dressed up as a glamorous Bollywood singer, she doesn’t change that narrative. She’s certainly opulent—but that’s figured as a mystic, distant opulence, set against spiritual landscapes, not as a wealth obtained through sweat and smarts. She exploits Orientalist tropes to make herself exotic and exicting, but those tropes end up defining and limiting her. In joining with Coldplay to make herself a Orientalist mystical totem, she gives up her role as entrepreneur.

She takes it back in “Formation,” though. In her own video, Beyoncé isn’t stuck in any one role. Instead, the video, set in New Orleans, puts her in a range of identities, from upscale buttoned up gentlewoman to street-level twerker, from historical to present-day. “Through this reckless country blackness, she becomes every black southern woman possible for her to reasonably inhabit, moving through time, class, and space,” Zandria Felice Robinson writes. Beyoncé is both marginal and empowered, both looker and spectacle.

It’s important that that the culture that inspires the video is treated with much more respect than in the Coldplay collaboration, in no small part because the community in question is one that Beyoncé identifies with. This isn’t just a matter of presenting herself as part of Southern black culture; it’s also about knowledge and respect. “Hymn to the Weekend” could have gotten a Bollywood star to appear alongside Beyoncé, but no one cared enough to bother making that happen. As a result, the video feels like something done to, rather than in collaboration with, Mumbai and its culture. In contrast, “Formation” includes New Orleans bounce performers Messy Mya and Big Freedia. It honors queer dancers and rappers whose style has been much imitated in the mainstream, but whose personal artistry is rarely acknowledged there.

“Formation” also differs from “Hymn to the Weekend” in that it presents marginalization not as exotic spectacle, but as struggle. The most instantaneously famous images from the video are of a black child dancing in front of an ominous line of police, and of Beyoncé lying on a sinking patrol car as the video’s close. The New Orleans presented in the video is not a tourist destination. It’s a city under siege, both by neglect in the wake of Katrina, and by state violence. There is joy there, but there’s also an insistence that the joy is not meant to be comfortably viewed from a cab. It’s an act of defiance.

And part of that defiance is the video’s deliberate, amused consumerism. “I’m so reckless when I rock my Givenchy dress/I’m so possessive so I rock his rock necklaces.” Beyoncé is Bill Gates; she wants, or already has, power, wealth, glamour, respect, and brains. She’s a businesswoman, which means she’s the entrepreneur making the video, not just the person the video is about.

Beyoncé’s been criticized at times for embracing capitalism and the iconography of wealth. But the “Hymn to the Weekend” video is a reminder that capitalism isn’t just about money. It’s about inequities of power, about who is owned, and about who gets to be the one who does the owning. The children Coldplay watches in Mumbai don’t get to say, with Beyoncé in “Formation”, “I’m so possessive,” because they aren’t seen as having their own desires. They are treated as the things to be consumed, not the consumers.

“Earned all this money, but they never take the country out me,” Beyoncé declares. Through double consciousness, she can be Bill Gates and herself at the same time. Poverty isn’t natural or fun. The people who don’t have power, want power, and are justified in wanting it. To tell them they should be different in kind from the capitalists is just what capitalism, and capitalism’s police force, always tells them. Beyoncé, at least in “Formation,” isn’t buying it.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Matthias Wivel

Daniel Clowes’ latest book, Patience, came out in Danish (and a few other languages, as far as I know) just before Christmas last year, as part of an effort by the publisher, Fantagraphics, to jump start international sales and avoid having them cannibalized by the American edition. Here’s a brief first take in anticipation of the discussion the book will hopefully elicit upon its official American release next month.

Patience is a love story dressed up as equal parts social realism and time travel adventure. It is also Clowes’ first unequivocally romantic work. Its protagonist, the self-described loser Jack Barlow, and his beloved wife Patience are expecting their first child. But one day he comes home to find her murdered on their living room floor. He spends the next seventeen years monomaniacally—and in vain—trying to find the murderer until, suddenly, he is given the chance to travel back in time, save Patience and make sure their child is born.

It does not quite go as planned. Jack is impulsive and possessed of a real temper, which time and again sends events careening out of control, crisscrossing the timeline. It is perhaps Clowes’ most entertaining work since the his early humor pieces, a real page turner with an unpredictably spontaneous, but predictably funny character at its center. Much like Clowes’ previous protagonist Wilson (2010), in fact—another self-sufficient yet hapless sap of the kind he so excels at.

Jack is in many ways a fleshed-out version of the censorious, self-delusional Wilson, who also seeks to restore his broken family. In spite of his many shortcomings, it was hard not to like him, and that goes double for Jack even though he is even more of a dubious acquaintance. Where Wilson studied rain drops, Jack stares at the wall, blinds drawn. And whether we are talking 2013 or 1985, the wall is full of holes—the result of off-panel tantrums or panic attacks, one senses.

Jack’s thought processes, ways or reasoning and, at times, actions border on the sociopathic, which calls to mind Clowes’ perhaps most disturbing character, the borderline superhero Andy from his masterful The Death Ray (2004), who lucidly assumed the role as supreme arbiter over other people’s life.

Yet we still like Jack because he is so unequivocally driven by love—a love which here literally transcends space and time. Actually, the time traveling brings out the oedipal undertones of it, not least clearly at the moment when he finds himself in front of his fatherless childhood home. The riddle of the Sphinx is here a murder mystery the solution to which depends on whether Jack is fundamentally subject to the same crushing predestination that brought King Oedipus low. Can we change the future?

Clowes transposes this struggle against determinism to Patience’s efforts to break with the social conditioning she has inherited as the child of a broken working class home in the Midwest. A large part of the story takes place in the small town in which she grew up, during the years immediately before she met Jack. Patience sometimes assumes the role of second narrator and her portrayal is the heart of the story. She is the whole person Jack aspires to be.

These passages are exemplary of how subtly and bracingly Clowes describes crushing social circumstances and thus recall earlier signature works such as the ensemble piece Ice Haven (2001), which also took place in a small American town, and the more intimate post-school comedy Ghost World (1997), which was fundamentally about transcending expectations.

Clowes’ well-known misanthropy is remarkable subdued in this story—even his Kubrick-like irony is downplayed. Only in the rather uninventive description of Jacks future in the year 2029 does his disinterested line come up short and resort to camp.

Clowes’ cartooning is here more nonchalant than usual. One gets the sense that he does not mind if his drawing comes across as inelegant. For the most part, however, this seems an entirely natural choice for this particular story—on paper his most fantastic. And even though Clowes is not possessed of the uncanny design genius of his paragon Steve Ditko, his surreal interludes in which he invokes the heady abstraction of prime Doctor Strange as well as the bizarrely loaded symbolism of Ditko’s objectivist comics seem perfectly calibrated and emotionally earned in this story about the order of things.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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