The Unpublishables: All Mutant Everything: Combatting Normalcy in X-Men First Class

I am Marvelian. Or at least Bi-Marvelian. What does that mean? I am a Marvel stan (stalker fan). I argue with my husband weekly about why the  X-Men cartoon’s theme song is the best thing ever recorded. My first introduction to the X-Men was a Mystique trading card that my best friend gave me because he “didn’t collect girl Marvel cards.” Well, to hell with that. Mystique was badass. She could shape shift. And she was blue. Mystique made being different freakin’ amazing. Being an awkward and lanky pre-pubescent tween, I could appreciate that. Her card had a permanent home in my super secret box of awesome things.

With the onslaught of Marvel films hitting theatres this summer, I can’t help but think about the significance of displacement or “Othered” narratives being (re)produced during this moment in American popular culture. This era of cultural memory and expression is peculiar. Coupled with the initial purpose of the X-Men first introduced in 1963 as a portal to a marginalized narrative and the oddity of this current moment of social-cultural history, this wave of Otherness is not by accident. There is a niche, albeit a profitable one, that has allowed for an oppressed viewpoint to be brought before a mainstream and “normal” viewership.  

Those once highly identifiable traits of Americanness -- race, gender, and class -- are firmly in place throughout X-Men: First Class.  Films like this that invest in 'the fringe' or, dare I say, 'alien' narratives appropriate and trouble the taut and highly discomforting realization that American normalcy is shifting.

K_____ K_____ K____: the Remix

“Let’s get ratcheeeeeeeeet, let’s get ratchet.” ~Hurricane Chris

In his piece BET has Become the New KKK, Dr. Boyce Watkins goes in on how BET is a vehicle for selling the deteriorating state of black folks and black folks’ experiences. I’m down with that.  BET has long strayed from the Teen Summit, BET News, Rap City, and Miss Cita’s World days. Once upon a network, BET was a balance of the ratchet and the conscious in the African American community.

Where I pause with Watkins’ argument, however, is his premise that BET is vying for the 21^st century Ku Klux Klan spot.  And who is a front runner for this new Kool Kolored Kids KKK? The alien himself, Little Wayne. Okay, wait. According to Waktins, Weezy is a real life Clayton Bigsby, a blind and willing black perpetrator of white supremacy. I’m not suggesting that Wayne is slated to do a duet with Elmo on Sesame Street anytime soon, but a card carrying member of the Klan? Yikes. Watkins hammers Weezy like he owes him money.

The Unpublishables Archive: American Social-Collective Memory and the Death of Osama Bin Laden

I’ve tried to take some time to let my thoughts marinate and settle on the death of Osama Bin Laden. I’m not quite sure I’ve done that yet. I, like many Americans, remember almost to the minute what I was doing on September 11, 2001. I was a senior in high school in trigonometry class (don’t believe the hype – sexy name, ugly struggle). I saw the 2^nd plane crash live. And I remember the panic of wondering where my mother was – she happened to be in D.C. on business that day.

Then there was the beyond ugly 9/11 immediate aftermath where a classmate Allan (name changed for privacy) was viciously beaten and his bones broken because he was of middle eastern descent. The fear and anger that seethed through America’s open wounds at that time festered then and fester now.

Osama Bin Laden, Family Guy style

With Bin Laden’s death I can’t help but think about the implications his memory conjures about 21^st century Americanness and the Other. He, if not any other figure besides Obama, has framed this most recent manifestation of how America perceives itself. More specifically, I’d argue Bin Laden’s memory is Janus-faced, both feared and commodified in Post 9/11 American public and popular culture. One face is feared and hated. The other is softened by cartoon-esque violence and parody that sucks out the poison and vileness that Bin Laden represents on American soil. Both (re)presentations, however, influence and bleed into each other. If Bin Laden wasn’t regarded as the ultimate antagonist, the mockery and jokes that cater to his image would not and could not be sustained.

HELPING MINUTE: COLLINE FOUNDATION

Hey Hey Hey Blogworld,


Yesterday I made some pretty bleak observations about a narrative on the devastation in Haiti. I want to balance out the Karma and my aunt sent me this really powerful letter and opportunity to give back. The Colline Foundation, headed and founded by Jimmy Toussaint, organizes volunteer trips and raises money to help build schools and assist children in Haiti. Below is a letter that seeks donations for their latest endeavors. Please read and give what you can. We all we got, black folks. Let's make some kinda difference, yeah? ~RCS

Hello Everyone,

    I hope all is well. Colline Foundation needs a little help running this year's volunteer program. Primarily, we need a little help buying paint in Haiti and feeding the kids at the summer camp. This year, the budget for the program is almost stretched to its limit, so I am reaching out to you guys to help sponsor a program activity. The ways you can sponsor the volunteer program are listed below:

• $25 - Goes towards Rice for the Summer Camp Kids

• $40 - Covers water for the kids for the day

• $50 -  Goes towards Rice and Meat

• $100 - Covers Rice and Meat for the day

• $120 - Covers Rice, Meat, Some Water and Some Juice.

• $150 - Goes towards Gas. (Gas is crazy expensive in Haiti)

• $150 - Pays the salary of one teacher for the week.

• $200 - Buys enough paint to paint one class room of Colline Academie as well as cover some of the wages of Colline Academie's staff. We will paint your name on the wall of the classroom and the room will be named after you.

• $250 - Does everything that was explained for a sponsorship of $200 plus a personal thank you video will be made (Directed by Alex Horner). One of the summer camp kids will be thanking you for your contribution on video and it will be uploaded onto youtube/vimeo/bliptv

The money you donate can go to whatever you want. If you want to sponsor 3 or 4 days of Rice, just specify to me where you want your sponsorship dollars to go and I will make sure that happens. Colline Foundation is currently 501(c)3 so sponsoring this program is tax exempt. Every little bit can help. 

Cordially,

Toussaint

DONATE TO THE COLLINE FOUNDATION HERE

Mad Minute: Haiti Got Sucker Punched

I've been marinating over the past few days with friends and all by my lonesome about this story that Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland posted about her PTSD and its ties to Haiti. I am by no means dismissing the seriousness of PTSD nor McClelland's ordeal as I have seen people close to me suffer through it. McClelland's narrative, however, did not stress the significance of this mental condition as a result of covering a rape victim's story or the turbulence of an earthquake ravished country struggling to regain some sort of stability. Oh no. THIS narrative focused on violent sexual experiences that she used to ease her anxieties. And Haiti made her do it.

I cannot speak from the perspective of McClelland or the women journalists that held her accountable or responded. As a literary scholar, I immediately made a mental note of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and eerie similarities between McClelland's disposition and Kurtz, a European gentleman turned noble savage. Kurtz was consumed by the African continent. It ate him alive. I thought about the insinuations Conrad nuanced throughout his text, how Africa's literal and figurative darkness "changed" incorruptible, civilized whiteness.  McClelland paints Haiti in a similar way, an update to the "dark continent" that is seemingly just as corrupted and irremediable. The difference between Conrad and McClelland, however, is how McClelland nearly romanticizes Haiti as a Xanadu of dangerous black sex that she engages to cope with her distress.

While the article suggests she is not raped, McClelland constructs a second hand rape discourse in which she borrows from the actual rape victim's experiences to signify her violent sexual desires. McClellands sex narrative also heavily paralleled the rape fantasy trope discussed in black male narratives like Himes' If He Hollers Let Him Go, Wright's Native Son, and Ellison's Invisible Man. McClellands predatory Haitian partner alludes to if not resuscitates and updates the hyperviolent and hypersexual insatiability of black men and their incessant lust for white women trope for a 21st century audience.

Perhaps most penetrating about McClelland's post is the Haitian woman Sybille. Oooooooh wee. Where to begin with that? The fact that Sybille was a mentally unstable AMERICAN white woman with multiple personalities and situated within a different social-cultural landscape? The fact that Haitian Sybille suffered immense psychological and physical trauma without the privilege of being able to seek treatment while being at fault for her "crime?" Or the fact that for Haitian Sybille's literal and figurative silence (McClelland reports earlier that Sybille's tongue was bitten off by one of her rapists) to be validated a non-Haitian, American woman needs to speak for her. The same woman who THEN attempts to situate her own sexual anxieties within Haitian Sybille's oppressed narrative?  I'm sayin'.  Where's the objectivity in that?