Swamp Thing: Southern Change

[alicemacher]

Warning for racism, both verbal and violent.


From Swamp Thing #41 (Oct. 1985).

In the abandoned Robertaland plantation house near Houma, ghostly voices echo a violent incident from the past. Wesley Jackson, the plantation owner, having discovered his wife Charlotte's affair with their slave William, had him tied to a post and made her watch as he prepared to skin him.

In the comic's present, the Swamp Thing tells Abby that Constantine wanted him to come home, and asks her whether she'd noticed anything not quite right around Houma. She says no. The conversation turns to the "T.V. people" who've recently arrived.





After a few moments' silence, Abby asks Alec whether travelling, by letting go of his body and growing a new one someplace else, makes him feel "disconnected."





Sometime later, Alec concedes Abby's point and says he'll exercise restraint with his powers so he won't forget who he is.

We meet the soap's three stars: Richard Deal, a "trying too hard to sound progressive" white guy; his sort-of girlfriend Angela Lamb, a casually racist Caucasian woman; and Billy Carlton, a black man bitter towards white people. Richard's playing the plantation owner; Angela and Billy are cast as his wife and slave, who become lovers. (Despising each other, Angela and Billy both insist on stand-ins for the love scenes.) The cast hold rehearsals throughout the summer as the decaying plantation house is restored. Abby takes a part-time gopher job there so she can see the stars in action.

In a late-July rehearsal, Billy objects to the "Stepin Fetchit" dialogue he's expected to utter in a scene with Angela. Director Dennis Linder tells him to just improvise if he doesn't like any specific line. Angela snarks that they should keep the line and get rid of Billy.









Three days later, the extras on the set have begun to sleep there at night, and are now bringing flower offerings to the loas Maitresses Silverine and Lorvana, in accordance with the Voudon feast day calendar. The stars rehearse the confrontation scene between slave and master. Richard tells Dennis he's having trouble getting into character as a racist. "What," says Billy, "an' you think thinkin' like a slave comes any easier to me?" The director breaks it up and gives them their cues.





Meanwhile, the Swamp Thing, hearing from Abby that the extras are staying overnight on the plantation, decides to investigate after dark. He finds that someone's laid down a salt pattern around the slave graveyard.

The story now skips ahead a month.





Inside the house, Angela catches Billy having relapsed into his cocaine addiction. She agrees to keep it a secret from his manager, but says she hates to see him "become a slave to this white junk" (get it? huh? huh?) because he deserves better. In fact, so much has she grown to like him (and detest Richard) that she suggests they begin seeing each other. Billy agrees, though he calls her "Charlotte."

A few days later (the Voudon feast day Mystère L'Orient), Abby begins to notice something's seriously wrong on the set when she finds Alice, an elderly black woman who serves the kids lunch at Elysium Fields, laying down salt and not being sure why. She also alternates between addressing Abby as "Mrs. Cable" and "mistress" (as in, for example, "Oh the sun don't worry me, mistress. Gonna be dark soon. Gonna be real dark"). That evening, the first night of filming, Abby asks the Swamp Thing to come investigate the plantation with her.

As Dennis frets over the extras lighting bonfires without permission, Richard learns from him that Angela (whom he momentarily also calls "Charlotte") is inside the house with Billy. Furious, he conscripts two extras to come inside with him ("Right away, Mister Wesley," his fellow thralls say), as the director says that "unreasonable behavior" from actors is covered in his contract, "in black and white!" (Subtlety, thy name is not Moore.)

Sure enough, Wesley/Richard catches Charlotte/Angela in a tender moment with William/Billy. The three of them recapitulate word-for-word the ghosts' dialogue from the issue's beginning:

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

Considering Moore's love of formal experimentation that tend to be (and I say this with affection) so on the nose that it feels like a head cold, it's surprising that he didn't ask the colorist to do the supernaturally-influenced scenes in "black and white" themselves. Maybe that idea was left on the cutting room floor because some of the ghost-influence is obvious and immediate and some of it kind of drifts into our awareness more slowly, which a visual cue might spoil.

Abby's worry about Alec's nature pulling him away from her would eventually (very eventually, after about 80 issues) turn out to be well-founded, but that's just one of the reasons that stopping with the end of Moore's run isn't the worst thing a reader can do.

[alicemacher]

I agree that the use of mostly full-colour throughout (though note that the two panels of Wesley/Richard whipping William/Billy are in monochromatic red) was the right way to go. That way, there are certain differences, between the actors in possessed and non-possessed mode, that require a closer look to notice. For example, in the first rehearsal scene, Billy-as-William wears a white shirt, whereas Billy-as-himself wears a yellow shirt. In this way, the subtlety of the art makes up for what's often a lack of subtlety in the writing.

Though on that last point, I do like the bit where Richard, after Billy doesn't respond as expected to his "pretty fly for a white guy" talk, says, "Jeez, what is it with those people?" Those last two words suggest that, well before Wesley has gotten his claws into him Richard, however well-meaning, isn't as free of prejudice as he thinks. It's a very true-to-life moment, without hitting the reader over the head.

[tcampbell1000]

The performative nature of Richard's "progressivism" is probably the best aspect of the story, now that you point it out. Even at his least affected, he's not trying to think of Billy or others with compassion so much as trying to score points for wokeness, which is probably even more relevant now than it was in the 1980s.