"Fear makes people do stupid things": Containment Culture In Angel's "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?"

My reading of this episode owes much to Alan Nadel's book, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism and the Atomic Age. 

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" is the title of the second episode of Angel's second season. It is also a direct reference to McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) line of questioning towards suspected communists, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?". The story, which is set against the backdrop of Cold War anxieties, goes beyond solely depicting the period's "Red Scare" and instead offers up a broader presentation of the various aspects of containment culture.

Angel, spin-off to Joss Whedon's teen-horror Buffy the Vampire Slayer, focuses on the eponymous vampire-detective, cursed with a soul, as he endeavours to "help the helpless" in early-2000s Los Angeles. This episode features a dual timeline, where most of the action takes place in flashbacks to the vampire's (relatively) younger years. The villain of the peace is a thematically appropriate demon which feeds off of fear and paranoia, with the flashback exploring Angel's first interaction with the creature and the present action showing Angel (and his supporting cast) endeavouring to scourge the hotel of its longstanding occupant. The episode, written by Tim Minear, is one that leans harder into Angel's noir genre inspiration than most, as its oblique themes of fear and paranoia converge with its 50s setting and its disgruntled, pessimistic protagonist. Angel's quiet life in the hotel is disturbed by Judy, a mixed-race woman who passes for white. Judy, fired from her job and abandoned by her husband because of her heritage, has stolen some money and has a Private Investigator on her heels. Race is prominent throughout the episode, with a black family being refused entry to the hotel in the early moments of the story, and ideas of blood purity and sanctity in Judy and Angel's relationship are abound. This culminates in the paranoia-fuelled mob of hotel guests attempting to lynch Angel, as Judy deflects accusations of her deviancy by identifying Angel's monstrous nature to the mob. This betrayal has the protagonist wilfully surrender the people to the fear demon until his later, redemptive return, to slay the demon. Interrogating the questionable depiction of a white man taking the place of a black woman in the imagery of lynching is beyond the scope of this piece, but an interesting discussion can be found here.

What is of interest to me (and writer, Minear) is the episode's sensationalised realisation of containment: the containment that yielded high-profile witch hunts and took a focal lens to Hollywood, particularly. Trials and blacklists of notable figures came to define 50s Hollywood and the containment policy enacted on America as a whole. The focus of McCarthyism on Hollywood was not because the American government believed there was a secret sect of communists operating out of Hollywood, but rather that these particular, high-profile, trials helped disseminate the principles of Containment to a nationwide audience. Americans were encouraged to be suspicious of others and to police themselves well, so as to not demonstrate any deviant behaviour that may incriminate them; deviation from the norm was career-threatening, as the high profile Hollywood cases demonstrated.  The "Hollywood" community is developed in the episode through a cast of hotel guests, who are actors and screenwriters, and iconic Hollywood imagery; the Griffith Observatory, for example, harkening back to Rebel Without A Cause, eliciting the necessary cognitive link between text and context. The historical context is as much a villain here as any other antagonistic force and, in many ways, the suspected murderer, or fear demon, serves the role of subversive Other. The Communist, the Soviet, has infiltrated the ranks of the hotel, the inhabitants of which serve as a microcosm of an American community- particularly the Hollywood community- who must eject the subversive Other not only to protect the status quo (or idealised America), but to protect themselves also. As Angel states, "Everyone here has something to hide.", and each individual's hidden quality is one that would be considered deviant or a threat under containment. Deviancies of the "social, sexual, political, economic, and theological" (Nadel) are under surveillance, from the left-leaning politics of a blacklisted screenwriter, to the hidden homosexuality of a movie star, the passing of a mixed-race woman for white or a vampire passing for human.

The "Lavender Scare" is a term that particularly refers to the treatment of homosexuals- as subversives and inherent, anti-American, communist allies- under containment narratives. These hotel guests, identified as potential subversives, then engage in a race to find the most deviant identity: the person whose repudiation would cement them as innocent or truthful engagers in American life. The second to last subversive is a black woman, passing for normative white; the last, Angel, is then representative of the most profound anti-Americanism. His vampire nature serves him well here, as vampires have been theological, biological and sexual threats in their storied existence. With classic vampires, like Dracula, they have also been presented as geopolitical threats, an external Other. Most important here though is the dual nature of the vampire, the human face that belies the inherent demonic qualities. Looking like a human, the vampire is assumed to hold human values and this assumption is what creates the vampire's victims. In much the same way, Americans were instructed to be suspicious of those who appeared human, but hid anti-American sentiment. Sentiments could only be identified by interrogating minute deviancies.

Angel is secluded in the hotel for that own deviance, policing himself so as to not bring attention to his subversive nature. His monstrous nature as vampire identifies him as a metaphorical Other- someone feared by a paranoid, mainstream society- but his existence is literally Otherised as well. Angel exists as a character who cannot perform the masculine function- he cannot hold work, reproduce, be a functioning subject of capitalism- and, as such, isolates himself. Sequestered away in the hotel with the other gender, sexual, ideological and race deviants, Angel falls into a meta guilt of association. We understand that Angel must be a viable avatar for punishment on account of existing in this community of subversives.

The search for "truth"- or hunt for the duplicitous- characterises the demonically-influenced lynching of Angel, yet it is markedly important that the participants in the hunt for deviancy- particularly the hotel manager and bellhop, who together conspired to cover up a suicide by promoting the idea of a loose murderer- are all guilty, complicit in some way, of subverting idealised American capitalism. The instant turnaround as the mob has a new target for its legitimisation is one thing, but it's also worth noting how the woman from the lobby, previously accused of solicitation, likewise accuses Judy of being a "slut". Like the rest of this mob, her innocence will be proved at the altar of another's. "If the willingness to name names became the informer's credential, the ability to do so became his or her capital." (Nadel) By isolating the most deviant of them, the inhabitants have absolved themselves of their own individual crimes against cultural norms. Only once all these hidden facets are brought to light is the veracity of their accusation of Angel legitimised, echoing the role that evidenced deceitfulness of ex-Communists played in convincing a court that they truly were "ex".

Nadel writes that, under containment, objective "truth" was endowed with a theological aspect. The good, domestic monotheist was positioned against the evil, foreign atheist. As such Angel, as an unholy entity, is realised as the deceiver who must be disavowed and destroyed so as to prove the credibility and innocence of those accusing him. Angel's lynching provides the guests no freedom from paranoia, provides them no veracity to absolve them of their own deviance, it only sustains the culture of containment. In Angel's reckoning with containment culture, we can see the qualities of containment which have manifested and persisted in popular culture when we revisit 1950s America. Surveillance of the Other, policing of the self and the search for an objective "truth" are perhaps the most resonant of the existential questions which containment narratives and McCarthyism left for the American populace.

Nadel, A. (1995). Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. London: Duke University Press.

REFLECTIONS: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Spoilers may follow. Not that there are any that matter.

Ant-Man and the Wasp, sequel to 2015's not too bad Ant-Man and the 20th entry in Marvel's not too bad cinematic universe, is not too bad. It's an unfocused romp that never really earns its status as a big-screen entry to the Marvel story-world, often feeling like a spruced up one-shot, but still manages to glide by thanks to some great performances and the undeniable joy of the core gimmick. Shrinking and unshrinking people and miscellaneous objects remains as fun as ever.

Yet, 20 films, and 10 years, into one ongoing story-world demands something more than a harmless, safe, Summer blockbuster. At this point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with every new entry, must justify its existence. Ant-Man and the Wasp's greatest offence, then, is its sheer mundanity. There are two different types of boredom to discuss when it comes to this film. The first derives from how the film does nothing new or particularly interesting, allowing only its post-credit scene to contribute to any form of over-arching narrative. The second derives simply from how the film's pacing often screeches to painful halts, never knowing which parts of the film we want to spend more time with and which parts we'd have rather seen skipped over completely. The two moments which best exemplify this are when the opening tells us, bluntly, the film's mission (to return the original Wasp from the Quantum Realm) and, later on in the film, when Ghost, the villain of the place, tells us of her tragic (Eh) origin. I use the word "tell" pointedly. This is all too often a film about telling, not showing, and overdrawn narration on top of flashback sequences haemorrhages any flow and rhythm the film might have had. The second instance at least has a moment of subversion, interrupting the villainous monologuing with a video call between Ant-Man and his daughter, but it only comes after the expository function has been completed. It's a good gag, reliant totally on the perfect chemistry between Paul Rudd and his on-screen daughter (Make Cassie Lang an Avenger, you cowards), but ultimately, it's safe. It never threatens to undermine the character the screenwriter's are so committed to landing. Naturally, they failed.

The first instance had no such subversive moment, leaving an opening completely devoid of entertainment. It is, almost certainly, the worst opening to any MCU movie, and really sets the movie off on poor footing. It's a rocky, uneven road in the movie ahead, anyway. Each of the scenes feel individually conceived, creating a disparate film that seems only motivated to move from one gag to the next. Transitions between scenes are so clear and visible that it's jarring, with cliche name drops that lead directly to the scene concerning that name.

As I said previously, the film's greatest sin is its mundanity. Yet, it clearly didn't have to be this way. Ant-Man is Marvel's most exciting, yet least realised, franchise. It offers a unique opportunity to deal with intimate world-building, exploring clear themes of family and offering up development of the story-worlds past; the CGI technology that de-ages older actors for flashback scenes is pitch-perfect here, yet never used in as pivotal a way as we have seen elsewhere (Tony Stark in Civil War comes to mind). Even in the film itself, you can piece together what seems to be thematic links and an emotional core. Familial relationships are at the forefront, combined and utilised in different ways. You have two generations of Ant-Man and the Wasp, forming an impromptu family unit, facing off Ghost and her father figure in Bill Foster, and, off to the side, you have the extended family of Ant-Man's daughter, her mother and her mother's husband. Yet nothing meaningful or memorable is ever done with these parts. Rather than converging into the film's thematic heart, they are left carelessly at the wayside. It is a film which squanders its potential, limits its scope and makes you wonder why this had to be a feature-film at all.

The other missed opportunity is the Wasp, particularly the Evangeline Lilly/Hope van Dyne version of Wasp, who never earns her title credit. She falls into this new trend of female superhero who, having won the battle to be featured as a non-derivative, desexualised franchise-helming character, is never allowed the functional traits of the archetypal hero. When Hank Pym offers to dive after Hope's mother, in her stead, his robbery of her moment of self-sacrifice reminded me of how Wonder Woman similarly gave its big moment of heroism to Chris Pine's character. If self-sacrifice is a key tenet of developing and characterising the hero, then we can see that women are now allowed to be superheroes, just not the hero. Aside from that though, the realisation of Hope as a superhero in her own right seems to have taken from her a character arc. She had one in the first film, alongside her purely civilian/romantic interest capacity, yet here character development has been replaced by superhero iconography. The relationships of the film likewise take a hit. The very nature of the broader MCU sabotages its own individual components, with this film dealing with ramifications from the third Captain America film and the deterioration of relationships that has happened in the downtime between films. Going from the first Ant-Man to this one would not merely be a jarring experience, it would be untenable. Characters who were on positive terms with each other previously now have to navigate retreads of character tension. Is there a triumphant feeling when Scott and Hope come together, through adversity? No! Because the adversity has popped up out of nowhere, in some kind of sick rerun of the character tension from the first film.

All my criticisms aside though, this film has a great Morrissey gag. No, really. From The Cure in the first film, to the Moz in this one, it would appear that director Peyton Reid has a great taste in music. Perhaps he should give Ant-Man 3 a miss and just make some Spotify playlists. It is the comedy and lightness that makes this film enjoyable, despite its shortcomings. Visual gags abound and almost enough Ant-Man family sweetness really does the heavy-lifting for the film. It has to be understood though, that this cinematic universe rests on the precipice: it is all but guaranteed to survive until the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, but after that will the long-promised superhero fatigue finally kick in? I'd argue that, with more films as safe, trite and unimpressive as this one, it could be right around the corner.

Psylocke is Dead, Long Live Psylocke: On Body Swapping and Orientalism

Here we go again. In Marvel's current Wolverine-focused event, Hunt For Wolverine, writer Jim Zub is promising to put X-Men franchise mainstay Psylocke through another round of her perennial body swapping ordeal. From a leaked variant cover to #4 of the Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor mini-series and Zub's own confirmation, fan communities and comics journalists have discovered this plot point some weeks before the reveal. Before we delve into the torrid discussion surrounding the politics of body swapping (particularly in the case of Psylocke), let's first recap some history.

Psylocke, the telepathic, telekinetic mutant with a proclivity towards focused totalities and leather thongs, has had a series of debuts. Her first appearance, from creators Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, was in 1976 in Marvel UK's Captain Britain #8. Long before she was identified as a mutant, Psylocke was Elizabeth Braddock, twin sister of Brian Braddock aka Captain Britain. Her US debut was not until 1986, in New Mutants Annual #2, and her debut as Psylocke was in Uncanny X-Men #213. Already, we can see that the character has a more complex history than most iconic superheroes, whose debut most often occurs in only one comic book. But, it only twists more from there, as we reach the crux.

What is the most common visage of Psylocke? I'd wager it is this figure, from the 90s, the hyper-sexualised Asian body.

Yet, the Psylocke who debuted in Captain Britain, and was later seen in Uncanny X-Men, was not Asian. Not just that the character, as sister to Captain Britain himself, hailed from Britain, but that the character was Caucasian. A mild-mannered, upper-class styling of femininity, that belied a hidden strength, comic book creator Alan Davis once compared her to Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope.

So, what exactly happened? As with all things concerning the continuity of superheroes, it's complicated. Put simply, Psylocke, upon anticipating tragedy would befall the X-Men, entered through a magical MacGuffin that transported her to Japan and rendered her amnesiac. A dastardly villain sees this as a chance to groom a new master assassin for his nefarious purposes. Psylocke is brainwashed and is then, due to an incapability to abide outsiders, subjected to bodily transformation. She comes into conflict with some X-Men, she overcomes her conditioning, defeats the villain and gets the happy ending. Only there's no such happy ending, considering her body is no longer her own, but that of a Japanese ninja. This new iteration of the character is confrontationally sexual, alluringly deadly and suddenly an expert of Eastern martial arts. Psylocke is dead; long live Psylocke.

There was also a later incident of retroactive continuity that posited that there was another character who Psylocke had simply transferred minds with. This is a complete logical mess and beyond the scope of this particular piece. Even if I had the space for it, I wouldn't want to delve into that matter because, quite frankly, it makes my brain hurt. Regardless, this transition from British body to Japanese happened under the pen of the character's creator: Chris Claremont. With fairness to Claremont, the questionable ethics surrounding minds and body are a repeatedly explored topic in his X-Men comics (many of a similarly problematic nature, including turning two other White characters into Native Americans) and he would later return to this character and revise the transformation into an Asian woman, returning her to her British body. After a brief period of disuse (she had been killed, but silly things like that don't tend to stick), Psylocke returned in her original body in Uncanny X-Men #455.

For some time it seemed like the British Psylocke was to be a victim of "hypertime", a term borrowed from Grant Morrison's conceptualisation of a DC meta-universe, where canonicity is determined by a readership's almost-democratic decision and doesn't adhere to what is strictly in texts. Whilst Psylocke had returned to her British identity, comic book artists simply refused to stop drawing her as the hyper-sexual Japanese ninja. After spending some time in flux, (textually white, yet aesthetically Asian) Psylocke would experience yet another body swap (courtesy of Matt Fraction) in Uncanny X-Men #508-511, this time reconciling artist measure and definitively situating Psylocke in the Japanese body. So definitively, in fact, that over the course of this story Psylocke's original body was mutilated and destroyed; a bizarre realisation of the idiom, "you can't go home again".

There are actually few enough differences between the renderings of the two ethnicities that you could get away with saying that Psylocke had always been, in some part, Asian. It would not be the most ridiculous moment of retroactive continuity in X-Men franchise history. Certainly, this is one solution posed by those who see both the problematic nature of the character's Asian body and the value of such a popular Asian character. Yet what is abundantly clear is that the moments of sexuality diverge with the change of ethnicity; the Japanese woman is afforded a fetishisation and sexualisation that the White, British woman simply never is. What's even more interesting here is that Psylocke did not merely go through the body swap and come out on the other side a newly sexualised character; she was always objectified, her modelling career backstory serving as an opportunity for male creatives to curate her for male audience consumption. What we then see are two distinct sexualities and femininities- both curated for male consumption, yet disseminated in separate ways.

I think it's fair to say that the femininity associated with the British Psylocke is privileged in the readership's eye. Her objectification can be considered a higher, more sophisticated cultural process than the comparatively crass and base depictions of Japanese Psylocke. You can see this in the distinct costumes the different realisations wear, but also in how the body is posed by artists. The Japanese body is almost always contorted in some unnatural way so as to always deliver some element of sexuality. The White body, meanwhile, is allowed some dignity in its objectification. Whilst still a conservative realisation of beauty standards, the White body is at least allowed to look human.

It is also worth noting that, alongside the new body, Psylocke gained new traits and abilities that had never been realised in her British form- particularly ninjutsu and an affection for all things Japanese, or, at least, all things Japanese by way of America. This is a woman who had been raised in a privileged, upper-class British household, with no feasible connections to the culture she had now become endowed with. The Japanese Psylocke had, for the swathe of the character's popularity, become the preferred reading. It is this version of Psylocke which is realised in cartoon adaptations and even in Olivia Munn's portrayal of the character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Her dated costume was criticised widely, but, to fans of the comic book, this was merely an apt adaptation of the source material. So the Psylocke of the wider consciousness is this crass, dated character of a Japanese superhero, yet therein lies the inherent danger of further meddling with her identity. She is known to be a significant Asian character and to obliterate her is a serious mark against a brand that focuses itself around sympathy towards identity diversity, if not identity diversity itself.

To question Marvel's fetishisation of the East is vital, considering the context of the recent promotion of Akira Yoshida (the alter-ego of white comic book creative C.B. Cebulski) to Editor-In-Chief; white people using Asian identities to promote themselves isn't just a textual phenomenon but a metatextual one also. What, then, does this return to Britishness and whiteness signify? Is it an attempt to remove the criticisms of authorial orientalism, or, perhaps, audience orientalism? Does Jim Zub seek to absolve Marvel of these issues or to simply allow fan communities to overcome this point of contention? After all, the constant re-switching and renegotiation can be attributed to a synoptic fan community, where the many (an audience devoted to multiple realisations of genre and character) interact with the few (the creatives actually involved with the generation of new stories) and all each proclaim themselves as arbiters of true representation. To me, though, I think there is something more profound and zeitgeistic at hand. Despite the surface-level diversification, wherein which a Caucasian character is replaced by an Asian one, we can read the Japanese Psylocke as actually endemic of the homogenising force of the 90s- the superhero comic book's "Dark Age". Where Psylocke had previously been allowed to exist as her own unique entity, complementing the make-up of the X-Men franchise in her own way, the onset of the 90s came with a clear, decisive mission. Everything has to be cool. Everything has to be dark. Everything has to be big. And everything has to be sexy. This new return to Psylocke's original body feels like a condemnation of the "Dark Age" design ethos, in a context where superhero audiences beyond the straight, adolescent male are finally being considered. By abolishing the Asian body, Jim Zub may also be abolishing the dehumanising sexuality associated with that body. Rather than to reconcile the inhuman, orientalist subject with dignity, the subject is to be replaced by the White: dignity present by default.

Then we are finally faced with the impossible question. To return Psylocke to Whiteness is to obliterate one of the franchise's most significant Asian representations, whereas to persist with the Japanese body is to likewise persist with the American fetishisation of Asian identities. With any new property or adaptation, it's an easy decision to just meld these characters together. Reproduce Psylocke as an Anglo-Asian character, from birth, and you side-step a lot of the concerns at hand. This does not, and can not, hold up in the ongoing, serial format of contemporary comic books. The format would resist it, fans of the format would resist it, and soon enough you would see a return to the status quo, proving any noble work done to progress the character moot. Only time will tell if Mystery in Madripoor can finally quell Psylocke's existential questioning for good, but, whatever the answer to this conundrum is, I think that it is clear that it cannot be found in the constant switching, re-switching and re-re-switching of bodies.

In a way, the answer means little. Such a fraught cultural issue benefits more from the question. The fictional Psylocke is no ubiquitous battleground for debates around orientalism in contemporary popular culture, but, rather, is a microcosm from which we can further scrutinise issues of representation at large.