First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero.
We’re thrilled to share a brief excerpt from Hero Me Not by Chesya Burke, an in-depth look at The X-Men’s Storm through all her manifestations in comics, animation, and films—available now from Rutgers University Press.
First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero. She is also one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, with abilities that allow her to control the weather itself. Yet that power is almost always deployed in the service of White characters, and Storm is rarely treated as an authority figure.
Hero Me Not offers an in-depth look at this fascinating yet often frustrating character through all her manifestations in comics, animation, and films. Chesya Burke examines the coding of Storm as racially “exotic,” an African woman who nonetheless has bright white hair and blue eyes and was portrayed onscreen by biracial actresses Halle Berry and Alexandra Shipp. She shows how Storm, created by White writers and artists, was an amalgam of various Black stereotypes, from the Mammy and the Jezebel to the Magical Negro, resulting in a new stereotype she terms the Negro Spiritual Woman.
With chapters focusing on the history, transmedia representation, and racial politics of Storm, Burke offers a very personal account of what it means to be a Black female comics fan searching popular culture for positive images of powerful women who look like you.
The Blinding Absence of Blackness in Gattaca
The year is “the not-so-distant-future.” The actual year is irrelevant as it could be any year in any time, and you could, in fact, be any person. In this time, it does not matter if you are Black or white, man or woman—there is no discrimination and racism has been eliminated. How, you ask, do you know this? Because they told you so. In fact, we all watch as you, Ethan Hawke, run around the screen scrubbing all evidence of your true self away, replacing it with DNA from another, more suitable white man. Gattaca (1997) is the future, and you can be assured that you will not be discriminated against because of your race or gender.
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While it is “illegal to discriminate,” you endure a new kind of xenophobia because you have not been genetically enhanced. Because of this, you are forced to live a secret life, always hiding who you are from the world, pretending to be something that you are not. “Genoism,” is the new true name of bigotry in this world, and you, a white, male character played by Ethan Hawke, are the most tragic victim of it.
As you, generic white man who we all could be, fight against every form of injustice in the film, there is a notable absence. Something just there under the surface, but that you cannot quite put your finger on. But then it hits you. The thing that is missing is actual Black people, or really any marginalized group. While the film assures the viewer that racism has been eliminated, Black people are almost completely absent in this futuristic world—other than in secondary, non-important roles. The white imagination of a world without racism could not equally imagine a world where Black people exist as autonomous and vital to the future.
You have been subsumed by whiteness, your persecutions and the injustices that have been done to you generationally are ignored, thrown aside, and consumed by the greater inequality of whatever this new future world has created. But you have been entertained, and really, isn’t that the point? So, nothing is amiss here.
Please, proceed with caution.
For the very same Hollywood that could not construct a future world with autonomous Black people, equally cannot construct a cinematic one where Storm, an Omega level mutant, exist in any meaningful way.
Excerpted from Hero Me Not, copyright © 2023 by Chesya Burke.
