(Warning: Plot spoilers ahead)

Paula: The movie Hancock, starring Will Smith, recently opened in theaters to excellent reviews. Smith plays a surly superhero who gets “reformed” through the intervention of a good-hearted PR guy played by Jason Bateman. Bateman is married to preternaturally blonde Charlize Theron, who it turns out has been keeping under wraps the fact that she is a superhero, too. Most of the hype and resulting reviews claim the movie is no ordinary superhero movie but a kind of allegory about the problem of being human. I’m frankly puzzled. The movie struck me as an unsettling and unsatisfying amalgam of possibly racist motifs. It started out well enough in postulating the idea of a nontraditional superhero, one who lacks the chivalric elements one generally associates with the type. It was a provocative premise, especially in casting Smith, a black man, in the role. But as it continued, I wasn’t sure whether the idea was that Smith is angry because as a black man with a history of being discriminated against he feels resentment in the role of universal savior, or simply that he is uncouth, i.e., unschooled in “proper” mainstream behavior. The former gets no support, because issues of social justice are never raised in the film, while the latter seems to be suggested since Bateman is placed in the role of etiquette teacher (instructing him on how to act and how to dress). The second part of the film posed other problems. It seemed to veer off in a completely different direction that nonetheless had disturbing racial resonance. The idea was that Smith and Theron were in fact complementary superheroes. They had been created together, and were ineluctably drawn to each other. But when they get together, the story goes, they would lose their powers, become human and vulnerable. At the end, they save each other by separating.

Perhaps no racial statement is intended, but given the emphatic racial contrast in the casting it seems to me that the issue of race mixing has to be part of what this film is concerned with — and what is the conclusion? Is it that the power of the races will be stronger and will better serve mankind if they are kept apart? Or is it that we will only achieve our full humanity by mixing races? If the latter, why then is the happy ending arrived at by separating these two characters?

I’m missing something here. Please give me your take on this possibly reactionary and oddly disjointed film that has received so much acclaim.

 

 Robert: Provocative post! I’m not sure I can do it justice. First of all, I spend almost every moment of a Will Smith movie sitting in pure amazement that this former black rapper from West Philadelphia has become one of Hollywood’s ultra-bankable superstars. I think many black people my age have the same reaction that I do — almost the same reaction black people have to Barack Obama’s campaign. Wow! … I would have never imagined. This is amazing. I wonder how he does it? Part of me is watching Will Smith on the screen, and part of me is watching the audience, trying to figure out the source of his popularity.

And no matter how many times Hollywood has portrayed interracial romance in recent years, I am amazed and stunned and pleased to see it on the big screen — though I am in equal parts nervous about what stereotypes Hollywood may be including in the process. There was a lot of talk two decades ago about how black actors (superstars) couldn’t be very sexual on the screen. Well, in Hancock, Will Smith is not only involved in an interracial romance, but an interracial romance that dates back thousands of years! And for Smith’s character to be involved with Charlize Theron, a white South African, has all kinds of resonance for me. South Africa is no longer an apartheid state and Will Smith is the star of a film where he is involved with a beautiful blond actress. Wow, I say to myself. But there is one odd point: Smith and Theron never kiss on screen, and that may be more important than I first imagined.

I see your points here, Paula. Smith does traffic in racial stereotypes at times, but I’m not sure he can escape this. He has had to find a way to bring his particular style of hip, urban (slightly rebellious but not too rebellious) confident blackness to the screen. This is his comedic style, his shtick if you will, and it is what makes him unique in Hollywood. Smith is going to invariably bring some African-American lingo and swagger to his action films. Eddie Murphy has done this as well. He has found a way to be a cross-over star while also bringing in his stylized street black fast-talker. In movies like Shrek, where Murphy is the voice of the chattering donkey, I think his style works. The television goddess herself, Oprah Winfrey, slips in and out of voice of a down-home southern black woman, one not particularly persuaded by the therapeutic ideas and twists presented on her show.

So to your question, the fact that Smith’s Hancock character was a wino didn’t necessarily bother me. I think that’s just Smith dipping his character into the shallow end of a racial stereotype. And this gets at a key question: when Smith tweaks the urban black thing, isn’t he also reinforcing stereotypes? Did Woody Allen reinforce stereotypes about Jews even as he made a certain Jewish style more approachable and understandable to a non-Jewish audience? A pinch or more of stereotype may be the cost of wider recognition for various ethnic groups. I don’t know.

But Smith tries to counteract the black wino stereotype by portraying Hancock as crude and unsocialized, but not unsocialized and crude in any particular black way (save for the wine bottle). That puzzled expression on Smith’s face as the Jason Bateman character tries to explain to him how to connect with people — I didn’t necessarily see that as particularly black. Yes, his uncouth character is oh so close to the image of the primitive, violent black man. But I thought Smith tried to slip the old stereotype here and I think he was largely successful. And I want to give him room to play a crude character, for running from that portrayal simply to avoid a stereotype would still leave him imprisoned by the stereotype.

I’m still figuring out that ending. You’re so right: The black and white superheroes do not get to love each other. That has to be significant. In this sense, Smith is sort of the outsider who seemingly draws his worth by sacrificing himself for the white person. But wasn’t Theron’s character desperately fighting on the E.R. table, determined to recover as her partner, Smith, goes down? I take this as showing Theron’s commitment to and love for him was every bit as deep as his commitment to and love for her.

But Paula, say more. This is fascinating as hell! I did find the movie unsettling and for some of the same reasons you did. It’s just that I think he moved just a hair’s breadth over the line from the stereotypes … I think …

 

Paula: Your response spins the film for me in a more acceptable direction. I see that I’ve seen it with a kind of flattened, knee-jerk, politically correct perspective that is perhaps easier for a white person to assume than someone who has lived inside the complexity of the African-American experience and is more attuned to the history of actors like Smith and to the ways in which Hollywood may be inching forward to embrace characterizations that don’t put race front and center. I suppose in the end the film struck me as more sloppy than ideologically pointed. And I wasn’t as entertained by it as you for the reasons that I’m not as into action films, superhero movies, or Will Smith’s back story. That said, your post makes me inclined to reconsider the film — though not go so far as to want to see it again any time soon.

 

Robert: I didn’t find your argument to be knee-jerk or politically correct. I think you took the movie seriously and you saw some big picture themes that I fear I am overlooking or minimizing. Hancock will be great fodder for critics and biographers in future decades when they analyze Smith’s success and the role race played in his success. And I think your argument is going to play a major role in that discussion.

 

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: conversations with Paula and Robert, movies // 3 Comments »