Posted by Eugene Volokh:
The Obama/Joker Poster Is Racist, Says a *Washington Post* Article by the
Newspaper's Culture Critic:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_02-2009_08_08.shtml#1249580799
How is that, pray tell? Here's [1]the argument:
Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image.
By using the "urban" makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of
the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster
connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can't
openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner
city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and
a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling
crime rates.
The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long
franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the
wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product
and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is
white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic
racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes --
don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger
with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the
social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of
crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious,
underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence.
It is an ugly idea, operating covertly in that gray area that is
always supposed to be opened up to honest examination whenever
America has one of its "we need to talk this through" episodes. But
it lingers, unspoken but powerful, leaving all too many people with
the sense that exposure to crime creates an ineluctable propensity
to crime.
Superimpose that idea, through the Joker's makeup, onto Obama's
face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and
political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another
attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the
unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort
to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama's
association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy
over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black
man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous
marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge
of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be
trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black.
Joker = "urban" = "inner city" = black. True, he's white, Heath Ledger
is white, but ... But what exactly? All references to white "urban"
criminals are actually secretly to blacks? The references to William
Ayers were, too?
Also, if we're looking for supposed racial connections here, wouldn't
the Socialism reference cut the other way? Karl Marx, François
Mitterand, Bernie Sanders, no? Or does even Socialism (which to
Americans is mostly a European phenomenon, with pockets of support
among mostly white prominent American liberal academics) still become
black when coupled with the Joker -- who is white but of course black
because he's urban and a criminal?
Quite an argument, it seems to me. Thanks to [2]Jules Crittenden for
the pointer.
References
1.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503876.html
2. http://www.julescrittenden.com/2009/08/06/we-have-a-winner-2/
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
