EMANICIPATION VS. FREEDOM PT. 4

I had hoped that I had said all I needed to say about the politicization of the CW superhero universe in the previous essay in this series. Unfortunately, thanks to the BLACK LIGHTNING episode "Just and Unjust," broadcast on 2-5-19,  I’m returning to the CW well once more.

I don’t watch BLACK LIGHTNING for entertainment, since I don’t generally get entertainment out of any sort of art that puts politics ahead of poetry. Despite my having been accused in some benighted bailiwicks of being an arch-conservative, I find conservative soapboxes just as flimsy as liberal ones. But in the 2010s there's not nearly as many venues where conservatives can may fools of themselves as the ultraliberals like to pretend.

I won’t attempt to analyze the complicated plot-lines of BLACK LIGHTNING's two seasons here. The show's posture was made clear from the first episode. Racist white cops gratuitously pull over school principal Jefferson Pierce and humiliate him for “driving while black”—and in front of his teenaged daughters Anissa and Jennifer, no less. This incident looms large in Pierce’s return to his earlier role as the vigilante superhero Black Lightning, and when his daughters also develop powers, they too become equally involved in fighting against “the Man,” as an earlier generation called it. To be sure, most of the hero’s opponents are the minions of the albino-black gang-boss Tobias Whale, against whom Black Lightning nurtures an old grudge. But even the presence of black cops in Pierce's mostly-black community of Freeland doesn’t anneal the general sense that all Black Americans live in a state of constant victimization. Even the predatory actions of black gangstas, by implication, are ultimately the responsibility of America’s system of “institutionalized racism.”

Nothing signals this unrelenting depiction of constant victimization more than what I’ll term “the Khalil plotline.” Khalil, a fellow student with Jennifer and Anissa at Freeland’s fairly upscale high school, is an up-and-coming track star with a bright future ahead of him, the more so when he and Jennifer fall in love. But Khalil's dreams come to an end when one of Tobias Whale's minions tries to kill a local organizer, resulting in Khalil being crippled by a stray bullet. 

Tobias Whale, though indirectly the author of Khalil's predicament, then plays the role of the Tempter. Using cyborg-like technology, Tobias gives Khalil the power to walk again, as well as super-powers, so that Khalil will function as Whale’s enforcer. Khalil makes this devil’s bargain in full possession of his faculties, and one of Whale’s plots involves Khalil storming his former high school and creating havoc. The students, most of whom are black, flee in panic from Khalili’s powers, though, conveniently for later plotlines, he doesn’t kill any of them.

Jennifer Pierce believes in her beloved and turns him away from serving Whale. So far as this goes, this is pretty standard for the CW, having a sympathetic character commit criminal offenses but finding some way to redeem him so that he never goes to jail for them. However, in season two, Khalil meets his reward for rebelling against the gangsta life, and he dies by the order of Whale.

As “Just and Unjust” begins, the mourning Jennifer returns to her school, where incidentally, Jefferson Pierce has been demoted to vice-principal due to his mysterious absences (caused by his superhero sideline), and an unfeeling white guy takes Pierce’s former job. This of course is one of the nightmares of Afro-American culture: the fear that at any moment even those with rewarding, respectable community positions will simply have their advancements ripped away by the white hierarchy. Since Unfeeling White Guy is not a developed character, I’ll just call him UWG for short.

On Jennifer’s first day back at school, she’s pleased that many of the students have evidently forgiven (or forgotten) Khalil’s rampage, for they’ve created memorials for the former track star. However, UWG has the memorials taken down.

Jennifer doesn’t make any attempt to meet with the principal or anyone else to contest this dictate. Instead, she assembles her own memorial in one of the school hallways. UWG quotes the school handbook, calling the display “inappropriate student art.” Though I don’t recall UWG having done or said anything racist in previous episodes, Jennifer immediately tasks him with bigotry.

“You can hide behind the handbook and all your rules. But the fact of the matter is, you just don’t like [Khalil]—or any of us, do you?” She also inducts Khalil into the ranks of “black lives that matter,” and outright calls UWG a racist. All of the student witnessing the exchange—not just some of them, but ALL of them—completely agree with Jennifer and apparently don’t care that Khalil’s rampage might’ve killed or injured some of them. Once a white guy’s in charge, he can be nothing but a representative of the white hierarchy, even though I believe most principals in a similar situation would have a lot of problems with honoring a gangster’s enforcer. Somehow, Khalil’s injury becomes the injury that all black people suffer at the hands of white people, for Jennifer, before being removed by security, preaches that “every person standing here is just one step away from becoming something they never meant to be.” And it’s totally the fault of the hierarchy: black people are  “trapped by a system, that doesn’t give a damn about us-- run by people like you.”

UWG then has a student rebellion on his hands, and his vice-principal’s only concern is his daughter’s welfare. When Pierce is told that finds his daughter called UWG a racist in front of other students, Pierce re-interprets this direct insult into liberal-speak:

“Jennifer is just questioning whether you have the perspective or the sensitivity for this community.”

Uh, not quite. She wanted to have a memorial to her gangsta-boyfriend on school property, and thought she could get it by picturing him as a victim of institutionalized racism.  The script, not willing to recognize Pierce’s bullshit, then loads the dice further by having UWG express resentment for the fact that he believes he’s had a harder life than Jefferson Pierce. Pierce’s response is practically boilerplate Leftism:

“you get the benefit of the doubt that even a rich black man will not get.  That’s what these kids are facing.”

If Khalil had been framed by the cops or the KKK, this “benefit of the doubt” argument might hold some relevance. But there is no “doubt” that Khalil committed criminal acts, and it would be a peculiar principal of any race who would think it a great idea to memorialize a gangsta in a high school. The idea that Khalil is instantly forgiven all of his sins because he’s had a hard row to hoe, being black in America, summarizes BLACK LIGHTNING’s total investment in victimization politics, and makes clear that the show endorses only the credo of “justice for the oppressed alone.”

EMANCIPATION VS. FREEDOM PT. 3

In Part 1, I quoted Fukuyama on a philosophical question posed by Nietzsche:

 Is recognition that can be universalized worth having in the first place? Is not the quality of recognition far more important than its universality? And does not the goal of universalizing recognition inevitably trivialize and devalue it?

Contemporary television serials are possibly one of the best mediums by which ideologies can produce widespread, albeit trivialized, forms of the ethic of emancipation. When television was dominated by conservative and occasionally ultraconservative creators of content, the emancipation ethic followed the "melting-pot" paradigm that I mentioned in Part 2.  Persons who did not conform to the WASP image of normality were not condemned for their differences, but there was the expectation that, say, a heroic Black American would be devote his energies to the benefit of the American status quo.  A character like Barney Collins of the 1966 MISSION IMPOSSIBLE provides an apposite example. In the Hegelian terms promoted by Fukuyama, Barney received "recognition" of his talents and his heroic nobility because he served the status quo by curbing the excesses of foreign dictators. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, then, provides a fair example of the trivialization of recognition along conservative political lines.

 In the ultraliberal morass of current television, a series, or a group of related serials, are far more likely to pursue liberal ideals of "identity politics," whether the identity is defined in terms of a character's race, religious heritage, or sexual proclivities. My apposite example of this current trend is the so-called "Arrowverse," usually identified with show-runner Greg Berlanti and incarnated in four current TV-shows on the CW Network: ARROW, THE FLASH, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, and SUPERGIRL (which originally debuted on CBS but moved to CW in the show's second season).

The Arrowverse's identity politics orientation does not touch on the matter of religious heritage very often, so this aspect does not come into play. In terms of the representation of racial identity, the four shows have not followed the tendency of race-bending established franchise-heroes. Green Arrow, the Flash and Supergirl, depicted as Caucasian in the comics, are all played by Caucasian actors, and most of the "Legends" follow the same pattern, with the exception of short-lived members like Hawkgirl and Kid Flash.

However, the Berlanti-verse has invested heavily in the idea of "gender-bending" various characters in terms not of sexual identity but in terms of sexual proclivities, to wit:

ARROW started the ball rolling with the character of Sara Lance/White Canary. Sara was an original creation for the teleseries, though she was loosely patterned upon the comics-character Black Canary, and was apparently conceived as a lesbian early on. Sara did not stay on ARROW but was later spun off on the LEGENDS OF TOMORROW show. However, a gay version of Mister Terrific-- who debuted in the comics as a straight character in 1997-- joined the ARROW show in 2015.

THE FLASH, though it rewrote the hero's origin so that he now had a Black American "father" and "sister," didn't "gender-bend" any previously existing characters, such as those based on DC-characters Vibe and Killer Frost. In the course of one of the Arrowverse-crossovers, however, regular FLASH villain Captain Cold was revealed to have a gay doppelganger in another universe.

SUPERGIRL, though it introduced "Black Jimmy Olsen" as the Arrowverse's most notable "race-bending" up to that point, did not signal its investment in LGTB concerns during the show's first season on CBS. When the second season commenced on the CW, the original-to-TV character of Alex Danvers, adoptive sister to Kara "Supergirl" Danvers, belatedly discovered that she was a lesbian without ever having realized it, thanks to an encounter with a cop named Maggie Sawyer. Sawyer, a character who debuted in the SUPERMAN comics-universe, was "ambiguously gay" in her first appearances, though eventually her lesbian status was fully embraced by DC. The TV-version of Sawyer did not remain as a regular on SUPERGIRL but Alex Danvers remained as the representative for this particular strand of identity politics. In the fourth season, the show introduced a new character who will be defined as "trans," and though created for the teleseries, Nia Nal is loosely patterned after "Dream Girl" of the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES franchise.

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, obviously, started out with a lesbian character as one of the regular members, and she was eventually joined by regular girlfriend Ava in Seasons 3 and 4, whose status is that of a support-character, rather than being a member of the Legends team. None of the Legends regulars were gender-bent, though in Season 4 the group recruited DC character John Constantine. In the comics Constantine has been loosely defined as bisexual, but according to online essays, the comics have not tended to focus on the character's homosexual encounters very often, while Season 4 made one such liaison a going concern for several episodes. There has also been a suggestion of possible romance between Constantine and "Citizen Cold," the gay doppelganger of FLASH's Captain Cold.

Now, what's my point in laboriously listing all the examples of gender-bending in the Arrowverse? Obviously nothing I could write would change Greg Berlanti's patent conviction to his liberal emancipation ethic. His interpretation of the liberal ethic seems based on the "monkey see, monkey do" principle, essentially taking the position that the only way TV can help achieve equity for LGTB people in reality is to bombard viewers with LGTB characters, and hope that said viewers, if not already liberal in their sentiments, will become more liberal in attitude by exposure to such characters.

Here, however, Berlanti's intent is far more consistent than his execution. Speaking only for myself, I consider most of the LGBT characters in the Arrowverse to be extremely mediocre,  both as characters and as representatives of identity politics. The only character who seems authentic both as a character and as a homosexual is Mister Terrific of the ARROW series, expertly portrayed by the actor Echo Kellum.

In some cases, the actor may be good but the character-arc is mediocre. Like many fans, I applaud the fact that the Arrowverse gave actor Matt Ryan the opportunity to portray John Constantine once more, following the demise of the 2014 NBC teleseries in which Ryan first essayed the character. However, his homosexual story-arc was jejune in the extreme, as are most of the arcs involving Sara and Ava,  which are also not well-served by the wooden line-readings of Cathy "White Canary" Lotz. Chyler Leigh provides decent thesping for the character of Alex Danvers on SUPERGIRL, but since her primary function on the series is to be an ally to the central heroine, being a lesbian doesn't really hurt or help her.

I assume that Berlanti's deluge of LGBT characters within a relatively short span of time is predicated on roughly similar liberalizing strategies seen in earlier eras. I stated in Part 2 of this series that the racial liberalization seen in television shows and even comic books of the 1960s broke down many of the old barriers of white privilege vis-a-vis creating all characters as WASPs. However, it's my conviction that people didn't respond so much to mediocre Black American characters like the aforementioned Barney Collins, but to those the audiences found more distinctive and memorable, like the contemporaneous 1960s character Alexander Scott of I SPY.

Berlanti follows the current trend of identity politics, assuming that as long as you keep showing "noble gays" to the public in great quantity, the public will embrace gay people in response to this fervent appeal to social equity. But I don't think that's the way it worked for the liberalization of 1960s attitudes toward Black Americans as fictional characters. White people may remember the presence of a Barney Collins or a Julia Baker (from the titular series JULIA), but mediocre characters don't change opinions. Whatever the real-life failings of Bill Cosby, his portrayal of Alexander Scott puts across a character who is enjoyable because he is rounded as well as being black. Similarly, even though Nichelle Nichols' Lieutenant Uhura appeared in far fewer scenes than did Diahann Carroll's Julia, the former made a more lasting impression because her character was better conceived, both as a character and as a black woman.

Both the melting-pot paradigm and the paradigm of identity politics substitute political status in place of vivid characterization. They fail because they conceive of the audience as imitative monkeys, and when their politics become known, they're more likely to conjure forth King Kong than Curious George.