Blade

Representation has always mattered because I could tell you all day that the sky is blue.

But one, having something abstractly described to you is different than seeing it or experiencing it yourself and two, once you’ve seen and experienced a thing it’s harder to dismiss. Telling you the sky is blue doesn’t mean anything. You have to see it for yourself for it to mean anything to you.

It also matters because it validates the experiences and existence of those being represented. It’s why Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones and Whoopi Goldberg mattered to someone like me. They not only looked like me but they weren’t ‘traditionally’ beautiful. Not in the way other women of colour such as Beyoncé or Halle Berry or Rihanna in their lighter-skinned, less offensive easiness have. Those women were intelligent and funny and sexy and bizarre and most importantly authentic enough that they didn’t bother trying to fit any mold or preconceived notion of what women like them ought to look like or do.

Beyoncé has arrived where she is following the classic pop star mold. Halle Berry was a beauty queen. Literally. Rihanna had been plucked from obscurity and molded into a pop star by a major record label. Mind you these are great and accomplished women no doubt, and the hard work involved in their success should not be diminished by my saying this, but I don’t look at Beyoncé or Halle Berry or Rihanna and see myself.

I’m sure other young girls and women did/do and that’s great, but diversity means people who feel especially outside the norm are bolstered by representation. Everyone feels like a weirdo or a freak and hopefully everyone sees parts of themselves reflected in the media they consume. Whether it be literature, film, music, video games, whatever. I was grateful for those women in my young adulthood for reflecting myself post adolescence, but in my most formative years there were two women who I saw myself in and I was especially fortunate because those two women were Ororo Munroe a.k.a Storm of the X-Men and Aisha the Yellow Ranger of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

All my prepubescent drawings were of these two. I’d often imitate them and run around pretending to be them. As a child of the early nineties, obviously I didn’t know that not having a Disney princess that looked like me or Barbie dolls who looked like me was deliberately discriminatory. As a result of this minuscule representation in the media, my child self was exposed to, I got not damsels in distress, no fair maidens seeking Prince Charming. No. I got kick ass, gorgeous, unconventional, multidimensional characters. They didn’t often get lead story lines but Storm was a level 5 mutant, incredibly powerful and dangerous with a checkered past as a pickpocket with severe claustrophobia. She was often Professor Xavier’s right hand and just as often in his absence, de facto leader of the X-men. Leader. In Africa she was both worshipped as a Goddess and feared as a weather witch. All these things more than adequately informed and rounded out her character. She wasn’t simply a “good guy” so to speak, a tangent in her story line only briefly glossed over in 2016’s abysmal ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ released by FOX Studios.

Aisha Campbell the Yellow Ranger, took over for Trini Kwan in the second season of ‘Mighty Morphin’ after grumblings about the Yellow Ranger being portrayed by an Asian American woman and the Black Ranger being portrayed by an African American male. They simply switched race (Aisha, an African American teen, rocking braids no less) took over the role and Adam, an Asian American male, ostensibly, more politically correctly filled the Black Ranger role. This all went down in 1994 if memory serves me correctly and a year later my mind was blown when ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’ was released. Mind you, I hadn’t even hit double digits in age but damn if this wasn’t exciting! They got Ninja Zords in this movie! Aisha went from having the Saber-Toothed Tiger to a Bear. A fucking Bear! “Time to boogie with the Bear!” She actually said that before kicking some Ivan Ooze ass.

Life before puberty was great.

And by now, no doubt, you’re wondering ‘what the actual fuck does any of this have to do with Blade’? Well, today’s date is January 16th 2018. Presently, Marvel studios helmed by my favorite giant, Disney, is about to release the first comic book blockbuster of the year, Black Panther, directed by the preternaturally gifted Ryan Coogler, to a soundtrack curated by none other than hip hops crowned prince prophet Kendrick Lamar and with the singular most stunning all black cast in history. Everyone keeps saying things like ‘finally!’ 52 whole years after his first appearance as the first major black superhero in comic book lore, he’s getting his own movie.

And I get that. I really do. Here is a character free from the stains of the sordid history of blackness in the western world. He’s an African king. A friggin King! Descended from Kings. Never a slave, never in bondage, never at the mercy of an oppressor. Leader of a powerful and advanced African nation that has managed to remain untainted by the general madness of the world. His love affair with the afore mentioned Storm was hot stuff too for someone my age but, and not to detract from the monumental significance of this film at this time in America, during this, the Golden Age of the comic book/super hero movie and all that that genre has allowed, I think any millennial child of color like myself would be remiss to not mention that we previously had a very nearly perfect comic book movie in 1998’s Blade, released by New Line Cinema.

You see, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, but something happens and suddenly you’re besotted with the truth. It’s time to put away childish things. Blade was of the marvel universe and unless I’m wrong, was the second hard R-rated comic book movie and the first to seed a franchise. That’s right. In 1998 New Line Cinema released a Marvel film with a black male lead that resulted in a three picture franchise. And these were all R-rated. Before Fox took its cue from the success of ‘Deadpool’ and went the mature route with 2017’s ‘Logan’ we had Spawn and we had Blade. And I saw that movie on cable about 9 months after its theatrical release.

Now the year before gave us ‘Spawn’ led with a rather diverse cast given that this was the year 1997 and there is some pedigree in there with Martin Sheen making an appearance in the film. But there’s a reason Blade makes the list and Spawn does not. First, Image Comics, the house that published Spawn, did not manage a widely consumed catalogue. That’s is to say, the work they released was largely esoteric almost art house books that while interesting and diverse, probably appealed to very specific palates. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but Marvel had managed a catalogue of characters and storylines in their universe that was at once diverse but relatable on a massive scale. Spawn gave us our first R-rated male led black ‘superhero’ but just barely. Micheal Jai White’s ‘Al Simmons’ basically is KIA as a US soldier and take from it what you will, arrives in hell and is given command of hells army in exchange for being able to visit his fiancé. Spawns moral compass given his origin story makes him an anti-hero at best but if the fates sent him to hell and not heaven, is this a character we want to root for? As interesting as the story was and as amazing and terrifying as John Leguizamo was, the story was lacking. It turned out to be a cult hit but given, again the very specific nature of that story, Spawn did not accurately or positively set the bar of any superhero, far less the first major African American foray into the genre. One must consider that before this we had only had Shaquille O’Neal as Steel in a DC Comics movie that currently holds a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes that was also released in 1997 and before that Meteor Man released in 1993 currently holding at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. The closest we’ve gotten was 2008/2009 ‘Hancock’ starring, quite appropriately, arguably the biggest movie star in the world, Will Smith, and even with Vince Gilligan as its scribe (yes, the Vince Gilligan….Breaking Bad Vince Gilligan who gave us some of the best writing on TV in the past decade) currently only manages a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes. And yes there was Halle Berry’s turn as ‘Catwoman’ in 2004 that I’m sure she along with everyone else would like to forget. It currently holds a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. With Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson and Miss Berry herself fresh off a history making Academy Award win for ‘Monsters Ball’ and a turn as a Bond Girl, why this film was so poorly conceived and executed is beyond me.

There are those of you who are going to mention this….and this…please don’t…just….don’t.

Early reviews had Black Panther trending at a near perfect Rotten tomatoes score, something strangely enough, most recently achieved by another black director in the racially charged, black led ‘Get Out’. The significance of Blade is that Black Panther would not have come to pass without it. That’s a factual statement.

Marvel Films circa 1993 – 1996 was dying. So much so that desperate to save the brand, and cash strapped in the most dire way, with the Christopher Reeves led Superman movies and the financially successful but critically panned Batman movies from the 80’s through the 90’s as examples, Marvel began to shop its catalogue away in hopes of finding financial relief in developing their content in another media: Films. Aside from animated fare and the HULK television series, despite much talk, and hope amongst fans like myself, it seemed unlikely that Marvel characters would ever make it to the big screen. Unlike Dark Castle comics, Marvels characters and stories were often heavy handed metaphors for on going social issues. The X-Men and their fight for equality in a world that sought to ostracize and castigate their very existence could be stand ins for the LGBTQ or Civil rights movement. Professor X / Malcolm X anyone? And unlike DC, Marvel heavily and early on in their publications, deliberately featured characters of color written that way. But poor management meant that to survive, the Marvel universe had to be broken up.

The X-Men and their cohorts went to 20th Century Fox. Spider-Man landed at Columbia/Sony Picures and the Avengers landed at…Paramount. Huh? Some of you might be confused but if you watch the first Iron Man, Captain America and Thor Movies, it is the Paramount insignia that unfurls before the Marvel Studios banner scrolls. Disney and Kevin Feige saw the potential of bringing to the screen characters that Generation X and Y grew up with and doing as the comics had, developing an expansive extended universe. But these studios were all developing different movies, serious movies, Academy award fan fare. Video game and comic books movies were campy drivel that had their time in the sun and had burnt out. They were no longer massively appealing. They could no longer guarantee the kind of return on investment that studios needed to green light such projects. Or were they? With nothing to lose Marvel had to prove that their catalogue was worth the time and effort for extensive development. Enter Blade. Not a major character by any means so what would it hurt to throw caution to the wind? And it is moments like this that the absolute best things happen.

I was barely a teen and obviously in no way involved with Marvel Films at the time but I imagine that their thought process was something like, ” New Line Cinema is doing edgy interesting stuff. Between the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Jason’ franchises, horror is right up their alley. Blade is a vampire story. Let them run with it. This Wesley Snipes….he just played a drag queen opposite Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo. At the very least this is gonna be interesting as fuck” and when expectations are at zero, you can only go up and boy did they. Blade was the first R-rated comic book movie out of a major publishing house (Spawn coming from the much lesser known Image comics does not meet DC or Marvel status unfortunately) and with a black lead no less.. like a black, black lead. And not in a relatable, family friendly way. Not the way Shaq was a basketball hero to kids…not the way Will Smit was an unoffending, lighter skinned, bankable movie star with widespread appeal. I don’t know if anyone has seen ‘New Jack City’ but, Wesley Snipes does a pretty damn good job of being menacing.

There’s a lot I could dive into here but the good folks at Cracked cover the broad strokes. But dues being paid aside, the reason Blade is so important especially in the age of Black Panther is because our first true black major superhero that yielded a successful franchise was African American.

Now, to hear it told, the very term ‘African American’ is something of an oxymoron. In the history of mankind, counting from when we first decided to start walking upright say, 65,000 years ago to now, being black in western culture for as long as it has existed, meant that you were actually counted as 3/5ths of a human being and yes much has changed. But for those who tout the line of ‘post racial America’ try telling it to Trayvon Martin, or Alton Sterling or Sandra Bland or Philando Castile, or Freddie Gray or Walter Scott or Tamir Rice or Eric Garner or Sean Bell or….I think I’ve made my point.

African American culture is starkly not African and also, not quite ‘American’, though it is entirely, ideaologically speaking, absolutely American. Black people in America do not share the same privilege as white Americans though they legally have the same rights. African American culture is literally the result of the systemic stamping out of African culture by white colonizers to make African slaves effective at their new role in the New World. A people without a history and a culture are easy to control, so those perpetuating slavery executed a holocaust of the African culture they unwittingly brought with the Africans they had stolen to make slaves ( stolen, not bought because you can’t fucking buy a person, do not @ me). From the ashes, Black people in America created Black culture which is nothing like African cultures. It is also nothing akin to the lives and opportunities that bolster White America. People who look like me unwillingly have a foot in two worlds that we don’t truly belong to and have thrived in, not in spite of but because of the who and what we are.

Blade is the same. He’s a Vampire. But not like the ones he hunts. He walks in plain daylight that would otherwise kill his enemies. He’s dressed head to toe in black leather, like a 60’s era Black Panther leader. His fade is so sharp you risk cutting yourself just looking at it. Wesley Snipes plays the role with not an ounce of self-deprivation, much to the movies’ detriment. There’s no deliberate silliness. But the tones of the larger metaphorical strokes being painted are there. He’s not human, he’s not a vampire. He has all of their strengths but only the one weakness, the blood lust (Chicago comes to mind) The Vampires are all pasty, indulgent, hedonist, save the purists. Those who were born Vampires look down on those who were merely bitten ( rich White America vs poor White America) and the purists aren’t that concerned with Blade. Blade only catches on to them when show offs like Frost get sloppy and lead a trail to follow. Pureborn Vampires are more annoyed with Frost than they are with Blade. And then there are the familiars; a Cop, who thinks that if he does the bidding of his Vampire owners they might one day turn him. This all plays out like the economic structure in White America. Old money knows the institutions they built are unshakable, new money doesn’t get it and blames the ‘other’ for their problems and working class servants like Cops can only dream of being like the people that despise them one day.

Blade is born Eric Brooks.

With the help of Whistler he becomes Blade.

T’challa was born T’challa, future King of Wakanda. He was always the Black Panther. He rules a nation rich and powerful and advanced and unsullied by Western Colonialism. There’s no White savior or mentor. He has never been oppressed or ostracized in his own nation. Blade is to Black Panther as Batman is to Superman is that respect. Black Panther is the mantle held by the ruler of Wakanda. He needs no alias. He’s not hiding from his people. His power is not born from a pain and need to avenge his dead mother. In fact, quite like Kal El, much of the conflict in the Black Panther series has to do with the duality of T’Challa being an effective King and protector. You can’t run off to keep saving the world with your superhero friends and be a good King and politician. And in the rest of the world, T’Challa is singular in that sense. Wakanda might as well be the Krypton of the Marvel Universe. And the Black Panther is an idolization of how we wish to be seen, as the best of ourselves. As the promise of our ancestors, from the incredibly advanced Egyptian cultures of old, to the high seats of knowledge in Timbuktu. Before it was raped and pillaged of it resources, from its people to its diamonds, one can’t help but wonder what Africa could have been had it been free of colonial interference. And that’s great, embracing and celebrating and African culture, black culture the same way we do everything else in the mainstream is beyond awesome. Alternatively there might also be a slight fetishization of African Culture as a renewed novelty going on. I doubt many of the African Americans who have donned Dashiki’s and Kente Cloth to screenings of the film know the cultural meanings or significance of those things. They just know that its African and cool and Black Panther allows for a sort of sanctified cultural appropriation of all things African as he is this edified African (not African American) hero. The same way that Captain America despite being a Brooklynite, in name and spirit embodies all things American (despite America’s undeniable sprawling diversity) with a sort of self righteous, almost nauseating, “America-as-an-ideal” personification, Black Panther is the Umbrella underneath which all things uniquely greatly African rests, despite individual significance or resonance.

However, that positive representation is something to still aspire to. Unfortunately very little about Black Panther is rooted in the real world. While Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne in some ways parallel, say, Elon Musk (save the bit where instead of stopping crime through economic power, charity, political or activist involvement , they dress up like crazy people and beat their enemies to a pulp making any kind of injustice inadmissible in any American court…but I digress )…we currently have no black equivalent. Again, maybe one day, but in the era of Black Lives Matter, Blade is a more grounded representation of the black experience in Trump era America.

Even now, watching the Blade Trilogy, something about Blades seriousness while given the setting of Blades Vampire infested world resonates even though the movies are honestly not that well written and absurdity begins to give way to campiness by the third film.

I rewatched the films recently.

Aside from delivery of maybe the single greatest line in cinema history, the idea of this all powerful white entity, preying on humanities collective ignorance is really heavy handed. And the fact that Blade can’t find any humor in it like say Ryan Reynolds does by the third film, says something. Ideologically, it can be funny to other people…but not to Blade…because he knows what’s at stake…and not just for humanity…but for himself. He became what he is because his mother was murdered by these creatures…and worse he cant help but partially be that which destroyed his family.

He is and isn’t the same as his enemy. He too feels the blood lust… he fights it but can’t deny it. Until you’ve felt the fear that something you cant help, like being black, can cause and knowing that an interaction with law enforcement could end with your death, even if you do everything ‘right’, is something that at times, someone like myself can find humor in. The ridiculousness of systemic racism is absurd but not when I’m riding gunshot in my now ex- boyfriends car and we get pulled over and questions are directed at me even though I’m not behind the wheel.

Having to explain to my white boyfriend what that reality is, is sobering in a way that makes me long for Wakanda…but in the mean time,if I had a choice, I’d settle for Blade.