African superheroes: 'You don't have to be white to save the world'

For scholars on comic books, African superheroes are an inevitable reaction to a predominantly white cast of caped crusaders.

By Stephanie Findlay  

Sunday, 24 January 2016

 

In the first issue of "Aje", a Nigerian comic offering a new breed of superheroes strictly from Africa, university student Teni casts a curse on her boyfriend in a rush of jealous rage and purple lightning.

Koni dara fun o ni yi aye (it will never be better for you in this life)," snarls Teni in Yoruba, a language and one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria.

Teni is the creation of Jide Martins, the founder of Comic Republic, one of a handful of comic startups making African superheroes to rival Iron Man, Batman and Spiderman.

Unlike Storm, a beloved X-Men superhero who is a dual citizen of the United States and the fictional country Wakanda, the superheroes Martins brings to life are born and bred in Africa -- and fight there too.

"In university, I started wondering what it would be like if Superman came to Nigeria," Martins told AFP at his flat in Lagos, where his dining room doubles as a studio for his team of young illustrators.

"People are trying to break away from the norm and find new things to aspire to," Martins said. "You don't have to be white to save the world."

Nigerian names and spandex

In 2013, Martins, a slim 37-year-old with a freckled nose and goatee beard, published his first issue of Guardian Prime, a hero wearing a forest green and snow white super-suit in the colours of the Nigerian flag.

Since then, readership has swelled from 100 an issue to over 28,000.

Despite the 30-plus page comic books being free and only available as a digital download, Martins is able to generate enough money through advertising and spin-off projects, including educational booklets on malaria featuring his characters, to keep the business running.

"People had this idea that African comics had to be with people in traditional clothes, but I don't agree with that," Martins said.

"Let them have Nigerian names, saving people in Nigeria, but let's put them in spandex."

Martins isn't the only one realising the potential of the burgeoning African superhero industry, which adapts the continent's long tradition of voodoo and the occult for a modern-day audience.

Roye Okupe is the creator of E.X.O. -- The Legend of Wale Williams, a graphic novel set in Lagoon City, a futuristic Lagos riddled with corruption and besieged by an extremist insurrection.

Okupe, a 30-year-old who grew up in the Nigerian megacity of 20 million people, saw a market for an African character grounded in reality.

"You're probably not able to name five African superheroes off the top of your head," Okupe said from Washington, where he is based.

"And as much as I love Black Panther, he's from a fictional African country."

At a time when superheroes dominate the international box office, Okupe says Nigerians are uniquely poised to offer alternatives to the waspy roster of Clark Kents and Peter Parkers.

"Ten years ago if you released a superhero from Nigeria, I don't think anybody would care," Okupe said. "But now that it's a popular industry, people want diversity."

'Long overdue'

For scholars on comic books, African superheroes are an inevitable reaction to a predominantly white cast of caped crusaders.

"I think it's long overdue," said Ronald Jackson, co-editor of the 2013 book "Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation".

"As we begin to appreciate other identities, we're going to become increasingly more embracing of the kind of images coming out of African comics.

"What you don't always see front and centre are major spin-offs in terms of movies and television shows. I think that may be the next step for African comics."

Back in the Comic Republic studio, the team of illustrators -- all under 30 -- hope that one day their characters will appear on the silver screen.

They're betting that their African cast, including witches stronger than the Jedi warriors in "Star Wars", will be more than enough to keep international audiences excited.

"You hear about Greek gods like Zeus but no one has heard of Shango, the god of lightning in Yoruba," 23-year-old illustrator Tobe Ezeogu said.

"It's a different take to what people are used to."

Along with Aje and Guardian Prime, Martins and his team have created Avonome, who goes into the spiritual world to fight battles, and Eru, a lecturer at the University of Lagos whose alter ego is modelled on the Yoruba god of fear.

"We're shocked at the way people have received the comics," Martins said. "It's been amazing."

Source: Al Arabiya 

Toronto Star Article related to romance novels

“But there's nothing we like more than NEARLY kissing each other near some horses. I always try to look hot in front of him so he doesn’t leave me.”
- best quote!


The full article can be seen here: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/972759--couple-re-enacts-harlequin-romance-book-covers?bn=1

Romance in the media

Fairy-tale romance. Taking the literal meaning of the word itself, the word fairy tale refers to a "fanciful tale that talks about legendary deeds," meaning that it is obviously something far from reality. Yet the media portrays this ideal as achievable, and it is often seen on reality shows such as the Bachelor, or Bachelorette.

Shows such as these portray myths and stereotypes around love and courtship which will often fail to succeed in current times. In fact of all the bachelors that have happened, none of them have stayed committed to their relationship. One would think that this would deter the audiences from believing in their storytelling and construction on love and relationships, but somehow the audience keeps being dragged in. Maybe it is because the show is an escape, because it provides for them something that would not occur in their everyday life. Either way, the idea of that beautiful vulnerable woman, and the strong man still runs throughout the media - be it in a reality show such as the Bachelor, or a scripted television show such as Mad Men.

Being Canadian

What does being Canadian mean? Everyone has a different answer, and different idea on what being a Canadian means to them. For an outsider being a Canadian is probably defined by a beer ad: we are people who live in the cold, play hockey, wear fur, say 'eh' a lot, drink beer, and have policemen that ride horses.

Of course, being a part of Canada, we know that this is far from the truth. Some of these stereotypes do apply, but more importantly one of the greatest things about being a Canadian is the acceptance of being whoever you are. It is in Canada that all the different cultures of the world have come together, to mix, and build new traditions, and systems. To many families, including mine, Canada was the place you could come to make a better life, and where working hard meant that you would eventually become successful.

In 2007, a journalist once wrote, "The Canadian Identity, as it has come to be known, is as elusive as the Sasquatch. It has animated--and frustrated-- generations of statesmen, historians, writers, artists, philosophers, and film... Canada resists easy definition."

But maybe it is our resistance to be defined, that allows us to maintain our true identity of being a nation that accepts everyone, allowing people to maintain their culture and traditions while building new ones.

Anyways, on that note, I just wanted to leave people with this video I was sent a few weeks ago, about the "average American" view on Canada.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXjih-WBqqM

The Carnivalesque and April Fool's Day

As April Fool's Day passed by last week, I thought it interesting to reflect on the carnivalesque nature of the holiday. In the third part of his essay on "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse", Bakhtin points out that the Cyprian feasts of the Middle Ages allowed people to parody normally sombre sacred ceremonies and mock religious authority figures. Similarly, it seems to me that April Fool's Day, particularly on the Internet, allows companies and other content creators to mock things that are normally seen as serious rituals and events. For instance, last year, social news website Reddit.com made granted all users administrator privileges, thereby reversing the website's usual hierarchy and letting the servants become the masters, as it were. Similarly, following its usual tradition of mock product announcements, Google pretended to launch Google Motion, which claimed to allow users to type in e-mails using gesture control. The video mocked the tone and enthusiasm usually found in product launch videos, with Google employees acting out ridiculous gestures in order to create e-mails. It also parodied videos created by Microsoft and Sony in marketing their motion-based videogame software (Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move) in ways that may not normally have been acceptable for a corporation. In short, therefore, it seems that April Fool's Day lets users and companies on the Internet indulge in carnivalesque parodies and mockeries similar to those found during the Cyprian Feasts.

Smoking: Hot or Cool?

I found our class discussion on “Hot vs. Cool” to be very enthralling, however there was one item that I found particularly troubling in regards to the classification procedure. Lauren Bacall, I believe, did not belong in the “hot” category. To me, Bacall represents one of the absolute prime examples of “Feminine Cool.” There was a conspicuous underrepresentation of women in the “Cool” category, which at first struck me as potentially discriminatory (not necessarily exclusive to the attitude of the class, but of popular media and culture in general), and, in line with our discussion, seemed to me to provide evidence for the legitimacy of the sexist view of women as being strictly “hot” commodities vs. men as being iconic creators and innovators. However, upon further scrutiny, androgyny and transgressiveness in general seemed to be a prevalent theme in the “cool” category: from Isabella Rossellini to David Bowie. Lauren Bacall certainly did not fall in line with many of the contemporaneous standards of femininity required of the proto-typical Hollywood starlet of her time, although she was incredibly striking to look at. One of the most iconic shots is of her smoking a cigarette in “To Have and Have Not;” a very masculine, and what used to be, a “cool” activity.

Which leads me to the questions, and to somewhat of a tangent shift: how has smoking managed to transition from identifiably “cool” to “hot”? Or is it neither? Is “hot” necessarily always bad? Smoking to me epitomizes how activities are subject to the contemporaneous ideologies and attitudes of a particular time. It seems that the once “cool” smoking past time has been overshadowed, and discriminated against, by the “cool” green eco-friendly trend; a shift from a contemplative self-indulgence to an active philanthropic indulgence. The latter now chastises the former for its selfishness and through attempts to eradicate its presence from public spaces, it has elevated the idea and the rights of the environment and the community against those of the individual, which somewhat conflicts with the fact that smoking is often a social activity. Although the green trend’s scope and ambition seems to be long-reaching and potentially timeless (Harrison’s criteria for “cool” as per our class discussion), it is just that: a trend. That is not to say environmentalism is included in this; I am referencing a particular movement that was launched by environmentalist beliefs and ideals, and that is the highly commercial green/eco-friendly movement that is very heavily steeped in consumerism and subject to marketing tactics, and therefore is highly individualistic and it remains unsure as to whether or not people will awake to this hypocrisy.

Which brings me back to Bacall: smoking, once a pervasive motif in classic cinema, has been actively protested against and almost entirely eliminated, and yet people still react positively to Bacall’s scene in “To Have and Have Not” in which she smokes. Does smoking, or watching others smoking, present some kind of outlet for contemporary audiences and a nostalgia for something lost from our culture? To close, I see smoking torn between “cool” and “hot;” while its health risks are now well-known, people cannot seem to escape its ambiguous allure which connotes selfish, care-free attitude and, especially for women, a space in which to transgress against feminine ideals of selflessness and cleanliness.

Romance Novel and the Masculine Other

What struck me the most about our class discussion about the traditional romance novel, was the observation that was referenced in a class discussion that the traditional romance novel's conceptualization of the gender dynamic is a palpable inversion of the "nature is to woman as culture is to man." Women are conceived as civilizing agents of culture through their commitment to the institution of marriage, which, through its endorsement of the nuclear family and the simultaneous requirement that men serve as the sole breadwinners, transforms the role of the family into serving as an obedient unit of production. The idea that women are "taking charge" or are the dominant figure of the family in this particular depiction is an illusory one, as they ultimately serve a very patriarchal function which is to preserve the subordinate role of the family to the state.

Although a lot of focus was obviously, and justifiably, on women in regards to this topic, I would be interested in turning the critical gaze on the depiction of men in not only romance novels, but in popular culture and indeed in everyday media regarding diverse topics, such as news and medical commentaries, etc. “Our” everyday view of men, it would seem to me, has been overwhelmingly influenced by a very traditional socio-biological view: they are the "simpler" sex, as magazine articles often characterize them, especially via widely consumed women's popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan; they are enslaved to the corporeal, and therefore excluded from being properly subjectivized due to the "primitive" sexuality attributed to them. Therefore, I would be so bold as to propose that there is a certain “Othering” of men occurring in this type of discourse; a discriminatory linking them to animality and thus a denial of the social and psychological forces that shape both their subjective and objective identities.

In their indiscriminate pursuit of objectified female bodies, men are “zombie-like” in being denied a sexual subjectivity. However, on the contrary, woman’s very subjectivity is used against her in the romance novel as justification for sexual assault or rape; the discursive strategies that frame her internal monologue insinuate doubt as she simultaneously rejects her perceptibly “true” feelings towards male advances, and thus alleviates the guilt of the male perpetrator. In the incredibly cerebral and existential* romance novel that I chose to read for class entitled “Annie and the Red Hot Italian,” masculinity and femininity are conceived in oppositional linguistic terms: masculinity is hard, inert, and stubborn; femininity is soft, flighty, and malleable. Both of these conceptualizations of women and men deny agency and individuality, in different ways. Women suffer due to the imbalanced power dynamic at work within sexual difference, and men suffer due the inability to recognize their subjectivity. So, although much criticism has been directed against depictions of femininity in romance novels, I think a critical investigation of stereotypical portrayals of men in popular culture would be very useful to not only general social theory but feminist theoretical work on these subjects.

In pointing out the male discrimination that occurs in both the traditional romance novel and in everyday life, I am in no way attempting to deflect attention away from the female discrimination or suggest that the female discrimination that occurs is less important. I am simply trying to acknowledge that the scope of the discrimination that occurs is much broader and extends to both of the sexes and create different levels of harm. The traditional romance novel dynamic undergirds even our contemporary perception of sexual difference.

*Sarcasm