A Lazy Thursday Tod-centric Brain Teaser…
… of sorts, anyway.
A friend just reminded me of this list I made in high school and the common denominators he saw immediately that I didn’t. Reminded of it now, I found myself wondering, “I would never have seen the pattern without him pointing it out, but I wonder if the people at the League would see it immediately?” So I decided to indulge my curiosity.
First, a quick background:
In my junior lit class, our teacher had us list on paper as many heroes as we could think of in thirty seconds. They had to be our heroes, but they could have been heroes from any point in out life. I cannot for the life of me remember the intended purpose of the exercise.
Here is my list:
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Captain Kirk
Dr. Who
Jackie Robinson
Indiana Jones
Charlie Parker
Duke Ellington
Han Solo
Sherlock Holmes
Encyclopedia Brown
Magic Johnson
Daedalus, from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Wynton Marsalis
Batman
Satchel Paige
So there are the ones I rattled off. As I said, I never would have seen the pattern if my friend had not pointed it out to me. Since then, I’ve often wondered to what degree it says something if anything about me, and to what degree it says something if anything about our world.
So, does anyone see the pattern?
Men?Report
My guess as well.Report
Martin Luther King Jr is the only one who actually did anything that couldn’t be reduced to “goofing off” by someone sufficiently grumpy?Report
All are: a) smart and clever, b) audacious, c) pioneers or explorers in various realms, and d) male.Report
Yup.
Plus Creative with a capital ‘C.’Report
There is a maverick or civil-disobedience quality to most of these. “Forget about the law/custom, and do what is RIGHT!” Or, perhaps “border crossers” would be more broadly applicable? (Thinking, for eg, of Wynton Marsalis, who doesn’t fit into the first category for me, but does fit into the 2nd.)
And, well, Kazzy’s got a point. (FWIW, my list of heroes at that age would’ve been mostly men too, with the exception of my grandmother and Birute Galdikas.)Report
Also, as more or less alluded to by Burt, they’re all hypercompetent at something. I think I missed that because I expect heroes to be hypercompetent… but there is definitely a Heinleinian quality to the list as a whole.Report
I saw the pattern once you’d acknowledged one was there, but I don’t know that I would have caught it otherwise. I’ve tried to think of a way to signify that I’ve seen the pattern without giving away the game for everyone else, but I can’t.
I think it is telling, though likely only about your high school self and the influences on you at the time.Report
Ohh, the real-life ones are not white; the cartoon ones are.Report
Also, MLK aside, the black ones are famous as athletes or musicians, while the white ones have less specific talents.Report
I noticed it right away, too. Well, and the “men” part.Report
Wow, I totally missed this.Report
Is it weird that your real life heroes are black, and your fictional heroes are white? I assume that’s not the pattern you meant, but after their gender, it was the first thing I noticed.Report
And I see zic already pointed this out.Report
Zic and Chris beat me to itReport
Yeah, that was pretty fast.
zic, Chris, and (I assume) Scott Fields are all correct: In a list pretty evenly divided between white men and African-American men, all of the white heroes are entirely fictional, and all of the African-American ones are real-life people. (My friend actually took it one step further and noted that the white heroes were fictional men people created by white men, but I’m not sure that’s a necessary step.)
As I said, I’m never entirely sure exactly what or how much to read into this.Report
It means you’re a fictional racist!
(I’m kidding, in case someone takes that seriously.)Report
But a real-life self-loathing white man.Report
Here’s a puzzle for you.
here’s a story I wrote, my last serious professional piece. Tell me the race of the sources in it.Report
Since you ask, I’m going to assume it’s a trick question and the answer is Intuit.
Also, why aren’t you blogging, sic?Report
It’s not a trick question. I don’t know some of them, too.
But these people are all from the military, the most non-discriminatory institution in the country. And I’m very proud that I wrote about them so that, if I did my job well, it would never even cross your mind to wonder.
I’ll leave you to judge.Report
*mutter mutter* that just leaves me thinking of them as white.
*irritated with self*Report
exactly.
Over half are not.Report
From the tundra of TurboTaxia.Report
Mike, do you need a life line, some oxygen, or perhaps an intervention?Report
Hmm? I was just having some innocent fun with Tod’s typo.Report
I’m dyslexic, migrainey stupid, and generally dense.
I still don’t get it.
I hate not getting funny things; typos worst of all.
Are you sure you don’t need an intervention? I was thinking how much fun that might be.Report
I misspelled Inuit as Intuit, which is the name of the company that makes TurboTax.
It was funny.Report
Thanks, Tod, I get it now.
(And I read that as intuit, that you were supposed to intuit race, which was what I’d asked you to do.) Not ‘Inuit’ as in tribe.Report
That the only white men better than the greatest black men are make-believe?
Nawww…Report
Perhaps it points to a dearth of fictional black heros on a par with fictional white heros?Report
Conversely, and slightly more serious than my previous answer, it might speak to how we lionize those black men (and perhaps women) we do elevate to hero status.
For instance, most portrayals of Dr. King are almost cartoonishly shallow. He’s a man who had a dream that kids would play together and argued that racism was bad. It is almost verboten to speak ill of the man, but it is also almost as verboten to speak about him as a complex, nuanced figured (or at least was in many circles, likely the ones you found yourself in during that time of your life). This limited his criticism, but also reduced his greatness.
I think Rosa Parks is actually a more informative example. She is often portrayed as a black woman who was tired so she sat in the front of the bus regardless of the rules. The reality, as I’ve come to understand it, is that her actions were purposeful and deliberate, intended to provoke the sort of reaction and change they ultimately did. But to make her that, to make her a political figure, to give her intellect and purpose and intent… that was too much for many people. It was easy to make her the old lady who didn’t want to move seats than to make her a determined fighter for justice.
This is sort of a long way of saying that, based on your age, you probably saw real world black men lionized one-dimensionally while traditional white heroes were getting raked over the coals in some circles (e.g., Columbus).
I hope this makes sense. If not, I blame Mayonnaise.Report
History is so littered with white, male heros that they’re cheap on the ground. And so the modern heros don’t receive the accolades they deserve.
The difference between Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.Report
And the reality is that Rosa Parks was chosen as a symbol. And was not the first to sit such.
I fault not her courage, as it takes something indeed to be the spotless face — to be the hero,and sign up for it willingly.
But it takes a different courage to be the first one, to do what is right when no one else will.Report
But we don’t talk about Rosa Parks in that way because to empower her with those traits is to make her a far more formidable agent of change. That was hard for the white power dynamic to do, and they were still the ones writing the history books, even if they themselves were not active practitioners of racism.
So they’ll give us Parks and King, deny us Malcolm, and allow room for debate on “controversial” figures like Columbus. There aren’t many “controversial” black heroes, since those who the white majority embrace simply become heroes and those who they reject simply become villains. Ultimately, they are denied their nuance and their full humanity, reducing them ultimately to little more than fictional representations of real people. Which is why their presence on a list of white fictional men makes sense in a weird sort of way.Report
This is almost certainly the reason.Report
Thanks for the credit, Tod. That was the pattern I saw.
As others have noted, I do think the pattern reveals an absence of black heroic figures in fiction, especially fiction geared toward high schoolers.
Why none of your living heroes were white is harder to parse. Zic’s idea that they are so numerous as to become almost commonplace is an interesting one I’ll have to think about.Report
I think it says more about our media than it does about you specifically – there aren’t an awful lot of black main characters in media. I’d say this is something that’s problematic.Report
Not looking at the comments, before writing (trust me) but in addition to all being men, all the actual human beings are black. All the fictional characters are white.Report
Hooray. Let the armchair psychoanalyzing begin!Report
You’re obviously not racially colorblind. So … you’re a real racist. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.
Tod obviously has a racial blind spot at the conscious level, but it’s a reaction to his inherent racism at the unconscious level: he thinks only fictional white guys can compare to real black guys. So he’s a self-hating Caucasian.Report
I probably do this, too.
And Tod and I hold jazz in common.Report
Well, they’re all male.Report
The pattern:
All of them should’ve been portrayed on film by either Denzel Washington or Harrison Ford.Report
That’s another nice pattern overlaying the pattern.
We’re getting textured here.Report
Or both in the case of Dr. Who, Batman, AND Captain Kirk (for which Denzel would be cool.)
Maybe Ford could’ve done a cool MLK, too.Report
Tod, I hope you don’t mind my using this as an open thread, for here’s another brain teaser that I quite approve of:
http://proud-a.blogspot.com/2013/04/Topless.Jihad.html
profanity and nudity warning.Report
brain teaser…?Report
Payback for the udder pun.
But I still highly approve the protest.
The Atlantic’s got the photos up, too.Report
Wow missed that. I had seen all of them as men who seem to be in some fundamental way alone. solo hero’s even when in a crowd. semi-outcast at the hard edge.Report
and then i remembered, much like Steven Colbert I don’t see race.Report