A Note from the Author:
In order to try to meet the demands I have placed for myself in releasing new blog posts I decided that I should go ahead and write some material in advance. I imagine this is an open secret among content creators. Anyway, I wrote something last week to be published this week that seemed to be prescient.
News coverage regarding the 2 mass shootings that occurred last Saturday showed us an ugly side of our American psyche. We know that one killer was a misogynist. We know that the other killer was a white supremacist. And as it just so happens my next few entries are about elements of racism and sexism within geek culture.
Geek culture is influential, powerful, and (often) intellectual. Let’s use these qualities for positive cultural change.
Halle Bailey was cast to play Ariel in a remake of “The Little Mermaid” and people lost their minds. People who could be spending time working to improve their own lives or the lives of others chose to devote time to expressing their anger at the casting of a young black woman in a role previously portrayed as an animated white woman. I don’t think it’s necessary to regurgitate all of their criticisms except I would like to isolate one comment that comes up A LOT when it comes to casting or presenting a character as a different race or ethnicity than has been previously portrayed:
“What if they cast a white man to play Blade?”
So often have I heard people playing the Blade card. Maybe I
just happen to notice this one in particular because, and you can put this on a
poster board of personal quotes for my eventual memorial service, I LOVE BLADE.
I love the character as presented in Marvel’s “Tomb of Dracula” series and I am
an even bigger fan of his portrayal by Wesley Snipes in the New Line Cinema
“Blade” movies. Some people rise to the occasion of fleshing out a fictional
character. Wesley Snipes made the coolest Marvel superhero EVEN COOLER. Snipes
is also very dark-skinned which, I presume, is why he is always the target of
this particular re-casting trope. Alternatively, perhaps even more
predominantly than Blade is, “what if we cast a white man to play Shaft?”
With that in mind let me flip things a little: what if we
cast a black man to play Tarzan?
Right off the bat let me address the most controversial
aspect of Tarzan: was his creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, a racist? Just as with
anyone who is heroic or an idol to people Burroughs has his apologists who will
say something like “he wasn’t any more racist than anyone else in his era.”
Since “Tarzan of the Apes” was first published in 1912, smack dab in the middle
of the Jim Crow era, it stands to reason that “not anymore racist” was still
pretty racist.
Do I think Burroughs was a racist? He might not have been a
Klansman but Burroughs still romanticized the majesty of white people. Whether
it is Carson Napier, John Carter, or Lord Greystoke himself Burroughs made his
tales about a rugged white man, whether of noble birth or southern American
aristocracy, who goes to a wild, untamed world and by his sheer will and
determination becomes a leader. Yes, lots of stories are about the one person
who changes the tide of things because dramatically it is easier to identify
with fewer protagonists. But in an age of imperialism when Burroughs could have
written a story about a lone black native being brutalized by whites he instead
wrote about the lone, noble white boy who would become a king. And he didn’t
even become King of the Jungle because it was his ambition or lineage. Tarzan
was just being himself and so became the monarch. Is that the commentary of
society by a white supremacist? It may not have been his ideological assertion
but it certainly was a reflection of Burroughs’s existing bias.
So what if Tarzan were played by a black man? It would be
more than an aesthetic choice, wouldn’t it? The story is explicitly about the Lord
of Greystoke, by definition an English noble and therefore inevitably a white
man. In 1912 English noblemen were white men. BUT let’s say the Greystoke
family was black. It would mean that we somewhere must delve into the world of
speculative history. Just like novels about “what if Nazis won WWII” or “what
if the Confederacy won the Civil War” speculative history is an excellent way
to look at the events that shape the world and offer social criticism. So what
I’m saying is if you want a black Tarzan then you have to completely change the
story of who Tarzan is. And, frankly, I’m okay with that! It’s all fiction,
right? Go ahead and play around with it. Tell new stories and explore new
ideas. Heck, as an alternative you could keep Tarzan white and say “what if
Tarzan landed in South America” or something. I just want the story to be good.
So let me go back to Shaft for a moment. Who is Shaft? Well,
in the theme song for the motion picture he is explicitly identified as “the
black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks.” So chances are
you’re not going to cast Don Knotts to play Shaft. But here’s what we know
about the character Shaft as presented in his fictional world: he is a private
investigator living and operating in Harlem. We also know that he is put in
between two explicitly racially identified organized crime rings, one black and
one white. We know that tensions are escalated and his actions will help stop a
race war in New York City. Quite honestly I don’t know what John Shaft is like
in the original book that introduced the character because I haven’t read it
and it isn’t in print. But I know this: he’s a black private detective in
Harlem. SO what does this mean? It means that in every existing media, in every
incarnation, John Shaft is a black man in Harlem and that aspect of his
character helps create the character’s environment, motivations and narrative
events. Could you then cast a white man to play Shaft? Well, in theory you
could but if you were to keep all of the above characteristics in place you
would have such a casting disconnect that it would have to be one amazing
performance by your actor to make it believable to your audience.
You could, however, make a character named John Shaft a white man. He wouldn’t be in anyway similar to the Shaft we know and love because that character is specifically black. Of course white John Shaft would likely be as vanilla and as uninspired as Phil Collins’s recording of “You Can’t Hurry Love” (thanks to the “Your Favorite Band Sucks” podcast for reminding us of that travesty).
But now I have to answer: what about a black actress playing
Ariel? To begin she’s a mermaid and she can look however the artists want her
to look. There is nothing in her story that makes her black and there is nothing
in her story that makes her white. The color of her skin is not an essential
aspect of her character. Her purpose, after getting kids to buy a billion
dollars worth of merchandise, is to be a character that mostly young girls but
anyone else can watch, identify with emotionally, and root for. In the animated
movie she happens to be white, sure. But that’s an aesthetic choice that was
made primarily by white people. And, like Burroughs, they probably weren’t more
racist than anyone else at that time, but they saw white as their default
setting. Fortunately we live in a world where that is becoming less of a
default setting. In fact, I think white people need to learn to openly embrace
fictional characters of different skin colors and appearances because it will
help us develop our empathetic abilities.
As for Blade? The challenge you present yourself there,
regardless of race, is that you have to somehow cast someone to play a Blade
that is as cool as Wesley Snipes’s portrayal and as the character himself says,
“some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill.”