No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more aristocrats, no more armaments, no more police, no more countries, enough of these imbecilities, no more, no more, no more, no more, no more
Hooper:
For years in this industry, whenever an African American character, hero or villain, was introduced - usually by *white* artists and writers - they got slapped with racist names that singled them out as Negroes. Now, my book, "White-Hatin' Coon," don't have none of that bullshit. The hero's name is Maleekwa, and he's a descendant from the black tribe that established the first society on the planet, while all you European motherfuckers were still hiding in caves and shit, all terrified of the sun. He's a strong role model that a young black reader can look up to. 'Cause I'm here to tell you, the chickens is coming home to roost, y'all. The black man's no longer gonna play the minstrel in the medium of comics and sci-fi fantasy. We keepin' it real, and we gonna get respect by any means necessary.
Holden:
Ah, come on, that's a bunch of horse shit! Lando Calrissian was a black guy. You know. He got to fly the Millennium Falcon, what's the matter with you?
Hooper:
Who said that?
Holden:
I did! Lando Calrissian is a positive role-model in the realm of science-fiction/fantasy.
Hooper:
Fuck Lando Calrissian! Uncle Tom nigger!
It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.
Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.
