Day: April 15, 2019

I’ve been thinking a lot about Trump’s America. It is hard not to in a state where MAGA bumper stickers are about as common as possible. This is also the state where the symbol below remains prevalent. I’ve included the symbol with the instructions and explanations that don’t normally appear on it here.

The sticker is another example of a dog whistle: a secret communication that is only meant to be seen by a particular group. This particular one means that if you have this sticker on your car we can pull your car over if we spot black people inside. It means that because black people did not use and were not given this sticker. MAGA hats are kind of the same thing.

Make America Great Again. What does that mean? Contextually it is a response to 8 years of presidency by a black man–8 years that the current POTUS is trying to dismantle policy by policy in spite of the overwhelming success and support for many of those policies. He was elected largely on two fronts. The first is open distaste for Clinton. The second is a fear/anger based response to the shifting demographics and power structure of our nation. Make America Great Again means make America a safe power structure for old white men and their children, so they can transfer power to their children as has been done for hundreds of years. However, that reality is no longer so certain. As with any group in power, that ‘base’ is going to hold on whether it is consciously or unconsciously.

Great Again precludes America having been great during the time that change was underway. This is in many ways the acceptance part of the argument that is so insidious. It allows us to believe that America is only great when led by people who look a certain way, which largely allows us to forgive how they act.

Even when how they act is unforgivable.

Netflix cannot stand folks doing a genre and them not having a cut. Moreover, they want a really big cut and they want to basically take over the entire operation. Only, they remain late to the party. Black Summer is a version of the Zombie shows we’ve been watching for years. However, it is a version of that show that loses all credibility by episode 4. If not for an incredible performance by Yuk Guen Lee, the show wouldn’t have been worth a single episode.

I think the conversation begins with Lee. An actor from Hong Kong, Lee has been around since the late 80’s as a child actor. She is responsible for carrying the show through multiple episodes where the writing fails to do more than anything we’ve already seen and succeeds in doing less in character development than I thought possible through 4 episodes. It was the 4th that killed the show (pun intended) for me.

The show exists in vignettes. Or at least it is supposed to. We fade to black every few minutes supposedly opening on another ‘beat’ in the script. The 4th episode is a perfect example of those beats leading us in circles. In that episode we follow a lone survivor (actually, one of the beats is called alone) as he flees a lone zombie. Now in this scene we realize the running man is a coward and a fool. 5 minutes in I’m waiting for him to die.

Spoiler Alert: He does not die. Instead we watch the silly running nonsense and him making every mistake in the world and being rewarded for it. We learn nothing about him and the entire episode (because it is the entire episode) is a waste. Even if he died, it would’ve been too much for too long.

Maybe that should be the name of the show: Too much for too long.