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January 4, 2006

brokeback boondock

I've been wanting to write about The Boondocks, but, you know, alas and alack and all that. The following posting in the Afrofuturism yahoogroup (about a range of things, including the Boondocks and Richard Pryor and the loa that might be writing each or none) offered a low-sress way in.

[the Boondocks] damned-well *should* have happened back in the mid-90s when the iron was hot and he first developed his lines of reasoning and critique -- back when a public enemy record *and* a boondocks animated series would have been culturally *unstoppable.*

the boondocks (static and full-motion) is a labor of love for a specific black sociopolitical demographic, not a force for change. as such, it is "white media" so to speak. c'mon, the whole show is farmed out to low-wage korean animators like any other contemporary cartoon that isn't *proud* of low-fi visuals (12 oz. Mouse, ATHF, etc.)

I was curious as to where folks thought a show like the Boondocks might have aired 10 years ago. The great answer from the list?

I think that liquid television-era MTV would have been the best candidate for the boondocks... and it would have worked well in the blipvert format of that show -- look how peter chung finally cashed in on aeon flux almost a decade later.

The list's notion of the Boondocks as a demographic coming-out-party struck a chord, as it historicized the show the right way and also encapsulated what I like/don't like about it. What's the demo? Well, their fantasy exemplars (in my experience at least) are crotchety, middle-aged, straight dudes with vaguely Long Island associations. (The list's Public Enemy name-check was pretty apt.) These guys are post-Civil Rights, old enough to have arc'd pre and post hip hop. Party affiliations are largely "Democratic" but they're also disaffected and prone to third party ambitions. Ironic Sharpton protest voters. College educated and either southern-born and non-HBCU educated, or northern-born and HBCU educated, which is to say, their backstory includes an orthogonal passage through a membrane structuring distinct black "success" strata. Socially liberal in the way anyone who lived in the shadow of bad old 70s-80s New York City is socially liberal, socially conservative in other ways (crime & punishment, for example) for the same reason. (Homophobic just because.) Complicated, formative relationships to (not being) one of the cool kids in high school. Deep investment in the notion that black self-criticism and self-reliance have magical, anti-genocidal powers. These are products of integration who nonetheless have heavy romantic entanglements with an idealized, pre-integration "community." In afrofuturistic terms they subscribe to a Darwinian/Zizekian racial reading of the The Matrix (first movie, at least) where black superpowers not only only work in the zone of our oppression, but also require said oppression in the first place. For the Zizekian Matrixian hero (both neo and morpheus), that means all progress requires some literal skin in the game, some act of christ-like self sacrifice. That or change just weakens you, robs you of your powers, advances the common good but reduces the singular you to nostalgia. (Older, parallel comic book framesets - Krypton must be destroyed for there to be a superman; our mutations don't make us freaks but heroes, no bad heart, no motivation to build the supersuit, and so on.)

As media producers, these dudes are so skilled at a jokey, ecumenical form of racial jujitsu precisely because their best friends once upon a time really were cosmopolitan white men or white institutions, either literally in the fifth grade or professionally later. (I have seen the enemy and he is that dumb kid I used to play with.) That the Boondocks is on Adult Swim is just part of what one list poster called the Boondocks' "lethal weaponizaton" - black show on a white network. It also seems to me to extend the lifespan of a triumphal, integrationist, Kirk/Spock-slash meme that was in the air last year about Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan. The meme goes like this: for every disaffected black genius there is one true white male bestest-pal/collaborator/network out there (ie. a Neal) in whose safe, strong arms and unwavering gaze the aforementioned black genius will find their national voice. As opposed to the classic, pre-post Civil Rights relation of cynical seduction and patronage, the Chappelle/Brennan diad exists not to provide material support but to minimize the troubling distractions that can crop up for a black genius while in the loving embrace of a black bestest-pal/network/collaborator, which is to say, in the arms of a brOther. (Is there a more fraught relationship than that between two unrelated, middle aged, high-achieving black men not interested in fucking each other? White supremacy has so evolved that "race" is increasingly expressed only while we're facing each other, while our relationships with the right white people become oases of rest and calm.)

In terms of lethal networks, one can conceive of BET loving you like a brother, but only in a School Daze sense, which is to say, after a course of physical abuse and in the service of arcane, crypto-greco-egyptian ritual. (Bob Johnson will also anally rape you, but that's another movie.) FOX only loves you the way your pre-gentrification landlord loves you - as long as the rent is on time, and if you don't ask for anything, and only to such time as you can be replaced with a richer/whiter tenant. But the fantasy of being loved and accepted (finally!) by the white boys at Adult Swim or Vertigo or Neal, well, those are what crossover dreams are made of.

The list is right that the determinant open window for when the Boondocks happened wasn't "when would this be culturally unstoppable?" Instead it was: "when would it best cro$$over?" From jump something like the Boondocks has a foundational requirement for distribution on mass, regularly scheduled networks, this even as the show presents as nominally antagonistic to the values of mainstream media in the first place. (Wheels within wheels, doublings and mass media DL, all of which can functionally extend the Dave/Neal K/S riff if one is so inclined.) That mass media love-hate circle gets squared only if the show can find a white distributor who is "open" (the way alleged ex-weedhead Neal was open?) - i.e., if its distributor has roots in debased genres like comics or cartoons, for example, or is a time traveling VC from 1995s, or is an upstart TV network in search of a competitive advantage. If you want to go back in the crate, Van Peeples had to get down with pornographers just to distribute a black movie to black people. Looking at that cast of characters, Adult Swim seems about right in its own weird way

Me, I'm curious to see what happens if the show doesn't pan out ratings wise. This isn't M*A*S*H, so its lifespan isn't going to stretch into decades. What will the white boys from Atlanta do when it stops pull enough eyeballs? Or what if the night starts demo'ing as too ethnic? Adult Swim has put itself on the line as being motivated by more than profit with all the in-you-face, attitudinous inter titles. We'll see if that voice shifts in response to shifting numbers. Maybe that trademark white-text-on-black will blame white audience members for killing the show. Or perhaps it will start hectoring us for not supporting quality, cable television, just the way nobody colored supports jazz except the Japanese.

Posted by ebogjonson in screened, what is B.O.G.?, on January 4, 2006 10:44 PM

Comments

Posted by: TheTruth at January 17, 2007 11:05 PM