"Your Rights When Shot While Black"
<p dir="ltr"><span>This 6-panel webcomic (three rows with two panels each) features the Black male body in the context of being just a Black male body. Whereas other items in this exhibit have the Black body in dialogue with Western art, American history, existentialism, and more, Keith Knight keeps the Black body within itself. No other body appears in this comic but that of a Black character. Knight keeps the Black body as a Black body. That is the point of his comic -- to see a Black body as it is and see what it means. To this comic’s sole speaker, the police officer with the smoking gun, a Black body is a dead body.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">There is quite a bit of presuming one has to make with this comic. We never see the police officer, yet we know the sole speaker of the comic is a police officer. Each panel’s first sentence mirrors the beginning sentence structure of Miranda Rights. It alternates between “You have the right…” and “I have the right…” Other textual clues, such as the “my police chief” of the top right panel and the “I have the right to be investigated by people I work with” (see<a> </a><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/7c93865478a579510369d39fab421db7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515322735&Signature=QpkwZEIaoCux66IwgvtrKtrJqUQ%3D">Fig. 2</a><a>) </a><a>insinuate t</a>his character’s profession, it is the parroting of the Miranda Rights that is most telling of this figure’s authority. Like in <em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/captain-confederacy-4">Captain Confederacy</a> </em>and <em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/forever-free-dress-your-best">(Forever Free): Dress Your Best</a></em>, this white figure commands authority despite being merely omnipresence and never fully embodied for the reader. However, in Knight’s work, that authority is heightened by the fact that the character is presumably alive while the black body is dead. Seeing this police officer murder a Black body, yet speak to it in the same manner as if the body were alive -- the lack of individual distinction between a living Black body and a dead Black body -- is chilling. The fact that those words are about rights is haunting.</p>
And what of the black body in this scene? We know it is a body of a man of color because his hand is colored more darkly than the officer’s (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/a8a17aa9fce583e1c87f7a5bc11baf22.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515322355&Signature=GKgRui4d7T06pPnRJYGwfPO3udM%3D">Fig. 1</a><a>)</a>. The body lies face down, back containing three holes presumably from bullets fired by the smoking gun. Despite the rightful assumption that the Black body is dead, the corpse contains one of the only visual movement throughout the comic. Whereas the smoke of the gun and the dialogue in the speech bubbles imply movement, the comic becomes a comic -- it shows sequencin<a>g -- through the increasing amount of blood seeping through the bullet holes from panel-to-panel (</a>compare <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/a8a17aa9fce583e1c87f7a5bc11baf22.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515322941&Signature=2KCM5GJ7WoLmMKx8aeewXvsws3s%3D">Fig. 1</a> to <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/7c93865478a579510369d39fab421db7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515322735&Signature=QpkwZEIaoCux66IwgvtrKtrJqUQ%3D">Fig. 2</a> to <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f524c8b485dd4b39bb70b547ea522727.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515322956&Signature=efMFVz66GDeoRqsVUiOj4cmijKA%3D">Fig 3</a>). <a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/item/6"><span>Warhol</span></a> used an image of a real, living Black man being attacked, yet Knight’s cartoon representation of a Black male is more violent than Warhol’s. Warhol’s darkening of the image and removal of its context took away the humanity. As such, the violence to that Black man is not as troubling -- the viewer can gaze upon that image with relative comfort. Knight’s Black body is a simplified symbol of a Black body. Like Warhol, we can also not see this character’s face. And yet, the Black man here is so much more human and effective.<br /><br /><p dir="ltr"><span>This is possibly because of the character’s </span><span>lack </span><span>of realism. Scott McCloud calls this “amplification through simplification”: “[b]y stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.” (McCloud 30). By reducing the Black body to two distinguishing physical features (darker skin and curly hair) and </span>a sociopolitical one (police brutality towards Blacks), Knight humanizes and elicits strong emotions from a Black cartoon. Knight’s comic relies on the reader’s understanding of 2015 American politics and history to understand the comic. There is less visual narrative help and more reliance on the reader’s knowledge and presumptions. This pays off in creating a comic that has the reader see and feel for the brutalization of and indifference towards Black bodies.</p>
Knight, Keith.
<ol><li>McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, First edition ed., HarperPerenniel, 1994.</li>
</ol>
Knight, Keith. “Your Rights When Shot While Black.” The Nib, 27 Jan. 2015, thenib.com/your-rights-when-shot-while-black?id=keith-knight&t=author.
27 Jan 2015.
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/">Rachel Davis</a>
N/A
Digital image.
The Nib website.
<em>Captain Confederacy #4</em> (first series)
<p dir="ltr"><span>Whereas </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/item/6"><span>Warhol</span></a><span> frames dehumanized black bodies for gallery walls, Shetterly and Stone frames African-Americans for the mass public of 1986 (and the 21st-century, as Shetterly made most of the </span><a href="http://pictographist.blogspot.com/"><span>series available for free online</span></a><span>). Still, even with the restoration of human identity to black bodies, the positioning of Blacks within this comic reveals the comic medium’s tensions between breaking and needing tropes.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>One of the rebels, a Black man named Mr. X, tells Jeremy he distrusts the former poster boy of the Confederacy (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/53ba469f74105e77244cc9da44d5a31f.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324705&Signature=aj9ykoRT4Mf6OI4LfRXvdHOE1CI%3D">Fig. 3</a>). Yet, two pages later, he is asking Jeremy to be the figure of the rebellion (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/79304c73db9b4d4d37f9a5c612ee9b7c.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324769&Signature=S05JvOSTuMfwYcNr3eTokspZEfM%3D">Fig. 4</a>). He doesn’t trust Jeremy, yet he wants the man he said has not proven himself of the resistance’s protection to visually lead them. <em>Captain Confederacy</em> is Jeremy’s story, he experiences the hero’s journey. However, why is Mr. X not the hero?</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>Mr. X is already well-known and feared by the Confederacy for his rebellious actions, as Jeremy’s introduction states. He already is a symbol. He has proven his commitment to the cause and knows how to organize such far-flung allies as Kate and Kitsune. Surely he has the confidence to be a symbol of the resistance if his “Purple Rain”-era Prince appearance is any indication. Most importantly, though, Mr. X has a greater stake in dismantling the Confederacy. Mr. X, as a man of color, is a second-class citizen -- he is persecuted. Jeremy is not. The only reason Jeremy leaves the Confederate side is because his best friend -- a black man -- is killed by the Confederacy. Shetterly and Stone have a black man killed -- ending his story -- by the government to awaken the consciousness of a white man to save society. A superficial excuse is given for Jeremy wanting to directly fight the government (he needs an antidote from the government in order to live), but that does not mask the fact that </span><em>Captain Confederacy </em><span>is a white savior story. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Why do Shetterly and Stone make Jeremy the hero? According to Shetterly, it is because Jeremy, as an attractive white male, is the symbol of the Confederacy: “The way to weaken symbols is to subvert them. That was my intention when I wrote <em>Captain Confederacy</em>” (Shetterly). What this does is make the words “hero,” “South,” and “man” synonymous with the white race. Jeremy being Captain Confederacy does not so much weaken and subvert the symbol -- it reinforces that symbol’s ideology that white is right. Having a Black man free himself and his fellow citizens -- black and white -- would be the subversion. Instead, we have Mr. X made one-note by being having a white man tell the reader who he is rather than showing Mr. X’s character via his actions. Also, Mr. X’s Prince appearance is inappropriate. It lacks the militancy of Kitsune’s costume while looking diminutive and unimaginative to Captain Confederacy’s muscles and costume (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/b305f293ef3b4cbaec4c3f4cf2acdff2.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324823&Signature=%2F9cv7S7Zx1f4iBTCpeYRH9VQ8ug%3D">Fig. 1</a>). Mr. X is grounded in the reader’s reality, not a heroic one, with his stereotypical, humorously out-of-place attire and accent. Mr. X is created and drawn to be read as Black. That is his character, and it shows <em>Captain Confederacy</em>’s failing</p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-17ed6d5f-6c70-d261-1a16-9c66857fc756"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>Despite noble intentions, </span><em>Captain Confederacy</em>'s<span> Achilles heel is the very thing it is satirizing: it is a story trying to show the stupidity of systemic racism, yet uses racist story tropes to send that message. As such, the message fails. The black body satirizing racism will be explored in other works </span><span>Charles’s </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/5">(Forever Free) Dress Your Best</a></em><span> (1999) or even Wiley’s </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/item/4">Ice T</a></em><span> (2005). In regards to </span><em>Captain Confederacy</em><span>, if </span><span>Fredrik Strömberg is correct in saying comics give </span><span>“a clear picture of the spirit of a certain time,” then it stands to reason that the picture “Captain Confederacy #4” gives three decades later is of a better world for white men -- and, therefore, Black men as well (Strömberg 23).</span></span>
Writer: Shetterly, Will.
Penciler and Inker: Stone, Vince.
<ol><li>Shetterly, Will. “On Subverting Symbols, Why I Wrote Captain Confederacy, and the Current Confederate Flag Controversy.” <em>It's All One Thing</em>, Blogspot, 24 June 2015, <a href="shetterly.blogspot.com/2015/06/on-subverting-symbols-why-i-wrote.html">shetterly.blogspot.com/2015/06/on-subverting-symbols-why-i-wrote.html</a>. </li>
<li>Strömberg, Frederik. “Prologue.” <em>Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History, </em>by Frederik Strömberg, Fantagraphics, 2003, pp. 22-34.</li>
</ol>
Author (25 Oct 2017)
Dec 1986
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/">Rachel Davis</a>
25.6 x 14.3 cm
Ink on paper
Hempstead: Hofstra University Library Special Collections
<em>Ice T</em>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The artwork that offers the loudest dialogue to </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/6"><span>Warhol</span></a><span> and the Western art canon, in general, is Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of men of color. The similarities and differences between Warhol’s <em>Birmingham Race Riot</em> and Wiley’s <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Ice T</span> are fascinating. Warhol appropriated a newspaper photograph documenting the Civil Rights Movement. Wiley appropriates the icons, colors, and medium of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1806 </span><em><a href="http://www.musee-armee.fr/en/collections/museum-treasures/object.html?tx_mdaobjects_object%5Baction%5D=show&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bcontroller%5D=Object&tx_mdaobjects_object%5BidContentPortfolio%5D=537&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bobject%5D=551&cHash=d5b34980f2912c609d32c6e45f75d5d7">Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne</a></em><span>. Warhol took the photograph out of its newspaper context to make it into a piece of art -- a Warhol piece of art. Wiley adds context by replacing Napoleon Bonaparte with American gangster rapper Ice T, creating a new meaning using an established Western image of the royal white male ruler. Warhol’s work was for the elite art world. Wiley’s <em>Ice T</em> belongs to the National Portrait Gallery -- it belongs to the American people. Ice T is an American artwork in the mold of the American Dream. What is the American Dream but the promise of the self-made man regardless of birth lineage? And which man has made more of himself from the humblest of beginnings than the African-American? Unlike Shetterly and Stone in </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/2">Captain Confederacy</a></em><span>, Wiley puts the Black man as the nation’s victorious symbol.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>This painting is, like </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/forever-free-dress-your-best"><span>Michael Ray Charles</span></a><span>’s work, is visually striking. It is meant to stir emotion and have the viewer question history with its use of a Black man in casual attire (cap, black sneakers, black sweatpants). Two noteworthy differences between this painting and the Ingres one is the positioning of the subject’s heads and the placement of the ermine hood. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Napoleon looks straightforward at the viewer (Musée de l'Armée). His head is as level as his gaze upon the viewer. Ice T’s head, however, is tilted upwards, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his forehead. We the viewer are looked down upon by him -- why? Is Ice T’s head tilt another symbol like the throne and scepters of his superiority over the reader? Or is he wary of the viewer? A Black man growing up in a racist society ascend to a throne. What did Ice T have to endure, what sacrifices and sins did he commit, to make it to that hallowed seat? What sacrifices and sins did the Black men who did not make it to the throne endure? Whether tilted in superiority or defense, Ice T does not gaze directly at t, e viewer unlike Napoleon, making it easier for the viewer to gaze upon him without the fear of “being caught.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>Secondly, Napoleon wears the royal ermine, his “head emerging from a body drowned in an imposing costume, [the attire] effectively sets it apart from the [then] usual depictions of the emperor” (Musée de l'Armée). Ice T’s ermine is splayed across the throne he sits, leaving his bare, muscled arms visible as it holds the same scepters Napoleon does. Ice T does not envelope himself in the traditional attire of divine, empirical power. Instead, he wears the clothes of any American: comfy, affordable, and accessible. Yet his attire is black, like his flesh. His arms, like </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/green-lantern-mosaic--1"><span>John Stewart</span></a><span>’s and the alien in </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/strange-fruit">Strange Fruit</a></em><span><em>,</em> are his power. Once again, the Black man’s power is made physical -- he is made physical. Wiley’s Studio states that his works blur “the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation and the critical portrayal of masculinity and physicality as it pertains to the view of black and brown young men” (Kehinde Wiley Studio). Is that occurring here, where once again the Black man’s physicality is on display as his power? </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span>There are neither singular nor simple answers to these questions. The lack of a singular and simple answer for a work about black masculinity is a triumph. Again like Warhol, Wiley’s work succeeds in provoking questions, and with a history of reducing black men to the same stereotypes and roles, provoking questions is a form of resisting racist and sexist representations.</span></p>
<div><span> </span></div>
Wiley, Kehinde
<ol><li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Musée de l'Armée. “Napoleon I on the Throne or His Majesty the Emperor of the French on His Throne by Ingres.” </span><span>Musée De L'Armée</span><span>, 10 Dec. 2012, </span><a href="http://www.musee-armee.fr/en/collections/museum-treasures/object.html?tx_mdaobjects_object%5Baction%5D=show&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bcontroller%5D=Object&tx_mdaobjects_object%5BidContentPortfolio%5D=537&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bobject%5D=551&cHash=d5b34980f2912c609d32c6e45f75d5d7"><span>www.musee-armee.fr/en/collections/museum-treasures/object.html?tx_mdaobjects_object%5Baction%5D=show&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bcontroller%5D=Object&tx_mdaobjects_object%5BidContentPortfolio%5D=537&tx_mdaobjects_object%5Bobject%5D=551&cHash=d5b34980f2912c609d32c6e45f75d5d7</span></a><span>.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span></span>Kehinde Wiley Studio. “KEHINDE WILEY STUDIO: Brooklyn, NY.” Kehinde Wiley Studio, <a href="kehindewiley.com/about/">kehindewiley.com/about/</a>.</p>
</li>
</ol>
Wiley, Kehinde. "<em>Ice T</em>." Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery. <a href="http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/recognize/paintings.html">http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/recognize/paintings.html</a>. Accessed 15 Nov 2017.
2005
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/">Rachel Davis</a>
243.8 x 182.9 cm
Oil on canvas
Washington D.C.: National Portrait Gallery