Nope, this is not an argument for the arming of Tucson citizens with Batarangs.
There was a minor eruption in the blogospere recently over a decision by DC Comics to create a spin-off of Batman, to market in France, which would feature a “Muslim Batman.” The storyline goes something like this: Bruce Wayne has decided to franchise his brand around the world, leading to the creation of Batman, Inc. While in France, he finds Bilal Asselah, who is arrested after being caught up in the 2005 immigrant riots while dressed up in spandex and running up walls, and Wayne picks Asselah to be Paris’s coolest new superhero, Nightrunner.
People were upset. Al Arabiyah reports that the outrage within France has been minimal, but blogs around the world are condemning the decision to make France’s Batman a Muslim. Immigrants, you see, “have been rampaging across the country for several years now,” according to one blogger. The “Angy White Dude Blog” was confounded by the idea that a Batman character would ascribe to the “religion of murder.” But the argument that appears to have resonated the most is simply that France should have a French Batman. And apparently, Bilal Asselah isn’t French. Except he was born there.
“Apparently Batman couldn't find any actual Frenchman [sic] to be the ‘French savior,’” complained one blogger. The issue is not simply one of religion, although certainly attitudes towards Islam play a major factor in the blacklash against a Muslim Batman. More acutely, French people (and apparently white people everywhere), don’t want France to be understood as a Maghrebi or non-white nation. There is a fear that the nation that created its national identity, according to Jules Michelet, around the superhero Joan of Arc is at risk of losing that identity to a more popular superhero. Everyone loves Batman, so with the creation of a “French” version, the stakes of identity are high.
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| Whose Paris? |
So why are rabid right-wing Americans so concerned with Frenchness? One hears echoes of the birther movement -- even though Barack Obama was born in the United States, his most extremist critics push his perceived foreigness. Maybe they’re concerned about their own othered region to the South -- Mexico. The day of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, the New York Times published a story about the abolition of ethnic studies programs in Arizona public schools. (It didn’t get much attention due to the events in Tucson that day.) Because Tucson teacher Curtis Acosta’s class taught students to understood the history of United States imperialism and to explore the contingencies of state borders and national identities, it was understood to be sowing the seeds of division and hatred. Arizona likes its history like the French right likes its Batman: nativistic.
The opposition to the Muslim Batman probably won’t amount to much, but it did lead the creator of Nightrunner, David Hine, to respond to his critics. When asked what he thought about the charge that Bilal is not a Frenchman, he responded: “I’d like to see [the bloggers] in a room full of French Algerians making that point.” But when pressed, he stepped back from the controversy, insisting that he wasn’t trying to make a political statement, only trying to write good comics.
Comics, of course, have always been political, ever since DC published the first Superman story in which the hero battled evil bankers. The early Superman comics were heavy with New Deal politics. Deeper readings would reveal that Superman himself was an immigrant, an intent often ascribed to his creators’ foreignness. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were Jewish immigrants at the head of a long line of Jewish immigrant and first generation American comic book writers, including Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Their creations, like X-Men, Mad Magazine, and even Captain America, have often questioned or satirized nationalistic or bigoted discourses. But explicit critiques of normative Americanness were off-limits, the writers’ own subjectivities bound by a heavily assimilationist culture.
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| Captain America took on these Tea-Partiers last year. |
So, in imposing strict anti-immigration policies, abolishing ethnic studies, arming white citizens, and deporting anyone who looks funny, Arizona is doing something far worse than creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred, and threatening thousands of people’s material well beings. The state is quite possibly preventing the appearance of the next Harvey Pekar (who passed away recently). And that is unacceptable.
Let’s hope that a Nightrunner movie gets made someday, to show popular audiences the vision of demotic cosmopolitanism that the Jewish-American comic writers fell short of. If all goes well, M. Night Shyamalan will direct, and will cast Jim Carrey in the role of Bilal.
You can find more Nightrunner artwork here: http://trevormc112.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0
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2 Response to What Batman Can Teach Arizona
Dear Gyp,
You really need a mailbag section on this site, so you can answer my questions.
1. What religion do you think Kal-El pratices? And what if someone demanded to see Superman's birth certificate?
2. Fun fact: I worked at the same Cleveland alt-weekly as Harvey Pekar. He was our jazz critic.
3. Why "bareknuckle vengeance" and not "bare-knuckled vengeance"?
Excelsior,
dm.
Thanks for your questions dm.
1. I'm not sure what religion Kal-El practices, if any, but I do believe that his parents, Jor-El and Lara-El, took him out for Chinese food every time Rao Day came around. Luckily, he doesn't have to worry about the birth certificate issue because he doesn't work at Chipotle.
2. That's pretty cool. I had heard about a guy who worked with Harvey Pekar once, but he was more famous for having been in the movie theater scene of Barry Levinson's Avalon.
3. Huh? I don't know, I always liked Vengeance with Mittens, but that was sadly voted down.
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