{"id":23500,"date":"2012-05-28T23:41:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T23:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23500"},"modified":"2016-03-18T23:49:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T23:49:41","slug":"obama-zombies-and-black-male-messiahs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23500","title":{"rendered":"Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Messiahs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.futureofthebook.org\/imr\/2009\/10\/01\/obama-zombies-and-black-male-messiahs\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Messiahs<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.futureofthebook.org\/imr\/about\" target=\"_blank\">In Media Res<\/a><br \/>\n2009-10-01<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/emcalister.faculty.wesleyan.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Elizabeth McAlister<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of Religion, African American Studies and American Studies<br \/>\n<em>Wesleyan University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Insofar as they occupy the symbolic place of messiah in these zombie apocalypses, it interesting that from Ben in <em>Night<\/em>, to Peter in <em>Dawn<\/em>, and John in <em>Day<\/em>, to Robert Neville in <em>I Am Legend<\/em>,  a central male hero is Black, two of whom are West Indian.\u00a0All are  solid, dependable, capable Black men who strategize and fight their way  to survive the zombie outbreak. All Romero\u2019s Black men make alliances  with the one White woman in each group, who also makes it to the  post-apocalypse. \u00a0 What can we make of this interesting pattern that zombies seem to be the  monsters it is the province of Black men to vanquish? We might wonder,  in turn, what it is about <em>whiteness<\/em> in zombie films that the Black male secular messiah characters point to&#8230; &#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Obama<\/a> has been said to possess an image in the American psyche that  lends itself to being cast as a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magical_Negro\" target=\"_blank\">Magical Negro<\/a>; he has also been  referenced in a messianic idiom, and scores of commentators have noted  the many times that people use exalted, prophetic vocabulary in  describing Obama. Obama was elected in the teeth of an economic  super-crisis, a\u00a0hero who would slay the zombie-banks threatening to  cannibalize the nation\u2019s funds.\u00a0Obama is also figured as a multi-racial  person who will usher in America\u2019s multiracial future (the implicit  future of these zombie films)&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire essay <a href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.futureofthebook.org\/imr\/2009\/10\/01\/obama-zombies-and-black-male-messiahs\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Messiahs In Media Res 2009-10-01 Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion, African American Studies and American Studies Wesleyan University Insofar as they occupy the symbolic place of messiah in these zombie apocalypses, it interesting that from Ben in Night, to Peter in Dawn, and John in Day, to Robert Neville [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1196,8],"tags":[6732,10959,10953],"class_list":["post-23500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-elizabeth-mcalister","tag-in-media-res","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46098,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23500\/revisions\/46098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}