Blog Post #1: The Pretended and Black to the Future

“This is especially perplexing in light of the fact that African Americans, in very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment, and tasers come readily to mind)”. (Dery 180).

In Dery’s essay and in his interviews with two Afrofuturism authors, he discusses the use of African American culture and people in the science fiction novels and art. Here Dery is explicitly saying that African Americans, in real life, were aliens. They were abducted from their roots and brought to be slaves in different parts of the world, thus making them the epitome of an alien. To me, I see this as motivation for black writers and for them to look at potential future environments in which they will be involved.  Examining the short story, The Pretended by Darryl A. Smith, we see a future in which the characters are robots with “bones made of steal and skin made of light” (361) but the robots aren’t just made with these characteristics, they are also replicating the appearances of African American people. We learn of this when the main character, Mnemosyne is talking to her friend Diva Eve; they argue about the importance of their bodies saying “They programmed you so you could pretend like you was black” (361). Mnemosyne struggles with the color of her body and thinks that being white is more beautiful and closer to being perfect than being black is. Mnemosyne says, “’Oh yeah! White robots. Think of it! White skin over brains made of light. White skin over platinum bones, over crystal-clear blood wid sparkles! That would be so beautiful, Eve! “(367). This quotation is crucial to the story because we get to see how color plays a huge part in the future and how people(robots) may feel. I like this story because science fiction usually seems to create a new future, where things are outlandish and new; but here, I see things that aren’t new at all. The prejudice still exists against different colors and issues of the past exist. The girl wishes she were white, even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with her.  It would be my hope that in the future we, as a society, can move past these feelings of hatred, but Smith imagines a world where prejudice and dislike still exist, even in a technologically advanced society.

            Smith’s story, in relation to Dery’s quote, is interesting because Dery proposes that science fiction keeps the “black bodies” of the characters and that the African Americans tend to be aliens still. And in Smith’s story, I really like how he keeps the African American style alive. He has his main characters colored black still, they listen to music that, when reading, comes off as a hip-hop style song (“History!, Dis!story, Fist!ory;/We got da missed story, da list gory-/See? I’m pissed, tired a dis shit; We endin it, offendin it, sendin it/Down like a bad dream, a mad skeme;/And getting ALL us muthafuckas out clean/ Like 501’s outda washmachine!”(366).) Hip-hop, even techno, as discussed in the documentary in class Monday, is directly associated with African Americans. So, this song style keeps the culture alive that Mnemosyne and Diva Eve have. Also, I see the traces of slavery in this story as well, based on the characters’ colloquial slang. Their slang is seen where they don’t pronounce words fully and they are grammatically incorrect. The errors in speech remind me of the dialogue in the book Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, since they seem closely related on that level it leads me to think about slavery and lack of proper education.

            Ultimately, the passage when Dery discusses Afrofuturism and the short story by Smith are related because Dery discusses how black culture can carry over into the stories told, and in Smith’s story I see reflections of slavery in the United States, a love for music that can be associated with popular music (like from the documentary) and slave tendencies, including speech and beliefs concerning white people. 

QUESTIONS:

1. Does Mnemosyne wish she were a human or white? What do you think Diva Eve is symbolic of in this story? (She seems to try to make her friend feel better quite a bit, but does she have a larger purpose?)

2. What do you think about how Smith envisions is depicting white humans as negative people, who still dislike African Americans? What kind of real world issues may have convinced Smith to construct his story in this way?