Don’t “Happy Halloween” me

Hal·low·een [hàllə wéen] Hal·low·e’ens)

n

The night of October 31, the eve of All Saints’ Day, originally celebrated by Celtic peoples but now popular in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Traditionally, children dress up as witches or ghosts and go from door to door asking for candy and threatening to play tricks if refused.

[Late 18th century. Shortening of All Hallow Even , from Allhallowmas + even2 .]

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The thing about Halloween that makes people show their hands and reveal some latent sentiments is very implicated in the concept of fantasy and make-believe. Dressed up as a Nigerian witch doctor on the Sunday of Halloween, I walked outside as early as 9 AM to retrieve some books from the library. Visiting parents waved vigorously at me, and their Amherst College students did not even betray a glance, as if my costume was nothing out of the ordinary. That being a quintessential Amherst behavior, it did not faze me until I recalled my sophomore year when I did Nigerian Witch Doctor part II (a Halloween trilogy that began my first year, skipped my junior year and resumed my senior year). I was walking through Keefe Campus Center with my roommate when we both heard a jock-like figure ask his cohorts with raucous laughter upon seeing me, “Is that Halloween or just totally tribal?”

“I See You”

I am going to attempt to explain the connections I see between Avatar, Black Like Me and Gattaca in the realm of being seen and not being seen.  First, I want to point out that there are different aspects of being seen: being seen and acknowledged for the person you are, being looked at but not being seen, and being seen but still not being seen. Sounds confusing I am sure but hopefully the clarity will come in the examples and explanations.

In this scene Neytiri starts to see (italicized see) Jake for the first time.

Avatar: “I see you.”  -Neytiri to Jake Sully when he is human

As I believe Neytiri explains prior to this very dramatic and somewhat scary scene, the meaning behind the “I see you” for the Na’vi people is the idea that you are accepted into the group, you are one of them, and they really see you for who you are.  When Neytiri and Jake first exchange this phrase it is the recognition that Neytiri and Jake love each other.  She no longer views him as this savage (ironic, no?) Marine invading her life and culture. Through the tests of warriors he has proven himself worthy of the trust of and acceptance into the community. One could argue that the “I see you” moment is still quite shallow because she is seeing and accepting him as this warrior she created.  In that sense she is still not seeing him.  However, when she saves his life he is no longer in the avatar body.  This is a body she has not seen up until this moment.  She realizes that the physical representation is not the part of Jake she sees.  Instead, she sees the person Jake always was but took time to come to light.  At this moment she is really seeing him. Something I just realized as I play that scene back is that he in turn is seeing her through his eyes for the first time.  I believe this is something important to note.  While Jake is in the avatar body, is he seeing Neytiri (and the rest of the Na’vi world) through the eyes of an avatar or is he seeing these things as the man in the wheelchair belonging to an entirely different species of life?  I think this dynamic is similar to what Griffin was experiencing.  He was viewing life of a black man in black skin but was his mind-set still that of a white man?  Another connection I see between Jake and Griffin is that once their identities are revealed, in order to receive acceptance into the communities they have infiltrated they must gain trust among the people in the form of aid to solve the problems in their communities.  The man Griffin works with learns of his identity and although Griffin does not relay any form of hesitancy on the part of the black man I would imagine that there was some questioning but things were made better by the fact that Griffin’s experiment was in the best interest of the southern black communities.  Of course that last statement was speculation but something I feel strongly about.  Jake is actually ostracized after the Na’vi learn of what he did and intended to do.  The trust wasn’t received until Jake conquered the largest ikran and assured the people that he was on their side and would lead them to victory over the intruder group he was once a part of.  Through inhabiting the bodies of the oppressed people and claiming to be what you are not there is a notion of distrust followed by an acceptance on the terms of helping.  This no longer strikes me as passing but as mimicking a group of people to become part of that people in order to carry out a larger goal, whether it is positive or negative for the community being entered.

Griffin’s Purpose

After having Tuesday’s class discussion, there seemed to be a lot of resentment for Griffin.  It offended many people that he took pigment pills and died his skin black, emerging himself in Southern culture.  Some of the comments were, “He can’t know what it’s like to be be black if he can just rub off the color of his skin whenever he feels uncomfortable” or “He can’t understand what it feels like to be black after just six weeks” or “He can’t get what it’s like to be black if he’s doing things an actual black person wouldn’t do.”

I understand all of these things.  Griffin certainly cannot understand what it’s like to be black.  But I think it’s unnecessary to take offense because he’s not claiming to understand the feeling of “being black.”  Griffin’s main goal is to catch a personal glimpse of Southern black life during the 1960’s so that he can become a political group between two races that seem to be unable to communicate.  With Griffin’s social experiment, he will know ENOUGH to converse with black people and acknowledge their grievances.  With his white skin, he will be able to communicate these grievances to white people and be taken seriously. 

Bamboozled

Today during class, while we discussed the differences between performing in black face in a minstrel show and what Griffin did in Black Like Me I thought of the movie Bamboozled (2000).  In this movie, directed by Spike Lee, an African American TV writer (Damon Wayans) comes up with the idea to create a black face minstrel show in protest of the stereotypical black television shows his boss wants him to write.  Unfortunately, his show becomes a hit and gets him the recognition he always wanted, which makes him lose sight of what his purpose for the show was.  This was the promotional poster for the movie

The poster itself is quite offensive and disturbing, especially during a time in which images such as these would not be put up.  However, as most know Spike Lee has a knack for racial controversy.  But back to the movie itself.  As you can see from the poster Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson star in the movie as well.  Well you might be saying to yourself, “Hmm, those are African American entertainers. Why would they be starring in this movie in which people put on black face?”  Well, they are the ones in black face.  This of course takes the uncomfortability and controversy to a new level. Black men in black face… Probably makes no sense.  But why not? Why was it okay for white people to put on black face and portray a stereotype of a Negro (as they were called during the time), an exaggerated depiction of this already oppressed race?  For the people  attending these vaudeville shows (mostly, probably only, white) this stuff was hilarious.  But once a Black man puts black face on something about the situation becomes scary, shocking, almost too real.  This brings me back to a comment Dan made in class about how frightening it was too watch The Watermelon Man (I’m paraphrasing so sorry if I have the wrong comment), a movie in which a black man is in white face but becomes black and hates what he sees in the mirror and afterward begins to occasionally act as if he is cooning.  Is it that it’s difficult to watch a Black person poke fun at the way he is perceived? Are we always expecting outrage in situations like this?  Is the black man not supposed to laugh at these stereotypes, at people “imitating” him, at white people displaying their perception of a black person?

The Eye and Bodies

It is interesting that the eye can take on so many different, and seemingly unrelated, meanings.  In the Uncanny, Freud equates the removal of the eye to castration; the eye, like the penis, can be an organ of sexual desire.  This point is also implied and extended in Black Like Me, where John Griffin talks about his first experiences in the ghetto and says “her hips drew the eye, and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh”.  Here the eye moves from being an object of sexual desire, to being an extension of the being, to almost becoming another body.

Skepticism about John Griffin

After reading “Black Like Me”, I have lots of thoughts pinging around my brain. They are somewhat chaotic and scattered, but I have tried to sort out some ideas below.

I have some general skepticism in regards to the trustworthiness of the narrative voice of John Griffin. For starters, throughout the book, I found many moments when I questioned how much a white man disguised as a black man could give an honest perspective of the black experience; how is Griffin’s experience affected, knowing that at any moment, if the situation became bad enough,