<em>(Forever Free) Dress Your Best </em>(from the "Forever Free" series)
<p dir="ltr"><span>With </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/1">Green Lantern: Mosaic #1</a></em><span>, the comics narrative was visually laid out beside the narrative of the advertisements. Like the medium, this comic maintains the conceit that there is a line differentiating between the artistic narrative and the commercial narrative. The two narratives share a cover, but you do not visually see Hamner’s John Stewart playing basketball with the basketball advertisement, or see the rocket from the rocket advertisement fly with John Stewart. There is a distinction. This distinction does not exist in Michael Ray Charles’s </span><span>(Forever Free) Dress Your Best</span><span>. In this work from his series, the art is an advertisement. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Charles has a minstrel character modeling a shirt for sale. We know this is a white actor in blackface not only from the red hair, but the minstrel “uniform” he is attired in black skin, white gloves, and large lips. This is a white man performing as a black man to sell whatever “dress[ing] your best” is. What is that concept? Perhaps it is the whiteness of the shirt being sold, or maybe it is the covering of flesh being advertised as best. Or, just as likely, it is what the minstrel character is not doing that is being sold as best.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The minstrel character is staring forward at the viewer as he is in mid-action putting on a white shirt. His smile and gaze is a frozen mask of the minstrel, but his actions are not. He is not moving in exaggerated motions or making odd faces. There is no outrageous posture or dance moves. The character is performing blackness visually without acting black. The audience knows this is not a Black man, but the ad is selling what is not Blackness -- control, respectability, whiteness. Hence why there needs to be a white actor playing a Black person, it would not visually be transmitted that whiteness is being sold to a Black man.That is what dressing your best is (and has been, given the aged appearance of the artwork). Your best is your whiteness.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This art piece provides a useful commentary on the black body by showing what Blackness has historically (and perhaps presently) means: not white. Charles notes that his advertisement art </span><span>“ is just as much white as they are black”; the same could be said about all discussions of whiteness or blackness (Art 21). When we distinguish between these two races, whether in fine art like this or in comics’ white and black figures like in </span><em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/item/2">Captain Confederacy #4</a></em><span>, we are highlighting more similarities than differences. </span></p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-17ed6d5f-6d60-df9f-fa5c-ff3eefc76941"><span>So who is a Black male? In visual arts, every human is a representation. A representation claims not to be what it shows but an image of it. Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe is not claiming to be Marilyn Monroe. But Charles notes that concepts like whiteness and blackness are “re-appropriated and re-presented” (</span><span>ibid</span><span>). To Charles, the concept of blackness is what is shows -- blackness. It is not represented as being what it is not but is what it is. Perhaps this is where the tension and discomfort of works representing minstrel figures or </span><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-bodies-black-ink/strange-fruit"><span>Black male figures adorned in Confederate flags</span></a><span> come from. The figures will always be representations, but the concepts and history behind them are presentations. They are always present.</span></span>
Charles, Michael Ray
<ol><li>Art21. “Advertising and Art: Michael Ray Charles.” <em>Art21</em>, PBS, <a href="art21.org/read/michael-ray-charles-advertising-and-art/">art21.org/read/michael-ray-charles-advertising-and-art/</a>.</li>
</ol>
Charles, Michael Ray. "<em>Forever Free Dress Your Best by Michael Ray Charles on artnet.</em>" Tony Shafrazi Gallery, artnet. h<a href="Charles,%20Michael%20Ray.%20">ttp://www.artnet.com/artists/michael-ray-charles/forever-free-dress-your-best-a-Yo-DWl7n3Sz_42DkjvawDA2</a>. Accessed 15 Nov 2017.
1999
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/">Rachel Davis</a>
182.9 x 152.4 cm
Acrylic Latex, Stain & Copper Penny on Canvas
New York City: Tony Shafrazi Gallery
<em>Strange Fruit</em>
<p dir="ltr">Out of all of the items in this exhibit, <em>Strange Fruit </em>has the most body diversity. The main black male humans of the comic are Sonny and Mr. McCoy. As seen in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/bda9add0992f89dd5cb9a4efc7f9625a.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323486&Signature=wJd%2BhiAlRHUf9ig9OmlHG8L6yb4%3D">Fig. 4</a>, Sonny is lean but with some muscle definition, as befitting a physical laborer on a plantation farm. His hair is free and goes in many directions and his beard is full. His clothes are too large for him, as seen from the blue shirt spilling over from his pants and how he pulls at his trousers and excess fabric stretches across his leg. Mr. McCoy, the Northern engineer sent to Chatterlee from D.C. to help save the town, is noticeably different from Sonny.<a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323687&Signature=ql9RdQBspMq5VIXqmcj1i3JkHQU%3D"> </a><span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323687&Signature=ql9RdQBspMq5VIXqmcj1i3JkHQU%3D">Fig. 6</a> </span>shows him to be shorter, rounder in body, with neck fat. He wears glasses, a visual shorthand signifying his higher intelligence to that of the other recurring characters who lack glasses and the knowledge to save the town from the flood. Furthermore, his pencil moustache and formal attire of a bow-tie, white shirt, plaid brown suit, and hat, put him in stark contrast to Sonny and most of the residents of poor Chatterlee.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In comics, body diversity speaks to psychological diversity. Sonny is the rough-and-tough rebelling sharecropper with dreams of fighting Jim Crow and white people, and McCoy is the Northern, educated black man among uneducated, bigoted Southerners, offer a variety of possibilities for who a can be a Black man. Most of the items in this exhibit present a black male for all black males. </span><em>Strange Fruit </em><span>gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and </span><span>only </span><span>two black men. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr">The central black male figure of this comic -- its main character and the strange fruit of the title -- is not a black male. He is an alien who reads as a black male to the Jim Crow characters and the comic reader. And the only way the alien can be read as Black is from his physical appearance. The character never learns a human language -- only the physics and mathematical equations necessary for him to save Chatterlee (see <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d5cb601655afeb514a7177569340b9a9.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323811&Signature=8hJdeLzrFHjZU8BoxTb9belfZVE%3D">Fig. 5</a> and <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/f77644a8cf9a3ca3e474fd08a1371cdd.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323862&Signature=3zZ7vEnML4bDr0W143mp9Gc9xoo%3D"><span>Fig. 6</span></a>). We know not what he calls himself or what he wants beside a few scattered flashbacks that equate the guns of Chatterlee to space guns. We know not who he is or how he sees himself. Only how others see him (see <em><a href="http://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/1">Green Lantern: Mosaic</a></em>). And what they see is a black body of colossal proportions. His body is always made to appear large to other characters and sometimes the dimensions of the comic, as seen in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/ccfdc5457d477b47e35049dc36c71133.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323896&Signature=DsECgDMb%2BDxn968DQBBtr498pBA%3D"><span>Fig. 3</span></a> when the alien’s body surpasses the confines of the panels and gutters. The alien takes up space, whether dominating a skyline with his muscled torso and veiny arms as in <span><a href="https://wst198.omeka.net/items/show/7">Fig. 4</a> </span>or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d5cb601655afeb514a7177569340b9a9.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515323966&Signature=Lpl2YfXYXT2yOZ0NDo1FkPVIP10%3D"><span>Fig. 5</span>. </a></p>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-434cc422-73fc-181a-e9d7-6e16c79a8bf8"><span>The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [</span><span>sic.</span><span>] acts as [</span><span>sic.</span><span>] a mirror on their [the other characters’] motives” (qtd. in Dietsch). The authorial intent was to have the alien’s black body be a metaphor, yet Jones and Waid ended up relying on visual stereotypes that make the black body inhuman to the reader. One cannot relate to the alien because one does not know who or what the alien is. He is only his appearance -- an appearance that is stereotypical -- the unintelligible black muscular man. Sonny, as the Nat Turner uncouth with a heart of gold, and McCoy, the portly intellectual of diminutive stature and authority, are equally stereotypical. Even a non-character perpetuate visual stereotypes, as seen in the </span><a href="https://ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/antiblack/picaninny/homepage.htm"><span>picaninny</span></a><span> character in </span><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/34789/archive/files/d08ff08f68422217b6843629ca68f8b7.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1515324005&Signature=4WYXDi0vX2V3Couy7C8sRhOpLjE%3D"><span>Fig. 2</span></a><span>. Jones and Waid use various types of visual and narrative stereotypes of black bodies in a story about black oppression. The black bodies are diverse but the type of diversity is reductive rather than inclusive. </span><em>Strange Fruit </em><span>serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities. </span></span>
Writer: Jones, J.G. and Mark Waid.
Penciler and Inker: Jones, J.G.
<ol><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-434cc422-73fd-c7ab-d421-4c49014bb130"><span>Dietsch, TJ. “EXCLUSIVE: Jones & Waid on Examining Racism, Cultural Legacy in 'Strange Fruit'.” </span><span>CBR</span><span>, Valnet Inc., 24 Feb. 2015, </span><a href="http://www.cbr.com/exclusive-jones-waid-on-examining-racism-cultural-legacy-in-strange-fruit/"><span>www.cbr.com/exclusive-jones-waid-on-examining-racism-cultural-legacy-in-strange-fruit/</span></a><span>. </span></span></li>
</ol>
Author (15 Dec 2017)
9 May 2017
<a href="https://comicsverse.com/author/o0rayday0o/"><span>Rachel Davis</span></a>
18.3 x 1.5 x 28.4 cm
(Exterior) Ink, plastic, cardboard; (Interior) Ink on paper
Los Angeles: BOOM! Studios.