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“Woke” Without Waking Up to History … and Real Life
Four days ago on the website of the SyFy Channel, film critic, screenwriter, and comic book author Marc Bernardin wrote about the 2018 slate of pictures to be released.
If 2017 was the tip of the representational spear, then 2018 will be the long shaft that follows. This year will deliver Black Panther, A Wrinkle in Time, Ocean’s 8, and Crazy Rich Asians — studio movies catering to historically underserved audiences, many of which are written and directed by members of those same audiences.
In other words, 2018 is the year that white dudes will be confronted with inescapable media that isn’t about them.
In Hollywood’s Golden Age, before the FCC lifted restrictions on construction of television stations, it’s not hard to make the case that the major studios ignored black America. There were only six all-black movies that were produced and distributed by the major studios during that era, and not all of them were without controversy. One of the first, Warner Brother’s The Green Pastures (1936) was slammed for its racial stereotyping. Still, this was the era of the truly mass market film. The studio heads were risk adverse and programming to 10 percent of the population was something they weren’t particularly interested in.
But this is not where I take issue with Mr. Bernandin. What I take issue with is this:
Black Panther might be the biggest, blackest movie ever made. And white nerds are going to have to go see it, because it’s a Marvel movie. They are going to have to learn to identify with someone who doesn’t look like them, who doesn’t live where they live, who doesn’t talk or act they way they do. They are going to have to learn cinematic empathy.
A fan embraces his hero (cincysportsgallery.com)
“Learning to identify with someone who doesn’t look like them.” Has this man ever attended a professional sporting event? When I go to Cincinnati Reds home games in the summers I see old white guys in Joe Morgan jerseys, middle-aged white guys in Eric Davis jerseys, and younger white fans in Brandon Phillips gear. Although none of them are on the roster today, these pigmentally-challenged individuals still identify with their favorite black athletes.
They just didn’t want to cheer these men. They wanted to be these men. It is something that’s repeated all over this country — from MLB parks to NFL stadiums and NBA arenas — and it’s been going on for 71 years, ever since that April day when Jackie Robinson first walked across that white line at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
The identification level of sports fans is certainly stronger than most comic book aficionados. While there may be an occasional completely out-of-touch nerd who desperately wants to be a guy who dresses up like a bat with a leather fetish, one only has to watch a grown man meet the sports hero of his youth to see real cross-race empathy and admiration.
Published in Culture
Only North America was dumb enough to allow open borders?
I always liked Captain Janeway, I thought Tuvok was the best Vulcan since Robin Curtis, and Chakotay was pretty bad-ass.
I found virtually every other character annoying as heck. Tom Paris, B’Elanna, Kes, Neelix, 7-of-9, and The Doctor. I can’t decide if it was the actors or the characters, but I hated them all.
Harry Kim was fine. Nothing special, but at least he didn’t annoy me.
It was, presumably, nuked the hardest during The Atomic Wars. Maybe thinning out the herd provided the impetus for linguistic unity, somehow?
“Always some white boy gotta invoke the Holy Trilogy.”
Dr. McCoy has evidently worked to suppress it, presumably for professional advancement; it reasserts itself in the presence of attractive women, when drinking, and/or under the influence of mind-altering spores.
Given that Bones felt the need to retrain his speech patterns, can we conclude that the South is still under the heel of the North, even in the 23rd century?
In a Universe where folk can bend time and space, why shouldn’t race and gender be similarly malleable?
Of course, in our Universe, time and space cannot be bent so easily, therefore…
Weird. One would imagine that the North should have been nuked harder than the South during the Atomic Wars, thereby allowing the Southern accent to become dominant.
And then there’s the fact that the French speak with British accents. The Atomic Wars clearly did a number on linguistic migration patterns.
There is a non-zero number of Internet nerds who complain loudly about such things. A small minority, to be sure, but their rants get amplified by those who depend on the existence of racism for their livings (just like the most idiotic fringe Left-wing tweets get amplified by right-wing media outlets who should know better than to give oxygen to those fools).
Funny thing though. If the Russians are to blame for all fake election news, why can’t they also be to blame for racist sci-fi/fantasy rants?
Thereby proving the point for SJWs that racism persists when people don’t stand up to it. The only reason Bones insults Spock is because Bones knows he can get away with it, because he knows Spock will never lodge a complaint. Bones would never say similarly racist things to Uhura, Sulu, or Chekov, because he knows they’d lodge a complaint against him. The lesson: Tolerance breeds racism.
Every time I see that trailer, I think “That’s gonna be a stinker.” Oprah preaching her sermon of self-empowerment? No thanks. I can probably see reruns of her show for free on the webs.
There are people on the Internet who point to this as evidence that all of the Earth people on the show are racist, and ask why Spock didn’t do exactly the thing you claim is unimaginable.
I think there’s a deep sickness in how people are raising children these days if people younger than I am are so uptight about race that they assume any comment at all about it must be bigotry, even in a science fiction setting.
The marketing for A Wrinkle In Time is pretty annoying. The music is the same saccharine “self-esteem empowerment” hipposcat that pervades mediocre YAF movies.
Replace the background song for this trailer, and it could have been pretty bad-ass. Market it as a sci-fi movie, not an after-school special.
Like, imagine if Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor movies were marketed with saccharine “girl empowerment” songs.
Compare the above trailer with that for The Golden Compass. Pretty terrible movie, but at least the marketing didn’t pander.
Yeah, who was the HR Director on the Enterprise, anyway??
@misthiocracy You know what your problem is? You have no cinematic empathy for girl power. You will be made to see Wrinkle and you will be made to enjoy it.
Hey, I’m the one arguing it might be a decent movie. I simply don’t like the marketing.
Actually, I presume that would have been Spock’s responsibility. He was the First Officer.
That’s a different trailer for A Wrinkle in Time than the one I saw. I actually like it better, because at least it feels like the same story. Sort of.
This is the one I saw, and if it hadn’t had the scene with the ant and the string, I likely wouldn’t have recognized the story at all.
I guess the special effects are there to distract us from the terrible acting on display?
Great post, EJ. You immediately blew apart Mr. Bernardin’s faulty premise, by appealing to an example we’ve all seen, or been a part of. Where has he been for the last fifty-odd years, if he thinks those “white nerds” have never empathized with someone who doesn’t look like them? This is 2018, not 1892.
For the left, history begins afresh every morning.
I like that trailer better.
The facile YA mysticism I can do without, but it seems no worse than any other facile YA fantasy movie.
I just figure I’m not the target market for this flick, and I’m ok with that. I’m not arrogant enough to think every movie is made just for me.
That’s what I meant by not being able to recognize it. Sure, the source material is all “people of the light fighting the darkness” — L’engle already gets criticized for being just a bit too new agey — but this trailer seems to increase that factor by 10.
My kids thought the book was weird, but also corny with its “love conquers all” message. I think they get the cynicism from the ol’ man.
1967. I’m in high school. I love basketball. My local NBA team sucks (the Detroit Pistons); their glory days are 20 years in the future. But the Boston Celtics are still in their heyday and I follow them avidly. And the Cincinnati Royals with the amazing Oscar Robertson. But in 1967 I become infatuated with the Philadelphia 76ers. And in particular their star shooting guard, Hal Greer. He is amazing! So fluid, such a great shooter. For his free throws, he shoots a jump shot. He claims it gives him an opportunity to practice his jump shot. He is deadly accurate. He is a 10-time NBA all-star. One of the all-time greats. He is my hero. I emulate his jump shot and his “jumping” free throw. I celebrate when the 76ers win the NBA title that year. I adopt his number 15 as my favorite number. And did I mention he is a black man? Hmmm, how could I overlook that salient fact? Maybe because it didn’t matter a fig to me! He was a basketball player who played the game with skill and class – just the way I would have hoped to if I’d had even a fraction of his talent. It would still be one of the highlights of my life if I could meet him! People like Marc Bernardin are beneath contempt when they try to assign their ignorant stereotypes to people they don’t know or care about.
If white audiences have to be forced to watch black actors, then I must’ve missed that directive. Silly me – I will watch just about any film featuring Denzel Washington for the same reason I will watch just about any film featuring Gene Hackman: They are terrific actors capable of making even a bad guy seem believable and sympathetic.
To: Ryan Coogler, Director, Black Panther
From: Disney Studios Marketing Department
Big Coog! Just wanted to touch base with you regarding our ‘White People Are Gonna Hate This Movie’ campaign. We’ve got Marc Bernardin on board and he’s selling it hard. We’re in talks with AMC about’ racist-only seating in LA.
Todd’s in talks with Disneyworld’s engineer about a minorities-only park area – that’s right, we gone put Wackpanda on the map!
Sincerely,
Lars
Racists are disgusting.
So, the movie amplifies the themes of the book, but doesn’t alter them. A lot of people might argue that’s what movies are supposed to do.
And Cosby. He was America’s dad, and we rewarded his show with number one ratings are five straight years, 1985-1990. And I’m pretty sure that we all fantasized about having a wife as gorgeous, smart, and sensible as Clair Huxtable (played by Phylicia Rashad).
She was originally to Phylicia Ayers-Allen. I actually remember when Ahmad Rashad (of your Minnesota Vikings) proposed to her on air during a game. I know what we all thought: how awesome. A handsome, successful football hero marrying a beautiful, talented actress who played America’s mom. It was like a storybook.
Oh, yeah, did I mention that they were black? Well, no, because nobody cared about that.
It is my sense that our country got over the whole race thing about 30 years ago. It’s been political propaganda and postmodern nonsense since then.
About the OP, I’m torn. I particularly like the Black Panther. At the moment, he is one of my two favorite Avengers, with Hawkeye. (Sorry, Cap, you fell in my ratings when you sided with your murderous buddy.)
So does watching Black Panther lend implicit support to the silly project of race conscious selection of superheroes? Should I punish the studio by refusing to watch what they seem to have designed as an expression of their wrong-headed race theories? Or should I enjoy the movie to show to them that they’re wrong? But that’s putting money in their pockets, the ingrates.
I’m going to withhold judgment for now. If the trailers and reviews indicate some sort of SJW theme, then I’ll skip it. But if Black Panther is the admirable hero and dutiful son that he has been thus far, I will pay, enjoy, and cheer.
It looks to me like an African version of Atlas Shrugged. The nation of Wakanda is able to avoid interference by the rest of the world thanks to a sci-fi cloaking device, just like Galt’s Gulch.