Cynthia Erivo: The Problem with the Black Female Identity Artist as Liberator

Every once in a while, God dumps an encapsulation of failure (or success), so strongly that it becomes an archetype of everything right or wrong with particular classes or entities of phenomena. In our case Cynthia Erivo shows us everything wrong with Black American men and women. Amazingly, and why I am religious about the matter, is because it is hard to believe one thing or detail can be used to summarize an entire catastrophe of failure. Completely unwittingly, Cynthia Erivo, and I will inject here David Oleyowo, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Boyega, and Trevor Noah symbolize Black American dystopian dysfunction at its worse.

Let us begin with the idea that Black Americans, Black American Culture, and a Black American Actor, don’t have the ‘gravitas’ to play Martin Luther King Jr., or Harriett Tubman. So they (the ‘producers’) went out and hired David Oleyowo, and Cynthia Erivo, British trained African immigrants to ‘intentionally’ bring a kind of gravitas to the roles because of course, American niggas can’t do it. It is as though we are too ghetto today, to play our own heroes of yesteryear.

Who was going to play MLK Jr., TI, Ludicrous, AI Tupac, Will Smith? The idea of those men bringing gravitas to the role is inconceivable. And if you thought the equivalent high point in Will Smith’s career was playing Venus and Serena Williams bat shit crazy father…I’ll cede the point, with the counterargument however, that playing a bat chit crazy dude by going bat shit crazy yourself is insane. The parallels are startling. Mr. Williams got tricked out of his estate by a conniving, shady, self-serving wife. Mr. Smith got tricked out of all dignity and self-respect (his estate as a man in the world) by a conniving, shady, self-serving, other man dick sucking wife (figuratively as in Tupac, or literally as in August Alcina). Either way these men, after achieving great heights, now are reduced to playing ‘Bad Boy’ caricatures of themselves. And I’m convinced that the only reason ‘Bad Boys’ (the latest ridiculous installment) was commercially successful is because everything else out at the time was so bad. It turns out that as regards human nature, the familiar, even if it is artificially induced, is better than nothing. That’s why Hollywood has produced so many rehashes, remakes, reworkings, reimagining’s, and rearward thinking and looking shit movies, and expects people to be happily uncritical about paying $20 a pop to do it, or paying $20 a month to stream ‘garbage’ (pronounced like the French)!

Furthermore, the idea that Will Smith would play MLK JR, or Fela, or Mandela, or Charles Drew (Blood transfusions) with gravitas and dignity, is negated by the very real fact that Will Smith wouldn’t do such a thing to save his life. Rather than display his ‘gifts and graces’ in a challenging Black role that required dignity with a capital ‘D’, he’d prefer to make another Bad Boys infantile movie making the White people who do the choreography on the fight scenes, and CGI effects blowing things up and on stunts rich. In addition, whatever ‘gravitas’ Will Smith could bring to playing MLK Jr., was wasted on slapping the shit out of Chris Rock on National television and telling the world they better keep his wife name out their muthafuckin mouths…or else. I’d be a Putin lover like Donald Trump, if immediately after that incident, Putin went on Russian National Television and said, “yo bitch is a muthafuckin whore; her name is in my mouth, and if I showed her my riches and fit Russian manhood, my dick would be in her mouth; I heard you like it kinky, you can get some of this ‘Russian Crushing’ too; now what the fuck are you going to do nigga!” And of course it would be true, Will Smith should have been more concerned in keeping other men’s penises out of her mouth, and Tu Pac’s out of her dreams, than her name out of Chris Rock’s or anyone else’s mouth. If the reader thinks that last ‘skit’ too aggressive, let me hasten to suggest the reader look at a few episodes of her ‘Red Table Talk’ podcast. I’m suggesting a few episodes because I’m sure that’s about all you could take of that kind of pre-Cynthia Erivo talk about ‘space’, ‘safe spaces’, ‘creating space’, ‘space to breathe’, ‘space to be authentic’, for God’s sake, how much space do Black women need to create? The space(s) that exist seem to be good enough for everybody else except Black women, for nobody else talks about the inferiority of the ‘space(s) that exist’ but Black women, the gay socialist-atheist White liberal women Black women inspire, and the LGBTQIA+ Alphabet soup communities that adore and idolize Black women, seeing them as Divas and trailblazers for them to be ‘themselves’ (which is just as trumped up in this fantasy land of ‘creating spaces’). Never mind your children and your man (real spaces), the world is adoring you and giving the Black woman highest positions in Babylon, even perhaps President of the United States. And when you create ‘all this space’, you inevitably create space for people to criticize you. The more self-righteous, prideful, arrogant, and self-satisfied about it you are (don’t erase my face), the more people (who don’t feel powerful enough to criticize you openly), content themselves with a little schadenfreude at you getting your comeuppance…Killa Kam…Fani…Letitia…etc. Sistas end up eroding their own base in the process.

Of the problem(s) in contemporary Post-Modern Black Arts, as to young Black men and women not possessing the gravitas and artistic poise and power necessary to do great thespianism, the problem is accentuated by the fact that White mainstream entertainment moguls love elevating the latest rapper, booty shaking boss bitch, or whatever, to a great role or take as a role model. White folks (and Killa Kam) try to be hip by elevating the latest nigga who flew over the cuckoo’s nest and on the periphery of the radar screen, as opposed to investing in the kind of artistic endeavors regarding Black people and culture that would cultivate a wide range of Black writing and screenplays, as well as the development of Black actors. Furthermore, the fact Black artists are depending upon Whites for writing, production, and promotion, materially and/or psychologically, is an insult to our ancestors, and a sign of a link still connected in the mental chains of slavery.

What they give us is mindless. As much as we all love Ice Cube, he plays a caricature of himself in every role. Look up in the sky, it is a bird, it is a plane, it is Ice Cube playing a barber, playing a thief, playing a security guard, playing a husband, playing in a buddy film. Mindless endless loops of Black stereotype after stereotype, of the same variety and function that Tyler Perry and Oprah produce. How many sistas are we to find entertaining, how many real housewives, how many real this or that with fake nails and fake hair, and fake lives where shopping, getting their nails and hair ‘did’, and arguing with their family, their man, and their children, and of course, sleeping with the friends and associate’s husbands seems to be the predominant concern. That is not drama, it’s a stereotype presented as art, like a caricature.

But do White people see themselves as ‘responsible’ for the poor quality of Black Arts and Political leadership, because they pick the basest and most degenerate elements among us (Blacks) to elevate, promote and project, and then have the nerve to complain and act insulted when the Fani’s, the Tiffany Henyard’s, Latoya Cantrell’s from New Orleans, the Killa Kam’s, the Cynthia Erivo’s show up bad! And then to add insult to injury, because the niggas they picked are incompetent, it must mean all native Black Americans are incompetent and lacking in ‘gravitas’ and they must go to Brittain to find niggas that can bring gravitas to historic Black roles, that no common Negro actor (that they have been promoting like the best thing to happen to Black culture since grits, Nikes and Adidas) can bring.

Part II

What is altogether worse is that neither the British immigrant actors/entertainers, nor the Black American public and Arts communities knows they are being used like this by the White mainstream. For instance, I remember when David Oleyowo was challenged with the idea that when ‘they’ (foreign born British Blacks) get roles over Black Americans, the resentment Black Americans feel is unwarranted. He made a ‘we’re all just actors’ argument that was as incredulous as it was disingenuous. We’re all just cogs in the White man’s Industrial Arts Machine, what does it matter if Black American cogs or Black British cogs fill the same spaces.

Erivo however takes the cake as being symbolic of the age we live, however. She is Black, queer, massively talented, and hypersensitive. Hypersensitivity is quite common among artists (me included) and in itself is not a crime. But what she did in the case of the Movie production ‘Wicked’ is not the sign of a secure Black woman with self-esteem. As a matter of fact, the hypersensitivity is quite precisely low self-esteem parading itself around as pride and high self-esteem. Pride is so blinding, that a woman who the argument could be made, stole a role a Black American woman could have taken, in a movie, musical, and novel franchise White Americans created (Wizard of Oz), complained that when her face was redone by fans of the original using AI to make it more like the original Broadway production posters, Cynthia’s face, her identity was being stolen (erased). Her sense of self-esteem was at stake…because of a respectful and tastefully done picture. These are her comments.

“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting… Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face & hide my eyes is to erase me. That is just deeply hurtful”

And dammit she was not going to sit by silently (not to save face, and not to cloud the marketing, promotion and distribution of the movie). No Cynthi was offended that someone did something to her ‘queer Black face’ that she didn’t approve of, thus robbing a very rich and talented Black woman, mind you, of her dignity. A superstar on stages all over the world, felt humiliated because one fan of the Wicked Franchise redid her face to look more like the original. Look at the hyperbole in her statement…’the wildest, most offensive thing’ Cynthia had ever seen, trying to erase her? She is the star of the photo and the movie/musical, how in the hell is she being erased? I’m assuming Cynthia got paid her full salary, what difference does it make what a fan does respectfully and innocently…that is unless she is a hyper sensitive ready to be angry Black woman, that quite apart from the idea of being ashamed to be an angry Black woman, fulfills it as a self-lived stereotype, and caricature of herself and her ‘kind’ that she conveniently blames on others. Cynthia gets angry about perceived micro-insults, calling them “the wildest, most offensive thing she has ever seen. A grown woman mind you…like she has never seen Trans-Atlantic Slavery documentaries, or Holocaust Documentaries. Someone loving the franchise so much they change Cynthia’s face to look more like the original franchise picture, to Cynthia is “wildest, most offensive thing” she has ever seen!

Sista, if it’s that easy for your self-esteem to get impelled and imperiled, then your self-esteem must not have been much to begin with (contrary to your talent and your constant profession of your being proud to be Black, queer, and female). ‘Her got her little feelings hurt, wah, wah, wah’. And if you think I’m being mean spirited, she herself regrets that she reacted in a hypersensitive way and told interviewers that she should have just called a friend and vented about her ‘little girl’ (Cynthia’s words) sensitivities.

As it stands, she brought bad press to the ‘Wicked’ reboot. She should be ashamed as an artist for doing a ‘reboot’ of ancient material at all. Real artists look for new material, they don’t work other people’s material until and unless they want to as a labor of love, not a labor just to get paid by getting a franchise role that has already been defined. Think Miles Davis, think Picasso. Think of them and how they sought out evolution and change in their art. The irony is that Miles Davis could remake the famous standard tune ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’ and do it in a way that is completely his, quite precisely because he loved the tune. When Miles, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb did their version, do you think Miles or Trane et al were looking for admiration from the fans of the original. Trust me, they didn’t give a damn what the original writers of the song, or the fans of the original song thought. They did what they did for a much hipper audience, that Cynthia is not privy to. That is not the kind of Art she does. Her ‘Art’ needs contestant approval feedback in the form of you’re the greatest, no one can sing like you, you represent all Black queer women, etc., or else little Cynthia is going to get her ‘feelwings whurt’. To get a ‘franchise’ role that has already been played (exhaustively no less), and defined, just to make money and self-appointing yourself some kind of Human Rights representation warrior because you are doing it as a Black, Queer, female is ridiculous. It doesn’t make you an artist, and it certainly does not automatically mean that you are ‘breaking down barriers’, and thus no one can ever criticize you without being accused of being a racist or sexist homophobe.

With all that baggage these Black women bring to the table, they get mad when the White mainstream either doesn’t support them, or doesn’t support them as strongly as now angry Black women think they should. For God’s sake, how can a woman who came up in the industry playing Celie in the musical version of The Color Purple argue with a straight face she got ‘demeaned’ in a role. First of all being dumb enough to be in a tragedy, paraded around to the world as a liberation vehicle for Black women, performed as a musical, is so oxymoronic, you can leave the ‘oxy’ out of the phrase. I suppose she brought all that British ‘gravitas’ and ‘training at the Royal Academy’ to playing Celie and Harriet Tubman. Was she condescending to play the roles? It cannot be known for sure, but I have my suspicions because continental Africans and other African immigrants to America digested and ejected through the UK and Europe oftentimes have a vision of Black American culture that is consistently clouded by the same stereotypes typical of White America (lazy, oversexualized, no fathers, inherent criminality, etc.)

Part III

Let us be clear, for clarity is the price of truth, Cynthia, David, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Trevor Noah, and even Lupita do not resonate in Black American culture. They exist, and we are happy to have them exist, but no Black American is deluded enough to be into the idea that their activities mean something or is doing something for Black culture or Black people. They are piggybacking off opportunities hard fought and won by African Americans and in exchange for exacting payment, we just ignore them. Let White people fuss and fawn over them, giving them award after award for their exalted ‘gravitas’ that they got from studies in Britain, or just the accent, but to the Black popular mind they are irrelevant and as nothing. For whatever reason(s) Cardi B, Beyonce, Meg the Stallion, and other half-naked women have more impact on vulnerable little Black girls than anything Cynthia, Lupita, or Ego Nwodim (Saturday Night Live) does; in White or Black American women’s culture artistically or personally. Is it because Cynthia and her Queer Nigerian British Negritude is too far above us, too exalted for us? Or is it that she is simply unlikable, even by Black people and Black cultural standards, cultural standards that theoretically should be sympathetic to Cynthia eta al., to listen to and like. Instead of being a hero to little Black girls, do you really want to know who she is a hero to…little queer Black boys who idolize Broadway and strong Black women who just need affirmation to save the world. Then we wonder what the effects of generations of Black boys being raised without credible masculine figures in their lives will do to a kid.

But little Black girls aren’t as stupid as Cynthia thinks. While the ‘necessity’ of being a queer Black female actor I will happily cede to any opponent; what little Black girl wants to be a queer Black female actress dependent not on new fresh writing, scripts, and roles, but on White people doing remakes where they simply inject the ‘little Negro girl’ into a role defined, detailed, fleshed out, and written by White folks four or five generations ago? Doesn’t that sound fun! This is part of the tragedy and drama of the Black actor in post-modern America. They can be in starring roles, but no one wants to see them star! Star as what, pray tell…a hustler, pimp, drug addict, Celie, women on Brewster place, Precious, She-nae-nae, Madea, a slave, etc.? A princess? Princess of what and where, some White man’s Kingdom he loaned to her for the sake of inclusion? Get the fuck outa here. What, he/she/they is going to be a super spy…for who…the White man’s CIA, MI5, the KGB and its current iterations? Clearly there is no Negro political State, Corporation, or entity that could afford well trained superspies or maintain them without they themselves creating coups, so what is poor Idris Elba and David to do; get shopped around as a DEI James Bond? None of these people, and for that matter Black American Cinema and Actors either, is willing to address these basic issues about Black people’s general portrayals and self-portrayals in the Cinematic world.

What is a Black man or woman with ‘gravitas’ going to star in? Another remake of The Color Purple, President of Wakanda, a Senator in Wakanda? Thank God for Vibranium because if it took political, cultural, military, juridical, and organizational abilities and skills, we niggas would never get the business of Civilization building done. That is why Black acting is at its nadir in America. The roles are played out. They are either stereotypes, based on stereotypes, based on stereotypes being sold as fresh material, or roles White people did and figured they’d do us a favor by letting us play the roles. As great as Angela Bassett or Denzel is, how many truly Negro roles can they really be able to play considering how restricted Negro life and art has been for 400 years. Denzel and Angela in space, ‘Captain Negro’ (as opposed to Nemo). Oh no, there Angela is, as a 60-year-old 911 style rescue worker, and there Denzel is as a ‘citizen’ of Rome. There some random mulatto is in Bridgerton. Do White folks expect us, that is to say real Black artists to be happy with crumbs (seats in the kiddie section) from their tables forever? And the answer to the question of why is simple; profoundly sad, but simple.

The Black Man and Woman (Son and Daughter of Ham), cannot conceive of him or herself or his or her art ‘apart’ from White people. It is nearly always a reaction to something White folks have done, said, did, or are doing. Thus it is completely reactionary and as such, it is not independent, and is not ‘free’ in spirit, tone or subject matter and that is why it is nearly always stereotypical and derivative, whether its Tyler Perry, Oprah, etc. Why do Black men get portrayed so much as silly irreverent sidekicks to fastidious, responsible White characters who could stand a little loosening up? Like we were all variations of Mr. Brown from Tyler Perry’s infinite variations. It is not a coincidence. The White man will pay you to be his sidekick like they will pay you to spend 8 hours a day dribbling a ball, and make your children desire to do so. Chris Tucker, Martin Lawrence, Luda, Tracy Morgan, etc. And I don’t blame you. If I could get paid exorbitant amounts to play the White man’s irreverent, silly, comedic sidekick, and comedic foil or fail, I would too. But accepting awards for such a thing is improper as an artist.

The only liberated Black Art will be art that isn’t dependent on White financing and production services. But that is just phase I. There needs to be a phase I because while Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey control ‘the means of production’, they are tools in that they are using their ’empires’ to create a reactionary mirror of White mainstream stereotyped caricatures of Black culture. Before Oprah and Tyler Perry, we got White produced movies where the Black characters were simplistic stereotypes, and after Tyler Perry and Oprah, the Black community gets fed endless reams of celluloid images of damn near the same Black stereotypes and caricatures of Black culture. Either that, or Oprah and Tyler are sounding off on White oppression, racism, institutional racism, micro-aggressions, macro-aggressions, and/or some other reaction to what White people have done to us for 450 years. However at the same time they are nominally angry and resentful of White people, secretly they seek affirmation from White people and White culture. I find that fact fascinating. Black actors getting mad and sounding off because they didn’t receive the White man’s award (remember Oscars so White). Li’l Wayne, wacked out on lean, upset because the Super Bowl people picked Kendrick Lamar over him. Niggas really be in they little feelings when they feel White people don’t appreciate them. Cue my Dr. Amos Wilson, that is insane. As a matter of fact, when a Negro seeks out White affirmation (or negation), that should be a sign to the individual and the world that the art is not ‘healthy’.

A truly liberated Negro Art and Artist must be completely ambivalent about White people. That is freedom. To be that way on the inside and the outside is freedom. To use Te Nehesi Coates phrase, the Negro intellectual and artist must be free of worrying about how ‘Black Bodies’ are perceived by former enemies or possible friends; and even less concerned about whether or not my psychological state and mental health is dependent upon some encounter with racism and White culture writ large that is not mediated by my own religious, cultural, economic and political sensibilities as an existential human being. Not that one could only envision oneself absent White folks, because quite frankly being too rigorous about ignoring (negating) White people is the same as being a part of a Black culture that is purely reactionary…like the intellectual, spiritual and political equivalent of reacting to the Rodney King beating by burning out and burning down your own communities (psychologically and physically). Finding some medium; remembering without going back, forgetting without forgetting to go forward. Remembering without being angry, forgetting without being unfair to thank them for the least they did of what they did that was noble and right. Remembering with a sense of gratitude, forgetting with a sense of gratitude when necessary. Those of us who are married and in extended family relationships understand.

‘Sons and Daughters of Ham’ must wrestle with such existential questions. I used to be 100% sure that for the Black Man and Woman to be free we must ‘break every chain’ of mental slavery; but at the risk seeming way too conservative, and not conservative enough, I now think the key is not breaking ‘every chain’, but knowing selectively which chains to break, and which to maintain. Yes, I know I need to turn in my right-wing credentials by saying such a thing but indeed, at least in the short term, there is no interpretation of Black America (or even a Black America with Geopolitical aspirations) that is benefited by a weak White mainstream America, economically, politically, culturally, and geopolitically. If the Africans go from giving it to the White man to giving it to the Chinese, that is not Development (with a capital D). If niggas in the Carribean and S. America do the same thing, where is the liberation?

As a matter of fact, it helps White America that Black America develops its economic resources domestically and internationally. Less economic demands on the ‘welfare state’ and less political demands on the ‘welfare state’ that are specifically race based, would naturally tend to help race relations in America. White people in middle America would not feel that their taxes were going towards urban dysfunctional cities and the human products of that dysfunction in the form of ‘entitlement-based cultures’. A productive competitive Black America can only help the White mainstream. We do not need to consider ‘resentment’ as a factor on either side when the objective benefits of the relationship are mutually beneficial.

I’m not suggesting we somehow forget White people exist or use them as characters (caricatures that can’t run, jump, and have small penises etc.), or that Black comedians make endless jokes about Whites, or we act like #Blackgirlmagic or #Blackgirlpower is a ‘real’ thing. We have clear evidence those caricatures of White people are grossly overestimated. I cannot attest to their average penis size, and have little interest, but most certainly the Central Europeans are ballin at a high level in professional basketball when they can stay healthy. And I suspect that considering that so many Black men are fond of White women, I am not sure White Women need #Blackgirlmagic or #Blackgirlpower. Of course the LGBTQIA+ community will still adore and idolize sassy Black women…sashe Shante. And Oprah and Tyler will still be pumping out their stereotypes and caricatures of sisters, real housewives, and sassy Black women with long nails, sexy outfits, baby daddy drama, and they hair did. The kinds of Oprah and Tyler Perry styled ‘power’ in the Democrat Party they have enjoyed and made a career of, using these same tropes and stereotypes of Black culture to build a brand off of, are painfully exposed as irrelevant in the post-2024 election era. Even the Obamas have not escaped the sting and scalding burn of irrelevancy. They were no good to anybody; irrelevant to ALL communities; Black people (your supposedly docile built in audience) or the White mainstream. Who completely ignored your calls (justified or not) that the state of our Democracy was at stake. Clearly, niggas and White people didn’t believe you.

Part IV

Cynthia is an academically trained thespian and has the pipes to sing nearly any kind of music she chooses. And yet one would/could not call what she does a personal art. Her career is a series of rehashed roles, her vocal pipes devoted to songs other people wrote and arranged. To call performing ‘art’ in such circumstances, is not at all to be taken for granted. Artists choose their material, and suffer the consequences, performers pick their material based on the will of the highest bidders and what is popular.

Furthermore, with the vocal chops and training, the taking over roles African American women woulda, shoulda, coulda done, she doesn’t resonate with Black Americans. Sure she is the darling of Broadway and Hollywood, but go in the ‘Holly-hood’ and the poor little Black girls that need strong Black female role models don’t know who Cynthia Erivo is. I’ve never stood at a bus or train stop here in Atlanta waiting on MARTA public transit and heard some Nigga talking about the latest Cynthia Erivo song, movie or project. It’s not like Black people won’t accept ANYBODY! Ergo Tiger Woods, Oj Simpson, et al. Kanye went to Black and White debauched churches and sang trumped up ‘gospel theme songs’, but Cynthia has never used those glorious pipes at Negro churches in the cities she tours. You’d think a woman that played Harriett Tubman, by all accounts a profoundly religious and Christian woman, would have an almost telepathic relationship to the Black American Church, but she is not interested in such things. Cynthia is too busy being a professional Queer Black Female, and traipsing the world ‘creating spaces’. It’s not enough simply to be those things, she must be it professionally. That is why she gets her ‘wittle feelwings hwurt’, when someone ‘erases’ her as a Queer, Black, Female. Amateurs might get treated that way, but professional Queer, Black females should not be treated like that, and she refuses to be treated thusly. She will not be erased! Just like the White far right protestors in Virginia chanted “White Lives Matter” and “You will not replace us”. Cynthia is running around hollering about how “Black Queer Female Lives Matter”, and her face on a poster will not be ‘replaced’ under any circumstances that don’t involve her self-esteem. The Alt-Right protestors in Virginia and Cynthia were convoluting extreme disruptions in logic and reasoning. A ‘real artist’, a ‘real leadership vanguard’, knows it cannot be replaced and need not engage such trivialities.

From Al Gore, to Hillary Clinton, to Bill Clinton, all have tried with varying degrees of success to imitate the vocal currents and ephemeral waves of Black church Black secular rhetoric. Let us be clear, a woman that can play Harriett Tubman, Celie from the Color Purple, and can sing, can pull off behaviors in the Black church designed to stimulate brotherhood, sisterhood, religious comradery and the like, perhaps even up to what we in Sacred Black Southern Christian Negritude call the Holy Ghost. But Cynthia is not interested in that. Gospel music is just a tool in her arsenal of vocal abilities, not something she would ever use in an effort to actually reach out to God apparently, or Black people. That is of course subject to Cynthia creating ‘a space for God’, or having enough time in her ‘creation of spaces’ to create one for God; otherwise, her ego is so big she can’t possibly tolerate a God who presumes to ‘make his own spaces’ and is not dependent upon Cynthia ‘creating a space for Him’. She would never imitate Black culture out of love, preferring to do it because she can take advantage of White perfidy, in putting Cynthia in roles that just as credibly could be done by a native African American woman. While I could be wrong, I do not think she has ever visited Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, Otis Moss V church, Jamal Bryant’s church here in Atlanta, etc. She means absolutely nothing to the Black community, but yet let her and White liberals tell it, she is important enough for her feelings about White micro-aggressions (her being robbed of her face/identity) to be a representation of authentic Black women and men’s feelings, even though she is queer, rich, successful, independent, and lives with luxuries the average Black man or woman in Africa, the Carribean, South America, and North America could only dream of. But her got her ‘wittle feelings hurt’ because some White people took back the image Cynthia herself stole (the Green Wicked Witch with red lipstick, in a well-worn Broadway play).

My favorite thing she complained about was being sent rude posts on her and ‘Wicked’ media accounts. My favorite one is individuals taking the time to question is her ‘pussy green too’! As a former adolescent male, and because the man most certainly is the boy, I can say without hesitation that I found such a thought hilarious (as in I wish I had thought of it). In an effort to make it innocent, you might think of it as a dad joke gone wildly to the point of inappropriate impropriety. It would have occurred to my teenage self to wonder however, was her pussy green too, and had it not, it would most certainly have occurred to one of my friends. Any sane post-pubescent woman knows only teenage boys, and men with minds like teenage boys would take the time to ask that question? Is it not beyond the realm of possibility to genuinely wonder did Cynthia Erivo get green makeup placed all (literally ALL) over her body from head to toe. It would not be beyond the realm of possibility because many actors…as it were…stay in character at all times while filming. Getting green makeup on her pussy and dying her pubes green would have made Cynthia a consummate thespian for ‘going all out’ to really get into a role. I could imagine Cynthia in an acting masterclass taught at Oxford 25 years from now, where she looks back with pride in telling the story to her students that she was such a perfectionist, and so complete in her desire to internalize a role that when she played a green witch, she grew long fingernails and got the make-up artists to use green makeup to make her ENTIRE body green from head to toe, toenails and all. The bizarre part about Cynthia’s ‘sensitivities’ is that to any teenage boy (ergo the man), it wouldn’t matter in the least if her or any other woman’s pussy was green. I can’t say I’ve run into any green pussy yet, but considering the already wide range of colors it comes in (pink, red, purple, doo-doo brown, regular brown(s), blue, blue-black, laffy taffy, etc.), the fact that it could be green would not change its (the pussy’s) efficaciousness or inherent appeal. But surely Cynthia and her gay lover would agree with me on that.

Thus, a woman with genuine self-esteem wouldn’t answer those posts and emails or be offended by them. In addition, I can tell you for a fact, that if by chance, there are relatively intelligent alien life forms that even resemble humans sexually, there will be humans that fuck them just as sure as there are humans perfectly willing to fuck outside the commonly accepted biological, cultural and religious norms and standards now. An alien blob like slob with a digit or receptacle to stimulate a clitoris or penis, and human men and women will travel through space to get that alien receptacle/digit sex. And they will justify it on the basis that it is spreading love throughout the galaxies, and most certainly God is love and thus God endorses love in all its forms; intergalactic, interspecies, bionic, tech-interfaces, robots, dolls, and sexually stimulating implants, and menus and lists of all sorts (the illusion of freedom), to swipe through with the ideal that this will enhance life, by enhancing sexuality and sexual practices, so any physical risk is worth it…and maybe it is important to interbreed with aliens, after we encounter them, to hybridize ourselves, thus quickly making ourselves adaptive, resilient, and resistant to diseases and other adverse conditions we might encounter on other planets…or fucking aliens will kill us. But never you worry, some intrepid White man or woman will be happy to be the first.

As interesting as that is, the point is that if Cynthia Erivo doesn’t have enough self-esteem to know that green pussy is just as good as every other color pussy, and that fact is self-evident, and thus requires no comment from her or we fellow pussy lovers, she is not a good role model for young Black girls. If I am not mistaken Dr. Spock from Star Trek was fucking Uhuru; thus it couldn’t have been that much more or less difference between Vulcan pussy and chocolate pussy, and for that matter pink and green pussy too. There is another green character from contemporary superhero science fiction, Gamora from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise (which has lasted for multiple movies and offshoots). Surely Zoe Zaldana has gotten the ‘is your pussy green too’ question from curious adolescent male fans, or gay women dressed as barely pubescent boys, and otherwise pretending to have the mentality of pubescent boys. I don’t remember Zoe responding. But somehow, a ‘strong Black queer female’ gets her ‘wittle feelwings hurt’ by pubescent boys (and gay women’s) fantasies. While I am on the subject, if you look at Cynthia Erivo’s gay lover/partner, she looks like a barely pubescent boy, 20 years later (having still not gone through puberty but wearing men’s clothes). Thus she looked like a barely pubescent middle-aged man, which regardless of the sexuality debates, is a strange a kind of jarring thing to see. And Cynthia considers this (a fake man), an improvement over the real thing (a man). Fascinating, absolutely fascinating, of the magnitude that one would have to wonder is Cynthia sane. Yes, it’s a valid question because if I show up at your house with a wax apple, presume to eat it, and offer some to you and your family, and demanded that I be taken seriously, and you and your children have to indulge in the wax apple, that would be insane. And if you pretend along and eat the wax apple, and force your children to do so, that will make you and your children insane. How is it Cynthia gets offended because teenaged boys and bored men that get more internet sex than they do real sex, ask her is her pussy green too? Why should she be upset at that, perhaps men have the right to be upset that butch women go prancing around pretending to have penises they don’t have, and be masculine in stereotypical ways they got off television and movies (because they don’t have a daddy either), and then having to be insulted along with the injury by women who are hyper sensitive about pretending that they both like and love fake penis. That is an insult Cynthia, not somebody altering your picture. Cynthia has bought into a fake stereotypical caricatured manhood practiced by a woman as though she can do it better than a real man. Is Cynthia not ERASING men’s appendages by altering them and substituting them the way her photo was photoshopped…out of love…but in a way that Cynthia interpreted as robbing her of her agency and dignity.

Let us amuse ourselves even further in imagining the type of adolescent boy or man (or fake one) that would take the time to write in to Cynthia Erivo and ask her is her pussy green too. You can bet way more successfully than the lotto, that any dude that had the time to come up with such a question, probably wasn’t getting any pussy, green or otherwise. Perhaps Cynthia should have responded like that instead of getting her ‘wittle feelwings hurt’. If he dared respond, as Facebook and social media warriors always do, she should say, “I get more pussy than you do”, which coming from a gay woman, is always an insult to a man, not the least of which reason is because it is probably true, especially if a man doesn’t have a woman at all. Or Cynthia should have accused him of having to buy pussy because he can’t get any on his own merits….here again probably true if the dude has enough free time to post all over social media and Wicked accounts whether or not Alphaba’s pussy was green too. If Cynthia wasn’t so sensitive, and was as talented as she claims to be, she would have had plenty of jokes. I’ll delight the reader with a few more retorts a Cynthia not all up in her ‘feelwings’ could have said. She could have responded sexxy redd, Poundtown style, and argued that yes her pussy was green, and her ass hole is green too, bitch ass niggas! But of course Cynthia is filled with too much ‘gravitas’ and too British tight-upper-lipped to do that, even if she can’t help responding to adolescent boys with dreams of green pussies. One more, dear reader one more…perhaps Cynthia should have endeared herself to the Black community by responding with the most famous Negro ‘dozens’, ‘joaning’, and ‘dis’ retort, by saying to her teenage tormentors filled with surging testosterone her fake man biological female lover will never have, by saying “yes this pussy and ass is green, and neither your mama, nor your daddy are complaining, go sit your ass down somewhere and try to figure out which one of them niggas yo mama has been fucking is your real daddy, biyatch! I’m spending your college money, yo mama and yo daddy love this green pussy and ass so much. Ok I’m done. But I will have you know that little demonstration was just one of many, in which I demonstrate “Why I Write Such Good Books”.

I told you at the beginning of the essay that in the name of being a strong Black woman, she and other Black women make themselves look foolish in their dependencies for affirmation, adoration, affection, and affiliation from White liberals and the sexual alphabet soup communities. Think about what that really means Black woman. In theory your natural ally is Black men. But you ignore them, and view being equal to, or subservient to him as patriarchal and reprehensible, then proceed to run out and support your new White liberal socialist-atheist, pro-abortion, LGBTQIA+ communities no questions asked, even though you know damn well Sam Smith doing satanic rituals at the Grammys, Li’l Nas X giving Jesus and the Devil a lap dance, and Tyler Perry being more so the definition of Black womanhood than any comparable Black female character actor is not healthy!

Just because somebody thinks you are stupid doesn’t mean you to act that way Black man and woman. We are being played for fools!

Part V

About 5-7 years ago I wrote an article about why there was no Black Harry Potter; or rather, even Black child fantasy fiction. The reason is because no sane White person would ever write a story about a little Black girl or Black boy, indoctrinated by White Western European Culture, who has a transformative experience where he or she transforms out of the cultural stereotypes that she/he was raised in, and becomes authentically his or herself, saving the world in the process. People write those kinds of stories about their own children, not other people’s. Why would you write a story about someone else’s child saving the world? In Anime, li’l Japanese kids and adolescents save this world or that one, etc. White folks will let a nigga be a prince or princess in a worn out, played out trope of their choosing, with an integrated kingdom. But the idea of a little Black child finding him or herself apart from or in opposition to White mainstream culture, that is too close to home and too near the bone. But there is one thing that makes it tolerable. If the Black boy or girl has this transformative experience and then works for or closely with White people, like the Wakanda people are happy to work within the DC/Marvel/etc., universes. Then White people will let/allow you to publicly ridicule them or even be superior to them; as they are letting Cynthia browbeat them for daring ‘erase’ her. Cynthia is dependent on them, for material and money, White folks are not dependent on Cynthia. I promise you they can find 4 more in nearly every medium to large majority Negro city America. They do it all the time. Black women and niggas in general can have all the spiritual and emotional transformations they want to, they just better show up for work (that is to say what White people pay them to do) every day ready to portray the nigga stereotype of the week.

So the White mainstream will pay Cynthia to rework rehashed material and ‘make it her own’? And Cynthia is so silly she doesn’t even see this as a contradiction, philosophical or otherwise. And indeed, it is far easier to be a green witch princess than a Black one, and get paid handsomely. Would she be offended if someone posted on her social media asking was her pussy black? Of course no. No one would ask that (even prepubescent bored boys) because the a priori assumption is that it is. There can be little question. I’ve heard of a lot of things in my life. Michael Jackson and others had or have vitiligo, but I’ve never heard of a vitiligo that only affects one’s private parts, to the extent that even though the rest of one’s body is Black and brown, one’s penis/vagina is albino White. By the way, I just want to alert the reader that I have enjoyed writing this essay primarily because I have really gone into my adolescent self to come up with this stuff. Can I give you one more? Had Moses whipped out an albino ding-a-ling instead of merely his hand or arm, that might have been the greater miracle to the ancient Hebrews and the Egyptians.

White folks are happy to pay you to be a ‘back up’ princess, a ‘2nd hand princess’, a princess that must get loaned a White girl or woman’s ‘kingdom’ and where she feels continually oppressed to prove herself to her White masters that she belongs and deserves to be respected. This is also the theme of her role in the ‘Wicked’ Movie as well. Instead of being a princess or queen, even a witch princess or queen, by virtue of possessing a kingdom or queendom of your own, and ratified by your own subjects, you beg the White mainstream in the form of magazines, media outlets, and celebrity personalities. Cynthia, David, and my other favorite Megan Markle (Prince Harry’s mulatto). They would never try to build an authentic Black audience, or even African audience. That is not what they are interested in because it takes real courage, not some artificial version of courage because you think the fact you are Black, queer, and female gives you special powers, #Blckgirlmagic. White people know damn well they can get a new nigga next year, so instead of building an audience, they rehash White parts, White people burnt out two generations ago. They will never present themselves to lower- and working-class Blacks because that requires authenticity. Parading in front of the White mainstream industry fulfilling roles they have built for you instead of building your own, requires a lower level of authenticity (and talent) than presenting oneself before Negroes and quite precisely expecting to be taken seriously as an artist….especially considering the kind of bullshit we are use to on OWN, Tyler Perry Stuff, Steve Harvey, Real Housewives of this or that, etc. It would take too much work to build and develop authentic audience amongst Black people…better to keep rehashing shit for White people, impressing them with your queer woke Blackness, because they don’t need authenticity, they just need the a Black female face to prove they are not racist or sexist. They do not need an authentic Black person, a caricature, no matter how ridiculous it is, is better than an actual Negro for the same reason, actors are loathe to work with animals and children. Ergo Cynthia Erivo.

Trevor Noah claimed he got burnt out hosting the Daily Show. This is because a comedian explores contradictions, from the point of the common man, finding the sarcasm, irony and humor in the process. Cynthia and Trevor are contradictions, ironies, and oxymorons; thus they can’t really resonate with the common Black man or Black woman. It is artfulness to them whether they use a Black accent or intonation when it’s convenient like Killa Kam, Hillary, and even Al Gore. What we all forget is, imitating people badly isn’t a crime, it can be cute, like when children do it. Imitating people stereotypically and as a caricature, not out of love, but out of artfulness, self-absorption with one’s own skill and talent, and arrogantly, that is bad. Cynthia can sing any style of music she wants. And yet can we tell what music she loves? She can play any nigger in the world from an African, to British African, to an African American to someone from the Carribean or Brazil, an MI5/MI6 agent in Her Majesty’s Secret Service or a CIA or FBI agent in some elite department of the United State government. Cynthia wants to do those kinds of roles. She is excited to do that and wants to be well feted and paid to do that, just like the White media and stage stars who call themselves her peers. And yet, with all that talent, what does she believe as an artist? It the entirety of her art, the entire oeuvre, really defined by the fact that she is queer, Black and female?

And then she has the nerve to suggest she was devalued and her Black womanly humanity denied because somebody made a painting more like the original production art, when she thought she was bringing something so new, so revolutionary to a role White men wrote years ago. No one should ever change the poster because she’s Black female & queer, and must be worshipped for what the virtue of those ‘facts’ automatically brings to the role. Get the fuck outa here.

The first rule of psychology as I practice it is, you can’t outrun your baggage. And there we should close these matters as expeditiously as possible with a brief discussion of the role of Art and Artists in human culture. Through this one might see my last critique of Cynthia Erivo fully and clearly.

Part VI

The woman has pipes, clearly she is bright, and clearly she is knowledgeable in an applied sense to many different disciplines and arts. But she loses track of ‘Art’ and the individual ‘interpretive artist’. For instance, I sing 3 basic types of music if not professionally, then at a high enough level to reproduce it in public with credibility if not perfection, in the deep country. I sing gospel music, I sing my own folk-blues-rock music and as a hobby I sing German Lieder songs (Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, etc.)

As an artist every time I perform in front of people or not, what am I trying to accomplish? Everything I do, every choice I make, is an artistic reflection of the fact that at particularly important points in my life, I had a profound life-altering moment with these forms of Art. The encounter with them so moved me, that I (as it were) obsessed over them. I memorized them without trying from sheer love, the repetition that comes from sheer delight and fascination. I hummed them so much I knew the melody instinctively. I hummed and sang along with primary examples so much, I could eventually do a rough imitation that overtime got crisper and more and more credible.

That is my interior motive, but when I perform in front of people what is my motive? I don’t want the listener to encounter me (the me presently in front of them). I want the listener to fall in love with God, the music, and German Lieder, not me. I’d rather the listener see my passion and feeling, and perhaps be so moved as to love what I love, rather than love me as a performer. And even if you are Black queer female et. al, that in itself is not enough to justify making yourself more important than the production.

We see a clear example of the artist, putting themselves before the production when we witness Cynthia cracking-back on lovers of the ‘Wicked’ franchise who dared use AI to make her face look like Cythia mixed with the original promotional materials for the Broadway musical. Cynthia’s outburst brought a lot of negative attention to the ‘Wicked’ movie and production. Everybody in the mainstream media is ignoring it, and acting like there is no impact on the money, but the damage is done. When a production has an artist (for whatever reason) that is more important as an artist, than the production, it will invariably present some sort of distraction. In Cynthia’s case, here we have some kind of diva witch Queen with a nose ring whose decisions must never be challenged or toyed with, or risk the wrath of Cynthia. That is a distraction to the film and its promotion. Cynthia’s fickle sense of self-esteem, and getting her ‘wittle feelwings hwurt’ as a proud queer Black, woman, derailed something (fan fiction interaction), that could have been used to the films hype. But no, when you have a hypersensitive Black woman at the helm, who of course must be hypersensitive because of the ridiculous choices she has made in her life, that naturally would expose her to public ridicule. For instance, let us be frank, no disrespect intended. Cynthia’s husband or her co-wife, or her rudimentary coven, I don’t know what they call it, looks like a prepubescent man, dresses like an adult man, but doesn’t have a penis and/or male specific hair patterns (mustache and beard). Cynthia has a fake man. She wants to be celebrated (and respected) for having a fake man. She has a woman that acts like a man, and she calls that her husband or co-wife, or something silly like that. To demand people take that seriously automatically means you have to be hypersensitive to every possible micro-insult…because your entire life invites a macro-insult, the same way slapping a Mercedes symbol on a Ford Fusion doesn’t make it a Mercedes…but then if you go around demanding that everybody else and every other driver on the road, address you and accept you as a Mercedes driver and even Mercedes must register you in their list of official Mercedes owner membership club…well…at the very least you invite insults behind your back and to your face, and at its worst, you might be insane.

That takes its toll on a person, to go around with something fake, parading it around like it is real or perfectly normal. When I was a child, I’d witness my grandfather cutting the grass with his gas-powered lawnmower. So small was I, that I was deceived by my grandfather who gave me a plastic lawnmower and told me to mow behind him. What in the world kind of woman is satisfied with a fake man? Indeed real, and halfway real men (to her specification) would be available to someone of her stature except for the fact that the kind of ‘men’ hanging around Broadway, would naturally be so unmasculine, that a butch female might indeed be more masculine than the men Cynthia encountered in her history on Broadway and in theatre. And the pool of Black men that aren’t gay would naturally be even smaller than an already small pool. So when Cynthia ran up on a fake man, she said, sold, I’ll take a caricature, a stereotype over the real thing. Whether she did it out of desperation or Cynthia is really gay I do not know, but it is not something either she, myself, or the reader should assume we are capable of knowing. It reminds me of how I feel when someone comes on television that not only owns sex-dolls but has fallen in love with one in particular, and feels intensely attached to it. Interviewer after interviewer, psychologist after psychologist, therapist after therapist tries to tell him that the doll is not real. They try to tell him that it is a doll, a fake woman, an imitation of a real woman, and it is an extremely one-sided relationship that is nearly all in his head. One man even carried his doll around in public with him. At a certain point one must simply leave him be. And considering that what he is doing is not illegal, one might suppose it’s not hurting anybody. No wonder Cynthia is so hypersensitive, she runs around like she is a superwoman because she is Black, Queer, and Female, but the reality of it is, how is it that a ‘real’ superwoman is running around with a fake boyfriend/husband that is in actual fact a woman (that is to say as masculine butch female), that specializes in roles White people wrote, in films White people produce, and that she is the 2nd or 3rd iteration of, because some White woman has already done it, and most probably did it better simply because when she did it, it was good enough to build a franchise, but if the original would have starred you, it’d just be some nigga shit, and thus would not have built itself up into a franchise juggernaut that you could one day step into quite precisely because it was so successful without you. Thus everyone can see through the mask but Cynthia. She is a fake self-respecting descendant of Africa that must qualify her self-esteem with her queerness, qualify herself self-esteem with her Blackness, and qualify her self-esteem with her femininity (which is so weak it is satisfied by a ‘fake man’). These are the types of absurdities that post-modern Black feminism and womanism is confronting Black culture and politics with and trust me, it is being found very wanting. This is how we get Fani Willis, this is how we get Killah Kam, this is how we get Keisha Bottoms, this is how we get Tiffany Henyard, this is how we get Stacy Abrams, this is how we get Latoya Cantrell, and yes, this is how we get Cynthia Erivo; Black women who are successful at prancing around in front of White people, rabidly seeking power, position, and fame by any means necessary. Apparently ensconced in White people’s titles, with degrees from White universities and in jobs White people had for generations and defined, currently produced by White people, they go around pretending like they are such strong Black women! Being strong and hypersensitive (always on the defensive trying to justify yourself or your ridiculous behavior) don’t usually go together, however. These Negroes are doing everything but what they are supposed to be doing for the niggas they claim to represent. They are an embarrassment, and I challenge anyone to prove to me they and their entire cultural and political movements are not only embarrassing but a colossal failure.

I’ll admit that I could be misinformed, and misreading the facts I’m presenting in this essay, but I’m not lying. Let us speak more on Cynthia overreacting to longtime fans using AI to make her face look more like the original production arrangement. Cynthia’s outburst brought a lot of negative attention to the Wicked movie and production. Everybody in the mainstream press and media is ignoring it and acting like there is no impact, but the damage is done. When a production has an artist (for whatever reason) that is more important, i.e. her fickle self-esteem, her diva like behavior and ridiculous requests for obedience and even genuflection (don’t alter my face), than the production itself, that is a sign of unprofessionalism. It is a sign of disrespect to the producers, directors, the staff, and the dozens of other ‘struggle’ artists and extras who are dependent upon the success of such opportunities as the Wicked production to get their careers going. But no, it’s more important for Cynthia to make statements, even if it alienates an audience that is predisposed to like/love them (the definition of shooting oneself in the foot)!

Cynthia is not the only woke Black or brown woman to self-destruct, damn near destroying entire franchises in their wake. The girl from the 2025 Snow White production, Rachel Zegler had some woke critiques circulating around the time the initial press pushes for the films upcoming release began a few months ago. She doubled down on woke at that time, and it made people suspicious and hyper critical of the upcoming release. The Trump victory intensified all of this, and she made even dumber remarks she has had to walk back, because in truth, absent her remarks there are many people that voted for Trump that probably would have taken their children to see Snow White, if for no other reason than ‘old times sake’. Her comments alienated many potential viewers, and whatever may be said about the film’s opening, it damn sure would have been bigger if Rachel had not ‘stuffed her big foot in her mouth’ and been ‘forced to eat crow’. A real artist, a professional artist, who really values art above ‘political statements’ (unless the two are wedded which requires originality as well), would never jeopardize the success of an artistic work and production by inserting and injecting irrelevant personal shit into the mix, that the average person doesn’t find funny or entertaining! The financial and artistic success of any production hinge on a game of margins, as regards profits and the like, because there are so many variables, and different industries and commercial interests involved at so many different levels. So to have a rogue starring artist(s) that believe being Black, Queer, and female trumps every other consideration (even economic) is a liability that has a time limit. Even among post-modern White folks, time is running out.

Notable as the Snow-White example is, the classic example of the self-destructive woke #Blackgirlmagic artist was the star of the Star Wars spinoff The Acolyte, Amandla Stenberg. The ‘name’/word Amandla I am told means ‘power’. Amandla lives her public artistic life like Cynthia, as a Black Queer Female, and viewed that as a raison d’etre to make acceptance of that in all its forms a litmus test for the Star Wars franchise and its fans. This particular case is dear to my heart because the Star Wars franchise is about as old as I am. It has been a part of my dramatic and cinematic life longer than Amandla Stenberg or her gay thespian friends and associates, that set out to quite intentionally make the gayest Star Wars ever! Note they didn’t celebrate, nor even mention the fact that they were desirous of, and proud of making the best Star Wars movie iteration ever, but the gayest, Blackest, brownest, #girlpower’est, and most confused about the nature of good and evil Star Wars ever. That is far easier than simply making the best Star Wars movie iteration ever. For all you need to do that is cast gay stars and actors in a plot that involves gayness, check box 1. The next box to check is that out of the actors, actresses and non-binaries that you have, you need some Black and brown ones. Then finally you need some female ones to star. And then you must make sure that every White male, the Black and brown males, and even the Wookie males, take a back seat to the dominant women, whose whims change faster than any male screenwriter could have possibly justified for a grown woman with Jedi powers. That is all you need to make the gayest, blackest, brownest, #girlpowerest and most confused about the nature of good and evil Star Wars ever…not talent for instance, gifted dialogue, exciting and interesting screen play and narrative, multidimensional characters, and great sequencing and pacing. Nope, all you need is gay, Black and brown, White & male actors with no screen presence and no charisma, overweight actors, handicapped actors, and people calling themselves Jedi who hate going on missions and doing what they are ordered to do (out of a sense of duty, which is so old fashioned and passe). They are pouty angry and resentful at being sent on missions by the Jedi Council. Ridiculous. Neither does it make sense. Your master looks like a 950-year-old Kermit the Frog, after he hit rock bottom living in the swamps, 4 ft tall, and he can levitate. How the fuck are you going to resent his orders and think he’s sending you on some bullshit mission!

When Amandla, Leslie Hedland, the others with starring roles, and the rest of the cast, which seemed in its entirety to be gay and lesbian did the press junkets and media tours for the Acolyte Star Wars movie, they bragged and patted themselves on the back for creating (in their words) ‘the gayest Star Wars ever’. When my son got old enough, 6-8 I introduced him to the Star Wars franchise on rainy days, with a late 90’s era DVD player. As children, my friends and I collected the Star Wars action figures and toys. We would play with them together socially and of course independently. I had a 2-foot tall ‘At-At’ (the Imperial 4-legged walking Vehicle used in The Empire Strikes Back) plastic cast replica in my room. Another friend of mine named Greg, had 3ft around Plastic cast Millenium Falcon and foot long X-Wing Fighter. Greg’s people had money and in addition to other similar Star Wars franchise toys, his parents got him official Star Wars cases for him to put his action figures and figurines in and keep them organized. As children we hard core Star Wars fans would gather together in his room, combine our figurines and make up our own narrative and story lines, based on the spaceships, and other vehicles we had on hand. Usually this happened at Greg’s house. His father owned a gas station and was a very enterprising man in other ways. As a matter of fact, his father spared neither himself nor Greg, all the latest pop culture gear. For instance, I had many firsts at Greg’s house; the first time I saw a beta max video cassette recorder, the first time I drank Capri Sun which like Tang, hyper marketing perpetuated upon foolish children and even more foolish adults. Greg had a trampoline, no a real 14- or 16-footer that multiple people could get on and jump. Greg’s father had devoted the basement to Greg’s amusement and the contents included a full-sized air hockey table, a full-sized ping pong table, full-sized soccer table, go cart and motorcycle. He also had the first generation of every popular video game console.

No, this essay is not turning into an ode to Greg or his dad, even though it is quite a fascinating story, that includes mayor of Atlanta daughters and the like. I simply highlight the following story. You might imagine in such circumstances; Greg had a lot of friends. You would be right, but as a child he didn’t have a lot of friends he felt liked him for him, and not because his house was like a toy store, and his parent’s kept cases and cases of Capri Sun Juice boxes, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, and the like. You might wonder what criteria he used as a middle school kid to figure out which kids liked him for him, and that he liked. I shall recount the following story, because indeed I write such good books.

As I stated earlier, Greg’s father hit a lick with the gas station and other ‘investments’. Being into pop culture and the latest greatest things, Greg’s father did the Beverly Hillbillies move, but Southwest Atlanta style. He up and moved his family from a securely upper middle-class community in the Southwest Atlanta-Greenbriar area, to a White mainstream neighborhood in an exclusive are of suburban North Fulton County (Blacks being more oriented towards the southside). Indeed, his home was a mansion, in an exclusive White mainstream neighborhood of mansions. Needless to say, Greg’s birthday parties from then on out, already well apportioned and appointed, took on mythic and gothic proportions in his new Alpharetta digs. I was friends with Greg from the old Greenbriar neighborhood middle school days, when we came up sitting on his bedroom floor playing with Star Wars action figures and toys, flying them around artificially in our hands, arms waving, and clashing them to symbolize fighting, making peow-peow noises to symbolize shots from lasers and laser cannons. Now in high school, Greg was safely ensconced in his new bedroom area which took up 3/4th’s its own floor and was the size and appointment of a master bedroom suite. He drove a late model circa mid-80’s BMW. His birthday party was quite an event. The entire old neighborhood, school friends, and general friends and associates were invited to the birthday party during the daytime, and ending around dusk. But for the inner circle of friends, we were to sleep over that evening and leave in the morning.

Dear reader, the ‘inner circle’ was largely comprised not of the mulatto children of Atlanta mayors, the rich White kids he had met, the drones of kids that kissed his ass to hang out with him and play with his toys and ride in his car, but the ones who back in late elementary school and middle school sat there with him on his floor, with their toys and his, making up Star Wars related stories and scenarios for hours at a time. And ladies and gentlemen Greg and his father did not disappoint that evening. Long before boxed sets of DVDs, and common boxed sets of science fiction tv shows and movies, and streaming, Greg’s father had arranged to get every single episode of Star Trek for us! Keep in mind, then there was no internet. So fan mags at the grocery store and drug store were the only way to get ‘more or less’ in depth info on one’s favorite artists and productions, and we were the type of kids that stood there reading the whole entire time our mother was in the grocery or drug store absorbing the information as intensely as if it were an academic subject and we were desperately trying to remember it. I remember I went through a Duran Duran phase too, inspired by my adoration for Nicole Prather…and then I went through a The Cure phase, inspired by my adoration for Karen Marmns.

Beloved, after everybody left, we ate snacks and prepared our sleeping bags and the like which were arranged in Greg’s bedroom on the floor around his bed. We gathered around the big screen television and began watching episodes of Star Trek…I kid you not. No fucking commercials…straight, no chaser. It was only about 5 or 6 of us, and one by one dudes started falling asleep and going to get in their sleeping bags. Finally, it was just me and Greg, absolutely fascinated, rapt, at like all 7 hours of episodes of 3 seasons worth of Captain Kirk, Spock, Uhuru, McCoy, Scotty, and Mr. Sulu. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not tell you ‘credentials’ like this out of pride. For me personally, these nerdy fascinations are probably the reason it is difficult for me to meet and entertain women successfully today. The last thing today’s Post-Modern Black women need is obscurity in a man; suggesting there is something beneath the surface that perhaps might be worth the weight (wait). When Greg and I went to college we went separate ways and communicated infrequently.

The point I am making is that when an actor or actress enters upon starring in a near 50-year-old franchise, you have a built-in fan base that is primed to engage nearly everything you do. That is the upside. The downside is, they have generations of built-up associations, canon and lore, that transcend completely what Hedland, Stenberg, Cynthia, and Rachel want to do with the franchise. In that sense fan fiction like my elementary and middle school friends dreamed up on Greg’s bedroom floor for hours at a time, would have been better than what their activism styled as ‘freedom’ and improving the source material by removing it of its ‘traditional’ points of emphasis. And that is the whole problem with liberals. They do not create their own traditions, that is too hard. They demand that you should have been more inclusive, and this is not only proof of your insensitivity, but proof you don’t deserve to lead, and they do; thus they deserve seats at the most important tables and in leadership positions. In this way they ‘infiltrate’ the organizations and industries they claim perpetuated crimes against them, and now they get a chance to get their revenge. Filled with sublimated anger and resentment, now in positions of power, with no love for the franchise they now run, because it oppressed them and people like them, they take their revenge by mocking the very ethics and norms the franchise historically represented! Hence you have Bud Light doing a Dylan Mulvaney promotion, even though historically the Budweiser franchise had a base of customers that is traditionally working-class White men, quite precisely with a high school diploma. As though to mock them, it’s traditional customer base, Bud Light goes out and gets Dylan Mulvaney, a transexual woman to be its next ‘spokesman’, presuming to lecture its customer base on how to be more accepting. Similarly, you have Gillette, the definition of a masculine brand because it is used for shaving, taking a woke tack on contemporary manhood, insulting the very customers that are its traditional base. In this way, DEI ombudsmen and executives take the ‘franchises’ they represent and drive them into the ground in the name of insulting its traditional customer base and their ‘norms’ in order to make a point no one wants to hear. No one wants to be insulted in the first place, but it adds insult to injury when you have to spend your hard-earned money to be insulted; and so that the people who are insulting you (woke advertising executives and ad agencies) can get paid ridiculous sums of money. Speaking of ‘driving’ a traditional company in the ground by insulting its traditional fan base and its values, Jaguar has recently gone out and done a commercial that looks like what old fashioned American conservatives thought Teletubbies was; some kind of fantasy land, supposedly for children, filled with homosexual references, androgynous (non-binary) beings, homoeroticism, with silly names like Tinky-Winky, Po, La-La, and Noo-Noo. These names would have fit in perfectly well as the cast of the new Jaguar commercial.

One would think that with the opportunity to lead a powerful franchise/production, one would indeed honor its tradition and traditional fanbase, all but ensuring their support and approval by innovations that tend to reinforce or are at least ambivalent to its prior iterations, and the lore and canon created by them. Nope, not woke executives, producers and actors. A case example is the Star Wars franchise, pertinent here because I feel my earlier elementary and middle school associations with the Star Wars franchise give me an authentic and unique take on the whole phenomena, of what happens when being ‘woke’ becomes more important than being ‘good’, talented, authentic, creative, etc. American mainstream culture, White and Black et al, embraced the Star Wars franchise, from Middle America to the Coasts, northern states, southern states, etc., quite because of the universality of the traditional values it espoused, while pushing the social limitations of its own times. This is why George Lucas talks about his intentionality in making Princess Leia the leader of the resistance, and courageous; at the same time imminently feminine, at the same time imminently capable, honorable, and brave. Lucas sought to make it clear from the first scenes to the last that Leia was a powerful, independent character, from Day 1, and guess what, she did it all without being butch, gay or intrinsically opposed to and resentful of men and men’s talents or leadership! Queen Amidala was in the Prequel series, and she was just as brave, resourceful, intelligent, and a worthy leader as Leia.

But let Lesley Hedland and Amandla tell it, traditional sex roles and characters in the original movies held women characters back, and it is up to them to liberate them by changing their sexual dynamics and making them Black brown or handicapped. For that matter, with all that futuristic technology and literally aliens with no skeletons, and all sorts of weird appendages, the idea that human beings of the future, let alone Jedi would oppress handicapped and fat Jedi and thus they need Hedland to put handicapped, gay and Black and brown Jedi there is ridiculous. Furthermore, the very fact that Lucas intentionally had aliens and humans interacting relatively equally, meaning there were good humans and bad humans, good aliens and bad aliens, good robots and bad robots, doesn’t mean anything to Leslie, and Lucas did that merely to prop up the humanoid male patriarchy and thus Hedland, her gay wife-lover, Amandla Stenberg, and leader of the Coven of Lesbian witches Jodie Turner-Smith must fix it.

Let Hedland, Amandla, and Jodie tell it, all the traditional Star Wars lore and canon, as well as its fans are just a patriarchal remnant of a world they hate, and the only way they can deal with it, is to alter it so radically that it becomes unrecognizable. In the process they kill it without so seeming to do so. Ergo the new Jaguar ad. It looked like the French Olympic opening ceremony except it was shorter and magically, though it was about a car, it never showed one, preferring instead to share androgenous men and women dressed in highlighter marker colors with puffs surrounding their bodies at varying points. Good luck Jaguar.

But no, the woke crowd feels it has been oppressed so badly and for so long, that it refuses to compromise with the center. No matter that 90% of the country is perfectly happy in the center, not gay, and prefers to see traditional heterosexual norms, romances and relationships displayed as normative, even when they are giving the option of woke ‘art’. And when it’s forced down the public’s throats, the public shuts down, like the Acolyte backlash and the Snow-White backlash destroyed those franchises and hurt the ‘Wicked’ production, whether the media and critics think so or not. But let us close with some critical amusement.

You might be wondering how Amandla Stenberg chose to react to the backlash from ‘gay-ifying’ the Star Wars franchise and committing other cardinal sins against the franchise like ignoring the lore and cannon that has gone before it, and/or changing it at will depending upon circumstances which even defy logic. For instance, the Acolyte series resurrected a character for no apparent plot driven reason, that had been killed in a previous iteration in the Star Wars Movie franchise. But no…to the ‘woke’ actors plot inconsistencies and poor writing couldn’t possibly be the reason for the blowback and the low numbers. To the ‘woke’ directors, actors and producers, the reason for the blowback and the low numbers is because of course ‘everybody hates strong Black queer females, and the idea of a strong Black gay female making a bad decision or viewing reality in an inconsistent deranged way is impossible (see the finger holding ‘saving space’ interview).

So any blow back must be racist male patriarchy. Never mind that Black and White women that loved the traditional franchise didn’t flock to view the Acolyte or show up in its defense, even though presumably because women outnumber men, they would naturally have the advantage of numbers. It’s always funny when someone wants to liberate somebody or a group, that doesn’t want to be liberated! And yet even women weren’t interested in seeing a bunch of lesbian space witches, get done wrong by the mean nasty Jedi who hate them just for being themselves…gay lesbian self-immolating space witches living in a flammable mountain, that use futuristic and ancient witchcraft to create twin babies, who are like one, but aren’t one, but still are one. Let the reader wonder for him or herself if a lesbian coven of space witches is all that fascinating as a plot device? All one has to do to see a ‘coven’ of lesbian space witches is go down to your local YMCA in an urban area. You don’t have to blast yourself into the outer rim of planetary federation, to an unknown planet on an unknown map to mysteriously bump into a coven of lesbian space witches. Ergo ‘Wicked’.

But the ‘genius’ of the ‘woke’ crowd doesn’t end there. How do you think Amandla Stenberg reacted to racist sexist demeaning talk about her acting range (or lack thereof), and emotionless performance etc.? How do you think a strong Black queer and female woman would react to a bunch of haters, hating on her for playing the first lesbian Jedi? How would a strong Black queer woman with plenty of self-esteem (for it takes self-esteem to be a Black queer woman in a racist hateful world) react to the attacks? How would a strong Black queer woman with #Blackgirlmagic and #Girlpower react? Amandla reacted the same way Cynthia reacted to her face getting ‘erased’, getting all wound up and emotional up in her ‘wittle feelwings’. No sooner than the ratings flopped, negative social media exploded, and the hate mail came Amandla went out and did something so ridiculously counterproductive that it proved to all her critics that she wasn’t ‘fit’ for the part in the first place. Do Queer Black women in a futuristic space world that have powerful force powers ‘twerk’? Do queer Black women in a futuristic space world that have powerful force powers sit in front of the mirror and phone camera, doing their bodaciously proud afro hair, and supposedly buck back on the racist, sexist haters by lecturing them like a 17-year-old girl doing her hair in the bathroom mirror making a Tik-Tok video getting herself ready to go out?

Let us say however, a Black woman was going to act out in anger and in resentment at her feelings of being trivialized by the White mainstream patriarchy and its forces, represented by ‘traditional’ Star Wars fans who happen to be predominantly White and predominantly male. How would a sane person react to the feelings that others were trivializing them? To prove how Black, how proud, and how womanly she was, Amandla did a dis track like a common thug or rapper. Is that what the producers hired, a star capable of playing a futuristic female Jedi, that happens to behave in an all too ‘common’ fashion like she is from the projects? I’ll remind you Star Wars is traditionally a family friendly franchise, Nevertheless, there Amandla/Osha/Mae is repeating endlessly into the camera that she ‘don’t fuck wit yo discourse’. She did the track in a weekend, and guess what Amandla, it sounds like you did it in a weekend with little or no forethought. But it gets worse. Mumble rapping over her own beat lyrics that are supposed to show how strong she is, she twerks and gyrates with short shorts on, her camel toe clearly in all the children’s sight, as well as the sight of her haters who got all the proof they needed, how common she was in one dis track, produced all by herself. Counterproductive and oxymoronically, Amandla responded to the feeling White men were minimizing and trivializing her, and hating on her, by twerking repeatedly and repeatedly telling them she ‘don’t fuck wit they discourse’! Earlier, I used the word deranged for the type of behavior Cynthia, Amandla and their ilk do on a regular basis. You would have to be insane to sabotage your own productions…by overreacting to legitimate concerns. Then Black women wonder why everybody calls them ‘angry’…like they are the only people in the world that ever got ‘erased’, ‘trivialized’, or ‘demeaned’, and must lash out wildly, angrily, and resentfully if even a micro-aggression level transgression occurs that they can perceive as an insult.

The only way I could possibly excuse such ‘twerking’ from Amandla is if she was drunk. An educated Black woman would have to be drunk to think that twerking is a protest statement that somehow dignifies her as a Black woman (queer or not). Furthermore, what the fuck is a rich Black gay woman doing twerking anyway? Who is she twerking for? That proves Amandla’s ‘twerking’ is completely disemboweled from any cultural context! I hope she was drunk. Any other excuse just highlights her mental health issues and shockingly low levels of shame and self-esteem. And to think she was doing something for ‘Black women’ or ‘Black queer women’ is even more ridiculous, but yet I guarantee you this is what Amandla and Cynthia believe their behaviors do. In actuality it hurts Black women and their reputation but let Cynthia and Amandla tell it they are liberators!

It is like getting offended because someone stereotyped you, and then reacting by performing the exact stereotype, however better (more stereotypical and caricatured) than even the other person(s) could imagine. Is twerking, shaking it like a saltshaker, baking, and dropping it like it’s hot, what a gay Black female Jedi does to protest in support of her suitability for a family franchise that is 50 years or so years old? She’s no Drake or Kendrick Lamar, it is not an advantage to her to either do a dis track (to the traditional Star Wars fans mind you), or produce and rap in a FAN dis track in a mere weekend. Of course I need not tell the reader that the execution and sound quality is quite precisely like an amateur did it in a weekend. Yeah, that makes you look real good sista, ‘don’t fuck wit you discourse’. Yep, that is how you represent a family franchise 50 years old.

In conclusion, Cynthia’s interview says it all; the sheer lunacy, the ridiculous self-absorption, the self-satisfaction at feeling themselves liberators and creating safe spaces. Cynthia feeling, absent any religious sentiment, her songs and voice somehow liberate, free, and create spaces for others to ‘be themselves’. If you need to go to a ‘Wicked’ movie and sing the numbers out loud, that’s your thing no problem. But suggesting everyone should be so moved, lest we are sexist, racist, homophobes is ridiculous.

Finale

Wicked and Cynthia Erivo is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. It was not my intention for this essay to become so long. But the subject matter just kept on giving. The optics, language, falsetto sensitivity, and making and reserving mental spaces, castles in the sky, for people to be themselves….as though it is common that people go around not being themselves, and thus have been waiting on Cynthia and Ariana Grand to create a space for them to be themselves. This type of deranged lunacy, masquerading as liberation technique is ridiculous. I’ll have Black women note something else, look how close and cheesy she has gotten with Ariana Grand, and the White folks that are producing and directing, but all she has for you sista, and Black culture is calling us ghetto. Some of her previous social media comments during the promotion of the ‘Harriett Tubman’ movie were dredged up where she called Black culture and Black language ghetto. I ask the average Black woman, or Black man how you would feel, if a White woman you just met a year and half ago, in a public interview in a moment of sympathy looped her finger around yours while you were talking. Most of the Black women I know, (for lack of a better phrase) would be like “bitch are you out yo muthafuckin mind, fuck you touching on me for”. Was that some kind of lesbian symbol to loop your finger around another woman’s finger like it was a ‘fake penis’ or phallic symbol. It was like the Drew Barrymore/Kamala Harris interview multi-cultural cringe moment when she wanted a hug from Kamala, newly christened ‘Mamala’, and that this ‘Momala’ was precisely what the nation needed…only the nation didn’t quite think so to the tune of a something of a Trump rout. That finger loop was a cringe moment worthy of Jeffrey Dahmer, Hannibal Lechter, and descendants of the Donner family opening competing restaurants across the street from each other. I can see it now, the Donner Family would open a restaurant called the ‘Donner Pass’ that specialized in barbecued and roasted meats. Like it says on the sign ‘their barbecue sauce is to die for’ or their other slogan, ‘your grandmother really did put her foot in it’! Lechter would open a restaurant named ‘le Chateau d’tete’ specializing in French sauces and recipes and deserts. And Dahmer would beat them all to the punch by opening a chain, the McDonalds of ‘the other White (fish), Dark (beef), Yellow (fowl & poultry), and Red meat’ (venison, goats, sheep).

That is a perfect segue to the fact that in quite a few of her interviews emaciated looking Cynthia has a nose ring and fingernails that resemble claws.