Chasing Utopia

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Donovan Grant

It’s been a whirlwind week or two here at the Hooded Utilitarian for discussing race in comics. Building on earlier treatises about Black Panther’s exercises in assimilation narratives, Black Lightning’s equivocation on race and the X-Men turning black Noah Berlatsky asserted that the original Milestone Static comics kind of suck. J. Lamb argued that the superhero genre is fundamentally white supremacist, which makes most all black superhero characters generally useless.

As a black comics fan, this is abjectly depressing.

Everyone knows that black comic heroes hardly register as competition against white heroes for popularity. They barely exist. The fact that having one non-white costumed character on the big-screen is typically seen as an enormous boon for diversity is pretty demoralizing. When you add this to the fact that, as J Lamb wrote, non-white heroes function “within a paradigm defined by Western perspectives on violence and ideal beauty, in an industry dependent on White male consumer support .” I’m left feeling outright bamboozled.

The truth wouldn’t sting so much if these essays were written some time last year, but they just reaffirm what I had concluded after reading All-New Captain America #1. One of the most banal, vapid comics I’ve ever read, All-New Captain America#1 truly underlined the utter fecklessness of the black super hero. We have Sam Wilson, the first African American super hero in the role of Captain America with all of the variant covers and implied importance that the role suggests, adorned in the American flag boasting a triumphant reach to the utopic mountaintop, published within twelve days of the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted for shooting Michael Brown. The book’s lack of self-examination makes the juxtaposition painfully jarring.

It isn’t as though I had ambitious hopes for the new Black Cap book. But I honestly thought the idea of a black Captain America would mandate a minimal degree of content, especially with books like TRUTH in Marvel Comics’ rearview. In this series, we’re presented with pages of wintry, hoary dialogue where Sam Wilson briefly recalls the death of his parents whilst dodging gunfire for no reason. He battles Hydra and fights Batroc, the French stereotype in a typical superheroic battle that is requisite for a Captain America comic, I suppose. However the concept of a black Captain America and what that means to him or anyone is completely passed over for an adventure typical for white Steve Rogers. The issue eschews moments of reflection from Sam, opting instead to toss in empty critiques of America’s obesity problem and government corruption. Remarks by the villains on how Sam’s nothing more than a sidekick are carefully worded; the reader can infer racial bias if he or she feels like it, or ignore it if the idea of a villain being racist is too upsetting or unpleasant.

Exploring the importance of Sam’s new role should be a no-brainer. Why else was an irrelevant Joe Quesada ushered back onto the Colbert Report to promote the book? Comic readers understand diversity is often an empty gesture in comics, but this is “Captain America”. I had no real fantasies about Sam talking about systematic racism or making birther jokes, but that the book literally says nothing about how the figure representing America as its premiere superhero is now black reveals how ruefully optimistic I was when expecting comments on the black super hero’s existence from a white writer.

The disappointment isn’t just mine. Writer and Public Speaker Joseph Illidge wrote about the first issue of All-New Cap on his weekly column for Comic Book Resources, “The Mission”. When reading it, you get the sense that he’s holding back a deeper sense of disappointment than he’s letting on. Lines like “I’m not going to make this a polemic on non-Black writers writing Black characters, because the dialogue on that subject may very well be reaching its golden years. That said, I would have preferred a Black writer handling this book.” Reading that, I can’t help but see an image of eyes clenched shut and a setback induced sigh.

He mentions the HBO series “The Wire” and says how it was a show where white writers presented black characters with a strong sense of authenticity. Illidge labels “The Wire” as an exception, and reiterates that white writers will almost always miss out on the nuances of the black experience. In the 50+ to 75+ years of Marvel Comics’ history the company has been generally viewed as the more diverse universe when compared to DC. Surely at some point, in all that time, one of those characters managed a convincing portrayal of the black experience.

As J Lamb wrote, black heroes can only do so much within the confines of the white establishment they exist in. Luke Cage may get his origin story from wrongful imprisonment and Tuskegee-inspired experimentations, but he won’t spend his super hero career warring on the treatment of black people by white authority. But it’s with relief that I recall a series of issues during Stan Lee and John Romita’s run of The Amazing Spider-Man where the sole black supporting characters Joe Robertson and his son Randy interact with each other in ways which feel honest and timeless.

In Amazing Spider-Man issues #68-#70, Randy gets involved with campus protesters who want the school Exhibition Hall to be used as a low-rent dorm for students. It leads into a number of scenes where Joe and Randy try to convince each other what’s right for a black man to do in the modern world of 1969. Quotes from Robbie like “A protest is one thing! But, the damage you caused..!” resonate sharply with the critics of the Ferguson protestors. The same goes for Randy’s comments about militarism, which mirror protestor Barry Perkins comments about feeling triumphant while fighting back against the police during the Ferguson protests.

A few issues on, in #73, the creators include a scene in which Joe and Randy discuss college. Randy protests his social placement, exclaiming “What’s the point bein’ a success in Whitey’s World? Why must we play by his rules?” Joe (or Robbie as he’s often called) maintains that by only educating one’s self can one truly bring about societal change. Randy, looking out at the reader, asks his father to explain why, if that’s true, educated black men in America haven’t prospered. Robbie has no response — he’s interrupted by J. Jonah Jameson bursting into the room ranting about Spider-Man. As in Static #4, where Holocaust’s grievances with racial inequality evaporate the minute he tries to kill a white child in cold blood, the discussion on racial inequity is silenced when the white guy (and, thematically, the white hero) enter the room.

But whatever it’s limitations, the fact remains that the two black characters in this comic are having a realistic discussion about racial injustice and how to deal with it. Randy isn’t presented as a hothead who doesn’t know any better (there was another character named Josh for that during the Campus protest arc), and Joe isn’t shown as a stodgy relic of the old guard. Education is said to be key to enlightenment, but Randy questions the very system providing the education. The scene is interrupted by a white man, but it has no easy answers for a white audience.

But the Robertsons aren’t super heroes.

So what’s the point? If black super heroes can’t engage in this type of discussion in any meaningful way, what does it matter that black supporting characters do?

If the super hero genre has been inherently, historically white, it’s all the more important to note those moments when white creators and black creators attempt to relay the black experience. It’s also important to note where they go wrong and to examine how, despite their efforts, superheroes continue to present a narrative of whiteness. The few successes can perhaps serve as a template for the future, so we don’t have another All-New Captain America to suffer through. Those few scene with Joe and Randy suggest that meaningful diversity is possible in a superhero comic, however unattainable the whole of the genre appears to make it.

Is Iggy Azalea the Female Vanilla Ice?

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Tracy Q. Loxley

Iggy Azalea and Vanilla Ice are both white rappers who were marketed like pop stars while also trying to tell us they were hardcore rappers. They’ve both achieved incredible levels of success only to be hampered by questions of artistic credibility. In Ice’s case, those questions ended his career. In Azalea’s case, I think it’s a real possibility that we may see history repeat itself.

In the past year, Azalea had two singles simultaneously at numbers one and two on Billboards Hot 100, and her debut album, the New Classic, hit number three on the Billboard 200 album chart and number one on the Rap Album chart. She’s also faced a backlash that has repeatedly called her credibility into question. Some of it is certainly understandable: she’s not only the first white woman to hit it big in hip-hop, but also an Australian, compounding her outsider status. One of the biggest questions hanging over her is the very sound of her voice. In interviews, her natural speaking voice doesn’t have a particularly heavy Aussie accent, probably the result of her living in the US for eight years. But it is discernable enough to make her “rap voice” all the more questionable. The harshest criticism is that she isn’t so much rapping as imitating black Americans.

One of the things that always made hip-hop interesting was that rapping was an extension of the spoken word art form, with the idea that one’s “rapping voice” would be consistent with one’s natural speaking voice. It also stands to reason that because rap and hip-hop were linked to poverty-stricken communities, the form’s performers and fans have had little patience for pretense or artifice. White performers like Beastie Boys and Eminem never pretended to be anything more than what they really are: crazy Jewish kids from Brooklyn who were too smart for their own good, and a mixed-up guy from a Detroit trailer park who found both solace and purpose in hip-hop.

On the other hand, even 20 years after Vanilla Ice’s pop career faded out, his true background remains shrouded in confusion. The biography put out by his record company appears to have been different from his actual life story, and there’s no way to know how much was written and released with his knowledge or consent. There are also questions about who actually wrote his biggest hit, “Ice Ice Baby.” Ice compounded the embarrassment when made when he denied that the main sample was taken from Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure.” (For the record, it was, and he did end up having to share songwriting credit with Queen and Bowie, in addition to paying back royalties.)

Another problem for Ice was that his own self-image of being a hardcore rapper was decidedly different from the kid-friendly marketing campaign that was rolled out, complete with action figures. At that time, two of the biggest acts in rap were New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer. Ice was supposed to fill a gap between the two.

The end goal was to have Ice do for hip-hop what Elvis Presley had done for rock ‘n roll. But while segregated radio meant that early rock ‘n roll was still fairly obscure to Elvis’ fans, when Vanilla Ice broke, “Yo! MTV Raps” had already been on the air for a couple of seasons. While Vanilla Ice was being embraced by bubblegum pop fans, he was being derided as a fraud by hip-hop fans. At the same time, the Milli Vanilli lip sync scandal broke (taking C+C Music Factory, Black Box, and Technotronic down with them). The rise of gangsta rap and grunge was in part a response to the years of actual fraud perpetrated by these acts, which left music fans hungry for something far more genuine and authentic. A lot of acts perceived as pop were suddenly guilty by association, simply for sharing the same genre.

And no one was hit harder than Vanilla Ice. In 1990, his debut album, To the Extreme, was number one for sixteen weeks, selling 500,000 copies a day at its peak. A year later, his follow-up live album failed to crack the top twenty, and his movie debut, Cool As Ice, barely made more than $500,000 at the domestic box office, getting pulled from theatres less than a month after its release. In 1992, Ice was so detested that the white rap group, 3rd Bass, scored a hit just by having Henry Rollins lampoon him in their video for “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Perhaps then, Iggy Azalea could be on a similar career trajectory. Like Ice, there seems to be little genuine sense of who she is. A description of her hometown of Mullibimby reads similar to the bohemian arts haven of Taos, New Mexico. Azalea herself has talked about her humble background, and has said that she and her mother worked as house-keepers in the vacation homes of Mullibimby’s more affluent residences. When Azalea moved to Miami as a teenager, she went to work as a hotel chambermaid.

Aside from her song, “Work,” there’s little indication of the effect of her background on her as an artist. Frankly, she spends most of the song judging women who exchange oral sex for designer shoes. Perhaps her real crime isn’t being an Australian woman trying to sound black, but that she’s cultivated a mean girl persona to sound black. While trash talk is practically its own sub-genre, she lacks cleverness, and sounds like she’s punching down in order to build herself up.

So, is Iggy Azalea the female Vanilla Ice? In terms of marketing, absolutely yes. They were both sold to pop audiences rather than rap audiences. While Ice eventually said in an episode of Behind the Music that he sold out, Azalea doesn’t strike me as having any morals to compromise. As for actual talent, one of the things Ice had going for him was that he was a good dancer. He did also show some real promise as a rapper, and if he’d been in more of a position to hone his craft like Eminem, instead of being thrown onstage as a kind of rapping New Kid on the Black, he might have developed some genuine artistry.

For her part, in a recent radio appearance, Azalea was asked to freestyle, and she balked. If you can’t freestyle, you’re not a rapper—race and gender are irrelevant. This should end her career, but it probably won’t.

When I wrote that Rock is Dead, I didn’t put enough emphasis on the fact that the under-30 audience sees rock as old people music, the way my generation (Generation X, I suppose) saw jazz as our grandparents music. For young people today, music is electronic dance music, R&B, and hip-hop, all with a great deal of overlap. Younger music fans aren’t plagued by the same questions of authenticity in regard to race and genre because they learned music appreciation from the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Also, Auto-tune has made it easier to sell attractive people who can barely carry a tune; I don’t see another Milli Vanilli-type scandal on the horizon.

So Azalea’s career trajectory may not parallel Ice’s, but that isn’t because she’s more authentic or talented. It’s just because the audience is willing to put up with less authenticity for longer. The public turned on Ice, but we’ll probably just get bored of Iggy.

We Like Liars That Seem Likable

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Adrian Bonenberger

A great deal has been said and written about the lying our public figures do, recently. After the “misremembering war events” scandal that brought Brian Williams down, Bill O’Reilly has been subjected to scrutiny over his claims of witnessing combat during the Falklands War. This past week, Secretary of the VA Bob McDonald has been criticized for claiming to a homeless man to have been in Special Forces – he was not. Chris Kyle, of course, is remembered as a hero by many, despite having a demonstrable record of lying about events (much of this occurred post-moral injury, when Kyle was suffering from PTSD). Hillary Clinton lied about being shot at by snipers and is polling stronger than any other potential Democratic candidate for President in 2016. Army veteran (who should goddamn know better) and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam. Republican Congresswoman and military veteran (who should also know better) Joni Ernst has received criticism over calling herself a “combat veteran” using a very broad definition of “combat.”

People lie. There seems to be a fairly broad consensus along the political spectrum that politicians lie a great deal – whether you believe that “your” people lie less or less harmfully probably goes a ways toward establishing how one votes in an election (having become fairly disillusioned, I recently registered Independent, abandoning the Democratic Party). This explains why a state populated primarily by Democrats would elect Richard Blumenthal over his Republican rival, despite his – well – lying about combat. This explains why Democrats are happy to forgive Hillary for lying about being in combat (misremembering is not something that happens when you’ve been under sniper fire once), and why Republicans think that Joni Ernst should be given the benefit of the doubt for her admittedly less egregious (but still fairly stupid) description of having been in combat, when she was posted to Kuwait, quite far from combat. In this case, her description of herself as a combat veteran is less annoying than her repeated and ongoing defense of that untruth.

I should also point out that most combat veterans, myself included, don’t feel that combat experience gives one special insight about life that one would covet, save that combat is a situation to be avoided at all costs. When one considers that politicians who experienced combat throughout history continued to encourage or abet warfare, it’s impossible to conclude that there’s any real utility to combat as a morally didactic lesson, save potentially on an individual level.

It’s slightly different with journalism, in that, technically, in order to call oneself a journalist it’s important that one adhere to certain unwritten but widely-obeyed rules: don’t get involved in a story, don’t plagiarize, don’t lie. O’Reilly has already said he’s not a journalist, and has no credibility with people who aren’t a certain type of conservative – this seems to have insulated him from the brunt of the fury that resulted in Brian Williams’ demise.

And that’s fascinating! Williams, by defining himself as a journalist, made himself more vulnerable to truth-criticisms from people that watch his program than O’Reilly. (For the record, I was fine with him continuing as an anchor – anyone who thinks journalists, who are human, don’t directly or indirectly lie [routinely] should be banned from ever voting)

I wanted to compare how various public figures seem to be judged on their military lies, so I threw together a basic chart and mapped public perceptions of journalists and other truth-tellers onto it.

What I found was… well, not shocking at all, really. O’Reilly’s posse sticks up for him and he won’t be fired despite having lied I’ve put myself on the spectrum (right in the middle there) because if one is going to make a claim about a thing, well, have the sack to tell others where you fall.)

And Williams, who has a more discerning audience that is willing to entertain shades of gray, suffers by comparison:

And just to see how that works out with politicians – there’s the Republican case of Joni Ernst, who has claimed (playing off a credulous public’s unfamiliarity with battle and sympathetic media) that she was in combat because she was in a combat zone. Which is exactly like me saying I got the shit kicked out of me once at a bar because there were a group of guys at the end of bar muttering and looking over at me and I was really worried about getting the shit kicked out of me. Someone who had once gotten a severe ass-whipping would probably take issue with my claim, as I do hers. Let’s see if she’s going to be fired or held to account or not (remembering that this is a question of whether or not someone’s worthy of the trust, confidence, and respect of the public):

Looks like Ernst is gonna be okay – the Republicans have her back (not surprisingly), and the Democrats / media don’t feel like evaluating her claims on their merits, and calling a liar a liar. Of course, if they did that with Ernst, they’d have to do that with Hillary Clinton, the putative fundraising frontrunner for 2016, and – don’t forget – maybe our first female president. What does it matter if she happened to lie about – well, anything?

I’m also down on Clinton because of that “we need to go into Iraq” thing she did, which if anyone remembers, was basically responsible for all the horrors we see in the Middle East today – a place that used to be filled with sensible dictators who were amenable to bribes and arms deals and could be relied on to limit their war crimes to 25,000 or 30,000 dead every decade – a tiny fraction of the dead since we became involved over there. But it looks like she’s going to walk, too.

In conclusion, the lies that get told to us by our political leadership don’t seem to matter as much as the lies that are told by people who call themselves “journalists,” which may or may not involve abiding by a set of agreed-upon rules to tell stories in a certain way. And while “liberals” or “progressives” tend to evaluate journalists and people outside their group more generously than “conservatives,” both groups are equally bad at applying rigorous scrutiny to their politicians.

So it goes.

Misandry Everywhere

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

I’ve written a fair bit here and there about misandry and discrimination, prejudice, and violence directed against men. It seemed like it would be useful to have all the links collected in one place…so here they are, in roughly chronological order. I think this is everything, but if you see something I’ve missed, let me know.

Misandry and the Trayvon Martin Case

Misogyny Hurts Men Too

When Men Experience Sexism

On stereotypes of men in Orange Is the New Black

An interview with genocide scholar Adam Jones, who does a lot of work on violence against men.

What Hollywood Needs Is Fewer Strong Male Characters

On Andrea Dworkin, hating men, and the patriarchy.

On the film Black Sea and the disposability of working-class men.

Utilitarian Review 2/28/15

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Comics vs. fashion editorials.

James Lamb on why superhero diversity isn’t enough.

Me on Static and how if you see racism you’re a supervillain.

Tom Syverson on The Bachelor, hysteria, and the pain of being an object.

Chris Gavaler on Paradise Lost, the first superhero story.

R.M. Rhodes on the contribution of art director John Workman to Heavy Metal.

Me on X-Men: Days of Future Past and the coming post-racial genocide.

Shonté Daniels reviewed the game Hot Tin Roof.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the New Republic I wrote about the limits of diversity and how Octavia Butler created the greatest black superhero.

At Ravishly I wrote about:

—I interviewed Dee of blackrocktumblr about genre, rock, and race.

—I wrote about our forthcoming dog.

—I write about how writers aren’t romantic heroes.

At Splice I cheered Rahm not winning because he is a terrible mayor.

Other Links

Kenya Golden on Amber Rose.

Alyssa Rosenberg on barriers to the entertainment industry getting more diverse.

C.T. May on Harlequin and feminism.

New Open Mike Eagle EP

Batman Never Goes Bad

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Various people had informed me that the Batmobile drove off a cliff in the third season of the Adam West TV series. Budgets plummeted, single episodes rather than two-parters became the norm, direction was lost, and sadness reigned even among the giggling villains. Matt Yockey argues that the growing political turmoil of the 60s made it harder for the show to sustain its delicate balance between conservatism and satirizing conservatism, leading to incoherence, dwindling market share, and falling quality.

At least as far as the last goes, it ain’t necessarily Bat-so, though. The low points of the series aren’t in the third season, I don’t think — nothing is clearly worse than the first episode of the 2nd season, or than the limping crossover with the Green Hornet. There are certainly weak moments — the three-part trip to Londinium, largely composed of half-hearted jokes about how the British are so British, is pretty crappy, and the special sexism episode where Nora Clavicle takes over the police department is just about as offesnive as Chief Screaming Chicken. But, on the other hand, the shorter episode length and the sense of improvisatory confusion lends some episodes a manic genius rare in the rest of the series. The Joker surfing episode is particularly brilliant, abandoning all pretense of coherence as the Joker uses a machine to sap the abilities of a pro-surfer and challenges Batman to a surf-off because supervillains want to rule the beach? The whole episode seems like an excuse to get Chief O’Hara to declare, “Cowabunga, B’gora!”

So, if the quality doesn’t fall off, particularly, why do people insist it does? Hard to say…though I think there’s an impulse to try to find some aesthetic reason, or (with Yockey) some historical reason, or really any reason at all for the show’s meteoric ascent and equally meteoric fall. Everyone loved it, so the show must have been doing something right — then everybody stopped loving it, so the show must have been doing something wrong.

I do think popularity often has something to do with quality or aesthetic choices — but what or why is often hard to figure. Maybe Batman grabbed the zeigeist just right as Yockey suggests, and then the times passed it by. But then again, maybe people just got tired of it. Capitalism is prone to bubbles of various sorts; for a second there everyone wanted Batman, the way everyone wanted mortgage securities or tulips. Then people stopped wanting them. The tulips were never worth anything to begin with; Batman never changed in quality. But the market revalued them because that’s what the market does. It’s sort of like the Penguin infecting all the cash in Gotham city with a beetle-carried sleeping sickness. It doesn’t have to make much sense.

Noir Minus Shooting People

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Shonté Daniels

Hot Tin Roof gives you a cat, a gun, and makes you figure out the rest

Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore a Fedora by Glass Bottom Games is a noir themed 3D side-scroller starring Private Investigator Emma Jones and her feline partner, Franky. With Jones’ all purpose revolver, the two scour all over to solve the slew of unsolved cases that have plagued the world of Tin Roof.

The game is an innovative blend of mystery, platforming, puzzles and exploration. It finds inspiration in games like Metroid and Castlevania yet carves its own identity in with its 3D, noir roots sultry smooth jazzy shadow lighting and snarky dialogue. This is the most enjoyable part of the game, exploring Tin Roof and its civilian characters. It was fun and playful while maintaining a sort of seriousness I expect in a noir drama. Think less like Rockstar’s L.A. Noire and more “Radio Daze,” the Rugrats episode where Tommy, the masked detective, solves the mystery of “The Maltiese Woodchuck”.

The game rewards you for exploring outside of the beaten path, but going off the beaten path sometimes leads to a lot of confusion and aimless walking. Hot Tin Roof‘s world isn’t exactly easy to comprehend, and unfortunately there is no map system in the game. It’s a large enough world, with enough twists and turns, to make getting turned around incredibly easy. Similarly, the game doesn’t provide a solid way to point the player toward progress.

Hot Tin Roof does have a tip system to help you if you’re stuck, but even then those tips aren’t always useful. Further, tips can only be accessed at the police department, so heading back to get a tip is not always convenient. Hot Tin Roof relies on the player’s patience and intelligence to figure out where to go next, but unfortunately my patience wore thin quickly. The game does very little hand holding, which is great when you want to work through a puzzle on your own, but a little nudge now and then would have been appreciated.

I also faced a few issues with small bugs. Towards the end of the game, when I caved and checked a forum to figure out what to do, I discovered that there was a bug that prevented a conversation from starting that would have helped me know where to go next. There were other dialogue related bugs, where conversations were either cut off or didn’t pop up at all, but the developers have been routinely patching the game, so the minor problems I faced are already fixed.

Issues aside, there is still a lot to enjoy about this game. Jones’ revolver wasn’t perfect, but it was a fun tool to play with. Reloading the revolver felt slow at times. There is a shortcut to instantly reload, but it only reloads one specific bullet into each chamber. Sometimes a puzzle required different kinds of bullets to complete, so if I wanted, for instance, two bubble bullets and two fire bullets, I’d have to reload those manually. Since the gun is crucial for the entire game, reloading did lose its luster after the first few times.

But on the plus side, I never had to kill an enemy, and that actually felt really good. Rather than shooting baddies or pointing the gun at enemies to intimidate them, I used the gun to reach high places, burn boxes or find invisible items, among other things. Using a gun as everything but a weapon allowed the game to keep its not-so-serious noir charm. And hey, gathering new clues did feel rewarding, especially if I found them without having to hunt for too long. I may not have always known what I was doing, but neither did Jones, so we had that in common.

Hot Tin Roof does a great job of creating a world I want to solve crimes in. It requires intelligence, curiosity, and most importantly, patience, to solve all the mysteries Tin Roof face. The game is missing a few key mechanics like a map and hinting system that could have prevented the game from being infuriating at times, but even without it I found enjoyment in the city of Tin Roof. There were a few splendid moments where I felt like a real detective, running around gathering search and arrest warrants to capture the poor chump who thought they could get away Scot-free.

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a pundit in every panopticon

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