The Nib Interview: Ta-Nehisi Coates

[history79]

Interviewer: Matt Bors, Art: Ezra Claytan Daniels








Source: https://thenib.com/the-nib-interview-ta-nehisi-coates/

Comments

[lego_joker]

I don't really disagree with the general thrust, but I believe Coates is a little getting cause and effect backwards here. It's always the racism that came first, not the stories - and the former might not be able to survive as well as it has with the latter, but it's never been truly subservient, either. A determined enough racist can twist any story to be about white supremacy - if the "haw, Black people in fiction are weak-minded and subservient, surely real-life Black people are too!" route isn't open, then they'll take the "Now Why can't you be like T'Challa/Storm/Blade?" They never kick and whine about white people" route.

[filthysize]

He's not talking about the ideas and interpretations of individual racists. He's talking about our collective empowerment of them. A Donald Trump and Trumpian viewpoints will exist no matter what, but he's saying our pop culture myths of the renegade outsider, of white saviorism, of the crass Peter Quill-type charismatic leader, etc, are what shaped the beliefs of many Americans and allowed the formation of Trump's large following. If we're talking about the conditioning of the next generation (which was the whole point of all the Confederate statues built in the 20th century, the effects of which only truly bore fruit decades later as history gets misremembered), then it must be acknowledged that out practice of myth-making and storytelling have an effect that, as Coates says, is not going to be immediately shown.

Even Trump himself is highly susceptible to this, right? He was criticized and mocked a few years back when he was building his cabinet because he kept picking appointees based on their appearances (he kept using terms like "he just looks the part" or "straight out of Central Casting" when asked why he's hired guys like "Mad Dog" Mattis). His faux pas was that he was shamelessly saying out loud what a lot of people already do in our society. So it's not about the determinedly racist. It's about the unconscious biases being shaped by who we consider "looking the part" of a leader and other roles of power.

[lego_joker]

Maybe my use of "a determined enough racist" - singular - in my first post was misjudged. My point wasn't really about the individual verses the societal, but about how active racism can survive just fine without passive racism, and up through today remains the bigger force in America. A nation of "racism without racists" may well exist somewhere, but the USA sure as hell ain't it.

Put it another way: I find it rather optimistic to believe that Trump - or the majority of his supporters - were motivated by pop-culture myths of white saviorism, etc. Most of them were pretty open about doing it out of spite: "Life (under Late Capitalism) sucks, but we're gonna make sure it sucks just a little (AKA a lot) harder for non-whites! Just try to stop us!" I'm not sure any amount of Black movie protagonists could've even slowed that tide down.

[cyberghostface]

So is he dissing Guardians or is that just the artist inferring? Because that’s a pretty poor understanding of the team dynamics.

[beyondthefringe]

Especially since Peter Quill, as depicted in the movies, is a bumbling idiot half the time, and I got the feeling that he was the "leader" only because no one else wanted it, and they humored his ideas when they were convenient, and probably shouted him down the rest of the time.

I mean, of the other Guardians in the movies, who actually wanted to be in charge?

[icon_uk]

I dunno, I enjoyed GotG, but it WAS hard to see why Quinn was in charge of a team that includes Rocket AND Gamora. He's not smart, he's not strong, he's not even tactically gifted, and the rest of the team neither respect him or even like him for the most part, he's just... there and is in charge because the story requires it.

[cyberghostface]

But he wasn’t in charge. The other characters weren’t following his lead just because he said so. When he came up with a plan the other characters would debate over it.

https://youtu.be/eD-ZKyGfhsE

[filthysize]

This is taking the term way too literally. He's undisputably the protagonist of both movies. The plots of both revolve around him, the team converge around his actions, including rallying them into "giving a shit" at the end. In terms of the symbolism of power that the interview is talking about, Peter Quill is the leader of the Guardians. That's why the poster, which that panel is emulating, places him most prominently in the center.

[cyberghostface]

He’s the protagonist in that yes he’s the viewpoint character for audiences to relate to but that’s not the same thing as him being the undisputed leader of the group.

The cartoon is trying to suggest he’s the least qualified and only the leader because he’s a white man which is also pretty ridiculous. Drax is a buffoon, for starters. Rocket is a selfish asshole half the time. Groot has been a baby and then a surly teenager for his last few appearances. Gamora is really the only other qualified member and she has always been on equal footing with Quill.

[tcampbell1000]

I mean, the first movie also ends with "We'll follow your lead, Star-Lord" and while it's true his command isn't "undisputed" (and it's amusingly subverted in Infinity War), he's definitely the one making decisions for the group more than anyone else.

It's also true that a team led by Drax or baby/teenage Groot would be an unmitigated disaster, adult Groot had the language barrier, Rocket would probably divide their time between soulless merc work and dumb pranks, and even Gamora seemed a bit directionless, more defined by what she didn't want out of life than what she did. Even so, it's hard to argue that she wouldn't have been better qualified to lead the team if they were serious about stopping Thanos, and the consequences of their not making that their top priority are pretty obvious.

More to the point, Quill is--and I say this with great affection--a man-baby, and a man-baby with two or three obvious berserk buttons. Pointing out everyone else's lack of qualifications only goes so far: Quill develops a solid relationship with Gamora, rarely earns respect from the other three mains, and is more or less ignored by Mantis and Nebula. This still leaves him one of the better candidates, but like a whole lot of other sci-fi heroes, he gets to direct the story not because he is the most qualified but because he is the most relatable to the average ticket buyer for this kind of thing, whose demographic is oh hey, would you look at that.

Guardians is smart enough to subvert this, and keep subverting it, by keeping Quill just barely in charge of his mildly dysfunctional family. But it's also smart enough not to stray too far from what its audience wants. So it skates over the discrepancy, balanced greatly by Chris Pratt's charm, until Infinity War's climax.

At this point, a lot of viewers turned on Star-Lord as if he weren't doing and being exactly what he'd been all along, but I maintain this was actually one of the MCU's greatest moments. Stan Lee frequently invoked Shakespeare as he tried to create heroes with flaws, and the thing about the Shakespearean flawed hero that comics can rarely do is that their flaws eventually swallow up their heroism. We can do worse than acknowledge the truth of that.

(Coates or Daniels probably didn't do themselves any favors by putting in the example, since this subthread proves it's kind of a distraction from the main point, which is a great argument for why representation matters and representation in tiny little indie comics is not enough. But hey, if you're going to address nerd culture, be prepared for nerds to nitpick.)

[lego_joker]

I think they meant "leader" less in the literal sense, and more in the "hey why is this guy front-and-center in all the screentime and merchandising" sense.

Batman (usually) isn't the literal leader of the Justice League, but he is the leader of DC as an overall franchise.

[werehawk]

That is more my interpretation. Oh, look, another white guy in charge. Which is a valid criticism. They showed GOTG because there was diversity in the team - not actors - (compared to say Justice League), but they still put a white guy in charge.

Although technically, I think they were being "Earthist" rather than racist (in the comics) because - and I am so bored of this in all mediums - Earthlings/humans are so special, Earth is the most important, blah, blah, blah.

[janegray]

He is the only one who had any kind of experience with living in a group, therefore he was the glue that held them together.

Gamora had been raised by Thanos, who had his daughters try to kill each other. Rocket was tortured into sentience, his caretakers never gave a damn about him beyond his value as an experiment. Groot has the language barrier, and beside that, he is... well. A tree. Drax always gave me the impression that he lived alone with his wife and child, so not completely alone, but definitely not group oriented.

And then there is Peter. Yondu was faaaaaar from Father Of The Year, but he raised Peter within a large group where its many members had to smooth over their differences and work together every day, and we know from the scene in the brothel planet that the Ravagers even took vacations together.

Peter is just the only one I would expect to suggest that the Guardians stick together after the events of the first movie.

[donnblake]

I believe that the artist illustrated this after the interview took place- the website specifies that Coates spoke with the interviewer, Matt Bors (though the full interview is behind a paywall), but makes no mention of the artist, Ezra Claytan Daniels, being involved in the conversation.

This of course isn't proof that Ta-Nehisi Coates had no input into the illustration, or what his opinion on the Guardians of the Galaxy film might be.