Media Clarity : My new Blog

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Hip Hop Intellectual Boyce Watkins says that when he was younger he loved Snopp Dogg, “When I was younger, I followed that negro like he was a Superhero”.

80 percent of hip hop records are bought by white people.

“This is all systematic, this is all part of genocidally breaking things down to a point where people are going to follow a program that gets laid out for them.” Chuck D of Public Enemy

“Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” that talks about how a large majority of hip hop is a part of a culture that “mythologizes and mass-produces masculinity teaching us boys that real men our tough are violent and control women and can’t under any circumstances show weakness, hip hop in that regard is pure Americana. Hip hop is trapped in a box.”

In a large part this “boxed” American culture can be interpreted as television.  The medium that dictates so much of who we are, what we want to look like and who we should become in the future. There are other ways though, and leaving room for that discussion and growth in another direction is all part of a process that we can only do together. Being media literate, deciding for ourselves through self-discovery who we want to be in our terms. We need to have media clarity to reach these realizations and move forward in this age of history.

“Its a set up..We’re gonna grow only as you see and you hear.”
D.Solo on Hip Hop

Redefining the Heroic

I hope you enjoyed this multimedia project.  This blog has demonstrated several examples of the kidnapping of the ”heroic” for political and divisive purposes.  Part of this is also due to the lack of hero diversity in the mainstream media (TV, magazines and films).   If we want our children to grow up with positive hero archetypes then we need to press comic book creators and the film industry to provide smart, diverse, interesting characters to the American public.  Heroes that use their mind to advance society, rather than just their might.  

In Richard Reynolds, “Superheroes, a Modern Mythology” he writes, “The superhero has the mission to preserve society, not to re-invent it”.  If we want a change in society we our pop culture needs to reflect these societal advancements.   

On the news today there was a report about 3 policeman who helped a woman give birth in NYC’s Port Authority.  Apparently helping people today is considered heroic. Have we lost our common sense and compassion so much that even the simplest kind acts are considered “going above and beyond the call of duty”? 

We must redefine our ideas of heroism and reanalyze the men who wear the hero mask so well.  Neil Postman wrote, “A myth is a way of thinking so deeply embedded in our consciousness that it is invisible”.  Our ideas about race and gender even spirituality have come from myths throughout time, and now in an age of aesthetics and a time of war, people’s compassion for heroes is being manipulated.

Well, this is what a Hero looks like to me: 

 
Amy Goodman, who exposes government propaganda and speaks about international injustice and important news everyday. She challanges mainstream media and gives voice to the silenced majority.

“As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society.”
Robert McChesney is a journalist and author who has founded the non-profit Free Press, a group focused on decentralizing broadcasting and maintaining democratic principles by protecting media and press from large media corporations.

 
The schoolchildren who protested and needlessly died in 1976 Soweto Uprising. They shouted “Amandla Ngawethu” : “Power to the People”. These South African students who were protesting apartheid knew fully what could be deadly consequences for their actions.

On May 1st, 2008 protesters in L.A. demanded immigrant rights and that Americans acknowledge how many immigrants they rely on to maintain a labor driven society. These people are real heroes in a time when the hero image in pop culture and politics is still a brawny, violent, patriotic man. My heroes are people who are fighting for our constitutional rights, democracy and freedom of expression.  So many people around the world are not being acknowledged as living beings who also deserve respect, their own sense of dignity, basic human rights and ability to succeed as well as any other. ACCOMPLISHING THIS IS WHAT THE AMERICAN DREAM SHOULD BE ABOUT.  

This blog is dedicated to my very first hero, my Hungarian grandmother, Mera, who I never met in person because of her early death, but for whom I have the upmost admiration for in her fight for justice.   

Where ma black superheroes at ??

“It (the American Monomyth) secularizes the Judeo-Christian dramas of community redemption that have arisen on American soil, combining elements of the selfless servant who impassively gives his life for others and the zealous crusader who destroys evil…Their superhuman abilities reflect a hope for divine, redemptive powers that science has never eradicated from the popular mind” – Authors Lawrence and Jewett from the book “The Myth of the American Superhero”

If the superhero myth cuts so deep into our understanding of community why aren’t minority charcters featured in mainstream titles? Are Black, Latinos, Asians, Indians not not part of America’s “hope for the divine person or community” ?

Alonzo Washington believes the answer is obvious: “RACISM!!!!!!!!! Although, the attitudes are complicated to explain. Most White people are uncomfortable with people of color gaining power. That’s why affirmative action & immigration are always controversial topics in America. Therefore, the concept of a super hero of color is an uneasy thought to most White Americans. Moreover, the image of a super hero is one of perfection & morality. For years the mainstream media has always force fed the American public with the most negative & immoral images of Black people (murderers, gang bangers, thugs, pimps, video tramps, whores, rapists, gangsta rappers, criminals, etc.). Therefore, the concept of a Black super hero is almost a joke in the minds of most White people. That’s why a number of Hollywood films are made with a Black super hero as a comedy release (Under Cover Brother, Meteor Man, Pootie Tang & Blank Man). I have turned down a number of Hollywood producers who want to make a MOVIE WITH MY BLACK SUPER HEROES AS A COMEDY.” (“Why don’t Black Books Sell“)

There are some illustrators and comic authors who have worked to reverse the tide by not just drawing black superheroes but using the medium of comic books as social commentary:

Matthew Mohammed and Morningstar Constantine, said about creating their comic “Black Bastard”: “It’s a satire on racial stereotypes, a hero who dresses like a pimp”.  Black Bastard’s power is being able to pull whatever he wants from his black afro. 

But are there comics that aren’t just satires about black stereotypes ?

There is no better place to look than, The Museam of Black Superheros. 

William H. Foster III, an associate professor of English at Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley Community College and a specialist in images of blacks. Black characters “had names like Sunshine, Snowflake, Sunny Boy Sam, Whitewash Jones and Ebony White. Those were acceptable terms.  They were comic foils, ignorant natives or brutal savages or cannibals.” In one Mickey Mouse strip, the black cannibals wore earrings in their noses and ears, and bones were woven in their hair.

The Black Panther is the first black superhero.  Created by Stan Lee, I guess you could say he was black, he just looks like he is wearing a big mask, as if the creators did not want to focus on his black skin.  His story is a reminder though of his, foreign, African dissent.  He lives in an African nation that was unaffected by European colonization (must be why he became so super) and he protects his nation from colonization and other countries’ attempts to exploit his nation’s resources.

Comics like “The Black Panther “comic came from the 60’s and 70’s era.  Today Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” reflects racial diversity but as Foster puts it,  ”Black comic creators are increasingly told by white (newspaper) editors that ‘we have our black strip already,’” Foster said. “And then we have only one strip representing the entire spectrum of black identity.” (Coloring the Comic Books)

Western Heroism and Nationalism

A young Ronald Reagan.  Reagan is a good example of crossing over his Hollywood image into American politics. His campaigns were fueled by American’s emotional attachment to cowboys like John Wayne.  John Wayne was filled with many contradictions in his private and public life. 

He “didn’t particularly like horses and preferred suits and tuxedos to chaps, jeans, and boots” said his son, Micheal Wayne.  Wayne was a vocal conservative was racist off-screen.  In a 1971 Playboy magazine interview, his racist comments were targeted towards black and America’s indigenous people. “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them.  Our so-called stealing of this country from them is just a matter of survival.  There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves”. 

Wayne’s three marriages were all to Latina’s, but he was very prejudice against minorities, including communists. He was the president of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.  In his movies too he played generals who busts Honolulu communist. Regardless of his public persona of being rough and tough, he didn’t go fight overseas.  In reality John Wayne was a draft dodger.

Ideas of “Manifest Destiny”, patriotism and nationalism all were maintained through Hollywood stars. 

For all of the “militaristic hooey” and nationalism he proclaimed it is suspected that shooting his last film on Nevada’s nuclear testing site might have killed him.  Many cast and crew died of cancer and Wayne died in 1970 of stomach cancer.  Pentagon Defense Nuclear Agent scientist’s reaction to this, quoted in People magazine, “Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne”.  (Truth Dig Article)

 

 circa 1905: American President Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919) in a cartoon depicting him as ‘The American Hercules’, subduing the wild bull of anarchy.

“World of Wonder” feature that appeared in Jackpot #8 (Winter 1942), an educational PSA

Operation Blessing: Theology meets Politics

To this day the “hero narrative” continues to be transformed and reinstated to keep very average, very crazy men in power. Case and point…Pat Robertson. 

From writer and Pat Roberson expert : Bill Sizemore’s Article “The Christian with Four Aces”

Pat Roberson has pioneered the union of theology and politics.  Robertson attended military prep schools and majored in history at Washington and Lee University in his hometown of Lexington, Virginia. He was then a marine during the Korean War and after attended Yale University where he met his wife, Dede. 

“You need to be born again,” his mother told him, bombarding the couple with gospel tracts. At her urging, Robertson had dinner with an acquaintance of his mother, an itinerant evangelist named Cornelius Vanderbreggen, at an elegant restaurant in Philadelphia. Robertson was impressed. “I was used to the expensive bistros around New York, but that a faith missionary should say the Lord had led him to dine at this restaurant where the waiters wore white tie and tails was more than I could comprehend,” he wrote. “I thought that God’s people wore shabby clothes, baggy trousers, and suit coats that didn’t match. I thought they ate hamburger and boiled turnips.”

By the next day, Robertson had undergone a conversion experience. “Dede, I’m saved!”.  Pat then bought the UHF TV station for sale in Portsmouth, Virginia for 37,000 dollars. When a hurricane hit Virginia but not his station he said that “God sent an invisible shield around our area.”

After God told Pat to buy an expensive FM transmitter, he came up with the telethon to solve his financial problems, he started The 700 Club  by setting the goal of 700 people giving $10 dollars contribution.  He continued to grow The 700 Clubwith famous Jim Bakker.  After years of not being involved in politics, but Pat’s father’s death and his coverage of the Watergate Scandal on his network.   “Equally important to Robertson’s vision of the end-time is the nation of Israel. He sees Israel’s establishment in 1948 as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy—an event that set the clock ticking toward the creation of Christ’s kingdom—” 

After a failed attempt of running for office, Robertson endorsed Bush Senior and helped merge politics by speaking candidate’s positions on the issues of abortion in evagelical terms handing out little pamplets. Robertson reshaped the religious right into the group we now know today.  Robertson’s past in persuasion and religious rhetoric made him perfect to help the Christian Coalition-”a lobbying group aimed at drawing evangelical Christians into the political process”.  The younger Bush (our now president) was consulting with Billy Graham in those days “George W. had been a heavy drinker, often confrontational and even violent, but after a few days of walks on the beach with Graham, he had experienced a spiritual rebirth”. 

 

Robertson also claims to have God’s help and blessing to mine in Zaire and creating “The Operation Blessing” which was a flying hospital costing Robertson $25 million to buy and decorate.  On one of his several flights to Africa he wrote in his notebook that he “Prayed for Diamonds”.  Another one of Robertson’s companies, Freedom Gold had a mining agreement with the Liberian President, Charles Taylor.  Taylor who was imprisoned in the U.S for embezzling one million from the Liberian government, when he left prison, was found to have forced labor, torture and execution on his people.   The United Nations instated a arms embargo, a travel ban on government officials and a prohibition on diamond exports.  Robertson lobbied to Secretary of the State, Colin Powell to get the sanction lifted.  Once Taylor was our of office because of international pressure Operation Blessing ’s gold-mining continued. 

For more on Charles Taylor’s war crime charges
 

“Thanks to President Bush’s “faith-based initiative”—implemented by executive order—billions of federal dollars have been funneled to religious groups, including $14 million to Operation Blessing in 2005 alone”. 

All of this and I haven’t even mentioned Regent University, Robertson’s University founded in 1978.  Alumni include John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General, Vern Clark, former Chief of Naval Operations and Steve Forbes, president of Forbes incorporated .  These men and women (who are considered missionaries) all brought a big influence to their fields of politics, U.S. defense and media.  All were taught in a school founded by a man who wanted a ban on abortion (“the height of pagan barbarity”), limits on other rights for women, restrictions on gay rights (“a sign that a society is in the last throes of decay”), implementation of corporal punishment on schools, an end to teaching evolution (“There is no reproductive evidence to support evolution”), raising legal standards for granting divorce, expansion of capital punishment and an end of the nation’s progressive tax structure (“a creation of Marxist communism”). 

Click here to Watch Bill Moyer’s piece on Regent University and to see Robertson’s scary intent to change law, (the law school is now fully accredited by the bar association), politics and communication.

Pat Robertson’s life and influence is important to understand in the context of theology and today’s politics.  He and many others have high-jacked the hero’s narrative and persuaded so many that they are carrying God’s message, nationally and abroad, a scary continuation of religious colonialism.