TV – The "True" North

Like many people, I’ve watched a lot of TV during the pandemic including recently finishing all nine seasons of The Walking Dead. TWD follows the lives of groups of people near Altanta, Georgia trying to survive following an apocalypse that’s turned most of the world into flesh eating zombies with poor motor skills (they can’t climb, swim or move faster than an average Tim Horton’s lineup).

Life is pretty bad, except for one thing: there’s no racism. There are “good” and “bad” people of different races but no racism. In fact, in the 131 TWD episodes I watched, there was only one reference to race in one early episode when one of the minor bad white characters called one of the good Black characters the n-word and then the main good character smacked the bad guy and told him “There are no more n%$#s and there are more dumb as shit, inbred, white trash. There’s just us.” After that, nobody ever mentioned race again. So, to repeat: this story, set in Georgia, about groups fighting for scarce resources to survive, has no racism in it. Well, no blatant racism.

The leaders of all the major warring groups are white men, two are “bad” and the third, the star of the whole show, is “good”. Rick Grimes is a former sheriff from a small Georgia town who doesn’t seem to have a racist bone in his body (and, to his credit, manages to keep all his bones in his body for nine seasons). Rick leads his group in defending themselves against the walkers (as they call the zombies) and the other groups. They do some pretty bad stuff but always only in immediate or proactive self-defence. No one in Rick’s group or any other one ever does or says anything to suggest they see other groups as anything but bad people. They only see the walkers as sub-human. There aren’t any groups that hate people because of who they are and justify taking their stuff based on that. Sure, they kill each other for each other’s stuff and self-defence but all while respecting each other’s basic humanity – which is much easier to do when you’re literally surrounded by zombies. [Of course the zombies aren’t racist. They’ll eat anyone…although comic duo Key and Peele envision what things might look like if the zombies retained a little more of their former selves in their sketch White Zombies.]

There are many other times in TWD that scream for race to be raised only for the characters to remain silent.

Rick hooks up with Michonne, a dark-skinned, dreadlocked samurai sword wielding warrior and they have a brown kid but they never mention race in the past, present or future.
After Rick’s group defeats another group, some of the surviving former bad guys join Rick’s group at Rick’s urging and over the objections of some of Rick’s group who want to just kill them. Shortly after, the former bad people start disappearing. Two of Rick’s group investigating what’s happening discover members of their group about to execute a Black woman who was formerly with the bad guys and find out they’re responsible for killing the other missing people. After briefly trying to dissuade their comrades from killing the woman they walk away and let them execute her. However, a white woman who was with the bad folks before, including trying to kill members of Rick’s group like the Black woman did, is allowed to stay on as a trusted member of Rick’s group.

In addition to not mentioning race or racism on a personal level, no one mentions the role they may have played in starting the apocalypse. In fact, no one seems to know what caused it. This isn’t surprising since TWD creator Robert Kirkman only revealed the source of the outbreak in 2020. Comicbook.com reported Kirkman “said the zombie outbreak occurred because of a “space spore” when asked on Twitter, which is likely another homage to the godfather of the zombie-horror genre George A. Romero. In his classic [1968] film Night of the Living Dead, scientists speculated the creation of zombies could have been caused by a space probe to Venus bringing back radiation with unintended effects.”

Space spores? In all 131 TWD episodes, only one character ever mentions anything suggesting that the outbreak could have been caused by humans in, say, a lab designed to create viruses. In the last episode of TWD season one, the last surviving scientist at the U.S. Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta infers the disease might have been created by the CDC – before he blows up the entire place and himself to avoid anything (else?) getting out.

No other character ever questions if the outbreak could have been caused by something like a military bio-weapon gone bad or a drug company rushing a vaccine to market for profit. They don’t even wonder if it came from natural causes or not, unlike the media reports on the current debate over the origins of the COVID-19 virus. It’s like centuries of race-based capitalist exploitation that led to things like slavery and the decimation of Indigenous people and land never happened. There’s no memory, no accountability and best of all – no guilt.

Also, despite Atlanta’s almost 500,000 people being half Black, TWD has no groups of Black people roaming the countryside, some possibly looking for payback. The TWD world is essentially a massive chance for white folks to start over, blameless – and still in charge.

This wasn’t the case with the film that launched it all: George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead. In NLD, the main protagonist is a Black man named Ben who gets trapped in a house with a group of white people just as the zombie apocalypse starts. After leading the group in fighting off the zombies, Ben is shot by a white sheriff. So, NLD’s white sheriff shoots the Black hero and TWD’s white sheriff is the hero. How things have changed…

Now, don’t get me wrong. TWD was great TV. That’s why I watched 131 episodes and eagerly await season 10 hitting Netflix in July. But, as I watched it, I had the same feeling as I did while watching Game of Thrones that I blogged about. I was disturbed that so many people watched it with almost none appearing to notice how blatantly racist it was.

This brings to mind a quote by Princeton professor Ruha Benjamin:

“Until we come to grips with the “reasonableness” of racism, we will continue to look for it on the bloody floors of Charleston churches and in the dashboard cameras on Texas highways, and overlook it in the smart sounding logic of textbooks, policy statements, court rulings, science journals and cutting edge technologies.”

Her quote could be revised for the Canadian context as:

“Until we come to grips with the “reasonableness” of racism, we will continue to only see it on bloody London, Ont. street corners and residential school mass graves and overlook it in our technologies, policies, hiring practices, staff, management and the massively popular American TV shows we all happily consume.”

Comicbook.com also reported that, when asked about the origin of the zombie virus during a 2018 Q&A on Tumblr, TWD creator Kirkman said, “It couldn’t be less important to the story and the lives of these characters.”

It appears the other thing that both Kirkman and his characters have forgotten is the old saying, “Those that forget their history are doomed to repeat it.”

These zombie shows are the dramatic representation of a future where everyone says, “I don’t see color.”, still without realizing that’s part of the problem.

Black lives matter until the Game of Thrones sequel starts

Like millions of people around the world, I got hooked on Game of Thrones because it was great TV. However, unlike millions of people, I discovered it late and thought it was the one of the most racist shows I had ever seen. The picture below has some of the key reasons why.

Game of Thrones (G.O.T.) was the ultimate white liberal fantasy. It was about good white people fighting bad white people with almost no brown people around. The only brown folks were slaves, former slaves or savage warriors, called the Dothraki, who loved violence and looked and sounded like Arabs (the Sinbad movie kind, who were also played by white or kinda white actors).

Instead of showing these white folks violently robbing brown folks of their stuff (i.e. what really happened), one of the lead characters, Daenerys Targaryen, was a pretty blond woman who attacked places and freed slaves. After she conquered a place, she would tell the former slaves that they were free to go – but none ever did. In one scene, after she freed the slaves, they hoisted her above their heads like in a mosh pit, and passed her around while calling her “mother” in their native tongue.

The only two brown, main characters are the two in the pic above. Both are former slaves who Daenerys freed. The woman, Missandei, is a translator who becomes Dany’s trusted advisor, but it’s the male character who sets a new racist high for character development.

He is a former slave who was raised as part of a slave army, he now leads. Called the Unsullied, they wear masks so it’s hard to tell what colour they are (but you can judge for yourself from the pic below). What we do learn is that they’re all eunuchs because their balls were cut off when they were young. We also learn that, despite his lack of balls, their leader can still feel attraction, but only towards Missandei. He never expresses any sexual interest in Daenerys (despite her running around naked a lot because she’s immune to fire and kills enemies by burning them alive and emerging naked from the ashes). And she never shows any sexual interest in him – despite his sex machine name – Grey Worm.

So let’s recap: white folks fighting white folks, white women freeing slaves, crazy violent “savages” and the most non-threatening Black guys possible. Oh, and one more thing…. All the white people have a common enemy in the white walkers, an ever increasing army of dead people led by the Night King who’s one of the most Black looking dudes in the show. The dead live outside the massive ice wall separating them from where all the white people live. (Trump must have ordered a similar wall on the Mexican border before one of his advisors told him it would melt.)

The only thing that shocked me more than how racist the mega-hit was, was how few people seemed to notice – or care. Prior to Googling “Game of Thrones racist”, I hadn’t heard about anyone calling the show racist. (When I did Google it, the first result was the Guardian story, “There are no black people on Game of Thrones’: why is fantasy TV so white?”)

Millions of people watched G.O.T. for eight years with very few having a problem with its blatant anti-Black racism. Then they saw an 8-minute video of a Black man being lynched and many of them hit the street yelling Black lives matter. What changed? The problem is, nothing.

White folks (and other non-Black folks) hit the street after George Floyd because 1) Black people hit the street first 2) Black people burned down other people’s stuff. If only one of those had happened, there would have been far fewer non-Black folks in the street.

The problem is that it’s only the most horrendous acts of anti-Black racism, followed by Black folks hitting and street and burning down other people’s stuff that gets people’s attention. Blatant racism in one’s favourite TV show doesn’t.

The riots following the acquittal of the cops who beat up Rodney King got lots of attention but that was partly because of what Black folks burned down – and why.

According to Wikipedia:

“In the year before the riots, 1991, there was growing resentment and violence between the African-American and Korean-American communities. Racial tensions had been simmering for years between these groups. In 1989, the release of Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing highlighted urban tensions between Whites, Blacks and Koreans over racism and economic inequality. Many Korean shopkeepers were sad, tired, and afraid because they routinely dealt with targeted harassment, shoplifting or theft, violence, and threats from their Black customers and neighbors. Many Blacks were angry because they felt routinely disrespected and humiliated by Korean storeowners. They still viewed the area as their neighborhood, which the Korean Americans had invaded to make a living in without learning any preexisting culture. On March 16, 1991, a year prior to the Los Angeles riots, storekeeper Soon Ja Du shot and killed Black ninth-grader Latasha Harlins. Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and the jury recommended the maximum sentence of 16 years, but the judge decided against prison time and sentenced Du to five years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine instead. About 2,300 Korean-owned stores in southern California were looted or burned, making up 45 percent of all damages caused by the riot.”

The problem is not dealing with the root causes of the tension before things blow up.

COVID-19 exposed tensions created by systemic equality and contributed to George Floyd’s death being the spark that set the tinder box on fire.

The question now is, are the majority of people going to see the light, examine their role in maintaining systemic inequality, and do their part to end it – or are they going disappear into the next G.O.T. fantasy, only to emerge after the next explosion?