In The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling (posted in 2010), Chris Sims identifies an unintentional consequence of regressing beloved characters to their older, original version: white-washing. This is what happens (entirely by accident) when a superhero identity has been passed from the original (White) incumbent to a more racially-diverse incumbent (a Black Green Lantern, an Asian-American Atom) and then the identity gets passed back up (via retconning or rebooting) so that it’s gone from non-White back to White.

This got me thinking, in the light of DC’s New 52, about how many of the new titles seem to have backtracked right to the beginning. And I realised that one of the reason’s I like Gail Simone’s Batgirl so much is that it moves forward. Sure, Barbara Gordon is out of her wheelchair, but the fact that she was in it once remains part of the ongoing story, and new things are happening. Her mum turned up on the doorstep out of the blue. The story is about the future arriving, not the past being replayed for nostalgia.

Batman has a son and a new vision for Gotham. That’s exciting. Bruce Wayne changing from Broody McBroodsson to someone more positive and forward-thinking, who’s finally ready to move on from his parents’ deaths, is exciting and different and new.

Conversely, the new Justice League fails to be a really buzzing read for me, because I’ve read JLA: Year One before, and this is just a remake. And like all remakes, the original is better. It’s fine how it is. Why do it all over again if you’re not going to do something new?

I think there’s a fear that people won’t remain loyal to a title unless it’s exactly the same as it was when they were a kid. But I agree with Chris Sims that moving forward and innovating would actually make the titles more enjoyable. And it would also allow for some much-needed diversity in the DCnU, and allow non-White characters to take on some iconic roles, like Batman or Wonder Woman or Green Lantern.

With that in mind, here are three ideas that would (a) move the characters and titles in a forward direction, (b) retain a link to the past, and (c) allow PoC to take on some iconic superhero roles.

1. Wonder Black Woman

If I wrote for DC Comics, Wonder Woman would be Black. Hippolyta is brutally murdered by someone on Themyscira, leading to suspicion and accusations of treachery among the Amazons. Diana returns to the island to rule as Queen, find the murderer and unite her sisters. She appoints another Amazon to act as Wonder Woman in her place (there are already Black Amazon women in the DCU, so this would not even vaguely strain credulity). The new Black Wonder Woman has an afro and a deadpan sense of humour. Whenever men give her grief, she tags them with the magic lasso, which makes them admit that they find powerful women intimidating.

1. Mexican Batman

Bruce Wayne realises that his work in the Justice League means he needs to share the work of crime fighting in Gotham, so he recruits an apprentice Batman who will eventually take over his role full-time. He finds a young man, the son of Mexican immigrants whose family and community is plagued by poverty and crime. Mexican Batman throws Bruce Wayne’s White privilege into stark relief; when Bruce questions why his young protégé never took up crime-fighting like he did, El-Batman points out that he grew up in a motel not a mansion and it’s hard to hide a Batmobile behind the parking lot vending machines.

1. Hijabi Green Lantern

Why does the Green Lantern Ring always pick Americans to stand as Earth’s representatives? Since Asia is actually the world’s most inhabited continent, the Ring chooses an Indian man as one GL – and the other is a hijab-wearing Muslim woman from Europe. She is initially reluctant to use her ring, because her religion teaches her to avoid magic, but comes to realise it is only the power of her will. Her deep conviction that an all-powerful Creator has made the entire universe gives her pause for thought when she encounters alien races and cultures – where are their prophets? Did God send them guidance, too? Her costume incorporates a hijab that covers her entire hair – great for maintaining a secret identity.

It’s possible to move forward into something new without alienating long-term fans. But it requires courage and vision. To change is to live. DC is currently stuck in a nostalgia-fest that involves endlessly rehashing beloved characters. But the DC reboot won’t be enough to guarantee long-term life for comics unless they’re willing to shelve some of those characters and unleash some new ones on the unsuspecting world.

#nerdchick is a hashtag for all the chicks out there who are nerds. The ladies who LARP. The women who WoW. The females of Fantasy. The sisters of SF. The girls who Game.

The world of nerdhood and geekery has long been seen as the domain of men – women can’t be nerds, can’t be interested in science, won’t want to play computer games.

I remember aged thirteen, when our class had a show-and-tell, two boys brought in their Warhammer action figures and talked about gaming. After the presentation the teacher asked if anyone in the class felt like they’d like to give gaming a try.

I was the only girl to raise a hand.

The malecentric attitude lingers in the world of nerd, and it’s still a problem to this day. Often it becomes a problem when depictions or portrayals of women become over-sexualised or objectified. Or when female characters are written out or denied agency and prominent roles. These portrayals can leave geek girls feeling isolated, marginalised, ignored or even threatened by what they see.

It’s the problem with Starfire. It’s the obsession with big fake boobs in video games. And it all comes from the same place: forgetting that women can be nerds and geeks too.

The varied incarnations of nerdery are usually produced with a male audience in mind, by teams who sometimes seem to forget that women even exist and might be interested in their products. Geek girls and nerd chicks are left to pick over the scraps, because all too often no one is writing or creating delicious geekage with them in mind.

This is stupid. And it needs to stop.

So I say to you:

Women are interested in science

Women buy comics

Women read SF and Fantasy

Women play videogames

Women roleplay

Women can role a D6 with the best of them

Girls CAN be geeks

Chicks CAN be nerds

Stop ignoring us. Cos we’re awesome. That is all.

#nerdchick forever.

EDIT: Ladies, if you agree, tweet this. Copy it to your blog. Repost it. Print it out and stick it on the wall.

Spread the nerd word. #nerdchicks unite!

Voodoo #4 came out this week, and I ultimately decided not to buy it. I think what tipped me was the preview, where Voodoo (Priscilla Kitaen) is – yet again – on her hands and knees. And I just couldn’t stomach it.

This is the central problem with Voodoo. It might star a Black woman, but it’s not written for Black women. Hell, it isn’t even written for women in general. It’s written for men, and it shows, and the sexual and racial dynamics of the title are deeply problematic.

The race- and gender-fail in Voodoo is typical of fiction produced in a supposedly post-race and post-gender society. It’s a result not of outright hostility or open hatred, but simply race and gender blindness. It bubbles forth from the subconscious, written and produced by people who would no doubt be horrified at the very suggestion that they’re racist or sexist. And yet here it is.

Now-confirmed-rumour has it that Voodoo #4 will be writer Ron Marz’s last outing on the title. Newsarama reports that Joshua Williamson will take over from issue #5. A new writer could mean a new direction – or it could mean more of the same – and so I remain torn as to whether or not I should give Voodoo another chance in the hopes that it transforms into something I can actually applaud as racially and sexually empowering.

Because right now, I can’t.

This Scans Daily article has a pretty in-depth analysis of the racefail and some of the more common excuses presented for it. Here’s my thoughts on what drove me away from Voodoo.

***Warning: SPOILERS for Voodoo issues 1, 2 and 3***

The Problem with Voodoo

DC’s New 52 features several Black male superheroes with their own comics and titles and starring roles, but as I mentioned in another blog post about Black female empowerment, Voodoo (Priscilla Kitaen) is the only Black woman supeheroine with her own title.

Not knowing much about Voodoo prior to the New 52, I was sorta expecting something a little more… kick-ass. You know, the black Black Canary. Wonder Black Woman. The Black version of one of DC’s empowered super-heroines, basically.

Silly me for not doing my homework. I come to Voodoo full of excitement and anticipation, I open the comic…

Aaaaaaand she’s a stripper.

That, right there, is pretty much by verbatim reaction upon looking at Voodoo.

She’s a stripper? Really?

Priscilla’s stripperific origins pretty much sum up the whole issue I have with the first three issues of Voodoo: over-sexualised, written by men for men, and drawn for the male gaze.

I feel so empowered already

Apparently, this has always been part of Voodoo’s origins, but this is a reboot so you can’t tell me Voodoo has to stay a stripper-monster.

Oh yeah, did I mention she’s a monster? She’s a monster.

This is the second really big problem with Voodoo.

The problem with the kind of race and gender-fail on display in Voodoo is that it’s not intentional. None of this was done with malice by a creative team with some kind of agenda to pursue. They probably don’t think of themselves as racist, and no doubt Have Black Friends. Nevertheless, there it is on the page: DC’s only Black heroine with her own ongoing title, and she’s a stripper AND a monster. This is deeply problematic from a race and gender point of view.

Voodoo isn’t like you-do

Priscilla isn’t like you, because she’s a Black woman, and if you’re reading this comic then you are a (probably White) male. We’ve drawn lots of nice boobs for you. I mean, you’re not interested in Priscilla’s life or troubles or how she fee- wait, what? You’re a WOMAN?

Crap.

Er. Okay. Well we can offer you… this line about her troubled childhood that she completely made up? No?

This feely-emotional enough for you, ladies?

That’s the first problem with Voodoo. It’s a story about a Black woman, but it’s not written for Black women. As such, Priscilla forms part of a pattern of non-White characters written for White people; of women written for the benefit of men. You can always tell these characters because what they do or say or think or feel doesn’t make any sense from the point of view of themselves, as individuals, or from the point of view of the group they supposedly represent.

You know the type. The Token Black Guy there to make White people feel like they’re not racist. The Good Native who supports and hero-worships the White men. The Sexy Woman who’s entire character arc is to pout, look attractive, fall in love with the hero and have sex with him. Characters written this way might benefit or entertain White male audiences, but they offer nothing but scraps to the people they supposedly depict.

It’s like the writers of Voodoo didn’t think a Black woman would ever pick up their comic and read it.

Priscilla spends most of issue #1 taking her clothes off. I think I saw her boobs from every available angle. She’s often drawn with a passive, vacant expression on her face, like there’s nothing going on inside. We don’t hear a single one of her thoughts. She barely speaks a word. She is a silent, sexy, passive, docile male fantasy.

She is written and drawn by men, for men.

What’s there for a Black woman to take away from Voodoo? What inspiration can Priscilla offer young Black girls? None. They’re not supposed to be reading this comic.

Voodoo the Other

Priscilla Kitaen, the woman behind the stripper-monster, is Not Like Us. I know this, because she told me. Repeatedly.

She’s a monster. As in, she really is the monster, not just playing host to it. And she likes to remind us of this at every opportunity, in case we forgot and for a moment there thought she was like us and we could sympathise with her.

Don't forget she's NOT LIKE YOU

This sense of distance from Priscilla serves to paint her as undeniably Other, and Othering is a huge issue when writing about non-White characters. Throughout Voodoo #1, we do not get a single thought from Priscilla. No purple dialogue boxes narrating her inner narrative, as you would usually have for a comic book heroine. Her inner voice – her motivations, fears, desires, wants, dislikes, aversions or pain – is completely silent. It’s like none of those things matter.

Not until Voodoo #2 are we privy to Priscilla’s inner narrative – and literally the first thing she says is “I’m a killer. And they are all so weak”. She is constantly saying she’s not like humans – not one of them.

You know, when a Black woman is saying “I’m not one of them. I’ll never be one of them” over and over again, then that’s a big problem. And she is usually saying this in human form, so it is a human Black woman emphasising her own otherness, telling the audience it’s okay to view her as something completely alien and unrelatable.

The fact that nobody at all at DC thought that it was inappropriate or racist to portray a Black woman this way is astounding.

By Voodoo #3, the sheer Othering of this constant restatement becomes outright disturbing. Here’s a Black woman, constantly telling me, the reader, that she’s not like me and never will be. It’s all a big, huge pile of racefail.

It’s also completely unnecessary for the telling of the story. I’m trying really hard, as a reader, to connect to the main character here. This is usually pretty key to successful storytelling. And it’s really difficult to empathise with her because on the few occasions I’m granted access to her inner thoughts, she’s constantly telling me she’s Not Human and Not Like Us. I’m trying to connect to her, but there’s nothing to grab onto here. She’s constantly pushing me away.

She is completely Other.

Doesn’t Priscilla ever have a thought that’s not “Kill All Humans”? She must do. She must feel scared, or horrified, or confused or disconnected and out of place. Is she lonely? Homesick? She must feel something other than scorn and anger. But when even her inner thoughts are used to re-emphasise the fact that she is Other, it’s like we’re not even supposed to care about her thoughts or motivations at all. We’re not supposed to sympathise with her – she is just an exotic Other, to be cooed over as alternately sexual and dangerous.

In the DC comics line-up, White superheroines share with the readers a rich, inner world full of desires, angers, motivations and complex thoughts. Black superheroines share their desire to kill everyone.

Where is Priscilla the person? I want to get to know her, and I can’t. Apparently the inner life of a Black woman isn’t worth sharing.

Voodoo the Un-Empowered

I’ve talked before about how empowered Black women in fiction are problematic for the status quo. Since power in Western societies has traditionally resided with White males, having someone who possesses neither Whiteness nor maleness occupy a position of power and control represents a serious threat to the notion of White male hegemony.

So it’s no surprise that Priscilla’s power is undermined by the way she’s written.

Firstly, Priscilla’s power is not human power. It’s monster alien power. Technically, she isn’t an empowered Black woman, she’s an empowered alien pretending to be a Black woman Although later issues seem to imply she’s part-human, this isn’t clear at all in Voodoo #1. It isn’t deemed worthy of mention.

This is similar to the way other Black superheroines, like Vixen, find their power undermined and mitigated somehow: it’s Animal Power, or Alien Power, or Monster Power, or Sexy Sex McSmexy Power. But it’s not human – Black women don’t have access to normal, human power like other superheroes do. Their power is always something other – something base, or carnal, animal, wild; something uncivilised, barbaric, uncontrollable.

What does it say about Black women if the only way they can become empowered is by turning into some kind of monster or animal?

The second means of undermining Priscilla’s power is putting her in a position of powerlessness. She’s a sex worker. I know some people will say that stripping can be an empowering experience, but let’s be honest here: Priscilla’s sexuality is for sale. Her body and time is bought by a White man with money, and she must do as he says. The power in this dynamic belongs to the man who buys her.

Maybe Priscilla finds stripping exciting and fun and empowering. I wouldn’t know, because she doesn’t say a word about it. She is silent, docile and passive throughout.

I don’t think any of this is deliberate. I don’t think the creative team behind Voodoo sat down and said “boy, having an empowered Black woman is really threatening and makes me uncomfortable! How can we diminish and undermine her power? Okay, monster is good. So is stripper. Heck, let’s go with both!”

Nevertheless. There it is. The product of the subconscious, or of society, or of the ways women – particularly Black women – are habitually viewed. And no one on the creative team felt any need to rewrite Voodoo’s origins, to give her back some power or change the way she’s presented.

That’s the problem with this kind of racefail. No one realises they’re doing it. No one thinks about it, and so it’s just allowed to spill forth unchallenged. It’s invisible. No one seems to notice until the people it offends start pointing it out.

Is it really too much to ask for a Black superheroine to be allowed to exist without any kind of Othering, power undermining or turning her into an animal? I know this is possible because Black MALE heroes get the normal-human-being treatment all over the DCU. Why can’t Black women be treated the same way?

Voodoo Learns from the White Man

As a final little gem, I offer this panel from Voodoo #3.

Let the White Man teach you about honour and humanity!

You see that? See Priscilla there, learning about human kindness and nobility from a White man? Is she now going to start questioning her mission and rethinking her Kill All Humans ways? Survey says yes!

Seriously. This just happened. Gag me now.

Voodoo Deserves Better than This

There is a race dynamic in this comic title. That is unavoidable, because the main character is a Black woman in a world traditionally controlled by White men, and that comes with a whole cultural history. It can’t be ignored. If that shapes the way the story is told, so be it. But throughout the comic, I see a wilful blindness to the fact that putting a Black woman in these scenarios is deeply troubling, and insulting, and racist. That all the questions I have about how Priscilla, a Black woman, is portrayed, are questions that haven’t really been thought about in the Voodoo editorial office.

There are honestly so few empowered Black female characters in comics and films and TV, and when they do show up it would be really nice if they could feature without the baggage of Othering and diminishing and belittling and sexualising. Really. It would be great.

This treatment of Voodoo makes me sad. Priscilla deserves better than this, and so do the women who read DC’s comics and pay good money for them. Yes, some of those women are Black. And that’s the real sting in this, the real insult-to-injury point: no one, at any point, seems to have given a thought to how Black women might feel about Voodoo. It’s like they don’t exist as real people and real fans who might really read comics.

Maybe DC could keep those readers in mind in the future. It would certainly help.

Voodoo is published by DC Comics

Article Copyright Fatihah Iman 2011

Absolute Visions

See that Speculative Fiction Anthology? My short story “Daughter of the Void” will be in that

No fixed pub date yet. Still waiting on news.

Back before the internet, selling me (a typical consumer) a book went something like this:

I walk into a book shop and browse a few titles. I pick up a book by an author I like, whose other work I’ve already read. I also pick up a book that I recognise from the library, where I borrowed some other novels in the same series.

Maybe I read a review in a magazine, see a book recommended, and buy it.

A particularly keen human bookseller might recommend a title to me as well.

Buying a book, circa 2011

I follow Janet Reid’s blog (the internet now runs on broadband, which is so much better than dial-up. Remember dial-up? *shudders*). I follow her blog because it’s interesting and informative and pretty funny. She often runs fun competitions. It isn’t just a venue to scream “BUY MY CLIENTS’ BOOKS!!” all the time.

Janet posts a link to a review of one of her clients’ books on her blog. I click through and read the review, by an online blogger. I discover the novel has some fun SF elements, and I love SF. It also gets a great review.

I know from Janet’s blog that this book is actually being made into a film. I’m doubly impressed. Is it worth checking out?

I go to the book’s page on Amazon.co.uk. And the book is available for my Kindle. Sweet!

I don’t know this author. I’ve never read any of his work. But Amazon provides me with a free sample for my Kindle, so what’s there to lose? I download the free sample which is delivered wirelessly to my Kindle in less than a minute.

I realise we totally live in the future and get excited.

I read the free sample on my Kindle. It’s funny and sweet and intriguing enough to make me want to read more. At the end of the sample, my magical electronic book reader asks me “Do you want to buy this book?” and I reply “Why yes, actually I do.”

I instantly buy the book, and it instantly downloads to my Kindle. I don’t even have to put the Kindle down and pick up a laptop. I carry right on reading the book.

Ker-ching! One sale for Evan Mandery’s Q: A Love Story.

And I never even went near a bookstore.

So, class: what’s the take-away lesson from this?

I’ll post mine sometime next week.

P.S.

Epilogue:

Janet, if you’re reading this because your Google alerts led you to my blog: Hi. Here is a picture of a shark, just for you.

The shark is happy because it's Christmas

Here’s the clip:

My real take-away from this, as a newly-converted-from-fantasy science fiction author, is this quote right here:

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology.”

Advice to live by if you’re writing SF.

When coming up with awesome cool SF tech OF THE FUTURE, it’s tempting to start by looking at all the cool things that exist now and then extrapolating them out to their logical conclusions. In the future we’ll have the internet ON STEROIDS! And screens in your contact lenses! And everyone will have a rocket pack! Robots will do everything! Virtual keyboards! Hover cars!

This misses the point that human innovation is driven by human desire to solve a specific problem. Often these boil down to age-old problems like, how do we get around? (The Travel Problem) How can we talk to each other over distances? (The Communication Problem) How can we swap information and ideas? How can we stay warm? How can we find water and food? Etc ad infinitum.

Then we go away and find/invent the technology that helps us solve that problem. Tech that just looks TEH AWESOMES! but doesn’t actually solve a problem is cute, but is unlikely to get extensively used or widely adopted.

Remember that the inventors of the internet didn’t think it would have any application outside of the academic community. But it caught on (and boy, did it catch on!) because it solved a specific problem: how can we communicate and swap ideas over long distances? Here’s a recent story about scientists using space technology to detect fake whisky. This is a novel and non-linear application of technology designed to help astronomers better study the stars – but it solves a particular problem the whisky industry has (detecting fake whisky, which costs them a not-so-small fortune every year).

A lesson for SF writers

When designing SF tech to populate a SF world, it’s better not to think about technology. It’s actually better to think about people. What problems do we have, and how can we use technology to solve them?

It’s tempting to have future SF people use fabulously advanced technology just because it’s cool, but think about it – is this tech really that useful? Does it solve a problem? Would you actually use it, or does an easier alternative already exist?

Real life example:

In the city where I live, some buses introduced an automatic ticket-scanner. You inserted your weekly or monthly season ticket into the scanner, it verified the ticket and you got on.

After a month or so, they took the scanners out. Why?

It turned out the AWESOME FUTURE TECH actually took longer than having the human meatbag driver visually scan everyone’s ticket. The machines were fiddly to use and slowed down the queue. The superior technology didn’t actually make it easier to check tickets or get people onto the bus faster – quite the opposite.

Technology isn’t the answer to everything. And people won’t use technology if it’s more hassle than doing it the low-tech way.

So here’s the idea: you put in a contact lens, and it projects a heads-up display (HUD) in front of you. You can check your emails and text messages right in front of your eyes! It’s like the visual equivalent of Bluetooth headsets. And just like hands free headsets, it will make you look like a crazy person.

But will anyone actually use it?

Benefits

This technology is designed to allow devices such as mobile phones and laptops to get smaller, by taking out the screen element and instead linking the devices to a contact lens HUD. The idea has other applications, such as military use – replacing heat vision goggles or providing detailed overlay to the visual scene.

The downside

The biggest issue I can see with this is that if your screen is in your contact lens, it effectively remains stationary in relation to your eye. Whichever way you look, the screen is always right in front of you. So how would you look at the corner of the screen? When you move your eyes to look, the display follows you – you’re always looking right at the middle.

This might seem like a trivial concern, but when we look at a visual scene we scan it using a series of small, rapid eye movements called saccades. These happen so fast you’re not even aware of them, but your eyes are moving – flick – flick – flick – all over the scene in front of you, picking up little details. We do this because the centre of our vision is the most sensitive – this area of the retina is crammed full of receptive cells. We get the most detail out of a scene by quickly moving the centre of our vision all over it. Kinda like an eye vacuum cleaner.

Back to those contact lenses. If your display is fixed relative to your eyeball, you can’t use saccades to visually scan it. This actually makes it incredibly hard to see it in any amount of detail. Furthermore, we use those little eye flicks all the time in reading – as you read a line, your eyes rapidly jump from the beginning of each word to the next, so fast you’re not even aware of it.

If you can’t scan the scene and you can’t read the words, this renders the contact lens HUD effectively useless.

Of course, the tech is still in the early phase. I mean, these guys have only got as far as showing one pixel to a bunch of rabbits. So let’s assume that they’re well aware of this little saccade issue and are working on a way to compensate for it.

Let’s assume that this technology will eventually land you a contact lens with an inbuilt screen that you can actually scan and read normally.

Useability

It sounds annoying. Like, really annoying. Imagine having your mobile phone newsfeed delivered directly to your eyeballs. Let’s be honest: we all screen calls and texts and we all put our phones on IGNORE when we’re busy with something else. That’s all a little harder to do when it’s popping up uninvited right in front of you.

The issue here is this: it’s a lot of trouble and faff for really not very much functionality. All these contact lenses do is mimic a normal screen, but right in front of your eyes. Except normal screens work just fine and have in recent years become much flatter and clearer and are even interactive. A touch screen is actually better than a HUD, because it doubles as a user interface. So unless a contact lens HUD can offer some amazing new function not already provided by existing types of screens, there’s not much point adopting it. And it can’t offer anything extra. It’s just a bog-standard screen, but in your eyes instead of in front of them.

With a technology like that, which can’t offer any new functions and just replicates old ones in a different form, ease of use is key to adoption. Unfortunately, contact lenses aren’t easy to use. They’re difficult to put in and fiddly to take out. They have to be kept in saline solution overnight. You can’t pop them in and quickly take them out – it’s a time consuming process. If I decide to use my laptop, I grab it and flip it open and my screen is ready to go. If I decide to use my contact lens HUD with wireless keyboard, I have to spend five minutes in a bathroom poking around at my eyeballs. Why bother?

It’s also the visual equivalent of a hands free headset: it will make you look like an idiot. No one else can see your screen, so they will think you’re just staring blankly at a wall whilst madly tapping at a disconnected keyboard. This isn’t a cool look for anyone, let’s be honest. At least with a normal screen you can look away from it at will (have you tried looking away from your own cornea?) and share whatever you’re laughing hysterically at with other people. Imagine laughing hysterically at a wall whilst everyone stares at you.

I can imagine people who already wear contact lenses maybe trying this out, but I’m not sure I’d bother going to all the trouble of learning to put contact lenses in when my normal viewing methods work just as well.

The verdict

It sounds wonderfully SF. But it also sounds really gimmicky. I already have a netbook small enough to fit into my handbag and a mobile phone with a touch screen. And the added benefit that I don’t have to keep the phone in a special cleaning solution overnight.

I know this sounds really cool and everyone loves the idea of screens IN YOUR EYES! But I think touch screens are the future, not contact lenses.

That said, this tech does have some applications. Military use may be one, although I still think in that area that goggles would be more useful. But I can imagine people like spies using this kind of device – especially if it had an in-built camera.

I can also imagine students using this to surreptitiously watch movies in lectures.

Maybe it would be useful at dinner parties where you have to remember everyone’s name and what they do. Now if you can hand me a contact lens that will discretely tell me everyone’s names and suggest suitable topics for polite conversation, I will wear that all night.

So what do you think on the contact lens HUD? Will it become standard use, or will it be too gimmicky to be popular?

My challenge for this year is to write a novel. Not just write a first draft, but write, rewrite, edit, polish to a shine and submit for publication. In a year. Easily doable, even with working full time. That’s what evenings and weekends are for, right?

The Challenge Begins

I kicked off my self-imposed challenge in November. The aim is, by November 2012, to have a completed manuscript ready to send off to agents and/or publishers. Fresh full of enthusiasm, vim, vigour and determination, I set off on my task. My face looked something like this:

However, I soon found myself stalling. My headlong onward rush into a brand new novel soon ran into a mire of confusion and frustration.

Normally, when I start writing something, I have some idea of the plot. Even for short stories, I will have a fairly detailed plan of what the plot is and where the story is going. I find it hard to make headway into the tangled depths of the story if I don’t have some kind of map figured out first.

It’s safe to say I’m a planner, not a pantser

This time, however, I decided to be brave. Screw this map business! I’m will fly by the seat of my pants! Yeah!

Alas, this just doesn’t seem to be working for me. Three weeks into the challenge, and I’ve already decided that it’s all wrong, it needs a better plot and I don’t like the setting. I just can’t seem to write without a detailed plan and a point-by-point synopsis. I’m a planner, not a pantser. What can I say?

It Was Not Always Thus

This is a little strange, because centuries ago when I was a young, fresh-faced teenager writing away on the family PC, I never bothered with outlines and plans. I drew maps occasionally, but aside from that I just jumped into the story and went for it. Now, older, uglier and wiser, I can’t seem to leap into the story with the same reckless abandon.

Maybe I’ve choked myself. Maybe the intervening years have tied me up and made me too concerned. Maybe I’ve lost my youthful enthusiasm and the ability to just write without over-thinking it.

These are all possibilities, but I have another theory.

I tend to go in for complicated plots. I like lots to be going on. Convoluted side-stories, intricate mysteries, hidden pasts, secrets dramatically revealed…  I like to weave all these things into my tales. This kind of plot requires, by its nature, a certain amount of planning to get all the pieces in the right place.

It was not always thus. Back when I was a fresh-face teenage writer, my plot development process went something like this:

I wrote QUESTS.

I love a good quest and I’m not bashing it as a story form, but let’s be honest: plotting a quest is relatively easy. The characters must make a journey. Once you’ve decided where they start and where they finish, constructing a plot is basically a process of inventing interesting obstacles and sticking them in the way of the characters. In a fantasy world (as a youngster, I wrote fantasy) you have a whole exciting array of potential obstacles that can be thrown at hapless questers: dragons, monsters, orcs, Evil Dark Lords etc etc etc.

The key decision in a Quest Plot is: what are the characters questing for, and will they succeed in their mission? Once you’ve decided this, you’re golden. You can start at Point A and work your way merrily to Point B, and if things start to get slow? WHAM. NINJA ASSASSINS. Problem solved, my friend.

The Quest Plot displays the key elements of ALL plots in the cleanest, most elegant way: the characters want something, and are presented with obstacles that prevent them getting it. All good plots follow this structure. But in the Quest Plot, you can see these elements most clearly.

All this makes me think I should’ve just stuck with writing quests (hey, I could DO quests), but earlier this year I made a genre shift from fantasy to SF, and science fiction is a less questy genre than fantasy.

Also, I just really like complicated things.

Indeed, my plotting process has evolved somewhat from its younger state:

So it’s back to the plotting-board for the novel project. I’ll never try to pants it again.

Consider how many Black men are big Hollywood stars – Will Smith, Samuel L Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne… These men have all been nominated for Oscars, and they’ve all carried the lead role in big, serious films. Will Smith is a huge box office draw; Samuel L Jackson is a cult legend in his own lifetime.

It’s difficult to find Black actresses with similar clout. And it’s difficult to find films that star Black women in lead roles (name a romantic comedy with a Black female lead…GO!) Whilst Black men are making inroads into the Hollywood machine, Black women are left behind.

And that’s not even mentioning East Asian women, Aboriginal women, Latina women, Arab women… in fact, any woman that isn’t White.

The same disparity can be seen in DC’s New 52 line-up, where half a dozen Black male superheroes stare out at you from a shelf of covers – but the only non-White woman to get a lead role and her own title is Voodoo. And it’s not a no-women-allowed thing, because plenty of White chicks are kicking ass and taking names all over the DCU. Yet Black (and other non-White) women are conspicuous by their absence.

Why this disparity? What’s so threatening about empowered Black women that they have to be completely side-lined and shut out of fiction? Why do Black women always come in last?

The answer, it turns out, can be boiled down to a simple box diagram. Here it is – the pictorial representation of how race and gender discrimination interact, and the position of Black women in a society that privileges both Whiteness and maleness:

The White guy is like, "Awww yeaaaaah, check out my PRIVILEGE"

So how did I build this remarkable and well-illustrated (*cough*) diagram? Well, it started out like this:

The foundations of the Privilege Box are laid

The diagram has two columns, each representing a gender – male or female. It also has two rows, and each row represents an ethnicity. I’ve simplified it to White (top row) and Black (bottom row) but you could easily replace ‘Black’ with any other minority ethnicity, or just ‘not-White’. But let’s keep it simple for now.

As you can see, each box on the diagram falls into one row and one column, and therefore represents a unique combination of race and gender. Starting from this basic set-up, you can use the diagram to understand how privilege and discrimination interact.

As much as we like to think otherwise, both racism and sexism still lurk in the shadows of our society, so we can add them to the diagram. Anyone in the female column will suffer a certain level of discrimination based on gender; likewise, anyone in the Black column will be discriminated against based on their race.

You can see where I’m going with this. Since Black women fall into both the female column and the Black row, they face two sources of discrimination. The White male, on the other hand, faces none:

Discrimination: it all adds up...

You can see why she might be a little pissed off in that corner there.

The box is great, because you can also flip it around and insert privilege. Put male privilege in the male column, and White privilege in the White row, and see who gets what:

Privilege: it also adds up...

A White man gets two privileges: the privilege of being part of the dominant race (White) and the privilege of being amongst the most powerful gender (male). Black men and White women each get one privilege – race or gender, respectively. Black women get no privilege at all, because neither their gender nor their race comes with any privilege attached.

You can also stick power in there:

The all-powerful White male

Of course, Black women aren’t really completely powerless; the point is they don’t get access to any power on account of their race or gender, whereas both Whites and males can tap into race and gender powers.

Yet again, the White male comes out on top, with the Black male and White female tying for second place, and the Black female bringing up the rear.

If you combine the privilege and discrimination diagrams, the difference is even starker:

Well, this looks like the bummest deal EVER

There’s the White man, enjoying all that privilege; and there’s the Black woman, with no privilege at all, and shouldering all the residual discrimination and marginalisation that society hands out.

No wonder she’s pulling that face.

The Threat of Black Female Empowerment

One thing to take away from these boxes is this: all the power and privilege in Western society rests with White males. The emancipation and empowerment of non-Whites and non-males each pose a threat to the status quo – to the White male hegemony that has dominated our culture for years. This emancipation is happening, and the power is starting to shift; but it’s not quite there yet.

You can see this reflected most clearly in fiction. Fiction is a product of the society that made it, and reflects both how we view the world as-is and how we think the world should be. The preponderance of White males as heroes in any and every story told in the Western world shows the persistence of the idea that the White male is the ideal; the ultimate personification of humanity; the global, universal norm. If you doubt that this is the case, think about this: in Western society, how is God (the all-powerful) usually drawn?

Yeah.

Into this all-White, all-male world comes The Other – the non-White, non-males vying for a share of the power. But in a sense the empowerment of White females is simply an extension of White power to a group previously excluded from it on account of their gender. Similarly, the discomfort of the empowerment of Black men can be soothed away by reimagining it as an expansion of male power from only-White males to others. Both White females and Black males have broken into a power that already exists, because they share something in common with the powerful – be it race or gender.

But the Black woman shares neither of these factors with the White male. Nothing qualifies her to share in White male power – not her gender or her ethnicity. The empowered Black woman is the ultimate threat: a completely new type of power, a power not related to Whiteness or maleness; a power that’s not an extension of the existing power but is something wholly original and unique.

The uncomfortable rise of a completely Other power poses a dangerous challenge to White male hegemony. There’s no way that Black female power can be shoehorned into the existing power paradigm, or re-imagined as some kind of extension of White male power – it must be seen as something outside of that. The rise of the powerful Black female threatens the dominance of the White male more than any other form of emancipation.

Small wonder, then, that the collective consciousness of society is loathe to allow Black women power in fiction. To do so would be to acknowledge the possibility of the end of White male dominance and the rise of another form of power that has nothing to do with it. Terrifying stuff, to be sure.

How Black women are treated in fiction is a measure of how threatening they actually are to White male dominance. Their exclusion from the mainstream and the lead roles; the subtle ways of undermining or belittling the power they do manage to possess; their objectification and animalisation and portrayal as ‘wild’ semi-humans… All this speaks to the terrifying threat of Black female power. These are the ways a White society desperately tries to push down a new power rising within it.

So here we are, back at the beginning, staring at a shelf of comic books that only contains one Black female lead. Our Voodoo might look pretty lonely out there, but she’s carrying the flag for a new type of power. And when you understand how scary that power is, you understand the effort that’s poured into keeping it down.

Text and images Copyright Fatihah Iman 2011

***SPOILER WARNING for Static Shock #1 and Firestorm #1***

The “And by the way, he’s Black,” hero.

Meet Virgil Hawkins, aka Static Shock, a teen superhero who manipulates electricity and flies around on a cool hover board. He’s an intern at S.T.A.R. labs and his secret superhero activities are mentored by Hardware, who sorts him out a neat little secret base and some cool outfits. He lives at home with his parents and two sisters and attends the local college. He doesn’t like the photo on his ID badge. He’s got a gutsy attitude. He tries to be a good son. He wants a driving license.

Oh yeah. And he’s Black.

Static Shock’s ethnicity isn’t part of the story and it’s not a defining character trait. The very same character description could be attached to a White teenager, and very little about the story would change beyond the ink colour and the dreads. This isn’t a story about a Black guy who’s a Superhero; it’s the story of a Superhero who happens to be Black.

Ethnicity is played subtly in Static Shock #1. At one point, Static asks his mentor, Hardware, why the White guys in the shop underneath his secret lair all look at him “like I’m going to steal their wallet.” Hardware replies that “I told them I rescued you from the juvenile court system.”

There’s no overt mention of race, but there’s a subtle joke here: a dig at the stupidity of racial stereotypes, and an eye-roll at how readily people will accept that a Black teenager is some kind of criminal deviant. Hardware is another Black superhero (in an awesome metal suit!) who tells the juvie lie deliberately to make the White folks downstairs leave Static alone. There are some deeply cynical undercurrents here, but none of it gets spelled out; no one waves a big race flag and makes a point. Herein lies the appeal of Static Shock #1: you can draw your own conclusions without being hit over the head with any Special Messages.

Being Black is part of Static Shock’s character, and part of his experience of the world, but it’s not something that dominates his story and it doesn’t define the story’s direction or tone. It’s just part of who he is, and that’s allowed to just be in a subtle way without it having to mean anything, or make a point about anything, or prove anything to anyone.

The Importance of the “By The Way” Character.

What I love about the way race is played in Static Shock is that the Black main character exists without carrying any diversity baggage into the story. He’s not the Token Black Guy there to make an ensemble look “inclusive” and shout “LOOK HOW RACIALLY DIVERSE WE ARE!” in a way that makes you wonder exactly what the writers are compensating for. He’s not a walking stereotype played for laughs. He isn’t dropping the Racism Is Wrong anvil. He just is.

This kind of story is important because it normalises the idea of Black characters filling roles beyond tokens, stereotypes or comic relief. Like Will Smith in I Am Legend, Static Shock plays a role that could easily be filled by a White male – but isn’t. He’s Black and he’s a hero, and this is presented without comment: and that in itself becomes a statement about race. Black men can be heroes, it says. This isn’t a weird thing that needs to be commented upon. We don’t need to flag this as extraordinary and ask for bonus diversity points. This is completely normal.

When Black superheroes become normal, then society is moving past ethnicity point-scoring and into treating non-Whites as people and characters in their own right.

The Uncomfortable Truths About White Privilege in Firestorm.

Whilst Static Shock #1 presents race without comment, The Fury of Firestorm: the Nuclear Men tackles race issues head-on. But this is no anvilicious Very Special Episode. No one here is racist. Yet race is still in the room, lurking like a big, fat, White-Privilege Elephant.

Firestorm #1 introduces two Firestorms: Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch. Ronnie is a White jock; Jason is a Black student journalist. And yes, in this case it matters.

Ronnie isn’t racist. He’s gets on okay with the Black guys on the football team, cos on the field “no one cares what colour you are”.

“Those guys are my brothers!” he tells Jason, before going home and asking his mom: “Why don’t we have any Black friends?”

“It sounds awful when you say it like that,” she replies, and it does, but it wasn’t deliberate, it “just happened that way somehow”.

Jason confronts Ronnie with his White privilege: White guys get to play star quarterback, Black guys don’t – even though the school is 45% Black. He’s right, and he’s angry, and it’s right to be angry, but he still feels bad about taking it out on Ronnie. It’s not Ronnie’s fault that he benefits from a system that inherently favours Whites.

This is race for the “post-race” generation; the generation that Doesn’t See Colour but doesn’t see White privilege either. There are no easy answers – just a lot of tricky questions that won’t go away. The writers at DC don’t actually use the phrase “White privilege” at any point, but this is what they’re referencing when Ronnie and Jason discuss race. And everything about it is awkward: the awkward recognition of a privilege you don’t want to admit to; the awkward overreaction of an angry young Black man; the awkward discussions around dinner tables about truth and race.

Firestorm #1is uncomfortable reading, and that’s the point. It’s a brave and bold move for DC, because it goes beyond the well-worn path of Racism Is Wrong and attacks the invisible issues of race. The writers avoid preaching by presenting both characters in parallel. Neither is perfect, both make mistakes. They’re two young men, one Black and one White, butting heads over privilege and inequality.

Confronting the White Privilege

Whilst I’m a fan of the Static Shock type-stories – the By-The-Way Black heroes who boldly make heroic Black characters normal – the Firestorm-type stories are important as well, because they ask questions that need to be asked. When the reader sees Ronnie asking: “Why don’t we have Black friends?” the clued-in reader asks themselves the same question. They might note Jason’s point about Black quarterbacks and wonder if their own school or college does a better job of racial representation. Fiction changes the way people think about things.

It’s important to tell these kinds of stories, and ask these awkward questions, because we as a society need to move beyond simplistic notions of racism and onto the deeper questions. If we can address White privilege in print then we can do that in real life too.

New Stories About Race

We are a generation with some really tough race issues to wrap our heads around. Our parents had it easier: all they had to learn was It’s Wrong to be Racist and to stop using the n-word. Now White folks face a far more thoughtful and difficult examination of themselves. But fiction has power in this regard. Fiction can light the way; draw a map, post some guidelines to follow. If fiction is still stuck in “And that’s why racism is wrong, kids!” land whilst the rest of us have moved on, then it’s powerless to help us deal with these issues.

What I see in these new DC titles are race stories for the “post-race” world. Static Shock represents the ideal towards which we’re all working: a world where race truly doesn’t matter, where no one passes comment on a Black teenage superhero. Firestorm shows us the world as it currently is: those awkward questions still unanswered, the privilege of Whiteness even if you never asked for that. Both stories move us further forward in the quest for a truly post-race world.

Static Shock #1 was written by Scott McDaniel & John Rozum; drawn by Scott McDaniel; inked by Jonathan Glapion & Le Beau Underwood and coloured by Guy Major. The editor was Harvey Richards. Published by DC Comics, New York, NY.

The Fury of Firestorm: the Nuclear Men #1 was written by Gail Simone & Ethan Van Sciver; drawn by Yildiray Cinar; coloured by Steve Buccellato. The editors were Rachel Gluckstern & Rickey Purdin. Published by DC Comics, New York, NY.

Copyright Fatihah Iman 2011