Every year my partner and I host an Oscar Party. Yes it’s silly, and yes it’s no guarantee of quality in movies, but we always figure that at least someone, at some point, thought these movies were of some quality, so let’s watch them all and then make a sort of Superbowl out of it.
This past year, as we know, Steven Speilberg’s Lincoln was up for best picture. It didn’t win, despite a long buildup suggesting it might, but that is beside the point I want to make here. The film deals with a particularly nasty time in U.S. history, or rather, an attempt to end it: the process of legally ending the practice of slavery in the U.S.
During the Oscars there is a ridiculous amount of movie coverage, commentary and media punditry. Every angle of every star and director is covered in the buildup to the main event. And yet, there was one question I never saw a single reporter ask, which struck me as particularly odd: why are there no black people in Lincoln? For a movie that is purportedly about the ending of slavery, precious little is shown of any, well, slaves. There is a brief moment at the end of the film when we see a black woman as part of the life of one of the chief legislators of Congress, but that’s about it.
But, the response is, the movie is about Abraham Lincoln and the (white) Congress that finally passed the Thirteenth Amendment. Surely you don’t expect the view of the House floor to include black faces, given the time of the events? True, very true, but this somehow is always the answer when narratives about or affecting the lives of people of colour seem decidedly whitewashed. Would it have been terribly hard to have a parallel narrative with black characters, in order to show what exactly was at stake in these proceedings? True, it would have changed the tenor of the movie, and there’s the rub: the choice Speilberg & Co. made was to play it safe and keep the camera on Abe, and in so doing, render the narrative extraordinarily white.
The appeal to the whiteness of the source material is not a new one. We live in a culture where history privileges white narratives, and where fiction follows suit. Remember when the movie Thor came out and the internet went crazy with racist responses to Idris Elba playing the god Heimdall? “But none of the Norse gods were black!” the comments read, and, “look at the comic book – he’s white!” The role was small, in an otherwise totally white cast. But the departure, as fans saw it, from the original created an outcry in an effort to “preserve” the story. It’s this appeal to an unequivocal, authoritative source – even in cases where strong liberties are otherwise taken – that moviegoers continually use to justify a massive underrepresentation of people of colour in films.
So back to Lincoln. The biopic form gives a great deal of freedom to the director – in this case freedom to focus exclusively on a white, male figure. Because after all, this is the figure history remembers! Yes, ok, the movie is called Lincoln: clearly the focus will remain on Daniel Day Lewis for the majority of the film. But that’s exactly the point – the biopic form was the wrong approach to take to a movie about the ending of slavery. Instead of focusing on the “great” character, who is always male and always white, why not create a more nuanced look at the effects of slavery, how the delay in Congress affected the lives of millions, and the conditions faced by black men and women in both the North and South? But no. Much easier to rally around the idol of Lincoln, who is both a hero for pushing the legislation though, and conveniently, white.
There is, fortunately, some hope. Steve McQueen has a new movie out this year, 12 Years a Slave, which looks to be a more interesting account of slavery, and notably, features Chiwetel Ejiofor, a black man, in the main role. While I hold some reservations about Steve McQueen at the helm, I hope that movies like this signal the end of the biopic, which exists as an excuse to avoid looking at hard truths. Maybe one day we won’t say “but it wasn’t about that” and instead ask “why wasn’t it about that?”
I’d like to offer my (particularly) nerdy view:
I still haven’t seen Lincoln, but I do recall the racist nerd-rage over the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall. I found the outrage ridiculous. Sometimes laughably so, but largely disappointing, disturbing, and frustrating.
As Caitlin noted, the rationale, the defense against cries of the racist nature of the outcry, was that Hiemdall, in the comics, was white. The ‘purists’ (racist connotations are entirely intended) argued that they weren’t angry over the change in Heimdall’s race, but at any change to his character at all. My response? That’s utter bullshit.
I suppose that’s not a terribly productive response. So, if I may elaborate, I’d like to offer a few points. First, this isn’t an isolated case. Similar (entirely racist) rage arose when Marvel Comics introduced a new, bi-racial Spiderman a few years ago. This wasn’t a revision of Peter Parker, but the passage of the Spiderman mantle to a new alter-ego, a practice that happens all-the-freakin’-time within the medium of comic books. Its a common practice, and (as far as I am aware) one that isn’t usually attended by such controversy and rage. The only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that these people believe only a white guy can be Spiderman. Just like only a white guy can be Heimdall. Just like, at one point in the not too distant past, only a white guy could be a full, equal, citizen. Race is very much the issue here.
I’d also like to point out is that fiction isn’t static. It isn’t sacred. It’s fluid, and it always has been. The comic book industry constantly re-imagines its own mythos, killing off characters, resurrecting characters, retconning entire storylines, and using the trope of alternate universes to explore entirely different story lines and to play (there really is no better term) with their own fiction. Shakespeare is one of the greatest storytellers in the English tradition, and his works have been adapted, altered, and re-imagined countless times. Some of the earliest written works of the western world were the myths surrounding the ancient Greek gods, and there existed many, many variations and revisions of these tales, as successive poets and playwrights added their own voices and imaginations to the collective whole.
Finally, as Anthony Burch (the lead writer of Borderlands 2) recently argued, there is no harm in arbitrarily diversifying characters, so long as they aren’t negatively portrayed: “If a writer makes a particular character a transgender, homosexual woman rather than a cisgender, heterosexual man, and that character has a positive effect on an audience’s perception of transgender women […] that writer has made the world a slightly better place” (http://www.heyash.com/in-defense-of-arbitrary-diversity/). And I agree with him. Having a greater number and range of minorities (sexual, racial, et al.) is a step in the right direction.
The arbitrary choice to have a black actor represent Heimdall served an important role: it exposed the majority to a positively-portrayed minority character, and removed a tiny bit of priviledged representation of white characters in fiction. Let’s have more of that.
Thanks for the very well-put post! I completely agree, and I especially appreciate your bringing up the Spiderman issue! The comic-book world is full of re-inventions and re-imaginings of characters, but also, sadly, of fans who believe they alone hold the definitive version of each character in their minds. All too often, this character conforms to the privileged norms of when they were conceived (and many of these heroes are oooooold!) Hopefully those voices will fade away in the years to come and we can have some long-overdue diversifying of comic universes!