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.
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.
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 “ 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 Captain Confederacy #4, we are highlighting more similarities than differences.
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” (ibid). 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 Black male figures adorned in Confederate flags come from. The figures will always be representations, but the concepts and history behind them are presentations. They are always present.]]>With Green Lantern: Mosaic #1, 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 (Forever Free) Dress Your Best. In this work from his series, the art is an advertisement.
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.
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.
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 “ 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 Captain Confederacy #4, we are highlighting more similarities than differences.
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” (ibid). 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 Black male figures adorned in Confederate flags come from. The figures will always be representations, but the concepts and history behind them are presentations. They are always present.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 Fig. 2) insinuate this character’s profession, it is the parroting of the Miranda Rights that is most telling of this figure’s authority. Like in Captain Confederacy and (Forever Free): Dress Your Best, 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.
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 Fig. 1). 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 sequencing -- through the increasing amount of blood seeping through the bullet holes from panel-to-panel (compare Fig. 1 to Fig. 2 to Fig 3). Warhol 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.This is possibly because of the character’s lack 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 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.
]]>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.
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 Fig. 2) insinuate this character’s profession, it is the parroting of the Miranda Rights that is most telling of this figure’s authority. Like in Captain Confederacy and (Forever Free): Dress Your Best, 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.
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 Fig. 1). 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 sequencing -- through the increasing amount of blood seeping through the bullet holes from panel-to-panel (compare Fig. 1 to Fig. 2 to Fig 3). Warhol 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.This is possibly because of the character’s lack 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 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.
The three title pages here show three different spaces in three different lights. Fig. 1 shows a black figure aiming and loading a bazooka weapon at an urban water tower. Without the following panels providing context for this page, the reader is to assume this black male is conducting urban warfare on the communal water supply. For all intents and purposes, this person is conducting warfare on a source the community is dependent on -- a source the community does not control, but the bureaucracy does. Water is essential for life, but the distribution and management of such vital necessities in urban communities is relegated to the hands of a few (historically and still often white) politicians. Black people have and still do not (if Flint, Michigan’s water epidemic is any indication) live in areas where they have access or control to safe life necessities like water, organic fresh food, clean air, and so on. The water tower is not an animate threat to the black man aiming a military weapon at it, but what the tower represents -- a lack of control, racial equity, and autonomy -- is threatening.
With Fig. 2, a more traditional American comics scene is shown: a group of black figures are in motion, from the drum player in the foreground to the swinging mass to the viewer’s left to the flying figure to the right. Once again, the scene takes place in an urban environment. This time, the viewer is not only the street, but looking upwards. We are behind the action and cannot directly see the faces of the figures. Much like with Warhol, we are meant to see these figures as bodies in action and to see the scene. We see debris from the ground and the central building is partially demolished, showing a figure on the inside. The scene is chaotic, filled with movement and bodies that the viewer is a part of. There is an inclusion the viewer feels here that is absent in Fig. 3. There, the viewer looks down from the lighting equipment of a TV news set. The black female anchor sits behind her desk, reporting, as other bodies crowd the bottom of the page. There is plenty of empty space and no movement. The lights and TV equipment dwarf the human figures. There is a great contrast between the two images. In the former, black people are in abundance, taking up space and performing actions, but out on the dark, urban streets near a less-than-pristine neighborhood. In the latter, only one black figure sits still, her body contained, and is dwarfed by the machinery and professional environment. The social capital of the space -- the dark dirty urban streets versus the white-collar newsroom -- decreases with the presence of black bodies. Conversely, black bodies respond to the prestige and lightness (see: whiteness) of the space they occupy (also seen in Michael Ray Charles). From these images in Rythm Mastr, it can be surmised that black bodies and physical space affect one another.
]]>No work in this exhibit takes up space like Kerry James Marshall’s Rythm Mastr series. These works occupy multiple spaces at the same time. This is a fine artwork (each artwork is owned by the Museum of Modern Art) whose medium is a comic newspaper strip (Art21, “Rythm Mastr”: Kerry James Marshall). These works also address multiple types of spaces. Black bodies warp space. Black body warps space in a way a white body does not -- the choice of Jeremy Grey as the hero of Captain Confederacy over a black male lead and the alien lead of Strange Fruit are proof of that. This is psychological space, though. The interaction between blackness and physical space within a narrative is not as pronounced. Rythm Mastr offers insights into both types of spaces.
The three title pages here show three different spaces in three different lights. Fig. 1 shows a black figure aiming and loading a bazooka weapon at an urban water tower. Without the following panels providing context for this page, the reader is to assume this black male is conducting urban warfare on the communal water supply. For all intents and purposes, this person is conducting warfare on a source the community is dependent on -- a source the community does not control, but the bureaucracy does. Water is essential for life, but the distribution and management of such vital necessities in urban communities is relegated to the hands of a few (historically and still often white) politicians. Black people have and still do not (if Flint, Michigan’s water epidemic is any indication) live in areas where they have access or control to safe life necessities like water, organic fresh food, clean air, and so on. The water tower is not an animate threat to the black man aiming a military weapon at it, but what the tower represents -- a lack of control, racial equity, and autonomy -- is threatening.
With Fig. 2, a more traditional American comics scene is shown: a group of black figures are in motion, from the drum player in the foreground to the swinging mass to the viewer’s left to the flying figure to the right. Once again, the scene takes place in an urban environment. This time, the viewer is not only the street, but looking upwards. We are behind the action and cannot directly see the faces of the figures. Much like with Warhol, we are meant to see these figures as bodies in action and to see the scene. We see debris from the ground and the central building is partially demolished, showing a figure on the inside. The scene is chaotic, filled with movement and bodies that the viewer is a part of. There is an inclusion the viewer feels here that is absent in Fig. 3. There, the viewer looks down from the lighting equipment of a TV news set. The black female anchor sits behind her desk, reporting, as other bodies crowd the bottom of the page. There is plenty of empty space and no movement. The lights and TV equipment dwarf the human figures. There is a great contrast between the two images. In the former, black people are in abundance, taking up space and performing actions, but out on the dark, urban streets near a less-than-pristine neighborhood. In the latter, only one black figure sits still, her body contained, and is dwarfed by the machinery and professional environment. The social capital of the space -- the dark dirty urban streets versus the white-collar newsroom -- decreases with the presence of black bodies. Conversely, black bodies respond to the prestige and lightness (see: whiteness) of the space they occupy (also seen in Michael Ray Charles). From these images in Rythm Mastr, it can be surmised that black bodies and physical space affect one another.
This silkscreen, made in 1964, is manipulated by Warhol from a 1963 newspaper photograph documenting the Birmingham Civil Rights movement (Hofstra University Museum). Warhol’s use of another artist’s image without giving credit for the purpose of his own art is appropriation. However, given this artwork’s subjects -- a black human figure being attacked by two dogs -- the question arises of whether there is more than one type of appropriation occurring.
This image is being removed from the context provided by the newspaper and made to stand alone. The image is removed from time and space, requiring the viewer to see the image for what it is -- a human figure being attacked as other human figures standby. This act of violence, regardless of race or political views, could possibly be condemned as universally bad, if not for two features. Firstly, we cannot see the attacked human figure’s face, and therefore his humanity. Secondly, Warhol’s process of transforming a black-and-white newspaper-print photograph into a silk screen has blackened all of the print, rendering most of the figures with black skin to be just black skin and no faces (look to the figures in the background). Warhol has made the black bodies just that -- no longer black Americans or black humans, but black figures. These people, who at the time of Warhol showing this work were experiencing the battle between Jim Crow and Civil Rights, are made inhuman. These people are made art without their consent via Warhol’s appropriation of their body.
Warhol appropriated, but to what ends? What was his intention with this work? Was Warhol hoping to immortalize a moment of socio-political change or require the privileged urban gallery viewer north of the Mason-Dixon line to see oppression in black-and-white? Is this a commentary on how mass media such as newspapers were also commercial products producing and reproducing humans as media fodder? Or was Warhol producing Warhol -- the brand that created Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962) and Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) -- at the expense of objectifying and selling off of black bodies (Museum of Modern Art)? At the end of the day, does Warhol’s intentions in 1964 truly matter? Given who he branded himself then, who his work was shown and sold to, and how he is known now, then Michael Ray Charles’ words regarding his own reception of his work may apply to this Warhol print:
But for the most part, collectively, I would say that blackness continues to hover around this comfort zone of entertainment—providers of entertainment. You know, I think those areas are pretty comfortable for whites to see blacks in (qtd. in Art21).
]]>The name “Andy Warhol” is as ubiquitous in the American cultural landscape as Campbell’s soup cans are in grocery stores or Marilyn Monroe imagery on the internet. Commercializing consumer products and celebrities are how Warhol made his name and legend. Warhol’s name is not usually associated with the Civil Rights Movement or any form of identity politics activism. And yet, Warhol associated himself with the fight for American racial equality through this artwork.
This silkscreen, made in 1964, is manipulated by Warhol from a 1963 newspaper photograph documenting the Birmingham Civil Rights movement (Hofstra University Museum). Warhol’s use of another artist’s image without giving credit for the purpose of his own art is appropriation. However, given this artwork’s subjects -- a black human figure being attacked by two dogs -- the question arises of whether there is more than one type of appropriation occurring.
This image is being removed from the context provided by the newspaper and made to stand alone. The image is removed from time and space, requiring the viewer to see the image for what it is -- a human figure being attacked as other human figures standby. This act of violence, regardless of race or political views, could possibly be condemned as universally bad, if not for two features. Firstly, we cannot see the attacked human figure’s face, and therefore his humanity. Secondly, Warhol’s process of transforming a black-and-white newspaper-print photograph into a silk screen has blackened all of the print, rendering most of the figures with black skin to be just black skin and no faces (look to the figures in the background). Warhol has made the black bodies just that -- no longer black Americans or black humans, but black figures. These people, who at the time of Warhol showing this work were experiencing the battle between Jim Crow and Civil Rights, are made inhuman. These people are made art without their consent via Warhol’s appropriation of their body.
Warhol appropriated, but to what ends? What was his intention with this work? Was Warhol hoping to immortalize a moment of socio-political change or require the privileged urban gallery viewer north of the Mason-Dixon line to see oppression in black-and-white? Is this a commentary on how mass media such as newspapers were also commercial products producing and reproducing humans as media fodder? Or was Warhol producing Warhol -- the brand that created Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962) and Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) -- at the expense of objectifying and selling off of black bodies (Museum of Modern Art)? At the end of the day, does Warhol’s intentions in 1964 truly matter? Given who he branded himself then, who his work was shown and sold to, and how he is known now, then Michael Ray Charles’ words regarding his own reception of his work may apply to this Warhol print:
But for the most part, collectively, I would say that blackness continues to hover around this comfort zone of entertainment—providers of entertainment. You know, I think those areas are pretty comfortable for whites to see blacks in (qtd. in Art21).
This painting is, like Michael Ray Charles’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.
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.”
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 John Stewart’s and the alien in Strange Fruit, 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?
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.
The artwork that offers the loudest dialogue to Warhol and the Western art canon, in general, is Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of men of color. The similarities and differences between Warhol’s Birmingham Race Riot and Wiley’s Ice T 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 Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne. 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 Ice T 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 Captain Confederacy, Wiley puts the Black man as the nation’s victorious symbol.
This painting is, like Michael Ray Charles’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.
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.”
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 John Stewart’s and the alien in Strange Fruit, 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?
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.
Musée de l'Armée. “Napoleon I on the Throne or His Majesty the Emperor of the French on His Throne by Ingres.” Musée De L'Armée, 10 Dec. 2012, 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.
Kehinde Wiley Studio. “KEHINDE WILEY STUDIO: Brooklyn, NY.” Kehinde Wiley Studio, kehindewiley.com/about/.
Throughout the comic, John Stewart is shown less fighting space aliens than himself. Visually, this is seen in such imagery as page 20 (see Fig. 6), where the inside of John Stewart’s being is shown. Beneath his Black skin and masculine build lies, among other images, his heart has John himself crucified. A Black man is in the position of Jesus, and his Blackness comes not from the outside, but from within his very heart. John Stewart reaffirms his identity even as he is crucified for it. He sees himself not physically as black, but spiritually, raising the question of what makes a person Black and how blackness is experienced.
Mosaic #1 shows W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of double consciousness. The reader is visually shown how John sees himself through the eyes of others. John Stewart is deconstructing his identity within the panels of the comic. Outside of those panels, the advertisements within the comic tell the reader who this character is -- a commodity.
In Fig. 3, a full-page advertisement for basketball player cards is on the left of a full-page comic panel. The ad has a (Black male) basketball player in red doing a layaway. His body language -- legs forming a triangular negative space, one arm with a relaxed hand facing downwards while the other is stretched upward -- is a mirror reflection of John Stewart’s pose as he raises his fist in an act of power, green light emanating around him in glory. The two figures face one another as if deliberately meant to play on one another. If so, does that mean the ad’s tagline of “Good Things Come in Small Packages” applies to John? Is the reader supposed to be reminded that this powerful Black man does not exist -- that John Stewart is but a small package of a man? The struggle of his soul is underplayed when the ad draws attention to John’s physicality, a place Blacks are often visually placed (Johnson 10). In Fig. 7, beside the stunning image of John Stewart’s inner being from Fig. 6 is an ad with the tagline “This kid is having an identity crisis.” Can John Stewart’s struggle be summarized so flippantly? Is that the takeaway the reader is supposed to make, or one the advertisement gives? Lastly, Fig. 8 contains an advertisement for a model rocket. Apparently, the rocket is “Easy to Build…” -- does the same hold true for John Stewart? Is a person so easily built? The comic art would seem to say so. The images of rocket shooting off is analogous to John Stewart flying skyward, pink lines trailing behind him to show his ascent. John’s body mirrors the object on sale. He serves the same purpose as the rocket -- to be consumed after purchase.
Clearly, the placement of these ads creates a metatextual narrative and distract from the narrative of a Black man exploring his identity. The reader is pulled out of the story of this character to see him for the product he is a part of. Such a narrative is a rarity for the time: Kerry Marshall James says when explaining his reasoning for creating his “Rythm Mastr” series that “the market has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super heroes [sic.] in a way that could capture the imagination” (Art21, “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James”). It would seem that DC Comics editorial believed this to be true; hence their cancelling of the series. Jones and Hamner confirmed in seperate interviews that DC editorial cancelled the series prematurely at issue 18 despite sales being stronger than the Green Lantern comics starring the white Lanterns (Andrew NDB; Offenberger). John Stewart’s existential crisis of self -- both as a Black man and a human -- is sold short. The character is objectified and with him is identity as a Black man.]]>American comics is a hybrid medium, marrying text and images to tell a narrative. However, within the pages of most American comic narratives is another narrative form -- the advertisement. Michael Ray Charles believes that the concept of blackness as we know it “was linked to early marketing practices, early advertising” (qtd. in “Advertising and Art: Michael Ray Charles”). That is, the advertisements of centuries pass -- ads selling pancake mix or human slaves -- defined what it means to be racially Black today. Comics are an arena where these two concepts meet. The selling of a mass consumer product within a product displaying and dissecting identity is seen in Green Lantern: Mosaic #1.
Throughout the comic, John Stewart is shown less fighting space aliens than himself. Visually, this is seen in such imagery as page 20 (see Fig. 6), where the inside of John Stewart’s being is shown. Beneath his Black skin and masculine build lies, among other images, his heart has John himself crucified. A Black man is in the position of Jesus, and his Blackness comes not from the outside, but from within his very heart. John Stewart reaffirms his identity even as he is crucified for it. He sees himself not physically as black, but spiritually, raising the question of what makes a person Black and how blackness is experienced.
Mosaic #1 shows W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of double consciousness. The reader is visually shown how John sees himself through the eyes of others. John Stewart is deconstructing his identity within the panels of the comic. Outside of those panels, the advertisements within the comic tell the reader who this character is -- a commodity.
In Fig. 3, a full-page advertisement for basketball player cards is on the left of a full-page comic panel. The ad has a (Black male) basketball player in red doing a layaway. His body language -- legs forming a triangular negative space, one arm with a relaxed hand facing downwards while the other is stretched upward -- is a mirror reflection of John Stewart’s pose as he raises his fist in an act of power, green light emanating around him in glory. The two figures face one another as if deliberately meant to play on one another. If so, does that mean the ad’s tagline of “Good Things Come in Small Packages” applies to John? Is the reader supposed to be reminded that this powerful Black man does not exist -- that John Stewart is but a small package of a man? The struggle of his soul is underplayed when the ad draws attention to John’s physicality, a place Blacks are often visually placed (Johnson 10). In Fig. 7, beside the stunning image of John Stewart’s inner being from Fig. 6 is an ad with the tagline “This kid is having an identity crisis.” Can John Stewart’s struggle be summarized so flippantly? Is that the takeaway the reader is supposed to make, or one the advertisement gives? Lastly, Fig. 8 contains an advertisement for a model rocket. Apparently, the rocket is “Easy to Build…” -- does the same hold true for John Stewart? Is a person so easily built? The comic art would seem to say so. The images of rocket shooting off is analogous to John Stewart flying skyward, pink lines trailing behind him to show his ascent. John’s body mirrors the object on sale. He serves the same purpose as the rocket -- to be consumed after purchase.
Clearly, the placement of these ads creates a metatextual narrative and distract from the narrative of a Black man exploring his identity. The reader is pulled out of the story of this character to see him for the product he is a part of. Such a narrative is a rarity for the time: Kerry Marshall James says when explaining his reasoning for creating his “Rythm Mastr” series that “the market has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super heroes [sic.] in a way that could capture the imagination” (Art21, “‘Rythm Mastr’: Kerry Marshall James”). It would seem that DC Comics editorial believed this to be true; hence their cancelling of the series. Jones and Hamner confirmed in seperate interviews that DC editorial cancelled the series prematurely at issue 18 despite sales being stronger than the Green Lantern comics starring the white Lanterns (Andrew NDB; Offenberger). John Stewart’s existential crisis of self -- both as a Black man and a human -- is sold short. The character is objectified and with him is identity as a Black man.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. Strange Fruit gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and only two black men.
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 Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). 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 Green Lantern: Mosaic). 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 Fig. 3 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 Fig. 4 or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in Fig. 5.
The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [sic.] acts as [sic.] 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 picaninny character in Fig. 2. 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. Strange Fruit serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities. ]]>Out of all of the items in this exhibit, Strange Fruit has the most body diversity. The main black male humans of the comic are Sonny and Mr. McCoy. As seen in Fig. 4, 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. Fig. 6 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.
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. Strange Fruit gives the reader two black men to show a multitude of black male expressions. Two black men do this -- and only two black men.
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 Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). 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 Green Lantern: Mosaic). 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 Fig. 3 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 Fig. 4 or with his long legs reaching the edge of the bound page as in Fig. 5.
The alien is a black body. That is its purpose; Jones has said that “The appearance of The Colossus [sic.] acts as [sic.] 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 picaninny character in Fig. 2. 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. Strange Fruit serves as a reminder that quantity and breadth of bodies does not equate to qualitative and deep representations of oppressed identities.One of the rebels, a Black man named Mr. X, tells Jeremy he distrusts the former poster boy of the Confederacy (see Fig. 3). Yet, two pages later, he is asking Jeremy to be the figure of the rebellion (see Fig. 4). 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. Captain Confederacy is Jeremy’s story, he experiences the hero’s journey. However, why is Mr. X not the hero?
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 Captain Confederacy is a white savior story.
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 Captain Confederacy” (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 Fig. 1). 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 Captain Confederacy’s failing
Despite noble intentions, Captain Confederacy's 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 Charles’s (Forever Free) Dress Your Best (1999) or even Wiley’s Ice T (2005). In regards to Captain Confederacy, if Fredrik Strömberg is correct in saying comics give “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).]]>Whereas Warhol 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 series available for free online). 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.
One of the rebels, a Black man named Mr. X, tells Jeremy he distrusts the former poster boy of the Confederacy (see Fig. 3). Yet, two pages later, he is asking Jeremy to be the figure of the rebellion (see Fig. 4). 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. Captain Confederacy is Jeremy’s story, he experiences the hero’s journey. However, why is Mr. X not the hero?
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 Captain Confederacy is a white savior story.
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 Captain Confederacy” (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 Fig. 1). 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 Captain Confederacy’s failing
Despite noble intentions, Captain Confederacy's 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 Charles’s (Forever Free) Dress Your Best (1999) or even Wiley’s Ice T (2005). In regards to Captain Confederacy, if Fredrik Strömberg is correct in saying comics give “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).