Wandavision is a television mini series based on the superhero Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch, a Marvel Studios/Marvel Cinematic Universe character. On the surface, Wandavision appears to be a satire of post-1950 family sitcoms such as I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, Full House, Malcolm In the Middle, and Modern Family. Wanda and her husband, Vision, play house as a happily married couple dealing with wacky problems such as disastrous dinner parties and adapting to weird suburban culture within the quirky town of Westview. The series takes a dark turn as it is revealed that the characters’ “reality” is actually a metaphysical fabrication of Wanda/The Scarlet Witch’s subconscious dubbed “the Hex”. While Wanda believes she is controlling reality and the people around her, it is revealed that the antagonist, Agatha Harkness, is actually controlling the minds of the people of Westview. In the end, Wanda accepts her role as The Scarlet Witch and defeats Agatha which releases the minds of the people of Westview.
The lead characters Wanda and Vision struggle with power throughout the entire season. The beginning of the season picks up after the last Avengers movie, where Wanda’s romantic love interest and now husband, Vision, apparently dies. She subconsciously uses her powers to create the Hex as her own reality and recreates Vision. Throughout the season, we learn that the creation of the Hex is a coping mechanism for Wanda to deal with the recent death of Vision, which has left her completely heartbroken and lonely. She created a wacky mystical world full of old sitcoms from her memories as a child. These memories give her a sense of comfort and security. It is ironic because Wanda is seemingly all powerful in the Hex, but she is powerless in reality to save Vision. Vision has amnesia throughout most of the season, which we learn later is because he is actually just a creation of Wanda’s power, and not the actual Vision. Vision’s inability to remember the amazing superhero he was before the Hex leaves him powerless and confused about his origin and purpose in the world other than to be Wanda’s husband.
Identity is a more lighthearted theme in Wandavision. Each episode is set in a different era of TV, and this allows us to observe the similarities and differences between Americans in popular culture throughout the past several decades. Throughout every episode, Wanda and Vision are husband and wife. As they surf through decades, Vision is always a working man and Wanda is always a stay at home mom. This is representative of popular culture in the Western world: married couples are expected to stay together and men are supposed to be breadwinners. An interesting difference in the different time periods/episodes is how honest and frank Vision and Wanda are with each other about intermarital issues. In the earlier episodes set in the 1950s-1970s, Wanda and Vision sweep many problems under the rug. As time periods grow closer to the present, Wanda and Vision begin to speak more openly about their problems.
I found this show to be super interesting as a history nerd but also a Marvel Studios fanatic!
0:01
Hi So, I am David Malloy, and I will be doing this podcast by myself.
0:13
And today, I think I really just want to touch on three large topics, or three overarching topics which are like my experience in America as a black man facing racism from an Asian American or Indian American, the greater race relations between black Americans and Indian relation or Indian Americans, and really the greater stigma that we’re seeing in the United States that is kind of causing some of these problems. So, I guess, starting on the first part with like my experience so I was really appreciative of this diary of systemic and justices because it’s like my first installment, or like my first note was literally something that happened to me, so I was changing a light bulb on Zoom. A couple I think it was. I’m not remember what it was, it was when we started doing this, I was changing a light bulb on Zoom, and the Indian American that I was on, on a call with at the time had noted that saying, Oh, you’re trying to change your life. Oh, haha, yeah, you’re, that’s not gonna make you any less darker bro. Don’t don’t even, don’t even worry about it. And you know I, I took offense, because I think you should take offense. I was definitely micro aggression, but I kind of had to remind myself that he probably wasn’t even thinking. I’m thinking about all the things that are at play, you know I mean I know that I know him on a personal level.
1:44
My company works with is on a regular basis, we interact frequently and I mean we’ve worked together for a few years, right, like we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done quite a few deals together I work in venture capital.
1:58
He does as well. And we’ve done, we’ve done a few investments together over the past few years. So, I mean I guess this moment for me was really, it really raised the red flag for me. Because you know like I, I feel like I’ve been desensitized to like these microaggressions, to the point like that it’s like it’s laughable it’s like wow, you know like whenever you’re at the mall and somebody just says something off like offhand and like they’re not really thinking like, Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean it like that and it’s like no you did but it’s okay, you didn’t realize what you meant.
2:37
So you know I’m used to this, but I definitely think it’s, you can always, you can always proceed it, you know I mean I, honestly I can chalk it up as a joke between two minorities, like, I see that, but at the same time I also feel like we kind of need to address it right like let’s really look as I play here, you know I mean I think I’m with him being a model minority or not necessarily a model minority but him playing into the trope of the model minority, being an Asian American because Indians do fall under like Asian and being an Asian and Asian American it really, I don’t know it just I really felt that because it’s like whoa, you know, I kind of saw that coming, it’s like wait like you realize what was happening right here right and like I mean all this is going through my head. And, you know like him having this like status in America like whether he wants it or not, you know he has it, it kind of put me in a state of like otherness, right, where it’s like, I’m below him in the social caste.
3:43
Just as a minority, that’s not right, that’s not Asian or not white. And really you know this this cultural tension.
3:53
It really comes from. I wouldn’t even say it’s something that is inherent to us you know I think it’s more so, something that stems from white perception of us, right, like model minority that’s not something inherent to Asian Americans, That’s, you know, me being other that’s not inherent to me being black. I think it’s our I’m sorry I don’t think I know it’s a result of the perceptions of white Americans and just white America as an entity.
4:29
Yeah, you know, I think it’s. And I think that’s actually probably a good, a good point where we can kind of pivot to the inner relational relations that I was kind of speaking about earlier. So, I think.
4:42
In America we have.
4:46
We have all the.
4:48
We try to make things as being black and white. I’m not necessarily like referring to race but just very literally like black and white and cut and dry.
4:58
And that’s not always the case I think a really good example, kind of going with this like black American and Asian American, kind of going with this example is getting a little bit more specific and looking at the struggle between Asian Americans, or specifically Korean Americans, and black Americans. In the late, the late 1900s Right, so like the 1980s So like the early 2000s You know you were seeing mostly out on the west coast because that’s where a lot of Koreans and Korean Americans were immigrating to, you would see a lot of them moving into black communities right because they couldn’t afford to move anywhere else, they couldn’t afford to move into those affluent neighborhoods like all they could afford was the move into the lower income communities that just happened to be black.
5:50
And what kind of happened there was, you know, the, the tension didn’t arise, just because of like our differences, I think the tension arose, more so from an economic standpoint, right, like these Koreans, Americans would come in and essentially like build businesses in black communities, and then serve as black people, and then black people would be looking like wait a minute, why are we building these But why, like why are you coming into our community and building these businesses, why aren’t we building these businesses, and I mean it’s for a myriad of different things but ultimately you know black Americans they couldn’t they couldn’t get loans back then, you know, redlining was still a very real thing.
6:33
And if you’re not familiar redlining was the practice of discriminating against a person usually black people because of their area code or where they live, the banks would like intentionally not loan money to black Americans. So, yeah you know I think that’s that. And so yeah I think that’s where it kind of stems from and kind of looking back.
7:03
We see this, we see.
7:05
This emergence of Korean Americans kind of taking on that model minority trope as well because it’s like oh they came over and created businesses and they did better than the black people because black people didn’t create businesses and it’s like well the black people didn’t really have the resources to create the businesses right, like they didn’t even get the chance.
7:27
So I think that’s, that’s something that’s at play too. And then, I guess that’s also a good point to kind of pivot for towards the greater stigmas that we’re, that we deal with in the United States and, ultimately, I think that in terms of Asian Americans, it’s just a really people that aren’t American you know like people like people coming from other countries and just immigrants in general. I think it’s a, it’s a stigma of like a lack of education, and like a state of perpetual ignorance that we Americans live in, in the sense that, you know, there’s over 200 countries on Earth right I think it’s like 206 or something.
8:12
And it takes, it took me, I don’t know, I think I’m, I didn’t understand the, like the American culture. Honestly, until I don’t know maybe like age 16 I mean like, you know, there’s, there are certain norms that you internalize but you don’t actually understand what’s happening and what’s at play until you’re much older. I’m not trying to do that for 200 times, right, that takes a lot of work.
8:37
And as Americans, I feel like we’re lazy, you know, we just don’t take that time to learn these other communities we don’t take the time to learn these other.
8:45
These other cultures that are just all around the world and I don’t know it just it kind of makes me sad because I feel like we’ve been taught this ethnocentric ethnocentric line of thought that oh yeah Americans the best Americans that is a standard America’s this Americans that. And the fact is you know we never really got a choice to even look at other other countries from the standpoint of what was pushed us, you know like I could go to the library and read about it but that’s not the propaganda that they pushed on TV, they didn’t push diversity on TV back in like the early 2000s, like they weren’t trying to be gender forward they weren’t trying to be inclusive. I mean, they might have put the token black person on there or they might put the token Asian on there but it was never something that was really intentional to try to promote inclusion.
9:44
So I think those are really the. That’s really what I wanted to speak about was just the, the race relations in the United States between Asian Americans, and black Americans, the greater stigma in the United States. That is really just this perpetual ignorance that we have towards other nations, and really my experience, you know, with that kind of being othered and experiencing that racism from an Asian American and I mean, I hold no ill will towards them. For what it’s worth, I felt like it. I mean, he, he made a decision, and I guess I could try to educate him at some time, but that’s not really my job.
I was changing a lightbulb on a Zoom call and an Indian American told me that increasing the light in my room wouldn’t make me (an African American with brown skin) any less darker.
Context
I know this individual on a personal level as my company contracts with him on a regular basis. He and I interact frequently. We have worked together for a few years.
My Analysis
This moment definitely raised a red flag for me. As an African American I have become desensitized to microaggressions to the point that they are laughable (kind of sad typing that out). However, I can almost always recognize the indignities.
I believe this individual thought of the comment as an innocent joke between two minorities. It went a little deeper than that. As an Indian American, this individual is in fact an Asian American. Statistically, Asian Americans have some of the highest educational scores and incomes in the United States. As a result, the minority group has been given a “model minority” status in America. Asian American’s placement on this pedestal causes all other minorities to be considered “Other” and subordinate in sociocultural hierarchy. Despite both being discriminated against by White Americans, this otherness creates a cultural tension between Asian Americans and African Americans that has existed for several decades. The conflict between African Americans and Korean Americans is one of the most prominent conflicts.
In 1965, the United States restructured the immigration system from being quota-based to being skills and educationally based. Koreans were able to enter the country at relatively higher rates than other groups because they were “hyper selected”, or had much higher socioeconomic and educational access relative to their country of origin and the US born population (Tran). Many of these immigrants became small business owners in predominantly African American communities.
Korean liquor store in Leimert Park LA / (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The fact that most African Americans could not open businesses due to discriminatory financing practices by banks increased bitterness on both sides. American media made both groups distrustful of one another as well. Korean Americans were distrustful of African Americans because of the racist portrayals of African Americans as poor, violent, and uneducated. The Korean War depicted Korean as untrustworthy, which was internalized by some African Americans. Language and cultural barriers also exacerbated the problem (Bailey). The conflict may have reached its pinnacle during the 1992 LA/Rodney King riots when dozens of stores in Koreatown were looted and Korean American store owners were forced to go on the offensive.
Korean store owners in 1992 during the LA Riots (Hyungwon Kang/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Scott Kurashige, professor and chair of comparative race and ethnic studies at Texas Christian University summed up the conflict between both groups well: “…what we need to realize is that there’s this timeless structure, in which there’s always one group on top and another at the bottom.”
I doubt the individual I interacted with knew these dynamics were at play, as he is a light hearted guy. I also doubt he intended any harm. Nevertheless, ignorance and good intent never trump impact. Education is the only way to stop the perpetual injustices.
In the novel The Leavers by Lisa Ko, Polly, Deming’s mother, is detained by US immigration authorities in New York City and sent to an immigration detention center in the fictional Ardsleyville, Texas for 14 months. The novel depicts her treatment in the camp and the insufferable living conditions she endures. She is left in an unheated room with lights that are always on and given minimal time to eat and go outside. Her time at the camp ends after she endures physical and mental injuries and is deported back to China.
While this is a fictional novel, it is based on the true stories of millions of immigrants who were stripped from their families because of immigration status. Deportation in the United States has been increasing at an alarming rate. Between 1892 to 1997, approximately 2.1 million immigrants were deported from the United States. Approximately 2 million immigrants were deported during George W. Bush’s presidency. Approximately 3.2 million immigrants were deported during Barack Obama’s presidency (Yearbook 2019). Immigration detention centers are not new either. The United States’ first immigration detention center was established at Ellis Island in the 1890s. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan made the first major revision to US immigration by establishing the Interdiction Agreement, which led to the establishment of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center (Ellis Island: States of Incarceration).
Centers like the one depicted in The Leavers are operated by the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of I.C.E. There are 961 detention sites across the United States and Puerto Rico, but only 8 centers are directly operated by I.C.E. The majority of detention centers that are contracted out and include juvenile detention centers, shelters, and state & local jails (Immigration Detention Centres).
“Yearbook 2019.” Department of Homeland Security, 28 Oct. 2020, www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2019.
“Ellis Island: States of Incarceration.” Ellis Island | States of Incarceration, Humanities Action Lab, statesofincarceration.org/story/ellis-island.
“Immigration Detention Centres.” Global Detention Project | Mapping Immigration Detention around the World, Global Detention Project, www.globaldetentionproject.org/detention-centres/list-view.
