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Here are some observations about "blackness" in Mister Miracle, bearing in mind that I haven't read any previous Mister Miracle, and don't know very much about the New Gods.
1. Perhaps something could be made of the "dark side" as evil motif -- the parallel with another cosmic war, Lucas' Jedi conflicts, made more obvious by splitting Darkseid's name. "The dark side won. The choice is simple. Free the bright ones or be slaves to the dark". (#1) The association of black with evil, light with goodness in these space operas perhaps perpetuates a hoary old racial binary, and perhaps that's problematised here by having a black man recruited to the light side. The New Gods mythology does seem to acquire slightly different echoes when an African-American engages with it: "the Black Racer tells it like it is. You've attracted unwelcome attention from the dark side." (#1) And again, Shilo's blackness (as opposed to what would seem a "normal", and thus invisible ethnicity in a white superhero) draws attention to skin colour in the chess game that bridges the first two issues: "White supermagnetic force to black gravity." (#2) Even "the long, black sedan, the sound of the bone beatbox" have ethnic overtones if you're (oversensitively?) attuned to it. Even the black hole?
2. It struck me on first reading how Shilo isn't revealed as black for some time in #1 -- and as black superheroes are still relatively uncommon, an African-American man under a hero mask is still a slight revelation. Until precisely halfway through, his ethnicity is hidden. On the page that first shows him out of costume, he and ZZ seems to be putting on upper-class (white) British accents (or white Southern gentlemen?) before Morrison brings in a "black" American voice, connoted through phrasing like "how long we been friends", "that don't make you immune", "how you gonna escape from yourself?", even (I'd suggest) "mm-hmm". Shilo was advertised as David Blaine meets P Diddy, and he's clearly meant to have a hip-hop celebrity lifestyle. Mother Box is restyled as Motherboxxx along those lines -- so an aspect of New God mythology has already been tweaked as (I suggest) "black", in that Motherboxxx is surely a name meant to evoke hip-hop and grafitti culture, and so to suit Shilo's role in that (mostly black) community. He's not just a black hero -- he's part of a specific sphere of black American culture. His friends are black. His girl is black. Their names, I would say -- Lashina, Jonelle -- are meant to sound specifically black American.
3. So when the New Gods turn up, surely they're just blending in like Morpheus does in Neil Gaiman -- adapting to fit their environment. Orion is in a black fleshsuit because it makes sense to have one black man among a group of 8 homeless people in this city. Who can say if there's something about a rich black man selling out in the sequence where Orion pushes Shilo away, saying "we ain't your people", and Shilo subsequently muses "down in the dirt there was brotherhood and community." (#2) Darkseid as Marcellus Wallace is a god adopting a cultural suit that he knows will fly -- the big black man as gangster. It's a stereotype, but it's a better disguise than him trying to carry out his agenda while looking like, say, the 15 year old milk-white kid from American Idol. It seems quite possible too that Desaad suits up in disguise as black because he realises Shilo's most trusted confidantes and crew are black. Not beyond plausibility that a successful, troubled, slightly paranoid black professional would feel more comfortable talking about his fears and letting his guard down to another black professional, instead of a white.
4. In issue 3 there are further issues about skin. Baron Bedlam, as a white, blond plastic person, has "got himself right under your skin." Jonelle: "there's this new cosmetic thing that makes your skin like enamel." In Bulleteer, smartskin invited analogies with pornography and the representation of women. Here, perhaps, it might hint at skin lightening, at cosmetic efforts to disguise your own ethnicity? (Michael Jackson)? "We all had it done. Jonelle too." Bedlam's role could perhaps be seen as colonising and conquering. "I'm going to take everything that's yours... and make it mine." He's all surface as a model and just one of an Aryan army, tools of Darkseid -- but Darkseid is also wearing a superficial "skin", only disguised, like Desaad, as a black man. So, white villains, fronting as black, have infiltrated this black community and are science-fiction enslaving them. Interesting perhaps that the anti-life equation is a black speech balloon.
5. An interesting moment, in this light, when Shilo staggers past the Guardian and his partner, with the caption "self = dark side."
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I wonder if in these terms the title carries connotations, above all, of sell-out and loss of ethnic identity, of whites cynically appropriating black styling, mannerism, fashion and culture for their own ends (superficially, as a plastic product, rather than in any way sharing the experience) -- whether Shilo's sense of self, loss of self, battle for self does have particular meaning because he's a black man (which is emphasised in terms of culture, not just colouring). His triumph in issue 4 seems to come through facing up to issues of past, family -- depicted as a poor black neighborhood (his brother's death presumably a result of those cultural conditions) -- through memories of him working up through the ranks to warden -- through coming back to grips with a life entirely different from his isolated, flat and alienating celebrity sphere of issue #1.
"Remove those CHAINS you wear. Become what you were BORN to be."
Yes, I think ethnicity has something to do with it. |
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