Know the Ledge: Verisimilitude, Race, & Comics
November 1st, 2010 by david brothers | Tags: antony johnston, declan shalvey, jeff parker, wellinton alvesVerisimilitude is what makes stories go. Blah blah blah, you know this already. I talked about it a while back, pay attention. In short, getting close to the truth makes your story feel real. One way you can get close to the truth is by including little details and touches that hint at real life. They’re shortcuts, things meant to make you imagine a world beyond what you’re reading or buy into the world of the book in your hands.
Two examples.
Antony Johnston, Wellinton Alves, Shadowland: Blood on the Streets
Jeff Parker, Declan Shalvey, Thunderbolts 148
These two scenes have a lot in common. More than I realized when I picked them as examples, honestly. (I was just going for two that stuck out in my head as being fairly recent.) They’re both written by white dudes, though I think Johnston is British. Both scenes are set during Marvel’s Shadowland event, which features a Daredevil who has been possessed by the Beast from Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra Assassin. They both feature black characters who rose to fame, or at least not-obscurity, by hanging out in the same general area. Misty and Luke are probably also the foremost street level black characters in the Marvel Universe, too, come to think of it. I mean, I like Nightshade and Shades & Comanche, but they couldn’t heat up the sales charts with a lighter and a can of gasoline. I’m not 100%, but both scenes came out in the same calendar month, too. September, yeah?
(The artists are Brazilian and Irish, respectively. I don’t think that’s the same at all, unless I massively misunderstood World History.)
One of these scenes is crap. One of them is pretty straight. I’ll get there, though. (It’s the Misty Knight one, spoilers.)
Another thing that the scenes share is that they’re trading on race for the purposes of a punchline. The Blood on the Streets punchline is about how effective the (nonexistent) race card is. Misty knows it, and consciously uses it. She flips on her Loud Black Woman switch, her dialogue drops out of the Queen’s English and into some flavor of black vernacular (“black woman can’t have no degree now, can she?”) and the awkward white guy has the stereotypical response, which is to give whoever is yelling about how racist you are whatever they want so that they shut up and go away. She doesn’t mean it, though, it’s just that it’s an effective tool. Ha ha ha!
The Cage scene plays around with racial politics for a bit of (honestly facile) wordplay. A ninja is impersonating his friend in an attempt to gain some intelligence. Cage’s response? “Ninja, please.” It’s a play on “nigga, please,” a bit of classic black slang (one, two, three, pause) that’s got a number of uses. Scorn, disbelief, whatever whatever. It’s flexible, and the joke here is the substitution of ninja for nigga. They look kind of similar, same number of syllables, and as used here, they are functionally the same. That’s the joke. Cage is always cool and collected, and this is just him showing that he saw right through the ninja. Two words that say a lot. Not funny ha ha, but funny heh.
Okay, so why is the Misty scene crap? I don’t have any science to explain why. I flipped through it in the store and put it back on the shelf. I saw the Cage scene in one of the online previews, went “heh” and continued purchasing the series. Both hit me in more or less the same spot. It’s fair to call that spot whatever part of me that likes racial jokes, I figure.
It goes back to verisimilitude, I think. Both of these scenes are hinting at some sort of truth. Misty Knight is using racial history to get her way. Cage is using a reclaimed racial slur to show how cool he is under fire. Both of these scenes depict theoretically black things. A kind of ownership of a very specific facet of American culture, or a freedom to express yourself about race in a certain way. Step back a level and Johnston and Parker are both depicting a culture that isn’t necessarily their own, which definitely requires at least a little bit of research and hoping for the best.
The truth they depict is the difference, though. Luke’s truth is simple and short. Two words and out. Rather than reminding you of a specific thing (“Boy, I sure do love listening to music on my Apple™ iPod MP3 Player!”), it reminds you of a general thing (“black guy you know that says nigga sometimes.”). Misty’s scene is much more specific, and therefore much more likely to be not-truth. Honestly, the race card as depicted always felt like a myth to me. Like, sure, ask somebody if something is because you’re black, and maybe, just maybe, in very specific situations you’ll get the results you want and be sent on your way. Any other situation, including basically anything between professionals, will get you scorned, mocked, and dismissed. In this situation, you’ll get noticed, which is a pretty crap thing to do when you’re illegally infiltrating a building.
And if I know this… Misty should know this. She’s ex-NYPD, currently a private eye, and most of all, a black woman in her late ’20s. I mean… c’mon. It works in movies, not in real life. Everybody knows that.
So the truth that the Misty scene is portraying felt false to me, and false in a way that actively conflicted with my ability to enjoy the story, or even take it on its own terms. It popped my suspension of disbelief like a balloon. The Cage scene felt right. It felt natural. I read it, kinda laughed at how corny it is, and kept it moving.
There’s no science, no hard and fast rules, no nothing. You have to swing for the fences and hope your details make the grade. It’s just like anything else to do with writing, I guess.
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Misty’s scene did pop my suspension of disbelief. People do that. People who don’t want to fail at their mission do whatever it takes. And, if it “works in movies” I suppose that doesn’t count as true vermisimilitude but it sorta makes sense that it could “work” in comics.
I don’t like what she did, but the creator’s choice to portray her as willing to sacrifice a bit of Black or feminine or Black feminine dignity to continue *breaking the law* (I assume, toward a noble end) seems doable enough …and better than breaking innocent bones.
The reason why the Misty scene doesn’t work for me is the “Liberal White Guilt” tag at the end of the scene. I can see Misty acting up, causing such a scene that dude gets so flustered and backs down, but the LWG Card comment unnecessarily politicizes it IMO.
The “Ninja, Please” crack also got a “heh” from me.
I’ve been seeing “Ninja, please” buttons at anime conventions for awhile now. Definitely funnier when Cage is saying it to the Hand soldier he just decked though.
I love that you named the jpg for the first example “dumbcomics.” 😀
We need a comic about Luke Cage and Pops Racer beating up ninjas and making cheesy quips about it.
Yeah, see, that Misty Knight scene to me would be like Batwoman seducing a guy, and then when she gets the information she wants, she says “Thanks, Gay Agenda”. It’s one of those terms used only by people who don’t know what they’re talking about so hearing it from a person who does is just ridiculous.
The Misty scene I’ve witnessed too many times in my life from various people of dark color. Maybe it was the urban environment I had to live in at the time. (Jacksonville’s problem is famous.) Maybe it was the race wars that were going on in my high school. But yes: I’ve seen that card purposefully pulled time and time again. I’ve been accused of being racist by people who had no clue that I myself was not White. (And then they found out and fell into an awkward silence of their own.) So: although you may think it only happens in the movies there are places that it’s a fact of life.
That being said, I disliked the Misty scene enormously. It angered me and took me out of the story; it made me not want to read any more. If this is what that character is like, why would I want to read her? Even if it’s because she’s a woman on a mission: hey. I got other stories to read.
The second one… eeeh… it made me smile. Good play on words. Would I read that one, too? I’m not sure from that little bit. But the chances are higher for it than the first.
Not being from the US makes me unaware of most of the kind of problems you usually point out. I mean, I read both issues and while I thought the dialogue in Blood on the Streets was lame, I never thought what Cage’s phrase was referring to.
I see some folks are talking about the way Misty played that “card,” not the fact that she did. Thinking the word “card,” was apparently what made it over the top for some.
Since words are for expressing thought, not having them, the word structure of those thought balloons was for our benefit, not (necessarily) due to some unnatural thought process on the character’s part.
I could still see how the creator’s choice might take one out of the story, but its presence doesn’t bother me – perhaps because Misty hasn’t shown me anything to make me care all that much about her. I am interested in what she could be, but not engaged by what she is.
The Cage scene was perfect within his character…
The Misty scene was also decent except for that last blurb box…. take that out of the equation and instead of anger, you get a chuckle. But by overexplaining the writer/editorial kills the scene.
@Gavok: More like NONjas. It’s shameful what passes for a Ninja in the Marvel Universe…
[…] Know the Ledge: Verisimilitude, Race, & Comics t goes back to verisimilitude, I think. Both of these scenes are hinting at some sort of truth. Misty Knight is using racial history to get her way. [Luke] Cage is using a reclaimed racial slur to show how cool he is under fire. Both of these scenes depict theoretically black things. A kind of ownership of a very specific facet of American culture, or a freedom to express yourself about race in a certain way. (tags: via:arturo comics race images stereotypes) […]
The first comic wouldn’t happen to be penned by Mark MIller, would it? Heh.
Unfortunately, you can kind of see how once you’re given Misty’s dialogue, you have to have that caption — because that she’s doing it, requires some sort of contextualizing for the reader. Who is Misty, and how does what she thinks connect to how she behaves? The reader needs to know. So the caption isn’t the problem, the caption’s the solution…and that it’s a lousy solution means the problem was poorly-chosen. So, to my mind: BOO for having her try it on in the first place.
Also, I can’t help thinking how this might have gone differently if we were dealing with thought-balloons instead of first-person captioning, you know? The captions have such a distancing effect…you couldn’t have put those words into thought-balloons as-is, they would’ve sounded ridiculous, because internal monologues just aren’t that passive and remote…if Claremont had written this in the Eighties Misty might’ve thought something negative about herself, not that Danny would be irritated by that tactic but that (perhaps) it irritated her to try it on because she couldn’t think of anything better. The captioning technique actually makes this a pretty vague character moment. She says in so many words that she couldn’t think of anything better, but there’s no depth there, and no punch.
Irritating!