War Talk: a short essay on the Vietnam War and its language

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

      Nightmare. Bloodbath. Massacre. Quagmire. Four words that not only sum up the American experience in Southeast Asia but also characterize the language of defeat in American military history. The Vietnam War turned these four concepts into synonyms of failure, adding them to the long list of consequences that engulf that war’s legacy.

     We refer to ‘nightmare’ when acknowledging the death of the American Dream in Vietnam. We turn to ‘bloodbath’ when discussing My Lai as a metaphor for the brutality of the Vietnam War. ‘Massacre’ we summon when we discuss the picture of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a shackled Vietcong suspect in the streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive in 1968. And ‘quagmire,’ perhaps the most interesting of the lot, we reserve for those times we are asked to summarize the Vietnam War in a single word. Quagmire means to sink, “a bog having a surface that yields when stepped on.” In other words, quicksand (ironically enough, both words start with the letter Q).

      Tom Engelhardt, in his book The End of Victory Culture, calls ‘quagmire’ a “withdrawal word,” a sinkhole that could do little else other than suck American troops into the depths of perpetual combat with no favorable resolution in sight. To get to the point of saying the war has turned into a quagmire is to start thinking of calling the troops back home. Engelhardt tells us that in 1965, Clark Clifford (unofficial adviser to President Johnson) warned that Vietnam “could be a quagmire. It could turn into an open ended commitment on our part that would take more and more ground troops, without a realistic hope of ultimate victory.” To sink in war is to accept the inevitability of defeat, that victory cannot be a reasonable scenario given a quagmire situation. Victory, on the other hand, came to Vietnam as a word that Washington desperately wanted to include in its war talk. But victory belonged to another war: World War II. Different war. Different results. Different language.

     That Vietnam became the quicksand of American military history turned that war into an universal metaphor for war done the wrong way. It also made every other American war keep its vocabulary close-by, under heavy guard against Vietnam, hoping not to get infected with its linguistics of failure.

     American history textbooks (like The Americans, published by McDougal Littell for high school use) made sure not to mix Vietnam war talk with other American war talks. The Spanish-American War is still referred to as the “Splendid Little War,” World War I keeps its claims to being the “The Great War,” and the Second World War continues being remembered as the ultimate example of ‘victory’ and ‘liberty,’ as safeguarded by America’s “greatest generation.”

 

     The First World War’s case is interesting because, while ‘bloodbath’ flies around it more frequently than desired, it is mostly associated with the language of industrialism and empire. I refer, of course, to more popular interpretations of the war, mainly those found in survey books and high school textbooks. The same cannot be said of Vietnam. It only knows the language of death, defeat, and moral corruption, and history books have made sure it stays that way, on its own corner.

     The First World War had a clear resolution. The allies won and the combined forces of the ‘evil empires’ perished. That World War I industrialized killing and that around one million men were either killed or wounded in the Battle of the Somme alone did little to change the linguistics of that war. The allies didn’t sink or fall through a bottomless pit of combat with no end in sight. They won. Quagmire averted. Vietnam ended with people flying away in overcrowded helicopters off American embassies. The Americans left behind a destroyed countryside, crop burnings, a history of rape and civil rights violations, and a very public withdrawal of American forces. World War I? Victory. Vietnam? Quagmire. History, so it seems, forgets more than it remembers. And it has a worrying obsession with endings. They do more to structure the enduring meaning of a war’s language than any other event within the history of the war itself.

     Much like the Korean War, which stays ‘forgotten,’ Vietnam came up with a language, a war dialect, that no one else was interested in speaking. But the wars that came after it had no choice but to fall in place with it. The current War Against Terrorism certainly did, with both The New York Times and The Washington Post adding ‘quagmire’ to the long list of words that fed their skepticism against Operation Iraqi Freedom. Eight days into the war and both newspapers were already comparing Iraqi fighters to the resilient North Vietnamese. That Saddam Hussein was overthrown just eighteen days later did little to no effect in shifting the linguistics Vietnam had firmly set in place.
 

    Vietnam spoke a harsh language, of strange realities and of the moral implications behind them. After the war, victory was to be a concept locked in between quotation marks (except in the case of the Second World War), and horror could not escape being set as the Vietnam standard. No war has been able to skip over its linguistics after it. To be labeled as a war turning into a quagmire not only means losing public approval, it means channeling the memory of the Vietnam War and its linguistics of defeat. And this speaks to the legacy of the Vietnam War: the quagmire. Vietnam turned war into quicksand, a swamp, a very deep bog. And in the process it changed the official definition of the concept, for quagmire now truly means “a war having a surface that yields when waged wrong.”

The Sacrament: Movie Review

 by: Gabriel Serrano Denis

Well, I got something to say
I killed your baby today
And it doesn't matter much to me
As long as it's dead

    -Misfits, Last Caress

     Economic crisis, religious fundamentalism, political corruption and social unrest have always been the source from which the deformed manifestations of horror cinema feed and nourish themselves. From Don Siegel’s “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), through George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), to David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” (1986), paranoia and fear (of communism, counterculture, and AIDS) acted as the catalysts for the iconic creatures that still haunt and remind us of the political and emotional turmoil of their times. These “real” horrors, like the teenagers running from the monsters with chainsaws and knives of the 1980s, have forced American citizens to make terrifying decisions at their own peril decade after decade. Most recently, in 2011, a man called Richard Beasley posted a job advert on Craigslist in search for a watchman for his Ohio farm, offering $300 a week and a trailer home for free. Dozens of desperate workers suddenly stripped of their comfortable middle-class status applied for the job, only to be shot dead upon arrival by Beasley and 16-year-old Brogan Rafferty. An American Dream shattered, characters in search of betterment, a flash of hope, and the sudden, arbitrary destruction of life in the guise of salvation; the fundamentals of horror filmmaking.

     Following this tradition, contemporary horror auteur Ti West has successfully bred horror narratives from the initial conflicts of economic struggle and social detachment. In both “The House of the Devil” (2009) and “The Innkeepers” (2011), it’s the phantom of capitalism that leads the way into an inescapable menace, slowly building to a supernatural explosion of terror and hopelessness. The former presents a penniless college student accepting the eerie request to babysit an old couple’s ailing mother for $400 only to be sucked into a satanic ritual at the end of the night. The latter takes us into the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a haunted hotel at the end of its run, and its two remaining employees (about to be made redundant, futureless) who are desperate to capture some actual paranormal phenomena before the hotel closes.

     As with the classics of horror mentioned before, West taps into basic social and economic distress to pit his characters against oppressive forces all too familiar to the working class people (a wealthy couple taking advantage of a poor college student; the inability to escape from the confines of financial crisis). However, West is not interested in making larger points about American society with these films, despite the pertinence of his characters’ inciting conflicts. Though forced to act within such culturally significant situations, West’s characters experience their horrifying ordeals on a more personal and emotional level. With his new film, “The Sacrament” (2013), West not only delves into a fact-based narrative, but he grounds the horror in reality, directly addressing everything wrong with the current cultural zeitgeist in the process. Unfortunately, the biting social consciousness and the hollow characters through which it’s supposed to materialize don’t seem to have much of a point.

     In “The Sacrament”, produced by horror filmmaker Eli Roth, a Vice magazine journalist and his cameraman (AJ Bowen and Joe Swanberg) travel with fashion photographer and co-worker Patrick (Kentucker Audley) to an undisclosed country in search of his sister (Amy Seimetz), now living in a commune known as Eden Parish and run by a mysterious figure only referred to as “Father”. Based largely on the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, the film follows the newsteam as they are welcomed into Eden Parish, despite some minor altercations with armed guards at first, and slowly discover the true nature of “Father’s” paradise.

     The first miscalculation on behalf of the filmmakers comes in the form of its found footage aesthetic. Though more a “faux documentary” than an actual found footage film, the approach to the material nonetheless feels wrong and distracting. By striving for an extreme sense of reality, the film does well to justify its beautiful cinematography through its suggestion that an actual, professional journalistic photographer is at the helm. However, this does not justify the fact that the footage is so calculated and logically edited. With films like “Rec” and “Cloverfield”, though obviously constructed to a point where the narrative makes sense, the jumbled and chaotic nature of capturing live footage remains intact, and thus adds immediacy to an already tense situation. With “The Sacrament”, one can’t help but feel that it should’ve been shot conventionally. In a scene where Sam (AJ Bowen) sits down to interview “Father” (Gene Jones, ironically), his cameraman Jake frames up on Father and then goes to Patrick (with his handy DSLR hanging by his neck) and asks him to film Sam’s reactions from the opposite side. This totally unnecessary scene only serves to distance us from the sense of reality the film has worked so hard to achieve. It merely justifies the opportunity for West to play with the shot/reverse shot in the edit and thus only stays in the mind as a necessity of the filmmakers rather than a natural occurrence within the world of the film.
  

   Tyler Bates’ score also works against the filmmakers’ intentions as it permeates the entire film, leaving no doubt that something terrible and ominous is lurking within the commune. Since the film is presenting itself as a fake documentary, it makes sense to have a score, but then what does constructing the film as a documentary add to the overall impact of the story? It seems to me like it detracts from the overall experience as it is pretending to document something so similar to an actual controversial event. As such, the filmmaker’s distinct vision and take on the subject remains lost in the attempt to comment on reality and horror. With a subject and approach like this, where the story unfolds in less than two days time and the veracity of the horror is central, a bolder approach would’ve perhaps been ideal. As I was viewing the film I couldn’t help but think how certain moments would’ve felt had the score been entirely removed, if the camera had not captured many of the horrific moments, if we had heard or imagined more than what we actually see, if the camera wasn’t always on and thus harder and more jagged cuts would’ve signaled the passage of time and would’ve created immediacy. But then, it’s obvious that West wanted to experiment with the found-footage aesthetic by blending it with his particular, dreadful approach to horror.

     West’s films unfold with the slow burn of a bad decision coming into the foreground of consciousness, and this ties neatly into his care and attention to character and context. His films’ elegant and composed unraveling emphasizes mood and tension, very different from the commercial horror fare of visceral scares and buckets of gore. This elegance and careful planning of camera and blocking are present in “The Sacrament”, but it lacks the characters to sustain it. With “The House of the Devil” and “The Innkeepers”, West can withhold on the terror and the emotional payoff because we are following engaging characters with real, grounded stakes. Even as he sets up the conflict, the sense of dread is already present and building: something very bad is going to happen, it’s only a matter of “how” and “when”. But the “who” is already well established even before the dread starts to sink in. With “The Sacrament” all we have to invest in is the fact that Sam is a journalist and he wants a story. As he arrives at the commune, he suspects and doubts the validity of Eden Parish, confounded by the people’s complete willingness to live in such stripped conditions. Not only is this clichéd and contrived, but it also brings attention to Sam’s lack of personality. We don’t know what kind of journalist he is or aspires to be, only that he is a journalist and it’s his job to expose or find a story. We know that he has a wife and that she is soon to give birth, but this is a mere plot device that never heightens the emotional stakes. One even wonders why the film wasn’t centered on his friend Patrick, who has greater stakes in the matter and a conflict to resolve with his sister. As it is, West’s slow and calculated build-up to terror is wasted in the film, as we have no one to fear for.

 
     Despite all its flaws, the film is a natural product of its time. However, this relevance comes through in the sense that it explores the dangers of blind faith and extreme religious fundamentalism, and the untrustworthy American society from which it stems. Thus, the subject matter and realistic approach bring forth a film that speaks to a contemporary audience asphyxiated with school shootings, racism, homophobia, unemployment, poverty, international turmoil, mass murders, etc. All in all, “real” horror, not dependent on monsters or otherworldly manifestations to instill fear and shock. Sadly, the film fails to sustain its intent due to the lack of a distinct and personal vision concerning the idiosyncrasies of its subject matter. Though horrifying and shocking, anyone with a vague knowledge of Jonestown knows what’s coming. West structures his film smartly, withholding information and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty that leaves the audience anxious to know what it’s all building up to. But as the story progresses and every predictable beat is reached, it’s clear that West did not intend to alter or defy our expectations but rather to expose us to a “real” horrific event. And though horrific it is once it hits the screen (and it allows for some striking imagery), one can’t help but feel the lack of original thought, of a new lens through which to view the horror.

     Ti West has always been interested in people stumbling into horrifying situations. His characters enter unknown spaces in the hopes of finding something and end up being part of a grander, more sinister scheme. As an extension of his aesthetic and thematic interests, “The Sacrament” feels, in parts, like a genuine Ti West film. However, as a meaningful and powerful piece of horror filmmaking, West undoubtedly lost his way. In “The House of the Devil”, West opens his film with text detailing the influence of Satanic cults in the 1980s, where the film is set, finishing off with: “The following is based on true unexplained events.” So, as we follow the main character as she hears strange sounds in the house and slowly realizes what she’s gotten herself into, we know she’s the prey of a Satanic cult. In a Ti West film, the “what” is always spelled out for the audience. The “how” and the “when” are prolonged, withheld, manipulated, built up until they can’t contain themselves much longer. What’s missing from “The Sacrament” is the relevance of this build-up, the reason why we stick until the orgasm of terror pops up, the point of it all. This is partly because the “how” is as obvious as the “what”. We know what the characters are dealing with, how it’s going to end, who is going to die and who is going to survive; there is nothing for West to play with. And without a strong central character for the ordeal to matter, we are left in the cold watching as the “reality” unfolds.

A Marvelous Identity: Ms. Marvel and the importance of comic books

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis


    Storytelling, no matter how much it indulges in its fiction, can never truly escape reality. Social tensions, cultural anxieties, historical continuity, all of these things cling to fiction and demand that their presence be felt in comic books, film, and video games. The same goes with different genres. During the Cold War, Westerns dominated pop culture because they resonated most, in discourse and representation, with the ideological battle that the United States waged against Soviet Russia. The good guys (cowboys) were American bred, morally righteous, and white. The bad guys (Native Americans) were foreign to the ways of the good guys, antagonistic to American expansion, and red (labeled as such by the good guys and ironically compatible with the Soviet enemy). Who knew Native Americans could so easily fit into a metaphor for Cold War Communists? After Westerns, different genres took the mantle of Cold War politics and created stories that best reflected the different phases of said conflict (see Cold War science fiction and horror for some of the best examples), taking into account new developments and their wavering meanings. What was interesting was that each genre had its hero. Westerns had cowboys, combat films had soldiers, noirs had broken detectives, and thrillers had their spies. So, in a sense, one can say that genres define heroes the same way heroes define genres. But what of the heroes that stray from the classic formulas of Golden Age comics? What of those heroes of the post-9/11 world that are not a part of the Avengers or the Justice League? What of heroes that are Muslim, Latino, or Asian? What do they make of their genre, the superhero genre? And what does the genre make of them and their identities?

      Like a direct answer to these questions comes Ms. Marvel, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Adrian Alphona. Ms. Marvel tells the story of Kamala Khan, a 16 year-old Pakistani-American from New Jersey who idolizes Carol Danvers, the first Ms. Marvel from the comic book world. Kamala Khan is the fourth character to take the name of Ms. Marvel, inserting herself into Marvel’s current Marvel NOW! series—a semi-reboot of the Marvel universe intended to pull in new readers. Kamala is young, of color, and a minority, two elements that not only dictate identity in a very fierce manner but also inform the social tensions that define the post-9/11 world. She is also Muslim, a character trait (come 9/11) that automatically communicates persecution and antagonism. This does not even have to be alluded to textually for the reader to comprehend the character’s current state of affairs. Kamala’s religion is inherently added into the mix of components that makes her identity so reactive.

     Now, being a comic that deals in identity so directly, it is important we recognize the elements that make that topic drive the character into being a superhero. Those elements come out of Carol Danvers, the first female character to take up the name of Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan idolizes Carol Danvers. This idolization comes through her fan fiction writings in the comic. Kamala’s characters are all supreme metaphors for American values. Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel all make their appearances in her fantasy superhero stories. Captain America represents American war, Iron Man represents American freedom through economical gain and freedom, and Danvers represents a very traditional female image built into American conceptions of beauty and its power. She stands for a sort of female normalcy that plays second fiddle to male predominance in heroic deeds. It is of no wonder, then, that Kamala finds refuge in Danvers.

     Danvers is a white, blond bombshell that dresses in a skimpy black outfit with a yellow thunderbolt symbol across her chest. She was usually drawn the traditionally sexist way Marvel and DC drew (and continues to draw) their female characters, breasts bigger than her head and barely covered by a modified swimsuit (see most iterations of Wonder Woman and Elektra). This image extends well into the comic book culture of the 90s and early 2000s and makes up a sort of sexually misguided tradition that kept female superhero characters a step behind their male counterparts. They were objects readers could drool over instead of idols and examples they could follow or wish to become. Kamala falls under the second tier of followers by wanting to be Danvers in image, spectacularly sexualized though it may be. But Kamala’s intentions are far from sexual. They are cultural. They speak to identity, American identity.

      Ms. Marvel #1 opens with Kamala coveting, as she says, “delicious, delicious infidel meat.” She’s in a convenience store with friends when two, American, classmates come in and go through the now customary passive-aggressive culture bashing. We immediately meet a Kamala that desperately wants to fit in, to be “normal”. Of course, being normal means going out to parties and drinking with boys. The comic never directly associates normalcy with being American, but it is heavily implied. Kamala’s obsession with Carol Danvers further hits the nail on the proverbial coffin. Consider Kamala’s claim to normalcy after her very traditional father prohibits her from going out to an outdoor party:

     It’s just one party. It’s not like I’m asking their 
     permission to snort cocaine…Why am I the only one who 
     gets signed out of health class? Why do I have to bring 
     Pakoras to school for lunch?...Everybody else gets to be normal. 
     Why can’t I?

The discourses are simple enough: foreign girl wants to fit in. Her culture and the traditions that define her family’s identity hold her back. That she resists them is not only logical but expected given Kamala’s family is far away from home, and that sense of home cannot be expected to fully migrate into American soil intact. Kamala’s discursive rebellion follows an actual act of rebellion when she escapes to the party her father forbade her from going. At the party Kamala drinks, throws up, and is made fun of by the same classmates that teased her in the convenience store scene. She is ridiculed, making her identity stand out all the more. The stage is set for the transformation.

      As Kamala walks back to her house Terrigen mists descend upon Jersey City, swallowing up Kamala into a cocoon that transforms her into an Inhuman. The Terrigen mists are part of Marvel’s Infinity event, where the Inhumans and Thanos unleash a force that seeks out beings with Inhuman genes to encase them in cocoons that awaken their powers. Inside the cocoon Kamala is visited by three superhero hallucinations: Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers (now as Captain Marvel). They are the same characters that appear in her fan fiction. They question her intentions, her drive to be normal. They look like gods, speaking to their universal traits rather than their nationalistic ones. This is important considering the three heroes represent Americanism in one of its most intense forms. They are heroes we aspire to be. But they are heroes that never stray from their nationalities. Danvers asks the ultimate question: “What do you want to be?” To which Kamala answers: “I want to be you. Except I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.” Kamala challenges her identity, reasserts her right to make up her identity as she pleases (a very American ideal should it stick to its utopic underpinnings), and makes the decision. Danvers answers, in a very wise manner, “It is not going to turn out the way you think.” Kamala wakes up, breaks out of the cocoon, and stands into the light a blond superhero in a skimpy black outfit, the same one she wanted. She became an American superhero.

      According to Thomas Schatz, in his book Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (1981), genres are privileged story forms in which social tensions are brought to life in narratives and are ritualistically resolved. But popular genres, he explains, are those that can best animate and resolve social tensions through their metaphors. Comic books are popular culture products carrying within their pages iconic characters that proudly represent, and define, the superhero genre. Their power, the thing that makes comics matter, comes from the fact that the superheroes that live in the comic book pages can convincingly resolve social tensions, suppressing, if only marginally, the things that feed off of them. Superheroes are metaphors for a better way of life, for a way to do things the right way. That is why we want to be them, just like Kamala.

     Ms. Marvel is a powerful comic for various reasons, many of which I have explored here. But in the end, we find that Kamala is not so different from the average comic book reader. She wanted to be something different and she succeeded in doing so. Her reasons are complex, not too alien from things we have felt more than once in our lives. She becomes a superhero to fit in, to be a part of something that does not understand her. In looking for normalcy she further distanced herself from it. Her metaphor is one of change, of acceptance, and of diversity. She contemplates the possibility that equality is too naïve an aspiration. Instead she represents an alternative. In a world where identity can label heroes and villains too freely, Kamala speaks for diversity as a superpower rather than a weakness. For Kamala the word Muslim does not mean terrorist or not-normal, it means superhero.

Language and Myth in Comic Books

By: Gabriel Alejandro

"And in spite of current evidence to the contrary, actions do not rule the world... words do."

-Jonathan Hickman, East of West issue 11

     Whenever we hear the word “myth” being used, it often conveys one of two things: a negative charge against another’s basis for an argument or belief; or as a reference to the Greek gods that once inhabited Mount Olympus. We often forget that at the core of every myth lies a reality which, after the process of “mythification,” acquires new dimensions for its target audience. What distinguishes myth from fiction is that its elements (characters, setting, events, etc.) often resonate with the audience’s life experience and thus can become a valid explanation for that which cannot be easily understood or explained. Myths began as oral traditions, with each narrator adding something from their own personal undergoing to the general mythos. This was and still is possible due to language (either oral or written) and its conventions, which allows for different versions to deviate from the standard and still be accepted as part of a whole. Today, the same language mechanisms that allowed for the dissemination of classical myths are alive and well in the comic book medium, thus granting them a special place in modern culture

Language theory

     In order to proceed, we must begin with the late literary critic Terrence Hawkes’ take on myth: “All myths, that is, have their grounding in the actual generalized experience of [ancient] peoples, and represent their attempts to impose a satisfactory, graspable, humanizing shape on it” (Structuralism and Semiotics 13). This refers to a tendency in human history to bricolage or, in other words, use a familiar word for something alien. Just try to remember those bad movies where a native from some jungle is taken to a city for the first time and refers to a car as a “metal horse.” The native, taken from his setting (and language), employs a defense mechanism of sorts, in which he tries to understand the new world by means of his own language. This mechanism, also used in myth-making, is a way of coping with unknown events through metaphorical language, or “... to deal with the world, that is, not directly but at a remove” (Hawkes 15). For a while it was also referred to as “the primitive mind” by language scholars and thus underestimated its historical value. It was not until the French anthropologist Claude Lévi‑Strauss’ study, which took myths beyond “child-like play” and into a more “sophisticated relationship with the world,” that scholars began to view myths as portals into the past.

Comic book mythos

     Lévi-Strauss study focused on how myths, and the language they are built upon, echo a particular point in time’s surroundings. His concern was “… ultimately with the extent to which the structures of myths prove actually formative as well as reflective of men’s minds...” (Hawkes 41). In this aspect, we can witness how the language –dialogue, names, and imagery– of myths reflect a particular social and/or historic context, depending on their moment of conception. Furthermore, we can also make the jump into comic books, where some of our most beloved characters were created out of historic events. In With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story documentary, Stan Lee explains the birth of many of Marvel’s superheroes. In all of these instances, the character’s raison d'être mirrored a particular language from the times: In the early sixties (1962), the Hulk was born amid nuclear fears and proliferation of words such as “atomic,” and “radiation,” elements with which Bruce Banner worked with and suffered from respectively. A year later (1963), Iron Man was first published among the hatred for the U.S. military industrial complex. The name itself, Iron, being a clear signifier of the struggle. A few more years down the road, The Silver Surfer (1966) was the answer to the flower power movement. A pacifist alien who mediates between a destroyer of worlds and its victims. The list goes on and on.

     It must be said that language is not limited to the written word. Images and symbols also figure into what is known as semiology, or the study of meaning-making. In one of the clearest examples, Captain America’s name stands for an infinite set of ideals of the North American nation. Moreover, his appearance in 1940, during the lead-up years to the U.S.’s involvement in World War II, made him a symbol for the inevitable. The first issue, which showed the Captain punching Adolf Hitler in the face, sold out immediately and was met with patriotic fervor. Beyond Hitler, the Captain battled enemies such as the “Red” Skull, shown with a swastika in the above picture. The Red Skull’s name is not only a literary reminder of the red scare that spanned almost four decades (from 1919 to 1954), but it is also a visual reminder of it.

Modern Times

      This language recourse is still very much present in comic books today. Recently, Rick Remender’s run of Captain America introduced a new villain called Dr. Mindbubbles, another post-Captain America super-soldier failed experiment with the particularity that the serum used on him was laced with the drug known as LSD. On this occasion, the semiology transports us to a time when drugs were not perceived as entirely evil and the U.S. government studied its benefits for personal gain. One may ask then: Is Remender fifty years too late with the character? The answer is no. Remender’s character comes at a time when the legality of some drugs is being contested in the U.S., and the language used in the arguments both for and against echoes the language of the past. The character is then validated by the previous and current historical contexts, or as Roland Barthes notes in his book Mythologies, “…the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth” (113). This tool of language then allows for the myth to be accepted by contemporaries for its factual background and passed on to future generations for its historical value.

Popular acceptance

      The acceptance of these comic book myths also lies within the realm of language. Two basic concepts, the langue and parole, establish the glass through which these myths must be seen. In language, langue stands for language as-is, its rules and “correctness.” On the other hand, the parole stands for its everyday use, filled with mistakes, variations, and alterations. As with language, these myths stem out of a reality that can be seen as a langue. Thus, the variations, reinterpretations, and reimagining of past or current events lie within the parole. The public’s acceptance then comes of how close the myth can come to the reality without it actually being the reality. The more elements of reality the myth has, the better. If it has less, then it is just fantasy.

      Nowadays it is not even necessary to even purchase a comic book in order to know who Superman is, or how Captain America came to be. These characters have withstood the test of time, but they have not done it on their own. Every couple of years a new voice comes to carry the superhero myth in the form of writers. The “magicians” as Alan Moore would say, are tasked with the duty of breathing life into the characters and often take from personal experiences to shape their contributions. As with myths and their oral counterparts, comic book writers take from an established tradition to which they must answer to, but can also add to the story with some restrictions. The parameters are established by the language of each character at its moment of creation, which define its nature and myth. Writers then provide readers with a more updated language, one that reflects his or her contextual setting, and the public decides whether to accept it or not into the mythos. This, again, is possible due to language conventions and concepts such as langue and parole, which allow for an immovable canon to exist under unlimited variations of it. As time passes, the origins of our characters are questioned less and the focus shifts to where they are situated in the now. As long as there is a language to fill the pages with stories, comic book characters will continue to exist as an alternative to our reality.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier- Endorsing Good Wars

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

      Is World War II still the Good War? This was the title of an Adam Kirsch New York Times article exploring just that, the goodness of the Second World War. It came out in March 2011, when Iraq and Afghanistan had pushed Americans to question the extent of confidence a country could extended towards military might and strategy in the twenty first century. Militarism as a virtue, as a primary national value, seemed to be dwindling in representational prowess. The distance breached between morality on the home front and morality on the battlefield had broadened much to the disadvantage of war as an American ideal. Fighting in the Middle East made military conflict an impersonal experience, much detached from the cohesiveness of the American experience. More importantly, it became its own entity, with its own politics and its own history. In other words, it went opposite the Second World War’s route, that of war as the defining principle of American society. Kirsch will conclude that World War II will stay “good” so long as it stays living history. Living history, in turn, can instruct, it can still impart teachings of its own and tell people that there actually is a right way to conduct war. Of course, Kirsch explains that such histories need to take into account ambiguities and morally gray areas. But when memory is so highly elevated as to be considered near mythical, then, we have another thing entirely. War was “good” back then. Therefore, war can still be “good”. And Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) endorses just that idea.

      Captain America means many things, but most of them rely on his war to make sense. The Second World War lives through Steve Rogers the same way Steve Rogers lives through it. It might make the character unstuck in time and it might keep him from being a more universal metaphor for war in America, but it keeps the war’s memory fairly grounded in what Kirsch referred to as living history. The character’s many discourses have been touched upon before. He upholds conservative politics, endorses a continued state of war, exalts ultra-patriotism, and survives as a testament to the goodness of the Second World War. These things hold true in the movie. 

      Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Captain America: The Winter Soldier keeps with Captain America’s longstanding character conventions and gives us a fairly safe war movie. Rogers is now a part of SHIELD, just in time to watch it fall into the hands of HYDRA. In true sequel fashion, old enemies continue to haunt Rogers. HYDRA remains the Nazi stand-in par excellence (if HYDRA is not an offshoot of Nazism then nothing is), and is the main villain of the story. Captain America favorites such as Arnim Zola and obscure villains such as The Leaper pop up to keep true followers anxious for more. But it is the Winter Soldier that makes the movie stand above standard superhero fare. The character contrasts so starkly with Rogers that the whole HYDRA plot could have been scrapped so as to focus entirely on the Winter Soldier. In fact, the Winter Soldier is more a secondary story arc playing to the overarching plot that deals with war on a more general level. 

       The inclusion of the Winter Soldier could have been an interesting counterweight to the discourses of old residing in Rogers. The Winter Soldier, created by Ed Brubaker (who makes a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the film) is revealed as Roger’s lost sidekick, Bucky. Brubaker broke one of the only rules Marvel comics resisted touching (only Bucky stays dead) to make Captain America face his war with an added sense of ambiguity that judges his sense of being as superficial and overtly simplistic. In the comics, when the long lost sidekick returns as a Soviet-trained super-soldier Rogers knows he not only faces Bucky but the war that turned him against America.

     Bucky’s Cold War turns history into a lesson that descends upon Rogers and lectures him on the darkness American history carried out of the Second World War. He distorts the idea of goodness in war by ridding himself of the conflict that grounded him in a bygone era that barely resonated later on. Captain America slept through the Cold War, conveniently frozen at the bottom of the ocean so as not to witness the United States fall into hysteria, anti-communist paranoia, and proxy wars that strayed farther still from the mythic principles of World War II. It was a time Rogers could very well find war to be at its most un-American. But the fact he slept through it meant his example, and that of the Second World War, did not shine bright enough to keep America from derailing into morally ambiguous territories. The Cold War could not be saved by the Good War because it was frozen in time, a memory that sought shelter rather than facing the realities of a world dictated by nuclear politics. So why not right that wrong with Captain America and a big silver screen production that pits him against a villain borne out of the Cold War?

     That Rogers faces the Winter Soldier can be seen as just that, an attempt to save the Cold War after the fact. Captain America, unfrozen, looks back into the history that pushes the Winter Soldier into the will of HYDRA and sees an opportunity to once again prove his war’s might can save all wars, turn them good. All throughout the movie the audience is subjected to scenes of Rogers visiting museum exhibits dedicated to himself, his old uniform in display. Once we see the old uniform standing above a display of the Howling Commandos, we know that, in the end, Captain America will revert to that uniform (not a suit) and go into battle as a World War II soldier first and a superhero second.

     It is never clear which war weighs more on the Winter Soldier throughout the movie. Arnim Zola is the Winter Soldier’s creator in the film, more a Nazi than a Soviet, but the movie does stress his secret Soviet assassin past. The fact Zola plays Winter Soldier’s Frankenstein keeps the character between wars. He is the darkness between. The thing war is capable of but should not be. Either way, it falls to Captain America to prove that his war, one no one questions as being his, can save both the day and the idea that war can still be a virtue if not a moral responsibility. And keeping to our expectations, the day and war is saved, and very convincingly. Captain America in his old uniform explodes on scene as a war god, the ultimate authority on militarism and how Americans should interact with its war powers. So, is World War II still the Good War? The answer is obvious if you are Captain America. Can War, in all its dimensions, be Good forevermore? Yes, but only if it follows in the footsteps of the Second World War.

Batman #29: The Dark Knight Rises Again and Meets Gotham City

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

      Retelling old tales means, up to a point, updating myths. Making them make sense in the present. But it does not mean they stopped making sense in the first place. New generations deserve to know their heroes' origin stories. In them we find elements that bring us closer to the hero, fictional paths that coincide with real life, and personal parallels that speak to the similarities between us and the men and women whose feats we read about. Joseph Campbell, in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, says, “the effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world.” Following Campbell’s words, a hero’s birth can be argued as the beginning of life, provided we acknowledge that a hero’s origin is not necessarily expected to begin at the actual biological birth of the character. Instead it most often comes out of a traumatic event that obliterates what the character previously believed was the absolute definition of life. Trauma in the world of the comic book separates the normal from the spectacular. But it also establishes that the spectacular has a price. So, from the ashes of the previous life the hero is expected to rise like a phoenix, carrying the original trauma and converting it into the new origin, the thing that gives the hero’s life purpose.

     Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman run seems to have a deep understanding of what it means to carry trauma as a symbol close to the hero’s chest. In Batman #29 Snyder brings the second part of the Zero Year storyline, Dark City, to a close. After Snyder retells the origin of the Joker and Gotham blacks out after the Riddler turns the city into an actual riddle, Batman must face the possibility his humanity can truly interfere with his success as a superhero. And a superhero he is, although readers often forget the man behind the mask is no more super than the people he has sworn to protect.

     What is interesting with Batman #29 is that Batman is improvising. The road Snyder’s Dark Knight traverses is paved with mistakes. And those mistakes are never made by Bruce Wayne, the all too human alter ego of the Batman. Snyder goes lengths to show that the hero’s failures and mistakes belong entirely to the costume and not the man beneath it. As the Riddler plans to cripple Gotham and let an impending hurricane flood the city with no functioning security measures due to the blackout, Batman is seen catching up rather than meeting his opponent on an equal state of affairs.

     Zero Year, DC Comic’s reinterpretation of Batman’s origin, is framed up to this point as a set of circumstances that force a young Bruce Wayne to choose between two identities. One supposes a very limited approach to crime fighting (meaning staying as Bruce Wayne), and the other entails becoming an eternal symbol that haunts Gotham into submission and forces it to embrace order (becoming Batman). Now, what will shape this new identity is how Batman/Bruce Wayne relates to Gotham City. DC’s current run keeps Batman’s official origin mostly intact. Martha and Thomas Wayne are murdered in Crime Alley after a mugging gone wrong leaves Bruce a rich orphan. Crime Alley is the “birth place” of the Batman, the place the new life begins and where its traumas make Bruce become a Bat. In this new life Gotham City is Batman’s new father, creating the hero it needed out of the violence the city itself enabled.

 
     Snyder’s Gotham is a dangerous victim as opposed to being another criminal keeping its citizens under the influence of its vices. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) falls towards the latter. More directly resembling New York (Twin Towers included), Miller’s Gotham is an accomplice to crime. It reminds an old Bruce Wayne that it needs Batman’s supervision or it will relapse into chaos (which is what happens in the book). Miller’s Batman accepts his responsibility as a psychological necessity that feeds both him and the city. Gotham’s rain, Miller’s Batman says, “is a baptism.” And with it he is born again.

     On the other hand, Snyder’s Batman becomes the city’s savior. He still cannot claim Gotham as his, a thing Miller’s Batman does, but saving it means it will be in his debt. Snyder’s Gotham delves into crime just enough to create the hero it needs and not the other way around. Saving the city, then, becomes a rite of passage that turns Batman into Gotham’s sole keeper. Accepting responsibility for it is one of the ways Snyder’s Batman will soon possess Gotham the same way Superman possesses Metropolis. When the Riddler succeeds at exploding Gotham’s retaining walls, for example, and the ocean’s water floods the city in the middle of a hurricane Batman lays the blame on himself. He let the bomb’s signal jammer get lost in a fight against another villain called Doctor Death. He was too late to solve the riddle. But most importantly, he failed to live up to the symbol, to the bat. Being Batman meant Gotham City would be safe. Failing keeps Batman further away from his connection to Gotham. While destroying the machinery that boosts the explosives’ signal Batman says, “I should’ve listened, Gordon! I should’ve taken the call! There’d be no death! There’d be none of this! It’s my fault Gordon! I saw it wrong! You hear me!”

     In the frenzy of Gotham’s imminent destruction it is important that Batman accept the consequences of his initial failures. They are not final yet. For when he saves Gotham, and Gotham will be saved, his failures will become that which brings Batman and the City closer to each other, creating a sense of dependency that both defines and gives each a sense of belonging. In the end, Gotham will be Batman just as Batman will be Gotham. Gotham created the Batman so it could survive. Batman, when he earns the city, will reshape it in his image so that his new reality, the beginning of the new life, can find everlasting purpose, a justification for continued existence. One cannot exist without the other now. And Batman knows that his life ends when Gotham falls.

El héroe post-9/11: Ex Machina, superhéroes sin capas y el lamento por la caída de las Torres Gemelas

Por: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

     Todo evento traumático conlleva un periodo de lamentación, de luto y de confusión. Cuando las Torres Gemelas cayeron el 11 de septiembre de 2001 el lamento fue inmediato y vino acompañado de interrogantes dirigidas al porqué del ataque. Una de las preguntas más interesantes que nació de ese lamento, que también surgió tras el ataque japonés a Pearl Harbor, fue el siguiente: ¿cómo se permitió que esto ocurriera? La pregunta sugiere una acusación de negligencia militar. Estados Unidos tenía la tecnología, la malicia, para contrarrestar no solo ese ataque pero cualquier otro que se dirigiera contra la nación. Sin entrar en mucho detalle, la respuesta más o menos corrió por antiguas avenidas discursivas de guerras pasadas. Estados Unidos era un gigante durmiente que el Medio Oriente acababa de despertar. Pero llegar a esa respuesta (la misma que se dio en la Segunda Guerra Mundial) conllevó un tiempo prolongado de lamentación y de luto. Lo mismo pasó en el mundo de los comics.

      Un mes después de la caída de las Torres, Dark Horse, Image, DC y Marvel publican una serie de libros conmemorativos donde sus héroes explican el por qué no pudieron parar el ataque contra las Torres Gemelas. Lo hicieron porque sabían que no podían engañar al lector o ignorar el evento, mucho menos cambiarlo. La mayoría de los héroes de Marvel viven en Nueva York. Spider-Man sólo podía parar el ataque sin mencionar que los Fantastic Four también viven en la ciudad. Pero no ocurrió, y los comics no podían pedir una suspensión tan aguda de la credibilidad de sus historias al hacer que sus héroes interviniesen en los ataques. No quedaba más que lamentar.

      En Amazing Spider-Man #36, escrito por Michael Straczynski, Spider-Man presencia la caída de las Torres. Al bajar a las ruinas, Spider-Man encuentra ciudadanos perdidos, dados al rencor de lo sucedido. De ese enojo nace el cuestionamiento del héroe, de su ignorancia. Spider-Man, contemplativo y derrotado, solo puede decir We didn’t know. Como única alternativa, Spider-Man pasa a ayudar a los policías y a los bomberos. En el proceso se da cuenta de que los héroes reales del evento no son seres con capas ni semi-dioses americanos. Son seres humanos que simplemente hacían su trabajo. Esta va a ser la fórmula de la gran mayoría de las historias conmemorativas del evento. Un héroe clásico reconoce, valida, el heroísmo del hombre común después de lamentar su incapacidad de no poder haber previsto el ataque a las Torres. De la falla del mito sale la validación del nuevo héroe.

 

      Ahora, quizás una de las historias más interesante suscrita a la fórmula le pertenece a Superman. Unreal, escrito por Steven T. Seagle, empieza de forma sencilla: recordándole al lector las habilidades de Superman. Puede ignorar los principios de la física, respirar en el vacío del espacio, volar contra todo sentido de lógica aeronáutica e inspirar a personas comunes a ser más de lo que son. Pero, en sus palabras, “the one thing I cannot do is break free from the fictional pages I live and breath…become real in times of crisis…and right the wrongs of an unjust world”. Estas líneas parecen reafirmar que el destino del héroe americano recae en un acto absoluto de lamentación, sin espacio para la acción o incluso venganza contra aquellos que hicieron de la nación una víctima.

     Es en este contexto que entra Ex Machina (2004-2010) de Brian K. Vaughan y Tony Harris, la historia de un héroe que repensó los límites de su trauma y los convirtió en una reacción de responsabilidad legal. La historia de un héroe que decidió asumir la responsabilidad que Superman nunca se atrevió tocar, la de ser alcalde de su ciudad.

 

     Según Jeff Geers, “the post-9/11 hero is stuck within the disaster (of the Twin Towers), working within the limitations of the system to rebuild and repair it”. De tal forma comienza Ex Machina. El comic cuenta la historia de Mitchell Hundred, un superhéroe que tiene la habilidad de hablar y controlar todo tipo de máquinas. Adquiere el poder tras encontrar un mecanismo extradimensional debajo del Brooklyn Bridge. El mecanismo explota y le da el poder a Hundred. Su origin story se atiene a lo real. Hundred se llama a sí mismo The Great Machine y su disfraz lo hace ver como un piloto. Usa un jetpack para volar. Su presencia en Manhattan crea el mismo debate que persigue a Batman, el de la necesidad de un vigilante que trabaje fuera de los parámetros legales del estado. Pero todo cambia cuando rescata una de las Torres Gemelas el 11 de septiembre de 2001. The Great Machine se convierte en el héroe que el 11 de septiembre nunca tuvo. Antes del evento, en julio 4 de 2001, Hundred se había revelado como The Great Machine y había anunciado su candidatura para alcalde de Nueva York. Los ataques hacen que Hundred regrese a su disfraz. Su intervención eleva su campaña y en noviembre de 2001 es electo alcalde de Nueva York.

     Regresando a Geers, el héroe post-desastre es esencialmente impotente: es incapaz de prevenir el desastre pero tampoco puede corregirlo del todo. En efecto, el héroe se rinde ante las limitaciones reales del ser humano. La narración de Hundred afirma este punto. Hundred dice:
 
     I made it back to Ground Zero ninety minutes after I diverted the second plane…I tried 
     to help everyone who was trapped by the fire. I tried to convince the jumpers to hold 
     on, but…but people don’t listen to the goddamn “Great Machine” the way…Whatever, I 

     tried to catch them, but there were so many. I’m not that fast, not that strong.

     Hundred prefiere recordar su intervención como una fallida en vez de una digna de la figura que representa. El que rescató una de las Torres no importa. El lamento por la que calló es más importante. Por eso Ex Machina sugiere que después de 9/11 parece irresponsable esperar que el superhéroe lo arregle todo. El héroe post-desastre no puede reparar una cultura traumatizada. Su ideal utópico cae ante la realidad de su humanidad. Matthew Wolf-Meyer dice, “superpowered attempts at utopia fail not due to a weakness of the superhero, but because the superhero is basically a representative of conservative social order”. 
 

       Siguiendo lo expuesto por Wolf-Meyer, Ex Machina supone el reconocimiento de un superhéroe que no puede seguir representando el ideal utópico de seguridad continua al que se adscriben los héroes clásicos de Marvel y DC. Al representar un orden social conservador, el héroe tiene que subyugarse a una representatividad mayor encontrada en los mecanismos del estado y en los puestos que lo mantienen funcionando. En efecto, el gobierno es la única máquina fuera del alcance de los poderes de The Great Machine. Por eso el personaje acoge el puesto de alcalde como su nuevo alter ego. Sin él es un ciudadano más y como The Great Machine no puede realizar los cambios que la ciudad requiere. (Por eso, por ejemplo, la guerra que declara Batman contra el crimen es eterna, porque Batman solo reacciona ante el problema, no lo intenta cambiar a un nivel fundamental. Atacar el problema de raíz implicaría que Bruce Wayne se insertara en una posición de poder político. Significaría el fin de Batman.)

      Ahora, Hundred tiene una relación bastante problemática con sus poderes después de ser electo. En uno de los story arcs del comic, Hundred contempla cancelar una protesta anti-guerra convocada para el área Downtown de Manhattan. Después de 9/11 congregaciones sustanciales de gente en un lugar determinado se consideran una situación de riesgo, un posible blanco para un ataque terrorista. Hundred decide no cancelar el permiso. Cabe destacar que Hundred es pintado como un centrista bastante inclinada hacia la Izquierda. Entre las situaciones que desata encuentra el matrimonio de una pareja de bomberos gay, la legalización de la marihuana (que acaba de forma ambigua pero revela que Hundred la fuma) y la censura de una obra de arte que tiene la palabra “nigger” sobreimpuesta sobre la figura de Abraham Lincoln. Cada controversia resulta en una victoria liberal, pero los discursos desenterrados del diálogo gravitan más hacia el centro. Hundred mantendrá que todo es cuestión de balances. Unas libertades no pueden atentar contra otras.

 

      En el caso de la manifestación anti-guerra Hundred sufre la consecuencia de ser un liberal muy utópico. Una bomba de gas tóxico explota en la demostración y muere una cantidad preocupante de manifestantes. El ataque hace eco en las ansiedades que salieron del 11 de septiembre y Hundred ahora tiene que pensar como gobernante en vez de superhéroe. De ese pensar sale el que la ciudad, bajo órdenes de su alcalde, adopte una política limitada de surveillance. Cada estación de tren contiene una cámara digital que identifica posibles sospechosos. Pero el esfuerzo no rinde fruto. Hundred decide retornar a sus poderes como excepción a la regla que él mismo se impuso al ser electo, la de no intervenir como The Great Machine mientras esté en poder. Hundred atrapa al responsable, un residente legal de la ciudad que declara sus intenciones de culminar lo que Hundred interrumpió el 11 de septiembre. Pero el arresto del terrorista resulta en una victoria vacía, una repetición a menor escala del 11 de septiembre. Hundred no previene el ataque, su reacción viene después de la violencia. Tal parece que el espectro de la Torre que no rescató aun persigue a Hundred, estableciendo paralelos entre su incapacidad de prevenir otro ataque y la mentalidad que hizo posible la falta de acción que caracterizó los eventos del 11 de septiembre. La moral de la historia parece ser que después de 9/11 cada acción heroica es seguida por una reacción inversamente destructiva. El comic reafirma la impotencia del héroe y valida su decisión de abandonar el disfraz por uno que más fielmente representa los límites de nuestra humanidad.
 

      En fin, Ex Machina termina siendo la historia de un héroe que sale del lamento post-traumático de la caída de las Torres Gemelas. Sus acciones son medidas por traumas y ansiedades culturales que hicieron del superhéroe americano una víctima más del ataque terrorista del 11 de septiembre de 2001. The Great Machine fue un héroe más que fracasó. Un héroe que aunque responde al lamento de Superman de no poder salir de las páginas a rescatar a su lector reacciona ante la ficción de su condición al elevar su lamento a un nivel de autoridad más problemático. El héroe post-9/11 no tiene capa. Usa corbata y chaleco y es electo por el pueblo. Ahora es parte del gobierno y nace de un mito nuevo que exige que sus héroes sean víctimas perseguidas por las sombras de las Torres Gemelas.

12 Years a Slave: Solomon Northup y la esclavitud en retrospectiva

Por: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis

      Hijo de un esclavo libre. Tal fue la condición de vida de Solomon Northup, hijo de un esclavo libre. La frase parece suscribirse a una idea cruel basada en la suerte. O naces hijo o hija de un esclavo libre, o naces hijo o hija de un esclavo. Todo concepto de libertad, para la población negra de los Estados Unidos en el siglo XIX, parecía recaer en caprichos de buena o mala fortuna. La suerte, entonces, se tornó geográfica en los Estados Unidos del siglo XIX. El Norte estadounidense practicaba una filosofía anti-esclavista problemática, ya que no todo norteño pensaba que el gobierno debía intervenir en los asuntos económicos del Sur. Incluso, el Norte prefería una relación indirecta con el gobierno, delegando por niveles bajos de intervención en el desarrollo de la economía en general. El Norte, a su propia manera, era señalado como engendrador de su propia clase de esclavitud: la del trabajador industrial. Hombre que laboraba en fábricas, moviendo máquinas y empacando mercancía que apenas podía costear.

      El Sur, entonces, se convirtió en el villano de la historia. Esclavista y conservador, el Sur sufrió de muy poca aceptación entre estados dados a la industria ya que suponían una alternativa rudimentaria al capitalismo, una expresión menor. Su carácter conservador mantenía concepciones raciales anticuadas que mantuvieron a miles de hombre y mujeres de tez negra bajo el régimen de la labor forzada. Este es el contexto en el cual se inserta Solomon Northup.

      Proveniente de Nueva York, Northup era un violinista y un granjero de familia con propiedades. Era cercano a ser un ciudadano más entre muchos que no pesaban el valor de su persona dado su color de piel. Nueva York era bastante progresivo en asuntos raciales. Quizás de forma forzada ya que la ciudad de Nueva York nació de una diversidad humana potente que gravitó al área donde se encuentra la ciudad por necesidad, su cultura portuaria responsable por la gravedad de su heterogeneidad.

      En 1841, Northup fue solicitado como violinista por un dúo de músicos de camino a Washington D.C. para seguir su gira musical. Pero los músicos resultaron ser esclavistas en búsqueda de mercancía. Los músicos endrogaron a Northup en D.C. y lo vendieron como esclavo. Fue enviado a New Orleans como mercancía humana donde fue comprado por un dueño de plantación en la región de Red River en Luisiana. Solomon Northup fue esclavo por 12 años. Northup intentó escapar, intentó contactar a su familia por cartas y hasta arriesgó su vida clamando por la simpatía de hombres de influencia en el Sur con la esperanza de que se apiadaran de él y abogaran por su caso de venta como uno ilegal. En efecto lo era. La ley mantenía que ningún hombre negro documentado como libre podía ser esclavizado. Pero los prejuicios de la época y las paradojas del momento aun en el Norte hicieron posible doce años de esclavitud para un hombre libre.

     Northup logró regresar a su familia de forma legal, rescatado por funcionarios del gobierno de Nueva York que abogaron por su caso. Todos eran blancos. Northup pasó a ser una voz paradigmática en la lucha contra la esclavitud y publicó su historia para que futuras generaciones no olvidaran las crueldades infrahumanas de la esclavitud. Bajo otro juego de suerte, en este caso echada en contra de Northup, Harriet Beecher Stowe ya había publicado Uncle Tom’s Cabin, en 1852 (un año antes que la narración de Northup). El libro pasó a ser la narración más leída sobre la esclavitud y hasta eclipsó las memorias de Northup, 12 Years a Slave, que vinieron un año después. Añadiendo sal a la herida, la novela de Stowe era basada en personajes creados por ella. La narración de Northup es verídica y basada en él. Pero fue Uncle Tom’s Cabin el libro que, según Will Kaufman, “sentó las bases de la Guerra Civil”.

      12 Years a Slave se convirtió en una película, estrenada en el 2013. Ha sido nominada para varios premios aparte de los que ya ha ganado. El filme presenta imágenes ya conocidas sobre el trato injusto hacia los esclavos y la mentalidad conservadora del momento que se convirtió en metáfora casi absoluta de la maldad. Madres separadas de hijos comprados por esclavistas, secuencias de latigazos por no cumplir las labores del día a niveles requeridos de casi perfección y tensiones sexuales entre esclavistas y sus esclavas componen la experiencia cinematográfica. Hacen de la esclavitud una memoria entretejida con la identidad de la nación, de su proceso de crecimiento y madurez. Pero más interesante aun, mantienen que las ideas que dieron forma a esa industria permanecen y contemplan la maleabilidad del racismo, su capacidad para adaptarse y seguir relevante como pensamiento.

     La historia de Northup no es de gran conocimiento. No se ha insertado en la cultura popular de la nación. No es de conocimiento común y el filme no parece ser lo impactante que pudo haber sido para la promulgación de sus memorias. Quizás es un caso muy extraño. Muy inusual para ser entendido fuera de lo que conocemos como justicia o derecho humano. Quizás da muy cerca a las heridas cuyo dolor la nación ha intentado suprimir. En todo caso, la historia de Solomon Northup invita a re-contemplar las industria de la esclavitud como una más siniestra de lo ya pensada. Y quizás es en esa contemplación donde nos debemos preguntar en qué medida debemos seguir recordando la esclavitud, y si en efecto es simplemente una memoria lejana o el recuento de un proceso que aún persiste, adaptándose a nuestros tiempos bajo otros pretextos.