BlackkKlansman: The Reason to Take Subversive Action

The movie BlackkKlansman is an incredibly nuanced look at how to accomplish liberation. On the surface, it's conclusion seems bleak: subversion is not enough. The System can and does either silence or absorb subversion. To make the system crack, one must attack it from the outside. But, is there a point to subversion? Yes. Ron Stahlworth and Flip Zimmerman were indeed silenced. Their investigation of the Ku Klux Klan went unknown and unrecognized for thirty years. Yet, that is not to say they accomplished nothing.

1. Ron Stahlworth did break the color barrier, and there are now black police officers in most jurisdictions. Indeed, many jurisdictions are mostly policed by black and brown officers. This did not, of course, eliminate racism in the criminal justice system. A racist system does not need racists to run it. It only needs people ignorant enough to not understand how their individual actions connect to the wider oppression of a community.
2.  The two police officers did manage to kill a Klan member, with the bomb he made himself: shedding light on the Klan's self-destructive nature, in a highly visible way. And, not incidentally, saving the lives of many many people who have gone on to have descendants and effected change on our society.
3. David Duke has not forgotten, even if everyone else did. His speech given at Charlottsville clearly demonstrated that (and really only makes sense if you know about this story).  Ron Stahlworth didn't just investigate the Klan, he also wormed his way into David Duke's heart. When Stahlworth revealed his identity, Duke was genuinely hurt. David Duke has a MASSIVE chip on his shoulder, and has been pushed to embrace ideas he once rejected as a result.
4. Society's view of the Klan has changed dramatically, in part because of the incident detailed in the movie (and because of many similar incidents, and other factors as well).  The Klan does not have the same supporters it once did: either in academia or religion. The forces of bigotry are indeed rising again, after thirty years of remaining relatively quiet. But, the battle lines have been redrawn. It isn't black people against white people anymore. It's racists against anti-racists: the ideological battle can no longer be hidden behind smokescreens.  Not after the death of Heather Heyer. The plot that seemed fantastical when the Black Panther comic was written, has now been made poignantly real. White people are now willing to die for black liberation, not out of self-loathing: but because they wholeheartedly believe that black liberation would be a good thing for them.

Patrice is indeed correct: you cannot bring down the system from within. The movie fully acknowledges that point: by showing us the ways in which the system is still in place. But it questions her assertion that it is therefore useless to participate in the system, useless to subvert the system from within: by showing us what has changed. Ron Stahlworth successfully used one part of the system as a weapon against another and struck a lasting blow: that's not something to be discounted, sneered at, or overlooked. Strategic use of the system to subvert it is not a bad thing, although such actions will not bring about liberation in the absence of attacks from the outside. Patrice's problem is that like most young people she sees things as either/or: either you are outside the system, or you are a puppet of the system. But Ron is older and smarter: realizing that if he can weaken the system from within, then it can be more easily attacked from without. Subversion is not useless if it is genuine subversion. Not the insincere edginess of a Banksy or a "grunge" band (a band not brave enough to be punk or funk): but honest and searing critique of the system. Although even this stuff is not bad per se. The presence of such edginess does give people permission to talk about their real disillusionment with the system and their desire to bring it down, even if the piece itself can't be used meaningfully to those ends. But a true subversion strikes a blow to some part of the system, even if it uses another part of the same system to do so.

This is ultimately Spike Lee explaining his own choices. He is a famous director, and a rich man now. He has chosen to work within Hollywood, even though he understands that black liberation cannot be accomplished wholly from within Hollywood (no matter how many mostly black cast movies get made, or how many awards they win).  He understands that there is a fundamental problem with the hashtag "OscarsSoWhite": which is that the Oscars can never be anything other than white, no matter how many black people win awards. Yet, he has chosen to work within this system and is telling others that they should too. Why? because the media can be used against other parts of the system that keep black people oppressed: like the criminal justice system or the government. Hollywood can, and often has been, weaponized against the government and the justice system. The man holding the weapon right now, is Jordan Peele: expertly using the horror genre to attack complacent liberal whites, and upend racist tropes. His movies are finely crafted with intelligence and finesse, like the classics of Hitchcock or the Expressionists: yet they come out at a rate that would tax large studios (every other year? does this man sleep?), even further increasing the sense of unease and creeping horror. How's that for genius eh?

Love it or hate it, Hollywood controls public perception to a large degree, although it is also influenced by public perception. Hollywood movies can influence what genres people like: as when Lord of the Rings suddenly made fantasy mainstream in the early 2000s. Hardly surprising, given that this was a movie adaptation of the book that literally invented the genre, but still a demonstration of Hollywood's ability to influence taste. Hollywood movies can influence how people see certain ideas: such as how movies have warped peoples' ideas of how science works, or how to sword-fight, or the nature of serial killers. Working within Hollywood gives you the power to change peoples' minds. Changing minds is a part of liberation, because as Hamlet said: 

"the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear the ills we have than fly to others we know not of". 

He spoke of death, but the same is true of liberation: for liberation is a kind of death. It is a death of one's old habits, one's old ways. Those who imagine that liberation can be achieved within the confines of our current Constitution, and our current system of international politics, are deluding themselves. But that hardly means that working within the current system is useless.

The Dragon Prince Season 2: How to do Representation in Fantasy

The Kingdom of Durin had two Queens. When this is first mentioned, the viewer is led to imagine that it was something like Sparta: where two rulers from different families oversaw different aspects of life. King Leonidas was free to lead a suicide mission, because he had a partner holding down the fort.  Smart idea for a country likely to be surprise-attacked, as the kingdoms in this show are.

Nope, these women were a couple, and they had a daughter. It's not mentioned whether this is Durinese tradition, but nobody seems to think it's an unusual arrangement. Even the show's villain, the manipulative Virin, is accepting. Indeed, Queen Anya's mothers are considered heroes in the kingdom of Katolis as well as in their homeland for dying as part of a gambit to save both kingdoms from starvation. It would appear, that this is a world where homophobia doesn't exist. Even Soren the stereotypical jock doesn't ever make a homophobic comment. This makes sense, this world has it's own unique history behind it. A group of human realms constantly besieged by outside forces far more powerful than them would need to minimize internal divisions just to survive. Indeed, in the episodes where this story is told, Virin is (insincerely) arguing for the necessity of solidarity between the Kingdoms.

Why is this a good example of representation? after all the Queens of Durin are both dead by the time the main show starts. Because it treats their relationship as normal.  They are treated as if they were any other couple, any other family. This is a story that could have been written about a straight couple. This is not a story about a lesbian relationship: it is a story about heroism that happens to star lesbians. What frequently gets forgotten is that gay people just want to be normal. They want to be considered as people first. Often, the only time a homosexual character is included in a show is so that the show can make a point about homosexuality. This is a problem, because it does not question the white heterosexual default. Here we have a homosexual couple included in the show not to make a point about homosexuality, but simply because homosexuals exist. In a real-world setting you can't treat homosexuality as normal, except maybe in a far future setting. Even then, it would be more realistic for bigotry to still exist even if it wasn't socially rewarded. Fully normalizing homosexuality and homosexual family structures is almost exclusively the realm of fantasy or science fantasy.

We also have a character who is modeling how to be "one of the boys" and make "locker room talk" without being a bigot. Soren is clearly immature, but that's to be expected since he is a teenager. He does boast, and often insults others: but his insults are personalized. This indicates that he sees these people as individuals. Soren is a rebuttal to claims like the one President Trump made, that his misogynist and homophobic comments were just "locker room talk". Yet, it is also a rebuttal to people who say that all crude language is evil and hurtful. There is nothing wrong with crude language, and it exists for a good reason. Crude language exists to help people laugh, loosen up and de-stress.  It helps people bond, by making them feel safe enough to be vulnerable. Of course, this mission is undercut when bigotry and crudeness are made synonymous.  These kinds of claims should be alarming to anyone who cares about our language. The endless capacity that English has for constructing creative insults is not a flaw, it's a feature. It's something that we should celebrate. We should not celebrate the uncreative use of offensive words and phrases. If you mean to insult someone, do it with passion and creativity. Call them a "sniveling lemming", not a "fag".  Insults aren't a bad thing, but insults that denigrate an identity group are.  

Bourgeois liberal society likes to encourage this myth that all hatred is bigotry, that there is no difference. However, this is incredibly damaging: because this is the logic behind the myths of reverse racism/reverse sexism. See, a minority person understands that people can be cruel without being bigoted: that hating someone for something they did is fine, while hating them for who they are is not. But very often, people from the majority group confuse the two. They rationalize their own bigotry by pointing to stereotyped or nonexistent character flaws. Other times, they start to feel that if someone hates them, that person must be bigoted. Of course, what is this actually? it's an immature ego talking.  This simplistic narrative of kindness and hatred advanced by liberals really doesn't help matters. Humans are capable of cruelty, of hatred: without any ideology being behind it. We cannot create a world without cruelty of any kind, nor should we expect to. We can create a world in which cruelty isn't based on a person's identity. Or, as Dr. King put it: where people are judged by the content of their character.