Hall on Brother Voodoo
From “Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo vs. Moondog” in Marvel Team-Up (~mid-1970s):
I am leaning on Stewart Hall’s "Spectacle of the Other” to understand the representations of race in “Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo vs. Moondog."
Hall tells us that we should read racial representations in terms of markings of difference. Why? Hall tells us that the “explanation is psychoanalytic and relates to the role of ‘difference’ in our psychic life. The argument here is that the ‘Other’ is fundamental to the constitution of the self, to us as subjects, and to sexual identity,” viz. the subject’s consolidation of its self through a drama with the mOther (438). Hall notes that both Lacanian analysis and Kleinian analysis (differently) accept the Freudian notion that “Subjectivity can only arise and a sense of ‘self’ be formed through the symbolic and unconscious relations which the young child forges with a significant ‘Other’ which is outside - i.e. different from - itself” (238).
So we can first set aside the ‘preferred reading’ of the Marvel comic, viz. a racially inclusive narrative with a diversity of kinds of black people. Many of the representations of blacks in this Spider-Man comic are mystified, and therefore call for a ‘negotiated reading’ attentive to the history of representations. The creation of Brother Voodoo (by a non-black, Jewish man) is intelligible against the background of the history of the imperialist and white-supremacist myths which use racial commodities as spectacles of difference. These spectacles of the Other function to manage racial anxiety through a clear marking of racial difference and a disciplining of the black body. How do we read the myth of the representation, the underlying message? We have inherited figures of ‘black savages’ from the myths of blackness (e.g. cursed, mere animals, constitutionally unclean/servile/lazy/primitive/uncivilized) which facilitated Europeans’ enslavements of blacks and colonizations of Africa.
The black body is split between two figures, Brother Voodoo and Moondog, ‘hero and villain.’ Hall helps us understand this division as a schema for educating the black body through representation. The division of good ‘(Uncle) Toms’ vs. ‘Bad Bucks’ in the Marvel comic functions to inscribe a disciplining (white, imperial order) upon the black body. Brother Voodoo is aligned with goodness - the ‘noble savage’ - through a series of substitutions. Spider-Man is a protector of women against savages, Brother Voodoo is aligned with Spider-Man by helping Spider-Man, and Spider-Man’s is the good child - his practice is juvenile graffiti but endorsed as balanced, since Spider-Man is the artist who ‘refuses the sacrifice of his ear’ because such sacrifice signifies excess, the “lop-sided” mask (1). Moondog, on the other hand, seeks to make a sacrifice of a women with a “lovely victim’s breast,” surrounded by exposed women with “wildly abandoned gyrations” (9). The sexualizing can be understood because, as Fanon tells us, white people are obsessed with the sexuality of black people.
Freud gives us precedent for understanding why Brother Voodoo and Moondog are spirit-seers; savages are associated with projection (of emotions, spirits) as a means of dealing with death (Moondog’s own deferred death, Brother Voodoo’s brother).
Moondog is portrayed as “a madman,” “hysterical with rage” and only able to be dealt with in “one way” because the bad slave is eternally in revolt, whereas the ‘good Christian slave’ is alienated into full identification with the master (17, 18). This is why Brother Voodoo, the good black man, is “repulse[d]” by “the very idea of touching this scum,” the undisciplined black body (11).
Hall informs us of the racialized trickster stereotype - the trickster does not perform labor, avoids hard work. Hall tells us that the trickster is mystified, magical - voodoo. This allows us to understand why Brother Voodoo’s powers to effect movement and escape are mystified - pure fantasy - whereas Spider-Man’s movements and escape are accounted for, intelligible - science fiction. The trickster is also the laughing fool, the excess in the “harsh, thunderous laughter” of the savages, which subdues Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo (12).
I am leaning on Stewart Hall’s "Spectacle of the Other” to understand the representations of race in “Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo vs. Moondog."
Hall tells us that we should read racial representations in terms of markings of difference. Why? Hall tells us that the “explanation is psychoanalytic and relates to the role of ‘difference’ in our psychic life. The argument here is that the ‘Other’ is fundamental to the constitution of the self, to us as subjects, and to sexual identity,” viz. the subject’s consolidation of its self through a drama with the mOther (438). Hall notes that both Lacanian analysis and Kleinian analysis (differently) accept the Freudian notion that “Subjectivity can only arise and a sense of ‘self’ be formed through the symbolic and unconscious relations which the young child forges with a significant ‘Other’ which is outside - i.e. different from - itself” (238).
So we can first set aside the ‘preferred reading’ of the Marvel comic, viz. a racially inclusive narrative with a diversity of kinds of black people. Many of the representations of blacks in this Spider-Man comic are mystified, and therefore call for a ‘negotiated reading’ attentive to the history of representations. The creation of Brother Voodoo (by a non-black, Jewish man) is intelligible against the background of the history of the imperialist and white-supremacist myths which use racial commodities as spectacles of difference. These spectacles of the Other function to manage racial anxiety through a clear marking of racial difference and a disciplining of the black body. How do we read the myth of the representation, the underlying message? We have inherited figures of ‘black savages’ from the myths of blackness (e.g. cursed, mere animals, constitutionally unclean/servile/lazy/primitive/uncivilized) which facilitated Europeans’ enslavements of blacks and colonizations of Africa.
The black body is split between two figures, Brother Voodoo and Moondog, ‘hero and villain.’ Hall helps us understand this division as a schema for educating the black body through representation. The division of good ‘(Uncle) Toms’ vs. ‘Bad Bucks’ in the Marvel comic functions to inscribe a disciplining (white, imperial order) upon the black body. Brother Voodoo is aligned with goodness - the ‘noble savage’ - through a series of substitutions. Spider-Man is a protector of women against savages, Brother Voodoo is aligned with Spider-Man by helping Spider-Man, and Spider-Man’s is the good child - his practice is juvenile graffiti but endorsed as balanced, since Spider-Man is the artist who ‘refuses the sacrifice of his ear’ because such sacrifice signifies excess, the “lop-sided” mask (1). Moondog, on the other hand, seeks to make a sacrifice of a women with a “lovely victim’s breast,” surrounded by exposed women with “wildly abandoned gyrations” (9). The sexualizing can be understood because, as Fanon tells us, white people are obsessed with the sexuality of black people.
Freud gives us precedent for understanding why Brother Voodoo and Moondog are spirit-seers; savages are associated with projection (of emotions, spirits) as a means of dealing with death (Moondog’s own deferred death, Brother Voodoo’s brother).
Moondog is portrayed as “a madman,” “hysterical with rage” and only able to be dealt with in “one way” because the bad slave is eternally in revolt, whereas the ‘good Christian slave’ is alienated into full identification with the master (17, 18). This is why Brother Voodoo, the good black man, is “repulse[d]” by “the very idea of touching this scum,” the undisciplined black body (11).
Hall informs us of the racialized trickster stereotype - the trickster does not perform labor, avoids hard work. Hall tells us that the trickster is mystified, magical - voodoo. This allows us to understand why Brother Voodoo’s powers to effect movement and escape are mystified - pure fantasy - whereas Spider-Man’s movements and escape are accounted for, intelligible - science fiction. The trickster is also the laughing fool, the excess in the “harsh, thunderous laughter” of the savages, which subdues Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo (12).