THE RETURN OF THE TWO ELITISMS

 Back in 2013 I took advantage of a public debate between two comics critics, Gary Groth and Ng Suat Tong to show how both were wrong about their chosen subject (the artfulness of EC Comics) and I, of course, was right. In my essay ELICITING ELITISM I observed that although I considered both critics to be elitists (in contrast to the pluralism I practice), Tong's approach consisted of "form elitism," in that he only recognized art in terms of the form of a given work, while Groth's approach (at least in his defense of the EC comics he was re-publishing) consisted of "content elitism," in which he recognized art in a work's elements of content. This week I found a similar opposition in the public arguments of one acclaimed artist and one not-so-acclaimed performer, put on display in this BOUNDING INTO COMICS essay. 

(Note: before proceeding I should note that I have not seen the MCU "Shang-Chi" film, so I have no opinion of the merits of Simu Liu's performance in that film, only of his public remarks.)

Liu's remarks respond to two interviews given by Martin Scorsese and one given by Quentin Tarantino. I don't know why Liu includes Tarantino in his screed at all, given that Liu's main complaint is about "Hollywood racism," and Tarantino has distinguished himself for having scripted strong starring and supporting roles for POC actors. Further, though Tarantino has made his share of ideological statements over the years, his comments about not wanting to be a "hired gun" for the MCU are merely practical in nature, and do not condemn the superhero genre as a whole as does the remarks of Martin Scorsese. So I'm focusing here on Scorsese's remarks, which show him to be a "form elitist."

Scorsese takes exception to the box-office dominance of Marvel films, by which he means superhero films, though he says nothing about the films of any other studio. Scorsese says:

Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.

The famed director's remarks spring forth as a defense of his personal tastes, and that's why they are vague at best in a critical sense. Phrases like "revelation" and "mystery" may have special meaning to Scorsese, but they mean nothing in a wider critical context. Both in this excerpt and the rest of the essay, Scorsese's main complaint is that superhero films depend on "a finite number of themes," while with the filmmakers he loves, Scorsese feels that he's going to be "taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience."

Without my defending the overall quality of 21st-century superhero films, though, I believe what Scorsese really wants are works that fit the mythos of drama, in which most of the central characters are put through rigorous tests of their beliefs or personal loyalties. In contrast, most though not all superhero works fall into the mythos of adventure, where the main purpose of each narrative is to fill the viewer with excitement and invigoration rather than the purging of one's belief-system. Even in the many botched storylines of the MCU, this potential is always present. It's certainly possible to work purgative elements into an adventure-context. In my review of the BLACK PANTHER film, I pointed how it had given shorter shrift to its dramatic elements than had the Don McGregor comics on which the film was partly based. But had Scorsese been exposed to the original "Panther's Rage" arc of the Marvel comic, I tend to think the director would not have recognized the dramatic elements therein, because they weren't as important to the story as the hero physically triumphing over his various opponents. Almost all of Martin Scorsese's work falls into the mythos of the drama, and though he probably enjoys films that fall into other mythoi, most of the filmmakers he applauds also excel in dramatic works, not those of comedy, adventure, or irony. This is what causes me to label Scorsese a "form elitist," who cannot fathom excellence apart from the form he likes best.

Scorsese's essay ends with a complaint about the "financial dominance" of the films he cannot bear to call cinema, and his case is at least strong in terms of his personal tastes, not just his own prosperity. Simu Liu's remarks, as represented in the BOUNDING essay, start and end with the philosophy that "if it's good for me, it's good."

Even if Liu had only attacked Scorsese and left out Tarantino, his vile "everything that doesn't benefit me is racist" would not be any better. Since Scorsese does not bring up racial concerns of any kind, aside from (over)praising Spike Lee, Liu's attack seems grounded in nothing more than. "Scorsese doesn't like the genre which allowed me Sam Liu to get a starring role." 

Liu also manages to talk through both sides of his mouth, praising the two directors' "filmmaking genius" but condemning them as "gatekeepers" who, unlike Woke Disney and the MCU, would never have allowed an Asian star to star in a major Hollywood film." Of course Liu also tries to link his ascension to the entire Asian-American community, to their "lived experience." The entirety of White Hollywood existed for no reason but to keep POC performers down, and any work that does the opposite, no matter how meretricious it might be, is good for possessing that racism-defying content-- making Liu a person who makes his choices on the basis on content, though calling him any sort of "elitist" is a stretch.

I acknowledge that Liu is not engaged in an intellectual discussion as were Scorsese, Groth, and Tong. Yet the ideology he represents (but certainly did not originate) has permeated much of the Hollywood business community, insofar as even hard-hearted businessmen perceive the need to virtue-signal to gain cultural approval. Indeed, though Scorsese makes no comment upon the political content of MCU superhero films-- which it's possible the director did not even notice-- the virtue-signaling aspect of those films bears much of the blame for the aesthetic failure of most modern superhero films to measure up to the comics they pretend to emulate.

RACIAL NON-POLITICS IN DJANGO UNCHAINED

Whenever learned articles employ such phrases as “racial politics” or “sexual politics” to describe fictional narrative, the metaphor is clear. No matter how escapist the narrative may seem, it’s assumed that a political opposition is always at work, possibly stemming from Frederic Jameson’s “political unconscious.” 

Further, it is a not a “politics” like that of the real world, where politicians shift allegiances or make secret deals for purely personal advantage.  It is an absolute politics, in which the representatives of oppression are always for oppression, and the representatives of liberation are always for liberation. 

I speak, however, of “non-politics” as a counter-metaphor to escape this rigid oppositionalism.  “Non-politics” takes in any and all purely personal elements that have been elided from oppositional accounts, elements that don’t fit the “either/or” dichotomy.

After viewing Quentin Tarantion’s DJANGO UNCHAINED with a friend, that friend made a remark that I feel sure many other white viewers made: observing that Tarantino’s movie portrays an American West almost bereft of “good white guys.”  With the obvious exception of central character Dr. King Schulz (Christoph Waltz), every other white character is either a villain or an ineffectual bystander. 

At the time I replied that such strong racial opposition was wholly characteristic of one of the major influences on DJANGO specifically and on Tarantino generally: the “blaxploitation” movies of the 1970s.  Not all of these films are without “good white guys,” but it’s far more typical to draw battle-lines in terms of race in such films as DOLEMITE, HUMAN TORNADO, SUPERFLY, BLACK SAMSON, FOXY BROWN, and COFFY, just to name the first six that come to mind.  However, race doesn’t always tell, for one can find examples of black characters who “sell out to the Man.” A noteworthy example appears at the climax of COFFY, where the heroine’s boyfriend sells her out both politically and sexually (i.e., sleeping with a white woman).

Most of these films are escapist in tone, making no attempt to address abstract matters of morality or justice.  In the minds of oppositional critics I presume they would fall upon the side of “liberation” since they depict, however crudely, the triumph of oppressed people—just as Griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION would fall on the side of oppression in validating an oppressive regime.  However, oppositional critics generally fail to see that when blaxploitation films do draw battle-lines exclusively in terms of race, they subscribe to the same logic as the Griffith film does, saying, in effect, “protect only those who share your own ethnic characteristics.”

At first glance, it might appear that Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED subscribes to this same logic.  Bounty hunter King Schulz liberates the slave Django (Jamie Foxx) from his masters so that Django can help him identify a trio of wanted men; former overseers on Django’s plantation.  For this service Schulz promises to give Django his freedom, though Django goes beyond the letter of the agreement when he tastes the forbidden fruit of blasting down white oppressors, specifically those who have injured him and his wife Broomhilda.  Following this successful adventure, Schulz and Django bond so strongly that Schulz agrees to help the ex-slave find his wife, who had been sold separately to an unknown buyer.  The duo locate Broomhilda on the plantation of wealthy Calvin J. Candie, so they initiate a scam designed to liberate Broomhilda legally, though it requires some deception as to their real motives.  However, Candie’s house is managed by a slave named Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).  He sees through the deception and exposes the scheme to protect his master’s interests.  In the end Schulz and Candie both die and Django takes bloody vengeance on the entire Candie family, leaving the race-traitor Stephen for last.  He and Broomhilda ride off into the sunset to make a new life, having also acquired papers that will give Broomhilda freedom.

It’s true, as my friend said, that aside from Schulz all the white characters are villains or ineffectual bystanders.  What he didn’t notice, though, is that the same situation obtains for black characters.  Nearly all black characters in DJANGO are ineffectual bystanders except for Broomhilda—but even though she's not a simple bystander, she's also unable to participate in Django's heroics.  She does try to play along with her husband’s scam, but when it fails, she’s reduced to nothing more than a damsel in distress.  There’s one moment when some liberated slaves manage to execute the man who enslaved them, but the event only comes about because Schulz liberates them. 

And then there’s the one black villain.  At first glance Stephen might appear to be just another “sell out to the Man,” as with the character in COFFY.  However, I suggest that something more complex and non-political is going on.

For one thing, the relationship of Stephen to Calvin Candie is almost a mirror-image of the one between Schulz and Django.  There are differences, of course. Schulz, coming from Germany, has had the benefit of a classical education, while Stephen—made up to look a malevolent version of the “Uncle Ben’s Rice” icon— mangles words to show his lack of formal education.  Nevertheless, Stephen, despite having internalized the white man’s system of values, so that he feels extreme hatred toward Django upon seeing a “nigger” on a horse—is easily as subtle as Schulz.  Where Candie is easily flattered and manipulated, Stephen remains suspicious and perceives the connection between Django and Broomhilda.  After Candie has been killed, Stephen’s authority is sufficient to keep Candie’s relatives from killing Django too easily, as he persuades them to sell the former slave to a cruel mining camp.  Of course this reprieve allows Django to save himself and his wife, and to bring an end to Stephen, after Django tasks him with having ignored the tortures of thousands of slaves of his own race.  Yet the irony of this “moral” is that if one were to assume that race-loyalty is the standard, then Schulz would be as big a “race-traitor” in that he doesn't confine his loyalty only to Caucasians.

There are also obvious differences between the men being mentored.  Django has apparently been born and raised in slavery, so his moments of ignorance—such as not knowing some of the words Schulz uses—don’t reflect badly on him.  This feeling also extends to the one moment at his expense, when Schulz allows him to choose his own “valet uniform” and Django picks out an outfit that looks ridiculous even in the eyes of his own people.  In contrast, Candie has had the benefits of good education like Schulz, but is plainly a mediocre intellect at best.  Schulz chooses to mentor Django because he likes him and dislikes slavery.  Stephen, having lived in the plantation-house since the days of Calvin’s grandfather, has become the mentor to Calvin via inheritance, much as the character of Mammy becomes a maternal influence on Scarlet O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that Stephen continually sasses his master in order to manage the house the way Stephen thinks right, the bond between the two is as real as the one between Schulz and Django.  Oppositional critics probably will not understand the scene in which Stephen weeps over his dead master, since it might seem to sympathize with standard “slave-weeps-over-dead-master” scenes out of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.  This is the only way the scene can be understand in a “racial politics” sense, as a sneaky way of saying, “see, slavery isn’t so bad if the slaves feel affection for their owners.”

Of course this is not the point of the scene or of Tarantino’s film: only a fool would think that Tarantino has presented slavery as anything but evil in DJANGO UNCHAINED.  However, because Tarantino is also capable of thinking outside the political box, he can reflect on the varied ways in which human beings allow themselves to be seduced into evil—sometimes in very ordinary ways, like Stephen coming to regard the young Master of the House as something akin to his own offspring.  Candie clearly reciprocates the feeling, at least within the boundaries of the master-slave relationship. Thus we seen the differences between the two mentor-student dyads are largely superficial.  Battle-lines are no longer drawn in terms of race in DJANGO UNCHAINED, so that evil and good can be determined in terms of a more abstract justice, rather than in terms of belonging to either a majority or minority ethnicity. 

NO FOOTSIE WITH GREEN LANTERN

According to this piece at CinemaBlend, acclaimed director and rumored foot-fetishist Quentin Tarantino was offered the chance to direct a Green Lantern film but turned it down.

Personally, I could see great potential in a Tarantino interpretation, as long as the villain of the film was Star Sapphire.

She and Tarantino would seem to made for one another.

SHORT POST ON DAMN LONG BASTERDS

I saw INGLORIOUS BASTERDS last weekend. There are a number of standout scenes, but for every good scene, there's one where Tarantino just drags the "suspense" out so tediously that I was begging for the "Jew Bear" to bash out my brains so I wouldn't feel compelled to watch any more.

And I seem to be one of the few who garnered some enjoyment out of the overly-long talky-talk scenes in DEATH PROOF, which many found excruciating.

I may be able to enjoy IB better on DVD, where I can fast-forward past these clunkers.

("Jew Bear" is a character in the film, BTW.)