A New Hope – Black empow­er­ment and sym­bol­ic cast­ing in con­tem­po­rary blockbusters

Just as Rea­gan had Die Hard and Bush had The Dark Knight, so America’s 44^th Com­man­der in Chief, Barack Oba­ma, will come to be asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic films from the last eight years. So what exact­ly is Oba­ma Era Cin­e­ma, and what does it reveal about the world we live in today? Have your say @LWLies #Oba­maEraCin­e­ma.

What is Barack Obama’s pre­vail­ing moment, his defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic? If George W Bush is remem­bered for the War on Ter­ror, Bill Clin­ton for his impeach­ment tri­al, and Ronald Rea­gan for ​‘Reaganomics’, then what is the one thing that we’ll take away from Obama’s pres­i­den­cy? I would argue that, after eight years of rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble gov­ern­ment, and as a leader untaint­ed by scan­dal, Oba­ma still res­onates most potent­ly as the face on that ​‘Hope’ poster – as a sym­bol of dif­fer­ence and change. 

It isn’t that Oba­ma has achieved noth­ing, more that his tenure has been char­ac­terised by an emol­lient nature, and per­haps a too con­cil­ia­to­ry atti­tude to law-mak­ing, mean­ing that at times his avowed ambi­tions have felt mis­placed, under­mined, or over­sold. The promise to close Guan­tanamo and the implied promise in his elec­tion man­i­festo to break with the war and pain of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion, were not kept. If Oba­ma seemed to mark a rup­ture with hawk­ish gov­ern­ments of the past, this was belied by his appoint­ment of sup­port­ers of the war in Iraq, his hos­til­i­ty towards whistle­blow­ers and his appar­ent fond­ness for dron­ing civil­ians in Pak­istan, Afghanistan, Soma­lia and Yemen.

And while Oba­ma talked a big game about – and was vis­i­bly, gen­uine­ly har­rowed by – gun vio­lence and police bru­tal­i­ty, he has been crit­i­cised for not speak­ing out more point­ed­ly about insti­tu­tion­al racism and racial inequal­i­ty. As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic in 2013: ​“As Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent it is wrong for him to hand­wave at his­to­ry, to speak as though the gov­ern­ment he rep­re­sents is some­how only part­ly to blame. More­over, I would say that to tout your ties to your com­mu­ni­ty when it is con­ve­nient, and down­play them when it isn’t, runs counter to any notion of indi­vid­ual responsibility.”

All of this requires scruti­ny, and it is right that Oba­ma be crit­i­cised for his record on these mat­ters. But, return­ing to the poster of Barack Oba­ma – the Shep­ard Fairey one that pro­lif­er­at­ed online and in a thou­sand home-made ban­ners and oth­er para­pher­na­lia before and after the 2008 elec­tion – it is this which res­onates most strong­ly today. Eight years ago, Lau­ra Bar­ton wrote that the image had already attained an icon­ic sta­tus com­pa­ra­ble to that of Jim Fitzpatrick’s famous Che Gue­vara pic­ture. What is tru­ly remark­able is that the sym­bol­ism of that image – the sym­bol­ism of Barack Oba­ma him­self, a black man in the White House – is still so com­pelling. To say that the image of Oba­ma is more impor­tant than what he achieved isn’t to do him a dis­ser­vice: it is the great­est force of sym­bol­ism that it can tran­scend mere acts, and that Obama’s mean­ing is still so impor­tant and deserving. 

As in real life, so in cin­e­ma – so Obama’s pres­i­den­cy has been marked most acute­ly on screen by pro­gres­sive sym­bol­ism, and off­screen by hot, tox­ic dis­putes as to the legit­i­ma­cy of, say, cast­ing a black man as an alien. When the trail­er for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens was released in Octo­ber 2015, reveal­ing British actor John Boye­ga as the first black Stormtroop­er, a protest cam­paign was prompt­ly launched on Twit­ter call­ing for a boy­cott of the movie. Under the hash­tag #Boy­cottStar­WarsVII, racist users who think that Chew­bac­ca is a total leg­end vent­ed their fury that some­one in a dif­fer­ent era on a dif­fer­ent plan­et could be black.

A few years before this, when Idris Elba was cast as a god in Marvel’s first Thor movie, white suprema­cists moved to boy­cott it, with the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens (CCC) lament­ing that a mytho­log­i­cal deity of yore might have the face of a black man. These events aren’t coin­ci­den­tal, and they speak of a greater dis­qui­et since Barack Obama’s elec­tion among white, racist cit­i­zens, about the legit­i­ma­cy of black empowerment.

In 2008, Don­ald Trump, before he start­ed cam­paign­ing to put an enti­tled, white male ego­ma­ni­ac back in the White House, was among the lead­ers of the birther move­ment, which sought to ques­tion Obama’s legit­i­ma­cy as pres­i­dent; in real­i­ty, the whole thing was an ugly façade behind which to rehearse and indulge in racist hatred, in which view a black per­son could nev­er be enti­tled to gain high­est office. The crux of the racist anger is to do with ter­ri­to­ri­al­ism: in this nar­row world­view, the Star Wars fran­chise, Mar­vel comics and the White House have all his­tor­i­cal­ly been ​‘owned’ by white peo­ple. Nowa­days, the CCC cam­paigns for Trump to be pres­i­dent. Mean­while, Thor made $449.3 mil­lion at the box office and Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens is the third high­est-gross­ing film of all time. The sym­bol­ism of this cast­ing – what it means to make your­self the object of hatred, what it means to rep­re­sent peo­ple of colour in a cre­at­ed world – speaks plainly.

Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, often cas­ti­gat­ed for its neg­a­tive impact online, in media, and in gov­ern­ment, leads in these instances to some­thing like the hope that Oba­ma rep­re­sents. Dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy, the con­cept of the Bechdel test has gained greater trac­tion, to the extent that while women are still grave­ly lack­ing onscreen, there is at least a con­ver­sa­tion about the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women, and there are move­ments to cel­e­brate and pro­mote the work of women.

Geena Davis, who launched the Geena Davis Insti­tute on Gen­der in Media a year before Oba­ma came to pow­er, found­ed the Ben­tonville film fes­ti­val in 2010 to pro­mote diver­si­ty. Else­where, the female cast of 2016’s Ghost­busters reboot endured the same sort of roast­ing from anony­mous big­ots as Boye­ga and Elba before them, with Leslie Jones the pri­ma­ry tar­get of misog­y­noir activism online. That the film came out in the year that Hillary Clin­ton will become America’s first female pres­i­dent feels almost too pat – the sym­bol­ism is impos­si­ble to miss.

Also notable in cin­e­ma dur­ing Obama’s pres­i­den­cy, and aris­ing from the sort of pos­i­tive iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics he stands for, is the rise of the #OscarsSoWhite move­ment, which sought to counter racist dis­crim­i­na­tion against black actors onscreen, and led to a pub­lic debate about awards going to white actors year after year. The con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, rip­pling around film indus­tries all over the world, with ques­tions about black rep­re­sen­ta­tion being asked in France, and promi­nent actors like David Oyelowo chastis­ing the British film indus­try for not pro­vid­ing more roles for peo­ple of colour. Again, while the sit­u­a­tion is not pos­i­tive, the mes­sage sent by this activism, and by the cham­pi­oning of work by peo­ple of colour, can some­times rise above the prob­lem itself.

It seems like­ly that the real­i­ties of Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion will hit home in film some­time after he has depart­ed: much as the war in Iraq came home to roost long after Bush had gone, we will only get the Black Lives Mat­ter film that was pre­saged dur­ing the Oba­ma era once the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er has tak­en place. But some­thing of the hope, of the need for change that he rep­re­sent­ed, hangs in the air.