TOTALITARIAN TOKENISM PT. 2

 Berlanti follows the current trend of identity politics, assuming that as long as you keep showing "noble gays" to the public in great quantity, the public will embrace gay people in response to this fervent appeal to social equity. But I don't think that's the way it worked for the liberalization of 1960s attitudes toward Black Americans as fictional characters. White people may remember the presence of a Barney Collins or a Julia Baker (from the titular series JULIA), but mediocre characters don't change opinions. Whatever the real-life failings of Bill Cosby, his portrayal of Alexander Scott puts across a character who is enjoyable because he is rounded as well as being black. Similarly, even though Nichelle Nichols' Lieutenant Uhura appeared in far fewer scenes than did Diahann Carroll's Julia, the former made a more lasting impression because her character was better conceived, both as a character and as a black woman. -- EMANCIPATION VS. FREEDOM PT. 3.                                                                                       

In this essay I'm still no closer to specifying what type of tokenism is "totalitarian," though the above passage from my 2019 essay probably should supply some hints. And though I'll be focused here on productions stemming mostly from the 1960s, I thought it appropriate to lead with one of the 1950s harbingers of changing attitudes: a scene from 1950's NO WAY OUT, best remembered for the cinematic debut of Sidney Poitier. Apparently at some point in his career Poitier was labeled a "token" for not doing or saying whatever someone thought he ought to do or say. This would be a negative use of the word as exemplified by Malcolm X's screed in Part 1. But for me Poitier's career during his trailblazing years could only be as a "token" in a positive sense. To Liberals of the period, Poitier was like a subway token. You couldn't exchange the goodwill value of the object for an immediate monetary refund, but that sort of token would guarantee you many future rides and thus accumulated "progress."                                                             

 I've already mentioned a couple of reasonably successful "positive tokens" in my previous essay: Alexander Scott (also mentioned in the quote above) and Marvel's Black Panther. There were other works in the time period that weren't quite so successful, such as the Paramount release above. WALK LIKE A DRAGON, directed and co-written by James Clavell before his breakout success as a writer of bestsellers, was clearly an attempt to provide a "positive token" narrative for Asians. Set in the Old West, WALK was given a rather lubricious publicity campaign, but it's not really any racier than a TV drama of the era. The main plotline centers upon a romance between a Caucasian cowboy (Jack Lord) and a Chinese woman (Japanese-Canadian Nobu McCarthy) sold into slavery but rescued by said cowboy. There had been a fair number of Asian-Caucasian romance films in Old Hollywood, but Clavell's intent was somewhat more revolutionary, particularly when a male Asian character (James Shigeta) straps on six-shooters to battle prejudice.                                      

In my previous essay I noted how female characters assumed arguably greater agency of one kind or another in the early 20th century, whether as romantic interests or as combative figures, though only 1940s Wonder Woman gives strong evidence of providing a token of feminism-to-come. But feminism like race politics became a hot-button issue to average Americans in the 1960s, and so heroines of that period-- Modesty Blaise, Emma Peel, Honey West-- take on various intonations of virtuous feminism. But here, as with my examples of persuasive racial characters, the ones that appealed as individuals, rather than purely as symbols, had the greatest impact. This criterion puts Peel at the top of the heap, Blaise somewhere in the middle (and only for her comic strip, not for her unfortunate cinematic debut), and West cancelled in one season, *possibly* because there just wasn't anything very compelling about her character.                                                                                                   

Also in the previous essay I argued that there was practically no "emancipation narrative" for persons with unorthodox sexual proclivities in earlier decades. However, the sixties weren't called "swingin'" for nothing, and intimations of greater societal permissiveness gave rise to narratives with a positive-token message about tolerating the unorthodox. Many of these movies were just excuses to show a lot of female skin, but 1968's THERESE AND ISABELLE seeks to engage audiences to sympathize with the lesbian lovers-- though to be sure, their affair is told in flashback, so no one should expect a permanent liaison by film's end.                                                                                                                                    Next up: the totalitarian belief in mass quantities.