Philip Kennicott: Racial Projectionist

Posted by: Tristan

According to Philip Kennicott, the posters of Obama in Joker makeup are racist (we’re not making this up) because the makeup is from 2008′s “The Dark Night” instead of 1989′s “Batman”.

The Joker’s makeup in “Dark Knight” — the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world — emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks — the thinking goes — don’t just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence.

“The thinking goes”?  Whose thinking, Philip?  Yours?  A few of your sociologist friends?  What does this have to do with Obama?  Is there a widespread fear that somewhere in America, the Presidential limo is going to pull up and Obama is going to step out and knock over a couple liquor stores?

The problem with Kennicott’s reasoning is that it creates a concept of racism that is so broad that it is effectively meaningless. “Racism” morphs in definition from “the belief that one race is superior to another” to “opposition to the President’s agenda”.

Sometimes, when people say “community organizer“, they just mean “community organizer”.  And sometimes, when people say they see racism, it’s just a projection of their own secret feelings.