Nice to meet you
Newsletter 4: Getting acquainted
Hi dear readers!
The first two months on Substack and three newsletters were to share my best online published work so far. I’m so proud of the poetry, personal essays, and fiction I’ve already put out into the world. It’s been an exciting journey based in trust in myself and bravery despite the odds of ever being seen.
Well, I do feel seen.
I applied to join a Discord channel of Substack writers, I’m on a feed called “Substack Writers We Love” on Twitter, and recently got featured in the Janesberry creative writing directory. The FLARE is all about connecting with people and I’ve been doing just that.
Through that Discord channel, I connected with Har, an artist who has done amazing commissions so far. I cannot wait to show you his amazing work.
Instead of the usual literary buffet, this newsletter will focus on a single essay.
Admiring a Problematic White Man
I have a confession to make: I will watch the shit out of a Tom Cruise action movie. There is just something delightful about the way he runs full tilt with a straight back and long stride. There are near constant elements of danger where he defies every conceivable fear to complete a mission. The man hangs out of planes and climbs skyscrapers. His disregard for limits is extraordinary. He can do anything.
I am also a big James Bond fan. He is suave, impeccably dressed, resourceful, but also a rapist. I know this. And yet I have an entire wiki detailing the minutiae of nearly every Bond film. I count how many times he’s been beat into unconsciousness, how many women he’s had sex with, and tracked the appearances of his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld. One day, you’ll get a front row seat to that obsession.
We live in a culture that is keen on identifying a man as “a nice guy” right before it tells us about the severed heads in his freezer. We love epic tales of a conquest before we realize we are the indigenous in the story who are being ravaged by disease and slaughtered by the thousands to create “civilization”.
The long-held image of a white, male, straight protagonist will exist whether or not I consume it. Far from excusing the behavior of a colonizer or amoral government operative, I recognize the fantasy. We are all too familiar with the cold reality of white men quickly climbing corporate ladders and that there are more Fortune 500 CEOs named James than women. We are painfully aware of socioeconomic disparities and our relative powerlessness to dismantle a system that feeds on our oppression, insecurity, and exhaustion. Art and life recapitulate what we already observe.
We fight the influence of exalted men in real life who are predatory, toxically masculine, or cruel. We mount petitions for removal from office or imposing censures. I commit to change where I can, professionally and personally through taking leadership roles and making sustainable life choices. But how do I reconcile my admiration for a swashbuckling thief while contributing to marginalized causes?
I don’t.
There is a limit to the fight. I cling to poster boys of a deeply flawed image of a so-called hero to escape reality because I know I will have to fight real white men who will create narratives about my experience and legislate against my interests. When I sit down on a Saturday night and decide what I’m in the mood to watch, I often choose an immersive action experience. I suppose the shear gall of shooting your way through a nightclub or stealing international secrets inspires the hope that one day I can be that careless. It inspires me to don a dark brown, felt fedora and whip, battling mysterious criminal syndicates and narrowly avoiding a floor full of venomous snakes. These men were always bad news, but I can make paper planes of their images by building worlds where the underrepresented don’t just exist but get to be the heroes too.
You see, it’s not really about James Bond or anyone else. It’s about me. It’s about my aspirations, interests, views on reality, and views of myself. What if I had more situational awareness? How can I keep cool during conflict? What radioisotopes are used in nuclear weapons? There are a million avenues to take from even one film. I use all this information to fill my utility belt in my path as a writer. A legacy of storytelling with a different end continues with me and not the people whose -isms are as much a part of the work as their hearts.
I recently bought Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, to see how a black woman engages with science fiction. Within the first few chapters, I have been transported and when I play out the characters’ experiences, their faces are like mine. I await triumphs where I am fully embodied. Like Octavia, I could not help but consume the very media I am now fighting for a place in. The white, male, tragic figure is ubiquitous and infuriatingly good, but I can do better, or at least I hope. I have stories in the works about space travel, dystopia, and mystery that already speak through my experience and have filtered out the muck I grew up reading and watching. I can also elevate the reality that is often glossed over: black women are the most educated, last picked, but most willing to lay on the line for change.
So much in our lives remains to be written and conjugated into the future tense. One day, we will have our own catalog of action figures, with little room for others. If anything, these problematic men are fuel to power a universe without them.
Hope you enjoyed this read. It’s a prelude to an essay series I’m starting in September featuring a very famous problematic man. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll probably have a clue. Join me next month for my first essay series ever right here on Substack. I can’t wait for you to see it!
This struggle of problematic favs is so real! I definitely think reading other voices like Octavia Butler (such a badass), can help take some of the 'magical sheen' off the white heroes we're just in the habit of admiring. It's like if you've been told a Mars bar is 'chocolate' all your life, then when you finally sink your teeth into a 90% cacao bar, you're going to almost recoil a bit at first. Like, "what the fuck is this???" but then you realize, "oh my god, this is so much better than whatever the hell I had before." Still, I get it. Somedays I just need those 'comfort' characters that were on-screen and heroized for me when I was a child and times were simpler. There's no shame in that. And hopefully, our generation continues to make art with more diverse voices and heroines so that by the time our children grow up, their 'comfort characters' will be someone other than a white man. Great topic!