Fluent Essays

this is only for draft, after this one has been done, i may need a 10 page final paper for next posting assignment.( I will invite you directly for final paper assignment for same content on this draft). You may need to find three points to illustrate your point and give enough research support for each.Required Materials: movie BLACK PANTHOR,two essays i post below, any superhero movie may related to your topic.requirements:Draft and Final (5pp/7-10pp)—Both will be analytic and written using formal academic style. The draft will focus on concept development, skill practice, and revision. The final will focus on conceptual and argumentational refinement and skill demonstration.Note: Because of the protracted time frame, primary sources for all papers should generally be restricted to films and texts in the course.Response and Final Paper Information:All formal writing assignments must follow these guidelines. Not following correct formatting with be penalized:--Be formatted according to MLA--Contain a works cited pageHeading format:--Use one inch margins on all sides.--12 pt, Times New Roman font--Double spaced--Last Name & Page # in top right corner--Contains parenthetical citationsNameCOLI 211M-02Assignment titleDateAnother thing that need to be mention is the citation. Since you write many of my superhero film for me, you read about the documents I offer before. You need to use those documents again and make some citation from those documents nama___brave_black_worlds__1_.pdf williams___three_theses_about_black_panther__1_.pdf cocca___its_about_power_and_it_s_about_women__1_.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview African Identities Vol. 7, No. 2, May 2009, 133–144 RESEARCH ARTICLE Brave black worlds: black superheroes as science fiction ciphers Adilifu Nama* Pan African Studies, California State University, Northridge, California, United States (Received 1 October 2008; final version received 22 November 2008) Without a doubt, superheroes have played a significant role in presenting idealised projections of ourselves as physically powerful, amazing and fantastic versions of ourselves. Superhero comics also invite readers to imagine a world where advanced science, UFOs, aliens, space exploration, time travel and high-tech gadgets are common occurrences. Accordingly, the genre draws significantly from the science fiction (SF) idiom, making what is drawn and written across a multitude of superhero comics extremely significant as an expression of SF and American culture. Often overlooked, however, in the intersection between superheroes and SF is the place black racial representation occupies in the genre. This article examines how black superheroes, ensconced in a SF motif, function not only as counter-hegemonic symbolic expressions of black racial pride and racial progress but possibly even as transformational Afrofuturistic metaphors for imagining race and black racial identity in new and provocative ways. Keywords: Afrofuturism; black superheroes; comics; Black Panther; John Henry; science fiction; representation Black identity is not simply a social and political category to be used or abandoned according to the extent to which the rhetoric that supports and legitimizes it is persuasive or institutionally powerful. (Paul Gilroy, The black Atlantic) As you know I’m quite keen on comic books, especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. (Bill, Kill Bill: Volume 2) With Jules Verne’s visionary tales of Captain Nemo in 20,000 leagues under the sea (1870), Georges Méliès’s bullet-shaped rocket ship in A voyage to the moon (1902) and the opening notes and narration of Rod Serling’s The twilight zone (1959 – 1964), science fiction (SF) literature, cinema and television have for quite some time captured our collective attention and provided wide-eyed enjoyment for readers, movie-going audiences and television viewers alike. Despite the widespread popularity and wonderfully imaginative scope of the SF idiom across much of the genre, black folk and people of colour were absent. With, however, the notable contributions of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, Walter Mosley, Will Smith and, my personal favorite, Sun Ra, these black SF luminaries have increasingly made the rarified world of science fiction a more multicultural and diverse realm of futuristic speculation and alternative worlds. *Email: adilifu.nama@csun.edu ISSN 1472-5843 print/ISSN 1472-5851 online q 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14725840902808736 http://www.informaworld.com 134 A. Nama Certainly my scholarship around black representation and SF cinema speaks to this shifting dynamic in the field (Nama 2008). Yet, there is another science fictionesque genre that is often overlooked and under-analysed for including black folk in imaginative futuristic and alternative visions of society that present a progressive and sometimes daring depiction of Afrofuturistic images and ideas – the American superhero comic book. For decades the superhero comic book functioned as a psychological sandbox for scores of readers. Superheroes have fulfilled the desire to escape from the humdrum world of gravity, swing through the Big Apple with the greatest of ease or stalk the dark terrain of the city to avenge various injustices. Without a doubt, superheroes have played a significant role in presenting often idealised projections of ourselves as physically powerful, amazing and fantastic. But superhero comic books also function as more than a roadway to escapist fantasy or funhouse mirror reflections of our desires to create biggerthan-life personas that can exert our will and power in the world. Superhero comics also invite readers to imagine a world where advanced science, UFOs, aliens, space exploration, time travel and hi-tech gadgets are common occurrences. Accordingly, superhero comics draw significantly from the SF idiom and for that reason what is drawn and written across a multitude of superhero comics is extremely significant as an expression of SF along with what is communicated about American culture, politics and social desires. Often lost in the intersection between superheroes and SF is the place race occupies in the genre, and when it is addressed, the discussion frequently turns to framing the genre as racially biased. For example, Frantz Fanon (1959) in his psychoanalytical manifesto on race, Black skin, white masks, mentions how the superhero figure of Tarzan the Ape-man and various other comics function to reinforce real racial hierarchies in the world in which whites repetitively imagine victory over the forces of evil, often represented by blacks and other racial minorities. Given Fanon’s observation, the image of a virtually indestructible white man flying around the world in the name of ‘truth, justice and the American way’ easily opens up a Pandora’s box of racial issues. Symbolically speaking, Superman easily functions as a strident representation of American imperialism and racial superiority. A straightforward ideological critique of white superheroes is also reflected in the raceconscious work of Black Nationalist poet and activist, Gil Scot Heron in his declaration Ain’t no such thing as Superman (1975) on the spoken-word track of the same title. On the recording Heron chides black people to abandon the idea that whites will save blacks from ghetto poverty and alienation. Moreover, Gil Scot Heron, like Fanon, clearly comments on how the superhero motif and cultural politics of race are intertwined and suggests white superheroes pose a problematic incongruity for blacks who as victims of white racism are further victimised by reading and identifying with white heroic figures in comic books. This fear of blacks overly identifying with whiteness, whether based in social fact or psychological conjecture, is not some form of racial paranoia. Rather the debate over black identification with white superheroes is similar to Kenneth Clark’s doll experiments, where he concluded that black children in segregated schools who rejected the black doll for a white doll demonstrated internalised feelings of racial inferiority, a symptomatic effect of Jim Crow segregation. Against this theoretical backdrop the drive for positive black images was ratcheted up and the race of superheroes became increasingly important along with the need to create black superheroes for black children to identify with rather than white ones (Brown 2001). On the one hand, such a an analysis makes for a compelling argument concerning the likelihood that superhero comics are a form of white racial propaganda. On the other hand, such a severe indictment is, in my mind, overly simplistic. For example Junot Diaz, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The brief and African Identities 135 wondrous life of Oscar Wao, in his youth identified with the white mutant superhero team the X-Men. Because the group were labelled mutants and treated as social outcasts, as a young black man Diaz felt he shared an affinity with the comic book superhero characters because of his own racial status that stigmatised him as an outsider to mainstream America (Danticat 2007). Consequently, a strict racial reading of the negative impact white superheroes have on black or even white readers is, for me, too simplistic and reductive. But more importantly, rather than castigating the limitations of a genre admittedly dominated by white guys and gals clad in spandex and tights, there remain significant areas of analysis concerning the black superheroes that have existed in the comic book universe for just over 40 years. Their presence marks a range of transformations and symbolic expressions that not only offer a sci-fi version of blackness but also challenge conventional notions of black racial identity while engaging the thorny topic of race and racism in America. In particular, the black superheroes that are ensconced in a SF motif function not only as counter-hegemonic symbols of black racial pride and racial progress but possibly even as Afrofuturistic metaphors for imagining race and black racial identity in new and provocative ways. Although there has been some analysis on black superheroes such as in Richard Reynolds’ (1994) Superheroes: a modern mythology, the discussion of black superheroes is, for the most part, a marginal one. Bradford W. Wright’s (2003) Comic book nation: the transformation of youth culture in America presents the most depth and breadth concerning the importance of black superhero comic books to American culture. He, however, situates black superheroes in the interplay between broad social and cultural themes of a period and emergent trends in the superhero comic book genre in general. Even the most definitive text to date on black superheroes, Jeffrey A. Brown’s (2001) Black superheroes, Milestone comics and their fans invests virtually all his analytic efforts in covering the place and significance of a black comic book company, Milestone Comics, in negotiating the fickle terrain of a predominantly white comic book culture and industry. Other than his examination of the intersection of hyper-masculinity and black superheroes, scant attention and analysis are given to what black superheroes signify concerning their cultural work as a form of black science fiction representation. The lack of recognition given to black superheroes as sci-fi objects is not all that surprising given that many black comic book images easily fall into the uncomplimentary category of racial caricature, and therefore the focus of analysis and interests has revolved around exposing and interrogating this dubious history of black representation in the comic book genre (Stromberg 2003). The purpose of this article, however, is not in any way similar in scope or goal, nor is it attempting to restate the obvious in a novel manner. Instead this article self-consciously adopts what I call a critically celebratory perspective of the symbolic power and allegorical impact of black superheroes as sci-fi figures in the American imagination. Rather than examining black superhero representations in terms of how they are inadequate, underdeveloped or inauthentic figures conjured up by white writers and artists, I view them as significant (even if problematic) expressions of a science fiction (re)imagining of black racial being that reflects and reveals a myriad of racial assumptions, expectations, perceptions and possibilities. As Roland Barthes (1967), Umberto Eco (1979) and Dick Hebdige (1981) have superbly revealed in their respective works concerning cultural production, that which appears the most mundane, innocuous and everyday offers some of the most provocative and telling cultural and ideological information and insights about a society. Accordingly, within the universe of DC and Marvel comic books various black superheroes are more than marginal figures constricted to the panels and imagination of the reader. They also are 136 A. Nama social symbols that represent the intersection of race, science, speculative fiction, black culture, African tradition and technology, and as such stand as ideological place-holders for variegated expressions of black racial identity and black futurism. Admittedly, a science fiction motif does not negate problematic character elements that work to essentialise black racial identity, such as the clumsy use of black jargon and affected speech patterns to signify black racial identity. Instead, I propose that the significance of black superhero characters is not rooted in how authentically black they are, but in terms of the alternative possibilities a SF sensibility or motif offers for a more complex and unique expression of black racial identity. Admittedly, the presence of black superheroes in the predominantly white comic book universe of DC and Marvel comics drew their raison d’être directly from the heightened racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s. But below the surface of such reflectionist explanations these dark figures not only introduced race into superhero comics but they also provided a portal for readers to (re)imagine black folk singing the body electric as science fiction spectacles of technological achievement and scientific mutation. Thus, culturally and ideologically, black superheroes and the comic book pages they occupy are not merely disposable pop products; rather they are SF signifiers that attack essentialist notions of racial subjectivity, draw attention to racial inequality and racial diversity, and contain a considerable amount of commentary about the broader cultural politics of race in America and the world. Black superhero comic book figures are in many ways progressive representations when compared with the representation of black people in early Hollywood cinema and American SF. Much of the history of Hollywood cinema is marked by black representation confined to comedic performances or limited to historical events (e.g. the Civil War), a particular geographical setting (the jungle forests of Africa or the antebellum South) or social class status (maids, chauffeurs and butlers) (Bernardi 1996, Bogle 1998, Snead 1994), whereas except for superhero comics the presence of black people on alternative worlds, travelling in space, shooting ray-guns, inventing and commanding futuristic technology or experiencing time travel was until quite recently non-existent across various SF genres. This is not to say superhero comics were automatically more progressive or racially ahead of the curve in comparison to more traditional sites of SF expressions such as literature, television and film. In the wake of the Black Freedom movement of the 1950s and 1960s, virtually all mainstream media idioms made a self-conscious effort to address the dramatic racial shift in American society (Gray 1995, Guerrero 1993). By the late 1960s the age of innocence for America’s youth was fast coming to a close and even superhero comic books were incorporating the grand social anxieties of the period: the Vietnam War, racial inequality and a burgeoning Women’s Movement (Omi and Winant 1994, Steinberg 1995, Wright 2003, O’Neal and Adams 2004). But what the superhero comic book genre lacked in spontaneity compared with American film and television it made up for in originality. Although the emergence of the first wave of black superheroes symbolised the growing presence of black folk in public and professional settings to which they were previously denied access, they dramatically marked the emergence of black SF figures. If ever there was a black superhero that appeared directly drawn from the political moment yet presented an Afrofuturist sensibility, T’Challa, the Black Panther superhero of Marvel comics is such a compelling character. In 1966 the Lowndes County Freedom Organization created the image of a black panther to symbolise black political independence and self-determination in opposition to the Alabama Democratic party’s white rooster. In October of the same year, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was created which adopted the identical black panther emblem as the namesake and symbol of their black militant political organisation. African Identities 137 Fascinatingly, only a few months earlier a superhero called The Black Panther appeared in Marvel comics Fantastic four no. 52 –53 series, beginning in July of 1966. Although the Black Panther Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization’s black panther emblem are not inspired by the Black Panther comic book figure, all three manifestations of the Black Panther are a consequence of the politics of the period in which ‘Black’ became a defining adjective to express the political and cultural shift in the civil rights movement. In1966 Stokely Carmichael’s call for ‘Black Power’ set in motion a sociocultural tsunami that swept over America. Negroes were now identified as blacks. Black radicals advocated the need for ‘black’ institutions. Black was beautiful. Indeed, ‘black’ not only became the appropriate term for designating a new type of political consciousness, but it also provided a synchronous template for the creation of a regal, super-intelligent and highly skilled hunter– fighter black superhero from the fictional African nation of Wakanda. In America there is a dubious history of presenting Africa as a primitive and backward nation in books, television and film, a racial caricature readily available in virtually any garden-variety Tarzan film released over the last 70 years. Against this backdrop, the Black Panther character and comic book series is compelling because it stands in stark contrast to the historical and symbolic constructions of Africans as simple tribal people and Africa as primitive. The character and comic series challenge these common tropes by melding science fiction iconography with African imagery. T’Challa, the African princeking, is Black Panther, a descendant of an ancient African fighting clan from the fictional Kingdom of Wakanda and a super-genius whose scientific prowess appears to rival Reed Richards aka Mr Fantastic, a white superhero who is virtually peerless as an inventor and scientist in the Marvel Comic Universe. But most importantly, Wakanda is a scientific wonderland where African tradition and advanced scientific technology are fused together to create a hi-tech African Shangri-La nation-state which is the source of T’Challa’s futuristic flying machines, weapons and power (Kirby 2005). The use of a third-world country as a high-tech base of operation for Black Panther is a pioneering representation given that New York City, a recurring symbol of Western modernity with its towering skyscrapers and bright lights, has for decades occupied our collective imagination as ‘the city that never sleeps’ and played a central role as the urban terrain of choice for a multitude of superheroes. Moreover, the speculative construction of a SF version of an African nation is not divorced from the real geopolitics of colonialism that has plagued Africa’s development and dependence on the West (Rodney 1981). For Wakanda, black social agency is the fulcrum for their technological advancement. In his debut, Black Panther prepares for and defends against an invasion of Wakanda headed by a villainous white character called Klaw who is determined to gain control over Wakanda in order to acquire vibranium, a precious sound-absorbing mineral only found there. The Black Panther, however, is able to defeat Klaw’s mercenary military forces and halt his plans for the exploitation of Wakada’s most precious of raw resources. Clearly an origin narrative that has an African nation successfully defending their borders from incursion and exploitation of their natural resources from white men obsessed with controlling the country and dominating their economy is easily read as a critique of the historical reality of colonialism that has accounted for much of the underdevelopment of far too many African nations. Moreover, symbolically speaking, T’Challa arguably works as a composite and idealised representation of the black revolutionaries of the anti-colonist movement that took root in the 1950s. A significant part of the cresting wave of black racial pride and assertiveness in America was informed by the successful anti-colonialist struggle waged by African nations against their European colonisers. African leaders such 138 A. Nama as Jomo Kenyatta, ... Purchase answer to see full attachment