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3 Embodying Multiculturalism Red Skull: The America you knew is dead. The much heralded melting pot is little more than a lost ideal. Not unlike yourself. Think about it. You are white. Fit. I imagine if I were to pull off that face mask, your hair is blond. In every way, what Nietzsche described as “the Uberman.” In every way, an Aryan. Join me. And fulfill your destiny. Captain America: Never!1 C hapter 2 shows the metonymic relationship between the nationalist superhero ’s body and the body politic to be problematic via its embodiment of the nation in a single sex (which can be sexed either male or female, but tends to be gendered as masculine regardless). However, as this chapter’s opening quotation shows, similar problems are attributable to the racialized body of the nationalist superhero, with Captain America (in this case) trying to reject his association with whiteness in favor of a body politic lacking in racial attributes . However, whereas there are only two genders to be reconciled to the singular heroic body, the ethnic and racial complexity of any nation-state is far more complex.2 Further, while there was little variation in the portrayal of gender in nationalist superhero comics published in and/or representing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, the histories of colonialism and empire in each country (as well as their hegemonic narrations of those collective histories) ensure that race and ethnicity are treated quite differently in each case. Race in a Four-Color World Whereas Chapter 2 explores the relationship of gender and nationalist superheroes , this chapter expands the field of analysis by tracing the various ways in which the nation’s embodiment within a (racialized) corporeal form both Embodying Multiculturalism 47 contributes to the metonymic racialization of the nation-state but also provides narrative opportunities to negotiate and narrate the race/nation relationship. Raced Bodies within the Body Politic Taking forward Elizabeth Gagen’s notion of the corporeal nation (discussed in Chapter 2), Emily Grabham has noted that while scholars in whiteness studies often argue that “white” is understood as the nonethnic and the invisible, “it is more productive [. . .] to think about how whiteness is reiterated as an always visible corporeal norm.”3 It is with this in mind that the almost unanimous whiteness of the nationalist superheroes documented in this book must be considered . The nationalist superhero body is a spectacle; the use of costumes and masks only emphasizes that the body is a vision meant to be beheld (if not fully comprehended). Always highly visible but with their race generally deemed tacit and unworthy of attention, nationalist superhero bodies are constitutive of the larger (racialized) bodies politic with which they are aligned. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, Grabham argues that “whiteness is a habit, [. . .] an accumulation of ‘gestures of “sinking” into’ a space. When bodies do not ‘sink into’ spaces, they are perceived as out of place. Racialized bodies, in these terms, may ‘sink in’ or not, depending on the styles of embodiment that they repeat or do not repeat.”4 White bodies “sink in” to the body politic (at least in North American and European contexts), while racial and ethnic others are often exteriorized. As one explanation, the whiteness of nationalist superheroes can be traced to the production processes of comic books themselves: Comics are a medium that tends to use earth tones and shadows in the backgrounds in order to create atmosphere. Yes, there are times when the stories will call for the heroes to skulk in the shadows or blend into the crowds, but dramatic moments and fight scenes—of which there are many—work best when the heroes stand out.5 Artist Kyle Baker ran into this problem when trying to draw a black Captain America (more on this later): “If the person is dark-skinned, the only way to make him separate from the background is to make the background light. People are just not used to seeing this because there aren’t very many Black people in comic books.”6 Literally then, white superheroes blend in via their visibility. Black superheroes do not “sink in” and instead seem out of place in a comics panel. However, this technological/compositional approach only mirrors the larger cultural pattern rather than explains it. One reader complained to the creative staff of Captain America in 1974 about the yellow skin tone given to the Asian villain Yellow Claw. The editor’s response...

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