Intersection of Madness: Are Black people being rejected in popular culture?

Has there been a white-out in popular culture?

I'm working on a theory about over-saturation of Black people in sports (NBA and NFL) and the repudiation of Black people by those consuming other forms of entertainment (comics/graphic novels, movies and television, professional wrestling, video games, enjoying the outdoors, skiing, the beach, etc).

People are under the impression that sports equal a meritocracy (which it is not: just ask Peyton Hillis) and that the athletes in the NFL, NBA and at major colleges represent the best available. Though college athletes might not be best students -- and could cost a coach his job for their academic failures -- the perception that Blacks are the best athletes available require a toleration of their off-field antics.

Virtually every other form of entertainment -- outside of music -- amounts to a complete repudiation of Black people. Black comic books and characters have never sold to consumers and have failed to pick up an audience (the ultimate reason why so few Black super-villains exists); despite major pushes from promoters, wrestling fans rarely get behind Black professional wrestlers; movies are lily-white as ever, prompting some to believe that Hollywood discriminates against Black actors (sadly, it is movie-goers who discriminate against films with Black actors by not paying to see them); video games rarely have Black characters (unless it is a sports game and don't get us started on Black zombies); and worse, television can't keep a Black sitcom on air long enough for the narrative to take off (nor do people desire watching fantasy love shows with Black people cast in them).

This is one of the reasons why the uproar over Thor has upset a large segment of the population desiring the creation of a new Black phenomenon in pop culture.

Idris Elba -- whose last film Obsessed was a huge hit among Black people -- has been cast as Heimdall in the upcoming Marvel film Thor and he finds those who question a Nubian playing a Nordic God to be idiots:

"It's so ridiculous," Idris Elba says of Web sites that criticize his ability to play "the whitest of the gods."

When Kenneth Branagh cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in the upcoming summer tentpole Thor, a furious debate erupted among fanboys, with some insisting it was wrong for a black man to play a Nordic god often described as "the whitest of the gods."
Fumed one fan in an online foum: "This PC crap has gone too far! Norse deities are not of an African ethnicity! … It's the principle of the matter. It's about respecting the integrity of the source material, both comics and Norse mythologies."



But the London-born actor (who starred as Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire; his 2009 film, Obsessed, grossed $68 million domestically) has no patience for the debate.

"It's so ridiculous," he said Feb. 24 at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J.

"We have a man [Thor] who has a flying hammer and wears horns on his head. And yet me being an actor of African descent playing a Norse god is unbelievable?" he went on. "I mean, Cleopatra was played by Elizabeth Taylor, and Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley."

Beyond that artistic defense, though, there is an even more basic reason black actors welcome colorblind casting: There is a ceiling on the amount of business black-themed movies can achieve, so the opportunities for black actors and actresses remain limited unless they can also claim parts in mainstream entertainment.

In the past decade, black actors have been losing ground. In the early 2000s, blacks played 15 percent of roles in film and TV. Today, it has fallen to 13 percent, according to Screen Actors Guild stats.

This past Academy Awards lacked any Black actors, actresses, directors, set designers, costume designers, composer's, illustrators, etc., even nominated for an award.

 We have reached a point where white consumers of sports have been conditioned to believe the only legitimate sports are football and basketball -- because Blacks excel at them -- and sports lacking Black involvement are somehow tainted (see baseball).

Paradoxically, by every conceivable metric consumers spurn Black people in entertainment that doesn't include NFL or NBA stars. Black musical acts might sell on iTunes and zoom up the Billboard charts, but concert goers seem infatuated with white acts.  

Don't get us started on books, especially those written by Nicholas Sparks.

You have to laugh that the only way to get a Black actor into a comic book is to hypocritically cast him as the "whitest of the Gods."

I'm sure Hollywood expected no one to notice the casting of a Black guy as a Nordic God, but they did. That people laugh when Afro-centrists claim that Cleopatra was Black -- sorry to burst your bubble Elba, but she wasn't -- is upsetting to Black people desirous of creating myths that are inherently unbelievable.

That the only positive images of Black people come from sports is interesting especially when you realize consumers of popular culture, entertainment, and the activities they seek out for fun and recreation have insignificant and only token Black representation.

Does the over-saturation of Black people in sports make consumers uninterested in watching movies and television shows with Black actors and actresses? Why don't consumers of comics books read Black books? Why don't Black wrestlers attract support in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)? White guys tolerate rap and hip-hop because white girls like to dance to it, and this fad will ultimately pass. Then again, why is Journey so popular?

Black History Month Heroes: Persephone in "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" and Guinevere in BBC's "Merlin"

(Editors note: I know not everyone enjoys Black Fictional Month Heroes, but there is a reason we do them. Also, the publisher of the book will be sending me the link for where to purchase SBPDL: Year One. As soon as it is available on their Web site, it will be available on Amazon.)

Think about why there was an uproar over Thor for one moment. You remember that media firestorm right? We wrote about the movie Thor back in April of 2010 and pointed out the oddity of a Black guy cast as a Norse God.

Months later a Boycott Thor Web site was created that brought media attention to the oddity of white people coming together to voice concern over the portrayal of Norse God as a Black guy. Black people, who complained about the casting of Angelia Jolie as Cleopatra and, well, complain about almost everything else that involves a clash of different races in America and the inevitable metrics showcasing Black failures that such an encounters inevitably produce, should be overjoyed that Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall.

Persephone was Greek, right? So why is she Black in Percy Jackson?

It was a horrible year for Black people at the movies in 2010 and adding a Black guy to the pantheon of Nordic Gods makes perfect sense when you factor in Hollywood's fanatic goal of creating fictional Black heroes (like the ones we profile here) that sadly lack real world counterparts.

That a nation once existed - just watch Turner Classic Movies (TCM) - that didn't apologize for being white strikes one who can see as an ethereal thought when you consider that Black Run America's (BRA) Department of Education mandates the teaching of Black students that every failure of their race is due to white racism and that every evil in the world is courtesy of nefarious white people; that myths once existed that grounded a certain people together creating an immutable bond to the past, present, and future is a thought so extreme that these myths must be purged or sanitized for a more diverse audience.

Hence the need to include Morgan Freeman in 12th century England in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the portrayal of Friar Tuck as a Black guy in the BBC's recent Robin Hood production. Though England had virtually no Black people 50 years ago (and a non-existent crime rate), the future of the once great United Kingdom must have a past that is palatable to the Black people who now reside there.

That the people behind Thor would dare cast all of the Nordic Gods as - God forbid - white people isn't conducive to the new myths that must bring together the diverse people that now reside in Western Europe and America.

Movies and television represent the shared culture of modern America now, bringing the intellectual proclivities and progressive mindset of New York City and Los Angeles to areas of the country that consider both places synonymous with Sodom and Gomorrah. These areas imbibe this culture nevertheless, just as the British people joyfully drink from the culture cup that the BBC in London provides them.

Few people even complained that the recent BBC adaptation of Merlin cast a Black girl as Guinevere. Angel Coulby is that Black girl and though England was home to an all-white population when the Arthurian legend was purported to have transpired, rare is the eye that publicly bashes at such inaccurate castings.

Wait... Guinevere is Black? Weren't all the ancient Britons white?

The Arthur legend of his Knights of the Round Table is too grotesquely white for Cool Britannia, just as those disgusting Greek myths of Zeus had one too many white people as Gods.  In Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the Goddess of Spring Persephone was played by Rosario Dawson. Dawson doesn't look Greek, but she does have the approved racial look of the future that Quincy Jones' daughter states is the future of America. 

These myths have the misfortune of being created by a distinct people, a homogeneous people. That Black people were absent during the original telling of these myths is an unfortunate fact rectified by those pushing an agenda of affirmative black-tion.

Joseph Campbell, the author of Hero of a Thousand Faces, studied mythology his entire life and was curiously quiet about the myths that are indigenous to Africa. In a way, one can look at the novel of Alex Haley and the subsequent production of Roots as a creation of new myths.

Movies represent an avenue where new myths conducive to the ruling ideology espoused by BRA can be easily disseminated to an unsuspecting public. This is why Black Fictional Heroes play such an important part in creating that myth and ensuring that it endures.

Fealty to Black people is the new American way. Those who transgress from this mindset are straying from the intense devotion to the mythology of white guilt that creates this desire to placate Black people at every turn.

Even the Tim Burton remake of Willy Wonka was attacked for lacking Black characters. The myths of old are restrictive to a certain people; the myths in BRA must be inclusive to everyone.

Persephone (clip from movie here) and Guinevere, two iconic characters from white mythology have been freed and in a recent movie and TV show cast as Black women. That any white person dare raise their voice over these castings is a sign of revolt; that thousands of voices said "what the Thor?" to the casting of Heimdall as a Black guy is a sign that something is rotten in BRA.

Black Fictional Heroes include the Persephone and Guinevere, as cast in Percy Jackson and Merlin respectively. Don't Black people have a myth or two that they wrote down (wait, Black people in Africa rarely recorded their myths for posterity) that could be the basis for a movie?

No? Why is that? What are the great Black myths (besides these inventions)?

#642. The Uproar over "Thor"

It was said by a man long since gone that, "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."

During Black History Month we discussed how cinema presents opportunities for Black people to take on roles that reality seems to continually deny them, granting them the chance to play characters who have vocations that are exceedingly rare in the real world.

Perhaps then, you have caught a glimpse of Hollywood's public dream, creating myths in film by casting Black people in roles that non-celluloid enhanced life shockingly can't provide.

It is important to note that Joseph Campbell was speaking about myths that unite a cohesive people to the past, safeguard their collective present and grant images of hope and courage to forge on to create a future where those myths may endure.

In Black Run America (BRA), the great myth that binds the nation together is maintained through sports, plus the continued inclusion of Black History Heroes in cinema and television to help satiate the appetite of those in need of entertainment.

Since 2000, the predominate form of entertainment at movie theaters and thus, wherever DVDs are sold, has been through the genre of comic book movies. Raking in billions upon billions in worldwide box office revenue, films such as The Dark Knight, X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man and a host of others have a profound impact upon pop culture.

The problem is of course the nearly complete absence of any Black people in comics or in comic book movies. Hundreds of millions of people see these films, read the comics and buy the merchandise but rarely is it in celebration of any Black comic book hero, but the continued perpetuation of the notion that" only white people can save the world" ideas.

Comic books are the 21st century answer to the myths of old that worked to make mere mortals strive to have the characteristics of the Gods, ennobling us to summon the courage of greater beings in pursuit of truth and the overcoming of personal obstacles:

Comic books have always been popular with the American people, but in recent decades their popularity has increased dramatically. The Christopher Reeve's Superman movies may have that just shows America's fascination with that character. Film seems to be America's choice of form for pop culture, and comic book adaptations seem to be limitless lately.

In the more popular titles there is also more going on that is subtle that draws us to them. The characters are iconic in who they represent too. Superman represents the immigrant. He fully embraces America and will do anything to help his country, but at the same time he has to remember where he came from and that he is not truly an American (or even a human). The Hulk is a representation that anger can take over even the most rational of people and make them into a monster. Batman is an avenger, and uses fear against those who use fear to intimidate regular people. Captain America is an example of the truly patriotic and righteous as he fights the Nazis and Red Skull. The X-Men represent the outsiders, the people who suffer prejudice in the real world. It is these subtleties that also draw us in to these characters and stories.

Over time, these characters have dealt with a changing morality, and they have changed with it. That is one reason that we are drawn to them and why they are still compelling. The Greek and Roman myths changed too. The mythologies reflected morality and human nature, but there were many different versions of the stories just like in comics. Comic books will continue to reflect the nature of our society, and that is why they will continue to be popular. There is a lot more going on in comics than just kid's stories, and that is why they will be around for a long time to come.

The problem with the comic book movie is one that plagues that Black people, for so few Black faces are seen in these films that can give Black people myths and heroes to cheer for (Barack Obama comics notwithstanding) and engineer any type of character that can import positive ideas to the Black community. The universality of heroism is a noble idea, but to Black people only characters that are distinctively Black can provide idols for young Black people to cheer for, buy their merchandise and strive to replicate (see the power of the Obama Effect).

Thus, in the new Iron Man movie the Ultimate Avengers story, the character of Nick Fury - long an aging white guy - has been replaced with inimitable Samuel L. Jackson. A traditional white character has become a Black character, merely for the sake of integrating the white world of comic books.

In the poorly-received Daredevil film, the master of criminality Kingpin - once again a white character in every incarnation of the comic before - was replaced with a Black actor, Michael Clarke Duncan.

Black people need heroes (and villains) to identify with and the inclusion of Black characters - replacing boring white people - helps to open the door of mythology to more people, bringing about desperately needed inclusion.

Regrettably, Black people forget the incredible 1990s film Meteor Man that stars a nearly all-Black cast and a Black superhero trying to make Washington DC safe for Black people.

The upcoming Thor 2011 film (all part of the plan to eventually make an Avengers film) is one movie that hardly has the ability to cast Black people or any person of color, considering the subject material is the Nordic God of Thunder and his companions of Asgard:

In Norse mythology, Asgard (Old Norse: Ásgarðr; meaning "Enclosure of the Æsir"^[1]) is one of the Nine Worlds and is the country or capital city of the Norse Gods surrounded by an incomplete wall attributed to a Hrimthurs riding the stallion Svadilfari, according to Gylfaginning. Valhalla is located within Asgard. Odin and his wife, Frigg are the rulers of Asgard.

Ostensibly, a film about Nordic Gods is one that will be devoid of Black people, right? You see, Black people have a problem with white actors playing Black roles. This reasonable response to white people being cast as historical Black characters devalues the films authenticity:

Ya’ll know that every time a historical Black person is deemed to be of merit, his or her onscreen depiction will be done by white people as white people.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those people so pathologically Black that I have the urge to smash every pane glass window that depicts Jesus as a white man, but anybody with even a cursory knowledge of the bible realizes that he couldn’t have looked like Jim Caviezel.

Anybody that knows Egypt is in Africa wondered what in the world was going on when they first saw the Ten Commandments starring Charleton Heston as Moses.

I mean, this wasn’t an Egypt that had its bloodline significantly lightened by being conquered by Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and Mussolini seemingly in succession. This was early BC Egypt; the one that still looked like Harlem in the 1980s.

And a lot of times, you don’t even have to be a dead Black person to get a white actor to play you.

Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, is an African-Dutch-Jewish-Chinese-Cuban.

Who played her onscreen? Angelina Jolie who is none of the above.

And then (and I know this is a sidebar argument but please allow it) whenever a Black life is deigned significant enough to not only appear onscreen but also with a Black actor playing the part, there always seems to be a white story which serves as an undercurrent.

Take Invictus or Cry Freedom or the Last King of Scotland, movies about, ostensibly at least, Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko and Idi Amin.

Those movies also gave equal time to telling the stories of a white soccer player, a white journalist and a young white physician.

All this makes me wanna make my own movie: The Beatles—starring Charlie Murphy, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Hart and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

Black people should have the right to play Black characters in films. Of course this makes sense. However, Black people should also have the right to play white characters as well, no matter how silly the inclusion of such a character in a historical inaccurate might be. In the 2011 Thor film, the casting of Black actor to play a Nordic God makes perfect sense, as we live under the rules of Black Run America (BRA):

Even for an actor who has played a vampire-hunter with a guilty conscience, a Baltimore crime lord with a taste for Adam Smith, and an asset manager with a stalker, the role of the Norse deity Heimdall – guardian of the burning rainbow bridge between the world of men and the world of gods – was always going to be a bit of a challenge.

But playing a god in Kenneth Branagh's forthcoming film Thor has turned out to be the least of Idris Elba's worries, after fans of the comic books turned on the star of The Wire for reasons that have nothing to do with his acting ability and everything to do with the colour of his skin.

When news emerged late last year that the 37-year-old black Londoner had been chosen to play Heimdall, "the whitest of the gods", a being who can hear the sap flowing in trees and look across time and space, many devotees of the Marvel comics on which the film is based flocked to online forums to weep, gnash their teeth and unleash a tide of indignation...

Elba, who was born in Hackney, north-east London, to a Ghanaian mother and Sierra Leonean father, has addressed such concerns in a string of recent interviews.

"There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?" he told TV Times. "Hang about, Thor's mythical, right? Thor has a hammer that flies to him when he clicks his fingers. That's OK, but the colour of my skin is wrong?

"I was cast in Thor and I'm cast as a Nordic god," he said. "If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good."

Cinema, which is far less reliant on existing, classic material, has lagged behind theatre when it comes to colour-blind casting.

Rumours of a black James Bond remain just that, although his CIA friend Felix Leiter has been played by two African-American actors, Bernie Casey in 1983's Never Say Never Again, and Jeffrey Wright in the Daniel Craig films Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008).

In 1999, another originally white US lawman, Captain James West, was played by Will Smith in Wild Wild West, which also starred Kenneth Branagh.

Understand, white actors cannot play Black roles but Black actors can play any role they want. Even a character of mythology that belongs to the pantheon of Nordic heroes is fair-game to be portrayed by a Black person, though evidence for Black people arriving in Europe starts in the 16th century.

Nordic myths are quite old and bespeak of a time when a homogeneous people roamed the land, with Gods that reflected their fair skin to worship. However, Black people see nothing historical wrong with the inclusion of a Black person into the world of Asgard, for it makes absolutely perfect sense.

Even Captain America was rumored to be open to a diverse potential actor base, with Will Smith leading the way at one point. Never mind that during World War II the United States Armed Forces were segregated, thus negating the opportunity for a Captain America to be Black as this is of trivial importance:

While everyone seems to be chasing down flimsy leads about who's playing Captain America, I'm left wondering: What the heck is Marvel thinking here?

It's been a month since "Captain America" director Joe Johnston promised casting news within "a couple of weeks," and besides a disappointing (and ever-growing) list of actors I'd never dream of installing as the title character, we're no closer to anything firm.

None of this answers the question: How is there not one non-white actor on this list? To have 10 actors reportedly in the running, with not a single one of them African American, Latino or otherwise, isn't exactly representative of the American population these days. Why pass on a great opportunity for Marvel to think outside the box. After all, isn't America a melting pot?

If a Nordic God can be Black, by gosh a World War II soldier can be Black and thus, earn the title of Captain America. Black people (who were 9 percent of the population during World World II in America, the rest of 90 percent of the people being white) can see themselves playing any role, regardless of the time, place, country or historical figure.

George Washington? Black in the next biopic on his life. Neal Armstrong? Don't you know all of NASA is Black, as was the first man on the moon? The Romans, Greeks and Egyptians? Black, Blacker and Blackest.

White people cannon be cast as Black characters. Ever. Period. End of discussion.

Especially white women, for the opportunities of Black female actors are precious few to begin with and only growing rarer.

But Black people see no great travesty in playing historically inaccurate characters, especially "the whitest God of them all" as Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the uproar over Thor.

Black people need myths to guide them by and though African mythology is orally rich , the visual shock of seeing a Black in Valhalla and as a Nordic God offers a chance to continue the displacement of the old mythology that once bound a people together, but now works to bring about their complete dissolution.

By rewriting history and mythology new and more palatable myths emerge.