KEEPING VS. SHARING PT 3

 In my previous recent essays, I've been examining the way two ethical systems, the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing, have interpenetrated human history in the past and continue to do so. principally through their modern manifestations as "conservatism" and "liberalism." However, I added a couple of subdivisions to the mix. Keeping and Sharing can both manifest into extreme forms, both of which can be subsumed under "radicalism." The less extreme forms of both are best described as "meliorism"

Routine political discourse often distinguishes between radical and meliorist forms of liberalism. In the meliorist form, the ethic recommended to those that hold power can be summed up as "You Should Share" such things as rights and privileges with those that do not have (or do not think they have) said capacities. In the world of American civil rights, it's almost de rigeur to name Martin Luther King Jr as an exponent of persuading powerholders to cede power to the marginalized. In the radicalist form, the prevailing argument says, "You Must Share" and the best-known advocate from the same Civil Rights era, Malcolm X, favored the stick rather than the carrot.

Conservatism, though, displays the same two subdivisions. Liberals are usually only able to recognize the extreme form, so that everyone from the KKK to the guy running the Christian cake-shop are viewed as equals in tyranny. Naturally there are specific agents who want to Keep Power under all circumstances and cede nothing.  However, meliorist conservatives display the ethic that "You Should Share," albeit only under the right conditions. Franklin D. Roosevelt earned the reputation of a Liberal for measures like empowering the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Yet, the act of interning Japanese-Americans was fundamentally a conservative act, even if one takes the most charitable view of FDR's action.

And so I come to my first fictional example, that of the opposition between meliorism and radicalism seen in SPIDER-MAN #68-70 (dated January, February and March 1969). Yet to examine this scenario, a little grounding is necessary, since the conflict revolves around one of Spider-Man's support-cast, Joe Robertson. Though introduced in ASM #51, not until issue #55 does Stan Lee set up the newsman's role as a regular character, where he's a voice of reason as against the mule-headedness of publisher J. Jonah Jameson. He's also the epitome of a Liberal meliorist view: Joe Robertson ascends to his position of authority purely on the basis of merit. 

Jumping forward a year and some months, Joe's son Randy Robertson is briefly seen in ASM #67, but only in #68 do we see Randy's purpose: to show Stan Lee's negative view of radicalism. Thus, almost as soon as Peter Parker encounters Randy on the campus they both attend, up comes the shadow of Randy's friend Josh-- who, since he never has a last name, might as well be called Josh X.

Though Lee was often criticized for the piddly nature of the "campus protest" involved here, he shows considerable acumen in showing how militant Josh X is. There's no "hey, how they hangin,'" just, "are you joining the cause?" Lee obviously means readers to find Josh abrasive here and later, even though Peter Parker nominally approves of his cause. The campus protest will tie into Spider-Man's adventure with his frequent foe The Kingpin, but the cause is less important here than showing how Randy, the offspring of a meliorist parent, is being influenced by a radical who demands that the campus authorities "Must Share," while said authorities are taking the radical conservative posture, presumably currying favor with alumni to garner donations (though Lee does not say this).

Josh X is even less appealing in his second scene in the story. Though Randy is the first to invite Parker to help the students fight the good fight, Josh not only acts like Parker owes him allegiance, he addresses a near-stranger as "Whitey" as if he doesn't owe Parker the slightest courtesy. Stan Lee doesn't have Parker react to the racial slur, but rather to Josh's statement that the young militant doesn't think he has to listen to, or account for, the response of the authorities to the protesters' demands. On the next page, an unnamed Black protester casts aspersions on Randy for being "the son of an Uncle Tom," and Josh, for whatever reason, defends Randy as a "soul brother." But it's not hard to imagine Josh flinging the same insult if Randy failed to follow Josh's lead.

The battle between the spider and the gang-lord continues into ASM #69 and #70, but Stan Lee devotes just a handful of scenes to winding up his mini-debate about meliorism and radicalism. In the first of the two scenes above, Joe is aghast that a son of his was involved not just in protest, but in causing damage to personal property, which is something neither Randy nor Josh apologizes for. (In the next issue, Lee changes his mind and says no damage was caused by the protesters.) Randy, probably channeling whatever Sidney Poitier movies Stan had seen, complains that he has to be more "militant" because his meliorist father is part of "the White Man's establishment." Joe makes the more reasonable argument about proving oneself, though oddly, Josh gets the last word, claiming that "we" (meaning Black people) won't get anywhere unless they "kinda shake Whitey up a little." Given that Stan Lee was almost certainly a meliorist, it's fairly generous that he at least acknowledges the rationale of the radicalist in this issue. In #70 the voice of the "Must Keep" authority is at last heard, as the dean admits having failed to listen to the voices of his students, and that he was on their side but was busy fighting the real entrenched interests. the college's trustees. Josh admits the need to think about things a bit more, but no one's ever privy to his thoughts since I don't think he ever appears again.  

So in this late 1960s tale, some respect is accorded the "You Must Share" ethos even if the "You Should Share" is clearly the superior ethic. Yet what about one of the principal franchises of the era of identity politics?

The 2018 MCU film BLACK PANTHER presented audiences with a world where "You Must Share" is the only game in town. However, it's not a power structure based on the racial politics of America. Rather, Wakanda, an idealized African fantasyland, is called upon to pledge fealty to the radicalist ethos. In a loose way Wakanda is also governed by an Ethos of Keeping, though it's implied to be a world without the racial divisions found in the outside world, only a heritage of tribal quarrels that can be solved with rituals of combat. Wakanda keeps its miracle element vibranium out of the hands of the powerful and the powerless alike. However, their isolationism takes a major blow thanks to a poor relation of the realm's hereditary ruler, The Black Panther.   

Considering that T'Challa's uncle N'Jobu is critical to the end of Wakanda's isolationism, the character is barely more than a bare function of the plot. We are never told what radical influencer managed to persuade N'Jobu, brother of the reigning Wakandan king T'Chaka, to betray his country's policies and try to sell weapons to radicals in that hotbed of political activity, Oakland. Nor does the film tell us why T'Challa is so traumatized by the death of his traitorous uncle. N'Jobu's main purpose in the movie is to spawn Erik Killmonger, whom many critics described as the film's "real hero." Even though Killmonger takes over Wakanda with zero concern for its people and with the agenda of using their weapons for his network of blacktivist conspirators (also never defined), all that counts is forcing Wakanda to Share with the downtrodden, "By Any Means Necessary." Of course, Whitey is still the main villain even when no White person is directly involved in Killmonger's plans. Thus CIA agent Everett Ross is automatically a "colonizer" according to one of T'Challa's guardians. Yet none of the Wakandans uses that term for Killmonger, even though he's applying CIA tactics to ruin their country for his own agenda. Even though Killmonger dies, he succeeds in ending Wakanda's isolation. And the audience knows this must be a good thing because the nation starts donating money to American Blacks-- who I guess are supposed to be way worse off than all the impoverished tribes of real-world Africa.            

It's clear from BLACK PANTHER that without any sort of compensatory ethos, the radicalist ethos loses all control of whatever moral compass it might potentially possess. I would like to think that PANTHER's success at the box office was a short-lived anomaly, since most of the radicalist MCU movies since then have tanked. But as another famous Liberal-with-Conservative-tendencies observed, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."                 

   

THE APPROPRIATION HUSTLE PT. 3

I have not used the above essay-title since I completed a couple of posts on the subject of appropriation in 2017, but since my views on the subject have not changed, the title seems fully applicable here, to extend my remarks on the topic as they appear in Brian Attebery's 2013 book STORIES ABOUT STORIES.

In the last section of my Attebery review, I quoted the author's opinion of a particular White Australian author's "appropriation" of Aboriginal stories for her fantasy-novel.

As with similar endeavors in Canada, the United States, and other colonial locales, a goal of the [colonial] project... was to get rid of indigenous peoples through a combination of assimilation and genocide while APPROPRIATING [my emphasis] their songs, stories and rituals.

I won't repeat my refutation of this dubious logic, though I'll add the point that Attebery managed to conflate all those colonial persons urging for "assimilation" of marginal peoples with those who were supposed "appropriating" the sacred narratives of those people. In point of fact, the powers urging assimilation would have been totally focused on erasing all cultural differences. But when a researcher with an interest in Native American culture like Henry Schoolcraft devotes six volumes to preserving Native American culture-- research that, in turn, provided much of the content of Longfellow's HIAWATHA-- one could hardly call that erasure. It's also possible to fairly critique the characterizations Schoolcraft or Longfellow made of Native American culture without assuming some dire plot to heap opprobrium on Indians, and without assuming that the respective authors made tons of money by adapting their stories. (Longfellow did; Schoolcrafr probably did not.)

On a separate matter: Attebery was very vocal against the idea that only authors aligned with "living traditions" like that of Aboriginal worship could be deemed worthy to weave fantastic fiction out of those sacred narratives. He said nothing about other Aboriginals would approve of what the hypothetical Aboriginal author did with their sacred narratives, though Attebery dismissed the complaints of Christians who didn't always like what authors like C.S. Lewis wrought in his fictions about the "living tradition" of Christianity. Somehow I doubt Attebery would be quite so sanguine if traditional Aboriginals were upset with their religion's depiction, even by one of their own-- or even one who was ethnically related to that subgroup, but not "living the life." 

A specific example of some real-world condemnation can be found in the public criticism of fantasy-author Rebecca Roanhorse. Of her six published books, I've read both entries in the "Sixth World" series, which take place in a future where an apocalypse has more or less returned certain parts of the U.S. to their pre-Columbian status. So, given that it's a author with partial Native American ethnicity writing about Native American culture, it all must be good, right?

Not quite. According to Roanhorse, she's half-Black and half-Pueblo Indian, but her "Sixth World" fantasy is based upon Navajo religion. After Roanhorse became well-known, certain Navajo pundits claimed that a non-Navajo, even one who had lived for some years on the Arizona reservation known as "Navajo Nation," had no right to utilize Navajo narratives for fiction irrespective of formal literary quality. From Wikipedia:

Dr. Matthew Martinez, former Lieutenant Governor of Ohkay Owingeh,^[8][9] welcomed Roanhorse on her first and only visit to the community, in 2018, and spent time with her. He said, "I recognize that adoption is an emotional experience for families and communities and especially those who have been adopted out with no real connection to home....At Ohkay Owingeh, our current enrollment process privileges family lineage and not blood quantum." Agoyo explained that "anyone who descends from an Ohkay family - as Roanhorse has publicly claimed - can become a citizen. But Martinez said the author has chosen a different path."^[1] Martinez continued, "by not engaging in any form of cultural and community acknowledgement, Roanhorse has failed to establish any legitimate claim to call herself Ohkay Owingeh." He eventually concluded, "It is unethical for Roanhorse to be claiming Ohkay Owingeh and using this identity to publish Native stories."^[1]

 

 

Serendipitously, a similar example of small-minded exclusionary attitudes was brought to my attention by this CRIVENS post. It seems that a 2024 facsimile of the renowned GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 came out with an advisory warning reading, in part, that the story contained "negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures." But GSXM is not some 1940s cartoon making jokes about African cannibals or the like. The advisory also claims that its purpose is "spark conversation to create a more inclusive future." But how can there be a conversation, when the authors of the advisory don't even say what was wrong with "Second Genesis?" Did the story fail to depict non-White characters like Sunfire and Thunderbird as even-tempered? Or did some Marvel drone get the whim-whams from the scene in which a group of tribal Africans are shown worshiping mutant heroine Storm as a goddess, because neither they nor she know better?

Those are both possibilities. However, I'm of the opinion that the real issue was probably that all of the creative people involved were dominantly Caucasian in ethnicity. Yet the idea of having a concept like X-MEN being written so as to satisfy all ethnicities is absurd. Navajo pundits may be content to have no fiction-author base a story upon their sacred tales unless it's someone who truly came, ethnically and culturally, from the Navajo community. But how could any single writer or artist satisfy the demands of writing for all the ethnicities in this or any X-MEN story? Storm is ethnically though not culturally Black American, so I guess Rebecca Roanhorse could write her. But she couldn't write Thunderbird (even had he survived), because he's Apache. Nor could she write any hero from any other culture. And the same would apply to any other author. (And yes, I know that there are no "sacred narratives" in X-MEN, but obviously the whole "appropriation argument" extends far beyond the specific "religious fantasy" context it assumed in Attebery's screed.)

While I will admit that some pro-appropriation individuals may be motivated to preserve the integrity of their cultures, I stand by my imputation that an awful lot of talk about "appropriation" is what I called it in the title, a hustle designed to make sure some people get jobs and others don't. What did Ryan Coogler, a Black American from Oakland, know about real African cultures before he helmed a motion picture based on a made-up African nation? Wasn't he as dependent as a White writer-director would be, upon what expert researchers advised him? Even though he's credited with scripting, I feel sure that he depended on outside research as much as Longfellow depended on Schoolcraft. 

I have seen some online essays claiming that some of the worst political correctness is losing its hold on American culture. That doesn't mean an absolute return to the days when almost all comics-creators shared the ethnicity of European Jews and/or Gentiles. But it could mean a return to the idea that the quality of the work is more important than the identity of the work's creator.

PROTO CROSSOVERS AND SUCH PT. 2

 As a result of my refinements in Part 1 of this series, I'm overturning some of the conclusions I made in COSMIC ALIGNMENT PART 2:

Marvel's Inhumans debuted in a 1965 issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, and the Black Panther appeared in the comic in the following year. It practically goes without saying that Lee and Kirby intended for both the Panther and the Inhumans to appear in serials at some point, but neither did for some time, and so for all of those appearances they register as Subs. In a special FF issue dated November 1967, both the Inhumans and the Black Panther crossed over with the Fantastic Four in fighting Psycho-Man. The Black Panther would not get a regular berth for another year, when he became a regular member of the Avengers in 1968, so within the compass of that story, he remained a Sub type. However, the special placed a more immediate push to see if readers wanted an Inhumans series, since in an issue of THOR, also dated November 1967, the denizens of Attilan received their first feature, albeit only a backup strip. So the FF ANNUAL would be a High-Stature crossover because the Inhumans had just become Primes around the time when the issue came out, while the equally enjoyable Panther had to wait another year for Prime status. 

This section is not incorrect with respect to the Black Panther and the Inhumans being Subs within the cosmos of the Prime stars, the Fantastic Four. However, the overall intent of the essay was to state that the debut stories of the new heroes did not count as crossovers because it took considerable time for any of them to get their own features. However, now I would consider that the debuts of both characters would count as "proto-crossovers," and so would any other stories produced before the "future Prime stars" got their own berths. 

Such a "proto-crossover" appears in a Captain America continuity from late 1967 through early 1968 (though all of the issues were dated1968). But Marvel did not wait to see whether or not the issues teaming up Cap with the Black Panther sold well, for the storyline culminated with the star-spangled crusader recommending the Panther for admission to The Avengers. The admission took place about a month or two later in AVENGERS #52, and this comprised the African prince's first role as a Prime in any series.

Now, all these "retroactive proto-crossovers" raise a question: if the debut of Black Panther in FANTASTIC FOUR is a proto-crossover, is the same true of an ADAPTATION of that story, such as the one that appears in an episode of the 1994-96 FANTASTIC FOUR animated series. But my answer to this question is NO. For one thing, within the corpus of existing episodes in this series, the Black Panther never had the chance to ascend to Prime status, so he's just a Sub within the series, in contrast to the comic book universe from which he comes.

Now, had the MCU adapted the FF continuity for a full-fledged FANTASTIC FOUR movie, and then spun BLACK PANTHER off into his own series, THAT would have made the hypothetical FF film a proto-crossover. CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR was the MCU movie that launched the company's version of the Panther, but it's not a straight adaptation, but a new story, and is therefore governed by a different set of rules. The MCU always had the intent to spin the Panther off into his own film, and since CIVIL WAR sets up the storyline for the 2018 BLACK PANTHER, I don't deem CIVIL WAR to be a proto-crossover, just a Full Crossover in which the MCU Panther is a strong template deviation of the one in the comic books.

However, when one is dealing with "strong template deviations" rather than the weak type seen in a direct adaptation, it isn't strictly necessary for a character to get his own feature. Nick Fury is a Prime star within Marvel comic books, though his career in the comics has probably put him most often into the role of a Sub support-character rather than that of a Prime. To date the MCU has produced a strong template deviation of Fury, and there are no indications that he's EVER going to be anything to the MCU but a Prime demoted to the level of a Sub. Yet thanks to his comic-book career Nick Fury has enough stature that even his first appearance in the 2008 IRON MAN qualifies as a Full Crossover. 

TERRY GILLIAM AND THE TOTAL FAIL

I'm only a modest fan of Terry Gilliam's cinematic writing and directing, and the only Gilliam film I sometimes want to rewatch is THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. But despite my merely middling regard for Gilliam's creative work, I found his December screed against the movies of the MCU worth analyzing.

Gilliam's comments for the online magazine Indiewire had some resemblances to earlier complaints by both Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola, in that all three rants attacked superhero films for devouring the lion's share of the box office dinner. By itself, this is sophistry. Gilliam says:

“I don’t like the fact they’re dominating the place so much,” he said. “They’re taking all the money that should be available for a greater variety of films. Technically, they’re brilliant. I can’t fault them because the technical skills involved in making them are incredible.”

There are two major problems with this attitude. First, for anyone else to concur with Gilliam, that person would have to believe that the cinematic marketplace can support whatever ideal of "variety" that Gilliam advocates, if there were no MCU or any similar cinematic trend to dominate the market. But let us suppose that "fellow travelers" might come to some accord about an overall range of "good variety" while differing on particulars. Gilliam's statement still represents a leap in logic in that it assumes that Result B will take place from Cause A, even though it's arguable that Cause A has never actually been observed to take place in the arena specified, cf. the American film market.

Second, it's demonstrable that the "superhero trend" is far from unique in the American film industry, which has been for the most part driven by genre films that had wide appeal to audiences, and so encouraged producers to keep pumping out more films in those genres. Gilliam does not accuse the MCU of being a unique phenomenon, but the long history of genre films in Hollywood renders his complaint problematic.

Only on one point does Gilliam attack the superhero genre in a specific manner:

“What I don’t like is that we all have to be superheroes do anything worthwhile. That’s what makes me crazy. That’s what these movies are saying to young people. And to me it’s not confronting the reality of, you know, the quote-unquote human condition. You know what it is like to be a normal human being in difficult situations and resolving them surviving,” he said. “I can’t fault them for the sheer spectacle, except it’s repetitive. You still have to blow up another city.”

Now, Gilliam does not cite any specific instance from either MCU or from other superhero films to bolster his interpretation, aside from one offhand comment that makes it sound like it's too easy for Iron Man to replace his armor when it burns up. I've had my problems with some of the films in this series, but I certainly would not concur with Gilliam. At the very least, the three Iron Man films continually call attention to the difficulties that the genius in the armor has with interacting with the ordinary world.

Gilliam supplies even less support for the statement that "we" (meaning the audience) "have ot be superheroes to do anything worthwhile." Perhaps the former PYTHON performer overvalues the idea of deconstructing genre icons, as he and the Python troup did in their HOLY GRAIL film. It's only in a comic/ironic context that one can make, say, a film about knights in which the activity of the knights is not the center of the narrative, but exists to point the way toward something else in society. So it really makes no sense to critique superhero narratives for making superheroes the most important figures in the stories, just as cowboy-heroes are the most important figures in the majority of westerns.

I have a lot of personal reservations about MCU films, though I don't really think Gilliam's comments are MCU-centric; as he phrases them  I think that they could be applied just as easily to the Sony company's series of SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN films.

Ironically, the part of Gilliam's screed that I most agree with on aesthetic grounds is one with which I disagree on logical grounds. Of the 2018 BLACK PANTHER film, which I reviewed here, Gilliam said:

“I hated ‘Black Panther.’ It makes me crazy. It gives young black kids the idea that this is something to believe in. Bullshit. It’s utter bullshit. I think the people who made it have never been to Africa,” he said. “They went and got some stylist for some African pattern fabrics and things. But I just I hated that movie, partly because the media were going on about the importance of bullshit.”

While I didn't hate BLACK PANTHER, I too thought that much of its hype was bullshit, and that the film's characterization of Africa was politically correct nonsense. However, I don't entirely fault the film for not being realistic, which Gilliam does. I critiqued the film for not finding a middle ground, weaving real-world politics into an evocative fantasy, and as a result, the film is weak both in terms of its reality-elements and its fantasy-elements. Given that Gilliam has become best known for fantasy-films, I would think that the lack of a balance between these respective sets of perceived elements would be more important than the film's failings to mirror reality precisely.

It's strange that these admonitions from Scorcese, Coppola and Gilliam have come at this late date. While perhaps an old-time Hollywood director might've looked back at the 1990s and viewed the BATMAN and TEENAGE TURTLES films as a transitory phenomenon, by the early 2000s it should've been obvious that big-budget films in this genre were making big, big money, and that they weren't going away, even before the 2008 success of IRON MAN. Perhaps some of the hostility stems not just from the superheroes ruling the box office, but also because they're getting critical approbation, which has usually been directed at films of perceived "variety" as opposed to more generic forms of cinema. I didn't think BLACK PANTHER deserved an Oscar nomination, though ironically it was much better than two other more "mainstream" nominees. But I believe Gilliam, even though he certainly has greater knowledge of fantasy than the other two directors, simply doesn't engage with the particular nature of the superhero fantasy, and for that reason makes a superficial judgment about this particular genre.