Basil Creese Jr: Superhero

Back in the mists of time, when my sister, my brother and I would go to see Hollywood movies together, we'd bet on when they would kill off the token black character and how gruesome his death would be. I remember there was one movie which saw a black man die quite horrifically within ten minutes of the opening credits which made us all erupt with laughter and cheers and left the rest of the audience with the impression that we were perhaps serial killers taking a break from slaughtering innocents.

The acclaimed director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy) calls it The Disposable Black Man principle and he cites a friend who worked at a major studio in Burbank, California who would play exactly the same game with her friends. Mr Cox had a programme that he used to host on BBC2 called Moviedrome and he discussed the treatment of the black characters and their gratuitously violent deaths in his introduction to Darkman, quoting Unforgiven and David Lynch's Wild At Heart as further examples. You can watch the last scene in question here.

Up until that point I'd thought we were crazy and that this was something only we had noticed. It's been a while since we Creese Children occupied 3 cinema seats together (the last film we saw as a trio was The Bourne Supremacy, which I retitled The White Supremacy, because there are no black people in that motherfucker! I didn't bother with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy for the same reason), but it's a game I still play on my own.

I went to see X Men: First Class a couple of days ago. It claims to be a metaphor for tolerance (Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are the inspiration for Magneto and Professor X respectively). I was interested in whether, firstly, there was a black superhero, and secondly, how long he would last. The answer was 1. Yes, and 2. About seven minutes. And, as usual, he was eviscerated in the most horrible way. Ah, it took me back. Good times... Good times...

I didn't bother watching this year's Oscars ceremony as my corner shop had run out of Pussy juice (see blogs passim) and there was not a single black nominee in any of the categories. Not... One... Why is ever increasing societal diversity not being reflected in the film industry? Presumably ignorant twats like Morrissey (yeah, I said it. What? And fuck The Smiths!) and David "Multiculturalism has failed" Cameron who yearn for an age where the outside world had the good manners to stop at the white cliffs of Dover will have been feverishly tugging at their tumescence as they saw the list of nominees.

Cambridge graduate Thandie Newton's recent experience gives the lie to the notions that either the black talent doesn't exist or that it's just about the bottom line of dollars and cents. There is an agenda;

"There was one time I went for a meeting for this big movie and I was up for a character who wasn't written as black. The character was a college graduate and the studio head, a woman, said, 'How can we make this role more black if we are going to have you in the film?' And I said, 'Well, I think as it's written it's fine...' And she said, 'Yeah, I know, but she is a graduate, she has been to university.' So I said, 'I've been to university.' And then it was, 'Yeah, but you're different.'"

Thandie turned down the role. Kenneth Branagh's Thor features the peerless Idris Elba as Heimdall and whilst, as a The Wire devotee, it was fantastic to see him in such a high profile role, all through the movie I was waiting for his violent demise. But even his taking the role in the first place caused ire amongst the racial purists. I visit the white supremacist website stormfront.org pretty regularly (the better to know one's enemy), and it's fair to say they were outraged at his casting.

"This IS an attack on a White culture! If anyone attempted to muscle in on e.g. Red Indian or Tibetan culture, the ethnics would be able to legally challenge them! This IS no different! The only role this black should be playing is that of a primitive of some sort! And he should be playing that within his own culture, in Africa!"

Big Idris recently gave his thoughts on the under-representation of black people in Hollywood cinema. Elba said:

"Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful?" Elba asks. "Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone's white. That's what we have to change."

Yes, we do. I've started writing a screenplay which features Basil Creese Jr as a conflicted superhero: should he save a world for which he has nothing but contempt? I haven't decided if I make it to the end of the movie yet, but I definitely want Zac Efron to play me.