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In Class with Hancock:
A Black Family Man's View
A Film Review by Biko Agozino
I have just
seen the box office hit movie, Hancock, with my
two teenage sons and their 12 year old cousin.
As usual, after seeing a movie with the kids, we
engaged in debates about the representations and
subtle messages in the movie. I asked the young
men if they liked the film and they all agreed
that it was a great film. I asked them what they
liked about it and they said that Will Smith was
the greatest superhero ever. Then they asked me
if I liked the movie and I said no that I did
not. Why not? They all asked in unison.
I asked the children to compare Will Smith’s
character with other super heroes played by
white actors. They said that all super heroes
have their nemeses because people are suspicious
of those who have superhuman powers. Many people
dislike Superman and Batman and Spiderman
especially when they are slow to beat the bad
guys or when the bad guys impersonate them and
make it look like the bad things were being done
by the superheroes. Sometimes people dislike the
superhero because they envy the superpower or
because they fear that he may use the same power
to defeat them if they did anything naughty by
themselves. So they were not surprised that
people were complaining about John Hancock in
the movie, it comes with being a superhero.
I asked the young men if they knew of any
superhero who was unemployed, or an alcoholic,
or who slept rough on the streets, or used foul
language, or tried to pinch the bum of women on
the streets or called them bitches, or bullied
children who were bullies, or had no girlfriend
or family or went to prison just to learn how to
say ‘good job’, or chased another man’s wife?
I told them that I suspected that Hollywood used
these stereotypes to send the wrong messages to
young black men and help to continue leading
them astray. Some young black men may see the
movie and believe that abusing large bottles of
whiskey might give them superpowers. These are
common stereotypes of the black man: unemployed,
drunk addict, homeless, no family
responsibility, cursing, ex-convict, childish,
ignorant of his true identity and doing more
harm than good.
Moreover, while he slept rough, it was a white
boy who kicked him to wake him up by the side of
the street to tell him that there were bad guys
that he needed to fight and when he could not be
bothered, the boy called him an asshole, an
insult that almost everyone called him for his
trouble of saving the world from dangerous
criminals who were represented predominantly as
foreigners or as black people while the criminal
bosses were white men.
The young black men who saw the movie with me
protested that Hancock gave up drinking in the
movie. Yes, I agreed, but guess who made him
give up drinking for a while? It was a white man
who did so as if he had no mind of his own.
Moreover, Hancock did not even know who he was,
it was a white woman who defined him for himself
the way white people like to be the ones
defining black people’s identity. I Asked them
if they have ever seen a superhero played by a
white man who did not know who he was until a
black woman revealed the true identity.
Why was Hancock persuaded to accept a prison
term as the only way to win respect when it is
easier to improve the image of anyone by sending
him to the university? In the prison where black
men were over-represented, Hancock had to prove
his superpower status by pushing a man’s head up
the ass of another man (a metaphor for male rape
in prison), by dumbly saying ‘pass’ in the group
therapy sessions, and by magically scoring
baskets from incredible distance as if that was
all black men could do in a world dominated by
ideas of white supremacy.
Why was Hancock not given his own family or
girlfriend in the movie instead of setting him
up to appear as if he was after the white woman
who was married to the white man who pretended
to be his boss and who told him how to dress for
work? He later claimed that the white woman
kissed him after he had tucked her husband into
bed as if he was the nanny or ‘manny’ but that
was no kiss, it was a beating that he got from
the white woman who simply told him that they
were different because she was stronger, blah
blah blah.
Finally, Hancock was persuaded to go to a
different planet to avoid tempting the white
woman who claimed to be his mystical wife as if
getting rid of the black man was the only way to
resolve the sexual desire of white women for the
forbidden fruits of black masculinity. By some
kind of coincidence, John Hancock was the name
of one of the Founding Fathers of America who
was a slave trader, tax dodger and smuggler.
Films like Hancock are rated PG with the
expectation that parents would guide their
children in reading the codes in the movies but
not all parents have the time, skill or interest
to do so adequately. As a result, schools may
have to fill this void by having seminars and
workshops in which popular films will be closely
read and analysed by a students’ film club to
guide students against the negative messages
encoded in films. So PG films should also be
rated SG for School Guidance..
Biko Agozino is a Professor of
Sociology at the University of the West Indies,
St. Augustine. His documentary film, CLR James:
The Black Jacobins Sociology Series is being
serialized by NCC Channels 4 and 11, Trinidad
and Tobago.
bagozino@yahoo.com
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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Civilization: The West and the Rest
By Niall Ferguson
The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? In Civilization: The West and the Rest, bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic. These were the "killer applications" that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, opening global trade routes, exploiting newly discovered scientific laws, evolving a system of representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, and embracing a dynamic work ethic.
Civilization shows just how fewer than a dozen Western empires came to control more than half of humanity and four fifths of the world economy.
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posted 12 July 2008
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