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Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest  Ezra Claverie 155 Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence in the Film Ezra Claverie

Introduction different black superheroes, including the Black Panther. As one of the few black superheroes to have his own title, the Panther’s How does conglomerate Hollywood construct appearance in this film would seem to signify superhero blockbusters for a domestic market Hollywood’s willingness to give black super- structured by American racial ideologies? As heroes their “due,” yet as I will argue, we can also commodities and as marketing tools for larger read the film as a successful exercise in what Der- media brands, these films aspire to wide popular- rick Bell has called interest convergence, a careful ity, and the norms of this demand that the navigation between the desires of black people superhero pursue a universalist and prosocial mis- and the dominant racial ideology of . sion, fighting on behalf of “the people”—the city, the nation, or the planet—broadly imagined as having convergent interests. These films must Symbolic Racism and therefore appeal ambiguously to audience seg- Racialized Spectatorship ments that hold contradictory understandings of how race inflects American life. This essay looks primarily at the character of In their silence about race, Hollywood block- , played by in busters demonstrate the movie industry’s adapta- ’s films for Warner tion to the white racial ideology that social Brothers (2005–2012), and it argues that Fox scientists call symbolic racism, the “colorblind” demonstrates Warner Brothers’ skill in creating a and universalist ideology dominant in the United character that appeals across American racial- States since the legal victories of the Civil Rights ideological lines. Moreover, the essay argues that movement in the 1960s.1 Symbolic racism denies Fox offered a template that then white America’s implication in slavery and segre- followed in its development of black sidekicks for gation, it correlates with resistance to the political the white superheroes in their interconnected demands of black people, and it minimizes or “Marvel Cinematic Universe” of films. The latest denies the importance of race in present-day ques- entry, : (Anthony tions of justice. Symbolic racism operates as ideol- Russo and Joe Russo, 2016), features three ogy in the Marxian sense, making America’s

Ezra Claverie teaches as a Lecturer in the Writing Program at NYU Shanghai. His work has appeared in Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, The Journal of Popular Culture, and Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. The Journal of American Culture, 40:2 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc 156 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017 racialized inequities of power and wealth seem other segments. So the seeks to flatter natural and inevitable. white peoples’ self-conception as “not perpetra- Yet the buying power of nonwhite audiences in tors of racism” while also offering nonstereotyped the means that conglomerate Holly- black characters, thereby signifying the filmmak- wood still courts them. Blockbusters must there- ers’ respect for black actors and spectators. These fore make themselves intelligible to persons of films offer to multiple audience segments the color as respectful to nonwhites, presenting black opportunity to feel valued by the film. characters that avoid the demeaning Since the 1980s, black film scholars have of Hollywood’s past. Studios’ appeal to a global offered theories of spectatorship that revealed the hierarchy of audience segments that places white limitations of earlier theories that ignored race. At Americans at the top, the largest segment in their their best, these interventions explored the com- largest market, so blockbuster filmmakers find plexity of black responses to cinema. Contra Mul- themselves constrained into a narrow channel of vey, bell hooks argued that feminist film criticism ambiguous address. Capital has no racial ideol- had failed to theorize nonwhite women, and that ogy, but in order for the capital of the culture black women remained “‘on guard’ at ” industries to grow, those industries must create (298), “not duped by mainstream cinema” (295). texts compatible with the ideologies of their audi- Manthia Diawara proposed the “resisting specta- ences; a mass-market text that contradicts those tor” “as a heuristic device to imply that just as ideologies risks a bad return on shareholder some black people identify with Hollywood investment. It also risks damaging the equity of images of black people, some white spectators, the larger brand, either character or corporate. too, resist the racial representations of the domi- The success of blockbusters therefore depends on nant cinema” (892). Hollywood films that their heteroglossia, their ability to signify differ- appealed to white people engaged in a “textual ent things to different segments, who have funda- deracination and isolation” of their black charac- mentally different understandings of history, ters from any specifically black social or political justice, and policy. Scholars approaching these context, thereby denying black spectators “the films must therefore consider potentially contra- possibility of identification with black characters dictory readings of the films as texts. as credible or plausible personalities” (896). Yet Symbolic racism’s preservation of white hege- such criticisms of Hollywood representations of mony has a corollary: the belief among white peo- blackness did not explain the pleasures that black ple that they have become the main victims of spectators nevertheless found in Hollywood. Jac- racism. In a study comparing per- queline Bobo examined ways that black female ceptions of how race relations have changed in the spectators enjoyed and valued The Color Purple past fifty years, Michael Norton and Samuel Som- (, 1985) despite the film’s retro- mers find “a mindset gaining traction grade depictions of blackness (272). As R. among white people in contemporary America: Means Coleman has argued, most media presenta- the notion that white people have replaced black tions of racial difference “do not lend themselves people as the primary victims of discrimination” necessarily to dichotomies between negative (215). This finding helps explain Hollywood stereotypes and positive images,” so “good-bad blockbusters’ virtual silence regarding racism in representational queries” do not exhaust the contemporary American life. To white people meanings that media texts contain (83). I therefore who see themselves as the primary victims of seek to avoid what Rebecca Wanzo calls “‘just’ racism (e.g., through affirmative action), any film syntax.” “Too often,” she writes, “cultural analy- that claims otherwise will seem a race-conscious ses from varied political positions rely on a ‘just’ and therefore racist attack on beleaguered white- syntax: ‘Isn’t she just a mammy,’ ‘just a prosti- ness. However, a film that sides explicitly with a tute,’ ‘just cooning,’ ‘just a ,’ or ‘just narrative of white victimhood risks alienating a sellout?’” (136-37). Even in the superhero genre, Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 157 not known for profound characterization, the possesses supernatural or magical . These reductive “‘just’ syntax” can obscure contradic- powers are used to save and transform disheveled, tions that illuminate the cultural work that block- uncultured, lost, or broken white people (almost busters perform. Hence, I seek to identify ways exclusively white men) into competent, success- that successful blockbusters repurpose older ful, and content people” (544). Hughey identifies stereotypes into themes against which their scripts ten tropes of Magical films, but only one, present variations. “primordial magic,” has a supernatural element, and then only metaphorically. Others, like “eco- nomic extremity,” “hegemonic whiteness,” and “Spare me the “material detachment” derive from mundane routine.” social relations (555). Hughey does not mention , but his observations apply with equal force to Lucius Fox. Lucius Fox, the salient black character in the Over a long career, Morgan Freeman has por- Batman films of the , appears crafted to this trayed the President of the United States, Nelson end. Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of Fox, espe- Mandela, and Almighty God. The BBC summa- cially in Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, rizes Freeman’s image as one of “gravitas” 2005), warrants attention for three reasons. First, (“Film”). Yet for all the dignity of Freeman’s star Fox largely conforms to the cinematic image, he built his early Hollywood resumeon of the black person who helps a young white pro- roles flattering to white stereotypes about black tagonist fulfill his potential. famously people. His first Oscar nomination came for the called this figure the Magical Negro, noting its pimp Fast Black in Street Smart (Jerry Schatzberg, appearance in a spate of films including What 1987), whom the white journalist Dreams May Come (Vincent Ward, 1998), The (Christopher Reeve) profiles for a story. The jour- Green Mile (Frank Darabont, 1999), and The nalist sensationally fabricates most of Fast Black’s Legend of Bagger Vance (Robert Redford, 2000). story, and the piece wins acclaim. A black col- Lee argues that the figure represents a throwback league, not knowing about the fabrication, chal- to classical Hollywood’s depictions of black peo- lenges the protagonist: “Why did you choose a ple as happily subservient to white people (Gon- subject that embodies the worst of Black people? zalez, Okorafor-Mbachu).2 Second, Freeman’s [...] It might not be conscious racism, but it is character warrants attention because despite its racism.” Freeman’s second Oscar nomination seemingly stereotyped nature, it generated posi- came for the illiterate chauffeur Hoke in Driving tive responses from the black press. Third, after Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989). Hoke helps the success of Batman Begins, Marvel Studios Miss Daisy maintain her social life, while Daisy, a began casting major black as sidekicks, confi- retired schoolteacher, teaches him to read; the dants, and enablers to white heroes while isolating film’s condescension toward its black characters them from any black social or political context. has led multiple writers to use Driving Miss Daisy Heroes get lovers, dreams, and social histories; as a metonym for benevolent white racism.3 Free- sidekicks do not. man’s third nomination came for The Shawshank The stereotype of the Magical Negro serves Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994), where Free- well the ideological needs of symbolic racism, in man’s character, the rightly imprisoned Red, helps that it allows the narrative to appear progressive the film’s wrongly imprisoned white protagonist to white audiences for depicting an interracial to escape. Freeman’s fourth nomination, and his “friendship” while it also allows the white charac- first win, came for (Clint ter to attain or solidify a hegemonic position. Eastwood, 2004), where he plays a boxing-gym Matthew Hughey defines the Magical Negro as “a janitor who convinces the gym’s white owner to lower class, uneducated black person who train a white boxing hopeful. As in Shawshank, 158 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017

Freeman provides both voice-over and voice-off $131M worldwide on a $45M budget. Many narration, although his role remains peripheral writers cite its success as the impetus for 20th Cen- and enabling. tury Fox to bet on X-Men (, 2000), Freeman’s role as God in Bruce Almighty (Tom which helped turn around Marvel’s fortunes. Shadyac, 2003) offered him a chance to play the Like its half- , occupies a paradigmatic Magical Negro: a janitor God. liminal position both in terms of its suc- Hughey discusses this performance as exemplary cess, in mainstream and black markets, and in of the of economic extremity, since Free- terms of its mixture of cult genre tropes. The early man’s God initially appears “mopping floors in an 1990s saw a wave of black-directed and black- unoccupied building” (556). In this empty indus- themed films that S. Craig Watkins has called trial space, concrete pillars support the ceiling. “ action” (236), films that range from the The mysterious janitor tells white protagonist social-realist Boyz N the (, Bruce () that he knew Bruce’s father: 1991), to the exploitative Menace II Society “He didn’t mind rolling up his sleeves, either, son. (, 1993), to the parodic Don’t Be People underestimate the benefit of good old a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your manual labor. There’s freedom in it. Some of the Juice in the Hood (Paris Barclay, 1996). Like happiest people in the world go home smelling to many of the 1990s ghetto action films, Blade bor- high heaven at the end of the day.” On could not rows tropes from the black-themed action films ask for a clearer example of Spike Lee’s “happy of the 1970s, although its success lies in remixing slave” stereotype than this. Moreover, Batman them with tropes from Hammer vampire movies Begins essentially duplicates this scene when and Hong Kong (a year before The first visits Lucius Fox. In both sce- Matrix). The streets of Blade swirl with trash nes, an elder, low-status black character, played beneath graffiti-tagged walls and fire escapes, and by Freeman, surprises a younger, high-status like John Shaft, Blade’s name doubles as a noun white character named Bruce by telling him that denoting part of a weapon: it signifies a power he knew Bruce’s father. In both scenes, the meet- both combative and phallic, aligning Blade with ing marks the step in the white protagonist’s white-directed heroes Hammer movement toward fulfilling his potential. Even (Bruce Clark, 1972), Slaughter ( Starrett, the postindustrial mise en scene of concrete pillars 1972), and Black Gunn (Robert Hartford-Davis, matches in the two films. Whether or not 1972). Like Prince Mamuwalde in Blacula (Wil- co screenwriters Christopher Nolan and David liam Crain, 1972), Blade uses his superhuman Goyer set out to copy the scene for Batman strength to fight the police, and he eventually Begins, the visual and narrative parallels make takes on an entire SWAT team; one unlucky white clear Freeman’s analogous functions in both films. cop receives two beatings from Blade over the Goyer also worked on all three of the Blade course of the film. And like the cocaine-dealing films in the 1990s and 2000s, the first theatrical of Super (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972), franchise based on a Marvel property. In 1992, Blade uses an underground economy to fund his producer Peter Frankfurt had approached Marvel resistance. seeking to license a black character to New Line The film uses to present an allegory Cinema for an action film (Clark). New Line’s of black–white relations. The only racial bound- action film Juice (Ernest R. Dickerson, 1992) had aries that explicitly matter to this film divide proved a hit, so Frankfurt hoped to replicate its humans from vampires or divide the “pure blood” success with another film aimed at “urban” (read: vampires (those born of vampire parents) from black) audiences. From Marvel, he bought the those “turned” by a bite. The film’s , Frost, film rights to a third-tier character, the black vam- seeks to eliminate the pure-bloods’ monopoly on pire-hunter Blade. Goyer scripted New Line’s power; although not of pure blood himself, he still Blade (, 1998), which grossed finds Blade’s defense of humans contemptible, Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 159 even traitorous: “Spare me the Uncle Tom rou- it to him) enables him to help Bruce Wayne, tine, OK? You think the humans will ever accept because Fox can do as he pleases with the - a half-breed like you?” Here, in Frost’s reference balled prototypes. Fox’s material aid to Wayne’s to the of black collaboration with white vigilantism thus functions as an affirmation of supremacy, the script comes closest to acknowl- Bruce’s power in two senses. In the first, Fox edging US history. Vampires mark their human avers that the prototypes belong to this heir: familiars with glyphs that function like a “cattle “Mister Wayne, the way I see it, all this stuff is brand,” says Blade, indicating vampire “prop- yours anyway.” In the second, Fox advances erty,” yet the script makes no direct reference to Wayne’s goals without ever mentioning goals (or chattel slavery. Later, in an Oedipal revelation family or anything) of his own. As far as we know typical of the Hollywood superhero, Frost reveals from the script of this film, or the The that he bit Blade’s pregnant mother, passing vam- Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) and The pirism to her unborn son. Against the backdrop Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012), of vampires owning human property, the revela- Fox lives only to serve. tion of Blade’s parentage recalls white slavehold- Moreover, to my ear, Lucius Fox’s Roman- ers’ sexual exploitation of female slaves and the sounding given name evokes the practice of white “one drop” rules of hypodescent that placed the slaveholders giving their slaves classical names. children of mixed-race union into the subordinate Orlando Patterson explains this custom as slave- category regardless of phenotype; in the film’s holders’ ironic commentary on their slaves’ low racial order, Blade counts as a vampire not status and lack of education (Patterson 56–57). because of how he looks but because of one vam- My association may seem farfetched, but less than pire’s assault on his mother. Blade’s partial vam- three minutes after Fox’s introduction in the film, pire (read: white) ancestry remained unknown to Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred refers explicitly to him, recalling the substantial yet often unac- American slavery. As they explore the caverns knowledged (or unknown) European ancestry beneath , Alfred tells Master among .4 To viewers alert the Wayne, “In the Civil War, your great-great- film’s historical and racial allegory, the script grandfather was involved in the Underground seems critical, even revisionist for a medium-bud- Railroad, secretly transporting freed slaves to the get action movie, while viewers unable to read this north, and I suspect these caverns came in handy.” subtext can still enjoy its surface level of vampire- In light of Alfred’s speech, the helpful and avun- killing . I read Blade, therefore, as a cular Fox, the film’s only prominent black charac- proving ground for the kind of ambiguities of ter, reads as a signifier of a blackness comfortable racial address used in Batman Begins. under white patronage. Alfred’s speech turns America’s bloodiest war into an object of nostal- gia and racially inflected self-esteem for the pro- “When I’m asked, I don’t tagonist and spectators who identify with him. have to lie.” The Nolan films never tell us how the Waynes made their fortune, although clearly they made it before the 1860s, for Wayne Manor dates back at Lucius Fox’s role as ’s helper least that far. Yet Alfred’s speech does not impli- depends on his economic extremity. A former cate the Waynes in America’s history of the racial- executive, Fox’s unwillingness to cooperate with ized expropriation of wealth but instead redeems the profiteering board of Wayne Industries led to the Waynes as philanthropists. his demotion to Applied Sciences. He now occu- Fox fulfills another function of the Magical pies a position both figuratively and literally in Negro, in that he provides what Hughey calls the depths of the company, in a storage basement. “material detachment” (567). Fox never asks His abjection in this “dead end” (as the CEO put Bruce Wayne for anything in exchange for 160 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017 logistical help. Moreover, Fox dismisses the mili- James Bond franchise (qtd. in Williams, “Morgan tary-industrial “bean-counters” who “didn’t Freeman”). Why had black commentators not think a soldier’s life was worth three hundred read Fox as I had? grand,” showing his rejection of the instrumental My reading of Freeman’s role had failed to rationality of the military contractor. So does his account for the possibility that black spectators revelation that he worked on the philanthropic could approach the film not braced to resist its elevated train project of Bruce’s father, Thomas hegemonic meanings, but open, in Stuart Hall’s Wayne. The script thereby hints that Fox’s value terms, to negotiate them (516). That is, to look for rationality put him at odds with the other execu- contradictions, seeking oppositional potential in tives of Wayne Industries, resulting in his demo- seemingly hegemonic texts and hegemonic poten- tion. Heather Hicks discusses a nonfranchise tial in the seemingly oppositional. I had also failed , Unbreakable (Shyamalan, to consider audience response historically, as 2000), which “invites the fantasy that Black men Janet Staiger does (1-13), which would have exist in a childlike relation to economic matters required that I understand responses to Lucius and would gladly cede their own rare material Fox in terms of both past superhero blockbusters gains in order to be in a more certain—and nostal- and also Morgan Freeman’s evolving star image. gic—set of social relations, one in which white One could generate approving readings of Lucius men are always already heroes who have merely Fox by applying any one of three redemptive misplaced their capes” (36). Fox invites a similar hermeneutics to the character: Lucius Fox’s role fantasy in Begins. When Bruce Wayne returns to as technical expert, or Morgan Freeman’s digni- after wandering the Earth, Fox helps fied star image, or Fox as a victim of structural Wayne reclaim his patrimony: the basement full racism. of gadgets. The film’s denouement restores First, Lucius Fox departs from Hollywood’s Wayne Industries to the family’s control, when tendency to cast white people as technical experts. Bruce buys a controlling interest; he then appoints Karie Hollerbach notes this pattern in television, Fox as the new CEO, raising him from basement where white people disproportionately play to boardroom. The film thereby restores the eco- experts (612), but it obtains in film as well. The nomic relations of its diegetic past, such that one 1970s–1980s franchise cast Richard man dominates the corporation, and Lucius Fox Pryor as a computer genius in Superman III once more answers to a boss he calls Mister (Richard Lester, 1983), but the character also pro- Wayne. The seemingly progressive appointment vided comic relief in the tradition of Mantan of a black CEO obscures the film’s restoration of Moreland: the film’s poster shows a dignified white hegemony. Christopher Reeve carrying a panicked, eye-roll- Yet against my reading of Fox as a Magical ing Pryor high over the Grand Canyon. Although Negro, I found no similar criticisms in black press Blade cast N’Bushe Wright as a hematologist, it on the film. Instead, press citations of the role cast as Whistler, who designs mention it in the context of Freeman’s busy Blade’s vampire-killing gadgets. In other fran- schedule (Williams, “High”; “Morgan Freeman”) chises, a white man nearly always plays the tech- or the high box office returns of his films nical , from Bernard Quatermass to James (Richardson; Hughes, Brown, and Robinson). Bond’s Q, and from Egon Spengler of the - Where I read Freeman’s character as “explicitly busters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) to Angus MacGyver. positive, but latently racist,” as Hughey puts it Therefore, much as LeVar Burton broke ground (544), the 2005 Black Movie Awards committee on the small screen by playing Geordi La Forge nominated Freeman for Outstanding Perfor- on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Freeman mance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Butler). broke ground on the big screen by playing Fox. Freeman himself described Lucius Fox as “Bat- Second, Freeman’s star image primes specta- man’s version of Q,” the gadget-master of the tors to find dignity in his roles. He has played Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 161 increasingly prestigious characters, moving from structure. Even Fox’s deference to Wayne illiterates to school principals to statesmen, and becomes legible as irony, notably when he jokes he has done much voice-over narration for - about Wayne’s increasingly odd requests, such fiction TV (e.g., the intro to CBS Evening experimental lightweight fabric for “BASE jump- News). In the year of Batman Begins, Freeman ing.” provided narration for both National Geo- Wayne What kind of shapes can you make? graphic’s March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, 2005) and War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, Fox It can be tailored to fit any structure 2005); Esther Zuckerman identifies 2005 as the based on a rigid skeleton. year “that Morgan Freeman Narrates Movies Wayne Too expensive for the army? officially became A Thing.” Since then, it has also become a thing lampooned. The True Facts Fox Well, I don’t think they ever tried to video series on YouTube parodies nature docu- market it to the billionaire, spelunking, mentaries, but its creators also made a “True BASE-jumping crowd. Facts About Morgan Freeman.” It begins, Wayne Look, Mr. Fox— “Morgan Freeman was born in 1937. He nar- Fox Yes sir? rated his own birth” (zefrank1). This joke reveals a “true fact” about star image: it has the Wayne If you’re uncomfortable— power to revise understandings of the past and Fox Mr. Wayne, if you don’t want tell me to inflect understandings of the present. While exactly what you’re doing, when I’m Driving Miss Daisy became, at least among asked, I don’t have to lie. But don’t think black people, a metonym for white self-congra- of me as an idiot. tulation and condescension, Morgan Freeman, the actor, became a metonym for gentle authori- Fox tells Wayne and the audience not to tativeness. Parody can double as high flattery; in mistake his help for servility or stupidity. the case of True Facts, it confirms Black Although he infers Wayne’s dual identity as the Enterprise’s description of Freeman as “one of Batman, he maintains plausible deniability. In the most respected people in Hollywood” the , Fox meets Wayne in a busy district (Richardson). of Hong Kong and shows Wayne a new mobile Third, resisting spectators may read Lucius Fox phone. as a victim of institutional racism. The film hints Fox I had R&D work it up. Sends out a high at the reasons for Fox’s demotion from the board, frequency pulse, records the response but the scenes in the boardroom offer a clue: the time for mapping an environment. board looks entirely white. We see only one per- — son of color in the boardroom scenes, the white BW ! [Wayne smiles.] Just like a CEO’s black receptionist. Nobody remarks on Fox Submarine, Mister Wayne. Like a race, but nobody has to. Fox’s demotion appears submarine. compatible with what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls Fox, of surveillance technology and a “racism without racists” (2-4), ostensibly color- cautious operator, stops his boss from saying blind practices that function to exclude people of something that could be used against them. color from positions of power, maintaining white In light of Fox’s role as the supplier of the Bat- domination “in covert, institutional, and appar- man’s gadgets, audiences can read Bruce Wayne’s ently nonracial ways” (Bonilla-Silva and Forman appointment of Fox as CEO at the end of the film 52). In this context, Fox appears to be the victim as one of Wayne’s tactics for ensuring that the of an all-white power structure, and his aid to Batman can continue his vigilantism. However, in Bruce Wayne becomes a covert defiance of that light of Fox’s subtle resistance, the appointment 162 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017 can also represent a vindication of Fox’s merit, to give a direct answer about the reasons for Fox’s not only as a technician but also as a politically appointment as CEO. Spectators provide their canny survivor in a racist corporation. A resisting own. spectator could read Wayne’s appointment of Fox as redress for the demotion and abuse that Fox suffered under the previous regime, abuse like the Interest Convergence and Civil CEO’s gratuitous firing Fox in the film’s latter War half. If we read Fox’s appointment as redress, then it plays as an inversion of Bonilla-Silva’s notion of racism without racists, functioning as “affirmative Since 2008 Marvel has developed the Marvel action without race-consciousness.” That is, Cinematic Universe (MCU), a franchise of inter- nobody mentions Fox’s blackness or the board’s connected, self-produced film and television whiteness, yet Fox nevertheless makes his way properties modeled on the continuities of Mar- into a position from which he was formerly vel’s comics’ titles. Following the example of Bat- excluded, and which the film has urged all specta- man Begins, Marvel Studios has cast in its films tors to believe that he deserves. His appointment high-profile black actors—Samuel L. Jackson, remains simultaneously overdetermined and , , , and ambiguous, happening for any of the above rea- —actors who built their reputa- sons. I initially read Bruce Wayne’s rehiring of tions in race-conscious films, television, and the- Fox as a paternalistic gesture that solidified ater. Their likenesses appear prominently in Wayne’s authority to hire and fire at will, but a Marvel’s advertising, yet here they play sec- race-conscious spectator can read it as redress for ondary, flat roles: sidekicks, allies, or enablers to institutional racism. white within seemingly “colorblind” Donald Bogle argues that although many black narratives. Still, they avoid the kinds of stereo- roles in Hollywood instantiate stereotypes, “The typed portrayals that provoked black protest in essence of Black film history is not found in the the past. The black press has generally celebrated stereotyped role but in what certain talented these roles, praising the actors’ versatility, their actors have done with the stereotype” (xxii). Free- global box office power, and their function as role man’s nuanced performance, showing ingenuity, models for black children. Marvel Studios’ films flint, kindness, and the willingness to subvert have succeeded beyond industry expectations (white) authority, helped him transcend the both in the United States and overseas, validating stereotype of the Magical Negro, to present a the studio’s strategy. has character that black and white audiences could called the MCU “the only live-action brand that enjoy. For black spectators who choose to iden- matters to mass audiences” (Masters). tify with Lucius Fox, the film interpellates them Texts on marketing to multicultural audiences as intelligent, worthy of dignity, and resisting the stress the need for media texts to show “respect” authority of white people who profess colorblind- for blacks people “because, after all these years, ness even as they keep black people in marginal or many African Americans still do not believe they abject positions. At the same time, white specta- are respected by society at large” (Miller and tors who identify with Bruce Wayne can miss this Kemp 19). In Multicultural Intelligence: Eight dynamic entirely, seeing Fox instead as an avun- Make-or-Break Rules for Marketing to Race, Eth- cular helper and proof that Wayne and Wayne’s nicity, and Sexual Orientation, David Morse asks, ancestors, even as far back as the 1860s, bear no “how do Blacks want to be perceived? First, and “guilt” for racism. Much as Fox prefers not to most important, they do not want to be stereo- have to lie to his superiors about why Bruce typed” [his emphasis] (66). Morse’s advice on Wayne needs gadgets, Batman Begins prefers not advertising applies with equal force to the movies: Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 163

“In the old days, multicultural marketing was easy “Let Marvel know we want diversity in superhero [....] since African Americans rarely if ever movies and share this page!” yet at the time of appeared in ads as anything but distorted stereo- writing, only 2,779 users follow the page. This types, the trick was to include them, and don’t and the dismal Kickstarter flops suggest some- make them look too silly” (212). Another author thing less than Feige’s “groundswell,” but at a warns white media creators against attempting to time when Black Lives Matter protestors had write black vernacular because it may read as taken to the streets to protest police killings of stereotyped or parodic (Mueller 66). Others warn unarmed black men, a different kind of “grounds- that signifiers of racial difference can drift into well” preoccupied many Americans. It may also stereotype even when the marketer has the best have preoccupied executives at Marvel and their intentions (Nwankwo, Aiyeku, and Ogbuehi corporate parent, . 233). Deracination seems the safe approach: cast Then, in early 2015, a different protest - the respectable black actor in the feature-length ment erupted. When only white actors received commercial for your transmedia franchise but nominations in major acting categories for the make no explicit reference to race. 2014 , activists used the Captain America: Civil War brings together on hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to highlight Holly- screen three black superheroes. Previously, wood’s history of systemic racism. That summer, Marvel’s franchise had introduced Tony Marvel announced recruiting Ta-Nehisi Coates to Stark’s sidekick Colonel James Rhodes, who write for a new Black Panther series (McFarland). wears the armor that Stark designed, In 2014, Coates wrote the keenly race-conscious and Captain America: The Winter Soldier “Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic, and in (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2014) had intro- July of 2015 his memoir, Between the World and duced Sam Wilson, Captain America’s flying side- Me, appeared wide acclaim. Yet he had never kick, . Civil War brings these two into a worked in the comics industry, which suggests narrative with the MCU’s first nonsidekick black that his recruitment had more to do with his value superhero, the Black Panther. Many commenta- as public relations than with his ability to script tors claimed that the black Panther appeared due Black Panther comics. Against critics who see the to fan demand, but we have reason to show skepti- inclusion of Black Panther in Civil War as a sign of cism toward such a simple explanation. Marvel’s response to (black) fandom’s demands, I On 18 August 2014, less than two weeks after would argue instead that we should read this inclu- Ferguson police shot to death Michael Brown, sion as an overdetermined case of brand manage- Marvel Studios president said that ment in response to events in the wider world. On fans had been demanding a Black Panther movie 5 May 2016, the day before the release of Civil and that Marvel considered this “groundswell” War, Time observed regarding the Black Panther, “something that we have to pay attention to” “[t]o an entertainment giant like Disney, diversify- (“Marvel Head”). A group calling itself Shado ing means appealing to a wider audience” (Dock- Entertainment had launched a Kickstarter terman). Adding the Panther to the MCU and to on 17 August, the day before Feige’s statement, to the trailer for Civil War (which screened before fund the video series Reign of : Return Disney’s : The Force Awakens) signified of the Black Panther, but the campaign secured to black audiences the kind of diversity that they only $106 of its $20,000 goal. The other two Kick- demand, but it also gave Marvel the market seg- starter projects related to the character, “Dead- mentation that shareholders demand—and that Pool/Black Panther: The Gauntlet” and brand managers get paid to engineer. “/Black Panther Back in Red & Black” T’Challa, the Black Panther’s , enjoys [sic] both failed, raising less than $100 apiece. In the highest prestige of any character in Civil War, October 2014, fans created the “Black Panther first as prince, then as king of the fictional African Movie Now” Facebook group, with the tagline, nation of Wakanda. Unlike James Rhodes or Sam 164 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017

Wilson, T’Challa gets a family and a motivation, Desexing black superheroes offers studios one when an assassin murders his father, King means to avoid the choice between pleasing black T’Chaka. Despite Wakanda’s monarchy, the film spectators and pleasing racist white people. presents the country as rich and technologically To most white spectators, presence of black hypermodern. Yet the Black Panther gets little characters as and helpers of white protago- screen time relative to Captain America or Iron nists shows that equality of opportunity obtains Man; he remains a , aggravat- in the films’ “postracial” diegetic world. To ing the conflict between the two white leads by potentially oppositional black spectators, the seeking revenge against the assassin. Moreover, presence of acclaimed black actors playing heroic, the film says nothing about the historical context serious (nearly always male) roles signifies that of Wakanda’s technological prosperity in relation the films respect black talent and black audiences. to European colonialism or the transatlantic slave However, black representation in blockbuster trade, which had dire effects on black Africa. Civil films usually results in “the paradox of market War’s Wakanda lets every spectator feel blameless. segmentation”: shallow and deracinated black The film’s central white characters—Captain characters (Hollerbach 612). That is, “colorblind” America, Iron Man, Black Widow, , blockbusters offer salient black actors but nothing Witch, and even the android Vision—all about black life, only white fantasies of multicul- have romantic interests, but the black characters turalism. When Marvel Studios replaced Terrence have none. Like Marvel’s earlier black super- Howard with Don Cheadle as James Rhodes heroes on screen, Blade and , Black Panther between Iron Man (, 2008) and Iron lacks an erotic life. I interpret this as a symptom of Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010), Marvel CEO and lar- the white filmmakers’ and executives unspoken gest shareholder Ike Perlmutter told a fellow fear that a romance between the two black charac- executive, “no one would notice because Black ters the two would tip the film from “crossover” people ‘look the same’” (Garrahan). Perlmutter into “urban”: that is, that by showing a romantic spoke the crypto-racist truth of the blockbuster: relationship between two black characters, white for market segmentation, black actors of a certain audiences would identify the film as Not For respectability do, functionally, “look the same.” Them. encountered this fear when the That is, the movie needs a serious black actor— producers of the film Hitch (Andy Tennant, 2005) any serious black actor—in its ensemble so that waffled on casting the film’s female lead. Smith white people see the hero as “not racist” and so complained of the “myth” “that if you have two that black people see the movie as respectful. The Black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a role’s shallowness means that changing actors [...] people around the world makes little difference. don’t want to see it” (qtd. in Weaver 369). The Derrick Bell’s theory of interest convergence alternative of casting a white actress opposite a offers a complementary explanation for the sal- black lead poses, as Weaver puts it, “significant ience of black talent in Marvel’s films. Bell sought risk because of the lingering taboo among some to explain why the federal government worked to audience members against interracial relation- end segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, and he ships” (369). A 2012 study by the University of found that the interests of the black minority tem- ’s General Social Survey on white racial porarily “converged” with those of the white attitudes found that 21% of respondents volunteer majority during the Cold War. Washington inter- that “they would oppose having a close relative vened to end de jure segregation as part of a larger marry a Black person” (Cox). If we extrapolate geopolitical strategy not only because desegrega- this percentage to the larger white population, we tion made the United States look progressive to get some 46,946,000 white people opposed to potential Cold War allies and clients but also interracial romance—nine million more than the because it undercut domestic black radicalism total black population of the United States. (524).5 The Soviet threat motivated Washington Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 165 to overcome white peoples’ resistance to giving convention, stressed the international thrust of up their privileges. “The interest of Blacks in franchise filmmaking: “With 70% of box office achieving racial equality,” writes Bell, “will be revenues coming from international returns, much accommodated only when it converges with the of that on tentpole releases,” studios therefore interests of whites” (523). Applying this to super- focused “on special-effects extravaganzas and hero movies, we can read studios’ post-2005 pol- sequels, product that plays strongly overseas” icy of casting serious black actors in white-led (Cheney and Stewart). The People’s Republic of superhero blockbusters as a case of interest con- China, in particular, presents a huge, growing vergence in market segmentation. White people market. Between 2010 and 2012, total PRC box want to feel that they merit the comforts they office returns increased 29%, surpassing $2 billion enjoy; black people want to see black characters USD (Stewart, “H’wood”). In 2013, Mainland depicted with respect; conglomerates want maxi- Chinese returns increased by 27%, “the first time mum profit on their intellectual property. The a foreign market has eclipsed $3 billion” (Cheney contraction of the DVD market between 2008 and and Stewart). Furthermore, Mainland China’s 2010 means that studios’ profit margins have “unprecedented building of cinema screens at shrunk, increasing pressure on each blockbuster some 5,000 per year” has led to forecasts in the to make itself ideologically welcoming to the industry that this market will “soon equal that of greatest number of segments. Black people and North America’s” (Frater). During 2015, Main- white peoples’ differing interests converged with land box office figures grew by 48% (“China Hollywood’s, resulting in films adapted to all Box”). As the PRC’s urban development contin- three pressures. ues, we can expect Chinese demand for politically The trade press has noted the global success of ambiguous, “colorblind” American blockbusters Hollywood blockbusters starring black actors. to grow. Hollywood’s conventional wisdom holds that The growth of the Chinese market might also race-conscious black films do poorly overseas, explain why Captain America: Civil War contains but “colorblind” films, where “Will Smith, Den- dialogue in which a major character disparages zel Washington, or Halle Berry play characters democratic deliberation yet faces no challenge, who just happen to be Black” can succeed not even from Captain America himself. Prince (McNary). As franchises continue to dominate T’Challa complains in English to one of the Aven- blockbuster production, some argue that individ- gers about the tedious “politics” of an interna- ual stars matter less: “high-concept films or those tional summit in Vienna: “Two people in a room based on popular books or comic books have can get more done than a hundred.” At this, King replaced the star system as the engine behind for- T’Chaka steps into the frame and jokingly inter- eign sales” (Ross). The success of Warner Broth- rupts, “Unless you need to move a piano.” The ers’ Batman cycle and Marvel’s Iron Man, each of father–son joking allows Civil War to have it both which have recast supporting actors between ways about democracy, and it helps the audience sequels, suggests that brand identity and the forget Captain America’s history of punching tropes of a given franchise matter more than the democracy’s enemies in the jaw. T’Challa gives particularity of actors outside lead roles. Variety T’Chaka a slight bow and hails him with a word reported huge overseas openings for Marvel’s that sounds like “baba.” This suggests a son and (, 2011) addressing his father respectfully in their native (Stewart “Iron Man 2,” “H’wood”). language (Wakandan), but to anyone who speaks (, 2012) surpassed these (Stewart, , this display of filial piety sounds much “Few”); (Shane Black, 2013) then sur- like baba (爸爸), father. passed Avengers (“Iron Giant”). Domestic box Stories of Hollywood’s cultivation of block- office matters less and less. In April 2014, Vari- busters to please censors in Mainland China have ety’s reporting on CinemaCon, a major industry circulated widely in the trade press in recent years. 166 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 40, Number 2  June 2017

These include Marvel films like Iron Man 3, which blockbuster, audience segments can see the social recast the Mandarin of the comics as a white truths they want to see. Conglomerated studios American, and (, hope that these segments will then want more of 2016) which recast the , a Tibetan the brand, whether on screen or via other plat- man in the comics, as a white British woman. Doc- forms, and whether supplied by other arms of the tor Strange screenwriter C. Robert Cargill said, same conglomerate or by licensees. “if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that Marvel Studios has announced the casting of he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people Lupita Nyong’o as “the Black Panther’s love who think that that’s bullshit and risk the Chinese interest” in the stand-alone Black Panther film government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the planned for release in February 2018 (Kit, biggest film-watching countries in the world? “Nyong’o”). will direct, and We’re not going to show your movie because you Michael B. Jordan will play a supporting role decided to get political’” (qtd. in McMillan). Yet (Kit, “Jordan”). Nyong’o, who won an Oscar Marvel denied changing the character to please for Twelve Years a Slave, brings to the pro- Beijing and vaguely adduced their “record of ject the mainstream cachet of the Academy of diversity” as well as comic-book : “The Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, while Jor- Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held dan and Coogler bring the indie cachet of by any one character, but rather a moniker passed their work on the acclaimed down through time, and in this particular film the (Ryan Coogler, 2013), which told the story of embodiment is Celtic” (qtd. in Rahman). Marvel the killing of unarmed black man Oscar Grant seeks to have it both ways with their whitewash- by a white police officer.6 Clearly Marvel ing of the Ancient One, offering it not as proof of plans to aim Black Panther at a black audi- Hollywood’s racism or Disney’s proleptic self- ence; still, crossover hits like Drumline censorship in the service of an authoritarian, one- (Charles Stone III, 2002) do happen. And if party state’s political demands, but as proof of not for the unexpected crossover success “diversity.” Doctor Strange represents Marvel’s Blade, we might have no Black Panther movie attempt to steer the interests of Disney sharehold- to await—with hope or trepidation. ers between those of longtime fans, Beijing cen- sors, and Asian Americans eager for an end of Hollywood whitewashing and yellowface. Notes Conclusion

1. Writers use various terms to refer to this racial ideology, but “colorblind,” with or without scare quotes, appears widely in writing Mass-market films remind scholars to pay by psychologists and sociologists, as does “modern racism.” attention to the complexity of spectator response, 2. I prefer Lee’s term to Hicks’s “Magical African American Friend” (27) because of the connotations of the dated and potentially but they also remind us of the need to historicize offensive word Negro. Lee’s term suggests that this that response. We can better understand what clings to life after the Civil Rights and movements black and white audiences want from movies if retired Negro from everyday use. 3. Ed Guerrero calls Driving Miss Daisy “a putrid fantasy on race we also understand what they do not want or relations” (245). For other examples, see Public Enemy’s “Burn, what they will no longer accept. Superhero block- Hollywood, Burn,” Martin Lawrence’s You So Crazy (Thomas Sch- lamme, 1994), and (Michel Gondry, 2008). busters present a vision of America with simpli- 4. The practice of mixed-race persons “passing” as white people fied conflicts; the appearance of multicultural also means that the reverse is true: many white people have unac- integration in these films results from studios’ knowledged black ancestry. See Henry Louis Gates Jr., “How Many ‘White’ People are Passing?” pursuit of a wide audience that includes progres- 5. NAACP lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and desegregation- sives and reactionaries. In the tea leaves of the ist legislators routinely cited the propaganda value of desegregation Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence  Ezra Claverie 167

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